Category: Action

Information about how to take actions about various issues.

  • We are in the OIL WARS

    We are in the OIL WARS

    The oil cartel in the US, the billionaires and the gas/oil industry who gave Trump billions of dollars for his election, totally ignore the pollution and the threat to the planet as long as they dominate and make their petro dollars.

    We are in the OIL WARS

    By Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    The oil wars are both regional  and global. While the focus is on Iran with attacks from the US/Israel, Trump continues to support fossil fuels by ignoring the fact that the US is the world’s largest polluter of CO2 caused by fossil fuels and the release of methane gas. The US, purportedly does not have enough money to provide our needy citizens with the SNAP food program or Medicare and Medicaid. Instead the Trump regime is spending billions of dollars a day to fund the oil wars, especially against Iran. Recent polls show that the majority of American voters oppose war with Iran.

    Background: As a global source for oil Iran ranks third. Saudi Arabia, second—Trump and its leaders are buddies. First with the largest oil reserves in the world is Venezuela. The recent kidnapping of Venezuela’s Madura and essential takeover of the country was about getting access to their oil.

    The oil cartel in the US, the billionaires and the gas/oil industry who gave Trump billions of dollars for his election, totally ignore the pollution and the threat to the planet as long as they dominate and make their petro dollars.

    Their rank-smelling greed is summed up by saying “There is no Planet B.” There is no contingency plan to save the planet as long as oil is king. Under Trump’s so-called presidency pollution has increased.

    No Kings? We need to dethrone oil as king, to reverse the use of fossil fuel/oil and bring down Trump’s oil regime. Much more is at stake, the future of the planet is at stake.

    The links between oil and the climate crisis are manifest whether you look at Iran and the Middle East or Venezuela in South America. Trump and his minions are dead set on destroying not only American democracy with authoritarian neo-fascism but on destroying the planet earth with their greed for world domination and money.

    The Current War with Iran

    Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz through which one fifth or 20 percent of the world oil supply passes (as well as many other essential materials). Iran has blocked the Strait.

    Jeffrey Sachs on Democracy Now! explains how the US/Israel war is illegal under the charter of the United Nations and in direct defiance of international law. He condemns Trump in no uncertain terms as a liar who is provoking WWIII. Netanyahu does not have the power under the charter to declare war but has done so anyway.

    Trump is convinced that military power is the solution. Murdering innocent civilians in Iran as they have in bombing the country has forced many Iranians to leave their homes for refuge as the death toll escalates daily.

    Can we stop them? Military force will ultimately fail to bring peace, as it always does in the long run, because it carries the seeds for the next war; in the current case of Iran it also carries the threat of WWIII,

    While many may not agree with the form of Iranian government, which is authoritarian, Iran has a right to sovereignty and to not become a neo-colonial state under the thumb of the US, as, for example, Venezuela and other countries now have.

    The global nature of these oil wars has now expanded to making Russian oil available with the Trump regime releasing the ban on its use by allied nations or nations under US control; we hope, as does rest of the world, those weapons will not be used anywhere no matter what country has them. Both Trump and Netanyahu have been called insane by what many are calling a US provoked war that is being called unnecessary.

    The “apocalyptic” chess game between the superpowers, that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilization, is being played according to the rule “if either ‘wins’ it is the end of both”; it is a game that bears no resemblance to whatever war games preceded it. Its “rational” goal is deterrence, not victory, and the arms race, no longer a preparation for war, can now be justified only on the grounds that more and more deterrence 1s the best guarantee of peace.

    To the question how shall we ever be able to extricate ourselves from the obvious insanity of this position, there is no answer.

    —Hannah Arendt, On Violence

    Is there an answer? The US, claiming military superiority with both conventional and nuclear power with Trump’s hyper-militarism has been using military superiority as a threat for a long time, but now especially under Trump. Iran has dared to challenge that threat. We are now facing the dilemma and the insanity of the arms race in reality again. Trump has foolishly systematically withdrawn from or refused to renew the international treaties that were some protection.

    Here is an assessment on March 20th by Heather Cox Richardson of the status of the ongoing US/Israeli war, which changes daily as Trump continues his lies and waffles back and forth in his approach about what has been called a planless war by many sources. But really the oil wars are for US homogeny for unilateral US control of global oil and for the war industry that also reaps great profits from the wars.

    STOP THE WARS SAVE THE PLANTIf the Trump regime continues they will destroy the planet earth.

    If the threat of nuclear war or even of WWIII is prevented another threat that is related is being ignored: Trump’s regime is a March to Armageddon of a different sort. Already the slow march has begun with the melting of the polar ice cap, the flooding of coastal cities, and with ferocious storms, pollution of the air with fossil fuels, of the water with PFAS chemicals like tritium and the building of data centers that overuse of our limited water supply, of the land with copper mining (see the fight to save the Boundary Waters), and not the least by the environmental destruction caused by wars, the manufacture and use of weapons, and of expansion of nuclear reactor energy plants that pollute both land and water with radioactivity and chemicals. Plastic, also an oil product, is also polluting not only our land and seas but has been found in human bodies, including newborns.

    Most obvious, of course, is the extensive military use of CO2 air-polluting carbon from ground transportation and the worst offender, jet planes, along with the release of deadly methane gas. These are the Oil Wars.

    Can we stop them? Again that question. So if not with military force then what is called for: A global movement by the people of all nations to hold their governments accountable. Even if no nuclear weapons are used—and we hope and pray they will not be—and the oil–agarchy continues the planet earth will be destroyed.

    As always in wars it is the people who suffer most, the ordinary citizens who have no way to defend themselves as now in Gaza/Palestine, as in the Ukraine, as in Somalia, which the US regularly bombs, and via Israel the bombing of  Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar. And Trump wants Congress to authorize billions more for Israel to fund his oil wars and the power drive for global homogeny.

    The talk about nuclear weapons keeps us in the warp of FEAR so Trump can play the STRONG MAN who will take care of us, a “savior” in what is a common tactic by fascists. Instead he is spending billions of our tax dollars on war.

    One comment I had on Facebook was “Trump will take care of it. ” A chilling thought that people actually believe that he can take care of everything.

    COURAGE

    Related

    “Fossil Fuels as a Weapon of War”: U.S.-Israeli War on Iran Exposes World’s Dangerous Reliance on Oil

    Trump withdrawal from international treaties and organizations, 2025-2026, including key climate-related entities.

    Iran Outsmarts Trump: The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

    US gas exporters stand to be the big winners of the energy crisis



    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    To subscribe: Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media. Donate now to sustain Wings of Change.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others.

    Join us on Wings of Change

    We still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and are making plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration. Here in Minnesota we are particularly targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are mostly people of color. In spite of promises to withdraw ICE, the arrests continue. Other cities have been targeted as well, and they will try to target more to fill the detention centers they are building all over the country.

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”

    — Howard Zinn

  • The U.S. Is “On the Cusp of a Police State”: Chris Hedges on Resistance Before It’s Too Late

    The U.S. Is “On the Cusp of a Police State”: Chris Hedges on Resistance Before It’s Too Late

    Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author, and theologian Chris Hedges returns to Bad Faith to engage in a spirited debate about how to act now that liberal incrementalism has led to incremental fascism.

    Why does it feel like so much left discourse is explaining why we aren’t ready to act?: Insufficient union density, insufficient political consciousness, insufficient organization? Also, Hedges discusses his viral commentary on Epstein’s relationship with Noam Chomsky, why he’s not a Marxist, and more.

    Chris Hedges / Posted By Joshua Scheer / ScheerPost /
    February 18, 2026

    Joshua Scheer:

    In this wide‑ranging and deeply sobering conversation, journalist and author Chris Hedges speaks with Bad Faith’s Briahna Joy Gray and they lay out the accelerating collapse of democratic institutions in the United States and the rapid expansion of state repression — from Cop City to ICE raids to the bipartisan assault on protest itself. Drawing on decades spent reporting from war zones and revolutionary movements, Hedges warns that the U.S. is “on the cusp of becoming a police state,” and that the window for organized resistance is narrowing by the day.

    Joshua Scheer Commentary, continued:

    The discussion confronts the central dilemma facing anyone committed to justice in this moment: If waiting is counter-revolutionary and the state is escalating its violence, what does meaningful resistance look like now? Hedges argues that resistance is not a question of guaranteed victory but of moral obligation — standing with the vulnerable, the targeted, and the disappeared even when the cost is high. He details how the state’s harshest crackdowns — from terrorism charges against Cop City activists to the criminalization of filming ICE — reveal precisely what forms of dissent the ruling class fears most.

    At the same time, the conversation pushes back against fatalism. Millions have taken to the streets in recent years — for Palestine, against police violence, against authoritarianism — and that political energy, Hedges insists, must be organized, sharpened, and sustained. The question is not whether people have power, but whether they recognize it before the authoritarian machinery fully locks into place.

    This is a bracing, historically informed, and morally urgent analysis of where we stand — and what the moment demands.

    Highlights

    1. The State Shows You What It Fears

    “You can always tell what works by how the state responds.” Hedges explains why activists opposing Cop City were hit with terrorism and RICO charges — because their tactics were effective.

    2. Criminalizing Solidarity

    Hedges recounts how activists were charged with terrorism for raising bail money — a sign of how aggressively the state is moving to shut down dissent.

    3. The U.S. Is “On the Cusp of a Police State”

    Hedges warns that the infrastructure for authoritarian rule is already in place, and the shift could happen “very quickly.”

    4. ICE as the Tip of the Spear

    From Minneapolis to Princeton, Hedges describes ICE raids as a testing ground for broader domestic repression — and details local resistance efforts.

    5. The Myth of Powerlessness

    Briana pushes the conversation toward the political potential of mass mobilization:

    Black Lives Matter mobilized 20 million people — more than twice the 3% often cited as the threshold for revolutionary change.

    6. Resistance as Moral Imperative

    Hedges:

    “It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. You must stand with the Palestinians. You must stand with your neighbors being ripped off the streets.”

    7. The Powell Memo to Palantir

    A historical through‑line from the corporate counterrevolution of the 1970s to today’s surveillance‑state architecture.

    8. Liberal Paralysis vs. Popular Power

    Hedges argues that Democratic Party leadership refuses to call for mass mobilization because they fear their own base more than authoritarianism.

    9. The Danger of Illusions

    Hedges cautions against “Pollyannaish” expectations that resistance will be easy — not to discourage action, but to prepare people for the long struggle ahead.

    10. “Make Their Lives Difficult”

    Hedges describes practical, local forms of resistance — from monitoring ICE to disrupting their operations — as essential groundwork for broader movements.


    In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we’re doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.



    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    To subscribe: Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media. Donate now to sustain Wings of Change.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Join us on Wings of Change. We still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration. Here in Minnesota we are particularly  targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are mostly people of color. In spite of promises to withdraw ICE, the arrests continue. Other cities have been targeted as well, and they will try to target more.

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”

    — Howard Zinn

  • Robert Reich: On War

    Robert Reich: On War

    Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

    Trump’s War Footing

    His foreign and domestic policies are becoming one and the same, and their purpose isn’t complicated.

    Friends,

    At the same time agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are swarming into Minnesota and other states and cities, Trump is planning bombing raids on other countries.

    Domestically and internationally, he is putting America on a war footing.

    ICE is reportedly investing $100 million on what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed. Its recruitment is targeting gun and military enthusiasts, people who listen to right-wing radio, who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races. It’s calling for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

    Meanwhile, Trump has announced that he’ll ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year — a 66 percent increase over the 2026 defense budget Congress just authorized.

    There’s coming to be no difference between Trump’s foreign and domestic policies.

    Both are based on the same eight maniacal ideas:

    (1) Might makes right.

    (2) Law is irrelevant.

    (3) America is at war with the world’s “radical left,” who are defined chiefly by their opposition to Trump.

    (4) Fear and force are better weapons in this war than hope and compromise.

    (5) The U.S. stock market is the best measure of Trump’s success.

    (6) Personal enrichment by Trump and other officials is justified in pursuit of victory.

    (7) So are lies, cover-ups, and the illegal use of force. (Trump is invincible and omnipotent.)

    These ideas are at such fundamental odds with the norms most of us share about what America is all about and how a president should think and behave that it’s difficult to accept that Trump believes them or that his White House thugs eagerly endorse them. But he does, and they do.

    Rather than some “doctrine” or set of principles, they’re more like guttural discharges. Trump is not rational, and the people around him trying to give him a patina of rationality — his White House assistants and spokespeople — surely know it.

    The media tries to confer on Trump a coherence that evaporates almost as soon as it’s stated. The New York Times’s breathless coverage of its recent Oval Office interview with Trump — describing his “many faces” — is a model of such a vapidity.

    According to the Times, Trump “took unpredictable turns” during the interview. But instead of seeing this unpredictability as a symptom of Trump’s diminishing capacities and ever-shorter attention span, the Times reported it as “a tactic he embraces as president, particularly on the world stage. If no one knows what you might do, they often do what you want them to do.”

    Attempts to show inconsistencies or hypocrisies in Trump’s domestic or foreign policies are fruitless because they have no consistency or truthfulness to begin with.

    Nor is it possible for the media to describe a “big picture” of America and the world under Trump because there is nothing to picture other than his malignant, impulsive, unbridled grandiosity all the way up and all the way down.

    Trump has unleashed violence on America’s streets for much the same reason he has unleashed violence on Latin America and is planning to unleash it elsewhere: to display his own strength. His motive is to gain more power and, along the way, more wealth. (On Sunday, he even posted an image referring to himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela.”)

    “Policy” implies thought. But under Trump, there is no domestic or foreign policy because it is all thoughtless. It is not even improvised. It is just Trump’s ego — as interpreted by the toadies around him (Miller, Vought, Vance, Kennedy, Rubio, Noem) trying to guess what his ego craves or detests, or fulfilling their own fanatical goals by manipulating it.

    We must stop trying to make rational sense out of what Trump is doing. He is a ruthless dictator, plan and simple.

    All analyses of what is happening — all reporting, all efforts to understand, all attempts at strategizing — are doomed. The only reality is that an increasingly dangerous and irrational sociopath is now exercising brutal and unconstrained power over America and, hence, the world.

    Trump is putting America on a war footing because war is good for him as it is for all dictators.

    War confers emergency powers. It justifies ignoring the niceties of elections. It allows dictators to imprison and intimidate opponents and enemies. It enables them to create their own personal slush funds. It distracts the public from other things (remember Jeffrey Epstein?).

    War gives dictators like Trump more power and more wealth. Period.

    What are your thoughts? TO robertreich@gmail.com


    RELATED

    America’s Gestapo

    What you can do to stop ICE’s mayhem




    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media

    Please join me on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have so much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Tell Congress ICE OUT NOW

    Tell Congress ICE OUT NOW

    Robert Reich asks/implores people to call their Senators and Representatives not to approve Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill (spending bill) unless it includes a stipulation to DISARM ICE.

    RELATED

    The American Gestapo The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

     

  • REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS, by Susu Jeffrey

    REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS, by Susu Jeffrey

    It’s the law, it’s your oath, it’s your duty. You can, you must refuse illegal orders.

    They say empires last about 250 years so it’s time for the United States of America to retire from assumed global democratic leadership, or re-up.

    It is difficult to believe that out of more than 150 U.S. “manned” aircraft not one reported crew member failed to refuse to fly the illegal mission to bomb Venezuela and kidnap its president in January 2026. An unlawful order is one that violates human rights including harming civilians (not to mention the land). The Geneva Convention is a part of every service member’s education. One hundred civilian and military deaths have so far been reported since the U.S. military invasion of Venezuela.

    In addition to violating international human rights President Trump’s ordered incursion into Venezuela violates the Constitution because only Congress can declare war. The president failed to inform Congress before sending-in American troops — an impeachable offense. Furthermore he never requested an AUMF, authorization to use military force against a nation not attacking the U.S. The president claimed fentanyl is killing Americans however fentanyl is imported from Mexico in Central America, not from Venezuela in South America.

    Perhaps former geography instructor and former vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota could have clarified the China-Mexico-fentanyl (not cocoaine) drug connection for Mr. Trump. The president just sent 2,100 federal ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents into Minneapolis on “Operation Metro Surge” where one Latin American man was arrested on January  6 and one white neighborhood woman was shot dead on January 7.

    Confusion about the legality of war, what drug is what and where and how a drug kills Americans who actually buy, use and are victims of drugs, adds to the muddy responsibility and consequences of officials being ordered to do something illegal, or simply acting illegally because they are poorly trained and pissed off.

    It’s the law, it’s your oath, it’s your duty. You can, you must refuse illegal orders.

    Six Democratic congressmen and women, all U.S. veterans, released a video in November 2025 to educate military and intelligence officers about illegal airstrike orders on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific seas.

    Sen. Mark Kelly, 61, of Arizona, former Navy pilot and U.S. astronaut, married to former congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot in the head in an assassination attempt in 2011, is the most well-known of the six.

    Sen. Elissa Slotkin, 50, of Michigan, former CIA analyst and Department of Defense international security expert was inspired to run for a House seat in 2019 when she saw her opponent smiling at a White House celebration over the repeal of the Obama Affordable Care Act. After two terms as a Representative Slotkin won her Senate seat in 2025. She is remembered for her response to Trump’s State of the Union address when she said Ronald Reagan would be “rolling in his grave” over the American president’s cozying up to Putin. Slotkin assesses America’s greatest security threat as the decline of the middle class.

    Two Pennsylvania House members and military veterans spoke on the Refuse Illegal Orders video. President Trump  called all six speakers traitors who should be charged with sedition, punishable by death and hanged.

    Chrissy Houlahan, 59, represents part of the Philadelphia area. She is an engineer and former Air Force officer who grew up as a Navy brat and was first elected to Congress in 2019. Houlahan, on the Armed Services and Defense Intelligence committees, lobbies for better military technology, trans military rights and same sex marriage in addition to single payer healthcare and negotiated drug prices. She opposed President Biden’s troop withdrawal in Syria, is concerned about Netanyahu’s war in Palestine and wanted to give fighter jets to Ukraine.

    Chris Deluzio, 42, from Pittsburgh, went to the U.S. Naval Academy and Georgetown Law. He served in the Iraq War and is in his second House term. Deluzio is a member of the Labor and Progressive caucuses, focusing on suppression of voters’ rights, labor union rights and veterans affairs.

    Maggie Goodlander, 40, of New Hampshire, is a first term congresswoman serving on the Armed Services Committee. With a law degree from Yale she worked in Naval intelligence on terrorism for over a decade and advised the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. She leads the No Unauthorized War with Venezuela move to prohibit any federal funds for military force unless Congress passes an AUMF.  In addition to working on congressional war powers she is active in abortion rights since experiencing  a horrible natural stillbirth in a hotel bathtub while awaiting a medical procedure. Goodlander, from a prominent political family, is married to Jake Sulllivan who was President Biden’s National Security Advisor.

    Jason Crow, 46, is in his third term representing the eastern Denver, Colorado area. He was an Army ranger working in counter insurgency with three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan earning a bronze star. After military service he went into law and politics. Crow is on the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees. He has been criticized for accepting campaign donations from a company that does business with Israeli Defense Forces but lately called for pressure on Netanyahu over humanitarian violations in Gaza. Crow urged President Biden to send fighter jets to Ukraine noting that  “Russia is not our friend” and we have 60,000 American troops in harm’s way in Europe. He sees Ukraine as an American security issue rather than a political issue.

    So it’s a birthday year in the U.S. with affordability the top domestic concern but Venezuela and whether to buy or conquer Greenland on the president’s menu. Sounds like the two parties are not listening to each other.

    Susu Jeffrey is a poet and political activist living in Minneapolis. Her father, Harry Jeffrey (R-Ohio), was co-author of the “G.I. Bill of Rights” in the House of Representatives in 1944.



    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media  Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

  • Snippets: “The E’s have it” . . . and more

    Snippets: “The E’s have it” . . . and more

    The E’s have it:

    Epstein (transparency)

    Enbridge/oil pipeline builder (Line 5/also Line 3)

    Elbit Systems/Israeli defense firm (Thunberg London arrest)

    Ethnic Cleansing/Humanitarian Disaster (Sudan/Gaza)

    E-ICE (ICE crimes are documented everywhere; their purpose and violence are inexcusable)

    Senator Wyden on the new trillion dollar defense bill

    Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who voted no on the defense spending bill, said, “I cannot support a bill that increases military spending by tens of billions of dollars and fails to include guardrails against Donald Trump and Hegseth’s authoritarian abuses.”

    From Hannah Arendt

    “The ‘apocalyptic’ chess game between the superpowers that is, between those that move on the highest plane of our civilization, is being played according to the rule ‘if either “wins” it is the end of both’; it is a game that bears no resemblance to whatever war games preceded it. Its ‘rational’ goal is deterrence, not victory, and the arms race, no longer a preparation for war, can now be justified only on the grounds that more and more deterrence is the best guarantee of peace. To the question how shall we ever be able to extricate ourselves from the obvious insanity of this position, there is no answer.”
    Hannah Arendt, On Violence

    There are now organizations like ICAN that before Trump and his cartel took over have taken huge steps internationally to ban nuclear weapons. But the Trumpites see only the military as a solution, when in reality it is the greatest threat to world peace. ICAN built the following UN treaty:

    The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)

    The TPNW was adopted at the United Nations by a majority of nations in July 2017 and entered into force on January 22, 2021. It is the first globally applicable treaty to categorically prohibit nuclear weapons and provides a framework for their verifiable and irreversible elimination. 

    Trump has removed the US from many international arms treaties just as he has removed US participation in prevention of climate change at the recent COP international UN conference about climate change and continued to promote the greatest polluter in the world, CO2, caused by fossil fuel that also drives the military with over 1000 military bases worldwide.


    • What new authoriarian or fascist tripe will be thrown at us by Trump and his administration? As the poet William Blake once said: “Enough! Or too much.” My AI interprets that as: “the power of imagination and challenging conventional morality.” Robert Reich in his most recent Coffee Klatch on Saturday, 12/27/2025 explores the idea that Trump’s excesses and authoritarian dictates have exposed the conventional morality we have been living under, accepting the status quo around racism, women’s oppression and rights, healthcare, housing, and other oppressive systems for so many Americans.

    • As the population if the United States has become more diverse and has many more shades of color, the white supremacists have lost their hold while at the same time they are losing their unilateral hemogeny in the world (collapse of empire) and are trying desperately to hold on.

    • Trump and his cartel think the solution is a superior military that has put us on the edge of more war, especially in Latin America and particularly Venezuela which has two strikes against it. One, it is a socialist country and therefore the opposite of capitalism’s greed in its idiology. Second, and not without significance even though the Trump administration denies it, Venezuela has the greatest reserve of oil in the world. Much of that oil is offshore, but still belongs to Venezuela. 

    • Why is the oil so important? It sustains the military industrial complex and is essential for that hyper-military system that has those 1000 or so military bases worldwide. Those jets and other oil uses from US military bases alone are the greatest CO2 (fossil fuel) sources in the world. You say so what? But if you understand the climate crisis you know that they are destroying the planet with their use of fossil fuel. Yet Trump encourages fracking and major use of fossil fuels and supports the corporations that use them. That, of course, is in direct conflict with those of us who want to save the planet. 

    • The gas and oil companies who economically control our government along with domination from other corporations, most especially including the weapons’ industry, which again is tied into the hyper-military. 

    • So how are all those corporations, internationally those multinational corporations and the financial groups that support them going to make money? They desperately cling to their old and destructive ways. But that creates jobs, they say. But statistics have proved that turning to a green basis for the economy can create just as many if not more jobs. That scares them. Instead of changing their ways because they might lose their power and their money, they continue on the road to destruction instead if using their time and money for new innovations that could help save the planet.

    • US industry has lost its innovative edge. Daily I see that this or that country worldwide has created a new tool to deal with the climate crisis, and China is ahead of the US in the war against climate change. Instead the US is stagnated, caught in a MEGA web that serves no one except the rich while convincing too many Americans who are Trump supporters that there is no genocide in Palestine. Recent examples I have seen online include the Netherlands inventing a tubing they put in the ocean that collects plastic that they then process the plastic to prevent pollution. Other nations have built large areas of solar panels on flat land dedicated to solar power. In Morocco they have developed an inexpensive small solar panel that can be placed on their balconies. There are many more examples but you will not find them described in the mainstream corporate media. 

     “In the end there is no democracy without informed citizens, no justice without a language critical of injustice, and no change without a broad-based movement of collective resistance.”

    —Henry Giroux



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    In this critical time hearing the voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media  Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

  • Waging Nonviolence: The playbook of every successful nonviolent struggle, by Jamila Raqib

    Waging Nonviolence: The playbook of every successful nonviolent struggle, by Jamila Raqib

    The playbook of every successful nonviolent struggle

    by Jamila Raqib / Waging Nonviolence / November 26, 2025

    Democracy is being tested in our communities. Cities from Charlotte to Memphis face escalating threats from the deployment of military troops and immigration raids. States like Maryland and Vermont are being denied federal funding for disaster recovery and response. However, there are also many signs that resistance is building.

    Federal courts have become an important tool to protect against federal overreach, and Americans are increasingly getting activated — and yes, radicalized, in the best sense of the word. They’re recognizing that business as usual is no longer an option and that they have a role to play in protecting our communities and political systems.

    This is a time of great urgency, and the strategies being used against us are meant to overwhelm us, instill fear and confusion, and make us feel helpless. Authoritarians like to present the oppressive reality as a fait accompli, one that cannot be undone, thus undermining the will to resist.

    In America, however, resistance is widespread and growing, and there’s an urge to act quickly. Recent research out of Harvard shows that protests this year have reached “a wider swath of the United States than at any other point on record.” This is an important development, but how we act also matters. Now, the goal should be to use tactics and strategies that will increase our effectiveness in the short term, while ensuring our achievements are durable.

    What’s happening in America closely follows an authoritarian playbook common throughout history and around the globe today. But we have a playbook too — one that offers frameworks and lessons from people who have successfully resisted invasions, occupations and authoritarianism.

    These four steps enable us to think holistically about nonviolent resistance — a powerful tool in the fight for democracy and human rights — and ensure that all pieces of the puzzle are put in place.

    1. Assess the situation to understand the conflict landscape

    Movements often jump into action without a clear picture of the terrain they’re navigating. We must resist the impulse to respond to every outrage with immediate mobilization. Instead, we should pause to assess the situation, our objectives and the capabilities of the groups we are mobilizing against, as well as those of our movements.

    This kind of strategic assessment is a necessary prerequisite to action. We need to know what harm is being done or planned and who is doing it. And we need to know what systems and institutions enable this harm through their cooperation and obedience, and which are vulnerable to persuasion or pressure. It’s at that point that we can assess our movement’s numbers, capabilities, resources and people’s level of training and discipline.

    Previous Coverage

     Overcoming despair and apathy to win democracy

    This kind of analysis, carried out before mobilizing people, has been crucial in past movements. It’s revealed untapped power and enabled groups to target their actions in a way that makes success more likely. For example, the Otpor movement in Serbia which was successful in removing the Slobodan Milosevic dictatorship from power in October 2000 relied on strategic assessments to prepare actions. One of its key objectives was to convince police to shift their allegiance to the resistance, which seemed impossible. However, the movement realized that appealing to and recruiting police officers’ family members could prove effective given their proximity and influence. At the final showdown, when hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Belgrade, most police officers simply refused orders to open fire on the crowd.

    It’s this kind of clear-eyed, strategic assessment that comes first. Then we build, and not just power in numbers, but also in skills, strategy and infrastructure.

    2. Build the power to carry out effective action

    Once we understand the strengths and weaknesses of the groups we’re mobilizing against, as well as those of our movement, we need to build power.

    This means developing a strategy to recruit and train people beyond the usual suspects. And ensuring that they have nonviolent discipline so that our response to repression is strategic, not reactive, and we’re not provoked into violence and other counterproductive behavior. It also means building parallel institutions to meet our needs as existing systems weaken, collapse or are used for repression.

    Sudan’s neighborhood committees, which emerged in the 2019 resistance and helped bring down Omar al-Bashir’s regime, were decentralized, grassroots structures that coordinated protests, disseminated information and organized mutual aid — creating parallel centers of power grounded in local legitimacy and trust. In Lithuania, during the final years of Soviet rule, citizens built alternative communication networks, coordinated economic resistance and prepared for civilian-based nonviolent defense. And during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, street committees and people’s courts played a crucial role in both resisting apartheid policies and building new forms of democratic participation, effectively undermining the regime’s authority and replacing it with localized self-governance.

    In the U.S., faith groups, garden clubs and tenants’ unions could be similarly utilized as pockets of power and organizing hubs. Supported by a decentralized training infrastructure, any group in America, anywhere, could design and carry out action, even if centralized leadership doesn’t emerge or is disrupted.

    When these alternative capacities are built and integrated into resistance struggles and movement work, they become potent tools in our nonviolent arsenal and can better facilitate the next step: carrying out powerful actions.

    3. Act to shift power

    Our default, too often, are marches and rallies. Yes, these can be symbolically powerful, but unless they’re part of a broader strategy to shift power — by withdrawing cooperation, applying economic pressure and disrupting key functions — they rarely force change on their own. Actions must not only express outrage, but help bring about specific shifts in power.

    There’s a reason why the list of 198 methods of nonviolent action created by Gene Sharp is organized in three strategic buckets: protest, noncooperation and intervention. The most effective movements sequence these methods deliberately. That’s why timing, sequencing and clarity of objective are key.

    In Chile, civil resistance against Augusto Pinochet’s regime involved student boycotts, labor strikes and underground media, all of which were working in concert. In Israel, antiwar protesters recently moved from street protests, involving military reservists, to a general strike that carried the potential to create substantial economic and political pressure.

    Effective action builds momentum by involving a growing cross-section of society and increasing costs for the regime or institution. In the U.S., similar actions could include a coordinated tax resistance, sustained student walkouts, rent strikes or labor disruptions — all tied to specific demands, sequenced and scaled over time.

    Any of these actions will need defending, which is the final step.

    4. Defend our wins to ensure long-term resilience.

    Every movement that wins a policy change, campaign or struggle must ask how it’ll be defended. Without the capacity for defense, every gain can be reversed.

    This is where civilian-based defense is essential. It involves preparing society for decentralized nonviolent resistance in the face of attacks against our communities, institutions and political systems. It means building the muscle not just to mobilize once, but to sustain mobilization.

    In Latvia and Lithuania, for example, while declaring independence from the USSR, leaders prepared their entire societies, including neighborhood committees, for civilian-based defense. They trained people how to resist occupation without taking up arms. And it worked. During Bangladesh’s recent nonviolent student uprising that removed their authoritarian leader, when police vacated the streets, students took over many of their functions, such as directing traffic and providing security.

    In the U.S., this means embedding resistance training in civil society groups, civic education, labor unions and professional associations. It means preparing city councils, schools and unions to reject unconstitutional directives, and establishing watchdog groups to monitor and respond to democratic backsliding. And it means preparing for what comes after victory, so we’re not left scrambling during the transition.

    This is how decentralized, disciplined and strategic resistance can topple oppressive regimes, prevent coups and transform societies. Civil society in the U.S. is waking up: the No Kings protests on Oct. 18 brought 7 million Americans into the streets, making it one of the largest mobilizations in U.S. history. Now we need to act with both urgency and strategy. A decentralized and empowered civil society is one of the most resilient forms of democratic defense. This moment calls for us to assess wisely, build steadily, act strategically and defend relentlessly. The time is now.


  • Roger Waters This is Not a Drill Live From Prague – The Movie

    Roger Waters This is Not a Drill Live From Prague – The Movie

    Roger Waters This is Not a Drill Live From Prague – The Movie
    Saturday, November 15, 2025, 1:00 pm- 3:45 pm
    4:00 pm: Roger Waters LIVE with Q and A: He will join us live via Zoom after the screening for a Q and A session.

    Holy Trinity Church: 2730 E. 31st Street Minneapolis MN 55406. Enter on East side of the building. The parking lot entrance off Lake Street is between 28th and 29th Avenues  – next to the “Trinity on Lake” building.


    Cosponsored by Veterans for Peace
    Chapter 27 Minneapolis

    This is Not a Drill: Live From Prague is a 2023 concert film by Pink Floyd cofounder Roger Waters, featuring a live performance by Roger and the band. The film combines songs from his 60-year career with Pink Floyd and his solo work, and is described as a stunning “cinematic extravaganza” with political commentary that includes elaborate staging and visual effects.

    We refuse to accept a fascist America.The show is an indictment of the militarism, perpetual war, imperialism, settler colonialism, and the “corporate dystopia” we all struggle to survive and a call to action to love, protect and share our precious and precarious planet home.

    This is Not A Drill, with a message of love, hope and unity, is “dedicated to brothers and sisters all over the world who are engaged in the existential battle for the soul of humanity.”

    Roger is known worldwide for not only his music, but his work for justice and peace. In 2025 he won the Artistic War Abolisher of 2025 Award from World Beyond War for his “incredibly powerful combination of songwriting, singing, speaking and performing against the horrors of war,” in the words of David Swanson, World Beyond War executive director.

    Directors: Roger Waters, Sean Evans / Distributed by Trafalgar, Released 2025 / 2 h 24 m

    Film cosponsors are Women Against Military Madness and Veterans For Peace Chapter 27, with thanks to Holy Trinity Church for their support.

    _______________________________________

  • The Cancer Plague: Nuclear Power and Waste, by Susu Jeffrey

    The Cancer Plague: Nuclear Power and Waste, by Susu Jeffrey

    The Cancer Plague: Nuclear Power and Waste / Original to Wings of Change
    By Susu Jeffrey / August 18, 2025

    “Sometimes before I give a speech, I ask the audience to stand up if they or someone in their family has had cancer,” says John LaForge of Nukewatch. “Eighty percent of the audience gets up.”

    The Monticello nuclear power reactor is on the Mississippi River about 35-miles northwest of Minneapolis. Xcel’s twin Prairie Island reactors, plus about 50 giant dry casks storing waste reactor fuel, are all in the floodplain of the Mississippi. This waste is sited 44 to 51 miles southeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

    There are no plans to move the waste off-island because there is no alternative destination. In fact, 34 more concrete encased steel casks are planned. There is no national hot radioactive waste repository. Think of these waste container sites as permanent radioactive waste dumps.

    The greater Twin Cities’ 3.7 million people are in the nuclear “shadow” (within 50 miles) of all three nukes. The Mississippi River serves 20 million people with drinking water, way beyond the Minnesota state population of 5.7 million. Minnesota’s aging nukes are a national threat. For approximately the next six generations, radioactive tritium will be a part of the drinking water wherever those molecules wander.

    The Monticello nuke was licensed in 1970 for 40 years, and went online in 1971, a year it had two radioactive cesium spills. In 2010, the license was renewed for another 20 years until 2030. Xcel Energy has even been granted an extension for another 20 years until 2050. It is a corporate financial security move not yet approved by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission which holds the final consent. Paperwork is one thing, pipes are another.

    In November 2022, a 50-year-old underground pipe leaked 829,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated wastewater that reached the Mississippi River, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Xcel failed to make public the radioactive spill for four months. After a May 15, 2024 public hearing in Monticello where citizens testified “We don’t trust you. You lie,” an NRC executive “clarified” Xcel’s “miscommunication.”

    Senior Environmental Project Manager, Stephen J. Koenick admitted some tritium had been measured in the Mississippi. Tritium bonds with water and cannot be separated out. Water obeys gravity running downhill, in the case of Monticello, from the reactor to the Mississippi. The runaway tritium will persist in the environment for ten half-lives or about 123 years.

    SWANS AT MONTICELLO SWIM IN POISONED WATER

    The trumpeter swan gets its name from its loud sonorous call — and the spot on the Mississippi River near the Monticello nuclear power plant is often filled with them in winter. Tim Post | MPR News file*

    No telling where Xcel’s radioactive molecules will land. Men have a one in two chance of being diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes; for women the chance is one in three (National Cancer Institute, 2/9/2022). There is tremendous popular, fear-driven support for the oncology industry.

    The good news is that while cancer numbers are up so is the cancer survival rate. However, at nuke weapons, nuke reactors, and the virtually forever waste sites, “accidents” happen along with on-going radioactive decay. Radioactivity cannot be contained. When I was a newspaper reporter in Brevard County, Florida, where Cape Canaveral is located, I learned that nuclear waste cannot be rocketed off into space because it’s too hot, too heavy, and the rockets too faulty.

    Nuclear Safety Regulations Changing

    Among Pres. Trump’s cost-cutting moves is a weakening of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s exposure standards. Staff would be cut and regulations “revised” virtually cutting off the commission’s independent status. The Monticello nuke was licensed for 40 years and was rubber stamped to work for 80. Octogenarian nukes are considered “safe enough” now by the nuclear/government consortium.

    Piecemeal fix-it parts for geriatric machinery or people are a lucrative business. Locating a leaking tritium pipe underground, between buildings, removing and replacing it is a non-negotiable emergency at nuclear reactors with miles and miles of piping. Upkeep expenses figure in utility rate hikes.

    Joseph Mangano and Ernest Sternglass did a study of eight downwind U.S.  communities in the two years after a nuclear reactor closure. A remarkable 17.4 percent drop in infant mortality was found. “We finally have peer-reviewed accurate data attaching nuclear power reactors to death and injury in the host communities,” New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said of the 2002 report in the Archives of Environmental Health.

    Monopoly capitalism or public service?

    Clearly the Monticello reactor was designed to make money. In November 2024, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote that Xcel has “aggressively” pursued multi-year rate hikes while earning large profits. In 2024 Xcel reported $1.94-billion net earnings, a profit margin up 14% from 2023.

    According to Xcel propaganda, the nuke is “the biggest employer and largest local taxpayer” in Monticello, MN, and generates an estimated $550 million in economic activity each year in the region. And like profits, cancer rates are up notably among people under 50 and rising faster among women than men the American Cancer Society reports.

    Repeatedly, the Xcel corporation wins its rate hike and re-licensing “asks.” These asks get rewritten and resubmitted until a “compromise” is reached. In 2025, residential customers will pay $5.39 more per month, down from the original ask of $9.89, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which also noted that greater increases are on the horizon for EVs and data center capital improvements.

    Cancer

    St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital advertises heavily with videos of big-eyed, bald children cancer patients. In a review of published studies of 136 nuclear reactor sites in the European Journal of Cancer Care in 2007, elevated leukemia disease rates in children were documented in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada. This is not a new story.

    The danger of mental retardation of fetuses exposed in the womb was reported in The New York Times (page A1 on 12/20/1989). Tritium crosses the placenta. In addition to the health costs of breathing and ingesting exhausts from nuclear power reactors, there is the problem of what to do with and how to contain its long-lived waste. The nuclear profit god is a once and future terrorist.



    Please sign now: A petition calling for the closure of the Monticello nuclear reactor!  Here is the link:

    * The Trumpeter Swans have been a tourist attraction at the Monticello nuclear reactor plant in the past. With the discovering of the tritium poison leak they can no longer gather in the poisoned water.

    Susu Jeffrey is a poet and writer living in Minneapolis. She has opposed nuclear weapons/nuclear power since before her arrest at Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977.



    In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
    Wings of Change FeatherWhatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

    One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities. 

    —Henry A. Giroux

  • Glenn Greenwald: Palantir EXPOSED;  DN! “Purge Palantir”

    Glenn Greenwald: Palantir EXPOSED; DN! “Purge Palantir”

    “Everyone is converting to Palantir…”

     

     


    Palantir EXPOSED: The New Deep State

    By Glenn Greenwald / System Update / June 10, 2025

    This is a clip from the show SYSTEM UPDATE, now airing every weeknight at 7pm ET on Rumble. You can watch the full episode for FREE here: https://rumble.com/v6ujj1n-system-upd…



    Democracy Now! “Purge Palantir”: Day of Action Protests Firm’s Role in Gov’t Surveillance, ICE & Genocide in Gaza

    Protesters across the United States targeted Palantir Monday [7/14/25] in a day of action focused on the technology company’s work with ICE, facilitating President Trump’s expanding immigration crackdown, and work with the Israeli military. New York police arrested at least four people Monday after demonstrators blocked the entrance to the company’s Manhattan offices. Democracy Now! spoke to protesters, including some who work in the technology sector, about the “Purge Palantir” campaign and how Palantir’s data mining, surveillance and automation tools are being weaponized against vulnerable communities. We speak with Wired senior writer Makena Kelly, who has been covering Palantir and says many Silicon Valley firms are “trying to find opportunity in this chaos” as the Trump administration slashes government services and pursues mass deportations.

    Guests
    Makena Kelly
    Wired Senior Writer focused on the intersection of politics, power and technology.

    Links
    “This is DOGE 2.0”

    Please check back to Democracy now later for full transcript.

    The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

    More on Glenn Greenwald’s System Update:
    Now available as a podcast! Find full episodes here: https://linktr.ee/systemupdate_
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    In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers is common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media. striving to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
    Wings of Change FeatherA donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others

    Sue Ann Martinson, Writer, Editor Wings of Change