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Burmese Family’s 20 Year Journey to US Citizenship

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By Nile Sisters

In 1996, memories of a recently passed high school examination quickly faded as San San N., seven family members, and 35 others fled to the Burmese jungle to escape government troops. With their food supplies exhausted after 22 days, they quickly learned to forage for edibles in the jungle.

Approaching the Thai border, they slid down a mountainside to the river’s edge only to set off buried land mines along the shore, one exploding near San San. The terrified group had never before experienced such deadly weapons, which killed two members and injured several others with shrapnel. Miraculously, San San and her family crossed the river by boat and arrived alive in Thailand.   [Read more…]

The Weaponization of Hate

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History is filled with the consequences of silence and passivity.

By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet

This is a particularly interesting week to be traveling across the French countryside, as news fills the papers and the airwaves of another assault weapon-of-war used in another mass shooting done by another frightened—and thus hate-filled—American.

The Europeans know well the wages of hate and fear. And it goes way back into the dim mists of history, well before the era of the names we all know so well from the 20th century.

“The Other” is the key.

Once a demagogue successfully turns a person, a group, a gender (or gender preference), a region, a nation, or a race into the Other, the consequences are terribly but consistently predictable.   [Read more…]

All Hail the Fearless Leader Trump on His Birthday!

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The Washington Post joined the ever-growing list of media barred from receiving credentials by the Donald Trump presidential campaign on Monday. The Post joins the Des Moines Register, Politico, the Huffington Post, the National Review, Univision, and a host of other outlets in Trumpian political purgatory.

‘Displeasing The Fearless Leader will get you banished’ is the message. He’s already promised to “open up” the law, no doubt to construe libel in terms of what the rich and powerful may lose by others writing anything about them. Enjoy your First Amendment while you can, folks.

Today, by the way, is Donald Trump’s birthday.   [Read more…]

California Countdown: Clinton Calls Out the Crazyman in the Contest

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Sanders Voters Scarce So Far

With the deadline for primary voting less than a week away, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to San Diego to talk foreign policy.

This talk wasn’t about what she would do as President. It was all about The Donald, who–as far as I can tell– mostly formulates his ideas by playing upon fear or flight fantasies based on too much TV drama.

Who knows what Trump believes? And that may well be the scariest part of his persona. We do know that he seems incapable of moderating his passions in the face of a perceived threat, like a reporter asking a tough question. He’s also apparently never been wrong. About anything.   [Read more…]

The US Made a Deal With the Devil in Saudi Arabia

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Did Saudi Arabia Aid the 9/11 Hijackers?

All indications are that our biggest buddy in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, was directly involved with the 9/11 hijackers, and what’s more, exports its extreme form of Islam, Wahhabism, to al Qaeda, ISIS and other groups determined to wipe out the West and Western values. The Senate recently passed legislation that allows families of victims of the 9/11 tragedy to sue the Saudi government for any role it played in the terrorist plot.

The Saudis have gone so far as to say that, if the legislation is enacted, they would dump $750 billion worth of US Treasury bonds on the world market. That would blow up not only our relationship with the Saudis, but the world financial system which is predicated on the US dollar being the world’s reserve currency and its being necessary for the purchase of oil.   [Read more…]

Daniel Berrigan Dead at 94

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Jesuit priest lived life of peace activism

By Andrea Germanos / CommonDreams

Daniel Berrigan—Jesuit priest, peace activist, poet, author, and inspiration to countless people—died on Saturday. He was 94 years old.

When America magazine asked a then-88-year-old Berrigan if he had any regrets over the course of his long life, he replied, “I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville.”

In 1968, Berrigan and eight other Catholic activists, including his brother Philip, a group subsequently known as the Catonsville Nine, took hundreds of draft files and burned them outside a Selective Service office with homemade napalm.   [Read more…]

2016 Goldman Environmental Awards Announced Under Shadow of Murder of 2015 Recipient, Berta Cáceres

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The Goldman Environmental Foundation announced Monday the six recipients of its annual Goldman Environmental Prize, the largest eco-related prize in the world. The prize, established in 1989 by the late civic philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman, is also known as the Green Nobel. Chosen to represent Earth’s different geographic zones, each prize recipient will receive $175,000, no strings attached. It’s not unusual for them to donate their award or plow it back into their environmental efforts.

The recipients this year are Edward Loure, of Tanzania; Leng Ouch, Cambodia; Zuzana Caputova, of Slovakia; Luis Jorge River Herrera, of Puerto Rico; Destiny Watford, from the United States; and Máxima Acuña, of Peru.

An invitation-only ceremony tonight in San Francisco likely will be more solemn than usual. Early last month, one of last year’s recipients of the prize, Berta Cáceres, was found shot dead in a small town in her homeland of Honduras, near the border of El Salvador. The slaying is unsolved.   [Read more…]

Why Are Innocent People Being Killed by Terrorists?

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Many people cannot understand why radical Islamists are killing innocent people as happened in Brussels recently. What did these people ever do to them to justify their being ruthlessly terminated as they were just going about their everyday lives in a peaceful manner?

It’s not as though many innocent civilians in the Middle East have not had their lives terminated as they were simply going about their business. As many as 12 civilians were killed in December 2013 in Yemen when a US drone targeted vehicles that were part of a wedding procession going toward the groom’s village. Since 2002, drones piloted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have killed hundreds of people in the country, mostly members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but also dozens of civilians, including children.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: All War is International

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor

Listening to the news that March 15 was the fifth anniversary of the start of the current Syrian internal conflict it came to me that there’s no such thing as a “civil war” anymore.

Of course, I’m familiar with the joke about that phrase being an oxymoron. But, I mean an armed conflict between factions or regions within a country, rather than between separate nations.

Used to be, a nation/state could have a domestic conflict (again, I don’t mean a husband and wife argument) and it wouldn’t affect any other nation/state. But, that’s simply not true any longer. It is seeing the terrible results on the international stage of Syria’s five-year old war that creates and cements this new truth in my mind.   [Read more…]

Hugh Thompson, An American Hero

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By Jack Doxey

March 16th, 2016 marks the 48th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre that occurred in Vietnam. To say that it was a sad day in the history of our country is a gross understatement. Our United States military systematically slaughtered over 500 Vietnamese women, children, infants and old men in the tiny village of My Lai.

Our country’s attention span is short; and revisiting old wounds can be painful. The result is that this event has been shoved into the “dust bin” of history.

Never the less, I beseech our government and every American citizen to not forget but instead “learn” from the events that unfolded 48 years ago in the tiny village of My Lai.   [Read more…]

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