• Real Cooperation with the Nations is the Best Survival Tactic

    Real Cooperation with the Nations is the Best Survival Tactic By John M Repp Unexamined assumptions are the real dictators in a culture and society. Too many people in the USA believe that human beings are by nature competitive and competition brings out the best in us. This idea is seldom questioned. Our media saturates us in stories of competition. The sports networks give us games all day long. Fortress America looks out and sees danger everywhere, every country wanting to “destroy” us as the foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump writes. (“Flynn adds to the confusion of Trump foreign policy” by Trudy Rubin, The Seattle Times, July 24, 2016, p A13  http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/flynn-adds-to-confusion-of-trump-foreign-policy/ ) Our current economic thinking, so terribly…

  • Letter to the Editor by Larry Kerschner

    Letter to the Editor by Larry Kerschner   While the horrible event that recently occurred in Orlando with the murder of 49 people by a man armed with an assault rifle may be the largest massacre by a single individual in US history, it is far from the only large massacre. In the 1863 Bear River massacre near the present-day city of Preston in Franklin County, Idaho, 225 Shoshone were murdered by US Troops. In the 1864, the Sand Creek massacre occurred when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory Militia attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. In 1868 at…

  • A Vietnam War Veteran’s Poem II

    A Vietnam War Veteran’s Poem II intro by the editor, poem by Mark Fleming President Obama recently announced a 65 million dollar, 13 year long “commemoration” of the American war in Vietnam. In announcing this program, he said “As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor“. Many veterans and peace activists think that the effort is being undertaken “to whitewash what really happened and to glorify the Vietnam War as a noble effort.” The purpose of the government’s “commemoration” campaign is to make it easier for the U.S. government to fight future wars of aggression. There are too many people still alive who…

  • Letter to the Editor or Why I Allowed Myself to be Arrested Blocking the Road to Bangor

    Letter to the Editor or Why I Allowed Myself to be Arrested Blocking the Road to Bangor  by Larry Kerschner Several of us, members of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, were arrested for blocking the road to the Bangor Submarine Base in celebration of Mother’s Day. I have been asked why I would allow myself to be arrested like this.. My only answer is that until enough people are awakened to the realities of the world we are living in there is no choice. Americans, through ignorance and lack of concern and or vision, are willing to accept the death of millions to maintain our level of comfort. Fr. Richard McSorley, a Jesuit priest, put it succinctly.“The taproot of…

  • A Vietnam War Veteran’s Poem

    A Vietnam War Veteran’s Poem intro by the editor, poem by Larry Kerschner President Obama recently announced a 65 million dollar, 13 year long “commemoration” of the American war in Vietnam. In announcing this program, he said “As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, we reflect with solemn reverence upon the valor of a generation that served with honor“. Many veterans and peace activists think that the effort is being undertaken “to whitewash what really happened and to glorify the Vietnam War as a noble effort.” http://www.olympiafor.org/tv_programs.htm  The purpose of the government’s “commemoration” campaign is to make it easier for the U.S. government to fight future wars of aggression. There are too many people still alive who…

  • Banks Caught in the Act

    Bankers Caught in the Act. by John M Repp Since the financial crisis of 2007-2008, many people have taken a closer look at how that system works. The goal is to create a better monetary system, one more stable and one we don’t need to bail out from time to time, at great expense to ordinary people. I recently found an academic article on the web that proves empirically, with a scientific experiment, that individual banks create money out of thin air. This they do when they make a loan. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001070 This is the idea Ellen Brown, a founder of the Public Banking Institute, has been writing about for years. Unless you like reading academic papers, I suggest at most,…

  • Why Is the “Force More Powerful” More Powerful?

    Why Is the “Force More Powerful” More Powerful? by John M Repp People coming to FORUSA’s one hundredth anniversary celebration at Seabeck, Washington, this coming July 1 through July 4, will get to hear Erica Chenoweth and Jamila Raqib, two of the most knowledgeable people on the planet on the subject of mass nonviolent civil resistance. http://forseabeck.org/ In 2006, Chenoweth was getting her PhD in political science, writing her dissertation on why and how people use violence to achieve political goals. Then she received an invitation to a week long workshop put on by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/ . She accepted the invitation as a challenge. At the workshop, she expressed scepticism, assuming violent methods of political…

  • How to Tell TPP Is a Bad Deal

    How to Tell TPP Is a Bad Deal by Stan Sorscher Labor Representative, Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace first posted on Huffington Post Jan 05, 2016, published with permission of the author How do you tell if the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a good deal or a bad one? Consider the recent climate summit agreement in Paris. Nearly 200 countries negotiated the deal, more or less in public for the world to see. All signatory countries wanted a sustainable planet where their citizens could prosper. The climate change deal in Paris is not air-tight. Still, it is a significant political, social and moral commitment by leaders of most countries in the world to do better. TPP defines…

  • Short Reviews of Two Good Books on the Climate Crisis

    Short Reviews of Two Good Books on the Climate Crisis by John M Repp Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis. Tim Flannery. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 2015. Flannery, a scientist and writer, starts with a scientific assessment of the problem. He writes that the majority of the world’s population no longer needs graphs and charts to understand climate change. We have already experienced enough extreme and record-breaking weather to know that climate change is upon us and that it threatens us. Paraphrasing what Bernie Sanders said, “Only Republican candidates for President don’t get it!” Flannery wrote The Weather Makers ten years ago. Millions read it. It was translated in 23 languages. One of the readers…