WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
MLK Called for a “Radical Revolution of Values.”
The Movement for Black Lives Delivers One.
During the final year of his life, King was at his most radical in his politics and the most sweeping in his analysis. Emboldened to resist what he termed the triple evils of militarism, racism and poverty, King in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech offers a lesson for our own time. It is rich with provocative and relevant messages for the racial justice and economic justice movements, and the international solidarity work they require. Take, for example, his insistence that we wage a war on poverty rather than invest more human and financial resources in military aggression abroad. What demand could be more timely, give the promise by the 45th president to siphon an additional $54 billion dollars from public funds to further engorge the Pentagon budget? In the speech, King underscored the “fierce urgency of now,” and the need for this country to embrace a “radical revolution of values.” That revolution, of course, has yet to come, and its urgency has only increased… The MBL (Movement for Black Lives) “Vision for Black Lives” platform issued in August 2016 spells out what King’s “radical revolution of values” might look like. More
[Read the original speech here - "Beyond Vietnam" ]
JOIN THE #NO54BILLIONFORWAR CAMPAIGN
Our environmental and human needs are desperate and urgent. We need to transform our economy, our politics, our policies and our priorities to reflect that reality. That means reversing the flow of our tax dollars, away from war and militarism, and towards funding human and environmental needs, and demanding support for that reversal from all our political leaders at the local, state and national levels. We and the movements we are part of face multiple crises. Military and climate wars are destroying lives and environments, threatening the planet and creating enormous flows of desperate refugees. Violent racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia and other hatreds are rising, encouraged by the most powerful voices in Washington DC. President Trump plans to strip $54 billion from human and environmental spending so as to increase already massive spending on the military… Washington's militarized foreign policy comes home as domestic law enforcement agencies acquire military equipment and training from the Pentagon and from military allies abroad. Impoverished communities of color see and face the power of this equipment regularly, in the on-going domestic wars on drugs and immigrants. This military-grade equipment is distributed and used by many of the same private companies that profit from mass incarceration and mass deportation. More
CHRIS HEDGES: New Opiates of the Masses
The United States consumes 80 percent of opioids used worldwide, and more than 33,000 died in this country in 2015 from opioid overdoses. There are 300 million prescriptions written and $24 billion spent annually in the U.S. for painkillers. Americans supplement this mostly legal addiction with over $100 billion a year in illicit marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. And nearly 14 million U.S. adults, one in every 13, regularly abuse alcohol. But these monetary figures are far less than what we spend on gambling. Americans in 2013 lost $119 billion gambling, with an additional $70 billion—or $300 for every adult in the country—spent on lottery tickets… The engineers of America’s gambling industry are as skillful at forming addiction as the country’s top five opioid producers—Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, Insys Therapeutics, Mylan and Depomed. There are 460 commercial casinos, 486 tribal casinos, 350 card rooms, 55 racetracks and hundreds of thousands of gaming devices, many located in convenience stores, gas stations, bars, airports and even supermarkets. More
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WHO REALLY UNDERMINES US ELECTIONS?
Amid the on-going hysteria about alleged Russian interference in the US presidential, the real manipulators of our political system -- US-born plutocrats – has faded into the background. There’s a good reminder in a recent New Yorker article by Jane Mayer (who also wrote the book Dark Money about the Koch network last year): “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency”
Blaming Russia for Everything
It’s almost getting comical how everything that happens in the United States gets blamed on Russia! Russia! Russia! And, if any American points out the absurdity of this argument, he or she must be a “Moscow stooge” or a “Putin puppet.” … When Hillary Clinton boots a presidential election that was literally hers to lose, you might have thought that she lost because she insisted on channeling her State Department emails through a private server that endangered national security; that she gave paid speeches to Wall Street and tried to hide the contents from the voters; that she called half of Donald Trump’s supporters “deplorables”; that she was a widely disliked establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year; that she was shoved down the throats of progressive Democrats by a Democratic Party hierarchy that made her nomination “inevitable” via the undemocratic use of unelected “super-delegates”; that some of her State Department emails were found on the laptop of suspected sex offender Anthony Weiner (the husband of Clinton’s close aide Huma Abedin); and that the laptop discovery caused FBI Director James Comey to briefly reopen the investigation of Clinton’s private email server in the last days of the campaign. More
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