Occupy Democrats
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Influential Independent Senator Bernie Sanders just dropped a bombshell about “replacement” for President Biden — and then perfectly called out the New York Times!
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Last Week in the Republican Party - July 9, 2024
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1.11M subscribers
Trump, the only guy who can make a 2 dollar bill unlucky. The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy. Our fight against Trumpism is only beginning. We must combat these forces everywhere and at all times — our democracy depends on it. Don’t forget to like, share, and follow The Lincoln Project on social media below! DONATE TO THE LINCOLN PROJECT https://action.lincolnproject.us/donate JOIN OUR MAILING LIST https://action.lincolnproject.us/join FOLLOW LINCOLN PROJECT TWITTER: https://bit.ly/3zwZFva INSTAGRAM: https://bit.ly/31yyrHR FACEBOOK: https://bit.ly/3zCBHhT REDDIT: https://bit.ly/39PLnxi TIKTOK: https://bit.ly/3xHYRCY PODCAST: https://apple.co/3G7zr4L We can’t do our work without your support. Thank you.
January 6 Convict Punched In The Face BRANDON FELLOWS
Raw News And Politics
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Trump Speech Goes OFF THE RAILS Before It EVEN STARTS
BRAIN DEAD MARCO RUBIO - BANNING PLASTIC STRAWS?
WHO BELIEVES THIS LUNACY?
WE GET TO WITNESS A CULT!
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2.54M subscribers
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the unhinged behavior of Trump’s supporters his Miami Doral speech before he even started his speech. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Support the MeidasTouch Network: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Add the MeidasTouch Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Buy MeidasTouch Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Follow MeidasTouch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Facebook: https://facebook.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Instagram: https://instagram.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@meidastouch
Rep. Katie Porter Unloads on House Republicans’ Ridiculous Dishwasher Priorities
THANK YOU REP. KATIE PORTER FOR HIGHLIGHTING THE MAGA STUPIDITY ---
ADDRESSING DISHWASHERS????
If this was SOUTH CAROLINA DIM WIT JEFF DUNCAN....maybe you should re-think your vote!
Just how STUPID are MAGA MAGGOTS that this is the 'best' they can do: DISHWASHERS!
Rep. Katie Porter
97.7K subscribers
Rep. Porter delivered a clear message to House Republicans: if you don’t load the dishwasher, don’t legislate about one.
FED UP Dems take the gloves off, SLAM Trump during hearing
FAKE ELECTORS..ELECTION FRAUD...BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Get over the LIES!
CHIP ROY (R-TEXAS) - is this Clown for real? Sorry TEXAS! You can do better!
JASMINE CROCKETT - Well Done!
REP. MELANIE STANSBURY (D-NM) - THANK YOU FOR ADDRESSING THE MAGA
MAGGOTS LUNACY! KITCHEN APPLIANCES!
Thank you Congressman McGovern!
Thank you AOC! Thank you Bernie Sanders! Yes! WE need more progress!
We can work together to solve problems & make progress for ALL Americans!
Americans recognize that HATE, BIGOTRY, REVENGE accomplish nothing of benefit!
MeidasTouch
2.54M subscribers
Rep. McGovern and other Democratic lawmakers turned the tables during Tuesday's congressional hearing, SLAMMING Trump and his MAGA Republican goons. Francis Maxwell reacts. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Support the MeidasTouch Network: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Add the MeidasTouch Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Buy MeidasTouch Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Follow MeidasTouch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Facebook: https://facebook.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Instagram: https://instagram.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@meidastouch
MUST WATCH! 'All of Our Tricks Worked': Spoof ExxonMobil Ad Nails Just How Easy It's Been for Big Oil
A new parody ExxonMobil advertisement released Tuesday by a group founded by Adam McKay—the Academy Award-winning writer and director of the blockbuster doomsday climate comedy Don't Look Up—mocks humanity for letting Big Oil get away with causing one of the biggest existential threats of all time.
"There's a world we all want to live in again. A world where the air is pure and crisp and clean and fills your lungs with joy. A world where you can drink water from any river or creek and your house will still be there tomorrow if it rains," the narrator of Yellow Dot Studio's latest parody video says in the two-minute clip. "Here at Exxon, we believe in that world, and we're working hard to make sure that our customers believe that we believe in that world."
"We understand the road has been bumpy, and we haven't always done the best we could," he says over footage of the Exxon Valdez disaster, in which more than 10 million gallons of crude oil were spilled in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
The voice-over continues:
Sure, our own scientists accurately predicted climate change 60 years ago. But we didn't want you to know about it. That's why we spent billions on ads and media manipulation covering it up, then we rigged the government so leaders in both parties would do our bidding, and yes, we did everything in our power to block clean energy tech so we could keep force-feeding you oil via expanding global infrastructure, monstrous vehicles, and disposable plastics and chemicals that don't go away. Ever.
The video follows the recent conclusion of a bicameral Senate investigation into Big Oil's decades of spreading climate disinformation and obstructing a green transition—after which lawmakers called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate fossil fuel giants. There is also a nascent movement urging state and local prosecutors to go after the oil and gas industry for climate-related deaths.
"And yes, every now and then you squawk about how evil we are, but then we drop gas prices a nickel and you shut right back up," the narrator says. "Do you have any idea how easy it is to get you off our backs with a little bullshit about your responsibilities to the planet? About your carbon footprint? Pretending plastic recycling actually makes a difference?"
"You're letting us get away with it, you dumb bitches" he adds mockingly. "All of our tricks worked. The world is a burning, out-of-control charnel house. The last generation to die of old age has already been born, and you still let oil executives freely show their face in public."
"We're just one company but you're 7 billion people," the video concludes. "Get off your asses and do something, you fucking peasants!"
UN Experts Say 'Targeted Starvation Campaign' by Israel Has Led to Famine Across Gaza
While the United Nations still has not formally declared a famine in Gaza after nine months of Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid, 10 top U.N. experts on Tuesday said they have seen enough.
"We declare that Israel's intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza," said the experts.
Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food, was joined in the statement by other experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, and Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons.
They said the recent deaths of three children in various parts of the enclave led the experts, who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations as a whole, to declare a famine has taken hold.
"Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah," said the experts. "Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare."
"With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza," they continued.
At least 34 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority being children—have now died from malnutrition since October, when Israel began its bombardment of the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced there would "be no electricity, no food, no fuel" allowed in to Gaza.
Israeli officials said in response to Tuesday's statement that it has increased the aid allowed into Gaza recently, but hundreds of delivery trucks remain stranded in Egypt and a floating pier built by the U.S. has not significantly improved the humanitarian crisis.
The U.N. experts said that with the first death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration, it should have been considered "irrefutable that famine has taken hold."
"When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on February 24 and March 4, respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza," they said. "The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel's genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths... Inaction is complicity."
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is backed by the U.N., said last month that Gaza is at high risk for famine and that nearly half a million people were facing "catastrophic" food insecurity, with an extreme lack of food.
In May, Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, who had previously hesitated to say Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, said Israel's "sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory" ultimately convinced him that Israeli officials are "engaged in genocide."
In March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to ensure its military refrain from violating the Genocide Convention by preventing humanitarian aid from reaching people in Gaza, saying that "the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated further" and that "famine is setting in."
A woman named Ghaneyma Joma told Reuters on Monday at a hospital in Khan Younis that she feared her son would soon die of starvation.
"It's distressing to see my child... lying there dying from malnutrition because I cannot provide him with anything due to the war, the closing of crossings, and the contaminated water," she told the outlet.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the U.S. government, the biggest international funder of Israel's military and a persistent defender of its actions in Gaza, to ensure that a cease-fire agreement is reached and that Palestinians receive necessary humanitarian aid.
"The intentional starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza can only occur with the active complicity of the Biden administration in Israel's campaign of genocide," said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the group. "This complicity must end, and the Palestinian people must be offered a future in which they are free of occupation and can live in dignity."
Kingston UU Church Vandalized
Let's continue to work for love and understanding of one another!
Vandalism has no place in our society!
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Do-it-Yourself Divestment: Bringing Anti-Gaza War Activism Home
Do-it-Yourself Divestment: Bringing Anti-Gaza War Activism Home
Yes, schools and other institutions should divest from companies involved in war crimes or fueling the climate crisis. But individuals can also divest. Here’s how.
( Commondreams ) – On Sunday, May 26—as graduating students at my school, Wesleyan University, tossed their caps into the air—bombs rained down on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing 45 people, including a number of women and children. The weapons that killed them, GBU-39 bombs, were made by Boeing and supplied by the U.S.
“Many of the dead bodies were severely burned, had amputated limbs, and were torn to pieces,” according to a local physician. In addition, the bomb blasts and ensuing fires wounded another 249 people.
The next day, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the bombing a “tragic accident,” but by Tuesday, Israeli shelling and airstrikes killed another 37 Palestinians in the area, most of them sheltering in tents. “We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice,” Mr. Netanyahu had warned earlier, in his campaign to defeat Hamas after last year’s heinous October 7 attack on Israel.
In American terms, this concentration of explosive force would be like dropping five Hiroshima-size bombs over a land mass one quarter the area of Oklahoma City, with triple its population.
It is this mounting civilian death toll—carried out with U.S. weapons—that spurred students to protest and set up encampments in the spring on nearly 140 college campuses, including Wesleyan. Although each encampment was different, student protesters were largely united in calling on their school to divest any holdings in companies supporting the war. The divestment they were calling for was strictly institutional, but as I will explain later, it’s also possible for individuals to carry out acts of divestment on their own.
In the first three months of the war alone, Israel dropped 45,000 bombs on Gaza, the majority of which were designed or manufactured by the United States. Perhaps the most controversial of these weapons is the 2,000-pound “bunker busting” Mark-84 bomb, which has a lethality area equivalent to 58 soccer fields. In the first month of the war, Israel dropped more than 500 Mark-84 bombs, often in densely populated areas, according to a CNN analysis (and these 500 bombs, made by General Dynamics, are only a small fraction of at least 5,000 that the U.S. sent to Israel after the Hamas attack).
As described in a United Nations Human Rights Council report, the explosive blast from a Mark-84 bomb “can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities, and tear off limbs hundreds of feet from the blast site, according to trauma physicians. When it hits, the [bomb] generates an 8,500-degree fireball, gouges a 20-foot crater as it displaces 10,000 pounds of dirt and rock and generates enough wind to knock down walls blocks away and hurl metal fragments a mile or more.”
All told, the explosive force of munitions Israel has used on Gaza since October 7 is estimated to be 75 kilotons—five times larger than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In the case of Gaza, though, its 141 square-mile territory is less than half the size of Hiroshima. In American terms, this concentration of explosive force would be like dropping five Hiroshima-size bombs over a land mass one quarter the area of Oklahoma City, with triple its population.
One of the most catastrophic results of this bombing is that roughly 1 out of every 133 Palestinian children in Gaza has now been killed—a number which, when scaled to match the U.S. population, would translate into the deaths of more than half a million American children.
It is hard to imagine the bitterness and hatred that such a death toll would generate in the United States, yet only three days into the war, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari publicly acknowledged that Israel’s bombing campaign was “focused on what causes maximum damage“—not on the accuracy of where bombs land or the need to minimize collateral damage.
In keeping with that focus, nearly half of all bombs Israel used in Gaza during the first two months of war were unguided, and even U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Israel risked losing international support due to its “indiscriminate bombing.”
Fox 61 Video: “Wesleyan students call for the disclosure and divestment of military weapons funding”
Wesleyan student protesters began sleeping in tents on April 28, and their encampment ultimately grew to more than 100 tents by the time it disbanded on May 20. The tent community was peaceful and advanced a set of demands, the foremost of which was that the university administration disclose its financial investments and then divest from companies and institutions which are supporting or profiting from the war and occupation of Palestinian territory.
As someone with Israeli family members, it pains me to say that I agree with the call for divestment. My agreement is not only because of the profound loss of life on both sides of the war, but for three additional reasons.
(1) Israeli leaders are violating international humanitarian law. Put simply, it’s illegal to starve civilians or willfully impede relief supplies as a method of war. Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on October 18 that “we will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip.” As a result of that policy, “full-blown famine” hit Northern Gaza by May, according to the executive director of the U.N. World Food Program. Even worse, the program predicts that if the war continues, more than 1 million people (half the population of Gaza) will face life-threatening levels of starvation by mid-July.
Here is what Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court says about starving civilians and impeding relief efforts:
For the purpose of this Statute, “war crimes”… [includes] Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies.
To be sure, one could argue that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement doesn’t accurately represent the Israeli government’s official position, but several other top leaders have also publicly called for withholding food and humanitarian relief. For instance, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Likewise, on October 12 Energy Minister Israel Katz posted this statement on social media: “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.”
And National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has gone on record as saying that it would be a “grave mistake” for the Israeli government to allow “the transfer of humanitarian aid” into Gaza unless Hamas frees Israeli hostages.
There’s a relatively quick and simple step that individual citizens can take, not as a substitute for institutional divestment, but as a complement to it. They can make sure their own financial holdings are divested.
In other words, the starvation of civilians and suspension of humanitarian aid is explicit, sustained, and willful. Even Israel’s closest military ally and defender, the United States, issued a report on May 10 concluding that Israel has “contributed significantly to a lack of sustained and predictable delivery of needed assistance” and likely violated international humanitarian law (for more on that report, and claims by a former U.S. State Department official that it understated violations of international law, see coverage in The Guardian and PBS NewsHour).
Along similar lines, many Americans believe that laws have been broken. A national poll of Americans by The Economist/YouGov in May asked the following question: “Do you think Israel has violated any international laws in Gaza?” Only 28% of respondents answered, “No.”
Indeed, on May 20, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity, and citing violations of Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. (The prosecutor also sought to arrest three Hamas leaders for a list of crimes that included rape, torture, and kidnapping.)
In addition, the ICC appointed an independent Panel of Experts in International Law to render an opinion on whether there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that crimes had been committed. In its report, the panel unanimously concluded:
[T]here are reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant formed a common plan, together with others, to jointly perpetrate the crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. The Panel has concluded that the acts through which this war crime was committed include… cutting off supplies of electricity and water, and severely restricting food, medicine, and fuel supplies.
Although President Biden called the ICC prosecutor’s charges “outrageous,” the next day a report documented that Israeli soldiers and police officers were tipping off far-right activists about the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, colluding with vigilantes to block the trucks from reaching their destination. Then, on June 12, a commission established by the U.N. Human Rights Council released a finding that “Israel has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.”
(2) U.S. taxpayers are funding Israel’s activities in Gaza. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been the world’s largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, totaling more than $300 billion in American taxpayer money, adjusted for inflation. Moreover, military aid to Israel shows no sign of slowing down. Between 2019 and 2023, nearly 70% of Israeli arms imports came from the U.S., and since the Israel-Hamas war began last year, the U.S. has supplied Israel with weapons via more than 100 arms transfers.
Even after the U.S. State Department released its May 10 report concluding that Israel was likely committing crimes, the U.S. has continued to underwrite Israel’s actions in Gaza with $12.5 billion in military aid during fiscal year 2024—the second-highest level of U.S. military aid ever provided to Israel.
In a very real sense, then, Israel’s war in the Middle East has become America’s war—a joint project, as reflected in the results of a national poll conducted in April. When Americans were asked whether they thought the U.S. was at war in the Middle East, 56% said either yes or they weren’t sure.
By supplying most of the bombs dropped in Gaza while knowing that humanitarian assistance is being withheld, the U.S. is not only morally culpable—it is breaking federal law. Providing military aid to Israel under such circumstances violates Section 620I of the 1961 U.S. Foreign Assistance Act, which bans foreign aid to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
On March 11, eight U.S. senators sent a letter to President Biden raising precisely this concern, and on March 27, six additional members of Congress sent a similar letter reiterating the point:
It is apparent that the Netanyahu government is repeatedly interfering in U.S. humanitarian operations in direct violation of the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961… We [are] imploring you to enforce U.S. law with the Netanyahu government.
Providing Israel with weapons used in the commission of war crimes also violates Article Seven of the Arms Trade Treaty, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, ratified by 113 states, signed by 28 others (including the U.S. and Israel), and supported by several Nobel Peace Prize recipients, notable among them Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Nor is the problem limited to the 2,000-pound bombs made by the United States. On June 6, Israel killed at least 40 people—including women and children—with American-made GBU-39 small diameter bombs in an attack on a school where Palestinians were sheltering. One day later, the U.N. publicly announced that it was adding the Israel Defense Forces (as well as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) to a global list of offenders that violate the rights of children. Because the United States is still supplying Israel with lethal weapons while being aware of how the weapons are being used, many people around the world regard the U.S. as complicit.
(3) Divestment can promote political change and moral alignment. Divestment movements have been around since at least 1783, when Quakers urged members of their community to divest their holdings from the slave trade. As explained by sociology professor David S. Meyer:
[T]he idea wasn’t to financially cripple the slave trade. The idea was to get their [own] conduct in line with their beliefs so they could advocate more effectively, sort of a strike against hypocrisy.
Consistent with this explanation, modern-day divestment campaigns rarely have a major financial effect on the targeted countries or businesses, but they can raise public awareness about an issue, signal its urgency, and generate political action. One such political campaign was the global movement to divest from South Africa, which is widely credited as having hastened the end of apartheid in that country and provided a model for the movement to divest from Israel.
When I asked Wesleyan student protesters why they were calling for divestment, some said that they hoped it would help publicize the plight of Palestinians and contribute to political change. Others spoke of moral alignment, saying that they didn’t want Wesleyan to fund or support war crimes. And still others felt that schools should not profit from war, arms sales, or the death of civilians. As climate activist Bill McKibben famously said when explaining the logic behind divesting from fossil fuel companies, “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from the wreckage.”
Joining the call for divestment also offers a way for student voices to be heard, for protesters to network within and across campuses, and for students to exert more collective leverage than if they act alone. In the case of Wesleyan, for example, students were able to secure a promise from the administration to have the Board of Trustees consider a proposal later this year to divest Wesleyan’s $1.5 billion endowment, $25-30 million of which is currently invested in aerospace and defense businesses.
The Missing Element: Personal Divestment
One of the most powerful aspects of university divestment is that it makes a statement from a respected institution known for its erudition and scholarly expertise. At the same time, a promise to consider divestment is not the same as a promise to divest, and even if a school were to opt for divestment—as Wesleyan has with respect to fossil fuels, and as it may in the future with respect to defense contractors—the process could take months or years to complete, by which time the war in Gaza would presumably have ended.
In the meanwhile, there’s a relatively quick and simple step that individual citizens can take, not as a substitute for institutional divestment, but as a complement to it. They can make sure their own financial holdings are divested.
This is no small thing. American college and university endowments total an estimated $839 billion—an astronomical amount that would have far-reaching political effects if it were divested—but the divestment campaigns on college campuses miss a source of funds 45 times larger: $38.4 trillion in U.S. retirement accounts held by individual employees.
Even after the current war is over, we will be better off in a world that divests from companies selling weapons of mass destruction, fossil fuels, and tobacco products than in a world that financially invests in their growth.
In a matter of minutes, many employees with retirement accounts can divest by moving their assets into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds that exclude defense contractors. ESG funds also typically exclude fossil fuel companies, the tobacco industry, and corporations known for worker abuses.
In days gone by, these “socially responsible” or “sustainable” investment funds tended to perform more poorly than broad mutual funds set up to mirror market indexes such as the S&P 500. Not anymore. In fact, according to a New York University meta-analysis of more than 1,000 research papers, today’s ESG funds often outperform other funds.
To take just one example, the Statista Research Department compared the classic S&P 500 index and an ESG S&P 500 index between 2021 and 2024, and it found that by the fourth quarter of 2021, “the S&P 500 ESG index began to steadily outperform the S&P 500 by four points on average.”
A Morgan Stanley study of more than 10,000 mutual funds from 2004 to 2018 also found that ESG funds tend to be less risky than other mutual funds, especially when markets are turbulent. The conclusion, according to the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, is that “incorporating ESG criteria into investment decisions makes good sense financially.”
Of course, not everyone has a retirement fund, but for those who do, these results are reassuring. What they suggest is that individual employees can divest from defense contractors like Boeing and General Dynamics—makers of the GBU-39 and Mark-84 bombs discussed earlier—without compromising retirement savings.
This divestment option applies to a broad range of retirement accounts, including traditional and Roth IRAs, 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, and 457(b) plans. For further details on how to divest, see these tips on how to divest retirement accounts.
All well and good, you might say, but what about after a cease-fire or the war ends—would it still be worth the effort to divest? Without question, my answer is yes. First, cease-fires are often fragile. In the 2014, for example, Israel and Hamas had nine truces, during which more than 2,000 people were killed, before there was a relatively lasting agreement to stop the fighting. And even after the current war is over, we will be better off in a world that divests from companies selling weapons of mass destruction, fossil fuels, and tobacco products than in a world that financially invests in their growth.
Admittedly, personal and institutional divestment are both blunt instruments, and ESG investing has its critics. Nevertheless, ESG investments are growing worldwide and estimated to reach $53 trillion by next year (one third of all global assets under management). The reason for this meteoric growth is not just that ESG investment strategies exclude certain industries. They also embrace prosocial values and goals that are aligned with emergent global regulations, priorities, and needs.
In short, ESG investing is here to stay, and personal divestment can serve as a refusal to support or profit from the use of American-made weapons in Gaza—a small but significant statement. As Mahatma Gandhi reportedly said with respect to the impact of individual actions, “Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Scott Plous is professor of psychology at Wesleyan University and founding executive director of Social Psychology Network
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