Here’s the short video featuring Greta Thunberg #NatureNow: https://youtu.be/P0B6AxeVNY8 It is informative and encouraging, not merely frightening like some of her previous ones. George Monbiot adds his encouragement too.
I am always encouraging people to envision and organize bold goals for a significantly better future. Recently I posted to my blog this article inviting us to do that: http://parallaxperspectives.org/lets-boldly-create-the-future-we-really-want-2 Now I invite you to take the next step. Please read (or re-read) that blog post and send me your e-mail suggestions for this topic: What bold, good reality would you want for four years from now — October 2023? Instead of feeling constrained by the current conditions that are bogging our nation down and curtailing our imaginations, I invite you to BOLDLY AND CREATIVELY IMAGINE the future you really […]
This article is titled: “Making War: Implications for both Church and State Policy of Christian Theology, International Law, and the Constitution” by Archbishop Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. National Commander, “The Patriots” & Primate, United Catholic Church (a 2009 update of an article first published in March 1995) The article is at this link: Christianity and war — MakingWar2009A
Historically the U.S. was created — and our Constitution’s First Amendment adopted — to protect us from any official religion. Nowadays, the Religious Right is pushing hard to make their version of Christianity into the U.S.’s official religion. That would overturn 230 years of U.S. principled separation between Church and State. And it would hurt many people’s human rights. But some people have said that the U.S. has — in effect — the truly dominant religion of Nationalism. Extreme nationalism corrupts many aspects of that nation’s society in many ways. It causes people to hurt people of other nations. The […]
Many of the problems in our nation and in our world worsened and persist because people have created a gap between “us” and “them.” “Real” Americans vs. immigrants, Christians vs. others, rich vs. poor, straights vs. LGBTQ persons, and so forth — all of these divisions are ways for privileged people to put themselves above people of lower status. In 2018 some Church leaders who were appalled by the Religious Right’s cruelties and abuses wrote a statement they called “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis.” The document identifies six serious theological errors that the Religious […]
Twice in late summer 2019 the Olympia Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons organized and staffed information booths at public events (Olympia’s Harbor Days from Fri. Aug. 30 to Sun. Sept. 1, and Olympia’s International Peace Day event on Sat. Sept. 21). I labeled six jars with different possible uses for our federal budget. Our volunteers handed each visitor to our booth a stack of ten pennies and invited them to put the pennies into the various jars to show how the visitor would choose to spend the federal budget. The results (listed below) were similar for both events, except “Environment […]
Voters in 2016 were angry at the status quo, and they wanted Bernie Sanders, but the institutional Democratic Party manipulated things in order to cram Hillary Clinton down our throats instead. Hillary thought the status quo was OK with just a little tinkering around the edges, and her “centrism” failed to inspire voters. Voters voted for a radical non-politician named Trump and hoped for the best. Now the institutional Democratic Party is repeating their same mistake by opposing the true progressives (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) and trying to push Joe Biden or another “centrist” down our throats. 2020 will […]
A great many issues are important, but neither of the two big political parties is doing nearly enough to solve these problems. While voting has some value, the most progress in solving problems will occur when ordinary people organize nonviolently, strategically, and vigorously from the grassroots. The article I am attaching below fleshes this out briefly. For more information, see resources I’ve posted to this blog’s “Organizing” category. During 2019 The Olympian is publishing five op-eds that I am writing. The one at this link was published in the newspaper on Fri. Sept. 27, 2019: BOC — 2019.09.19 — FINAL […]
This article explains what happened behind the scenes that caused Pelosi and other negligent Democrats to finally agree to start impeaching Trump: https://theintercept.com/2019/09/24/impeachment-inquiry-donald-trump-nancy-pelosi/ But there is MUCH MORE we need to know about the huge gap between Congress members’ public positions and what they really think — and about the huge gap between Democrats’ partisan political calculations and the hard realities of Trump’s absolutely horrible impeachable offenses! Nixon won a landslide re-election in Nov. 1972. But less than 2 years later (Aug. 1974) he was forced to resign. When Nixon’s impeachment hearings began to reveal powerful evidence, the […]
For 2 1/2 years Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, has refused to impeach Trump, despite his MANY, MANY violations of the Constitution and MANY, MANY violations of federal law. Her negligence has enabled and emboldened Trump to do worse and worse things that seriously hurt human beings, the environment, our nation, and Planet Earth. Pelosi kept refusing to hold Trump accountable in the way that the Constitution specifies when a President becomes a tyrant: IMPEACHMENT. Finally, now Pelosi wants to impeach Trump, but ONLY for his Ukraine scandal. PELOSI IS STILL GIVING TRUMP A FREE RIDE FOR […]
The headline of the article I’m linking below asks, “Is Norway better off with socialism than the U.S. is with capitalism?” The article’s sub-head says: “The numbers show that the U.S. has wealth, but that wealth is collected in only a few hands. Norway has wealth, but it is spread more evenly.” Actually, the headline’s use of the word “socialism” somewhat overstates the case. Norway’s economy really is basically capitalist, but Norway has deliberately designed its government and its economy to serve the broad public rather than a rich elite. The article linked here includes stark contrasts between Norway and […]
Trump is relentlessly, repeatedly attacking TRUTH and attacking DEMOCRACY and other humane values in so many may ways that people are increasingly afraid that our constitutional government will be replaced by Trump’s dictatorship. Congress is not doing nearly enough to protect us. Trump has been stacking the courts with young, right-wing extremists who will continue imposing Trumpism upon us for decades into the future. Media ownership is concentrating in fewer hands, and those are increasingly right-wing, so now fewer Americans know what is really happening. A recent article was titled: “How Democracy Dies: Big Brother is Erasing the Public […]
The Port of Olympia issued a news release celebrating military troops and saying that the Port, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Olympia Yacht club will loudly blow sirens and horns to “salute the troops” on at 7:45 a.m. on September 6, 2019. Law enforcement agencies and a variety of other local entities and power centers would supportively participate. Mainstream America and powerful sectors within the U.S. want to “support the troops.” I’m still waiting for nearly 50 years for any local governments to celebrate Conscientious Objectors – the many people in the U.S. (such as me) and elsewhere whose […]
Olympia’s monthly publication Works In Progress invited people to write articles for their October 2019 issue around the theme of “The Rest of the World.” I submitted the article linked below, and I think you will enjoy reading it too (whether or not they print it). Replace militarism with nonviolent foreign policy — based on Oct 2019 WIP article
Republicans enjoy being “tough on crime” EXCEPT when Republicans commit crimes. Trump — who has been often accused of sexual assault, and who has admitted grabbing women’s private parts without their permission — nominated for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexually assaulting women when he was younger. Those accusations were very highly believable. His nomination was rushed through with a RIDICULOUSLY and DELIBERATELY SKIMPY investigation that was pre-determined to give him a free pass to become a Supreme Court Justice. (See the “Judicial” part of this blog for some posts […]
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