Human Rights – Page 33 – Glen's Parallax Perspectives

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 […]

Prayers sponsored by governments or schools UNDERMINE authentic religion!

February 24, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many conservative persons, religious advocates, government officials (including some in charge of public schools, as well as local, state and federal governments) want prayers at local government or legislative meetings – or in public schools. ACTUALLY, THESE GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED PRAYERS UNDERMINE authentic religion. Prayer should be a personal communication with God, but making it mandatory or obligatory – or a mindless public ritual – destroys the personal faith aspect and makes it a meaningless governmental routine. It’s ironic that conservatives who oppose “big government” want government to cram someone’s religion down everyone else’s throats. Instead of protecting liberty, they are taking […]

Widely held values actually OPPOSE Trumpism’s cruelty, etc.

February 22, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many people assume that Trumpism’s cruelty is more widely accepted by Americans than it actually is. In truth, the vast majority of Americans hold better values. In order to organize the public to oppose Trumpism, let’s tap into the better values that the vast majority of Americans hold. In order to push against the right-wing extremist agenda of Trumpism, we need to help ordinary Americans recognize that Trumpism seriously violates our nation’s best values. Ordinary Americans support truth, justice (fairness), human rights, the rule of law, science, preventing governmental corruption, etc. Trumpism violates these cherished American values. Exposing Trumpism’s violations […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“Understanding and Protecting Civil Liberties”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

The American people want our society to provide freedom and social justice. The building blocks for this are human rights and civil liberties. Unfortunately, too few Americans understand and support our basic constitutional rights. If we don’t understand civil liberties, we can’t protect them. As a result, governments and right-wing agitators have been expanding police and surveillance powers, chipping away at our freedom, and reducing our human rights. After September 11, 2001, this process got even more reckless and dangerous. The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s July 2010 TV program helps viewers better understand the range of civil liberties and how […]

“Starting to Understand Africa”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

Africa is a gigantic continent with a rich history. Africa’s creative and adaptive cultures have sustained themselves for thousands of years in a vast variety of climates and ecosys-tems, ranging from harsh deserts to dense jungles. Our school systems and mainstream media have failed to inform Americans about Africa. Much of what Americans think we know about Africa is simplistic, distorted, or not true. The Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation’s August 2010 TV interview features three guests who share their experiences, information and insights: • Jens-Dieter Stahmer is well known and well respected in the greater Thurston County area and beyond. […]

“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 […]

“International Day of Peace: Olympia Connects with the World”

December 3, 2017 GlenAnderson 0

n 1981 the United Nations established the International Day of Peace to encourage individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982. In 2002 the United Nations General Assembly officially declared September 21 as the permanent date for the International Day of Peace. For 2010, volunteers from the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation, Veterans for Peace Chapter 109, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, Media Island International, Earthbound Productions, and other groups collaborated to produce a truly stunning and inspiring display and international conversation. These events marked the International […]