• Military Budget: Letter to the Editor, Cascadia Daily News

    If the majority in Congress has its way, spending on the Pentagon and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy will hit $850 billion next year. This is half of the U.S. government’s discretionary budget … think of the other plagues we could address with this money: poverty, disease, environmental devastation, housing, potholes, public health? The troubled F-35 combat aircraft budget that the Pentagon and the Project on Government Oversight say “may NEVER be ready for combat” is comparable to the entire discretionary budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One-third of the cost of a new aircraft carrier ($4.5 billion) would “ensure equitable and sustained foundational public health services for all,” according to the Center…

  • Reflections on George Floyd

    “Black Lives Matter!” “Say her name: Breonna Taylor”  “Say his name: George Floyd”  “No Justice, No Peace” These were some of the chants called out over the past few days of protests in Seattle and across the nation.  Quickly, the nation has mobilized in response to police brutality and the racialized murders that have happened for much too long. Thousands of people have shown up on the streets and those who can’t join are educating themselves, having hard discussions and donating money.    I was at a couple of the protests that have unfolded over the last few days. On Saturday, some friends and I walked downtown in Seattle, we passed out clementines and cliff bars to the angry and…

  • Mary Margaret Pruitt speaks out on Minimum Wage

    Seattle FOR activist Mary Margaret Pruitt’s letter to the editor appeared in the Seattle Times print version on July 3, 2017, and can be seen online at http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/minimum-wage-brings-justice/ Minimum wage brings justice Originally published June 30, 2017 at 3:43 pm Thank you for your thought-provoking coverage about the $15 minimum-wage issue “Minimum wage research offers valuable insight” Editorials, June 26] and “Mackey’s $1 a year CEO salary most likely will be history now” [Business, June 26]. People who work conscientiously at a full-time job should be paid a livable wage, which $15 is not. CEO salaries that are 300 times that of their average workers should be adjusted so that jobs are not lost and worker hours are not reduced…

  • Tom Ewell speaks out: Abolish War

    Friends,  I have spent the better part of this weekend streaming a World Without War conference on war abolition being held in Washington, DC. (For those interested, the conference will continue to be re-streamed at http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2904). We heard speaker after speaker give accounts of the enormous negative impact of war our planet – the suffering of people killed and injured, the hundreds of thousands of refugees created, the economic and environmental cost of preparing for and executing war, the immorality of the arms trade, the failure of the US Congress to audit and control the Pentagon budget, the complete insanity of preparing for a nuclear war, the failure of the US to observe international law like the Geneva conventions and the UN Declaration…

  • Militarism and Gun Violence

    Friends, It is difficult to provide my intended “uplift” from my Saturday Evening Post this evening. The gun violence of this past week only leaves me with a “sinking” feeling – that we as a nation are sinking into some kind of quicksand of violence begetting violence. Recently a friend and I stopped at a little restaurant for breakfast on our way to a hiking trip. Across from our booth were a couple of unused video game machines blinking away with scene after scene of gun violence and inviting us to come “play.” My friend remarked at the time how this infusion of “recreational” gun violence must be having on us all but particularly the law enforcement community who carry…

  • Doug Mackey wrote: “The world gets smaller in Selma

    The three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 were part of the Voting Rights Movement underway in Selma, Alabama. The first march took place on March 7, 1965, organized locally by Bevel, Amelia Boynton, and others. State troopers and county possemen attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas after they passed over the county line, and the event became known as Bloody Sunday.  On March 8, 2015  thousands of people paraded across a Selma, Alabama bridge to commemorate the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” march, not waiting for dignitaries who had planned to lead them in marking the 50th anniversary of a turning point in the U.S. civil rights movement. A number of members of FOR were present for the commemoration.       We met on our way into the…

  • Savage torturers were U.S. military personnel

    Letter to Editor, The Seattle Times by Jean Buskin   Horrific, criminal, vicious, inhuman, gruesome, savage: Yes, the immolation death of Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh is all of this [“Group’s immolation killing of pilot outrages Middle East,” Nation & World, Feb. 4]. But the agony endured by this Jordanian pilot was short compared to that of Afghan taxi driver Dilawar who was killed in 2002. Dilawar, whose story can easily be found in The Seattle Times’ online archives, was hung by his arms for several days. During this time, his captors battered his legs until they were “pulpified” according to a medical examiner. According to witnesses, his captors found Dilawar’s cries to Allah amusing, and repeatedly hit the civilian just to…

  • Larry Kerschner, Letter to the Editor The Chronicle (12-09-14)

    A recent letter in the Chronicle asserted that Korean people eat cats and dogs after torturing them. A check with my Korean friends found that Koreans don’t eat cats. Some older Koreans do eat dogs, which are raised to be eaten just like cows and chickens, but most young Koreans find this as unpleasant as most Americans. I recently returned from Jeju Island, South Korea. I went with a group of friends to stand in solidarity with villagers of Gangjeong Village who are opposing the building of a naval base.  The base is supposedly a Korean Navy base but a look at the plans clearly shows that wharfs and docks are fitted to the size of US naval vessels. The…