Mine! Mine! Mine! Praise God . . .

This is perhaps the worst thing human beings do: They take their deepest values — connection, love, empathy — simplify them down to a religion, a name (Christianity, let us say, or Judaism, or whatever) and suddenly they have a flag to wave and a “cause” to go to war for. And the blood flows. Kill the savages! Kill the non-believers! Kill the enemy! (Take their land.)

Here’s the question of the day, as Israel continues to inflict hell and starvation on Gaza, as brutal conflict and murder rage across the planet: How do we reclaim — and maintain — the integrity of our deepest values? Acting in love and connection with an “Other” is, or can be, remarkably complex; declaring the Other to be an evil being who doesn’t deserve to live not only simplifies things enormously, but allows part of humanity to connect with itself, in fear of that enemy.

VINNIE DESTEFANO’S information on Julian Assange includes a way YOU can help by calling your Senators & Representatives to get him FREE!

MYLA RESON, DAVID GURAN and WENDI LEDERMAN chime into the amazing battle to save the right to practice journalism anywhere on Earth.

RUTH STRAUSS talks to us about “Outside Agitators” and Joe Biden.

From Georgia's RAY MCCLENDON we hear the latest on the Trump prosecutions and also on the arrival of the Vogtle nuclear plant already devastating the Peach State economy.

Republican Arizona state Senator KEN BENNETT explains the 4-point program for guaranteeing safe, fair, digitally scanned paper ballots that produce accurate outcomes in public elections.

With legendary election protection pioneer JOHN BRAKEY we conduct an astonishing excursion into the workings of the AZ legislature’s progress into the world of actual democracy.

Will this publicly verifiable method of conducting the vote counting and auditing process become a national model? Let’s hope so.

Shorts, documentaries, animation and features by and about the Pacific Islands’ Indigenous peoples are being highlighted from May 1-10 at various L.A. venues and via an online platform during the 40th annual VC Film Fest (formerly the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival). Since 1983 Visual Communications, a nonprofit organization, has presented this festival, dedicated to its mission “to develop and support the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists who empower communities and challenge perspectives.” Although the majority of the productions screened are by Asian and Asian-American filmmakers, VCFF is arguably America’s top portal for films of Oceania, as L.A. is cinema’s global capital.

Students need our support right now.  
As of April 30, over 1,100 students have been arrested for protesting on campuses. Instead of listening to student demands, university presidents are calling the police and armed guards to shut down their activism. Like a majority of people in the U.S., students want a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to genocide. It has been over 200 days of Israeli massacres of Palestinians. It must end.  

Send a mass email to University Presidents here.