Do we need a new stand-alone branch of the military to ensure that the US dominates space or is our military-industrial complex big enough already? President Trump's proposed "Space Force" has its critics inside government and even within the military, but even more so among activists, with few better able to weigh in on this notion than Bruce Gagnon, chair of Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Bruce joins Steve and Annie on this edition of "Corporations and Democracy" to discuss how activists around the world are pushing back on both the privatization and the militarization of space and planets. He's joined in the second half of the show by Dennis O’Brien, an attorney, former member of the NASA-Hastings Law Project, and founder of the the Space Treaty Project.

You can listen to or download the program here.

In this piece on VotingJustice.us's recount updates, Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate, provides an excellent report on program made toward voting integrity, right to vote, elections we can trust, and the problems remaining. 

"Protecting our voting system from cyber-threats is critical in an age when everything from hospitals to nuclear power plants are being hacked," Stein writes. "But cybersecurity and an accurate vote count are just the tip of the iceberg for safeguarding our votes, when the US election system is largely designed to protect the power of the economic and political elite."

The 2016 recount effort mobilized by the Stein campaign again focused attention on widespread problems with US elections, from outdated and vulnerable election equipment to systemic obstacles to voting, most consistently directed at people of color, and proposes a to-do list to strengthen election security, voter rights, and amplify the political influence of real people over corporations (or what is commonly referred to as "democracy"). There are lots of links to different issue-oriented democracy movement organizations, including Alliance for Democracy, so you can follow the latest on the work that interests you. 

Stein also repeats the call for a bipartisan emergency commission for election protection and voting justice--certainly a good idea at the state level, where they are likely to be more responsive to the grassroots and where voter groups can use them as a way to get their findings and demands out in front of both legislators and local media.

So far this year the Local Food RULES! campaign has helped a dozen Maine towns pass local food and community self-governance ordinances, bringing the total across the state to 41 municipalities.

To celebrate, here's Malvina Reynold's song "God Bless the Grass," which has become a kind of unofficial anthem for the campaign. You can also find some neat cover versions out there.

In July 4, 1998, Al Krebs, a tireless activist for family farms and sustainable agriculture, and Ronnie Dugger, founder of the Alliance, each read separate but similar documents, titled "A Declaration of Independence from Corporate Rule" at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Al Kreb's version is below.

We should never celebrate our country's history without remembering how much of it is written in innocent blood and lives lost through genocide, slavery, brutal repression here and illegal interventions in other countries. The old lie, that some lives don't matter, constantly crops up in new forms.

But there are events and ideas worth celebrating, too. We share this address with you as part of history that needs to be preserved and shared: a long history of resistance to money power, crony capitalism, and corporate rule. Let's keep making history! 

A 21st Century Populist Declaration of Independence

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for We the People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected us with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitled us, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that the People should declare the causes which impel us to that separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men/women are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights Governments—of the people, by the people and for the people—are instituted by the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Whenever that Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form as the people shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Whenever a long train of abuses and usurpations are designed to reduce us to an absolute Oligarchy, it is Our right, it is Our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security.

Our nation is in a crisis. Our Constitution is being trashed, our infrastructure is crumbling, the education of our young neglected, the environment trashed, the lives of young men/women are being wasted in an illegal war, and the welfare of our veterans jettisoned. We are creating enemies all over the world while Our government is using fear to stay in power, enriching itself at the expense of present and future generations.

Weed CA area water activists Angelina Cook and Bruce Shoemaker were guests on last week's edition of the Brain Labor Report, hosted by Wes Brain. The show originates on KSKQ in Ashland and Medford, Oregon. You can listen to the show here.  The interview begins at the 12:32 mark.

Bruce detailed the 100-year history of weed's water issues. A former company town, where land, homes, infrastructure, and the local store were all owned by a lumber company, Weed was incorporated only in the 1950s. After incorporation, a public water utility was set up, using gravity-fed spring water.

When International Paper sold its interests in town to Roseburg Lumber, paperwork indicating ownership of water rights were lost, said Bruce. Roseburg Lumber, now Roseburg Forest Products, claims that it still has legal right over local water, including what is delivered through the town's water system. The company has sold water to Crystal Geyser, a bottle water brand owned by a Japanese pharmaceutical company, and plans to sell more, while currently charging Weed $100,000 a year for the water the town used to be able to access for free.

The company has also sued in an attempt to shut down citizen activism that was leading to negative publicity.  "I think they thought we were small town people that they could intimidate," said Bruce, who was named in the suit. The case was dismissed in Superior Court in December. A court case over the ownership of the water itself continues.  

Mt. Shasta's volcanic aquifers are an important source of spring water, and have been under attack nearly constantly since Nestle's failed attempt to build the world's largest bottling plant in nearby McCloud, according to Angelina. Current regulation of bottling is insufficient--towns can't even find out how much water is being pumped for bottling and sale.

She pointed our vulnerability to corporate interests, even in towns with good water supplies. From consumer susceptibility to the bottled water marketing hype, to deep problems with failing public water infrastructure and water security, private interests see opportunities to profit from concerns--legitimate or otherwise--about what comes out of the tap.

But she noted that this is a unifying campaign for the town, which has taken on the responsibility to "get informed, get involved, contribute to the groups that are representing the public interest and the human right to water, and participate."