By Major Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

July 23, 2019 - I was just about the youngest person in the room. I usually am when I address veterans’ peace organizations. Of course, when I speak at universities, it’s the exact opposite case. Being a 35-year old post 9/11 antiwar veteran can be a bit lonely, a feeling of being stuck between two generational worlds. In this case, just this past weekend, I spoke, along with the great Ann Wright, at an amazing event titled Peacestock, in Red Wing, Minnesota. It was an annual gathering, several years running now, of the greater Minneapolis chapters of Veterans for Peace.

MOSCOW, Russia (PNN) - July 29, 2019 - Three weeks after a meeting between the countries that signed the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was ditched by Fascist Police States of Amerika, French, Fascist United Kingdom and German officials said the trade mechanism which was proposed last summer - designed to circumvent both SWIFT as well as FPSA sanctions banning trade with Iran - called Instex - is now operational.

SEATTLE, Washington (PNN) - July 24, 2019 - Privacy is a basic human right. It’s there in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence.” Attaining that right in an era of dragnet surveillance, mass data breaches, State-sponsored hacks, and big tech overreach, however, is a Herculean task. As the digital privacy fight heats up, crypto protocols are emerging as a new battleground where the right to anonymity will be won and lost.

He caught them beating him instead.

PALO ALTO, Kalifornia (PNN) - July 23, 2019 - Despite not having a criminal record, Gustavo Alvarez says he’s been repeated harassed by Palo Alto terrorist pig thug cops. So two years ago he had surveillance cameras installed on his home in case his fears of terrorist pig thug cop harassment ever materialized on his doorstep. Earlier this year that is exactly what happened; only because Alvarez had these cameras installed is he a free man today.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (PNN) - July 18, 2019 - Thousands of Puerto Ricans took to the streets of Old San Juan to demand the ouster of Governor Ricardo Rosselló following corruption investigations and the leaking of 889 pages of text messages revealing him to be vindictive, sexist and profane - including against those who died following Hurricane Maria.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (PNN) - July 8, 2019 - Once again, responding to a horrendous crime by inflicting knee-jerk, authoritarian restrictions on innocent people proves to be an ineffective means of convincing people to obey. Specifically, New Zealand's government, which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year, is running into stiff resistance to new gun rules from firearms owners who are slow to surrender now-prohibited weapons and will probably never turn them in.

Officials should have seen it coming.

SEATTLE, Washington (PNN) - July 5, 2019 - Washington state has unlawfully raised its minimum age for purchasing a semi-automatic rifle to 21, along with other new rules governing gun ownership. The age restriction went into effect in January, with the other changes taking effect July 1. But some in state sheriffs have vowed not to enforce the measure, arguing that it violates the Second Amendment.

PROVO, Utah (PNN) - July 5, 2019 - Utah schoolteachers have been training on how to respond to an active shooter - practicing techniques to neutralize assailants and keep students safe.

The training is nothing new - at least 39 states require some form of lockdown, active-shooter, or similar safety drills, according to the Education Commission of the States. Utah requires that elementary schools conduct at least one safety drill per month, while secondary schools must have detailed emergency response plans on hand. While firearms training in the state is voluntary, Utah County Sheriff's Teacher's Academy has a waiting list for its next four-week program.

By Jacob G. Hornberger

July 5, 2019 - Fascist Police States of Amerika President Donald Trump is being criticized for surrounding himself with tanks, armored vehicles, flyovers, and generals and admirals during his Fourth of July celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. Critics say that it was unseemly for the president to be showing off the federal government’s military process on Independence Day. Some said it conjured up images of the Soviet Union, when that communist regime would showcase its tanks and military hardware in parades in Moscow’s Red Square.

July 4, 2019 - Today is Independence Day, so it seems a good time to ask: How independent are we? Put another way: what are we free to do - and not do?

The dreary answer, of course, is not very much.

Orwell wrote that freedom “… is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.” Also that two plus two equals four rather than five.

But there is a more foundational freedom and it comes in two equal parts. The first part is the right to say No. The second part - without which the freedom to say No is a functional non sequitur - is that your No be respected. In law. By law.

Amerikans have lost this freedom almost completely.