From jbn at forestfield.org Thu Aug 5 01:03:03 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2021 20:03:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Recommended videos for AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV Message-ID: Here are the videos I recommended to run during AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV. As a reminder: If anyone else has anything to run, please feel free to get your pointers to Jason Liggett (jcliggett at urbanaillinois.us). I routinely ask him to prioritize AWARE members pointers over mine for AWARE on the Air, Carl Estabrook & David Green's pointers over mine for News from Neptune, and David Johnson's pointers over mine for Labor's World View TV. -J RT Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tj724CruyZQ (26m 4s) -- "Daniel Hale, Whistleblower" -- Chris Hedges interviews Transcript: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/530465-daniel-hale-whistleblower-sentencing/ Glenn Greenwald in https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1420062595277545473 > His crime was leaking documents that proved Barack Obama and John > Brennan were > lying about the number of innocent people whose lives they were ending > with their > drones: "When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals." -- Ed Snowden Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxkztQ0of8k Transcript: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/530735-ghislaine-maxwell-trial-discussion/ Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IEbCPD5qJ5w (25m 50s) -- Chris Hedges interviews Glen Ford on "The Con of Diversity" Transcript: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/442461-diversity-america-reparations-action/ Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=c3-FFcCUMGk (28m 05s) -- Chris Hedges interviews Glen Ford on "President Obama?s Legacy with Glen Ford" Transcript: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/374680-obama-wars-corporate-interests/ Big Think https://youtube.com/watch?v=CSv0pQbo6tg (40m 24s) -- Big Think interview with Glen Ford Black Agenda Report We're saying Rest In Peace to Glen Ford, fighter for Black liberation, incredibly prescient writer. https://youtube.com/watch?v=g_0QL9Pc9aA (1h 43m 24s) -- "Glen Ford, Presente!" marking the recent death of publisher, advocate, activist Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report. Status Coup https://youtube.com/watch?v=WQ39hAcvglM (10m 25s) -- "HUNDREDS of Striking Alabama Coal Miners Protest Outside Blackrock in NYC" https://youtube.com/watch?v=73tFBU-z1lc (1m 12s) -- "Susan Sarandon Joins Alabama Coal Miners Strike Protest at Blackrock NYC" https://youtube.com/watch?v=wVBEU82dPjo (17m 13s) -- "LIVE: Jordan @ Alabama Coal Miners Strike Protest, NYC Blackrock Building- Rokfin Exclusive" More Perfect Union https://youtube.com/watch?v=NccDA2Ao5KA (5m 3s) -- "When a Cash Payment Can Save a Life" laborvideo https://youtube.com/watch?v=twVLySyVcT8 (10m 15s) -- "The Union Busting War On Namibian Workers" https://youtube.com/watch?v=FCHF-kBOK-s (15m 59s) -- "The Attack On Namibian Labor Lawyer Hewat Beukes & The Namibian Working Class" https://youtube.com/watch?v=apVZG3MCHkE (14m 53s) -- "Chinese Investors Wage Union Busting War On Namibian MUN Mine Workers" https://youtube.com/watch?v=VdgdP5DPz1M (31m 17s) -- "Namibia MUN Karibib Best Cheer Marble Workers Face Union Busting From Chinese Owner" Grayzone https://youtube.com/watch?v=PYJkE-qgKJg (43m 10s) -- "US suffocates Cuba for unwavering, victorious anti-imperialism at great cost" -- Aaron Mat? interviews Prof. Piero Gleijeses (author of multiple books including "Confliction Missions") on Cuban foreign policy and how that small Carribean nation of 10 million people embarrasses the US empire. From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 5 13:48:16 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2021 08:48:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Cuba protest in Champaign Sat. Message-ID: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=search&v=543711840379791&external_log_id=ca7d2b0b-3c3b-4338-b863-4dbf1c4ed83a&q=party%20for%20socialism%20and%20liberation%20-%20champaign-urbana From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Aug 6 15:42:31 2021 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2021 10:42:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] saker/has-the-us-begun-its-great-retreat/ Message-ID: https://www.unz.com/tsaker/has-the-us-begun-its-great-retreat/ From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sat Aug 7 23:07:37 2021 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2021 23:07:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Triumph of the Will? Message-ID: I think we may be entering an era when the losers of our most consequential elections routinely claim ? indeed, insist loudly & endlessly ? that the the election was ?rigged,? the election officials were ?biased,? the election victory was ?stolen? from them, & that there must be multiple ?forensic audits? of the results until they get what they want. The current fiasco in Arizona gives us a glimpse of what our elections may become. I have seen a supposed quote from one of the Bolshevik luminaries to the effect that the most important thing is not who gets the most votes, but who gets to count & report the votes. Can anyone help me locate the source? # # # From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sat Aug 7 23:07:37 2021 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2021 23:07:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Triumph of the Will? Message-ID: I think we may be entering an era when the losers of our most consequential elections routinely claim ? indeed, insist loudly & endlessly ? that the the election was ?rigged,? the election officials were ?biased,? the election victory was ?stolen? from them, & that there must be multiple ?forensic audits? of the results until they get what they want. The current fiasco in Arizona gives us a glimpse of what our elections may become. I have seen a supposed quote from one of the Bolshevik luminaries to the effect that the most important thing is not who gets the most votes, but who gets to count & report the votes. Can anyone help me locate the source? # # # From r-szoke at illinois.edu Tue Aug 10 01:17:03 2021 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2021 01:17:03 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] My thanks -- Message-ID: To everyone who sent birthday greetings last week: Many thanks for the kind words & good wishes. You are appreciated. ~ Ron Szoke -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: younger this morning.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 48937 bytes Desc: younger this morning.jpg URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Tue Aug 10 01:17:03 2021 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2021 01:17:03 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] My thanks -- Message-ID: To everyone who sent birthday greetings last week: Many thanks for the kind words & good wishes. You are appreciated. ~ Ron Szoke -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: younger this morning.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 48937 bytes Desc: younger this morning.jpg URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Thu Aug 12 14:28:01 2021 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2021 09:28:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities References: Message-ID: > Begin forwarded message: > > From: LA Progressive > Subject: Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities > Date: August 12, 2021 at 9:14:48 AM CDT > To: > Reply-To: > > > Is this email not displaying correctly? > View it in your browser . > > THURSDAY, 12 AUGUST 2021 > > Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities > Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies: The rapid disintegration of the Afghan forces that the U.S. and its Western allies have recruited, armed and trained for 20 years at a cost of about $90 billion should come as no surprise. > > READ MORE > > Friend on Facebook > > Follow on Twitter > > Forward to a Friend > > > Reconciliation Will Serve Working People, Heal the Planet > > Bernie Sanders: As we address the needs of working families, and combat climate change, we are going to create millions of good paying jobs, many of them union jobs. > > READ MORE > > > Why Corporate Liberalism Is No Match for Trumpism > > Norman Solomon: A vital challenge for progressives is to not only block Republican agendas but also to effectively campaign for policy changes that go far beyond the talking points of current Democratic leaders. > > READ MORE > > > Indian Boarding Schools Investigated > > David ?Katya? Ketchum: During the 19th century, there was a growing frustration by the powers that be with the lack of success in assimilating Native peoples. > > READ MORE > > > > Sorry, Soldier, We're Not Buying Your Sudden Religious Devoutness Against Vaccines > > Chris Rodda: Not surprisingly, the disinformation and politicization surrounding the COVID vaccines are leading numerous service members looking for a way out of getting the life-saving jab. > > READ MORE > > > Immigrant Detention Grows, Despite Biden Promises > > Angelika Albaladejo: The ?insidious? expansion is creating new physical and psychological harms, advocates say. > > READ MORE > > > > Larry Elder ? Meet India Walton > > Ted Vaill: If Newsom does not get 50% plus one vote of those voters who say ?NO? to the recall, one of the 46 candidates who have declared in the recall race will become Governor. > > READ MORE > > > The Taliban Will Fill the Chasm Left by US > > Vijay Prashad: Foreign powers will treat Afghanistan as a battlefield for regional ambitions. Blindness to history governs the attitude of several capitals. > > READ MORE > > > > Our email address is: dick_and_sharon @yahoo.com > Mt. Washington, California 90065 > Copyright ?2021, LA Progressive, All rights reserved. > > unsubscribe from this list | subscribe or update subscription preferences > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moboct1 at aol.com Thu Aug 12 20:22:50 2021 From: moboct1 at aol.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2021 20:22:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <545608808.19141.1628799770611@mail.yahoo.com> VIETNAM ALL OVER AGAIN, DESPITE WHAT GEORGE W. PROMISED (OR WAS IT HIS OLE MAN?).? WILL USG NEVER LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES? WHY DO THEY NEED TO KEEP PROVING EINSTEIN'S DEFINITION OF INSANITY OVER OVER AGAIN? mo'b -----Original Message----- From: C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net Sent: Thu, Aug 12, 2021 9:28 am Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities Begin forwarded message: From: LA Progressive Subject: Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities Date: August 12, 2021 at 9:14:48 AM CDT To: Reply-To: | | | | Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. | | | | | | | | | | | THURSDAY, 12 AUGUST?2021 Biden Must Stop Bombing Afghan Cities Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies:?The rapid disintegration of the Afghan forces that the U.S. and its Western allies have recruited, armed and trained for 20 years at a cost of about $90 billion should come as no surprise. READ MORE | | | | | | | | Friend on Facebook | | | Follow on Twitter | | | Forward to a Friend | | | Reconciliation Will Serve Working People, Heal the Planet? Bernie Sanders:?As we address the needs of working families, and combat climate change, we are going to create millions of good paying jobs, many of them union jobs. ?READ MORE | | | | | | Why Corporate Liberalism Is No Match for Trumpism Norman Solomon:?A vital challenge for progressives is to not only block Republican agendas but also to effectively campaign for policy changes that go far beyond the talking points of current Democratic leaders. READ MORE | | Indian Boarding Schools Investigated David ?Katya? Ketchum:?During the 19th century, there was a growing frustration by the powers that be with the lack of success in assimilating Native peoples. ?READ MORE ? | | | Sorry, Soldier, We're Not Buying Your Sudden Religious Devoutness Against Vaccines Chris Rodda:?Not surprisingly, the disinformation and politicization surrounding the COVID vaccines are leading numerous service members looking for a way out of getting the life-saving jab.? ?READ MORE | | Immigrant Detention Grows, Despite Biden Promises? Angelika Albaladejo:?The ?insidious? expansion is creating new physical and psychological harms, advocates say. ?READ MORE ? | | | Larry Elder ? Meet India Walton Ted Vaill:?If Newsom does not get 50% plus one vote of those voters who say ?NO? to the recall, one of the 46 candidates who have declared in the recall race will become Governor. ?READ MORE | | The Taliban Will Fill the Chasm Left by US Vijay Prashad:?Foreign powers will treat Afghanistan as a battlefield for regional ambitions. Blindness to history governs the attitude of several capitals. ?READ MORE ? | | | | | | | ? | | Our email address is: ?dick_and_sharon @yahoo.com Mt. Washington, California 90065 Copyright ?2021, LA Progressive, All rights reserved. | ? | | ?unsubscribe from this list?|?subscribe or update subscription preferences? | | | | _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Aug 15 16:11:25 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2021 11:11:25 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The US final stage of decline Message-ID: Given the US decline into poverty, and chaos, supporting wars abroad devastating and destroying so many there, as well as here, one might say the American people are stupid to have allowed this to occur, which is what many non-Americans do say. I prefer the fact that keeping people poor, or indebt, working non-stop to survive they're too busy to think about politics, or to notice what is taking place elsewhere in the world. The incremental changes being imposed over time impoverishing the working class, often go unnoticed until it's too late, unless there is a vanguard offering leadership and education to tackle government abuse and oppression. The lack of non corporate owned media and our manufactured consent, is an important factor as well. Sadly, we lack a significant third Party to challenge our one Party corporate owned system, operating as if two. What is required is a vanguard, or leadership as we once had, during the thirties, to organize the working class, to "think" about politics, and to challenge the system. They were able to pressure the Roosevelt Administration into providing much needed changes, such as seen elsewhere in the world. Fear was the catalyst that brought about the 40 hour work week, social security, etc. It was done to save capitalism. With the destruction of our unions, and the Communists Party's by way of McCarthyism since then, and the creation of a "synthetic left," by the CoIntel Counter Cultural program of the CIA., people were led to focus only on their individual needs, and some local social issues, denying the reality of material conditions as a whole, on a national and/or global sphere. This places the whole of the working class in a state of dependency and despair, whether the issue is healthcare, shelter, debt, jobs, climate change, or war. It's critical that we unite and focus on the need for system change as the US empire of imperialism dies, if we hope to survive what's to come, be it catastrophe due to climate change, economic depression, or WW3. K. Aram From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Aug 15 19:32:35 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2021 14:32:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] My response to a question related to my previous posting. Message-ID: A question often asked. Does the American Empire deserve to survive, certainly not, but sadly when it falls it takes everyone with it, not the wealthy, ruling elites, but the poor, the average working class etc. All the animals, all that nature has created. We see the destruction of some of the most beautiful forests known to man across Oregon, from the forest fires, all the wildlife suffering and dying horrifically. To answer the question, it's not a matter of morality, or individuals deserving to live or die it's not a matter of whether the option of a better world is possible if we pursue it. We know that "man," has the capacity to develop, create, and do better, and we should never give up pursuing that option. Giving in to despair should never be an option. From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Mon Aug 16 20:04:01 2021 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2021 15:04:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?Code_Pink=3A_Today_3PM_Central_time=3A?= =?utf-8?q?_Afghanistan=F0=9F=92=94=3A_Who=E2=80=99s_to_Blame_and_What_Nex?= =?utf-8?q?t=3F?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It looks as if this message had my e-mail address wired in to it, so when someone signed up, the acknowledgement came to me. Here's the link to the meeting.?? They are starting by playing Biden's press conference live, then they'll respond to it. ????? *https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86264227538* On 8/16/21 10:23 AM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Aug 16, 2021 09:41:22 Jodie Evans & Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK > : > > RSVP for a discussion today on Afghanistan, 1pm PT/4pm ET > ?????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? > ?????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? > ?????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? > ?????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? > ?????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? > ?????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? > ?????????????????????????????? ????????????????????? > CODEPINK.ORG > > > > > > RSVP for a discussion today on Afghanistan, 1pm PT/4pm ET and *sign > the petition to Biden and Blinken > * > > RSVP NOW! > > > > Dear Stuart, > > The scenes out of Afghanistan are heartbreaking. It took only a matter > of days for the Taliban to take the capital city of Kabul after 20 > years of U.S. invasion and occupation. *Over the weekend, U.S.-backed > ??**President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and the Biden > administration sent in 6,000 troops.* Among the Taliban fighters who > took over the presidential palace was a man who said he spent eight > years imprisoned in Guantanamo.? > > *Thousands are fleeing Afghanistan to neighboring countries and others > have flooded the Kabul airport, which is now an epicenter of panic, > desperation, and sadness.* > > *While CODEPINK supported Biden?s decision to leave Afghanistan, we > have been shocked by the disastrous exit?taking U.S. troops out only > to bring more back again?and by the appalling lack of intelligence > about the strength of the Taliban.* > > *Today at 1pm PT/4 pm ET we will be hosting a discussion on > Afghanistan titled Who?s to Blame and What Next? > *Our > panelists will be retired U.S. Army Colonel and CODEPINKer Ann Wright, > former U.S. State Department official Matthew Hoh, Dr. Zaher Wahab, of > Lewis and Clark University. *Ann **was on the team that reopened the > U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December 2001*. *Matt**resigned in 2001 from > his post in Afghanistan* with the State Department over the U.S. > escalation of the war. *Dr.* *Zaher Wahab, born in Afghanistan, *was > the first person in his family to attend school and from 2002 to 2006, > *Dr. Wahab served as senior advisor to the Minister of Higher > Education in Afghanistan.* > > *RSVP now to join the webinar **Afghanistan: Who?s to Blame and What > Next?, today at 1pm PT/4pm ET.* > > > ** > > > As America grapples with the colossal failure of the U.S. war on > terror, with*the Afghan people paying a terrible price*, we remember > that only one member of Congress, Representative Barbara Lee, opposed > the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. *We also remember all our > visits to Afghanistan and all the years that we, as CODEPINK, have > been calling for an end to the war, while at the same time advocating > for the rights of Afghan women.?* > > Now that President Biden has taken the decision to end the U.S. > military involvement in the war but carried it out in such a reckless > fashion, we still have a tremendous responsibility to the Afghan people. > > *Sign our petition to President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken > calling for the following:* > // > > * Support UN efforts to create a humanitarian corridor and guarantee > safe passage for humanitarian workers to help the displaced population > * Expand qualification categories for Afghan refugees coming to the > U.S. and reduce the paperwork required to qualify > * Cease all bombings and CIA paramilitary involvement > * After U.S. evacuations are complete, remove U.S. forces, except > for a residual protective force at the US embassy for possible > recognition of a new government. > > There are many lessons we must learn from this debacle. The U.S. must > cease its military interventions around the world and the runaway > Pentagon budget must be cut. The U.S. must stop destabilizing the > Middle East and Southwest Asia, including lifting sanctions on Iran, > stopping weapons export to the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, > and the UAE, and pulling our troops out of Iraq and Syria.? > > CODEPINK was formed in 2002 in opposition to the wars in Iraq and > Afghanistan. We have never stopped working to end militarism and we > won?t stop until peace and justice are achieved. Join us today for > a?*discussion on Afghanistan* > and > sign our *petition to Biden and Blinken* > .? > > */In solidarity with the people of Afghanistan,/* > /*Jodie, Medea, Ann, Ariel, Carley, Ally, Ciara, Danaka, Emily, > Farida, Justina, Kelly, Leila, Leonardo, Madison, Mary, Marcy, > Michelle, Moses, Nancy, Paki, RJ, Shea, and Teri*/ > > ? > > Donate Now! > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > This email was sent to stuartnlevy at gmail.com > . To unsubscribe, click here > . > > > To update your email subscription, contact info at codepink.org > . > > ? 2021 CODEPINK.ORG > > | Created with NationBuilder > > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Aug 20 21:29:32 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2021 16:29:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Michael Parenti on Afghanistan 2008 Message-ID: Afghanistan, Another Untold Story Michael Parenti December 2, 2008 Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghani history and the role played by the United States. Less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, US leaders began an all-out aerial assault upon Afghanistan, the country purportedly harboring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. More than twenty years earlier, in 1980, the United States intervened to stop a Soviet "invasion" of that country. Even some leading progressive writers, who normally take a more critical view of US policy abroad, treated the US intervention against the Soviet-supported government as "a good thing." The actual story is not such a good thing. Some Real History Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People's Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced him proved to be autocratic, corrupt, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators. The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces came into office. "It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it," writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about that time. The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions on some key foods were imposed. The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate women from their age-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for girls and for the children of various tribes. A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Taraki regime Kabul had been "a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city's university. Afghan women held government jobs--in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women." The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy. Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium needed for the world's heroin supply. The government also abolished all debts owed by farmers, and began developing a major land reform program. Ryan believes that it was a "genuinely popular government and people looked forward to the future with great hope." But serious opposition arose from several quarters. The feudal landlords opposed the land reform program that infringed on their holdings. And tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs vehemently opposed the government's dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children. Because of its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies the Taraki government also incurred the opposition of the US national security state. Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers. A top official within the Taraki government was Hafizulla Amin, believed by many to have been recruited by the CIA during the several years he spent in the United States as a student. In September 1979, Amin seized state power in an armed coup. He executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military. It should be noted that all this happened before the Soviet military intervention. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas. In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining, education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily. Jihad and Taliban, CIA Style The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. After a long and unsuccessful war, the Soviets evacuated the country in February 1989. It is generally thought that the PDP Marxist government collapsed immediately after the Soviet departure. Actually, it retained enough popular support to fight on for another three years, outlasting the Soviet Union itself by a year. Upon taking over Afghanistan, the mujahideen fell to fighting among themselves. They ravaged the cities, terrorized civilian populations, looted, staged mass executions, closed schools, raped thousands of women and girls, and reduced half of Kabul to rubble. In 2001 Amnesty International reported that the mujahideen used sexual assault as "a method of intimidating vanquished populations and rewarding soldiers.'" Ruling the country gangster-style and looking for lucrative sources of income, the tribes ordered farmers to plant opium poppy. The Pakistani ISI, a close junior partner to the CIA, set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA's arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland became the biggest producer of heroin in the world. Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mujahideen mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah's name against the purveyors of secular "corruption." In Afghanistan itself, by 1995 an extremist strain of Sunni Islam called the Taliban---heavily funded and advised by the ISI and the CIA and with the support of Islamic political parties in Pakistan---fought its way to power, taking over most of the country, luring many tribal chiefs into its fold with threats and bribes. The Taliban promised to end the factional fighting and banditry that was the mujahideen trademark. Suspected murderers and spies were executed monthly in the sports stadium, and those accused of thievery had the offending hand sliced off. The Taliban condemned forms of "immorality" that included premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. They also outlawed all music, theater, libraries, literature, secular education, and much scientific research. The Taliban unleashed a religious reign of terror, imposing an even stricter interpretation of Muslim law than used by most of the Kabul clergy. All men were required to wear untrimmed beards and women had to wear the burqa which covered them from head to toe, including their faces. Persons who were slow to comply were dealt swift and severe punishment by the Ministry of Virtue. A woman who fled an abusive home or charged spousal abuse would herself be severely whipped by the theocratic authorities. Women were outlawed from social life, deprived of most forms of medical care, barred from all levels of education, and any opportunity to work outside the home. Women who were deemed "immoral" were stoned to death or buried alive. None of this was of much concern to leaders in Washington who got along famously with the Taliban. As recently as 1999, the US government was paying the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. Not until October 2001, when President George W. Bush had to rally public opinion behind his bombing campaign in Afghanistan did he denounce the Taliban's oppression of women. His wife, Laura Bush, emerged overnight as a full-blown feminist to deliver a public address detailing some of the abuses committed against Afghan women. If anything positive can be said about the Taliban, it is that they did put a stop to much of the looting, raping, and random killings that the mujahideen had practiced on a regular basis. In 2000 Taliban authorities also eradicated the cultivation of opium poppy throughout the areas under their control, an effort judged by the United Nations International Drug Control Program to have been nearly totally successful. With the Taliban overthrown and a Western-selected mujahideen government reinstalled in Kabul by December 2001, opium poppy production in Afghanistan increased dramatically. The years of war that have followed have taken tens of thousands of Afghani lives. Along with those killed by Cruise missiles, Stealth bombers, Tomahawks, daisy cutters, and land mines are those who continue to die of hunger, cold, lack of shelter, and lack of water. The Holy Crusade for Oil and Gas While claiming to be fighting terrorism, US leaders have found other compelling but less advertised reasons for plunging deeper into Afghanistan. The Central Asian region is rich in oil and gas reserves. A decade before 9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that US policy elites were contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided the lure, while the dissolution of the USSR removed the one major barrier against pursuing an aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world. US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new reserves. A major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region. US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the most direct route across Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the corporate oil contractors explored a number of alternative pipeline routes, across Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean or across China to the Pacific. The route favored by Unocal, a US based oil company, crossed Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. The intensive negotiations that Unocal entered into with the Taliban regime remained unresolved by 1998, as an Argentine company placed a competing bid for the pipeline. Bush's war against the Taliban rekindled UNOCAL's hopes for getting a major piece of the action. Interestingly enough, neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations ever placed Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged with sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden as a guest of the Taliban government. Such a "rogue state" designation would have made it impossible for a US oil or construction company to enter an agreement with Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields. In sum, well in advance of the 9/11 attacks the US government had made preparations to move against the Taliban and create a compliant regime in Kabul and a direct US military presence in Central Asia. The 9/11 attacks provided the perfect impetus, stampeding US public opinion and reluctant allies into supporting military intervention. One might agree with John Ryan who argued that if Washington had left the Marxist Taraki government alone back in 1979, "there would have been no army of mujahideen, no Soviet intervention, no war that destroyed Afghanistan, no Osama bin Laden, and no September 11 tragedy." But it would be asking too much for Washington to leave unmolested a progressive leftist government that was organizing the social capital around collective public needs rather than private accumulation. US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid waste to many innocent lives. The war against Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism. If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of one of the last vast untapped reserves of the earth's dwindling fossil fuel supply, and planting US bases and US military power into still another region of the world. In the face of all this Obama's call for "change" rings hollow. Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely. Michael Parenti is an American political scientist and cultural critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at American and international universities and has been a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences. His books include: "Face of Imperialism " (2011), "God and His Demons " (2010), "Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader " (2007); "Democracy for the Few " (2010); "The Assassination of Julius Caesar " (2004), and "Superpatriotism " (2004). For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 26 13:49:50 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2021 08:49:50 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Truth from The Grayzone Message-ID: DSA/Jacobin/Haymarket-sponsored ?Socialism? conference features US gov-funded regime-change activists Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal ?July 6, 2019 The 2019 Socialism Conference, sponsored by American leftist juggernauts the DSA, Jacobin magazine, and ISO?s Haymarket Books, features regime-change activists from multiple US government-funded NGOs. (Puede leer este art?culo en espa?ol aqu? ) Socialism is now apparently brought to you by the US State Department. From July 4 to 7, thousands of left-wing activists from across the United States are gathering in Chicago for the 2019 Socialism Conference . At this event, some of the most powerful institutions on the American socialist ? but avowedly anti-communist ? left have brought together a motley crew of regime-change activists to demonize Official Enemies of Washington. One anti-China panel at the conference features speakers from two different organizations that are both bankrolled by the US government?s soft-power arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) , a group founded out of Ronald Reagan?s CIA in the 1980s to grease the wheels of right-wing regime-change efforts and promote ?free markets? across the planet. Another longtime ally who has spoken at every single annual Socialism Conference since 2009, Anand Gopal, works at a liberal foundation that is directly funded by the US State Department. He is headlining a panel this year to provide ?A Socialist View of the Arab Spring.? Yet another 2019 conference panel rails against the socialist governments of Nicaragua and Cuba ? two-thirds of John Bolton?s ?troika of tyranny? ? with outspoken proponents of regime change. One of the speakers, Dan La Botz, hosted an event in 2018 that featured right-wing Nicaraguan activists wearing masks and disguised as students, who were junketed to meet with Republican lawmakers in Washington by the US government-funded right-wing organization Freedom House. The Socialism Conference?s regime-change lobbying ?Nicaragua expert? La Botz has admitted in leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone that ?there is virtually no left among the opposition? to Nicaragua?s democratically elected socialist government. La Botz, a leader within Democratic Socialists of America, likewise acknowledged in these emails that there is ?little likelihood of an outcome to the rebellion that goes beyond a more democratic capitalist regime.? But he has still vociferously lobbied for Nicaragua?s Sandinista government to be overthrown by US government-backed insurgents ? and is using his platform at the biggest socialist conference in the United States to do it. Merging of largest US socialist organizations The 2019 Socialism Conference is advertised under the catchy slogan: ?No borders, no bosses, no binaries.? Each ticket comes in at a neat $105 per person (or a $250 ?solidarity rate,? for the hardcore supporters) ? and this doesn?t include the rate for the rooms at the hotel where it?s held. For years, the Socialism Conference functioned as a platform for the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a small group steeped in the tradition of sectarian American Trotskyite politics, which pushed a hardline anti-communism and attacked virtually all socialist governments in history as ?not truly socialist.? Founded in 1977 after a long line of sectarian splits, the ISO never became a significant political force. It was mostly relegated to recruiting young impressionable students on liberal arts college campuses. As an avowedly anti-communist organization, the ISO eschewed symbols long associated with the communist left, like hammers and sickles and red flags. Instead, it chose a clenched fist ? one eerily similar to the symbol used by the US government-funded Serbian activist group Otpor and similar offshoots in Eastern Europe, which carried out Washington-backed neoliberal ?color revolutions? in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism. The ISO claimed to be anti-war, but its leaders spent a disproportionate percentage of their time and resources attacking the anti-imperialist left. They could more accurately be referred to as the anti-anti-imperialist left. This March, the ISO voted to dissolve ? in a decision some former members joked was the most democratic act ever undertaken by the organization, which had been dominated by an unelected leadership of veteran Trotskyite activists. The dissolution was prompted by evidence that the ISO?s steering committee mishandled sexual assault allegations. It also came as the ISO?s membership was shrinking and rapidly being absorbed by a newly burgeoning anti-communist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. Now that the ISO has dissolved, some of its past prominent members have entered the ranks of the DSA, burrowing from within to inject their anti-anti-imperialist politics into the group. Because Trotskyites are so sectarian and notoriously incapable of holding together organizations, they are infamous for infiltrating larger, more popular groups and trying to take them over, in a tactic known as entryism. This is precisely the strategy being used by former members of the ISO ? and by another tiny US Trotskyite organization, Solidarity , which was led by anti-Nicaragua regime-change activist and Socialism Conference speaker Dan La Botz, now a leader in DSA. Democratic Socialists of America is the largest self-described socialist organization in the United States, with more than 60,000 card-carrying members. It is also very heterogeneous, with many internal contradictions and conflicting political views. In 2019, for the first time, the organizers of the Socialism Conference ? including many holdovers from the ISO leadership ? joined together with two new sponsors: DSA, and the closely DSA-allied Jacobin magazine, another platform for anti-communist and anti-anti-imperialist politics. At the bottom of the Socialism conference website , a note reads, ?Brought to you by Haymarket, Jacobin, and the Democratic Socialists of America.? Haymarket is the book publishing arm of the now defunct ISO, and its editorial board features some of the group?s former leaders. Top speakers at the conference include Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, Jacobin magazine founder and editor Bhaskar Sunkara, and journalist Naomi Klein, the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. Klein was chosen to head the final plenary, titled ?Care and Repair : The Revolutionary, Democratic Power of a Global Green New Deal.? The 2019 Socialism Conference, like its annual predecessors, combines calls for radical economic democratic transformation and progressive social progress with the demonization of independent foreign governments that are targeted by the US government for regime change, such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, Iran, China, and Russia. The schedule of panels on foreign policy and international issues features a veritable who?s who of leftist regime-change activists. There is even a talk devoted specifically to demonizing the anti-imperialist left . Curiously, the 2019 Socialism Conference has no panels devoted specifically to Venezuela , which since this January has endured a US-led right-wing coup attempt, and which is suffering under suffocating sanctions that amount to a de facto economic blockade. In the past, the ISO has harshly criticized Venezuela?s democratically elected socialist government, condemning Presidents Hugo Ch?vez and Nicol?s Maduro for not being radical enough and for not supposedly implementing the vague concept of ?socialism from below.? In this way, the 2019 Socialism Conference also stands out as a sign of the effective political merging of what had previously been two distinct political trends: the Cliffite Trotskyites of the International Socialist Organization and the anti-communist social democrats of the Democratic Socialists of America. Anti-China ?workers? rights? groups funded by anti-labor US government One of the most eyebrow-raising panels at the 2019 Socialism Conference is entitled ?China and the US : Inter-Imperial Rivalry or Class Struggle and Solidarity?? The panel portrays the US and China as equally malicious imperialist powers, downplaying and whitewashing the uniquely destructive nature of Washington?s foreign wars and corporate domination. The panel features three speakers, two of whom work for anti-China groups that are funded by the US government?s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy. The third speaker is Ashley Smith, a former leader of the ISO who has spent the past eight years romanticizing foreign-backed, far-right sectarian Islamist ?moderate rebels ? in Syria. The first speaker listed on the panel is Elaine Lu , the program officer at China Labor Watch. This group is described by the Socialism conference website simply as ?a New York-based NGO advocating for workers? rights in China.? What Socialism Conference sponsors DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket did not disclose is that its speaker?s employer is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED states without qualification that its goals include supporting ?free markets? abroad. At the top of the about page on its website is a video of right-wing cold warrior Ronald Reagan inaugurating the US government-funded body. The National Endowment for Democracy?s 990 tax forms show how Washington?s regime-change arm has bankrolled China Labor Watch for years. Substantial NED funding goes back to at least 2009 . According to the NED?s 2015 form 990 , China Labor Watch received a $150,000 grant that year. On the NED?s 2013 tax form, it lists another $110,000 grant for China Labor Watch. In 2014 , China Labor Watch got $150,000 from the NED . According to the group?s annual report that year , its total revenues for all of 2014 was $238,003, meaning 63 percent, or nearly two-thirds of its funding came from the US government. China Labor Watch?s other major donor is the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that also happened to be one of the main financial sponsor?s of the ISO?s parent non-profit. In 2014, Tides gave $40,645 to China Labor Watch, another 17 percent of its budget that year. Joining Elaine Lu as the other main speaker on the Socialism Conference?s anti-China panel is Kevin Lin , who coordinates the China program at the Washington, DC-based NGO the International Labor Rights Forum. The Socialism Conference once again failed to mention that this group is also bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy. According to the NED?s 2016 form 990 , the US government?s regime-change arm gave the International Labor Rights Forum $150,000 that year alone. The International Labor Rights Forum likewise received $96,590 from the NED in 2015, and $62,500 in 2014. The Socialism Conference also identified Kevin Lin as a co-editor of the Made in China journal , which focuses on labor rights. A disclaimer at the bottom of the publication?s swanky website notes that it is funded by the European Union?s Horizon 2020 , a neoliberal business program which the European Commission describes as ?the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe?s global competitiveness.? These are the financiers behind the speakers that the Socialism Conference and its sponsors the DSA, Jacobin, and Haymarket brought together to explain why China is a malevolent imperialist power. Some of these groups may seem progressive, but they operate in effect as vehicles for US government soft power, exploiting the cause of human rights or labor rights to undermine and destabilize foreign governments that Washington has targeted for regime change. China Labor Watch and the International Labor Rights Forum are far from the only ostensibly progressive anti-China groups funded by the US government. Other China-related NED grantees include ?human rights? organizations like the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders , Human Rights in China , China Aid , China Change , and China Rights in Action (another Tides grantee), along with the New York-based Chinese Feminist Collective and news websites like China Digital Times . China Labour Bulletin, which maintains a map of strikes going on across the gigantic country, is likewise frequently cited by left-wing websites in the US. While its slogan is ?Supporting the Workers? Movement in China,? China Labour Bulletin (CLB) is not based in the mainland but rather in Hong Kong ? and it is funded by the US government. CLB notes on its website that it ?receives grants from a wide range of government or quasi-government bodies, trade unions and private foundations, all of which are based outside of China.? For decades, CLB?s founder and executive director Han Dongfang broadcasted anti-China programming on Radio Free Asia , a US government-funded propaganda outlet that was founded by the CIA to push anti-communist disinformation. Han?s work is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, and he was a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The ISO?s newspaper Socialist Worker has praised Han Dongfang as a leftist hero, without ever disclosing his extensive links to the US government?s regime-change machinery. Socialist Worker has repeatedly drawn on the work of China Labour Bulletin, over more than a decade . The ISO?s journal the International Socialist Review has also relied on the US government-funded organization?s research, and Jacobin magazine has noted CLB?s ?roots go back to the Tiananmen Square protests.? Human Rights Watch, another key part of the regime-change lobby, has lionized Han, happily noting that his show on the US government?s Radio Free Asia ?is one of the network?s most popular programs .? China is just one of the countries where the US government?s soft-power arm funds such putative progressive groups. The NED likewise funds many liberal anti-Cuba organizations, such as the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, Center for a Free Cuba, the Cuban Institute for the Freedom of Expression and Press, and the news website CubaNet . Or there are NED-funded groups pushing regime change against Syria and Iran, like the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and Human Rights Activists in Iran . While the United States has one of the lowest rates of unionization in the industrialized world, a bloody history of worker repression and anti-labor laws, and historically weak unions among those that still do exist, its regime-change arm the NED has funded workers? rights groups to promote a progressive image of America abroad. For decades, for instance, the NED has bankrolled the international Solidarity Center of the major union federation the AFL-CIO. The center receives tens of millions of dollars from the US government?s regime-change arm annually, and returns the favor by avoiding topics that would anger the US State Department and bite the hand that feeds it. Throughout the Cold War, the AFL-CIO remained a reliably anti-communist union that received funding from US government agencies, including the CIA, in order to combat and ultimately try to eliminate communist influence in the American labor movement. It was a textbook example of a controlled opposition. This is not to say that NED-funded groups cannot at times have a positive impact on the lives of average people; but their work is always part of a larger agenda, with ulterior imperial motives guiding them along the way. A controlled opposition can make some changes, but it always remains controlled. US State Department-funded speaker providing ?socialist? take on ?Arab Spring? Yet another speaker at the 2019 Socialism Conference works for a liberal foundation directly funded by the US government. Journalist Anand Gopal, who has been a close ally of the ISO for a decade, has a panel all to himself this year: ?A Socialist View of the Arab Spring .? The Socialism Conference website did not provide a bio for Gopal, yet alone disclose that his employer is funded by the US government. It simply described him as a ?Pulitzer-Prize nominated journalist,? and said he will explain how to understand ?the lessons of the protests, uprisings, rebellions, and wars that shook the Arab world beginning in 2011.? Left unmentioned is that Gopal serves as a ?fellow with the International Security Program ? at the New America Foundation. This foundation?s website makes it very clear that it is directly funded by the US State Department , along with massive corporations and banks ? clearly institutions that are invested in advancing the revolutionary socialist cause. Anand Gopal has harshly attacked the anti-imperialist left for opposing the international proxy war on Syria. He strongly supported the Syrian opposition, which is dominated by Salafi-jihadists, but which Gopal has consistently whitewashed and portrayed as a supposedly progressive force . Gopal likewise reported inside al-Qaeda-occupied territory , which The New Yorker euphemistically described as ?Syria?s Last Bastion of Freedom .? And he has constantly downplayed the billions of dollars of funding and weapons from the US, Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar that kept the Syrian opposition afloat, fueling the brutal war for years. Going back to at least 2009 , Gopal has spoken at every single one of the ISO?s Socialism Conferences ? in 2018 , 2017 , 2016 , 2015 , 2014 , 2013 , 2012 , 2011 , and 2010 . Gopal has also done more than a dozen extensive interviews for the ISO?s newspaper Socialist Worker and journal the International Socialist Review , blaming the rise of ISIS on Official Enemies and spreading the conspiracy theory that the US is actually ?helping the regime ? of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, not truly trying to overthrow it. ?Socialist? lobbying for US-backed right-wing coup in Nicaragua Another noteworthy 2019 Socialism Conference panel, called ?Problems of the US Left: The Cases of Cuba and Nicaragua ,? is led by Dan La Botz and Samuel Farber, veteran Trotskyite activists and outspoken proponents of regime change in the two respective countries. The speakers? problem with the US left appears to be that it has demonstrated too much solidarity with socialist governments in Havana and Managua, which, in their view from inside the United States, ?rely more on bureaucracy than democracy.? Farber is a Cuban exile whose family left the country for unspecified reasons when he was a child in 1958 ? a year before its revolution ? and has spent the rest of his life as a professional critic of its socialist government. Today, he contributes regular attacks on the Cuban Revolution to journals from Jacobin to New Politics to In These Times, where he published a trenchant denunciation of Fidel Castro upon his death in 2016. Farber accuses Castro of developing a model of ?state capitalism,? wielding a term Trotskyite ideologues routinely fling at any revolutionary government that is insufficiently pure. He calls for ?a revolutionary democratic alternative? through socialist resistance from below.? The concept of regime change ?from below? is also central to the rhetoric of exile groups like the People?s MEK , a US- and Saudi-backed cult of personality that calls for toppling Iran?s government through ?indigenous regime change.? Dan La Botz, for his part, has risen to prominence as a full-time opponent of another member of the Trump administration?s ?troika of tyranny?: the socialist government of Nicaragua, and the Sandinista movement that it represents. La Botz has published an anti-Sandinista manifesto with ISO publisher Haymarket Books, which is advertised as a survey of ?the failures of the Nicaraguan Revolution, by one of the most important Marxist-historians of Latin America.? In June 2018, as a US-backed, violent regime-change attempt surged across Nicaragua , threatening the rule of democratically elected President Daniel Ortega, La Botz attempted to mobilize left-wing US support for the anti-Sandinista opposition. That month, he joined an anti-Sandinista event ? co-sponsored by DSA?s New York branch, Haymarket, the academic journal NACLA, and the Marxist Education Project ? at Saint Peter?s Church in New York City, to drum up local support for the coup. The event featured speeches by several Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista activists who were involved in the regime-change attempt, including self-described students who wore masks on stage, concealing their identities from the audience. The Grayzone has obtained internal DSA email reports authored by La Botz which revealed that, days after the event at Saint Peter?s Church, those same students met with right-wing Republican legislators on Capitol Hill, including neoconservative Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The students beamed with pride, appearing without masks in photo ops with the avowedly anti-socialist members of Congress. Their trip was financed by Freedom House , a right-wing soft-power organization that is funded almost entirely by the US government. The students? US-backed delegation included Victor Cuadras, a fanatical right-wing activist who openly supported Donald Trump?s agenda for Latin America and blamed the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua for the caravan of desperate asylum seekers on the US-Mexico border. On June 15, 2018, Dan La Botz sent an email report to DSA leadership, reflecting on the event. He acknowledged that ?the Nicaraguans both on the panel and in the public had virtually no political analysis and no vision or program for the future of their country.? Then in a follow-up email report sent to DSA leadership on July 24, La Botz defended the students? collaboration with neoconservative politicians like Rubio and Cruz. ?The students, ages 21 to 24 or so, who spoke on our panel then went off to speak with Republican legislators, guided by a rightwing foundation,? he wrote. ?While, of course, we do not think that this is a good strategy, this is perfectly understandable given that the Republicans are in power and have the ability to do something about Nicaragua.? While marketing the anti-Sandinista activists as grassroots youth deserving of left-wing solidarity, La Botz admitted in his internal DSA report, ?Nicaraguan opponents of the regime in the United States hold a wide variety of political views, though there is virtually no left among the opposition here that I am aware of.? And while publicly framing the regime-change operation in Nicaragua as a progressive uprising, La Botz privately conceded, ?There is, however, little likelihood of an outcome to the rebellion that goes beyond a more democratic capitalist regime.? An excerpt from an email report on Nicaragua to DSA leadership, written by Dan La Botz As The Grayzone reported in 2018, the US government?s regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy boasted of spending millions on anti-Sandinista civil society and media outfits ?to lay the groundwork for insurrection? in the years and months ahead of the coup. While the coup attempt in Nicaragua was portrayed as a peaceful people?s uprising by figures like La Botz, it was in fact a violent putsch that saw armed elements erect roadblocks across the country, holding up ambulances, torturing , brutalizing , kidnapping, and murdering supporters of the Sandinistas. Anti-Sandinista insurgents dragged an unarmed, on-leave police officer to death from a truck and then burnt his corpse at a roadblock. They raped a 10-year-old girl at a roadblock and burnt the homes of local Sandinista legislators. They occupied and ransacked a public university campus , wrecked a women?s health center , and torched a daycare center . The armed opposition wreaked this havoc while attacking police stations with mortars and gunfire, during a national dialogue in which the police were ordered to remain in their barracks. In the end, Nicaragua?s opposition caused the deaths of over 60 innocent people , while grinding the country?s previously productive economy to a halt. Once the coup was extinguished, the US Congress passed the Nica Act without debate , imposing harsh sanctions on Nicaragua?s economy that emulated those already leveled against Venezuela and Iran. On January 9, Dan La Botz appeared at a meeting of the New York City DSA Anti-War Working Group to amp up the attack on Nicaragua?s socialist government. There, he was challenged by Gunar Olsen , a contributor to The Grayzone, about the event he organized last year with masked right-wing Nicaraguan students sponsored by Freedom House. La Botz claimed that the event had originally been planned as a discussion of his book, but that ?somebody said, these students were coming through. And I said, that sounds great.? He continued: ?My view is, they came from their country because someone gave em some money, and they can come to the United States and they wanted to talk to somebody who might be able to help their country? It may have been though that there were some conservative political forces working with them and the Republicans, it may have been that there was some of those four students that was more hip than the others but it wasn?t my impression.? La Botz concluded by telling Olsen and the DSA crowd, ?I don?t feel at all bad, I don?t think it was a terrible thing. I think they were four young people coming to this country that wanted to speak there. We didn?t know they were going there, we didn?t know where they were heading, I didn?t know they were gonna speak there. Would I do it again? If I knew what was going to happen I?d probably say, let?s see if we can find some other students.? However, in his private email assessment of the event to DSA leadership, La Botz had defended the students? subsequent meetings with right-wing Republicans as ?perfectly understandable.? In his internal DSA report, La Botz went on to characterize those in the US left that opposed the coup in Nicaragua as ?foreign leftists? who are ?backers of Putin, Assad, Iran, Hamas, and now Ortega.? La Botz did not respond to several attempts to reach him by phone. Update (August 19): After this article was published, an activist notified The Grayzone of a Facebook conversation in which Dan La Botz admitted he invited a US-backed right-wing Evangelical opposition leader to speak at a panel on Nicaragua, and praised the coup-supporting conservative as ?an authentic voice of the young people of Nicaragua.? On Facebook, the activist noted that, at La Botz?s panel, opposition leader Lesther Alem?n ?was portrayed as a leader of the nicaraguan student left.? In reality, he is a right-wing Evangelical Christian. Alem?n now lives in exile in the United States, where he regularly collaborates with the government of Donald Trump. In July, Alem?n attended the State Department?s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom , a soft-power event that demonizes adversaries of the US government using the language of religious freedom. In an interview with the National Catholic Register , Alem?n called for the US State Department to provide more support to the Nicaraguan opposition. ?It saddens me also that here in the United States we have encountered severe opposition from American leftist groups,? Alem?n said in the interview. ?[We] are not engaged in an ideological struggle.? Asked if he supports sanctions on his former country, Alem?n declared, ?of course I support these measures.? He called for the US government to continue pressuring the Nicaraguan government and imposing more sanctions. In response to this, La Botz wrote on Facebook, ?Lester Alem?n?s decision to participate in a State Department event and his support for U.S. sanctions is in my opinion unfortunate.? But, like usual, La Botz pointed the finger at the government of Nicaragua?s democratically elected president: ?That he and other young people would take such a course is a result of Daniel Ortega and his government having closed democratic options in Nicaragua,? La Botz claimed. ?When Lester Aleman spoke at our meeting, he had not yet come to these conclusions. He was till then an authentic voice of the young people of Nicaragua.? ?Revolutionary socialists? funded by the non-profit industrial complex The force behind the annual Socialism Conference, the International Socialist Organization marketed itself as a radical, even revolutionary movement supporting ?socialism from below.? But it was deeply embedded in the non-profit industrial complex. The ISO operated legally through its parent non-profit organization the Center for Economic Research and Social Change . A tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, CERSC received huge grants from the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation is well known for funding progressive groups, but only as long as they do not rock the boat too much. A Canadian environmental activist who has participated in projects funded by Tides told The Grayzone that the foundation funded a trip to the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, but eventually pulled funding for their environmental group?s excursion to the 2012 UN conference in Doha, Qatar, because the foundation was afraid the activists would carry out peaceful forms of civil disobedience. ?They funded some people ? those who wouldn?t rock the boat because they didn?t want people engaging in civil disobedience,? the Canadian environmental activist told The Grayzone. Another activist published a ?whistleblower?s open letter to Canadians ? explaining that the Tides Foundation, which funded many environmentalists in the country, was ?too afraid of reprisals from the government to act,? after the office of right-wing Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatened to challenge the foundation?s charitable status. Why a milquetoast liberal foundation would fund the ISO, a supposedly revolutionary socialist organization, raises serious questions about that group?s agenda. In fact, while the Tides Foundation was serving as one of the biggest financiers of the ISO, it was also funding Democratic Party-aligned organizations and even pro-Israel groups like J Street and the New Israel Fund, which actively campaign against the Palestinian call for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel) and support the preservation of a settler-colonialist ethnically exclusivist state. Haymarket Books, blending important literature with regime change propaganda While the ISO was marginal during its existence, it punched above its weight through front organizations and prominent members who worked in the mainstream media and academia. The ISO?s publishing arm, Haymarket Books, has been especially influential. Haymarket describes itself as a ?radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago,? which had been the base for the ISO. Haymarket has indeed published many important books on pressing issues. However, it has supplemented these works with anti-anti-imperialist screeds that echo the US State Department?s rhetoric, but framed as ?from the left.? Among Haymarket?s most aggressively marketed releases of 2018 was ?The Impossible Revolution,? a collection of essays by the Syrian exiled writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh, who now lives in Turkey and functions as a lodestar to self-styled left-wing supporters of regime change in Syria. Al-Haj Saleh?s book was blurbed by Charles Lister , a former functionary of the UK?s Conservative Party who became a top lobbyist for arming Salafi-jihadist insurgents in Syria at the Gulf monarchy-funded Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. State Department cables exposed by WikiLeaks indicate that Yassin al-Haj Saleh was a US government informant in regular correspondence with American officials in Damascus. One such memo, dated April 24, 2006 , features advice by al-Haj Saleh apparently delivered to US officials in the country to use Islamism as a weapon against the government of Bashar al-Assad. Haymarket has also recently published ?Indefensible,? a book-length denunciation of the anti-imperialist left by the writer Rohini Hensman. The manifesto features ham-fisted attacks on journalists Julian Assange , John Pilger, and Seymour Hersh, along with unqualified support for virtually every US and NATO military intervention in the past 30 years, as well as the dirty war on Syria and the Maidan coup in Ukraine. Anand Gopal, the longtime ISO ally who speaks at the Socialism Conference every year, while working for a liberal foundation funded by the US State Department, praised Hensman?s book as a guide to ?how to be a principled internationalist in the era of imperialism.? More recently, Hensman took to the DSA?s official website to attack The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, Seymour Hersh, and Robert Fisk as ?neo-Stalinists? engaged in a ?convergence? with neo-Nazis. No evidence was provided to support the extreme claim. Ashley Smith , an ideologue of the now-defunct ISO, says he is currently writing another anti-anti-imperialist book for Haymarket entitled ?Socialism and Anti-Imperialism.? Tiny, irrelevant Trotskyite groups, from South to North America Trotskyite groups are notorious throughout the world for their extreme sectarian tendencies. The organizations rarely last long, frequently splintering into tiny groupuscules over political disagreements. Unsurprisingly, then, the so-called ?left? opposition in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba ? which is celebrated by Trotskyite groups like the ISO ? is in fact infinitesimal and insignificant. Nils McCune, a socialist and environmental activist who has lived in Nicaragua for years, explained in an interview on our podcast Moderate Rebels that one of these parties, the Movement for the Renovation of Sandinismo (MRS) is a tiny group that is irrelevant in the country. Unable to mobilize popular support, this ?left? opposition can only lobby the US government for regime change. As Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, revealed in MintPress News , the MRS has received direct support from the US government in its campaign to prevent the election of Daniel Ortega as president, and lobbied for sanctions against Nicaragua after he was elected. Similarly, in Venezuela the ostensible left opposition has offered ?critical support? to Washington?s regime change efforts. This February, a leader of the marginal Venezuelan Trotskyite group Marea Socialista held a friendly meeting with Juan Guaid? , the US-appointed right-wing coup leader. On February 5, Guaid? tweeted a photo of a meeting with Marea Socialista?s Nicmer Evans. Juan Guaid? hails from the far-right party Voluntad Popular , which was practically founded by the US government and has been deeply involved in street violence throughout Venezuela. Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza, a Chavista who lives in Venezuela and is editor of the independent news website, the Orinoco Tribune , told The Grayzone when we reported in the country in February that Marea Socialista is ?tiny? and has ?no power.? He was genuinely surprised at how much coverage these minuscule groups have received in the US progressive media, because inside Venezuela they have negligible influence. Yet the Trotskyite organization has constantly been given a platform by the ISO?s newspaper Socialist Worker (Marea Socialista even enjoys its own tag on the website ). Jacobin Magazine, the self-declared ?leading voice of the American left,? has also given a huge platform to Marea Socialista operatives to push for what they call a ?Chavismo from below? ? despite the fact that the Trotskyite group is virtually unknown to average Venezuelans, including to millions of poor and working-class Chavistas. Also featured in the February 5 photo of the meeting with US-backed coup leader Juan Guaid? was the anti-Maduro liberal intellectual Edgardo Lander , who is popular in anti-communist left-wing circles in the US but almost unknown inside Venezuela. Like Marea Socialista, Lander has enjoyed very positive coverage in the progressive Anglo press. Democracy Now , which has advanced regime-change propaganda on Syria on repeated occasions, offered its platform to Lander this May. Hosts Amy Goodman and Nermeen Sheikh lobbed softball questions at the intellectual, and failed to disclose that he met with Guaid?. In his Democracy Now segment, Lander admitted that his outfit is a ?small collective,? whereas the Chavista movement he criticizes is massively popular in working-class barrios across the country. The International Socialist Organization has played a similar role in the US, with little visibility outside the left and almost no grassroots base. Now that the ISO has disbanded, its veterans can reach into the rapidly growing ideologically diffuse world of Democratic Socialists of America, using platforms like Socialism 2019 to infect DSA?s youthful core with the imperial politics of regime change ? but always ?from the left,? and always ?from below.? Anand Gopal Ashley Smith China Dan La Botz DSA Haymarket Imperialism International Socialist Organization ISO Jacobin Marea Socialista Nicaragua socialism Syria Venezuela Yassin al-Haj Saleh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Aug 27 01:47:39 2021 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2021 20:47:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Saker on 'us-imperialisms-last-gleaming' Message-ID: <4123D6EA-832D-418B-8476-0772536ABCEE@newsfromneptune.com> https://www.unz.com/tsaker/will-afghanistan-turn-out-to-be-us-imperialisms-last-gleaming/ From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Aug 27 16:51:10 2021 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2021 11:51:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NYT on the role of Pakistan in US war-making Message-ID: <319D2D37-8170-4870-8660-215EC09E8E05@newsfromneptune.com> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/world/asia/afghanistan-pakistan-taliban.html From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 28 14:31:53 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2021 09:31:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: **Emergency Mobilization Against Evictions 8/28** References: Message-ID: > Hey all, > > The unelected Supreme Court struck down the federal moratorium on evictions last night. Illinois' eviction moratorium is set to expire on September 18th -- in just a few weeks. If our moratorium is not extended, there could be massive waves of evictions throughout Champaign county, forcing many of us & our neighbors to become homeless and triggering a spike in COVID cases. > > As such, we're merging our Black August rally planned for tomorrow (8/28) at 4PM outside the Sheriff's office at 204 E. Main St, Urbana with an anti-eviction action called for by the Cancel the Rents campaign. In addition to demanding an end to police militarization & abysmal jail conditions, we'll be calling on the Sheriff to refuse to carry out evictions. > > > > Incarceration and the housing crisis are deeply intertwined issues, especially as more and more cities across the country move to criminalize homelessness. The same law enforcement officers who carry out racist terror will soon be carrying out evictions against working class and oppressed people across the country. Please join us tomorrow in an emergency mobilization to hold law enforcement accountable and renew the struggle against evictions. > > Solidarity! > PSL-CU -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CancelTheRents.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 159505 bytes Desc: not available URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Aug 28 15:40:28 2021 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2021 10:40:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] See Jimmy Dore's interview with Chris Hedges Message-ID: See Jimmy Dore's interview with Chris Hedges on Jimmy Dore's channel: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fcjeMWrboX0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y ?CGE h/t JBN From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 28 20:12:39 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen aram) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2021 15:12:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] See Jimmy Dore's interview with Chris Hedges In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Good one Carl, really good. I?ve cc?d Jason on this, in hopes he might be interest in running in on UPTV. > On Aug 28, 2021, at 10:40 AM, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: > > See Jimmy Dore's interview with Chris Hedges on Jimmy Dore's channel: > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=fcjeMWrboX0 > https://youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y > > ?CGE h/t JBN > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From moboct1 at aim.com Sat Aug 28 23:11:35 2021 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2021 23:11:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] See Jimmy Dore's interview with Chris Hedges In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2112688643.174166.1630192295194@mail.yahoo.com> This interview of Chris Hedges and Jimmy Dore restores confidence after my political "failures" of the past 50+ some years to? promote electoral choices for American government and efforts for the best wisdom of leaders such as Ralph Nader, considered losers and?political pariahs. It appears that America will never overcome its anti-intellectual populist animosity influenced by prevailing commercial interests which have? predictably pursued the path of ultimate ruin for so many people of this nation and of the world.? Is this a failure in education of logic and analysis, or is it a unique genetic defect of American style "democracy"?? Hard to tell from empirical results...? Midge.?? From: C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net Cc: Peace Sent: Sat, Aug 28, 2021 10:41 ama -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sun Aug 29 03:51:00 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2021 22:51:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Glenn Greenwald's move to Rumble.com going well so far, Tulsi Gabbard's on Rumble too Message-ID: <05144b2f-f8f7-eeb4-b015-370ca674c9d4@forestfield.org> As far as I can tell Glenn Greenwald's move to Rumble.com (https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald) is going well -- no interference with him posting videos which are critical of war (https://rumble.com/vlqdhc-terror-attack-in-kabul-system-update-with-glenn-greenwald.html) and COVID debates (https://rumble.com/vln3ca-the-bizarre-refusal-to-apply-cost-benefit-analysis-to-covid-debates.html), two issues that get others censored on other social media sites. Structurally, of course, nothing has changed -- Rumble is another single point of censorship just like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and so many other well-advertised sites are. We won't really know how well Rumble holds up to scrutiny until that site is targeted by the establishment. Some of Greenwald's videos show up on his YouTube account (https://youtube.com/channel/UChzVhAwzGR7hV-4O8ZmBLHg) as well. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has also joined Rumble (https://rumble.com/c/TulsiGabbard) and posts videos there. I'm not seeing much there that is critical of the establishment. There might be a tip off there; she did tell us and show us that she was a loyal Democrat, after all. [This will also function as a test post for me to see if I've figured out if an email intermediary stopped my posts from arriving on the peace-discuss mailing list archive.] From brussel at illinois.edu Sun Aug 29 17:10:31 2021 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2021 17:10:31 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: [wbw-discussion] Afghanistan: Five Success Stories References: Message-ID: This was a comprehensive talk given by David Swanson. He touches so many bases, all from the standpint of wanting to show the madness of war and its proponents. When it comes to hear those bemoaning the weakness, or lack, of a ?left?, he provides an ispiriting antidote. Begin forwarded message: From: David Swanson > Subject: [wbw-discussion] Afghanistan: Five Success Stories Date: August 27, 2021 at 11:17:43 PM CDT To: David Swanson > Afghanistan: Five Success Stories By David Swanson https://davidswanson.org/afghanistan-five-success-stories/ Presented Friday, August 27, 2021, to the Northern Colorado Alliance for a Livable Future [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.50.04-PM.png?resize=525%2C299] I want to begin with five success stories. [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.50.24-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] The Peace Movement. The people who spent 20 years largely excluded from the corporate media, lobbying Congress Members well paid not to listen to them, marching and protesting and holding teach-ins, making art, traveling across the globe or staying put on the same street corner for decades to build alliances and awareness, writing books and teaching courses, interrupting events, divesting from profiteers, wearing t-shirts, persuading uncles, exposing lies, defending whistleblowers, mocking war mongers, celebrating peace makers, and darn well screaming the most obvious truths until we could hardly stay on our feet had an impact. Public opinion moved to our side and stayed there. Politicians pretended more and more to be our side until they practically were, at least for one particular war that they call a mishandled flawed effort and we call, more succinctly, a war. I?m not praising myself. There have always been millions who said ?don?t do it,? and then said ?end it,? and we have not been some sort of geniuses. We?ve just disapproved of mass-murder no matter how you dressed it up. [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.50.35-PM.png?resize=525%2C294] The Afghan Army. These guys were armed to the teeth by U.S. taxpayers and told to kill and die to slow the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. They were encouraged to launch a new civil war, these poor people who have never known peace. They were revved up and pepped up and informed of the need to honor Uncle Sam, Freedom, and Lockheed Martin, and they chose instead to refuse to fight. Afghanistan had a transition of power roughly as peaceful and orderly as that of the United States this past January. What horrors are to come from the Taliban rule, we have yet to see. Which war lords launch new wars remains to be revealed. Which people resort to the more effective strategies of nonviolent action we are seeing in the news. But there?s not something worse than war that more war could have been justified in preventing. Most people in polls in Europe say they would never fight in a war. That we should be angry that Afghans won?t fight Afghans at direction from NATO seems odd. Given their horrible choices, too many Afghans had come to view the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. U.S. voters are huge fans of lessers of two evils. We know all about those. But war is always the greater of two evils, and we should applaud President Joe Biden for withdrawing any troops he withdraws from anywhere, but not join with him in blaming Afghans for ending their so-called civil war the instant the foreign occupiers cleared out. [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.50.46-PM.png?resize=525%2C294] The Weapons Dealers. The war on Afghanistan was a major success in transfering wealth from ordinary people to war profiteers. Big military weapons stocks outperformed the stock market by 58 percent. The biggest weapons dealers get five times now each year from the U.S. government what they got prior to the war. And there?s no glimmer of a hint of a consideration that ending the war might change that. It?s been normalized. In their legislation, including the big new progressive reconciliation bill, Congressional so-called leaders lay out a plan for steady increases in military spending for each of the next 10 years. Just because they can. And with no notion that the next 9 years of it might accomplish anything that could possibly alter the supposed need for even more military spending in the 10th year. [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.50.56-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] The Authoritarians. During the course of this war and the wars it spawned, governments ? national and local ? have been militarized, the world has been heavily armed, government secrecy and surveillance have been accepted, civil liberties have been eroded, and the word ?democracy? has come to mean oligarchic but reliable weapons customers that put up a little pretense of caring. [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.51.07-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] Safety, Democracy, and Enlightenment. The war on terrorism has reduced terrorism, spread democracy, and enlightened those poor benighted foreigners who had been living in darkness. OK, this one I haven?t verified but I did hear it on my television, so you can take it for what it?s worth, and in any case four out of five success stories is not bad. In fact, check out the latest from Peace Science Digest: The more a country has contributed to U.S. war on terror, the more terrorism has come to that country. Ssshhh. Don?t tell any governments this! Let?s talk about what we?ve learned about Afghanistan from our televisions. [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.51.20-PM.png?resize=525%2C294] Afghanistan is, in truth, far from the longest U.S. war. There was no peace before or after it. There is no after it until they end it ? and bombing has always been most of what it is. It has had nothing to do with opposing terrorism. It has been a one-sided slaughter, a mass killing over two decades by a single invading army and air force dragging along token mascots from dozens of vassal states. After 20 years Afghanistan was one of the worst places to be on Earth, and the Earth as a whole was a worse place to be ? the rule of law, the state of nature, the refugee crises, the spread of terrorism, the militarization of governments all worsened. Then the Taliban took over. When the U.S. armed the Afghan military with weapons costing enough to cause panic attacks in U.S. Senators had the expense been for anything other than murder, and predicted a happy little civil war, and then the Afghans refused to fight each other, the President of the United States denounced such reprehensible restraint, blaming the victims, instead of acknowledging the massive gift of yet more weaponry to the Taliban, instead of recognizing ? after 20 years ? anything about what Afghanistan is like. (Of course he still calls the war a ?civil war? as U.S. voices have done for years and years because unless the U.S. military is regretfully helping out in a civil war waged by primitive people, it will be understood to be, you know, waging wars, smack in the middle of what U.S. academics call The Great Peace.) [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.54.43-PM.png?resize=525%2C297] The puppet government was never a government outside of the capital. The people were never loyal to the Taliban or the invaders, but merely to whichever set of lunatics was nearby waving guns. First the Taliban collapsed, then the Muppets in Kabul, and for 20 years in between every home and village switched sides as needed, with the U.S. developing permanent enemies, the Taliban making practical alliances, and people persistently noticing that they lived where they lived, while the strange-looking foreigners who killed, imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, urinated on, and threatened them for ?human rights? lived somewhere else. But millions of people were made homeless. Children froze to death in refugee camps. Approximately half the victims of the U.S. war were women. The puppet government passed a law to legalize spousal rape. Yet the hypocritical screech of ?Women?s Rights? was heard over the agonized moaning of the injured, even as the U.S. government blissfully armed and supported the brutal militaries of such bastions of women?s rights as Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Ethiopia, Gabon, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Oman, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen. The death, injury, trauma, homelessness, environmental destruction, governmental corruption, renewed drug dealing, and general catastrophe were kept quiet by an obsessive focus on the tiny percentage of deaths that were U.S. troops ? but excluding the majority even of those deaths because they were suicides. [https://i1.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.54.51-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] Collecting reports on war deaths in Afghanistan from direct violence gave Brown University?s Cost of War Project a total of about 240,000. Nicolas Davies has pointed out that in Iraq in 2006 you had to multiply the reported deaths by 12 to get the number arrived at by scientific surveys conducted in Iraq, and in Guatemala in 1996 you had to multiply by 20. Starting with 240,000 and multiplying by 12 gives us 2.8 million possibly dead directly from war violence in Afghanistan. Multiply by 20 and you get, instead, 4.8 million. Interest in this question is limited in the extreme. There have been no serious studies conducted in Afghanistan. The U.S. corporate media reports on the topics are as nonexistent as humanitarian wars. And according to President Biden, ?American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.? In fairness, Biden was upset at the moment by the failure of a new civil war to materialize. Nonetheless, someone could have told him that Afghan military deaths were at least 10 times those of the U.S. military. Or the entire so-called intelligence so-called community could have been replaced by a single historian or peace activist, and the likely fate of foreign occupations might have been grasped 20 years earlier. ?There is no military solution? the generals and weapons-funded presidents and Congress members chanted for decades while pushing more militarism. Yet nobody asked what ?solution? even meant. ?We?re winning? they lied for decades until everyone announced that they?d ?lost.? Yet nobody asked what ?winning? would have been. What was the goal? What was the purpose? [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.55.01-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] The rhetoric, official and amateur, that launched the war was about bombing a nation full of people as revenge for the crimes of a small number of individuals who had spent some time in the place. ?Hey Mr. Taliban? song lyrics were racist, hateful, and genocidal celebrations of bombing the homes of people who dressed in pajamas. But this was pure murderous bullshit. Crimes can and should be prosecuted, not used as excuses to commit worse crimes. The Taliban was willing to turn Bin Laden over to a third country to be put on trial, but the U.S. government wanted a war. It had long-since planned the war. Its motivations included base construction, weapons placement, pipeline routing, and the launching of a war on Iraq as a continuation of an easier-to-start war on Afghanistan (a war that Tony Blair insisted on starting prior to a war on Iraq). Soon the U.S. president said that bin Laden didn?t matter at all. Then another U.S. president said that bin Laden was dead. That didn?t matter either, as anyone paying the slightest attention had known it wouldn?t. In fact, that same president escalated the war on Afghanistan three-fold in terms of troop presence but more than that in bombing, principally because he was largely keeping his predecessor?s deal to scale back the war on Iraq. One can?t just end a war without backing a different one. That?s part of why the world?s worried about a war on China right now. But, then what was the excuse for the unending war on Afghanistan? Well, one excuse was a new bin Laden. He would return in another form like Voldemort if ever the U.S. left Afghanistan. So, after 20 years of a global war on terrorism spreading anti-U.S. terrorism from a few Afghan caves to capitals across Africa and Asia, we?re now told that the Taliban takeover may mean the ?return? of terrorism ? we?re told this by the very same widely respected ?experts? who just said the Taliban wouldn?t take over. [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.55.11-PM.png?resize=525%2C294] You know who never believed that crap? The young men and women sent into Afghanistan from the United States year after year after year to become suicide risks and to . . . well, and to . . . to do what? What passes for ?winning? in the propaganda given the troops and everyone else is just the horrific wars with disastrous short- and long-term results that somebody had the sense to end more quickly than other wars: the Gulf War, the War on Libya. But they?re not, of course, better than never having started them would have been. On August 16, 2021, a U.S. military base at Niagara Falls posted this notice: [https://i1.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.55.20-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] While President Joe Biden swears the nonsense about ?nation building? was always nonsense, others cling to it. They were told they were doing it. They saw their buddies die in the name of doing it. On August 17th an email from Lauren Mick, Senior Manager for Media Relations, Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), claimed ?There is no doubt, however, that the lives of millions of Afghans had been improved by U.S. government interventions, including gains in life expectancy, the mortality of children under five, GDP per capita, and literacy rates, among others.? Even if you believe that, imagine what doctors and teachers could have done in that regard. Hell, imagine what giving every man, woman, and child in Afghanistan some $600,000 or even a tiny fraction of that might have done rather than blowing over $1 trillion on war per year for 20 years. Afghanistan, under the benevolent occupation, was the third worst place to give birth in terms of newborn mortality, with the first being the neighboring and heavily impacted Pakistan. The majority of marriages in Afghanistan during the humanitarian occupation were forced. The letter in the image above illustrates one of the points I elaborated on in War Is A Lie, namely that one can have contradictory war lies working simultaneously and certainly at different stages, especially before, during, and after a war. Let us count the lies in the notice above: 1. ?progress? ? no explanation given, so irrefutable, but vacuous 2. the war-making allowed people to vote, attend school, start a business, and live with basic necessities ? by definition anyone not killed in the war lived with basic necessities, just as prior to the war only less so; the rest of this has been very weak for 20 years and in fact for 50 years going back to the initial U.S. provocation of the Soviets back when the bad guys were the good guys as they very well may soon be again 3. evidence-free prevention of imaginary attacks on the Fatherland ? those have been made more likely, not less likely, by the war 4. saving fellow ?service? members ? not sending them would have saved more of them 5. planting small seeds of ?Freedom?s Cause? ? what can I say except that people will reach for utter obnoxious nonsense to justify horrible things they?ve done? Well, surely this harmless foolishness is better than veteran suicides? Not if it succeeds at its stated purpose of facilitating future warmaking it isn?t, no. Guess what one of the minor results of those future wars will be? More veteran suicides! [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.55.31-PM.png?resize=525%2C293] At one point during the past 20 years, I sent some unsolicited advice to a young man who was considering offering the world the ?service? of participating in wars. This was part of what I sent him: Are you aware that the U.S. government repeatedly turned down offers to hand Bin Laden over to a third nation to be put on trial, preferring instead a war? Have you come into contact with the understanding that ?if the CIA had not spent over a billion dollars arming Islamist militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, empowering jihadist godfathers like Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden in the process, the 9/11 attacks would have almost certainly not taken place?? Are you familiar with the U.S. plans for war on Afghanistan that pre-dated September 11, 2001? Have you seen the predictable excuses that Bin Laden gave for his murderous crimes? They each involve revenge for other crimes committed by the U.S. military. Are you aware that war is a crime under, among other laws, the United Nations Charter? Are you aware that al Qaeda planned September 11th in numerous nations and U.S. states that, unlike Afghanistan, the United States chose not to bomb? I continued: [https://i1.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.55.45-PM.png?resize=525%2C297] Are you familiar with the gross failures of the CIA and FBI leading up to 9/11, but also with the warnings they gave to the White House that went unheeded? Are you aware of the evidence of the role played by Saudi Arabia, close U.S. ally, oil dealer, weapons customer, and partner in the war on Yemen? Did you know that British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed to the future war on Iraq as long as Afghanistan was attacked first? Are you aware that the Taliban had practically eradicated opium prior to the war, but that the war made opium one of the Taliban?s top two sources of funding, the other being, according to an investigation by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. military? Are you aware that the war on Afghanistan has killed huge numbers of people, devastated the natural environment, and left the society very vulnerable to coronavirus? Are you aware that the International Criminal Court is investigating the overwhelming evidence of horrendous atrocities by all sides during the war on Afghanistan? Have you noticed the habit of just-retired U.S. military officials admitting that much of what they?ve been doing is counter-productive? Here are just a few examples in case you?ve missed any of them: ?Former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer, who says the more the United States fights terrorism the more it creates terrorism. ?The CIA, which finds its own drone program ?counterproductive.? ?Admiral Dennis Blair, the former director of National Intelligence: While ?drone attacks did help reduce the Qaeda leadership in Pakistan,? he wrote, ?they also increased hatred of America.? ?Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: ?We?re seeing that blowback. If you?re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you?re going to upset people even if they?re not targeted.? ?Sherard Cowper-Coles, Former U.K. Special Representative To Afghanistan: ?For every dead Pashtun warrior, there will be 10 pledged to revenge.? ?Matthew Hoh, Former Marine Officer (Iraq), Former US Embassy Officer (Iraq and Afghanistan): ?I believe it?s [the escalation of the war/military action] only going to fuel the insurgency. It?s only going to reinforce claims by our enemies that we are an occupying power, because we are an occupying power. And that will only fuel the insurgency. And that will only cause more people to fight us or those fighting us already to continue to fight us.? ?General Stanley McChrystal: ?For every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.? ? Lt. Col. John W. Nicholson Jr.: This commander of the war on Afghanistan blurted out his opposition to what he?d been doing on his last day of doing it. I tried to provide some context: [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.55.56-PM.png?resize=525%2C296] ?Did you know that terrorism increased from 2001 through 2014, principally as a predictable result of the war on terrorism? Of course a basic question that a good education should bring one to ask about any field is this one: ?Is it working?? I assume you?ve asked that regarding ?counter-terrorism.? I assume also that you?ve looked into what distinctions, if any, truly separate a terrorist attack from a counter-terrorist attack. Are you aware that 95% of all suicide terrorist attacks are indefensible crimes conducted to encourage foreign occupiers to leave the terrorist?s home country? I tried to provide some alternatives: Did you know that on March 11, 2004, Al Qaeda bombs killed 191 people in Madrid, Spain, just before an election in which one party was campaigning against Spain?s participation in the U.S.-led war on Iraq. The people of Spain voted the Socialists into power, and they removed all Spanish troops from Iraq by May. There were no more bombs in Spain. This history stands in strong contrast to that of Britain, the United States, and other nations that have responded to blowback with more war, generally producing more blowback. Are you aware of the suffering and death that polio used to cause and still causes, and how hard many have worked for years to come very close to eradicating it, and what a dramatic setback these efforts were handed when the CIA pretended to be vaccinating people in Pakistan while actually trying to find Bin Laden? Did you know that it isn?t legal in Pakistan or anywhere else to kidnap or to murder? Have you ever paused and listened to whistleblowers about their regrets? People like Jeffrey Sterling have some eye-opening stories to tell. So does Cian Westmoreland. So does Lisa Ling. So do many others. Were you aware that much of what we think about drones is fictional? [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-27-at-11.56.06-PM.png?resize=525%2C295] Are you familiar with the dominant role the U.S. plays in weapons dealing and war, that it?s responsible for some 80% of international arms dealing, 90% of foreign military bases, 50% of military spending, or that the U.S. military arms, trains, and funds the militaries of 96% of the most oppressive governments on earth? Did you know that 3% of U.S. military spending could end starvation on earth? Do you really believe, when you stop to consider it, that the current priorities of the U.S. government serve to counter terrorism, rather than to fuel it? We have real crises facing us that are far more severe than terrorism, no matter where you think terrorism comes from. The threat of nuclear apocalypse is higher than ever. The threat of irreversible climate collapse is higher than ever and massively contributed to by militarism. The trillions of dollars being dumped into militarism are desperately needed for actual defense against these dangers including spin-off catastrophes like coronavirus. [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.00.31-AM.png?resize=525%2C295] Now, we?ve been through two decades of atrocity aberration stories in Afghanistan. Some troops were hunting children but that wasn?t the norm. Some troops were peeing on corpses, but politely and respectfully creating the corpses was the norm. Innocent people were imprisoned and tortured but only by mistake. We?ve been treated to two decades of regrets that crimes should have been committed more properly. So and so shouldn?t have pretended to be ?winning.? Such and such shouldn?t have pretended to be withdrawing. This and that shouldn?t have lied about murders of civilians. Big shot shouldn?t have shown his brilliant plans for dragging out this madness to his girlfriend. We?ve been treated to two decades of imagining that mass killing can be reformed. But it cannot be. Remember that this was the ?good war? the war that one had to praise in order to oppose the war on Iraq without being some radical advocate of abolishing mass slaughter. But if this was a ?good war? ? a war that even peace activists pretended had been UN-sanctioned (simply because the war on Iraq had not been) ? one would hate to see the ?bad war.? The big lies are not the lies in the Afghan Papers but the lies evident on the day the war began. Here are some of them and links to their refutations: [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.00.38-AM.png?resize=525%2C296] War is inevitable War is justified War is necessary War is beneficial If you?re really good at the war propaganda game, you can do the inverted myths: [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.00.53-AM.png?resize=525%2C293] Peace is impossible. Peace is unjustifiable. Peace serves no purpose. Peace is dangerous and gets people killed. These are themes in U.S. corporate media these days. People get hurt when you end good stable wars. They die at airports (when you shoot them or let them crowd onto runways and generally run the airport like it?s a branch of the SNAFU war machine you sent in for the non-nation building). What can peaceniks say for themselves at such a moment? Well, here?s what this one says: [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.01.06-AM.png?resize=525%2C293] On September 11, 2001, I said, ?Well, that proves all the weapons and wars are useless or counterproductive. Prosecute crimes as crimes, and start disarming.? When the U.S. government launched an illegal, immoral, sure to be catastrophic war on Afghanistan, I said, ?That?s illegal and immoral and sure to be catastrophic! End it now!? When they didn?t end it, I said, ?According to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, there?s going to be hell when they end this, and it?s going to be a worse hell the longer it takes them to end it. So, end it now!? When they didn?t end it, I went to Kabul and met with all kinds of people and saw that they clearly had a lousy, corrupt, foreign-backed puppet government, with the looming threat of the Taliban, and neither choice was any good. ?Support nonviolent civil-society,? I said. ?Provide actual aid. Try democracy at home to lead by example. And (redundantly, since democracy at home would have done this) get the U.S. military the @%!%# out!? [https://i0.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.01.17-AM.png?resize=525%2C296] When they still didn?t end it, and when a Congressional investigation found the top two sources of income for the Taliban to be the revived drug trade and the U.S. military, I said ?If you wait additional years or decades to get the !^%& out, there?s going to be no hope left. Get the hell out now!? By the way, the opioid epidemic in the United States seems to have been connected to the war that revived the world?s largest opium production about as much as the next drought or hurricane will be connected to climate destruction. When Amnesty International put ads up on bus stops in Chicago thanking NATO for the lovely war for women?s rights, I pointed out that bombs blow up women the same as men, and marched to protest NATO. I asked people in Afghanistan, and they said the same thing. [https://i2.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.01.28-AM.png?resize=525%2C294] When Obama pretended to get out, I said, ?Really get out, you lying scheming fraud!? When Trump got elected promising to get out and then didn?t, I said, ?Really get out, you lying scheming fraud!? (When Hillary Clinton failed to get elected, and evidence suggested that she?d have won had she credibly promised to end the wars, I said, ?Do us all a favor and retire for godsake!?) Presidents I proposed be impeached for this war among other grounds were Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Now I?ve gone and offended both political Parties, of course, and must apologize for burning my Party membership cards and not children. [https://i1.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.01.39-AM.png?resize=525%2C296] When they STILL didn?t end the war, I said, again, ?According to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, there?s going to be hell when they end this, and it?s going to be a worse hell the longer it takes them to end it. So, end it now!? When Biden pretended to get out while promising to keep troops there and to increase the bombings, I said, ?Really get out, you lying scheming fraud!? I encouraged all the insiderish groups that said the same thing super gently and politely. I encouraged all the fed-up groups blocking doors and streets and weapons trains. I supported efforts in ever country involved to get their token troops out and stop legitimizing a U.S. crime. Year after year after year. When Biden claimed the war was some sort of success, I pointed out how it had spread anti-U.S. terrorism across half the globe, spawned more wars, murdered countless people, devastated the natural environment, eroded the rule of law and civil liberties and self-governance, and cost trillions of dollars. When the U.S. government refused to abide by agreements, refused to stop bombing, refused to give credible negotiation or compromise a chance, refused to support the rule of law around the world or lead by example, refused to stop shipping weapons into the region, refused to even acknowledge that the Taliban is using U.S.-made weapons, but finally claimed it would get its troops out, I expected that U.S. media outlets would develop anew a strong interest in the rights of Afghan women. I was right. [https://i1.wp.com/davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screen-Shot-2021-08-28-at-12.01.51-AM.png?resize=525%2C294] But the U.S. government, according to its own reporting, accounts for 66% of all the weapons exported to the least democratic quintile of nations on earth. Of the 50 most oppressive governments identified by a U.S.-government-funded study, the U.S. arms 82% of them. Israel?s government, notorious for its violent oppression of Palestinian people, is not on that list (it?s a U.S.-funded list) but is the top recipient of ?aid? funding for U.S. weapons from the U.S. government. Some women live in Palestine. The Stop Arming Human Rights Abusers Act (H.R.4718) would prevent U.S. weapons sales to other nations that are in violation of international human rights law or international humanitarian law. During the last Congress, the same bill, introduced by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, gathered a grand total of zero cosponsors. One of 41 U.S.-armed oppressive nations on U.S. funded lists, Afghanistan, was on the lists of oppressive governments before the Taliban threatened to take it over. And the other 40 are of truly minimal interest to the U.S. corporate media, much less to any of the ?BUT THE WOMEN!? crowd out there moaning in agony that a war might end. The same crowd seems to have no objection to the proposal moving through the U.S. Congress to force U.S. women at age 18 to register for a military draft that would force them against their will to kill and die in more of these wars. 1. So, what would I propose that the U.S. government do for the women and men and children of Afghanistan now, regardless of horrible decisions in the past that it?s obviously too late to undo and just silly and offensive to rehash like this? Until it can reform itself into an entity capable of benevolent action, not a goddamned thing in Afghanistan. Get out and stay out. Lay off freezing Afghan funds or blocking international aid. End sanctions. Make Afghanistan neither a client state nor an enemy to be punished further. 2. Stop encouraging the Taliban to think that it can become a model U.S. client state in a few years if it?s mean and nasty enough, by ceasing to arm and train and fund brutal dictatorships all over the globe. In 2019, the New York Times published this comment from the Taliban: ?What they are saying to Americans is this: You have accepted Saudi Arabia, and we won?t do more than their basic code ? retribution for murder, chop off the hand for robbing,? Mr. Shinwari said. ?If you have accepted Saudi, what?s wrong with us being another? The rest will be your priorities: aid, friendship, economic relations.? 3. Cease eroding the idea of the rule of law around the world by dropping opposition to the International Criminal Court and the World Court, by joining the International Criminal Court, and by eliminating the veto and democratizing the United Nations Security Council. 4. Catch up with the world and cease being the leading holdout globally on the most major human rights treaties including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (every nation on Earth has ratified except the United States) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (every nation on Earth has ratified except the United States, Iran, Sudan, and Somalia). 5. Move 20% of the U.S. military budget into useful things each year for five years. Shouldn?t ending a war reduce, rather than increase, the U.S. military budget? 6. Move 10% of that rededicated funding into providing no-strings-attached aid and encouragement to the most law-abiding and honest-to-god small-d democratic poor nations on the planet. 7. Take a hard look at the U.S. government itself, understand the powerful case that the U.S. government could make for bombing itself were it not itself, and take serious steps to remove the bribery from the election system, establish fair public funding and media coverage for elections, and remove gerrymandering, the filibuster, and as soon as possible the United States Senate. 8. Free, apologize to, and thank every whistleblower who?s told us what the U.S. government was doing in Afghanistan for the past 20 years. Consider why we needed whistleblowers to tell us. 9. Prosecute or free and apologize to every prisoner at Guantanamo, close the base, and get out of Cuba. Now that innocent prisoners in Guantanamo can?t ?return? to a battlefield that?s been abandoned, free them! 10. Get out of the way of the International Criminal Court?s prosecution of Taliban crimes in Afghanistan, as well as its prosecution of crimes committed there by the Afghan government, and by the militaries of the United States and its junior partners. 11. Swiftly become an entity that can credibly comment on horrors being committed by the Taliban, by ? among other things ? caring enough about the horrors coming to all of humanity to invest heavily in ending the destruction of the Earth?s climate and ending the existence of nuclear weapons. 12. Let a million Afghans into the United States and fund the creation of education centers at which they explain to people where Afghanistan is and what the U.S. military did to it for 20 years. I propose that last idea in the spirit of Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi?s idea way back when that instead of attacking Afghanistan, the United States build schools across Afghanistan and name them for victims of the crimes of 9/11, thereby informing people who had mostly never heard about those crimes, instead of bombing them as revenge for those crimes. I hope we can break away from the approach articulated by Joe Biden in 2010 according to Richard Holbrooke who says he asked Biden about rescuing Afghans who would be endangered by a withdrawal, and Biden responded: ?Fuck that, we don?t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.? -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk World Radio. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and U.S. Peace Prize recipient. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. Connect with WBW: [https://facebook.com/worldbeyondwar][https://twitter.com/worldbeyondwar][https://youtube.com/user/worldbeyondwar][https://instagram.com/worldbeyondwar][https://linkedin.com/company/worldbeyondwar] -- This is a listserve to discuss the building of a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. Participants on this list must be respectful toward each other, not advocate violence, and not promote electoral candidates. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WBW discussion" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wbw-discussion+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wbw-discussion/CAF1z47%2BvR6jp5%2BSCiuciaGkEeCUfPR0ums2miwOCozF151FhMQ%40mail.gmail.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Mon Aug 30 23:11:41 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2021 18:11:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Recommended videos for AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV Message-ID: Here are the videos I recommended to run during AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV. As a reminder: If anyone else has anything to run, please feel free to get your pointers to Jason Liggett (jcliggett at urbanaillinois.us). I routinely ask him to prioritize AWARE members pointers over mine for AWARE on the Air, Carl Estabrook & David Green's pointers over mine for News from Neptune, and David Johnson's pointers over mine for Labor's World View TV. Jimmy Dore's interview of Hedges (no swearing that I've found) is highly recommendable as are Hedges' "On Contact" interviews. With Jimmy Dore, Hedges covers labor issues and economic issues ("Dying for an iPhone" is a highly recommendable book, by the way, and Hedges is one of very few people to interview its authors on TV -- yeah, I know that's hardly surprising but this was one of the previously recommended "On Contact" interviews). Dore, with interviews like this, is clearly among the heavy-hitters of progressive labor + anti-war + political activism news and analysis. Jack Murphy's segment shows us with clear evidence, not just descriptions, what drone war looks like from the drone soldier's viewscreen -- people being assassinated by remote control. It's shocking but very real. Again, I point you to the difference between what "anti-war" Tulsi Gabbard told The Intercept about drone warfare (when she endorsed it) to what drone operators have told us (in the documentary "National Bird", a previous recommended video) and here. Drone war is not a "surgical strike". Drone war overwhelmingly kills innocent civilians and it's very easy for ordinary people to enter the area where the drone-fired missile explodes thus killing them. RT https://youtube.com/watch?v=u7ZQHssDTbc (27m 17s) -- On Contact: The debacle in Afghanistan; Chris Hedges interviews Danny Sjursen on Afghanistan war Transcript: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/533091-danny-sjursen-afghanistan-chaos/ https://youtube.com/watch?v=prOXz0zFRvs (26m 51s) -- On Contact: Mainstream Environmental Movement Lies; Chris Hedges interviews Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith Transcript: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/533294-mainstream-environmental-movement-lies/ Jimmy Dore https://youtube.com/watch?v=fcjeMWrboX0 (25m 34s) -- Interview with Chris Hedge part 1 of 3 https://youtube.com/watch?v=NusQH0pnX7Y (20m 27s) -- Interview with Chris Hedge part 2 of 3 https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZUOSKYyKb24 (8m 10s) -- Interview with Chris Hedge part 2 of 3 Jack Murphy for ConnectingVets.com https://players.brightcove.net/5757251889001/9klBjvbUGf_default/index.html?videoId=6269181020001 (2m 47s) -- Helmand Drone Strike introduction (youtube-dl can download this video from this URL) Companion article: https://on.rt.com/bfaj Mint Press News https://youtube.com/watch?v=2lyF0KRa6sg (58m 11s) -- "Why I Quit the British Army: Imprisoned Dissident Joe Glenton on Futility of Afghan War" Glenn Greenwald https://youtube.com/watch?v=WhmplXUogLA (16m 12s) -- "Permanent War Advocates Exploit the Kabul Bombing to Demand More War" ShadowProof https://youtube.com/watch?v=J6M7wqVzxLQ (57m 23s) -- "Australian War Crimes Whistleblower David McBride On The Afghanistan War's Ghastly End" https://youtube.com/watch?v=c6-8ggy_eeY (47m 13s) -- "Dissenter Weekly: Australian Witness In Afghanistan War Crimes Inquiry Was Bombed?Plus, Ag-Gag Laws" Democracy @ Work https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZQVeZeBKw9c (39m 34s) -- "Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: How Are We "Ruled by Abstractions?"" https://youtube.com/watch?v=oiR7XzD4QkM (29m 25s) -- "Economic Update: Liberating Technology From Capitalism" https://youtube.com/watch?v=8iHeMiaOv64 (34m 23s) -- "Capitalism Hits Home: Cruel Optimism" World Socialist Web Site https://youtube.com/watch?v=YSuovStMsWI (1m 48s) -- "Detroit autoworkers support striking Volvo workers in Virginia" https://youtube.com/watch?v=CIoyeKIRENM (1m 52s) -- "Volvo workers in Ghent, Belgium support the strike in Virginia, US" https://youtube.com/watch?v=qQGGZKKgi6M (6s) -- "Volvo Cars workers in Ghent, Belgium walk out over expanded work week" https://youtube.com/watch?v=UcxClIkU3SY (4m 53s) -- "Volvo strike news update, with Joseph Kishore" https://youtube.com/watch?v=7-ZUORCYO_Q (2m 45s) -- "Volvo workers vote down third contract" https://youtube.com/watch?v=GYOMbB3bpNU (1m 22s) -- "Volvo workers in Ghent, Belgium support the strike in Dublin, Virginia" BreakThrough News https://youtube.com/watch?v=LOmz-JkHSAQ (15m 38s) -- "No Contract, No Snacks - Nabisco Workers on Strike" And as a striking worker said in another video: please avoid buying Nabisco snacks until they return with a good contract. -J