by John M Repp On January 29, 2025, DemocracyNow  told us that a new Chinese startup company, DeepSeek, is out competing the world’s previously leading artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI’s application ChatGPT. This news upset the technology sector of U.S. financial markets when it was announced. Why? Because DeepSeekwas developed at a fraction of the cost of American companies’ costs. The news about DeepSeek came after President Trump announced a $500 billion investment plan to build more AI infrastructure in the United States. DeepSeek is available to download for free on the Apple application store. I tried it. You can give the application a very short description or outline of what you want it to write about and then it…

On December 18, 2024, Our Children’s Trust won a case in the Montana Supreme Court upholding the right of children to a safe and livable climate. This is a historic decision. The Montana Supreme Court upheld a decision of a district court in Montana. But the December 18 decision is the first of its kind from a state supreme court. Our Children’s Trust is a public service law firm that has been suing the governments to establish the right of children to a safe and livable environment not to be sacrificed by fossil fuel interests. The first lawsuit Our Children’s Trust filed was a lawsuit against the U.S. government (Juliana vs US ) which the U.S. Justice Department has stopped…

See BreakThrough News YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH8d7UJNmaA by John M Repp The U.S.-Israel relationship is unlike any other relationship the U.S. has with another nation-state. Israel is by far the biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world. Despite Israel being about .01 percent of the world’s population, Israel has received about 30% of U.S. foreign aid since World War II. They get about 4 billion dollars every year and have received almost $400 billion since 1945 if you adjust for inflation. Most of the money goes right back to the USA to purchase military weapons. The amount would be enough to end world hunger. But what is more shocking is that this support is unconditional. It goes through Congress every…

Trump Lost: If All Legal Voters Were Allowed to Vote and All Legal Ballots Were Counted, Harris Would Have Won   by John M Repp from a guest post by Greg Palast for the Hartmann Report, January 24, 2025      The 2024 election was stolen by means of voter suppression. There was a mass of voter challenges by Republican-trained “vigilantes” in a number of states where the voting laws had been changed so ordinary citizens could challenge voters. The challenges were concentrated in districts with a majority of voters-of-color. Remember Bush v. Gore in 2000. Yes, the Supreme Court stopped the counting and gave a victory to Bush, but that was after his brother Jeb had knocked thousands of black voters…

by John M Repp The Federal government, according to the Constitution, creates the money we use in our nation’s economy. Since we no longer have to back the money with a limited supply of gold, the government can print as much as it needs. If it prints too much, we get inflation. If we have inflation, we can tax people and companies, pulling money out of the economy and thus lowering prices. However, if there are just a few companies in each economic sector, which is the case now, they can keep the prices high. They cooperate against us rather than compete with each other. Part of the recent inflation was just so.    We need a Federal Job Guarantee at…

by John M Repp Nonviolent occupation is one of the methods of nonviolent action, specifically number 173, that Gene Sharp mentioned in the second volume of his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston, Ma. Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973). He lists 198 methods that have been used throughout history and agrees that new ones can be created in the future. In The Seattle Times of March 16, 2025, the headline on the front page told of a young man, Antonio Mays Jr., who was killed during the CHOP, Capitol Hill Organized (or Occupied) Protest of 2020. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, there was an occupation of an 8-block area on Capitol Hill from June 8 to…

by John M Repp Uruguay has a lot of Pampas, the extensive treeless plains, like its neighbors Brazil and Argentina. Thus, agricultural products, especially beef, and some wood products were mainstays of their exports. Now those grassland plains have some new additions: white wind turbines and glistening solar panels. Uruguay does not have any oil or coal like its big neighboring countries. As Uruguay started to develop, in the age of modern industry, after 1825, they had to buy oil and coal on the open market. The volatility of the oil price caused problems for them. In an extreme example from recent times, in 2001 they could buy oil for $20 a barrel, but six years later, on July 3,…

A new issue of our newsletter The Pacific Call is out!  Thanks to editor John M Repp and to all the contributors.  There are 10 pages full of information – with 8 articles about local, national, and international topics.  The full issue can be viewed as a pdf at https://wwfor.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Jan2025PacificCall.pdf and links to the individual articles are available here, https://wwfor.org/category/the-pacific-call/.

By John M Repp The victory of Trump in the recent presidential election has been a shock for many people. How could anyone vote for a pathological liar, a convicted felon, an adjudicated sexual abuser, climate change denier, and a man who attempted to overthrow the Federal government and change the result of an election? Why did the voters reject Kamela Harris, an intelligent, honest, woman with a successful record as a public prosecutor? Is there something I don’t understand about our nation? Michael Tomasky, an editor of The New Republic, published the article entitled “Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?” on November 8, 2024. His answer is “the right wing media.” Specifically, “Fox News (and…

Letter to the Editor, Cascadia Daily News, week of Dec 11, 2024 Editor, The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo. Nihon Hidankyo is a Japanese grassroots movement initiated in 1956. It is dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons. Japanese citizens known as hibakusha, or “bomb-affected people” have been speaking out for 75 years to tell us to not forget. Delegations attend international conferences and events to promote nuclear disarmament. They share firsthand accounts of the destruction and horror. Nuclear weapons are certainly a topic our current world leaders speak to in their use of threats and violence. We hear of it with the news of the Russia-Ukraine War; North Korea/South Korea conflicts; the concern of Iran’s nuclear program; and Israel…