Save
the Date!
Sunday,
June 7
DORCHESTER
DAY PARADE!
Please join us
for the parade. . . and the cookout after
Our
message will focus on building a neighborhood-based movement to resist wars and
military interventions abroad – while opposing racism, dispossession and budget
cuts at home; reducing excessive military spending; and funding urgent needs in
our communities. Thousands of marchers and parade watchers will see our banners
and get our anti-war flyers.
Marchers
will gather around Noon in Dorchester Lower Mills (look
for us on Richmond St.) with
the parade kick-off about 1pm – later for us in Division 3
We’ll
have our
AFTER-PARADE BARBEQUE and celebration at Jeff Klein’s house, 123 Cushing
Ave. from about 3:30pm.
Please
come to that, even if you can’t march in the parade. (You can drop off a dish
or drinks before the parade up to 12noon – or later if it doesn’t need
refrigeration.)
*
* * *
TAKING
THE LONG VIEW
After many years of
struggle, openly gay veterans groups were allowed for the first time this year
in our own South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and it is only a matter of
time before those barriers fall completely, if belatedly. It may be argued,
with some truth, that discrimination based on sexual orientation is not so
fundamental to elite interests as race and gender bias, especially in the US.
Meanwhile, Veterans for Peace remain barred from the local parade. And
Federal prosecutors successfully won a death penalty verdict for Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev – admittedly by selecting an unrepresentative jury who did not share
the overwhelming opposition to the death penalty in our community. But still,
voters in Ireland and Nebraska have shown that real change is possible.
Stepping back
further and taking a longer view, we should remember that Britain ruled India
for centuries before independence, and the French had colonized Algeria for 130
years before being expelled. All that remains today of the Crusader Kingdoms in
the Middle East are the ruins impressive fortresses dotting the hilltops.
Empires and imperial regimes are not permanent. Unfortunately, their fall can
also involve periods of violence and disorder that take a long time to overcome.
Change is coming, one way or another, and our task is to work for it –
confidently – and to minimize damage during the transition.
This is especially
true of climate change, which has already contributed to violence in the Middle East. Global
warming may be the most dangerous long-term challenge the world faces, but so
far our system has proved absolutely incapable of addressing it adequately.
History is not without examples of climate catastrophes that should serve as a
warning.
Tens of
Thousands March Against Global Elites Ahead of G7
As
representatives of some of the most powerful countries in the world prepare to
gather for their annual Group of Seven (G7) meeting, this time at a castle in
the German town of Elmau, tens of thousands marched through nearby Munich on
Thursday to protest the summit's politics of "neo-liberal economic policies, war and
militarization, exploitation, poverty and hunger, environmental degradation, and
the closing-off towards refugees." Over 34,000 people reportedly turned out for Thursday's march,
with one demonstrator identified as Julia by Euronews declaring "we must not lose hope that one day the world really
will be equal, and we will all have the same values." More
CHRIS
HEDGES: “We are in a revolutionary moment”
We
have, to quote John Ralston Saul, “undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow
motion” and it’s over. The normal mechanisms by which we carry out incremental
and piecemeal reform through liberal institutions no longer function. They have
been seized by corporate power — including the press. That sets the stage for
inevitable blowback, because these corporations have no internal constraints,
and now they have no external constraints… There’s so many events as societies
disintegrate that you can’t predict. They play such a large part in shaping how
a society goes that there is a lot of it that is not in your control… Yet you
rebel not only for what you can achieve, but for who you
become.
More
THE
FIRST COLD WAR: Environmental Lessons of the Little Ice Age
Reflecting
on the “misery and misfortune” he had witnessed during the Thirty Years’ War,
Caspar Preis, a German farmer, was sure that “no one living in a better age
would believe it.” From 1618 to 1648, the population of Germany fell by as much
as 40 percent. Roughly four million people were killed in the wars between
Catholic and Protestant princes; many others died of starvation or disease;
still others fled their homes in search of safety. The misery was worst in the
1640s, when summer frosts and storms wiped out crops and soldiers nearly froze
to death… A wealth of scientific evidence shows that the seventeenth century was
one of the more extreme periods in an era of global cooling that stretched from
the fourteenth to the nineteenth century… Seventeenth-century accounts of
droughts, floods, insect infestations, famines, and epidemics trace the
far-reaching effects of climate change. These scourges struck repeatedly and
across vast regions, contributing to an estimated loss of one-third of the
world’s population. More
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