!!Language Warning!!
Jan Weinberg explains the TPP as an aspect of the US’s pivot to Asia.
Video of Debate on Is War Ever Justifiable?
Allow Parents the Option to Protect Kids from Military Recruiters in High Schools
Parents in our state should be given the means to exercise their right to opt out of sending their kids’ names and contact information to military recruiters.
Please click below to send this email to your state legislators and governor:
Letter:
“As a constituent, I urge you to follow the example set by Maryland. The federal “Every Student Succeeds Act” contains a provision that compels high schools to provide the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all students to any military recruiter who requests the information. The law also says that parents have the right to remove their kids’ names from the lists being sent to the Pentagon, and that schools have the responsibility to tell parents that.
Only in Maryland are parents given an easy and directly presented means of opting out. The choice remains theirs, and they are empowered to make it. A right you do not learn about – or find any means to act on – is not a right at all!
Maryland is the only state thus far to pass a law that puts the military recruiter “opt-out” language on the school’s mandatory emergency contact form. As a result, large numbers of Marylanders have exercised their right to opt out.
Please make our state the second to take this step.”
Greg Gerrit On The Military
Hello, I am Greg Gerritt, a Green Party member since 1984 and a resident of Rhode Island. The State of the Union is fragile, threatened by three interconnected issues, the expansion of the war machine, growing inequality, and climate change. When the President and the Congress borrow money to give tax breaks to billionaires and prop up the fossil fuel industries and the war machine, while more kids go hungry, we deport dreamers, and the storms get fiercer, you know we are going in the wrong direction.
If There Wasn’t War, We Could All Sleep Better
[93] Nobel Peace Prize Winning Group On How To End War
https://trofire.com/2018/01/12/nobel-peace-prize-winning-group-end-war/
35 Peace Groups Demand Congress Protect Public From Nuclear ‘Bomb Threat’ Trump
Dozens of peace groups, in an open letter, are calling for Congress to back the “No First Use” and the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act” to reign in Trump’s power to launch nuclear war, according to an article in Common Dreams.
“Time and time again, Trump has proven just how dangerous it is for him to have thousands of nuclear weapons at his fingertips. He doesn’t believe in science and doesn’t consult experts,” the progressive groups, including Greenpeace USA, Indivisible, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Ultraviolet, and Veterans for Peace, write.
“There’s no better example of the unique danger Trump poses than the unfolding crisis with North Korea, where his cavalier attitude towards nuclear war puts the whole world at risk.”
The open letter calls out the fact the the majority of Americans are against Trump’s unilateral power to handle conflicts, putting the country at great risk.
To us it is clear: Donald Trump should not have the unilateral power to wage nuclear war. And the public is with us: the vast majority of Americans do not trust Trump to handle the crisis with North Korea, nor do they have confidence in his ability to deal with international conflicts writ large.
Giving War Too Many Chances
By Nicolas J.S. Davies in Consortium News
All Greens should be reading this article, which provides an excellent summary of the follies and utter venality, immorality and hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
Green Party National Women’s Caucus demands passage of House bill upholding human rights for Palestinian minors and international law
Women’s Caucus condemns the brutal treatment of 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi by Israeli military
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Women’s Caucus of the Green Party calls on Congress to pass HR 4391, “Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act.”
The bill, submitted by Congresswoman Betty McCollum (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party-Minn.), would prevent the use of U.S. tax dollars for the Israeli military’s ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children.
Recent news of Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager who was interrogated and charged with assault by Israeli military forces for slapping an Israeli soldier in December and threatened with rape by an Israeli journalist, highlights the need to recognize that massive detentions and violent interrogations of minors are horrific violations of human rights and international law and need to end. Continue reading “Green Party National Women’s Caucus demands passage of House bill upholding human rights for Palestinian minors and international law”
Zelaya: Open Letter to the American People
“The electoral fraud supported by the U.S. State Department in favor of the dictatorship has forced our people to protest massively throughout the country, despite savage government repression that has taken the lives of more than 34 young people since the election, and in which hundreds of protestors have been criminalized and imprisoned.”
Zelaya: Open Letter to the American People
SOUTH AMERICA • December 22, 2017 • José Manuel Zelaya Rosales
People of the United States:
For the past century, the owners of the fruit companies called our country “Banana Republic” and characterized our politicians as “cheaper than a mule” (as in the infamous Rolston letter).
Honduras, a dignified nation, has had the misfortune of having a ruling class lacking in ethical principles that kowtows to U.S. transnational corporations, condemning our country to backwardness and extreme poverty.
We have been subject to horrible dictatorships that have enjoyed U.S. support, under the premise that an outlaw is good for us if he serves transnational interests well. We have reached the point that today we are treated as less than a colony to which the U.S. government does not even deign to appoint an ambassador. Your government has installed a dictatorship in the person of Mr. Hernández, who acts as a provincial governor–spineless and obedient toward transnational companies, but a tyrant who uses terror tactics to oppress his own people. Certain sectors of Honduran private industry have also suffered greatly from punitive taxes and persecution.
You, the people of the United States, have been sold the idea that your government defends democracy, transparency, freedom and human rights in Honduras. But the State Department and Heide Fulton, the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires who is serving as de facto Ambassador to Honduras, are supporting blatant electoral fraud favoring Mr. Hernández, who has repeatedly violated the Honduran Constitution and (as noted by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) basic human rights. He is responsible for the scandalous looting of USD $350 million from the Honduran Social Security Institute and while he lies to you shamelessly that he is fighting drug cartels, he has destroyed the rule of law by stacking the Supreme Court with justices loyal to him.
The people of the United States have the right to know that in Honduras your taxes are used to finance, train and run institutions that oppress the people, such as the armed forces and the police, both of which are well known to run death squads (like those that grew out of Plan Colombia) and which are also deeply integrated with drug cartels.
People of the United States: the immoral support of your government has been so two-faced that for eight consecutive years the U.S. Millenium Challenge Corporation has determined that the Hernandez regime does not qualify for aid because of the government’s corruption, failing in all measures of transparency. With this record, the Honduran people ask: Why is the U.S. Government willing to recognize as president a man who the Honduran people voted against, and who they wish to see leave office immediately?
People of the United States: We ask you to spread the word, to stand up to your government’s lies about supporting democracy, freedom, human rights and justice, and to demand that your elected representatives immediately end U.S. support for the scandalous electoral fraud against the people of Honduras, who have taken to the streets to demand recognition of the victory of the Alliance Against the Dictatorship and of President-Elect Salvador Alejandro César Nasralla Salúm.
We can tolerate difference and conflict, seeking peaceful solutions as a sovereign people, but your government’s intervention in favor of the dictatorship only exacerbates our differences.
The electoral fraud supported by the U.S. State Department in favor of the dictatorship has forced our people to protest massively throughout the country, despite savage government repression that has taken the lives of more than 34 young people since the election, and in which hundreds of protestors have been criminalized and imprisoned.
We stand in solidarity with the North American people; we share much more with you than the fact that the one percent has bought off the political leaders of both our nations.
As descendents of the Independence hero Morazán, we want to live in peace, with justice and in democracy.
The Honduran people want to have good relations with the United States, but with respect and reciprocity. •
Tegucigalpa, December 21, 2017
José Manuel Zelaya Rosales
Consitutionally Legitimate President of Honduras 2005-2010
Chief Coordinator, Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship
José Manuel Zelaya Rosales is the Constitutionally Legitimate President of Honduras (2005-2010), and Chief Coordinator of the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship.