Month: January 2018

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WED FEB 28, 2018: Learn what’s been happening with nuclear weapons

January 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Click this link for the 1-page news release: NEWS — 2018.02.28 News, Updates, Discussions, Light Refreshments Nuclear Weapons News, Updates, Discussions, and Light Refreshments Wednesday February 28 from 4:30 to 6:30 pm Olympia Timberland Library meeting room, 313 8th Ave SE, Olympia The Olympia Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons invites the public to catch up on the many news updates about nuclear weapons – both the scary realities and the opportunities to work for peace. Enjoy an informal panel with questions/answers, discussions, printed materials, and light refreshments from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday February 28 in the meeting room […]

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Republicans Unwittingly Promote Homosexuality

January 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Although the Republican Party says it opposes homosexuality, its actual policies unwittingly promote it. At any given time, a great many women and men do not want to produce babies, but they still want to meet their sexual needs.  Women and men want to practice birth control, but the Republican Party (and many conservative Christians) are restricting people’s access to birth control. In case of an unwanted pregnancy, a great many women and men support access to abortion as a fall-back option without birth control.  But the Republican Party (and many conservative Christians) are trying to prevent access to abortions. […]

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Despite Trump’s behavioral distractions, he is accomplishing MUCH — but the WRONG stuff!

January 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Powerful interests run their agenda on two tracks: 1. For public consumption, they say nice propaganda, platitudes, etc., and they also put out a carnival of entertainment, scandal, eye candy, etc. 2. Meanwhile, apart from public view they do horrible things. So, for example, while LBJ and Nixon kept saying they wanted peace in Vietnam, they actually were escalating the war. Trump promised jobs, promised to “drain the swamp,” etc., but he has been doing the opposite. Both parties do this, and so does big business with “greenwashing” advertising campaigns while they hurt the environment. We must pay attention to […]

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An important post on this blog still reflects my best thinkig

January 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Trump, Trumpism and the Republican Party are doing horrible things to the U.S. and the world, while the Democratic Party and many Americans seem clueless. Often I think I should write something for this blog about the underlying problems that led us into this crisis.  Then I immediately remember that I did convey my best thinking in a long essay I have already posted to this blog.  Some of that article I wrote in January 2017 around the time of the inauguration, and I had added more before posting it in the autumn of 2017.  It is still valid, and […]

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Sign up for online training to advocate for Single-Payer health care

January 24, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many people want universal single-payer health care but feel they don’t know enough about it. Many people would like to become more effective in explaining it to people and advocating for it. Here is an opportunity to learn more.  Sign up for online training offered by a great non-profit organization that I’ve been supporting.  It’s “Healthcare-NOW.”  Their training will go over the healthcare crisis in the United States, misconceptions about our high healthcare costs, and single payer policy, equipping you to answer questions from legislators, coalition partners, and the public. It will also take you step-by-step through researching healthcare policy […]

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URGENT: Immigrant rights legislation in Washington State Legislature

January 24, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Bob Zeigler, who has worked very hard for decades on immigrant rights issues, alerted us on Tuesday January 23, 2018, to the urgent need to contact the Washington State Legislature about some very good bills that would protect immigrant rights in several ways.  The Senate bill (SB 5689) and the House bill (HB 1985) are the same, so we need to push each bill through its respective body until they can meet and pass on the Legislature’s floor. Here is what he wrote: Keep Washington Working Bill 5689 in Senate and 1985 in House needs support now. This is urgent […]

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Universal Single-Payer health care would have kept my family member alive

January 23, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S. has a screwy health care system that makes most people’s health care dependent upon their employment.  They might get health care if they have a good job with benefits.  But if they get laid off from their jobs, they lose health care. In contrast, all other modern industrial nations recognize health care as a basic human right, and their governments fund efficient, high quality health care for every person regardless of employment status. The U.S.’s failure to have Universal Single-Payer health care caused my cousin’s son to DIE. My cousin’s son had a job with medical benefits.  He […]

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Republicans kill fetuses.

January 23, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

For decades the Republican Party has claimed to be “pro-life.”  However, their actual policies disable and kill fetuses.  Here are some examples: — Republicans keep trying to take away people’s health care.  In 2017 the Republican-dominated Congress tried several times to take away health care from tens of millions of Americans.  This includes pregnant women and fetuses.  Without adequate pre-natal care, fetuses fail to develop properly, so they result in birth defects, disabilities in newborns, stillbirths, neonatal deaths, and maternal deaths. — Republicans keep trying to take away food and nutrition from poor, hungry people.  Inadequate nutrition hurts pregnant women […]

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Testimony for legislation to abolish Washington State’s death penalty

January 23, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

On January 22, 2018, I testified to a state legislative committee in support of SB 6052 to abolish the death penalty in Washington State.  My testimony listed the main points I made in my February 2018 TV program (see “TV Programs” and “Death Penalty” parts of this blog).  I mentioned the bold-face items in the document at the link after this paragraph.  My TV program includes the supporting information.  See my testimony at this link: TESTIMONY 2018.01.22 The persuasive flow of the testimony went like this: The more people know about the death penalty, the more they discover three basic […]

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Evacuating and relocating cannot save us from nuclear war

January 22, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

We who understand nuclear weapons know that it is an illusion – a deception – that nuclear war is survivable. In the early 1980s when Reagan was escalating the nuclear arms race, people understood that and passed a law in Washington State to prevent the State from wasting taxpayers’ money and deceiving people through “evacuation” and “relocation” plans. But now some state legislation has been introduced to require that, so another person and I testified on Jan. 22, 2018, to a House committee in opposition to that bill, HB 2214. We offered smart testimony. (I’m attaching my testimony at this […]

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“Death Penalty Does Not Work. It Makes Problems Worse. Let’s Abolish it.”

January 13, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The February 2018 episode of “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” TV series focuses on the death penalty.  Here is a summary.  See the end of this summary for a link to watch the program and a link to read the transcript. The death penalty promises many things but does NOT deliver what it promises.  It does NOT deter murder, provide justice, help victims’ families, get used on “the worst of the worst,” or save money. Instead of doing what it supposedly intends to do, the death penalty MAKES PROBLEMS WORSE and CAUSES MORE PROBLEMS.  It escalates the cycle of violence and the […]

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What vehicles’ “How’s my driving?” signs REALLY mean

January 12, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

I keep seeing various businesses’ cars and trucks with a sign on the back, asking “How’s my driving?”  They provide a phone number for people to call in order to report bad driving. This reflects badly on those businesses in 2 ways: 1.  It shows that the company does NOT trust its employees to drive safely, so it calls upon the general public to monitor their behavior. 2.  It shows that the company makes bad hiring decisions. If they hire people who are not competent as drivers, in what other ways are their employees not competent? Both of these are […]

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Besides Protesting What We Oppose, Let’s Also Organize to Achieve Positive Goals

January 12, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

by Glen Anderson We need to keep protesting against the cruelty, corruption, injustice and violence that continually assault us. But if we spend most of our time and efforts fighting the bad stuff, the oppressors will continue to have the upper hand because they can keep throwing bad stuff at us and we will always be on the defensive. We need to spend most of our time and efforts taking the initiative to organize for the positive goals that we want instead. We need to be proactive, envision the future we want instead of the current mess, and organize to […]

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Nixon’s scheme against African Americans and against the peace movement

January 12, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

One of President Nixon’s top aides, John Ehrlichman, later reported this: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did […]

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Support the Mar-a-Lago Dump for Fossil Fuel Sludge and Nuclear Waste

January 10, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

by Glen Anderson Trump wants to massively increase oil drilling, coal mining, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons. All of these would massively increase the amounts of sludge and wastes from those nuclear and fossil fuel operations. The wastes will need to go somewhere. Since Trump is so enthusiastic about those, I’m proposing a gigantic toxic waste dump right next door to his Mar-a-Lago luxury resort in Florida. Before the Trump era, the Environmental Protection Agency would have prevented such a project. But Trump and Scott Pruitt, his appointed EPA Administrator, have been eliminating environmental protections and converting that agency into […]