Governmental Abuses – Page 43 – Glen's Parallax Perspectives

Watergate book & film “All the President’s Men” is highly relevant now!

March 13, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Last night I watched the feature film “All the President’s Men,” which accurately lays out the Watergate scandal and the criminality of Nixon’s administration. I had watched the film a number of years before and read the book many years before that. Now it is more relevant than ever, especially because: — The extremely corrupt Trump regime is violating the Constitution and the rule of law — News media nowadays do not dedicate themselves to investigative reporting and seeking the truth, nearly so much as they did before — Media consolidation — especially by right-wing owners — has created enormous […]

Weird aspects of the screwed-up “war on drugs” — July 2015 article in The Atlantic

February 25, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The “war on drugs” has been dysfunctional and counter-productive for many years. It was escalated when Nixon tried to attack the “hippie” and anti-war movements and also to create public animosity toward African Americans by causing the public to fear them as drug dealers. Other politicians also provoked a “tough-on-crime” mania in order to attack their demographic and political opponents and in order to ingratiate themselves with voters who were easy to exploit through fear, racism, ignorance, and simplistic solutions to complex problems. This article in the July 2015 issue of The Atlantic magazine is informative: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/chapo-mexico-drug-war/398927/

Nearly 400 fatal police shootings occurred in the U.S. from January 1 to late May in 2015.

February 25, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fatal-police-shootings-in-2015-approaching-400-nationwide/2015/05/30/d322256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html?wpisrc=al_alert-national We keep seeing statistics about the huge number of police shootings. This article came from several years ago. The slaughter will continue until the public insists on changing public policy in several ways.

Norway and Sweden have more humane criminal justice systems

February 25, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S. has a very harsh (and ineffective) criminal justice system, compared to other modern nations. Here is some information about Norway and Sweden that I saved from a few years ago: Norway’s prisons are much better than the U.S.’s. Instead of dehumanizing their inmates, they help prisoners retain their human dignity, so they will become better able to reenter society. http://www.alternet.org/drugs/michael-moore-norway-prison-tony-papa-sentence?akid=13995.2186.s12ezx&rd=1&src=newsletter1051042&t=10 In 2013 Sweden acted sensibly to reduce prison populations. They accomplished this for several reasons including reducing sentence length and emphasizing rehabilitation. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/12-0 I would like to see ordinary Americans (including taxpayers and conservatives) confront elected officials and […]

We must DEBUNK “the Myth of Redemptive Violence.”

February 24, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

U.S. culture has long perpetuated what has been called “The Myth of Redemptive Violence.” Look at the plots of movies about the Wild West, about cops & robbers, about spies, etc. Nearly every movie ends with a big shoot-out in which “the good guys” use violence to defeat “the bad guys.” The U.S. assumes that our military is “the good guys” and we can use violence to defeat “the bad guys” just like in the movies. The problem is that reality does not work that way. The U.S. LOST the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Violence is also PROFOUNDLY […]

The U.S.’s long-standing “cult of ignorance” is growing

February 22, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

For a very long time the U.S.’s culture and political live have included a strong anti-intellectual tendency. Half a century ago I bought Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. When Adlai Stevenson ran for president in 1952 and 1956 he was criticized and scoffed at because he was a very smart person. Educated “egg-heads” are often criticized for being smart. The list goes on and on. This anti-intellectualism seems to have gotten much worse. The right-wing and Trump and the anti-science crowd and the anti-evolution crowd and the climate deniers are part of this. The editorial on page […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

TV: “More Information on the 9-11 Attacks”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s September 2010 TV program adds to the information we had provided in our September 2008 TV program. Both interviews examined some of the flaws in the government’s official story of what had happened on September 11, 2001. A growing number of people – including many scientists, architects, engineers, pilots and other professionals – have continued to analyze and provide new information beyond what we knew for the 2008 program, so in September 2010 we presented some of that new information along with some persistent critiques of the government’s official story. On the very next day […]

“Honduras”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

In the early morning of June 28, 2009, about 100 soldiers from the Central American nation of Honduras forced their way into the bedroom of Honduran president Manual Zelaya, kidnapped him while he was still in his pajamas, and forced him into exile in another country. This military coup – backed by conservative business leaders – overthrew a freely elected president. Latin American nations unanimously denounced this military coup against democracy. U.S. politicians and news media have distorted the realities, so the American people do not understand what really happened, or why. The crisis has continued ever since. Human rights […]

“Converting to a Peace Economy”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

Throughout our nation’s history, we had occasional wars and then de-mobilized afterward. But after World War II we launched the Cold War and maintained a permanent war status. We also created a “permanent war economy.” Massive military spending year after year – decade after decade – since the 1940s – has distorted and disrupted the U.S. economy and hurt our society in many ways. This is the topic of the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s December 2010 TV program. Every year Congress makes decisions about how much money to spend for which purposes. For example, Congress could spend less on nuclear […]

“Real Democracy, Not Corporate Personhood”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

“End ‘Corporate Personhood’ and Other Power Grabs” In its January 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that big business corporations can give as much money as they want to election campaigns. By a 5-4 majority (all 5 were appointed by Reagan or George W. Bush), they overturned a century of settled law that had protected election campaigns from excessive corporate interference. This decision further entrenched the bizarre notion that money is “speech” and that corporations are “persons” with free speech and the same civil rights as living, breathing human beings. The Citizens United […]

“Soldiers’ Wounds: One Cost of War that Never Ends”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

One of the recurring themes in the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s TV series is that we are all interconnected. No matter what issue we address on one program or another, we find ourselves affirming our common humanity – across nations, across social and economic groups, and so forth. Olympia FOR’s TV program for April 2011 took a fresh look at people who are in the military on active duty – and veterans who have served in the military. While the peace movement opposes wars and our violent foreign policy, we recognize that the individuals who serve or have served in […]