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Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven individuals pictures are those who "attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction" after they made their way onto the US Submarine Base in Kings Bay, Georgie on Wednesday night. (Photo:
Seven Peace Activists Arrested After Entering Nuclear Submarine Base in Georgia
Citing anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, activists say they "went to make real the prophet Isaiah's command: 'beat swords into plowshares.'"
Apr 05, 2018
Citing the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination this week, seven peace activists were arrested on Thursday morning after they made their way overnight onto the U.S. Naval Base in Kings Bay, Georgia where some of the nation's nuclear-armed submarines are stationed.
According to a post by the group on Facebook, the seven people involved in the action and subsequently detained by authorities were: Elizabeth McAlister, 78, of Jonah House, Baltimore; Steve Kelly, S. J., 69, of California; Carmen Trotta, 55, a NY Catholic Worker; Clare Grady, 59, of Ithaca, NY Catholic Worker; Martha Hennessy, 62, of NY Catholic Worker; Mark Coleville, 55, of Amistad Catholic Worker in New Haven, CT; and Patrick O'Neil, 61, of Fr. Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker in Garner, NC.
Local news outlet First Coast News, citing military officials at the base, report that the seven are facing trespassing and defacing government property charges.
The statement from the group further explained:
The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Who devoted his life to addressing the triplets of militarism, racism and materialism. In their statement, which they carried with them, the group quoted King, who said: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world (today) is my own government."
Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction.
Kings Bay Naval base opened in 1979 as the Navy's Atlantic Ocean Trident port. It is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world. There are six ballistic missile subs and two guided missile subs based at Kings Bay.
The activists went to three sites on the base: The administration building, the D5 Missile monument installation and the nuclear weapons storage bunkers. The activists used crime scene tape, hammers and banners reading: "'The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,' Dr. Martin Luther King"; "The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide"; "Nuclear weapons: illegal - immoral." They also brought an indictment charging the U.S. government for crimes against peace.
\u201cBREAKING: we\u2019re learning more about the 7 activists detained at Kings Bay Baval Submarine Base. A group called Kings Bay Plowshares shared these photos. @FCN2go\u201d— Eric Alvarez (@Eric Alvarez) 1522939334
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Citing the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination this week, seven peace activists were arrested on Thursday morning after they made their way overnight onto the U.S. Naval Base in Kings Bay, Georgia where some of the nation's nuclear-armed submarines are stationed.
According to a post by the group on Facebook, the seven people involved in the action and subsequently detained by authorities were: Elizabeth McAlister, 78, of Jonah House, Baltimore; Steve Kelly, S. J., 69, of California; Carmen Trotta, 55, a NY Catholic Worker; Clare Grady, 59, of Ithaca, NY Catholic Worker; Martha Hennessy, 62, of NY Catholic Worker; Mark Coleville, 55, of Amistad Catholic Worker in New Haven, CT; and Patrick O'Neil, 61, of Fr. Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker in Garner, NC.
Local news outlet First Coast News, citing military officials at the base, report that the seven are facing trespassing and defacing government property charges.
The statement from the group further explained:
The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Who devoted his life to addressing the triplets of militarism, racism and materialism. In their statement, which they carried with them, the group quoted King, who said: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world (today) is my own government."
Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction.
Kings Bay Naval base opened in 1979 as the Navy's Atlantic Ocean Trident port. It is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world. There are six ballistic missile subs and two guided missile subs based at Kings Bay.
The activists went to three sites on the base: The administration building, the D5 Missile monument installation and the nuclear weapons storage bunkers. The activists used crime scene tape, hammers and banners reading: "'The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,' Dr. Martin Luther King"; "The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide"; "Nuclear weapons: illegal - immoral." They also brought an indictment charging the U.S. government for crimes against peace.
\u201cBREAKING: we\u2019re learning more about the 7 activists detained at Kings Bay Baval Submarine Base. A group called Kings Bay Plowshares shared these photos. @FCN2go\u201d— Eric Alvarez (@Eric Alvarez) 1522939334
Citing the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination this week, seven peace activists were arrested on Thursday morning after they made their way overnight onto the U.S. Naval Base in Kings Bay, Georgia where some of the nation's nuclear-armed submarines are stationed.
According to a post by the group on Facebook, the seven people involved in the action and subsequently detained by authorities were: Elizabeth McAlister, 78, of Jonah House, Baltimore; Steve Kelly, S. J., 69, of California; Carmen Trotta, 55, a NY Catholic Worker; Clare Grady, 59, of Ithaca, NY Catholic Worker; Martha Hennessy, 62, of NY Catholic Worker; Mark Coleville, 55, of Amistad Catholic Worker in New Haven, CT; and Patrick O'Neil, 61, of Fr. Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker in Garner, NC.
Local news outlet First Coast News, citing military officials at the base, report that the seven are facing trespassing and defacing government property charges.
The statement from the group further explained:
The seven chose to act on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Who devoted his life to addressing the triplets of militarism, racism and materialism. In their statement, which they carried with them, the group quoted King, who said: "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world (today) is my own government."
Carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood, the seven attempted to convert weapons of mass destruction.
Kings Bay Naval base opened in 1979 as the Navy's Atlantic Ocean Trident port. It is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world. There are six ballistic missile subs and two guided missile subs based at Kings Bay.
The activists went to three sites on the base: The administration building, the D5 Missile monument installation and the nuclear weapons storage bunkers. The activists used crime scene tape, hammers and banners reading: "'The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,' Dr. Martin Luther King"; "The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide"; "Nuclear weapons: illegal - immoral." They also brought an indictment charging the U.S. government for crimes against peace.
\u201cBREAKING: we\u2019re learning more about the 7 activists detained at Kings Bay Baval Submarine Base. A group called Kings Bay Plowshares shared these photos. @FCN2go\u201d— Eric Alvarez (@Eric Alvarez) 1522939334
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LATEST NEWS
'Censorship and Discrimination': 200+ Scholars Slam Canceling of Harvard Journal Issue on Palestine
They wrote that "it exemplifies anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza," where students and educators face scholasticide.
Aug 14, 2025
As Israel continues its U.S.-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip and Harvard University weighs a deal with the Trump administration, the Ivy League institution came under fire by more than 200 scholars on Thursday for recently canceling a journal issue on Palestine.
"We, the undersigned scholars, educators, and education practitioners, write to express our alarm at the Harvard Education Publishing Group's (HEPG) cancellation of a special issue on Palestine and Education in the Harvard Educational Review (HER)," says the open letter. "Such censorship is an attempt to silence the academic examination of the genocide, starvation, and dehumanization of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and its allies."
Last month, The Guardian revealed how, after over a year of seeking, collecting, and editing submissions for a special issue on "education and Palestine" in preparation for a summer release, HEPG scrapped plans for the publication in June.
"The Guardian spoke with four scholars who had written for the issue, and one of the journal's editors," the newspaper detailed. "It also reviewed internal emails that capture how enthusiasm about a special issue intended to promote 'scholarly conversation on education and Palestine amid repression, occupation, and genocide' was derailed by fears of legal liability and devolved into recriminations about censorship, integrity, and what many scholars have come to refer to as the 'Palestine exception' to academic freedom."
The new letter also uses that language:
Contributing authors of the special issue were informed late into the process that the publisher intended to subject all articles to a legal review by Harvard University's Office of General Counsel. In response to this extraordinary move, the 21 contributing authors submitted a joint letter to both HEPG and HER, protesting this process as a contractual breach that violated their academic freedom. They also underscored the publisher's actions would set a dangerous precedent not only for the study of Palestine, but for academic publishing as a whole. The authors demanded that HEPG honour the original terms of their contractual agreements, uphold the integrity of the existing HER review process, and ensure that the special issue proceed to publication without interference. However, just prior to its release, HEPG unilaterally canceled the entire special issue and revoked the signed author contracts, in what The Guardian notes as "a remarkable new development in a mounting list of examples of censorship of pro-Palestinian speech."
These events reflect what scholars have termed the "Palestine exception" to free speech and academic freedom. It exemplifies anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza—precisely when Palestinian educators and students are enduring the most severe forms of "scholasticide" in modern history.
In a lengthy online statement about the cancellation, HEPG executive director Jessica Fiorillo said that "we decided not to move forward with the special issue because it did not meet our established standards for scholarly publishing. Of the 12 proposed pieces, three were research-based articles, two were reprints of previously published HER articles, and seven were opinion pieces."
"As a student-edited, non-peer-reviewed publication, HER manuscripts, nonetheless, undergo internal review by experienced, professional staff," she continued. "During this review, we determined that the submissions required substantial editorial work to meet our publication criteria. We concluded that the best recourse for all involved was to revert the rights to the pieces to authors so that they could seek publication elsewhere."
The scholars wrote Thursday that "it is unconscionable that HEPG have chosen to publicly frame their cancellation of the special issue as a matter of academic quality, while omitting key publicly reported facts that point to censorship. Perhaps most disturbingly, HEPG leadership has sought to displace responsibility for their actions onto the authors and graduate student editors of the journal, calling into question the integrity of the journal's long-standing review processes, and dismissing the articles as 'opinion pieces' unfit for publication."
"The latter claim ignores that HER explicitly welcomes 'experiential knowledge' and 'reflective accounts' through their Voices submission format," they noted. "When genocide is ongoing, personal reflections and testimonies are not only valid but vital. Dismissing such contributions as lacking scholarly merit reflects an exclusionary view of 'whose knowledge counts'—valuing Western and external academic perspectives over lived experiences of violence and oppression."
The scholars—whose letter remains open to signatures—said that they "stand in solidarity with the authors and graduate student editors of the special issue, who are facing and confronting censorship and discrimination," and concluded by calling for "HEPG to be held accountable."
HEPG is a division of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. While a spokesperson for the latter did not respond to The Guardian's request for comment on the new letter, signatory and University of Oxford professor Arathi Sriprakash told the newspaper that the cancellation mobilized scholars "precisely because we recognize the grave consequences of such threats to academic freedom and academic integrity."
"The ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza has involved the physical destruction of the entire higher education system there, and now in many education institutions around the world there are active attempts to shut down learning about what's happening altogether," Sriprakash said. "As educationalists, we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning without fear or threat."
HEPG's cancellation has been blasted as yet another example of higher education institutions capitulating as President Donald Trump's administration cracks down on schools where policies and speech on campus don't align with the White House agenda—including students' and educators' condemnation of the Israeli assault on Gaza and U.S. complicity in it. The Trump administration is also targeting individual critics, trying to deport foreign scholars who have spoken out or protested on campus over the past 22 months.
Harvard won praise in April for suing the federal government over a multibillion-dollar funding freeze. However, last month, the university "quietly dismantled its undergraduate school's offices for diversity, equity, and inclusion," and reportedly "signaled a willingness to meet the Trump administration's demand to spend as much as $500 million to end its dispute with the White House."
Amid fears of what a settlement, like those reached by other Ivy League institutions, might involve, Harvard faculty argued in a July letter that "the university must not directly or indirectly cede to governmental or other outside authorities the right to install or reject leading personnel—that is, to dictate who can be the officials who lead the university or its component schools, departments, and centers."
While the HER issue was canceled during Harvard's battle with Trump, outrage over how scholarship on Palestine is handled on campus predates the president's return to power in January. In November 2023, The Nation published a piece about Israel's war on Gaza that the Harvard Law Review commissioned from a Palestinian scholar but then refused to run after an internal debate.
At the time, the author of that essay, human rights attorney Rabea Eghbariah, wrote in an email to a Law Review editor: "This is discrimination. Let's not dance around it—this is also outright censorship. It is dangerous and alarming."
Key Inflation Indicator Comes in ‘Scorching Hot’ Just as Trump Tariffs Hit
"So much for foreigners paying tariffs," commented one economic expert.
Aug 14, 2025
A leading inflation indicator surged much more than expected last month, just as the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs started to weigh on American businesses and consumers.
New Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers released on Thursday showed that wholesale prices rose by 0.9% over the last month and by 3.3% over the last year. These numbers were significantly higher than economists' consensus estimates of a 0.2% monthly rise and a 2.5% yearly rise in producer prices.
PPI is a leading indicator of future readings of the Consumer Price Index, the most widely cited gauge of inflation, as increases in wholesalers' prices almost inevitably get passed on to consumers. Economists have been predicting for months that Trump's tariffs on imported goods, which at the moment are higher than at any point in nearly 100 years, would lead to a spike in inflation.
Reacting to the higher-than-expected PPI number, some economic experts pinned the blame directly on the president.
"So much for foreigners paying tariffs," commented Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at tax consulting firm RSM US, on X. "If they did, PPI would be falling. Wholesale prices up 3.3% from a year ago and 3.7% in the core. The temperature is definitely rising in the core. This implies a hot PCE reading lies ahead."
Liz Pancotti, the managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, took a deep dive into the numbers and found that Trump's tariffs were having an impact on a wide range of products.
"There is no mistaking it: President Trump's tariffs are hitting American farmers and driving up grocery prices for American families," she said. "Wholesale prices for grocery staples, like fresh vegetables (up 39% over the past month) and coffee (up 29% over the past year) are rising, squeezing American families even further in the checkout line."
Pancotti singled out the rise in milk prices as particularly worrisome for American families.
"Milk drove more than 30% of the increase in prices for unprocessed goods, rising by 9.1% in just the past month," she explained. "Tuesday's CPI print showed that milk prices rose by 1.9% in July, and this PPI data suggests further price hikes are on the way."
Betsey Stevenson, who served on former President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, also pointed the finger at Trump's policies.
"Tariffs will cause higher prices," she said. "Volatility and uncertainty will cause higher prices. The PPI jump is not a surprise, it was inevitable."
On his Bluesky account, CNBC's Carl Quintanilla flagged analysis from economic research firm High Frequency Economics stating that the new PPI numbers were "a kick in the teeth for anyone who thought that tariffs would not impact domestic prices in the United States economy."
The firm added that it "will not be a long journey for producers' prices to translate into consumer prices" in the coming months.
Liz Thomas, the head of investment strategy at finance company SoFi, argued that the hot PPI numbers could further frustrate Trump's goal of getting the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates given that doing so would almost certainly boost inflation further.
"The increase in PPI was driven by services, and there were increases in general services costs and in the Trade component (i.e., wholesale/retail margins)," she commented. "The Fed won't like this report."
Ross Hendricks, an analyst at economic research firm Porter & Co., described the new report as "scorching hot" and similarly speculated that it would stop the Federal Reserve from cutting rates.
"Good luck with them rate cuts!" he wrote. "Can't recall the last time we've seen a miss that big on a single monthly inflation number."
Hedge fund manager and author Jeff Macke jokingly speculated that the bad PPI print would cause Trump to fire yet another government statistician just as he fired Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Whoever compiles the PPI needs to update their CV," he wrote.
Just as with the monthly jobs report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects and publishes PPI data.
'Corporate Crime Pays' Under Trump as His Agencies Drop Enforcement Against 165 Companies
"The Trump administration is protecting lawbreaking corporate insiders from accountability instead of protecting Americans from corporate lawbreaking," said the author of a new Public Citizen report.
Aug 14, 2025
During the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump's administration has withdrawn or suspended enforcement actions against 165 companies in sectors across the U.S. economy, with Big Tech benefiting most from federal agencies' lax approach to corporate crime.
A report released Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that the Trump administration has halted or ended a third of misconduct investigations and enforcement actions targeting technology firms—including behemoths such as Meta, Tesla, and Google.
Both Meta and Google donated to Trump's inaugural fund, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent big in support of the president's 2024 White House bid. Public Citizen found that the tech corporations that have benefited from Trump administration decisions to drop enforcement efforts have spent a combined $1.2 billion trying to influence the president.
"The Trump administration is protecting lawbreaking corporate insiders from accountability instead of protecting Americans from corporate lawbreaking," said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the new report. "To Big Tech corporations, this sends the message there is little risk in breaking the law in pursuit of profit—especially if you are an ally of the administration."
"For insiders," Claypool added, "corporate crime pays."
"Although he pretends to be tough on Big Tech, Donald Trump is a willing enabler of Big Tech's wrongdoing."
Public Citizen's report comes amid growing scrutiny of what one critic recently described as "the incredible shrinking Trump antitrust enforcers."
Despite claims of a "surging MAGA antitrust movement," Trump's Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have repeatedly shown a willingness to bow to White House-connected lobbyists and allow corporate consolidation to proceed unabated. Last week, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump DOJ settled a Biden-era legal challenge against UnitedHealth Group, allowing the monopolist to swallow yet another competitor.
"The second Trump administration has now become a pay-to-play operation where influential MAGA lobbyists paid millions by large corporations use their clout with the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi to overrule the enforcers and push through mergers," The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote following news of the UnitedHealth settlement.
"It seems that if you're a company and can pony up the money," Dayen added, "you can get whatever regulatory treatment you wish. Bribery has gone in a few short months from a prohibited activity to the coin of the realm in Trump's America."
As Public Citizen's report showed, tech giants have been the chief beneficiaries of what the group characterized as the Trump administration's corrupt approach to corporate crime enforcement.
At the start of Trump's second term, at least 104 tech corporations faced more than 140 federal investigations and enforcement actions. The Trump administration has withdrawn or halted nearly 50 of those enforcement actions, Public Citizen found.
"Although he pretends to be tough on Big Tech, Donald Trump is a willing enabler of Big Tech's wrongdoing," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement. "For Big Tech, a relative pittance in political spending has generated gigantic returns in dropped prosecutions, policy U-turns, and aggressive administration support for Big Tech's global agenda."
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