We Can Afford to Save the Planet by John M Repp We live on a beautiful blue and green planet full of life. The last 12,000 years has been an especially abundant and fruitful period for our planet and our species as the planet warmed and got wetter after the end of the last glacial period. But now we face a crisis, a crisis of our own making, human induced climate change. We must be clear, “to save the planet” is a metaphor. The planet will be here even if there is catastrophic climate change gravely effecting human civilization. We know many of the things we need to do to save ourselves: get off fossil fuels, change how we farm,…

United State’s Nuclear Weapons Policy is a Violation of International Law and the U.S. Constitution By Larry Kerschner Twenty miles west of Seattle is the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the United States. Most politicians in this country are under the strong influence of the well-paid war and weapons making lobbyists. However, the United States at Nuremberg urged that individual citizens have an affirmative duty to publicly disassociate themselves from a known violation of international law. Chief Prosecutor for the United States, Robert H. Jackson, later U.S. Supreme Court Justice stated “International law, as such, binds every citizen just as ordinary municipal law.” International law is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI, Clause 2 of…

The 4 (or 5) Worst Market Failures in Human History   by Stan Sorscher                      first publisher September 4, 2013 in Huffington Post   I’m a capitalist for one reason: to raise living standards in my community. A familiar mantra of capitalism guides me: Markets are powerful and efficient. I’m also a realist, so I temper that mantra: Markets are powerful and efficient. And markets fail. Market failure is an established, well-understood field of study in mainstream economics. Generations of economists accept the basics of market failure. However, American economists turn their heads away at the mention of it, because it sounds like heresy. Consider the four biggest market failures in human history: Climate change: $40 trillion, so far Health care…

Protest Works; Resistance Works Better   review of Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement (2017) by Tom Hayden by John M Repp   Tom Hayden was the primary author of the Port Huron Statement, the 1962 political manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society – SDS. He was one of the defendants in the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial of 1970 where anti-war activists were arrested and charged for what later was determined to be a “police riot” at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Sadly, Hayden died in October 2016. We could use his wisdom now. He wrote Hell No out of concern that the role Vietnam peace movement played in the history of our country was…

Haiku on peace and justice

“why – for many people  — war feels better than peace”   a review of Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (2016) by Sebastian Junger by John M Repp  jmrepp@q.com   The title of this review is a quote from the introduction to Tribe (p xvii) where the author tells us what his book is about. In a related TED talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_junger_why_veterans_miss_war , Junger says that we need to understand this counter-intuitive fact if we want to stop war. Junger was a war correspondent for the magazine Vanity Fair. He was embedded in Afghanistan and made the acclaimed documentary film “Restrepo”. Soldiers form a “tribe” when they train together and especially when they go into combat together. They must band together…

America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement by John M Repp a review of Thomas Geoghegan. Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement. New York: The New Press. 2014 This book is full of ideas that could change America’s political and economic landscape. Thomas Geoghegan (pronounced gay-gen) is a veteran labor lawyer and author. He writes this book in conversational style and publishes it at a time when the labor movement is weaker than at any time since 1937. 1937 was when the sit-down strikes pushed General Motors to negotiate with the UAW (United Auto Workers). The Wagner Act of 1935 made collective bargaining legal, but did not make it mandatory.…