Director of World BEYOND War

The New York Times and the people it gives voice to are very worried that Donald Trump may be too much in favor of peace in Korea, more in favor of peace than of disarming North Korea prior to peace — a sure recipe, of course, for never arriving at peace.

North Korea has disarmed in the past when there were real steps toward peace from both sides.

North Korea is no threat to the United States — the actual United States, not its mission of global domination.

The United States has no business in Korea and would facilitate peace and disarmament, make itself better liked around the world, and save many billions of dollars by getting out.

The humiliation of United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw last week was a good thing. The ancient Greeks, exercising their demonstrated ability to synthesize defining characteristics, had a word for it: hubris. Hubris is when one develops an extreme and unreasonable feeling of confidence in a certain course of action that inevitably leads to one’s downfall when that conceit proves to be based on false principles.

Pompeo was in Warsaw for a “summit” arranged by the US State Department in partnership with the Polish government to discuss with representatives of sixty nations what to do about the fractious situation in the Middle East. In advance, he promised that the meeting would "deliver really good outcomes." The gathering was initially conceived as a “war against Iran” precursor, intended to pull together a coalition against the Persians, but when it became clear that many of the potential participants would balk at such a designation, it assumed a broader agenda concerning “Peace and Security in the Middle East.”

Some of my best friends are colored. All of them are, actually.

And so I introduce you to Lowell Thompson, artist — indeed, psycho-realist, as he calls himself — recovering ad man and “colored person.” He’s also, you might say, the king of irreverence and political incorrectness, but this is only because he’s also a dragon slayer. The dragon is racism. There’s no way to engage with race politely, but there’s a way to yank the seriousness out of it.

I am responding to recent publicity about this byproduct of oil/gas drilling, AquaSalina being used by the Ohio Department Of Transportation (ODOT) on our roads.

Unfortunately, I have a history with this product and this company. In 2012 I was sued by the maker of AquaSalina in a $1 Million SLAPP lawsuit for trying to warn my city and community members that this product was potentially dangerous to us and the environment. At the time, I didn’t have access to the product to test it myself. But, after learning about the oil/gas drilling process and the hazardous byproducts it generates, I used common sense to deduce that this solution could not be good. There are radioactive elements at the 4,000–5,000 foot depth of the wells drilled in my community. Basic physics tells us that when you force chemicals, sand and water down at high pressure, radioactive stuff is going to come back up along with what you pushed down. I wish many of the lawyers, judges and electeds involved in my case had also used deductive reasoning.