You’ve been radically misled to believe that the only thing, or the most important thing, or one of the super important things you can do is vote. Voting in a functioning democracy would be a fairly important thing to do, but wouldn’t somehow eliminate the thousands of important things that would also need doing. Voting in a broken democracy is a mildly important thing to do, for the reasons you know by heart, but also for this reason: Seeing so many people so eager to do something read more

Livestream: https://youtu.be/Vko2FlKftI4

I’ll be speaking on the topic of “The Abolition of War Requires New Thoughts, Words, and Actions”

Wednesday, December 12th, 2018, at 6:00 p.m. (doors open at 5:30)

First Unitarian Church of ABQ, 3701 Carlisle Blvd. NE (at Comanche)

Flyer: PDF.

https://pdacnm.org

This past Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., I watched the premier of the film Charlottesville, produced by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

The film begins by lamenting the fact that the word “Charlottesville” now means to many people not our city but an August 2017 fascist rally in our city. Yet the film is entirely about that rally and is titled “Charlottesville” which will presumably contribute to the problem it laments.

I hope it does, because I read more

Obviously having been a member of the U.S. military can’t have any causal connection to mass shootings, and that’s why it makes the most amazing coincidence over and over again that so many individuals who’ve been trained to kill lots of people bizarrely end up killing lots of people.

Another mass shooter in Florida just happens to have been in the military.  read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War

Some are inclined to recognize that Trumpies are dwelling in an alternative universe in which neither climate collapse nor nuclear apocalypse is a concern but terrifying wild hoards of Muslim Hondurans are skipping and dancing into the Fatherland armed with gang symbols, deadly rocks, and socialistic tendencies.

Others are alert to the fact that the so-called “mainstream” — the viewpoint of pro-status-quo, anti-improvement institutions — is also fabricated read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!”
“Don’t be such a purist!”
“Be strategic!”
“Do what’s possible!”
“You can’t deny reality / human nature / religious text.”

The phrases used to oppose proposals for major change haven’t changed much for centuries, in both meanings of that phrase. No doubt these sayings sound better in certain circumstances than others, depending on the details. But in general, I find that they sound worse read more

Someone recklessly left a copy of a Washington Post lying around in this coffee shop, and I succumbed to morbid curiosity long enough to notice an article that begins:

“Major U.S. defense manufacturers say they will stand by the Trump administration regarding whether American-made weapons systems should be sold to the Saudi government, despite a global political backlash over the killing of a Saudi journalist and an ongoing humanitarian crisis at the hands of a Saudi-led military campaign read more

Audio here.