Global

On February 20, the United Nations Security Council approved a statement, described in the media as a ‘watered-down’ version of an earlier draft resolution which would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian terri

Though it has been argued that the so-called American dream is long dead, Nikki Haley is proof that the dream is still alive. Unfortunately, the ‘dream’ is hers alone.

Until recently, a close confidante of former US President Donald Trump and his pro-Israel circle, Haley wants to be the next United States president. On February 14, she officially declared her candidacy and, starting February next year, she will be officially competing against her former bosses in the Republican primaries. 

It’s quite a high hurdle to appeal to a country that’s been militarily invaded — after decades of military defense (and offense) preparations and the accompanying cultural indoctrination in the supposed necessity of military defense — to appeal to said country to construct on-the-fly an unarmed civilian defense plan and act on it despite near-universal lack of training or even comprehension.

We’re finding it to be a high hurdle just to get access to bring in an unarmed team to defend a nuclear power plant in the middle of a war.

A more reasonable proposal is for national governments that are not at war to learn about and (if they really learned about it then this would necessarily follow) establish departments of unarmed civilian defense. World BEYOND War is putting together both an annual conference in 2023 and a new online course on this topic. One place to get the very beginning of an understanding that unarmed actions can repel militaries — even without serious preparations or training (so, imagine what proper investment could do) — is with this list of nearly 100 times people successfully used nonviolent action in place of war.

Seismic shocks such as those devastating Turkey and Syria could be turning California into a radioactive wasteland as you read this.

They could shake the two decrepit atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, into mega-lethal rubble. Their fallout’s incalculable health, ecological and economic devastation could render the region uninhabitable for centuries to come.

Diablo’s two outdated nukes are surrounded by seismic faults. In 2013 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s senior resident site inspector, Dr. Michael Peck, warned that some critical instrumentation might not survive potential shocks, leading to a major catastrophe. .

Peck’s warning was ignored. He was transferred to a training site in Tennessee and has since retired.

In February, 2019, more than 2500 Californians asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to back an independent study of the two Diablo Units, now nearly 40 years old. Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Eric Roberts, Jodie Evans and Graham Nash were among the Hollywood signatories.

Confession: I have a few books out there that no one knows about because I haven’t written them . . . well, finished them.

I’ve talked in previous columns about “wrestling with infinity” — the match I always lose — by which I mean, picking a subject too large to reduce to words and eventually getting hopelessly lost in it, e.g.: shifting human consciousness, transcending what we think we know, truly creating peace (whatever that is).

So welcome to my latest attempt to circumvent infinity. The book I’m aiming at is a collection of the poetry I’ve written over the past two decades, but not exactly. It’s not really a “collection” of anything — art objects on display in glass cases, meant to be admired — and the poetry (and other stuff) I would include I think of essentially as “soul fragments”: bleeding pieces of personal truth.

And the point of the book is to enter the present moment with the reader, to revere life together, to tremble at its wonder, to look into the eyes the unknown . . . with the help of something I call the Blue Pearl.

We live in an uncertain age wherein the very essence of truth is not only being questioned, but is literally under assault. Not one but two screen versions of the classic fable Pinocchio were produced in 2022. Books, including history texts, are being hysterically banned in Florida and elsewhere. Fox “News” (now there’s an oxymoron!) is embroiled in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, while its smug prig Fucker Carlson reportedly demanded the firing of a Fox staffer for fact-checking its 2020 election lies and telling the truth. Journalism has been decried as “fake news” – by a U.S. president who, in turn-around-fair-play, was accused of making “false or misleading claims” 30,573 times by The Washington Post’s fact checking team during Trump’s misbegotten presidency.

On February 7, a funeral was held in the northern Syrian town of Jinderis. It was one of numerous such funerals to be held on that day across Syria and Türkiye, following a devastating earthquake that killed and injured thousands. 

Each one of these funerals represented two seemingly opposite notions: collective grief and collective hope. The Jinderis funeral was a stark representation of this dichotomy. 

Declaration by the German Initiative Lay Down Your Arms, on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, February 16