Both houses of Congress have now passed big new sanctions bills by veto-proof majorities, in fact with near unanimity. The vote this week in the House of Misrepresentatives was 419–3 on a bill to sanction Russia, Iran, and North Korea as punishment for primarily imaginary crimes, despite the sum total of the global legal bodies having asked the United States to judge these crimes, skip over a trial, and move right ahead with punishment being exactly equal to the number of principled opponents of war employed on Capitol Hill.

The most recent vote in the Senate on a version of the bill that did not yet include North Korea was 97-2. The Senate will now take up the new bill for another vote.

Two of the last four commercial nuclear power plants under construction in the United States—both of them at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina—have been cancelled. A decision on the remaining two, which are in Georgia, will be made in August.

“DING DONG, Summer is dead,” says Glenn Carroll, one of a core group of safe energy activists who have labored for decades to rid the southeast of these last four reactor projects.

Why would Russia meddle in a U.S. presidential election? They were just returning the favor.

This Time magazine cover from July 15, 1996 documents it all. The United States bragged about helping rig the Russian presidential election that year, helping drunken authoritarian Boris Yeltsin remain in power.

How and why could this happen? A good place to start is the book Rewriting Russian History: Did Boris Yeltsin Steal the 1996 Election?

Yes he did. And the U.S. directly meddled in the election.

Yeltsin was much beloved by U.S. neo-cons because he allowed the massive expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc and U.S. and western corporations to control many Russian natural resources.

Going into his 1996 re-election campaign, Yeltsin’s poll numbers were worse than Trump’s and opinion said he was unelectable.

U.S. political operatives came to the rescue, many tied to former California governor Pete Wilson, becoming Yeltsin’s “secret campaign weapon,” according to Eleanor Randolph of the LA Times.

Editor's note: In March of 2017, researchers from the British Museum excavating an archeological site in Greece made one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century. Sealed in a clay jar was a copy of the lost third epistle from the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. The letter addresses Paul's growing concern about the Church of Corinth's use of Christian Rock praise bands in worship services. What follows is a verbatim translation from the original Greek.

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes.

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thursday, August 3, 7-9pm
Gateway Film Center, 1550 N. High St.
A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the heart of popular culture comes the riveting and rousing follow-up that shows just how close we are to a real energy revolution. 
Former Vice President Al Gore continues his tireless fight, traveling around the world to train an army of activists and influence international climate policy. Cameras follow him behind the scenes -- in moments both private and public, funny and poignant -- as he pursues the inspirational idea that while the stakes have never been higher, the perils of climate change can be overcome with human ingenuity and passion.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/huX1bmfdkyA
Join us for a panel discussion immediately following the film including:
Rev. Susan Smith (Crazy Faith Ministries) - environmental justice
Chad Stephens (Sierra Club) - energy efficiency
Cathy Cowan Becker (Sierra Club) - Ready for 100 campaign