Global

As the first Democrat presidential debate finally approaches (on Oct. 13), America’s nuke power industry is in accelerated collapse.

The few remaining construction projects in the U.S. and Europe are engineering and economic disasters.

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders may address this in broad terms.

The Pentagon is promising an investigation today after it was revealed that an AC-130 warplane carried out sustained fire against a Doctors Without Borders-run hospital on the outskirts of the Taliban-held city of Kunduz, killing 19 including 12 staffers and three children.

The hospital was already overwhelmed by the huge number of casualties from the past week of fighting over Kunduz, which the Taliban seized Monday. Doctors Without Borders is demanding clarification on what happened, noting they contacted the US after the first strike near their hospital to warn them it was so close, and sustained attacks against the hospital continued for over 30 minutes after that.

In the week since it was announced that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, is to be released, to be returned to his family in the UK, there has been a huge sigh of relief from the many, many people who campaigned for his release — supporters of the long-standing Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, which I have been involved with for many years, attending protests and speaking at events, of We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I established with Joanne MacInnes last November, which drew huge support for photos of celebrities and MPs standing with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker, and supporters of the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group, established last November by John McDonnell MP, who, at the time, was a persistent supporter of worthy causes and fighter against injustice, and, with Caroline Lucas (our sole Green MP), Jeremy Corbyn and Shaker’s constituency MP, Jane Ellison, the most consistent MP suppor

Americans may find Syria a bit confusing. David Petraeus, sainted hero, has proposed arming al Qaeda, organized devil. Vladimir Putin, reincarnated Hitler, is bombing either ISIS or al Qaeda or their friendly democratic allies, but he shouldn't be because he's against overthrowing the Syrian government, also run by Hitler living under the name Assad. Hillary Clinton, liberal socialist, wants to create a no-fly zone, but wouldn't that make it hard to bomb all the scary Muslims? Wait, are we against Assad or the scary Muslims or both? Aaaaaarrrrgghh! How does this make any sense?

Let's start over, shall we?

Some basic facts?

We'll start with the most uncomfortable fact, but one that helps begin to make sense of everything, OK?

   The Free Press is distressed to learn that the long-time stalwart resource for healthy foods, progressive literature, and ecologically sustainable products – the Calumet Natural Foods Cooperative a.k.a. the Clintonville Community Market – plans to close its doors no later than October 31 this year. Some of us at the Free Press remember its roots as it began as a germ of an idea at the King Avenue United Methodist Church.
   The reason for its demise is summed up in a letter to the community that reads: “During the past decade, the retail organic/natural food landscape has changed drastically with more competitors, including the larger conventional chains placing much more emphasis on the organic/natural products arena.”
   True, the community now has several Whole Foods stores, Trader Joes, and there are health food sections in Kroger and Giant Eagle (I still wonder at how the rest of the food in the store is categorized, if not for health). But, the suspect forcing the closure in the Clintonville area is more likely Lucky’s Market.          

That little smoke-filled room where our despair and paranoia incline us to imagine a small number of evil people run the world clearly forgot to keep an eye on the Republican Party.

A popular movement has struggled to stop such looming disasters as the NAFTA-on-steroids Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but the ouster of John Boehner as Speaker of the House puts stopping anything into play. While scholarly studies deem the U.S. government to be an oligarchy, based on whom it actually serves, petty partisan squabbling just might come riding to the rescue of democracy -- accidentally of course.

Boehner wasn't insufficiently right-wing for the other Republicans in the House of Representatives, he was just insufficiently obstinate and insufficiently anti-Obama. The new Speaker's mandate will be to oppose to the death anything Obama supports. Obama could publicly throw himself behind keeping Guantanamo open, and the place would be shut by Thursday.

On behalf of those of us who struggle to honor Gandhi's legacy to the world, I would like to wish Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi 'happy birthday!' Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 and had he defied both the assassin's bullet and the aging process, he would have been 146 years old this year.

In theory, the world celebrates 2 October as the International Day of Nonviolence but it is a day that few remember or commemorate meaningfully. Perhaps this is appropriate given the rather desultory progress we have made in making our world nonviolent. Still, while our scorecard might not be what Gandhi would have hoped nearly 68 years after his death, a number of people are making a committed effort to create this nonviolent world. This effort, by its nature, must be multifaceted. Much of it is mundane; some of it profound. Let me tell you about some of these efforts by people I find pretty inspiring.