Opinion

Former President Barack Obama recently tweeted that the day of a school shooting was the worst day of his presidency. Well, it certainly shouldn’t have been a good day, but, seriously, what the filibuster? Was it a bad day because children were killed and he didn’t order their killing?

It’s bad enough having a drone murder program, but do we also have to go along with the pretense that it doesn’t exist, or the pretense that it’s been stopped? Until this week, the U.S. government was hiding this data for much of 2020 and 2021 on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, leading some to imagine that drone strikes had stopped. Now that the data is available, we see a decrease but still massive bombings.

Fifty-four of Ohio’s largest employers paid their CEOs a median of 322 times what they paid the typical employee in 2020, according to a new report

Top U.S. officials want us to believe that the Pentagon carefully spares civilian lives while making war overseas. The notion is pleasant. And with high-tech killing far from home, the physical and psychological distances have made it even easier to believe recent claimsthat American warfare has become “humane.”

The biggest news story over the past few weeks has been the continued exposing of the Israeli military’s use of dirty tech to surveil Palestinians, and the extent to which Israeli-made spyware is used globally by oppressive governments. As JVP Executive Director Stefanie Fox points out in her latest newsletter Every Single Phone Call: What Israeli Spyware Reveals about the US-Israel Alliance: “Right after the Israeli Defense Ministry criminalized six of the leading Palestinian human rights and civil groups by designating them “terrorist organizations,” news broke that the phones of multiple Palestinian human rights defenders were infected with Pegasus, the military-grade spyware created by the Israeli company NSO Group.

On the very same day, another investigation revealed the Blue Wolf and White Wolf Initiatives, an extensive network of technology used by both Israeli soldiers and settlers to collect and record photos of Palestinians that are fed into a massive facial recognition database.

Former president Donald Trump popularized the phrase “fake news” as one of his terms of universal condemnation for any reporting—or stated facts—with which he disagreed, regardless of their accuracy. It became one of his rhetorical trademarks to the delight of his followers and the disgust of the legitimate press and all others.

As it scrambles to fill their pages in the absence of Trump’s daily outrageous statements or behavior, the press fears that it lacks the kinds of attention-grabbing breaking news that attracts readers, and is repeated across the multiple outlets of the social media sphere. In repeated exaggerations and repetition of dishonest messages from right-wing provocateurs and media, the legitimate press recreates the phenomenon of “fake news” that they so loudly condemned.

Several dynamics intersect in this startling development. First is the decline financially and journalistically of the daily local and national newspapers. As more and more go out of business, reduce their staffs and reporting, become parts of large for-profit networks, and face intense pressure to survive, both reporters and reporting decline.

A Very Special Holiday
Dec. 22-30, 2021, 6:30 PM-9:00 PM
MadLab Theatre 227 N. 3rd St. Cols. OH 43215 (Doors open 6:00 PM)

TICKET LINKS:
https://ci.ovationtix.com/35811/production/1085336
or
madlab.net/tickets

The Secret Life of Santa & Mrs. Claus
By Lynnix Marie Price
Santa and Mrs. Claus take a vacation in Hawaii and trouble follows.

Quey’s Stuffy Puppy Nose Day!
By Julie Whitney-Scott
A young boy learns the responsibilities of taking care of a pet and his close friend learns that it’s possible to have more than one friend that you love.(Based on children's book by Quentin Edwards)

That Special Joy
By Julie Whitney-Scott
Three foster group home teens are forced to host a Christmas party for three seniors and one of them doesn’t want to attend. What lessons will they all learn about loss, grief, and love?

THE REASON FOR M4GP

World BEYOND War, December 15, 2021

Whether or not you’re familiar (as everyone should be) with Peter Ackerman’s book and film “A Force More Powerful” about successful nonviolent activism campaigns, or his other books and films on the same theme, if you have any interest in changing the world for the better you’ll probably want to check out his short new book, The Checklist to End Tyranny. A webinar on this book would have accomplished radically more than the recent Joe Biden Democracy Summit.

The book does not address the criticism that powerful nonviolent tactics have been used to undesirable ends by the U.S. government, coopting local movements for desired overthrows. Nor does it apologize for its dubious origins in the Atlantic Council. But, obviously enough, getting hung up on this shortcoming reveals primarily the lack of seriousness in those getting hung up. A powerful tool is a powerful tool, no matter who uses it for what good or evil or unclear purposes. And nonviolent activism is the most powerful array of tools we’ve got. So, let’s use these tools for the best possible purposes!

War spews hell in all directions. Just ask the guys at Talon Anvil, a secret U.S. “strike cell” recently exposed by the New York Times as a unit with a reputation for ignoring the rules of engagement and killing lots and lots of civilians with drone strikes as it plays war with ISIS.

Part of the problem, a source told the Times, is that “the daily demands of overseeing strike after strike seemed to erode operators’ perspective and fray their humanity.”

Nuclear weapons are at the pinnacle of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.” If you’d rather not think about them, that’s understandable. But such a coping strategy has limited value. And those who are making vast profits from preparations for global annihilation are further empowered by our avoidance.

At the level of national policy, nuclear derangement is so normalized that few give it a second thought. Yet normal does not mean sane. As an epigraph to his brilliant book The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg provides a chillingly apt quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.”

Now, some policy technocrats for the USA’s nuclear arsenal and some advocates for arms control are locked in a heated dispute over the future of ICBMs: intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s an argument between the “national security” establishment -- hell-bent on “modernizing” ICBMs -- and various nuclear-policy critics, who prefer to keep the current ICBMs in place. Both sides are refusing to acknowledge the profound need to get rid of them entirely.

I was sorting the postal delivery recently when I opened an envelope addressed to my wife. It announced a “national campaign” and “citizen opinion survey” from the right-wing activist group Faith & Freedom Caucus’s “founder and chairman” Dr. Ralph Reed, PhD (redundantly and insecurely using both Dr. and PhD).

Aware of the group and its negative reputation among the legitimate media and public interest groups, I noticed these bold-typed statements leading the pitch and request for donations: “To Teach Millions of Young Americans What Made America Great and Train the Next Generation of Patriotic Leaders for America” and “Concerning the Assault on America by the Media, Our Nation’s Educational Institutions and Today’s Democratic Party.” I also noted that Reed boasted a “PhD in American History from Emory University” and writing “a number of books on America’s history and politics—including three national best-sellers.”