ucgdew – Reports from Hancock and Beyond

Trident: Illegal and Immoral

May 8, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

“The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide” Reprinted from Kings Bay Plowshares Seven Catholic plowshares activists entered Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia on April 4th, 2018. They went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares”. The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who devoted his life to addressing what he called the “triple evils of militarism, racism and materialism.”

A Tale of Two Atrocities

April 18, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Doug Noble Donald Trump’s latest strike on Syria, pulled off without Congressional approval and in blatant violation of US and international law. Reporting in breathless detail the weapons used and the sites bombed, the mainstream media seem to agree with President Trump that Syrian President Bashar Assad is a “Gas Killing Animal” responsible for the ghastly deaths of Syrian innocents in a chemical attack, one which demands swift, forceful retaliation. This rush to judgment comes even as international organizations

Gene Sharp Taught Us How and Why Nonviolence Works

April 18, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Ann Tiffany and Ed Kinane of the Syracuse Peace Council Activist, author and scholar Gene Sharp died this past January 28. Inspired by Gandhi and deeply informed by history, Sharp (b.1928) founded the Albert Einstein Institution in Boston. Back in the 80s, Ed plowed through Sharp’s three-volume, 900-page, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action” (Porter Sargent, 1973). The tome pivots on Sharp’s “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action,” for toppling dictators and enlarging liberation. Widely reprinted, the systematic (though somewhat redundant)

Thousands of Hearts and Minds

April 18, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Ed Kinane To work against militarism and for social justice is to struggle for hearts and minds. We “educate, agitate, and organize.” We reach out to the public to mobilize its conscience. But the public is large and we are few. Most ways to reach the public are costly. Or shaped by other agendas. So mostly we operate small scale. We could however make much greater use of a familiar and broad public forum: letters to the editor. LTEs

Pentagon Drone Attacks Escalate in Somalia While AMISOM Plans Withdrawal

February 1, 2018 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Abayomi Azikiwe, originally published on Pan African News Wire, Jan 31, 2018 Trump administration creates conditions for further displacement and hunger Somalia is facing yet another major crisis as the United States steps up its drone attack and combat operations in this Horn of Africa state. Drone attacks are promoted by the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an effective means of targeting so-called “terrorists” without threatening the lives of innocent people and American soldiers. This

The Wars Abroad Meet the War at Home

December 13, 2017 ucgdew Leave a comment

by Felton Davis of NYC Catholic Worker Below is the announcement sent out by Isaac at Action Corps NYC, and a couple of the photo sets from Monday’s demonstration across from the United Nations. It was a long twenty hours “in the system,” as the process from the precinct through the labyrinth of basement holding cells, to the courtroom at 100 Centre Street is known. My vest photo of Nora Al-Awlaki was taken by the officers of the Strategic Response

We are Killing Terrorists and Attack We Will

December 8, 2017 ucgdew One comment

Those who slaughter innocent people will find no glory in this life or the next. They are nothing but thugs and criminals and predators, and that’s right losers. ~President Donald Trump We are Killing Terrorists and Attack We Will, Trump’s Most Vicious Racist Rants by Brian Terrell, Originally Published in “The Sower“, Dec. 17, 2017 On Monday, August 21, President Donald Trump delivered a prime-time speech almost shocking in its ordinariness. It was such an address as either of his

The Environmental Consequences of the Use of Armed Drones

December 7, 2017 ucgdew Leave a comment

It is suspected that a small drone carrying a thermite grenade may have caused a massive arms depot blast near Balakliya, Ukraine in March 2017. The 350 hectare site near Kharkiv is around 100km from the frontline of the conflict in the eastern Donbas area. 20,000 people were evacuated and the blast is likely to have left a significant environmental footprint of heavy metals and energetic materials. by Doug Weir and Elizabeth Minor, Originally published on Toxic Remnants of War

Standing Up to the National Anthem

December 6, 2017 ucgdew Leave a comment

This Nation’s anthem was composed by Francis Scott Key, a racist, white supremacist, anti-abolitionist lawyer. He felt that black people, free or slave, were genetically inferior to white people. That perception was the foundation of his legal pursuits. When he was the District Attorney for the City of Washington, he defended slavery and prosecuted those in the abolitionist movement. He argued in court that the institution of slavery should be continued, continued ad infinitum, I suppose, as there is no known cure

Mary Anne Grady Flores OOP Appeal

October 15, 2017 ucgdew Leave a comment

On October 11th, the appeal of Mary Anne Grady Flores conviction for violating her Order of Protection was argued before the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany by Attorney Lance Salisbury. For those who are interested in better understanding the issues, I have posted a video of the press conference they held after leaving the courtroom below. The court will return a decision within 60 days from October 11, when the appeal was heard. Video by Heriberto Rodriguez