From Massachusetts Peace Action
Congress is voting on a $857 billion Pentagon budget, the largest in history. That's $80 billion more than last year And that doesn't count spending on nuclear weapons, spending for the war in Ukraine, and veterans' benefits.  

2.9 million children in the United States were lifted out of poverty in 2021 by the Child Tax Credit.  But that program expired after a year, and now our elected officials want to spend an equivalent amount on war instead. Bring our war dollars home.  

Kill this awful bill. Update, Dec. 8: The House voted for the NDAA 350-80, with 45 Democrats and 35 Republicans voting no.  The Senate has yet to act. 

There is considerable irony in the fact that Donald Trump when president virtually crawled to do Israel’s bidding more than any of his predecessors. He moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he accepted brutal Israeli settlement and control of the Palestinian West Bank, approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and ignored repeated Israeli war crimes using US provided weapons. Yet for all his gifts to Israel, which did not serve any actual US interest, he is currently being crucified by the Jewish/Israel Lobby because of an idiotic dinner with a pair of alleged anti-Semites, one of whom has been labeled a “holocaust denier.”

After Ranger Benny’s presentation about Alcatraz’s political prisoners, I climb uphill (trams are available) past cannons, barb wire and beneath a water tower to the main facility where audio equipment for “Doing Time: The Alcatraz Cellhouse Tour” are dispensed (at no extra charge). The taped exposition and explanation of the highly informative, entertaining audio tour are edited to be closely linked to what the lines of headphone-adorned visitors behold, unit by unit, while moving through the cellblocks.

In a perfect Ohio world, the two months between the November election and the early January would be free of insults to our intelligence by the rogue Ohio Legislature.

We would be free to enjoy the holiday season without having to worry about our public schools being taken over by the governor, our voting privilges made more difficult, and our opportunity to petition our government severely diluted.

But this is the real Ohio where the rapacious Republicans are running roughshod over the rest of us during what is commonly called the lame duck session, the two months between the election and the New Year.

I call it the rogue duck session. It has got to end.

There is a remedy for this political malady.

The Ohio legislature needs to be defanged.

Its elected members need to become part-timers, banned from meeting for all but financial and existential emergencies between election day and the New Year.

Separated by water from continents, islands have always represented freedom to me. When I graduated from Hunter College as a film major in the 1970s, I realized the Age of Aquarius was experiencing technical difficulties in ascending. So, inspired by movies like Mutiny on the Bounty, I decided to go search for paradise in the South Pacific, going on to visit and live at more than 100 islands in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia.

Before my latest journey, only three islands remained on my bucket list. At the head of the list was the apogee of isles symbolizing liberty: Pitcairn Island, where the Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian lovers fled to escape capture and punishment by the British navy after seizing the Bounty and throwing Captain Bligh overboard in 1789.

For others, however, islands exemplify the idea of imprisonment. In 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was confined at Elba in the Mediterranean, 6 miles off Italy’s coast. After the French Emperor returned to France and his army was defeated at Waterloo, the British took no chances and exiled Napoleon to remote St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, 1,200 miles from southwestern Africa.