by John M Repp There are many reasons for the new cold war with Russia and China. After promising not to move NATO east of what had been the Soviet Union, the new governments that formed in the east European countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union, were invited into NATO. We now know our national security people knew they crossed a red line when they did that. On February 24, 2022, Russia has invaded Ukraine. The U.S. is supplying a massive number of weapons to Ukraine, so we are in a proxy war with Russia, some say a real war. And now China has made the most amazing change in their economy in the last 70 years.  To…

by John M Repp One of the most disturbing news reports we hear nowadays is a report of a mass shooting at a school. Usually, the report tells us how many people are killed, the location, and ends with a statement “no motive has been established”. The listener or viewer’s heart sinks.  A few years back, two professors of criminology and criminal justice respectively, Jillian Peterson and James Densley, put together a database of mass shootings in the United States since 1966, when the first one happened. In 2021, they published a book The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Politico published a review of the book in 2022. Quotes below are from the review. Many mass…

Extinction Rebellion and Citizens Assemblies by John M Repp  “only nonviolent rebellion can now stop climate breakdown and social collapse” is the subtitle of the book: Common Sense for the 21st Century by Roger Hallam (London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019) Roger Hallam writes that real change happens when ordinary people break the law i.e., do nonviolent direct action. He gives his book a title that reminds us of Tom Paine’s Common Sense (January 1776) which sparked the American revolution. The book reads like a short 95-page instruction manual for a nonviolent revolution. Hallam uses “reverse engineering”, imagining what a successful nonviolent revolution would look like and then works back to the steps and preparations needed to achieve it. He means…

Planes, (fancy) trains and automobiles won’t help us meet our climate goals. by Mary Paterson | July 5, 2023 (reprinted from Real Change, the Seattle homeless paper by permission of the author) Real Change began an important discussion this spring about how our state legislators and governor are ignoring the need for East-West passenger trains between Seattle, Auburn, Ellensburg, Yakima, and Spokane (‘It’s Just Negligence…,’ March 15, 2023). Modernizing our existing rail routes — think Amtrak for the 21st century — can help us reduce “vehicle miles traveled” and slash our emissions by 2030, which we must do according to warnings from scientists about climate change.  Trains on our existing rail network are a climate solution hiding in plain sight. They’d also help…

Labor Struggles – Where’s Our Contract? by Cindy Cole Over the past few years labor unions organizing successes have been in the news.  But some big companies have used fierce union busting tactics, like firing workers who organize, requiring captive audience anti-union meetings, threats to shut down a worksite and more to fight this trend. Despite that, the independent Amazon Labor Union has been able to organize several Amazon warehouses.  Also, Starbucks workers have organized 21 cafés in the last few years.  However, over a year after the success of these organizing drives neither union has been able to secure a first contract. We need to look at the right to collective bargaining as a two-step process: 1) organizing a…

Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths by John M Repp Harvard Environmental Law Review recently accepted a 70-page paper to be published in 2024, suggesting that prosecutors start charging the big oil companies with homicide for the deaths caused by climate change. Oil companies have already been sued by cities for financial damages caused by heat waves, wildfires, and rising seas. And federal prosecutors charged British Petroleum with manslaughter for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. The company pleaded guilty and paid billions in fines and penalties. It is well known that the oil companies were told by their own scientists as early as the 1950’s that the use of their product would cause climate change. Their response was many massive…

Cracks in the Oligarchy by John M Repp Jimmy Carter said in 2015 that the United States of America is “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”. In response to a question on the Thom Hartmann talk radio show about the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision, Carter added: “we have just seen complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” So, even though we still have elections at local, state, and federal levels, we are not a democracy. Of course, we hear the contrary all the time, especially when our system is compared to our geopolitical rivals, Russia, and China. Oligarchy means rule by the few. In the United States today, the few who rule are the…

2023 WWFOR Spring Assembly The theme of the 25th annual WWFOR Spring  Assembly was Evolving Nonviolence. by David Lambert. David chaired the planning committee for this event. Our keynoter, Helena Cobban, shared her background of growing up in England. At age 21, she worked as a war correspondent in Beirut, Lebanon, while caring for her two small children. She came to the thinking that no matter how the war started, it needed to be stopped! She took her two children and left the Lebanon and her work there as a war correspondent in 1981. She has witnessed many war zones, reporting that just as many people die from lack of hygiene, medications, food, and lack of other humanitarian needs as…

Crisis for Pacifism – Again: Thoughts on Ukraine War and other Crises by Jean Buskin Recently, I followed a link to this article:  https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/20/2159214/-No-more-Ben-Jerry-s-founder-comes-out-as-tankie . There I learned two new words “tankie” and “Holodomor,” so that’s something.  If they are new to you too, each one has a Wikipedia page. This article criticizes Ben Cohen, the Ben of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, for opposing the U.S. sending weapons to Ukraine.  Ben has company, such as Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and Helena Cobban.  I count myself among that school of thought.  Weapons to Ukraine will only prolong the suffering of the Ukrainians, yet in this camp we are seen as enemies of Ukraine, and sometimes seen as apologists for the Russian…

Pacific Call newsletter editor, John M. Repp has reviewed Insurrection (Pigeon Editions, Seattle, 2023) by Nate Gowdy, with an introduction by Michael Rowe, and foreword by DC Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges. Nate Gowdy, a photographer from Seattle, took hundreds of photos on Jan 6, 2021. He was shooting for Rolling Stone. Click on the link below to see the review which includes some of the photos and a number of quotations about the violent Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol in Washington DC which delayed the counting of electoral college votes to install Joe Biden as President. Click here to see the article