Transform Now Ploughshares Support Group: A Long, Shining Line in the Sand

It’s a strange nation we’ve built in which men and women – one, an 84 year-old nun, fer crissakes – are arrested and charged with “destruction of property” at a nuclear weapons factory…But it happens, Oh, it happens. Ralph Hutchinson, Paul Magno and Ellen Barfield, fellow activists with Transform Now Ploughshares Support Group bring you a firsthand report on the sentencing of fellow activists for their protest at Tennessee's  Oak Ridge Nuclear Weapons Plant.

 

Eugene police are gunning for a “security forum” that takes  on “School Safety and Dangerous Acts of Violence.”  The Eugene, Springfield, University of Oregon and Junction City police chiefs will be among the law enforcement officials will be there.  But wait…

Let's parse that: isn't enforced poverty and its criminalization a form of violence against the disenfranchised?  

 

The question: Is social media making us dumber? And the simple answer: Yes. Now that social media are speeding up and exaggerating the copycat trend, it’s easy to see where humankind might be getting dumber, if grabbing information from someone else substitutes for exercising intellectual ability.

 

For years, decades even,  reporters have been allowed to sit in on and observe  the Eugene School  Board meetings  on condition they do not report on the proceedings. Last night however The  School Board voted 4-3 to bar the media from all future closed meetings on labor negotiations.

 

The state Land Use Board of Appeals has overturned Lane County’s decision to grant a special use permit to a private events center called Prindel Creek Farm in the Siuslaw National Forest.  Quite simply: No music and musical camping in the forest.  Now if the presenters had planed to clear-cut trees on public land..well that's a lot easier to arrange: just ask Governow Kitzhaber, He'll sign  off on it.

 

 

The Oregon Logging Conference opened in  Eugene yesterday to the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd.  And it was a pretty smelly crowd.  Thanks to a new report from an international market research firm attendance is expected to soar this year as the industry continues to recover from the blows dealt by the recession and  the forestry industry additional grounds for some optimism.

 

 

6, President Barack Obama  was In Mexico Wednesday for a summit with his North American counterparts — Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper — to discuss issues of trade, security and energy....in other words, a little Transpacific Partnership and arm-wrestling

 

'Sanction' is one of those odd-duck words that lays claim to two contradictory meanings.  Sometimes the second unintended meaning is the more appropriate descriptor.  Here, for instance:  The US Treasury Department is sanctioning a Colombian suspected of leading an international drug trafficking and money laundering organization that exported nearly 100 tons of cocaine a year from Colombia. Because if all the drug money laundered through the Streets of Wall, well, the Wall would fall.

 

Human Rights Watch released a report on the drone strike Thursday, citing interviews with eight witnesses and relatives of the dead as well as Yemeni officials. The report said four Hellfire missiles were fired at a wedding procession of 11 vehicles on Dec. 12, 2013, in Radda in southern Yemen, killing at least 12 men and wounding at least 15 others, six of them seriously.

 

And shortly thereafter, the Department of Homeland Security warned US travelers that Disgruntled targets of American diplomacy may try to bring down airliners by blowing their shoes up.