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Guess Where Huge Funds for Fighting Climate Change Are Being Wasted

In the United States it's not actually difficult to find significant funding with which to research new and innovative -- not to say bizarre and absurd -- pursuits, as long as they form part of an overall project of mass murder.

The United States has hundreds of programs at universities, think tanks, and research institutes that claim to devote their attention to “security” and “defense” studies. Yet in almost all of these programs that receive many millions of dollars in Federal funding, the vast majority of research, advocacy and instruction have nothing to do with climate change, the most serious threat to security of our age.

Cities of the World, Unite Against Nations' Wars


What if the very worst result of George W. Bush's war lies is that people stop taking seriously the danger of actual nuclear weapons actually falling into the hands of actual lunatics? Arguably the very worst result of Woodrow Wilson's lies about German atrocities in World War I was excessive skepticism about reports of Nazi atrocities leading up to and during World War II. The fact is that nuclear weapons are being recklessly maintained, built, developed, tested, and proliferated. The fact is that governments make mistakes, fail, collapse, and engage in evil actions.

The Rey Problem

Female Star Wars character walking

As of this writing, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has beaten out both 1997's Titanic and 2009's Avatar to become the all-time highest-grossing film in America. It has been a massive success, both commercially and critically, thrilling old fans and creating new ones.
   It's also been accompanied by a pervasive campaign of marketing tie-ins—with everything from toys to toasters—the likes of which we haven't seen since, well, the last resurrection of the Star Wars series with The Phantom Menace. And all you have to do is look around your nearest Kroger to see a glaring problem with much of it.
   In the world of all-ages action movie marketing, no one knows what to do with Rey.

At 70, Baby Boomers Face a New Acid Test

Harvey smiling with Solartopia shirt on

On New Year’s Day, the first baby boomers will turn 70.

From Jan. 1, 1946, through the end of 1964, 76 million babies were born in the U.S., more humans than lived in this country in 1900.

With a little help from LSD and our friends, we’ve won a cultural and technological revolution.

But our earthly survival depends on beating the lethal cancer of corporate domination-and the outcome is in doubt.

The GIs coming back from World War II kicked Rosie the Riveter out of the factories and into the suburbs.

The GI Bill gave them cheap home loans and free college tuition, birthing one of the world’s great university systems and one of its best-educated workforces.

Millions of boomers entered those colleges in the early ’60s. They lit the torch for a cultural revolution. They also invented the personal computer and the Internet.

Pot and psychedelics were essential to both.

Bern the Feel

 

If you have to obsess over a political candidate who's ocassionally allowed on television, please do so with Ted Rall's book on Bernie. This is not John Nichols' interview of Bernie in which he forgets that foreign policy even exists. This is not Jonathan Tasini's almost worshipful book in which he selectively includes the best and omits the worst of Bernie Sanders' record.

And this is not even just an honest look at the facts about Bernie (which Rall sees as far more positive than negative). What sets this book apart is not that it's a cartoon, but that it's an argument for placing Bernie Sanders in a particular position in U.S. history, namely as the restoration of liberalism to a Democratic Party that hasn't seen it since the McGovern campaign.

Can Local Law Enforcement Be Democratized By A People’s Movement?

In Medina County, Ohio, the local prosecutor, sheriff and judge are not behaving the way the fossil fuel industry has come to expect. A pipeline venture known as NEXUS is seeking to move 1.5 billion cubic feet of fracked gas per day across Ohio, angering and galvanizing residents along the route. However, despite not yet receiving a critical permit from the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Houston-based Spectra Energy and Detroit-based DTE Energy Co. have forged ahead with highly controversial surveying on private land. While most Ohio counties have streamlined access for NEXUS surveyors, Medina officials are cautiously resisting.

The Winter In You

Photo of woman

As the winter emerges

It fixes me with a piercing stare

My tears sparkle,still

I take a walk in the cold

Mist wraps me up like a robe

Nature's severity lessens my inner shock

Daisies, Lilies, Roses adorning the yards

Charm me and I am taken up, but

Your ignorance hurts me as the cold approaches

Like winter trees you are brutal and stand bare

Drop my love like leaves to survive yourself.

 

(The poet lives in Ohio, USA; She can be reached arubabz@gmail.com)

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