In a day and age when many of us are taught to overcome prejudice and behave respectfully toward all, mainstream U.S. media and school texts still habitually portray U.S. lives as the only lives that really matter. A plane crash that kills dozens of human beings is reported, just like a war, with the bulk of the coverage on the handful of U.S. lives lost. A U.S. military read more

The City of Charlottesville will be considering the question of divestment from weapons and fossil fuels at its meeting on May 6th.

For details on the divestment campaign, how to attend the meeting, and what else you can do to help in Charlottesville or in any other town, see http://divestcville.org

U.S. weapons companies arm three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships and both sides of numerous wars. Without the U.S. government’s support for fighters in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere, read more

Give a judge a couple of years and he’ll eventually blurt out that the sky is blue.

That’s now happened in Charlottesville, where a court has finally concluded that the statues of Lee and Jackson in their war uniforms on their war horses are war monuments.

People outside of Charlottesville will of course be scratching their heads and wondering what that matters. But that’s because nobody has bothered to tell them why Trump’s favorite statues are still standing and what it read more

Here I am sleeping at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington D.C. so that a coup government led by a graduate of George Washington University a few blocks from here doesn’t take the place over or send the U.S. Secret Service (and what the hell is secret about them?) to do it, and I keep wishing that the U.S. government could find the nerve to overthrow itself for a change.

The old joke is that the U.S. government is never overthrown because it’s in the one capital that doesn’t have read more

bit.ly/spencerlied

Read this Military.com article from Friday: “Do U.S. High Schools Bar Military Recruiters? Activists Try to Call Pentagon’s Bluff.” It discusses the offer that Pat Elder and I made [Here’s that offer and video of Spencer lying] to award funding to any school that could be identified as one of the over 1,100 public high schools that the Secretary of the Navy told Congress in December bar military recruiters. The article states:

“Addressing members of the read more

Below are 10 basic questions for U.S. Presidential Candidates and the answers they have thus far provided, if any.

1. What would you like the U.S. discretionary budget to look like? Roughly what percentage should go to what project? With 60% now going to militarism, approximately what percentage would you like that to be?
2. With some super-profitable corporations paying no taxes, some individuals with super-high incomes paying a lower tax-rate than ordinary people, a regressive cap on taxes for Social Security, no wealth tax, and no tax on the vast majority of estates, what will you do to make taxation less regressive and more progressive?
3. Do you support a Green New Deal, and if so what exactly does it look like?
4. How would you change the funding of education, including pre-school and college, and addressing student debt?
5. Would you halt or continue expenditures on the production and so-called modernization of nuclear weapons?
6. Do you support the creation of a single-payer health coverage system or enhanced Medicare for all?
7. Would you end discriminatory bans on immigrants?
8. How would you address the problem of mass incarceration?
9. What changes, if any, would you make to Social Security and the funding thereof?
10. What should the minimum wage be in the United States and should that wage be set to automatically keep pace with the cost of living?

Most people are surprised at how difficult it is to find any answers to such questions from candidates running for the office of U.S. president and receiving voluminous media coverage of various trivial details. Some candidates have answered some of these questions. Most have not answered most of them. You can ask your favorite and least favorite campaigns for their positions on these read more

Last week I tweeted this: “The U.S. military wants to fly small nuclear power plants into wars in order to power the wars’ weaponry. Because there was some chance we might not all die fast enough if nothing this stupid was tried.” I linked to a report on this insane idea. Someone replied: “The Navy already does this.”

True enough. Submarines and aircraft carriers engage in this lunacy, and we take it for granted. Submarines also haul nuclear weapons around the world’s read more

I’m old enough to remember when Nancy Pelosi was telling us that Trump would impeach himself.

Now, Trump’s “not worth it,” as if impeachment is a favor you bestow on those most worthy.

Jerrold Nadler is proposing to fine Trump for refusing to comply with subpoenas.

Do you grasp the full meaning of that last one? Trump has, in an unprecedented manner, blatantly violated the U.S. Constitution’s two — count em — emoluments read more

Max Blumenthal’s new book, “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump,” is over 300 pages and wastes not a word. It also does far more than it claims.

“This book,” Blumenthal writes, “makes the case that Trump’s election would not have been possible without 9/11 and the subsequent military interventions conceived by the national security state. Further, I argue that if the CIA had read more