Category: Uncategorized

Wisconsin Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars has held monthly vigils against drones at the gates of Volk Field for over five years.  This Wisconsin Air National Guard Base is a critical component of the whole drone warfare program being conducted by the US government in a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa.   At Volk Field personnel are trained to operate the RQ-7 Shadow Drone, which has been used for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition.  However, read more

When a small number of heavily armed Ku Klux Klanners from North Carolina are given vast amounts of media attention for holding a rally here in Charlottesville, Va., on July 8th, I believe people opposed to violence and racism should go nowhere near them but in no way ignore them.

The inclination to ignore them and hope they’ll fade away into history like trials by ordeal or dueling is strong. Judging by popular social norms and their dwindling membership, the KKK seems to be on read more

This week I was certified in a Spokane, Washington courtroom as an expert witness, able to offer a professional opinion as to the conduct of a man who sat down on a railroad line to block a coal train. My role was to let the court know whether, in my opinion, this elderly gentleman was acting in the American tradition of nonviolent civil resistance that is, at times, permissible by law.

George Taylor wore his clerical collar to court that day, looking the part that he plays in Spokane life, which read more

Speaking Truth to Empire on KFCF 88.1 Free Speech Radio for Central California, Dan Yaseen interviews Norman Solomon, an author, journalist, media critic and an antiwar activist. Solomon has appeared as a guest on many media outlets including the PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News,, C-SPAN, KPFA and NPR. Topic of discussion is Russiagate.

Note: I have reached no conclusions on the Khan Sheikhoun alleged Sarin gas attack, waiting for the OPCW report. Below are the latest news plus older documentation.

Syria: Trump‘s red line, Seymour M. Hersh investigates the case of the alleged Sarin gas attack – WELT

Intelligence officials doubted the alleged Sarin gas attack at Khan Sheikhoun. WELT presents a chat protocol of a security advisor and an active American soldier on duty at a key base in the region – WELT

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Reprinted from OpEdNews.com

It is not enough to resist or fight the system and the problems that exist. It is absolutely inadequate to aim for repairing the symptoms of what is broken. We need big, positive visions which lift our sights higher, towards horizons where there are bright futures, not scotch tape and bubblegum fixes for the pathological system we currently inhabit.

Back in the early eighties, when I was a lonely pioneer in the field that has become Positive Psychology (I called it Positivity back then,) most of the world of psychology focused on pathology. Clinical psychologists asked the questions:

• What is the diagnosis?

• What are the pathological symptoms?

• What is the etiology that has led to the current clinical pathology?

• What treatments, interventions and drugs are needed to eliminate the symptoms and pathology?

I had a different idea. How much can we help people by, instead of fixing what is broken or pathological, teaching them how to move in positive directions, helping them to develop positive skills. Instead of treating symptoms, we could help them develop habits and behaviors and attitudes that would lift them, regardless of the symptoms, towards greater health, happiness, inner strength and well-being. Of course, there was and is a place for pathology oriented “treatment” of psychological problems, but people back then were not talking about positive ways to lift people towards robust health, as opposed to the mainstream model of helping people to be not ill. I had an overhead transparency that something along the lines– Be Well, not not-sick. Since those early days, starting, for me in 1981, the field of Positive psychology has emerged as a major new idea that has sprouted wings and legs of its own. The International Positive Psychology Summit meeting has over 1000 attendees and hundreds of presentations, and Positive Psychology has become a field unto itself with graduate departments at major universities. Today, I’m prepping for an interview with Henry Giroux, a big picture thinker, and just published an article by Nathan Nahm, who, in his article, concludes, “It is high time that every one in America woke up for the reality we face. Stupid or not, we cannot have a useful prescription to our problem, if we don’t have a correct diagnosis.” Nahm is talking about our economic political situation. Nahm’s remark and Giroux’s big questions in the writings and interviews I’m reading in preparation for our interview, remind me of my quest, earlier in my career, to re-think the way that we help people become and stay psychologically healthy.

And Giroux says, in his book, The Violence of Organized Forgetting,

“It is not enough for people of conscience only read more

By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune

The U.S. Senate has increased sanctions on the people of Iran and Russia, if the House and President go along. The Senate vote was 98-2, with Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voting no, the latter despite his support for the Russian half of the bill.

The bill is called “An act to provide congressional review and to counter Iranian and Russian governments’ aggression.”

“Aggression” is a term of art here meant to convey something like what read more