The United States Department of Defense released its latest ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018’ (NPR) on 2 February, updating the last one issued in 2010 during the previous administration. See ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018’.

The Executive Summary of the NPR is also available, if you prefer. See ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018 Executive Summary’.

“I’m so honored to be alive at such a miraculous time in history. I’m so moved by what’s going on in our world today.”

This was 2003. The words were those of Robert Muller — the other one, the one from Costa Rica, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations — who was speaking just after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, to the horror and outrage of most of Planet Earth. Millions of people took to the streets, in the U.S. and around the world, to protest the invasion. Muller called this movement “the other superpower.”

“Never before in the history of the world,” he went on, “has there been a global, visible, public, viable, open dialogue and conversation about the very legitimacy of war.”

Fred Warmbier, whose son Otto Warmbier, a student here at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, died shortly after returning from North Korea, is reportedly traveling to the Winter Olympics with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

It’s hard to imagine the incredible grief of losing a son and of having seen a son suffer. I would not risk being perceived as advising a father how to grieve were it not for the risk I perceive of creating tens of millions more such grieving parents.

Opening arguments happened today, February 6, in Franklin County Municipal Court. The courtroom was packed with #BlackPride4 supporters.

In their opening argument, the City prosecution emphasized that the protestors did not have a permit to have their silent demonstration during last year’s Pride Parade.

The defense argued that the state could not establish the elements of an actual crime committed and that their clients were not guilty on the facts. Attorney Constance Gadell-Newton, defending Wriply Bennet argued that “there are constitutional issues involved” and notified the jury that they would be asked to uphold the law and Constitution.

The defendants’ attorneys argued that their nonviolent political protest was reasonable and lawful. The police had approached the #BlackPride4 abruptly and immediately got physical with them. No one had asked the police to come in and rough up the demonstrators. Any injury to the police officers, the defense argued came from the police falling over themselves and their bikes as they gave contradictory commands.

Tuesday, February 6, 11am-1pm
112 E Main St, Columbus
We live in a city in which our elected officials take millions of dollars from our failing schools to prop up commercial real estate properties in the hottest real estate markets in the sound.

We live in a city where 2-3 babies die every week before the age of 1 and Black babies die at twice the rate White babies do. The counter-measures proposed by the current machine have barely made a dent.

We live in a city where police brutality is ever on the increase and affordable housing is on the decline.

In the meantime, people who earned votes based on raising real issues are passed over for empty Council seats by City Hall insiders and party loyalists. Nothing changes, but it will. 

Join us as leaders and friends of Everyday People for Positive Change address these and other issues as we prepare to submit the over 40,000 signatures of Columbus residents demanding to bring political power back to the people and away from the corporations and party power brokers they pay with our tax dollars.