Italy Should Make Friends with the US Public and the World By Kicking Out the US Military

By David Swanson

In the late 1980s when I was a teenager and an exchange student in Bassano del Grappa I loved Italy for the same reasons. I found Italians on average to be friendly, kind, generous, loving, fun-loving, humble, self-critical, and intelligent. It was also very cool when I told other young people that I was from the US. Older people told me that the United States had saved Italy from Nazism.

Trump with Likud Party Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Aka, the Likud Party Half of the “US/Israeli Wannabe Authoritarian Tag-team”)

Israel’s influential center-left newspaper, Haaretz, commented recently on the Netanyahu/Trump relationship:

“The historically deep ties that bind the United States and Israel were profoundly damaged Thursday when the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu succumbed to pressure from the Trump Administration…’

“The ‘wannabe authoritarian tag-team’ (ie, ‘Trump and Netanyahu’) has committed a reckless, racist, contemptible act driven by stunningly short-sighted political calculations by barring [US House of Representatives members] Omar and Tlaib from visiting Israel. The action will have fateful repercussions…”

It is instructive to recall that in the 1995 campaign for Israeli Prime Minister, a number of violent hate-group protests were organized by Netanyahu’s Likud Party which caused serious divisions in the state of Israel – quite similar to the divisions that have occurred in the US since the campaign for president by Donald Trump.

Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 6 PM
Columbus Metropolitan Library - Hilltop Branch
511 S Hague Ave, Columbus, Ohio 43204
Register on Facebook Event page

Politicians are copy cats.

Today they are aping President Donald Trump by ignoring the will of the people and taking vengeance on their enemies.

Look no further than Liberty Township in southern Delaware County where trustee Melanie Leneghan exemplifies Trumpian behavior run amok.

You may recall my February column in the Columbus Free Press headlined "Government At Its Worst. GOP Gives Black Eye to Powell, Liberty Twp."

I described how Leneghan and a second trustee were joining with two Delaware County commissioners, all four of whom are Republicans, in an attempt to remove emergency medical services from the Liberty Township Fire Department and transfer them to the Delaware County operation.

This ran counter to the will of the people as 75 percent of voters supported a fire and EMS tax levy in 2017. Hundreds of people showed up at trustee meetings to protest.

After much anguish, one of the two commissioners, Gary Merrell, relented and the plan was suspended.

At the end of September, hundreds of herbalists, plant conservationists and green-minded folk gathered together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of United Plant Savers (UpS). The nonprofit organization has been pivotal in efforts to protect North American medicinal plants throughout the Ohio region and beyond. Within the beautifully biodiverse Appalachian foothills sits Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary (UpS headquarters). It is an oasis and refuge for those interested in learning about medicinal plant conservation and how to protect the legacy of earth’s ancestors. The sanctuary is a hidden gem, and one that often gets overlooked by Ohio residents.

The event connected people from across the continent, with a singular common goal: banding together to advocate for plants and the role humans play as stewards of the world ecosystem. Founded in 1994, the organization was forged from the painful realization that many medicinal and native species were becoming endangered or going extinct. The key players saw a problem and decided to take action. They were not just herbalists, but horticulturalists and farmers who were intimately observing the decline of native botanicals.