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
..."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?

March 21, 2018

Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War

The United States plans to spend $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to replace its entire nuclear arsenal and build new “more usable” nuclear weapons. A new campaign seeks to prevent this -- and nuclear war.

From David Ratcliffe, creator of the compendium site https://ratical.org/rat_haus.html

March 20, 2018: "Greetings on the occasion of the northern Vernal Equinox as Life again miraculously awakens from its Winter's sleep.



This is an invitation to participate in Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War, a Life-promoting and -nurturing campaign now taking shape. Its fundamental purpose is to pursue The Call for the U.S. to lead negotiations with the other nuclear weapon armed states to eliminate nuclear weapons. It is modeled on the Freeze movement and seeks to leverage a moment similar to the early 1980’s when Ronald Reagan’s hawkish plans for nuclear war fighting scared people to death and made them open to the idea that they needed to take action. The Freeze was organized around a simple call to stop the arms race in a form that people could take to any organization they worked with, providing a vehicle for engagement and action. Conceived and initiated in the Fall of 2017 by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Call to Prevent Nuclear War is a collaborative campaign, not to be “owned” by any single individual or organization.

A signpost for this is at <https://ratical.org/BftB>, an expanding catalog/archive of materials involving the Back From The Brink Campaign as well as providing historical analysis and resources to provoke and educate. In the present time of chaotic upheaval and disintegration, this budding movement offers inspired creative opportunity to change course away from the nightmare path of hyper-militarism and omnicidal imperial triumphalism and towards universal, human, and ecological security, a return to multilateralism, and a commitment to cooperative, non-violent processes for conflict resolution. In all our relationships we are evermore confronted by the imperative Dr. Martin Luther King expressed of choosing between non-violence or non-existence."

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