Inauguration 2017 Special Coverage w/ Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader & More
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Special coverage in the Trump Era
From Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency site: "44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their network of political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney."
Dark Money author Jane Mayer on The Dangers of President Pence, New Yorker, Oct. 23 issue on-line
Can Time Inc. Survive the Kochs? November 28, 2017 By Jane Mayer
..."This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of allied conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their allies to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel as free to do so now?"...
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" see: our site, and George Monbiot's essay on this key book by historian Nancy MacLean.
Full interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer March 29, 2017, Democracy Now! about her article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency."
Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the Women's March on Washington
The Economics of Happiness -- shorter version
Local Futures offers a free 19-minute abridged version of its award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness. It "brings us voices of hope of in a time of crisis." www.localfutures.org.
What's New?
May 23, 2015
Memorial Day: Let Us Remember the Forgotten War Dead
Memorial Day: Let Us Remember the Forgotten War Dead
by H. Patricia Hynes, Portside, May 13, 2015
"May closes with Memorial Day, also called Decoration Day for the tradition of placing and planting flowers at the graves of war veterans. Freed slaves began this tradition, gathering on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, Virginia to commemorate the death of Union soldiers. It was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 and observed with different customs in northern and southern states. President Woodrow Wilson extended Memorial Day to honor military dead from World War I and all future wars.
This national holiday, which honors soldiers who lost their lives in war, poses many complexities. Recalling President's Lincoln's words in his Gettysburg address that "those who died shall not have died in vain," we recognize that Memorial Day does not distinguish, for example, between wars of justice like the Civil War and wars of aggression for control of natural (oil) and geopolitical dominance, in which young men and women lose their lives in vain. Who among us cannot name wars of the later 20th and early 21 st centuries where our government's motives were ambiguous, hidden from the public, or based on deceit? "In war," the Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote, "truth is the first casualty."
Pat Hynes, a former Professor of Environmental Health writes and speaks on the health impacts of war and militarism. She directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice.