Duty to Warn

Above all, the worldwide People’s Climate March on Sept. 21 must bury King C.O.N.G.: Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas.

Which also means abolishing corporate personhood and saving the internet.

The fossil/nuclear corporations have been given human rights but no human responsibilities. They’re about to gut our most crucial means of communication.

They’re programmed to do just one thing: make money. If they can profit from killing us all, they will.

Ironically, we now have the technological power to get to Solartopia—a socially just, green-powered planet.

But our political, economic and industrial institutions answer to Big Money, not to us or the Earth.

“So you want to disarm cops LOL yeah that’s an intelligent thing to do the gang bangers would love that surely they will unilaterally disarm too.”

I’m used to semi-anonymous sarcasm by now, like this Huffington Post comment beneath a recent column I wrote on the militarization of the police and the possibility of disarmament, and I have no interest in “fighting it out” with the guy. But there it is, perfectly preserved: an impulse homage to Big Fear, wrapped in unexamined certainty. This is fast-draw morality, made in Hollywood.

I take this moment to highlight it because it’s so typical and, for that reason, the first line of defense of the status quo of violence: this instant acceptance of the idea that our enemies are continually stalking the perimeter of our lives, waiting to invade, to commandeer our way of life the moment we lower our weapons.

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America By Kiese Laymon

Many fine authors hail from the South, that most distinctive region in the country. It seems that southerners have voices and story telling skills like no others in America. Kiese Laymon, a son of the south, joins the long line of southerners who have dazzled us with their literary skills.

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America isn’t a book about suicide per se; it’s a collection of searing essays about the daily, slow death and dying marginalized people go through as they come to grips with the harshness and hopelessness of their lives.

President Obama has authorized surveillance drones over Syria, and is threatening to begin airstrikes in Syria, along with the ongoing strikes in Iraq. All without Congressional approval. The Syrian government has said that airstrikes in its airspace would constitute an act of aggression. Tell President Obama: Don’t bomb Syria or Iraq!

We’ve seen the pictures and read the news. ISIS is certainly frightening, and we’re deeply concerned about the people of Syria and Iraq. US military intervention in the region has historically been counterproductive. We've seen this from the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. What’s needed is a political and humanitarian solution to the crisis, not more violence.

Remarks at North Carolina Peace Action Event in Raleigh, N.C., August 23, 2014.

Thank you for inviting me, and thank you to North Carolina Peace Action, and to John Heuer whom I consider a tireless selfless and inspired peacemaker himself.  Can we thank John?

It's an honor for me to have a role in honoring the 2014 Student Peacemaker, iMatter Youth North Carolina. I've followed what iMatter has been doing around the country for years, I've sat in on a court case they brought in Washington, D.C., I've shared a stage with them at a public event, I've organized an online petition with them at RootsAction.org, I've written about them and watched them inspire writers like Jeremy Brecher whom I recommend reading.  Here is an organization acting in the interests of all future generations of all species and being led -- and led well -- by human kids.  Can we give them some applause?

A long list of prominent individuals has signed, a number of organizations will be promoting next week, and you can be one of the first to sign right now, a petition titled "Call For Independent Inquiry of the Airplane Crash in Ukraine and its Catastrophic Aftermath."

The petition is directed to "All the heads of states of NATO countries, and of Russia and the Ukraine, to Ban-ki Moon and the heads of states of countries on the UN Security Council." And it will be delivered to each of them.

The petition reads:

"Set up an impartial international fact finding inquiry and a public report on the events in Ukraine to reveal the truth of what occurred.

"Why is this important?

"It's important because there is so much misinformation and disinformation in the media that we are careening towards a new cold war with Russia over this."

That's not hyperbole. It's the language of U.S. and Russian politicians and media.

President Obama may want us to sympathize with patriotic torturers, he may turn on whistleblowers like a flesh-eating zombie, he may have lost all ability to think an authentic thought, but I will say this for him: He knows how to mark the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin fraud like a champion.