I want to share a few photos of Saturday’s No Kings event in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Yes, to the critics, I share your concerns. These things are full of more U.S. flags than a Trump rally, and stacks and stacks of signs promoting patriotism, and a whole forest of signs telling people to do nothing for years and then “Vote!” — an absurdity that I don’t think you could find in any other country.

Yes, you’re right, there is no plan for escalation or disruption or strategic direct action read more

Monday was Indigenous People’s Day, when much of the United States celebrates a murdering, enslaving, profiteering, imperialist Italian sailor mercenary and missionary who couldn’t tell one continent from another, wisdom from ignorance, or value from waste.

I was born and raised and have mostly lived in the eastern United States, and yet when I hear someone here refer to “how people lived several hundred years ago,” they almost always mean how people lived in Europe several read more

And this year’s peace prize goes to . . . . next year’s war!

For any supposed case where good intelligent people should supposedly side with massive violence, one has to consider five questions.

1) Is it worth the support being given in the longterm to the war machine? Supporting the war machine when there are alternatives to doing so means gratuitously supporting the single biggest impediment to global cooperation, the single biggest waste of badly needed resources, the single biggest destroyer of the natural environment, the cause of the nuclear threat, read more

The Nobel Committee has frequently given the peace prize to major war makers, and frequently to do-gooders whose work in a variety of fields has been unrelated to abolishing war. It has also often given the prize to opponents and victims of the targets of Western empire. But it has never given the prize to open advocates of war and fascistic government. Trump was never going to be given the prize directly.

Trump is not the right type of warmonger. Nobody could do it with a straight face. Zelensky read more

“Abolition” isn’t just a fun word to say.

“I want to abolish prisons,” doesn’t just mean that you think there are too many prisons and they are too horrible. “Abolish the police” isn’t just a hip way to say “I’m angry at abuse by police.” Abolishing something means eliminating it entirely, which often also means creating very different institutions that do things very differently.

Entirely means every last speck.

Abolishing war, and preparations for war, and weapons of war, read more

Two U.S. military veterans allegedly shot and killed at least three people each this past weekend, Thomas Jacob Sanford in Michigan, and Nigel Max Edge in North Carolina. So, it is a safe bet that they will both be added (with, almost certainly, no mention of their status as veterans) to the database maintained by Mother Jones that I have for years been using as a starting point to track statistics on mass shootings.

It’s been almost two years since I posted an update. In that time, Mother read more