Let’s Try a New Approach to Overcome the Politics of Division a review of The Third Reconstruction: How A Moral Movement Is Overcoming The Politics of Division and Fear by Reverend Dr. William J Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016). This is a short autobiography of Rev. Barber as well as his recollections on the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. There was an extreme right-wing takeover of the North Carolina legislature in 2013. The Koch brothers, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and local billionaires were behind the takeover. Their extremist agenda was the defunding state government through a flat tax, the denial of federally funded health care to half a million North Carolinians, the rejection of…

Larry’s latest letter to The Chronicle by Larry Kerschner, received January 8, 2018 It is long past time for voters of the 3d Congressional District to wake up and make a change. Jaime Herrera Beutler clearly genuflects at the altar of Pence/Trump and Big Money. She voted in favor of the greatest transfer of wealth from the lower class to the upper class in the history of the world. We need to call her out on her statement about the recent corporate tax giveaway bill which she whole-heartedly supported. Herrera Beutler defends her tax vote, touting an estimate “that a family of four in Southwest Washington making $83,874 will save $2,385 annually under the new plan”. Since the average household income in Lewis County is about $44,000…

Korean War not over by Mary Margaret Pruitt, printed in The Seattle Times, January 6, 2018, page A7 U.S. policy toward Korea has been deadly and dominating [“How Korean War shaped current tensions for U.S.,” Jan.2, A3]. Three million to 4 million Koreans were killed; 70 percent were civilians;25 percent of North Korea’s prewar population was killed; the U.S. bombed with napalm; and children in North Korea are taught that the U.S. perpetrated a Holocaust. We claim to be a democracy working as part of the United Nations. We have not arranged a peace treaty to end the Korean War. We have escalated our bases and military personnel in South Korea in opposition to the desires of many Koreans. We…

Ditch the Plow, Cover Up and Grow Diversity for a Sustainable Future by John M Repp A review of Growing A Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life David Montgomery. (Norton, 2017) Montgomery co-wrote The Hidden Half of Nature that explains how microbes in our lower gut and in topsoil make life and health possible. Growing A Revolution tells the story of a few farmers around the world that are adopting new practices that protect and enhance the life in the soil on land where humans farm or graze animals. Widespread adoption of these practices will keep the soil sustainable while maintaining crop yield for a better future. Montgomery sees a pattern in the history of many civilizations. They started…

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens- Davidowitz ( Harper Collins, 2017) review by Marjorie Prince This is not a book I would normally read, let alone recommend.  But this witty and provocative volume engaged me, a technology skeptic, in ways I had not expected.  Stephens –Davidowitz  studied economics and Harvard, then became a Google data scientist and now a New York Times writer and self-proclaimed “internet data expert”  He convinced me of his expertise.  Stephens-Davidowitz wrote his Ph.D dissertation on “The Cost of Racial Animus on a Black Candidate: Evidence Using Google Search Data.”   Most interesting to students of history is the use of…

A Vietnam Veteran’s View of Burn’s and Novick’s “The Vietnam War”   By Mark Fleming, an activist with Veterans For Peace, chapter #109, Olympia WA   Early into the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick PBS documentary The Vietnam War, my reaction was “if only…”  If only the United States had recognized that Ho Chi Minh led a genuine independence movement based on the same ideals that drove America’s own war for independence.  If only US leaders had seen the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu as a warning of Vietnamese determination.  If only President Kennedy had the political courage to follow the advice of military and civilian advisors who understood that America could not defeat Vietnamese resistance and who recommended reducing the…

My latest letter to the editor by Larry Kershner Between 1940 and 1996 the United States spent nine trillion dollars on nuclear weapons including platforms development (aircraft, ICBMs, submarines and support facilities, command and control systems, maintenance, nuclear waste management and administrative costs). The US has produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads since 1945. This is more than all of the other nuclear states combined. The costs for nuclear research, development, deployment, defense and dismantlement since 1940 is the third most costly government expenditure after general defense and the Social Security program. By February 2006 over $1.2 billion had been paid in compensation to US citizens for exposure to nuclear accidents in the US nuclear weapons program. Production, maintenance and…

Grassroots Lobbying Via Advocacy Teams by Louise Lansberry   Founded in 1943 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) lobbies Congress and the Administration to advance peace, justice, opportunity and environmental stewardship.  FCNL fields an expert team of lobbyists on Capitol Hill and works with a grassroots network of tens of thousands of people across the country to advance policies and priorities established by a Governing Committee.  FCNL is a nonpartisan organization that seeks to live the values of  integrity, simplicity and peace as it builds relationships across political divides to move policies forward. Three years ago FCNL established a new strategy for enabling people at the grassroots level to get…

Reframing the Trump Election A review of Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (2017) by John M Repp The epigraph of No Is Not Enough:  “I’m not looking to overthrow the American government, the corporate state already has.” John Trudell, Santee Dakota activist, activist, artist, and poet (1946-2015) Naomi Klein’s thesis is contained in her title. She encourages the various progressive movements in the United States to start meeting with each other to see what connects them. Klein writes that an informal beginning of such collaboration was happening at Standing Rock. Then Trump got elected. She describes a two-day gathering in Toronto in the spring of 2015 for Canadian progressive…