Key Step to Clean Up Vieques Survives in Catastrophically Awful Military Bill

First the good news.

If one of the worst pieces of legislation ever drafted becomes law, there is one small measure in it that we can be pleased with. RootsAction.org and World BEYOND War and many other organizations and activists from Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States and beyond urged Congress through a petition and a variety of lobbying approaches to provide $10 million for the purchase of closed detonation chambers in the clean-up of military contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

This read more

Talk Nation Radio: Preetha Gopalan on Appealing the ICC’s Decision not to Prosecute War Crimes in Afghanistan

Preetha Gopalan is Reprieve’s Deputy Head of UK Litigation. She works on strategic litigation efforts in the UK which seek to hold the British Government to account for complicity in the death penalty, torture, secret detention and extrajudicial killings abroad. Reprieve has just appealed the decision by the International Criminal Court not to pursue prosecution of war crimes in Afghanistan.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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If You’re Not Busy Plotting Nonviolent Revolution for Peace and Climate, You’re Busy Dying

Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional and disastrous denial of the need for nonviolent revolution.

Facts are facts, as Hallam points out. The current political systems cannot change fast enough. They read more

American Culture Loves a Good Killer: Hit-men, Gumbas and Politics Circa 2020

By John Grant

Donald Trump’s narcissistic, authoritarian instincts and the man’s clear admiration of Vladimir Putin’s gangster-capitalist leadership style makes me think of archetypal killers. During his campaign for president he spoke often of killing; he would anonymously refer to some of his business friends as “real killers,” which was meant as a compliment on their skills and effectiveness. There was the remark he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Lately, read more

A Boss is a Boss: Nurses Battle for Their First Union Contract at Albany Medical Center

A nonprofit employer is not necessarily a better boss than a profit-making one.

That sad truth is reinforced by the experience of some 2,200 nurses at Albany Medical Center, who have been fighting for a contract since April 2018, when they voted for union representation.

Even that union recognition struggle proved exceptionally difficult.  The management at Albany Med―a vast, sprawling enterprise with roughly $2 read more

West Point Professor Builds a Case Against the U.S. Army

West Point Professor Tim Bakken’s new book The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military traces a path of corruption, barbarism, violence, and unaccountability that makes its way from the United States’ military academies (West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs) to the top ranks of the U.S. military and U.S. governmental policy, and from there into a broader U.S. culture that, in turn, supports the subculture of the military and its leaders.

The U.S. Congress and read more

Conviction and Removal Aren’t the Issue; It’s Impeachment of Trump that is Essential

By Dave Lindorff

A lot of pundit verbiage and Democratic Party internal debate as well is being wasted on the question of whether Trump could be convicted successfully in a Senate currently run by a lickspittle Republican majority afraid of their shadows and devoid of any concern for the fate of Constitutional government.

Let’s accept that the 2-plus Republicans among this bunch of gutless partisans that would have to join all or most of the 47 Democrats and independents in the Senate in order read more

New poem by TCBH! resident poet Gary Lindorff: The Circle of what?

Circle up.
Hold hands.
Look around.

Look across.
Look at your feet.
Look at all the shoes.

Shoes with feet in them.
We make a good circle.
Circle of people.

Is life a circle?
Where is the circle of life?
Is there a bigger circle?

Why cant I see it?
Is the Koala in it?
Is the house spider in it?…

For the rest of this new poem by GARY LINDORFF, poet in residence at ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively owned, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news read more