From jbn at forestfield.org Wed Jul 1 00:31:01 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2020 19:31:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Recommended NFN/AOTA videos, notes Message-ID: Here's what I recommended for playing during the News from Neptune/AWARE on the Air timeslots with corrections for Sacoolas' name & details of her killing 19-year-old Harry Dunn in the UK last year, and expansion of a point oft-repeated about Assange and the 1st Amendment. UPTV's Jason Liggett said that the first 3 listed will run during tonight's AWARE timeslot and the last 4 for this Friday's News From Neptune timeslot. Afghan war: Russiagate lives on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvEpHCOrnRc (25m 55s for the whole segment but the first 14m 16s is this story) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGY7J0eOVKA (3m 22s focusing on the NY Times portion) -- NY Times criticized over anonymous sources who claim Russia pays bounties in Afghanistan to kill Americans. George Galloway reminds us (in the longer version above) that this NY Times/Permanent Government claim is projection: this is what the US did in the 1980s to kill Russians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3LFbOSPfrE -- (36m 7s) "Afghan War Exposed: An Imperial Conspiracy", Abby Martin's latest Empire Files segment on the history of the ongoing war in Afghanistan and our chances for ending that war (spoiler: it will never end). Assange extradition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMCi-7K-xCo -- (28m 8s) "Ramifications for press freedom in Julian Assange extradition" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OICpoYkO78 -- (5m 2s) Are the newest allegations against Assange merely smear tactics? Also covered is Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer. Sacoolas killed 19-year-old UK resident Harry Dunn with her car outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in August 2019. Sacoolas fled to the US for cover trying to avoid extradition to the UK to face murder charges. This brings up a double-standard for the US: the US won't extradite a CIA agent's wife but it wants a non-American (Assange) who published from outside the US (WikiLeaks is not an American-based organization) to face American interpretation of American law. Related: https://www.rt.com/usa/493394-soros-ngos-blocked-supreme-court/ -- RT's article about a recent SCOTUS ruling denying "federal funding to billionaire financier George Soros? international anti-AIDS organizations, ruling that in order to access the federal cash, the groups must explicitly oppose prostitution". An interesting point which caught my attention appeared to me to connect this to Assange's case by way of Justice Kavanaugh's majority opinion which said "foreign affiliates possess no First Amendment rights": > Because plaintiffs? foreign affiliates possess no First Amendment rights, applying > the Policy Requirement to them is not unconstitutional. Two bedrock legal > principles lead to this conclusion. As a matter of American constitutional law, > foreign citizens outside U. S. territory do not possess rights under the U. S. > Constitution. and > In sum, plaintiffs? foreign affiliates are foreign organizations, and foreign > organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the U. S. Constitution. Julian Assange is an Australian national, and WikiLeaks is a foreign organization operating abroad (outside the US and its territories). So it seems to me that there is disagreement between those who hold that the 1st Amendment (which allowed the New York Times & Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers) also allows WikiLeaks to publish the Iraq & Afghan war logs (the publications at issue in Assange's case). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KKq4pPiVkI -- (14m 42s) Elwood has a different take on the recent Assange allegations from the US government: USG is trying to tie together Anonymous (which recently released information about who has connections to Jeffrey Epstein) with Assange hoping that any ill will you feel for Assange will carry over to Anonymous and thus discourage you from finding or believing any information Anonymous publishes. Economy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDf2SktV8NM -- (2m 33s) Millions of gallons of milk are thrown away while dairy products are in high demands in stores because the US government won't reorganize how we handle such products to deliver direct to the consumer (or give the soon-to-spoil product away gratis) during relatively low-demand times while schools and restaurants close for pandemic lockdown. -J From carl at newsfromneptune.com Thu Jul 2 17:02:07 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2020 12:02:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Thank you for your pledge References: <5efe125c2f722_60ab93ef546161f@worker13.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Setsuko Thurlow > Subject: Thank you for your pledge > Date: July 2, 2020 at 11:59:08 AM CDT > To: "C.G. Estabrook" > > > > Dear C.G. -- > > My name is Setsuko Thurlow and I speak as a member of the family of Hibakusha ? those of us who, by some miraculous chance, survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want to thank you for joining 306 people in pledging to join us in the fight to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons. > > For 75 years, we have worked for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. > > As a 13-year-old schoolgirl, I witnessed my city of Hiroshima blinded by the flash, flattened by the hurricane-like blast, burned in the heat of 4000 degrees Celsius and contaminated by the radiation of one atomic bomb. A bright summer morning turned to dark twilight with smoke and dust rising in the mushroom cloud, dead and injured people covering the ground, begging desperately for water and receiving no medical care at all. The spreading firestorm and the foul stench of burnt flesh filled the air. > > Within that single flash of light, my beloved Hiroshima became a place of desolation, with heaps of rubble, skeletons and blackened corpses everywhere. Of a population of 360,000 -- largely non-combatant women, children and elderly -- most became victims of the indiscriminate massacre of the atomic bombing. As of now, 75 years later people are still dying from the delayed effects of an atomic bomb considered crude by today?s standard for mass destruction. > > As the 75th anniversary of bombings Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches, this is the very time to solidify our partnerships to achieve nuclear disarmament, for make no mistake: the majority of the world?s people want to live in a world without nuclear weapons. And the majority also want to live in a world where the human rights of all people are celebrated, as we can see now across the globe as citizens rise up to confront systemic racism. Hibakusha understand the sting of discrimination all too well. We join with peaceful people everywhere, demanding change. > > The adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons by 122 UN member states was a moment of great joy, marking the beginning of the end of the most horrific weapons ever made. With each state that signs and ratifies this extraordinary treaty, we move closer to our goal becoming a reality. Seventy-five years after that great crime against humanity we can see the glimmer of a new dawn ? an era of peace built on stability, grounded in human rights, humanitarian law and secured through cooperation, not threats of global annihilation. Raise your voice with me and all Hibakusha who declare now is the time for all nations to join the nuclear ban treaty ? to end the darkness of this era and welcome the sunrise on a new day through the force of law and the will of the people. We now have the opportunity to bring the treaty into force. We now have the opportunity to stop funding nuclear violence instead of funding human needs. We now have the opportunity to stop risking the life of future generations. > > Thank you for taking action and choosing to work with us to make this dream a reality. > > Setsuko Thurlow > > > > READ SETSUKO?S STORY > > > > Why am I receiving this? > > You are receiving this email because you have signed up to news and updates from ICAN. When we contact you, it is to share campaign updates and calls to action, as well as inspiring stories about our activities worldwide. Click here to unsubscribe from this list . For more detailed information on how we use and store your data, please read our Privacy Policy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jul 2 17:27:59 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2020 10:27:59 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Goose Memorial video References: Message-ID: > > https://youtu.be/Zc3AUqexm_E >> >> > From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jul 3 13:19:17 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2020 06:19:17 -0700 Subject: [Peace] The New York Times fabricates Russian murder plot Message-ID: The New York Times fabricates Russian murder plot 3 July 2020 Not since William Randolph Hearst cabled his correspondent in Havana in 1898 with the message, ?You furnish the pictures and I?ll furnish the war,? has a newspaper been so thoroughly identified with an effort to provoke an American war as the New York Times this week. The difference?and there is a colossal one?is that Hearst was fanning the flames for the Spanish-American War, a comparatively minor conflict, the first venture by American imperialism to seize territory overseas, in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The Times today is seeking to whip up a war fever directed against Russia, one that threatens to ignite a third world war fought with nuclear weapons. There is not the slightest factual basis for the series of articles and commentaries published by the Times, beginning last Saturday, claiming that the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, paid bounties to Taliban guerrillas to induce them to attack and kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Not a single soldier out of the 31 Americans who have died in Afghanistan in 2019-2020 has been identified as a victim of the alleged scheme. No witnesses have been brought forward, no evidence produced. The sole foundation of the reports in the Times, since reinforced by similar articles in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, and accounts on cable and network television, are the unsupported, uncorroborated statements of unnamed intelligence officials. These officials give no proof of their claims about the operation of the supposed network of GRU agents?how the money came from Russia to Afghanistan, how the money was distributed to Taliban fighters, what actions the Taliban fighters carried out, what impact these actions had on any American military personnel. Yet six days into this press campaign, there has been no acknowledgement in the ?mainstream? corporate media that there is anything dubious or unsubstantiated about this narrative. Instead, the main focus has been to demand that the Trump administration explain when the president learned of the alleged Russian attack and what he proposes to do about it. The Times reporters spearheading this campaign are not journalists in any real sense of the term. They are conduits, passing on material supplied to them by high-level operatives in the CIA and other intelligence agencies, repackaging it for public consumption and using their status as ?reporters? to provide more credibility than would be given to a press release from Langley, Virginia. In other words, the CIA has provided the plot line, and the newspaper creates the narrative framework to sell it to the American people. Take up the fight for socialism! First Name Last Name Mobile Phone Country Zip I would like to be contacted by the Socialist Equality Party or the WSWS. I acknowledge that the WSWS uses my personal information in accordance with its privacy policy . Submit The Times and individual reporters like David Sanger and Eric Schmitt have a track record. The newspaper played a leading role in helping the Bush administration fabricate its case for war against Iraq in 2002-2003. It was not just the notorious Judith Miller, with her tall tales of aluminum tubes being used to build centrifuges as a step to an Iraqi atomic bomb. There was an entire chorus of falsification, in which Schmitt (January 21, 2001, ?Iraq Rebuilt Bombed Arms Plants, Officials Say?) and Sanger (November 13, 2002, ?U.S. Scoffs at Iraq Claim of No Weapons of Mass Destruction,? and December 6, 2002, ?US Tells Iraq It Must Reveal Weapons Sites?) among many articles, played major roles. In this week?s ?Russian bounties? campaign, Schmitt and Sanger are at it again. A front-page article published Thursday under their joint byline carries the headline, ?Trump?s New Russia Problem: Unread Intelligence and Missing Strategy.? This article is aimed at advancing the claim that Trump was negligent in responding to allegations against Russia, either being too lazy to read the President?s Daily Brief?a summary of world events and spy reports produced by the CIA?or choosing to ignore the report because of his supposed subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The political line of the article is set early on, when the authors claim that ?it doesn?t require a high-level clearance for the government?s most classified information to see that the list of Russian aggressions in recent weeks rivals some of the worst days of the Cold War.? The list is ridiculously thin, including ?cyberattacks on Americans working from home? (no evidence presented) and ?continued concern about new playbooks for Russian actors seeking to influence the November election? (this is a description of the state of mind at the CIA, not of any actual steps taken by Russia). The purpose is to place the current allegations about Russian bounties in the context of the long-running effort to portray Russian President Vladimir Putin as the evil genius and puppet master of world politics. Schmitt, in an article co-authored with Michael Crowley, refers to ?intelligence reports that Russia paid bounties to Taliban-affiliated fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan,? as though this was an established fact. The article cites various unnamed ?former officials? of the Trump and Obama administrations who claim that such an allegation would certainly have been brought to Trump?s attention, and that his failure to take action in response must be seen as negligence. The article suggests that there is ?supporting evidence? for the CIA claims of a Russian bounty plot, citing, among other things, ?detainee interrogations, the recovery of about $500,000 from a Taliban-related target and intercepts of electronic communications showing financial transfers between the Russian military intelligence unit and Afghan intermediaries.? In point of fact, every item on this list represents an assertion by unnamed intelligence sources, not evidence: no actual detainees, cash hoards or electronic intercepts have been produced. Another article by Schmitt, along with three Afghan-based reporters, focuses on the alleged role of an Afghan businessman, Rahmatullah Azizi, a former drug smuggler and US government contractor, in whose home investigators found a cash hoard of half a million in US dollars. Again, ?US intelligence reports? are cited, claiming Azizi was ?a key middleman between the GRU and militants linked to the Taliban.? Again, there is no actual evidence cited, and Azizi himself cannot be found. As for the alleged cash hoard, this suggests more the proceeds of narcotics trafficking than anything else, an enterprise in which Azizi was supposedly engaged. The article asserts that the Russian government organized the bounty scheme as ?payback? for decades of humiliation in Afghanistan at the expense of the United States, although how killing a handful of US soldiers would accomplish such a goal is a mystery. Moreover, the Times also admits, citing an unnamed congressman who participated in a White House briefing on the allegations, that the intelligence briefing did not ?detail any connection to specific US or coalition deaths in Afghanistan,? and that ?gaps remained in the intelligence community?s understanding of the overall program, including its precise motive ?? In other words, the Russian ?bounties? program has no identifiable victims and no credible motive. This makes the unanimity of the media chorus that much more damning a self-indictment. Why is there not a single article or commentary in the corporate media challenging the claims being peddled by the CIA? It is not that these claims are particularly convincing in and of themselves. Far from it. It is the source of the claims that is decisive: if the US intelligence apparatus says it is so, the American media obediently salutes. The real question to be answered about the latest anti-Russian provocation is this: what political considerations are the driving force of this episode of media fabrication? It is no coincidence that the Afghanistan ?bounties? story has surfaced just at the point where the Trump administration is visibly reeling in the face of the twin crises of the coronavirus pandemic and the popular upsurge against police violence. The American ruling class has been deeply shaken by the outraged protests by large interracial crowds, particularly of young people, that have swept virtually every American city and town. And the financial aristocracy is well aware of the deep-seated popular opposition to its drive to force workers back to work under conditions where every large factory, warehouse and office is a potential epicenter for the ongoing resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The response to this crisis by the political and media representatives of the ruling elite is twofold: seeking to split the working class along racial lines and seeking to divert domestic social tensions into a campaign against foreign antagonists, particularly China and Russia. The New York Times acts as a political mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, which is determined to block any mass radicalization of workers and youth. In the event that former Vice President Joe Biden is elected in November and takes office in January 2021, an incoming Democratic administration will carry out policies no less reactionary than those of Trump. The campaign against Trump?s alleged ?dereliction of duty??a phrase used by Biden three times during his Tuesday press conference?is nothing more than a continuation of the campaign by the Democrats to attack Trump from the right, as too ?soft? on Russia and too unwilling to intervene in the Middle East. This began with the anti-Russia campaign that triggered the two-year-long Mueller investigation, continued with the Ukraine phone call that led to impeachment, and now emerges in the form of increasingly vehement demands that the US government ?retaliate? for an entirely fabricated Russian effort to kill American soldiers. Patrick Martin/WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Jul 5 01:31:06 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2020 18:31:06 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: A worthwhile discussion on the annexation, with the Palestinians going forward for a one state solution? References: Message-ID: > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf_JNE066HQ&fbclid=IwAR2MPzWUGj8W59YJzSCoBMfiWo3HopQYMkM_-La4WtqqCvLl00pAfSMDFE8 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jul 8 13:58:29 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2020 06:58:29 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Israel just bombed Iran. How can we stop a war? Code Pink References: <5f049abea5f6a_658112e0f6c6502@asgworker-qmb3-18.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: > > > Last Thursday, Israel exploded a massive bomb at the Iranian Natanz nuclear site. It doesn?t get more dangerous than this and we have to act fast to prevent Israel from starting and dragging the U.S. into war. Join us tomorrow, Wednesday, July 8, for a discussion with NIAC?s Sina Toossi on what?s happening and tell the Senate to act FAST to affirm that TRUMP MAY NOT GO TO WAR WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL. > > > > Last Thursday, Israel bombed Iran. Not only did they attack Iran, but they targeted and hit the Natanz nuclear facility located about 200 miles outside of Tehran. > > It doesn?t get more dangerous than this. Iran could retaliate at any moment and Netanyahu could achieve his goal of dragging the U.S. into another disastrous Middle East war. Act now. Tell the Senate to support Sen. Tom Udall?s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) affirming that Trump may NOT take the U.S. to war with Iran without Congressional approval. > Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 8th at 1:00 PM ET (10 AM Pacific) we will be hosting a webinar discussion with researcher and analyst Sina Toossi of the National Iranian-American Council . Sina and Medea will discuss the situation of Israel attacking Iran right now: why now, what are they trying to accomplish, what?s at risk, and what can we do to deescalate the situation and prevent war. RSVP right now ! > > > The explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility was the third incident of its kind in Iran recently. There was also an explosion near the Iranian Parchin military site in northeast Tehran and a fire at a Tehran medical clinic that killed 19 people. A Middle Eastern intelligence official told the New York Times that Israel was behind the Natanz attack ? Israel has not denied it ? and it is possible that Israel was behind the two other recent explosions as well. Iran says that they have and will soon release the details of what happened at Natanz, but one thing already seems to be clear: despite the COVID-19 pandemic raging throughout the world, Israel seems hell-bent on war. > > Trump (and other U.S. presidents before him) have sent Israel the message that if they go to war ? even a war that they outright provoke ? the massive U.S. war machine will back them. ?If we think for a minute that the Trump administration isn?t ready and willing to go to war, think again,? Senator Udall stated upon introducing his amendment. On June 30, 2020, Brian Hook, the Trump administration?s Special Representative for Iran, affirmed that ?The military option is always on the table.? ?With this kind of continuing saber-rattling,? Udall said, ?We must send a clear message to the president and his administration that initiating war against Iran is beyond the powers this president or any president holds.? > > The Trump administration doesn?t actually have the sole power to go to war. In 1973 Congress passed The War Powers Act to limit the Executive branch?s power to drag the U.S. into an armed conflict. The War Powers Act states that a president can only commit the U.S. military to action abroad through a congressional declaration of war or "a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." > > Without the promise of U.S. military support, Netanyahu may think again about starting a war with Iran. Send a message right now to your Senators? telling them to VOTE YES to include, in the 2021 NDAA, Tom Udall?s amendment to invoke the 1973 War Powers Act to prevent an unconstitutional U.S. war with Iran and join us tomorrow, July 8, at 1 PM ET for a discussion with NIAC?s Sina Toossi . > > Towards peace and diplomacy, > Medea, Ariel, Ann, Angela, Asia, Carley, Caty, Cody, Emily, Jodie, Kelsey, Leonardo, Makena, Mary, Michelle, Nancy, Paki, Teri, and Yousef > > > > > ? 2020 CODEPINK.ORG | Created with NationBuilder > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jul 10 17:49:30 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 10:49:30 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: This is where we are now in Africa........... References: Message-ID: > > It?s too bad no one really cares, I like to think some of us tried to enlighten?? > French-backed security forces in the Sahel guilty of mass extrajudicial executions > By Will Morrow > 10 July 2020 > A Human Rights Watch report published yesterday provides evidence that Burkina Faso troops are carrying out mass extrajudicial executions of civilians as part of operations in the French-led war in the Sahel. > The report is another exposure of the Franco-German-led war in Mali and the Sahel as a neo-colonial intervention whose aim is the subjugation of the resource-rich and geo-strategically critical region and its population. It follows a series of reports documenting similar atrocities by troops in Niger and Mali, which along with Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania make up the G5 force fighting alongside the European-led intervention. It also comes as the European powers are escalating their occupation, which is being cynically waged under the banner of combating ?terrorism? and protecting human rights. > The report is based on interviews with 23 people from the northern town of Djibo, 45 kilometers from the border with Mali, including farmers, traders, civil servants and aid workers. All spoke anonymously for fear of government reprisals. In recent months, common graves have been uncovered in Djibo containing the bodies of at least 180 people, all men, killed in that town alone. All the witnesses said they believed the murders were committed by security forces, after the victims had been arrested. > > Soldiers from Burkina Faso before deployment to an exercise in Mali (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) > The executions reportedly spanned from November 2019 to June 2020. The victims? bodies were left under roadways and bridges, fields and vacant lots. Most were found with their hands bound tightly behind their back and blindfolded, shot in the head. One farmer told HRW, ?At night, so many times I?d hear the sound of vehicles and then, bam! bam! bam! And the next morning we?d see or hear of bodies found in this place or that.? > The residents reported that in most cases the bodies were left out in the open for days or weeks. Anyone accused of harboring sympathy for the Islamist ISIS forces fighting against the government could be killed. ?People are just too terrified that if they claim the body of a man accused of being a terrorist, they too will be taken and end up dead,? one resident said. > The report includes specific details of mass executions. One man said: ?I discovered the bodies of nine people some meters off the road, one of whom was my 23-year-old nephew. They?d been arrested the day before. A friend called around 11:00 a.m. saying there was trouble in the market, that my boy had been arrested. I went to the market immediately and saw all nine, tied up and face down on the ground. Four gendarmes led them into their vehicle and took them away. That night around 8:00 p.m. I heard shots near the Djibo dam, and in the morning saw them in the bush, hands tied, riddled with bullets? We were too afraid to even bury them ? we had to watch my nephew turn into a skeleton. He was not laid to rest until the mass burial in March, with dozens of others, but it was hardly a funeral and my boy was not a jihadist.? > In March and April, the residents received permission to bury the bodies, and were ?strictly forbidden? from taking photographs of the mass graves. ?No one would dare do that because the FDS [Defense and Security Forces] was watching,? a resident said. > ?I didn?t recognize any of them,? one resident said, ?but several of those watching the burial later told me they?d recognized their father, brother, or son ? that he?d been missing since being arrested by the soldiers in Djibo or in their village?weeks or months earlier. They didn?t say anything during the burial though ? out of fear that they too would be arrested.? > > > > Take up the fight for socialism! > First Name > > Last Name > > Mobile Phone > > Country > > Zip > > I would like to be contacted by the Socialist Equality Party or the WSWS. I acknowledge that the WSWS uses my personal information in accordance with its privacy policy . > Submit > Most of those killed by state forces belong to the ethnic Peuhl, or Fullani, community, which are predominately Muslim. Because of this, they are accused of being more sympathetic to recruiters for ISIS. > It is increasingly clear that the strategy of the European powers is based on the stoking of ethnic conflict between the Fulani and Dogons. The different ethnicities have long existed peacefully side by side in the same towns throughout the region. Since the launching of the war in Mali by France in August, 2014, however, a series of increasingly horrific ethnic massacres have taken place. Local security forces are widely reported to have armed and supported Dogon militia as part of the war against ISIS, and turned a blind eye to sectarian massacres. > In central Mali alone, HRW claims that it has documented the killing of 800 civilians in dozens of large-scale massacres of Peuhl citizens, and numerous killings of civilians by armed Peuhl groups and Islamists. > On February 14, 2020, a Dogon militia killed 35 villagers in the town of Ogossagou, the same location of a massacre of more than 150 people a year before, on March 23, 2019. It occurred within hours of a Malian security detail departing that had been stationed there since the previous year?s massacre. > The government has inexplicably claimed that the decision to stop protection of the village was a ?tactical error.? According to a report in May by HRW, they withdrew without providing any explanation to the town?s inhabitants. Within hours villagers began to see a build-up of armed men in the Dogon neighborhood. They made calls to high-level Malian authorities, including government ministers, and to the UN peacekeeping mission, requesting protection. > ?Among those they said they contacted were security force personnel?including gendarme and army personnel?based in Bankass, just 15 kilometers away,? the report stated. In addition, ?a witness who had attended a meeting of high-level government and MINUSMA officials said ? three ministers, including the defense and security ministers, had been contacted in the early evening of February 13 to raise the alarm about the likelihood of an attack.? The massacre was allowed to occur. > For European imperialism, such sectarian killings serve not only to terrorize the local population, but to provide a ?human rights? rationale for maintaining a permanent occupation of the region. The Sahel contains not only contain uranium deposits that supply France for its energy production. The region is situated in a geographically important area of western Africa where European imperialism is seeking to hold back growing economic and diplomatic activity influence of China. > With criminal recklessness, French and German imperialism are following the strategy pursued by United States in its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, which destroyed entire societies and led to the deaths of over one million people and the forced emigration of tens of millions. > In a war-mongering July 6 column published in Le Monde, the German Social Democratic Party deputy Nils Schmid declared that ?contrary to the anti-jihadist operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by the United States, France and Germany carry the principal responsibility for what is happening in the Sahel. We therefore cannot abdicate responsibility to the Americans or pull out our troops free of charge!? > Indeed, France and Germany are using the occupation of the Sahel as a testing ground for the methods developed by the United States in its decades-long ?war on terror? in the Middle East. France is already operating armed drones from Niger for targeted assassinations. Germany is planning to deploy drones to the region. French President Emmanuel Macron travelled to Mauritania on June 30 to an international summit with the G5 leaders to announce a further intensification of the intervention and even closer collaboration with the G5. > The latest HRW report has received scant coverage in the French-language media and no comment from the French government. One can only imagine the wall-to-wall media editorials, government denunciations, and threats of sanctions that would follow if such documented atrocities were committed by militaries working with the armies of Iran, China or Russia. > WSWS.ORG > Share this article: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Jul 10 19:05:41 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 14:05:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right Message-ID: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Jul 10 21:08:51 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 16:08:51 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Demonstration at politicians' homes tomorrow -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_wwjCTTq4U -- peoplesparty.org has info Message-ID: See Nick Brana's interview with Jimmy Dore: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_wwjCTTq4U Information on tomorrow's protests: https://peoplesparty.org/ https://archive.md/utl0b (a Javascript-free snapshot) Tomorrow, 2020-07-11, there are a series of marches to demand a "People's Stimulus" to demand money and services for people. Here's the list of demands Brana said in the aforementioned interview: - Medicare for All - A Universal Basic Income - Cancelling rent & mortgage payments through the duration of the crisis - Keeping people on payroll - Defunding police and moving those funds back to social services - Cancelling debt payments like student debt and credit card debt According to Jimmy Dore in the interview: - 1 in 4 New York City tenants haven't paid rent since March. - 32% of US families missed July's house payments. - 23,000,000 in the United States face eviction by September. - The CARES Act enacted a 120-day eviction moratorium which ends on July 25th (which means delaying paying rent until after the moratorium, not forgiving for unpaid rent) - The boost to unemployment benefits also stops at the end of the month (2020-07-31) - There are 20,000,000 people out of work. - Nancy Pelosi's Democrats (including "The Squad") and Sens. Sanders & Warren voted for the CARES Act which added trillions to the economy (most of which has already gone to the wealthiest businesses and wealthiest people) and the banks have the power to add unlimited more money. -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jul 10 21:37:35 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 14:37:35 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Carl I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. > On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: > > https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Jul 10 23:09:51 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 18:09:51 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE > On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > > Carl > > I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. > > Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. > > Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. > > Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. > > I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. > > > >> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >> >> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace mailing list >> Peace at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jul 10 23:19:51 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 16:19:51 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? JULY 10, 2020 Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate ? is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas. The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.? The letter elaborates : ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration of diverse and competing views. The letter includes : + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our norms of open debate and toleration.? + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.? + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric that has taken over the American right. Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system. Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place. I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events. We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better. > On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook wrote: > > I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? > > I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. > > But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. > > Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE > > >> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >> >> Carl >> >> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. >> >> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. >> >> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. >> >> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. >> >> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. >> >> >> >>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>> >>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace mailing list >>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> > From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Jul 10 23:28:34 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 18:28:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: Yeah, I read DiMaggio?s piece in CP this morning. CP has published him fairly often, but I never particularly liked his stuff. But ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them,? right? In this case, if I have to choose between his ideas and those of the Harper?s letter, I?ll take the latter. That?s what we should be talking about. Where, specifically do you think DiMaggio is right and the letter is wrong? > On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > > True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? > > JULY 10, 2020 > Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Facebook Twitter Reddit Email > > Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair > Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate ? is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. > > The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas. > > The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.? The letter elaborates : > > ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? > > Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? > > One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. > > Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration of diverse and competing views. The letter includes : > > + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our norms of open debate and toleration.? > > + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? > > + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.? > > + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? > > All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. > > The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. > > I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric that has taken over the American right. > > Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system. > > Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. > > The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. > > In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. > > Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place. > > I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events. > > We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >> >> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? >> >> I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. >> >> But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. >> >> Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE >> >> >>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >>> >>> Carl >>> >>> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. >>> >>> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. >>> >>> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. >>> >>> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. >>> >>> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>>> >>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace mailing list >>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>> >> > From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jul 10 23:50:40 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 16:50:40 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: I never said the letter was ?wrong,? but Di Maggio?s statements taken out of context are those I tend to agree. I?m not an academic, but I didn?t like the letter as much as I should. My revulsion at those promoting it, not all, I like Chomsky, is related to the liberal assumption that Di Maggio refers to below: ? I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas.? "One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas.? "The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions.? "Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented > through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system.? "Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged.? "The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job.? "In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research.? "Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place.? "I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events.? "We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:28, C. G. Estabrook wrote: > > > Yeah, I read DiMaggio?s piece in CP this morning. CP has published him fairly often, but I never particularly liked his stuff. > > But ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them,? right? > > In this case, if I have to choose between his ideas and those of the Harper?s letter, I?ll take the latter. > > That?s what we should be talking about. > > Where, specifically do you think DiMaggio is right and the letter is wrong? > > >> On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >> >> True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? >> >> JULY 10, 2020 >> Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Facebook Twitter Reddit Email >> >> Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair >> Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate ? is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. >> >> The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas. >> >> The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.? The letter elaborates : >> >> ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? >> >> Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? >> >> One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. >> >> Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration of diverse and competing views. The letter includes : >> >> + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our norms of open debate and toleration.? >> >> + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? >> >> + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.? >> >> + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? >> >> All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. >> >> The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. >> >> I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric that has taken over the American right. >> >> Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system. >> >> Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. >> >> The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. >> >> In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. >> >> Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place. >> >> I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events. >> >> We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >>> >>> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? >>> >>> I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. >>> >>> But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. >>> >>> Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE >>> >>> >>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >>>> >>>> Carl >>>> >>>> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. >>>> >>>> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. >>>> >>>> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. >>>> >>>> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. >>>> >>>> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>>>> >>>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Peace mailing list >>>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>>> >>> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Jul 11 00:20:49 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 19:20:49 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: Much of what DiMaggio says is a bodily assault on a deceased equine. It's as if he?s just discovered the situation, and is shocked that it?s affected his career so much. Surely he can?t just be discovering that "U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? Who does? Best, CGE > On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:50 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > > I never said the letter was ?wrong,? but Di Maggio?s statements taken out of context are those I tend to agree. I?m not an academic, but I didn?t like the letter as much as I should. My revulsion at those promoting it, not all, I like Chomsky, is related to the liberal assumption that Di Maggio refers to below: > > ? I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas.? > > "One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas.? > > "The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions.? > > "Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system.? > > "Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged.? > > "The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job.? > > "In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research.? > > "Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place.? > > "I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events.? > > "We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? > > > On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:28, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >> >> Yeah, I read DiMaggio?s piece in CP this morning. CP has published him fairly often, but I never particularly liked his stuff. >> >> But ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them,? right? >> >> In this case, if I have to choose between his ideas and those of the Harper?s letter, I?ll take the latter. >> >> That?s what we should be talking about. >> >> Where, specifically do you think DiMaggio is right and the letter is wrong? >> >> >>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >>> >>> True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? >>> >>> JULY 10, 2020 >>> Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Facebook Twitter Reddit Email >>> >>> Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair >>> Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate ? is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. >>> >>> The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas. >>> >>> The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.? The letter elaborates : >>> >>> ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? >>> >>> Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? >>> >>> One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. >>> >>> Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration of diverse and competing views. The letter includes : >>> >>> + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our norms of open debate and toleration.? >>> >>> + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? >>> >>> + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.? >>> >>> + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? >>> >>> All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. >>> >>> The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. >>> >>> I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric that has taken over the American right. >>> >>> Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system. >>> >>> Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. >>> >>> The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. >>> >>> In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. >>> >>> Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place. >>> >>> I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events. >>> >>> We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >>>> >>>> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? >>>> >>>> I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. >>>> >>>> But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. >>>> >>>> Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Carl >>>>> >>>>> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. >>>>> >>>>> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. >>>>> >>>>> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. >>>>> >>>>> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. >>>>> >>>>> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ >>>>>> >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> Peace mailing list >>>>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>>>> >>>> >>> >> > From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Jul 11 00:34:26 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 17:34:26 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: Well Carl, I?m not familiar with his work, and only bothered to read this article as it is related to my statement regarding ?the letter." If he appears shocked I missed it. Everything you say below appears to agree with his and my assessment of the letter. Glad we agree. "U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? > On Jul 10, 2020, at 17:20, C. G. Estabrook wrote: > > Much of what DiMaggio says is a bodily assault on a deceased equine. > > It's as if he?s just discovered the situation, and is shocked that it?s affected his career so much. > > Surely he can?t just be discovering that "U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? > > Who does? > > Best, CGE > > >> On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:50 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >> >> I never said the letter was ?wrong,? but Di Maggio?s statements taken out of context are those I tend to agree. I?m not an academic, but I didn?t like the letter as much as I should. My revulsion at those promoting it, not all, I like Chomsky, is related to the liberal assumption that Di Maggio refers to below: >> >> ? I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas.? >> >> "One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas.? >> >> "The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions.? >> >> "Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system.? >> >> "Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged.? >> >> "The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job.? >> >> "In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research.? >> >> "Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place.? >> >> "I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events.? >> >> "We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? >> >> >> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:28, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >>> >>> Yeah, I read DiMaggio?s piece in CP this morning. CP has published him fairly often, but I never particularly liked his stuff. >>> >>> But ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them,? right? >>> >>> In this case, if I have to choose between his ideas and those of the Harper?s letter, I?ll take the latter. >>> >>> That?s what we should be talking about. >>> >>> Where, specifically do you think DiMaggio is right and the letter is wrong? >>> >>> >>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >>>> >>>> True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? >>>> >>>> JULY 10, 2020 >>>> Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Facebook Twitter Reddit Email >>>> >>>> Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair >>>> Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate ? is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. >>>> >>>> The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas. >>>> >>>> The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.? The letter elaborates : >>>> >>>> ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? >>>> >>>> Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? >>>> >>>> One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. >>>> >>>> Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration of diverse and competing views. The letter includes : >>>> >>>> + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our norms of open debate and toleration.? >>>> >>>> + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? >>>> >>>> + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.? >>>> >>>> + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? >>>> >>>> All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. >>>> >>>> The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. >>>> >>>> I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric that has taken over the American right. >>>> >>>> Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system. >>>> >>>> Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. >>>> >>>> The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. >>>> >>>> In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. >>>> >>>> Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place. >>>> >>>> I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events. >>>> >>>> We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? >>>>> >>>>> I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. >>>>> >>>>> But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. >>>>> >>>>> Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Carl >>>>>> >>>>>> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. >>>>>> >>>>>> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. >>>>>> >>>>>> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. >>>>>> >>>>>> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. >>>>>> >>>>>> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ >>>>>>> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>>> Peace mailing list >>>>>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Sat Jul 11 01:26:27 2020 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 20:26:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 7:21 PM C. G. Estabrook via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: Much of what DiMaggio says is a bodily assault on a deceased equine. > What Carl means here is that DiMaggio is beating a dead horse. > It's as if he?s just discovered the situation, and is shocked that it?s > affected his career so much. > > Surely he can?t just be discovering that "U.S. media and educational > institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing > views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we > stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of > ideas, the better.? > > Who does? > Who engages in this pretense about the U.S. media and educational instititutions being committed to the free exploration of competing views? That the 'landscape' represents a free and open exchange of ideas? Practically everyone. Including, of course, the media, and virtually everyone who makes his living in academia. > Best, CGE > > > > On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:50 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > > > > I never said the letter was ?wrong,? but Di Maggio?s statements taken > out of context are those I tend to agree. I?m not an academic, but I didn?t > like the letter as much as I should. My revulsion at those promoting it, > not all, I like Chomsky, is related to the liberal assumption that Di > Maggio refers to below: > > > > ? I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is > being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to > empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of > ideas.? > > > > "One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it > misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political > discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and > untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to > serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting > notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about > exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality > to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate > capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who > have contempt for the free exchange of ideas.? > > > > "The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds > great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort > of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, > is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the > respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, > to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a > reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and > economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being > worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are > sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical > content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and > reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to > demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce > a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even > progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed > discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and > are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions.? > > > > "Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, > available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented < > https://global.oup.com/academic/product/news-on-the-right-9780190913533?cc=us&lang=en&> > through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion > polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s > virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the > U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. > The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to > those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly > reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to > progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate > ?experience?-oriented schooling system.? > > > > "Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of > academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault > by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political > engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever > lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back > decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. > Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, > jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while > elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a > discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this > process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active > citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to > be regularly politically engaged.? > > > > "The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory > tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which > academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in > the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer > review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are > filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to > challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, > and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find > academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad > school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their > scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job.? > > > > "In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such > thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to > academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in > elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges > of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, > let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research > that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false > consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social > science disciplines express interest in this sort of research.? > > > > "Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, > media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these > timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking > engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. > But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever > in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for > understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing > high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal > corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, > it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus > attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other > reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited > from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t > dream of receiving in the first place.? > > > > "I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling > university resources for their own personal publicity and > self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports > gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. > The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? > right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous > speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting > arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student > protests that are mobilized against these campus events.? > > > > "We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel > culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American > society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what > little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and > higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and > critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and > educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration > of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. > The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open > exchange of ideas, the better.? > > > > > > On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:28, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: > >> > >> Yeah, I read DiMaggio?s piece in CP this morning. CP has published him > fairly often, but I never particularly liked his stuff. > >> > >> But ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them,? > right? > >> > >> In this case, if I have to choose between his ideas and those of the > Harper?s letter, I?ll take the latter. > >> > >> That?s what we should be talking about. > >> > >> Where, specifically do you think DiMaggio is right and the letter is > wrong? > >> > >> > >>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > >>> > >>> True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my > instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? > >>> > >>> JULY 10, 2020 > >>> Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American > Liberalism < > https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/10/free-speech-fantasies-the-harpers-letter-and-the-myth-of-american-liberalism/>by > ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Facebook > Twitter < > https://www.counterpunch.org/#twitter>Reddit < > https://www.counterpunch.org/#reddit>Email < > https://www.counterpunch.org/#email> < > https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/10/free-speech-fantasies-the-harpers-letter-and-the-myth-of-american-liberalism/print/ > > > >>> > >>> Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair > >>> Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate < > https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/>? is making its > rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel > culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black > Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and > perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the > free exploration of competing viewpoints. > >>> > >>> The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, > including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, > liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as > Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the > letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no > interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for > condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which > ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary > American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a > free exploration of ideas. > >>> > >>> The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in > principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of > ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to > ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open > exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free > exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a > liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and > ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding > moral certainty.? The letter elaborates < > https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/>: > >>> > >>> ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe > retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. > More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage > control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of > considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; > books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from > writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of > literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed > academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are > sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each > particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries > of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? > >>> > >>> Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open > dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably > hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic > participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and > persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? > >>> > >>> One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it > misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political > discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and > untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to > serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting > notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about > exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality > to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate > capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who > have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. > >>> > >>> Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that > U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration > of diverse and competing views. The letter includes < > https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/>: > >>> > >>> + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our > norms of open debate and toleration.? > >>> > >>> + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the > lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? > >>> > >>> + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by > institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic > counter-speech from all quarters.? > >>> > >>> + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement > without dire professional consequences.? > >>> > >>> All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They > obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are > routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social > discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. > >>> > >>> The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds > great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort > of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, > is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the > respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, > to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a > reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and > economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being > worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are > sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical > content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and > reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to > demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce > a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even > progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed > discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and > are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. > >>> > >>> I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the > mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those > from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and > mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited > space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this > marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those > seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive > institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of > repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of > unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in > American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric > that has taken over the American right. > >>> > >>> Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, > available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented < > https://global.oup.com/academic/product/news-on-the-right-9780190913533?cc=us&lang=en&> > through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion > polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s > virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the > U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. > The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to > those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly > reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to > progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate > ?experience?-oriented schooling system. > >>> > >>> Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion > of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic > assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts > political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? > Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was > rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic > ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing > in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one > cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research > over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In > this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing > active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral > responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. > >>> > >>> The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory > tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which > academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in > the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer > review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are > filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to > challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, > and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find > academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad > school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their > scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. > >>> > >>> In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such > thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to > academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in > elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges > of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, > let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research > that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false > consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social > science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. > >>> > >>> Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, > media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these > timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking > engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. > But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever > in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for > understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing > high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal > corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, > it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus > attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other > reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited > from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t > dream of receiving in the first place. > >>> > >>> I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate > dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and > self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports > gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. > The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? > right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous > speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting > arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student > protests that are mobilized against these campus events. > >>> > >>> We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel > culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American > society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what > little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and > higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and > critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and > educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration > of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. > The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open > exchange of ideas, the better. > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the > people who believe in them.? > >>>> > >>>> I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people > you name from the list of signers. > >>>> > >>>> But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s > more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. > >>>> > >>>> Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE > >>>> > >>>> > >>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: > >>>>> > >>>>> Carl > >>>>> > >>>>> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly > during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication > offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent > it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only > much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however > make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and > propaganda, during the Obama Administration. > >>>>> > >>>>> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, > Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today > with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of > those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. > >>>>> > >>>>> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the > ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who > the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing > everything in the area, a very large area. > >>>>> > >>>>> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, > represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color > revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington > Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. > >>>>> > >>>>> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his > specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace < > peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > >>>>>> > >>>>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ > >>>>>> > >>>>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>>>> Peace mailing list > >>>>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net > >>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > >>>>> > >>>> > >>> > >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Jul 11 01:39:40 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2020 18:39:40 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Read the 'Harper's letter': it's right In-Reply-To: References: <003D642B-28C7-4F0A-B04C-C7947B676D13@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: John, I know what Carl means by ?deceased equine.? But since when did we stop beating the drums of truth. Correction on my first communique: I referred to ?fly zone,? I meant to say ?no fly zone.? > On Jul 10, 2020, at 18:26, John W. wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 7:21 PM C. G. Estabrook via Peace > wrote: > > Much of what DiMaggio says is a bodily assault on a deceased equine. > > What Carl means here is that DiMaggio is beating a dead horse. > > > It's as if he?s just discovered the situation, and is shocked that it?s affected his career so much. > > Surely he can?t just be discovering that "U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? > > Who does? > > Who engages in this pretense about the U.S. media and educational instititutions being committed to the free exploration of competing views? That the 'landscape' represents a free and open exchange of ideas? Practically everyone. Including, of course, the media, and virtually everyone who makes his living in academia. > > > Best, CGE > > > > On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:50 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: > > > > I never said the letter was ?wrong,? but Di Maggio?s statements taken out of context are those I tend to agree. I?m not an academic, but I didn?t like the letter as much as I should. My revulsion at those promoting it, not all, I like Chomsky, is related to the liberal assumption that Di Maggio refers to below: > > > > ? I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas.? > > > > "One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas.? > > > > "The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions.? > > > > "Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented > through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system.? > > > > "Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged.? > > > > "The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job.? > > > > "In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research.? > > > > "Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place.? > > > > "I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events.? > > > > "We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better.? > > > > > > On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:28, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: > >> > >> Yeah, I read DiMaggio?s piece in CP this morning. CP has published him fairly often, but I never particularly liked his stuff. > >> > >> But ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them,? right? > >> > >> In this case, if I have to choose between his ideas and those of the Harper?s letter, I?ll take the latter. > >> > >> That?s what we should be talking about. > >> > >> Where, specifically do you think DiMaggio is right and the letter is wrong? > >> > >> > >>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:19 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: > >>> > >>> True, but look what I just came across: An article supporting my instincts of aversion in reference to the ?Letter.? > >>> > >>> JULY 10, 2020 > >>> Free Speech Fantasies: the Harper?s Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism >by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO >Facebook >Twitter >Reddit >Email > > > >>> > >>> Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair > >>> Harper?s Magazine?s July 7th ?Letter on Justice and Open Debate >? is making its rounds in popular political discourse, and takes aim at the ?PC? ?cancel culture? we are told is being fueled by the most recent round of Black Lives Matter protests. This cancel culture, we are warned, is quickly and perniciously taking over American discourse, and will severely limit the free exploration of competing viewpoints. > >>> > >>> The Harper?s letter signatories run across the ideological spectrum, including prominent conservatives such as David Brooks and J.K. Rowling, liberals such as Mark Lilla and Sean Willentz, and progressives such as Noam Chomsky and Todd Gitlin. I have no doubt that the supporters of the letter are well meaning in their support for free speech. And I have no interest in singling out any one person or group of signatories for condemnation. Rather, I think it?s warranted to focus on the ways in which ?free speech? is being weaponized in this case, and in contemporary American discourse, to empower reactionary voices, under the fa?ade of a free exploration of ideas. > >>> > >>> The ideas established in the Harper?s letter sound just fine in principle, and when examined in a vacuum. The supporters embrace norms of ?open debate? and ?toleration of differences,? and opposition to ?dogma[s],? ?coercion,? and ?intolerant climate[s]? that stifle open exploration of competing views. The letter?s supporters celebrate ?the free exchange of information and ideas,? which they deem ?the lifeblood of a liberal society,? contrary to a rising ?vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.? The letter elaborates >: > >>> > >>> ?But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.? > >>> > >>> Appealing to Americans? commitment to civic responsibility for open dialogue, the Harper?s letter warns, ?restriction of debate? ?invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? > >>> > >>> One of the main problems with this sort of lofty rhetoric is that it misrepresents the severely deficient reality of American political discourse. We live in a period when the rise of neoliberal capitalism and untrammeled corporate power have cheapened ?public? political discourse to serve the interests of plutocratic wealth and power, while assaulting notions of the common good and the public health. Idealistic rhetoric about exploring diverse views falls flat, and is a mischaracterization of reality to the deficiencies in U.S. political discourse under neoliberal corporate capitalism, when debates are perverted by political and economic elites who have contempt for the free exchange of ideas. > >>> > >>> Numerous passages in the Harper?s letter create the impression that U.S. political discourse is characterized by a vibrant and open exploration of diverse and competing views. The letter includes >: > >>> > >>> + A lament that the emerging ?cancel culture? threatens to ?weaken our norms of open debate and toleration.? > >>> > >>> + The claim that the ?free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.? > >>> > >>> + The assertion that American discourse is characterized by institutions that ?uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.? > >>> > >>> + The call ?to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? > >>> > >>> All of these claims are romanticizations of American life. They obscure the reality that progressive left and radical dissident views are routinely blacklisted from ?mainstream? political, economic, and social discourse by the media and by mainstream academic institutions. > >>> > >>> The ?let?s engage in a diversity of competing views? position sounds great until one realizes that we do not, and have never lived in, that sort of pluralistic democracy. We live in a political culture that, on its face, is committed to free speech protections for all, in which through the respectful exchange of ideas, we arrive at a better understanding of truth, to the benefit of all. But we don?t really live in that society. Ours is a reactionary culture, which celebrates ideas that service political and economic power centers. In this society, views that are elevated to being worthy of discussion include milquetoast liberal values that are sympathetic (or at least not antagonistic) to corporate power, apolitical content that?s aimed at mindless entertainment and political diversion, and reactionary authoritarian views that border on fascistic, but are vital to demonizing immigrants, people of color, and other minorities, and reinforce a white patriarchal corporate power structure. Radical lefties, or even progressive-leftists, need not apply to be included in this circumscribed discourse. Their views are routinely blacklisted from the mass media, and are increasingly marginalized in higher educational institutions. > >>> > >>> I don?t draw these conclusions lightly. My understanding of how the mass media operates is based on extensive personal experiences, and those from countless left intellectuals I know. Many of us have struggled (and mostly failed) to break into ?mainstream? discourse because of the limited space in corporate news devoted to marginalized perspectives. With this marginalization comes the near erasure of critical views, including those seeking to spotlight record (and rising) economic inequality, repressive institutions that reinforce racial, gender and transphobic systems of repression, the corporate ecocidal assault on the environment, the rise of unbridled corporate power and plutocracy, the rising authoritarianism in American politics, and the increasingly reactionary and fascistic rhetoric that has taken over the American right. > >>> > >>> Despite complaints about a pervasive liberal bias in higher education, available evidence reveals the opposite. As I?ve documented > through my own comprehensive analysis of hundreds of national opinion polling questions on Americans? political and economic values, there?s virtually no empirical evidence to suggest that increased education in the U.S. is associated with increased likelihood of holding liberal attitudes. The reason for this non-link between education and liberalism is obvious to those leftists who have struggled to carve out a space in the increasingly reactionary American university: there?s very little commitment to progressive or leftist values in the modern corporate collegiate ?experience?-oriented schooling system. > >>> > >>> Reflecting on my own experiences within this system, the very notion of academics serving as public intellectuals has been under systematic assault by the rise of a ?professionalization? culture that depicts political engagement as ?biased,? ?unprofessional,? and ?unacceptable.? Whatever lingering commitment to higher education as a public good was rolled back decades ago with the rise of corporatized academic ?professional? norms. Scholars are now primarily concerned with publishing in esoteric, jargon-laden journals that no one reads, and almost no one cites, while elevating a discussion of the methods of how one does research over a discussion of the political and social significance of our work. In this process, there?s been a suppression of any commitment to producing active citizens who see themselves as having an ethical or moral responsibility to be regularly politically engaged. > >>> > >>> The reactionary ?professionalization? that?s celebrated in the ivory tower is relentlessly promoted at every step of the process through which academics develop and are socialized: in the graduate school experience, in the job hiring, tenure, and promotion processes, and in the process of peer review for academic publications. Those who don?t get with the program are filtered out at some point in this process. Very few who are committed to challenging professionalized academic norms make it through PhD programs, and fewer still obtain tenure-track jobs and tenure. It is a rare to find academics who learn how to effectively hide their political values in grad school, and who then actively draw on those same values in their scholarship once they?ve secured an academic job. > >>> > >>> In my more than two decades in higher ed, I can say there?s no such thing as a fair hearing for the progressive-radical left when it comes to academic publishing. Thinking of my own research, I see zero interest in elite academic publishing houses ? the Oxfords, Princetons, and Cambridges of the world ? in making space for openly leftist frameworks of analysis, let alone for the sort of applied Gramscian and Marxian empirical research that I do on media propaganda, hegemony, indoctrination, and mass false consciousness. Neither do any of the reputable journals in most social science disciplines express interest in this sort of research. > >>> > >>> Considering the research I do focuses on social movement protests, media propaganda/fake news, and inequality studies, one might think these timely topics would draw a large number of requests for university speaking engagements. These are, after all, defining political issues of our time. But this isn?t at all the case. The academy remains as reactionary as ever in terms of sidelining and blacklisting leftist ideas and frameworks for understanding the world. There?s little interest in prioritizing high-profile campus speaking events for such topics in the neoliberal corporate academy. Considering the utter contempt for such scholarship, it?s difficult for me to focus my limited time and energy lamenting campus attacks on authoritarians like Milo Yiannopoulos, or whatever other reactionary pseudo-intellectual flavor of the week who has been disinvited from paid speaking engagements that I and other leftist scholars couldn?t dream of receiving in the first place. > >>> > >>> I won?t shed a tear for reactionaries who seek to appropriate dwindling university resources for their own personal publicity and self-aggrandizement, considering that their ideology actively supports gutting the very institutions that they so shamelessly take advantage of. The reality of the matter is that there?s no First Amendment ?free speech? right to be invited to numerous campus engagements, to be paid a generous speaking fee, or to have campus security resources devoted to protecting arch-reactionary authoritarian speakers in light of the large student protests that are mobilized against these campus events. > >>> > >>> We should recognize that the recent wave of laments against PC ?cancel culture? from the right reinforce a specific power dynamic in American society. It is one in which reactionaries have initiated an assault on what little remains of independent and critical thinking within the media and higher ed. They have done so by draping their contempt for free and critical inquiry in the rhetoric of ?free speech.? But U.S. media and educational institutions have never been committed to the free exploration of competing views, at least not for those who question corporate power. The sooner we stop pretending this landscape represents a free and open exchange of ideas, the better. > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 16:09, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> I used to say on News from Neptune, ?Ideas aren?t responsible for the people who believe in them.? > >>>> > >>>> I think that?s true - and I don?t disagree with you about the people you name from the list of signers. > >>>> > >>>> But the important thing is what the letter says. And I think it?s more or less right. That?s what we should be debating. > >>>> > >>>> Hope you?re keeping well in the current craziness. ?CGE > >>>> > >>>> > >>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 4:37 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: > >>>>> > >>>>> Carl > >>>>> > >>>>> I?m very fond of Harpers, given I read their publications monthly during the late sixty?s and seventy?s, they were the one publication offering sanity at the time, and still do. However, this letter, excellent it is, nonetheless has signatories that are as duplicitous as Trump, only much more professional, polished and knowledgable. That does not however make them any less guilty of the crimes of war they supported with lies and propaganda, during the Obama Administration. > >>>>> > >>>>> Anne Applebaum, Anne Marie Slaughter, David Frum, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukiyama, the list goes on, all contributed to where we are today with the Trump Administration and certainly would not be on my list of those demanding/urging truth in US institutions or government. > >>>>> > >>>>> Anne Marie Slaughter urged a fly zone over Libya to support the ?rebels,? against Jeremy Scahill?s sound advice, given we didn?t know who the rebels were, they likely are ISIS, and a fly over zone means bombing everything in the area, a very large area. > >>>>> > >>>>> Anne Applebaum, who once deleted you from her website conversation, represented a particularly egregious organization/NGO/ fomenting a color revolution in one of the nations in Africa, now writes for the Washington Post. Sorry, I?m weak on details, given I?m writing from memory. > >>>>> > >>>>> I didn?t mention David Brooks, who sometimes is good given his specialty is ?culture,? but is another one with a hidden agenda. > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>>> On Jul 10, 2020, at 12:05, C. G. Estabrook via Peace > wrote: > >>>>>> > >>>>>> https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ > >>>>>> > >>>>>> _______________________________________________ > >>>>>> Peace mailing list > >>>>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net > >>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > >>>>> > >>>> > >>> > >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Jul 11 18:22:40 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 13:22:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Betrayed by John Roberts References: <68.C0.11954.2920A0F5@emsmta16> Message-ID: <3364634D-B49E-4D64-BE0E-3F46EDFBE1A7@newsfromneptune.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "Alveda King" > Subject: Betrayed by John Roberts > Date: July 11, 2020 at 6:06:06 AM CDT > To: Carl Estabrook > Reply-To: Patriot at americanlibertywire.com > > > > Fellow Supporter of Life: > > The Supreme Court is again overlooking the truth about the harmful impact of legal Abortion. Their recent decision to strike down a Louisiana law that would have required the so-called ?doctors? who performing abortions of these mothers of aborted babies to the hospital if something went wrong is heartless. > > The court's decision, and especially Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.'s heartbreaking decision to stand with the abortion industry, shows us that if we are going to end this barbaric practice once and for all, the fight must come from the people. > > > Please Help Us Today > The courts won't help us. > > My name is Dr. Alveda King, I am the niece of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and I am continuing my family's legacy of justice, on behalf of the soul of our nation by battling the horrors of Abortion. > > I have teamed with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, such as Jon Voight, Stacy Dash, and Steve Guttenberg, to produce a movie about the real story of Roe v Wade. > > If we can educate America about this dark chapter in our nation's history, we can start a wave that will sweep Abortion into history. > > Millions of babies have been aborted since the Roe v Wade decision in 1973, and we intend to stop it. Will you help us educate America about the unborn lives that have been forgotten? > Abortion in America is a true Genocide, and too many people seem clueless. Since I have announced that I was producing a movie on the real history of Roe v Wade, enemies of life have done everything possible to block our production. They have tried to shut down this movie?a few times?they almost succeeded. Yet we are so close to getting the final cut of the film into theaters this Fall. > > We need your help now to get across the finish line. Will you help us finish this movie and educate America about the real story of Abortion in this country? > > The Roe v Wade Film team has come so far in the face of overwhelming adversity. Please help us now in this most critical mission of outreach. > > Your support will allow us to secure theatres to screen our film this Fall and save countless unborn lives. > > We can change hearts, minds, and even laws to save countless generations of unborn children. Pitch in today to change the course of history: just click one of the links below. > > >?>?>?CLICK HERE TO CHIP IN $10 > >?>?>?CLICK HERE TO CHIP IN $25 > >?>?>?CLICK HERE TO CHIP IN $50 > >?>?>?CLICK HERE TO CHIP IN $100 > >?>?>?CLICK HERE TO CHIP IN $1,000 OR MORE>>> > ALL GIFTS OF $1,000 OR MORE WILL RECEIVE TWO TICKETS TO OUR RED-CARPET PREMIERE AND EXCLUSIVE AFTER-PARTY, BUT WE APPRECIATE GIFTS IN ANY AMOUNT! > > If our movie helps save just one life, it will all be worth it! > > For the children, > > > > Dr. Alveda King > Executive Producer > Roe v Wade, The Movie > > P.S. Remember, a gift of $1,000 or more secures two tickets for you to the red-carpet premiere of the movie and after-party where you can mingle with our all-star cast and other Hollywood celebrities! But, please also remember that your gift of $100, $50, $25 or $10 will help fund our outreach efforts to spread our message and change hearts and minds to save future generations of precious unborn babies! Donate here. > Please take a minute to read the special message from our sponsor. > Sponsorships like this one help us keep our news service free of charge. The sponsorship above reflects the opinions & representations of the advertiser, & not necessarily the opinion of American Liberty Outreach > This email was sent to: carl at newsfromneptune.com > > ? 2020 American Liberty Outreach > 1200 G St NW Suite 800 Washington, D.C. 20005 > > > Report as Spam > This message was intended for: carl at newsfromneptune.com > You were added to the system October 10, 2019. > For more information click here . Update your preferences > Unsubscribe | Unsubscribe via email > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sat Jul 11 20:49:33 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 15:49:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Suggested AOTA/NFN videos Message-ID: <789a86d3-a4a8-603b-d43a-7d423c0e9818@forestfield.org> Here are some videos I suggested to Jason Liggett for running during AWARE on the Air and News from Neptune timeslots: Grayzone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvPfuBVrrU -- (32m 43s) What does community control of police look like? Jimmy Dore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGczmJQ2H28 -- (12m 21s) "Code Pink Has More Balls Than MSNBC!" on Code Pink's recent activism opposing the US-led Venezuelan coup attempts, Aaron Mat?'s twitter responses to MSNBC's Chris Hayes, and a repeat announcement that Dore is not above being paid handsomely to ditch the integrity he has to pitch neocon propaganda like Hayes. There is some censorship of Dore's language baked into the audio. Glenn Greenwald https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejqYrzEX14E -- (1h 7m) How Congress Maintains Endless War Black Agenda Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0AM_NFtWc -- (49m 24s) Left Lens: Premiere episode with Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley introduce viewers to Black Agenda Report, question neoliberal confidence in Joe Biden's 2020 chances, discuss why community control of the police is so critical to the development of the movement against racist policing, and end with a brief analysis of internationalism and solidarity. Consortium News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq4qQiwL1iA -- (1h 21m 14s) Elizabeth Vos interviews guests on developments in the Ghislane Maxwell case: will she implicate others? What is Maxwell and Epstein's relationship to spying? -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Jul 11 22:36:47 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 22:36:47 +0000 Subject: [Peace] (no subject) Message-ID: Huge hailstorm in Urbana, electricity out. Get Outlook for Android -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sun Jul 12 03:31:52 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 22:31:52 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Suggested AOTA/NFN videos In-Reply-To: <789a86d3-a4a8-603b-d43a-7d423c0e9818@forestfield.org> References: <789a86d3-a4a8-603b-d43a-7d423c0e9818@forestfield.org> Message-ID: <45c34a78-c821-0f98-1d0e-9aca13dda570@forestfield.org> I wrote: > Here are some videos I suggested to Jason Liggett for running during AWARE on the Air > and News from Neptune timeslots: One more to add to the pile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGu1qDQnT70 -- (27m 42s) Chris Hedges interviews Dean Yates, who, 13 years ago, was head of the Reuters bureau in Baghdad when the "Collateral Murder" video (the famous WikiLeaks/Manning video showing the US military committing war crimes against civilians and two Reuters employees) was released. He speaks about that and US military cover up. A transcript should be available on https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/ soon. -J From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sun Jul 12 04:37:07 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 23:37:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: AMAZING: 11-Year-Old Chose Life After Rape, and Now Her Son Is a WWE Superstar References: <1594479986661.9685dc93-d445-4e58-a298-e1e5a106956a@bf10x.hubspotemail.net> Message-ID: <66BBBE18-A756-40A6-8FEE-6BE9CC08A952@newsfromneptune.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Live Action News > Subject: AMAZING: 11-Year-Old Chose Life After Rape, and Now Her Son Is a WWE Superstar > Date: July 11, 2020 at 10:19:56 AM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > Reply-To: info at liveaction.org > > > > > AMAZING: 11-Year-Old Chose Life After Rape, and Now Her Son Is a WWE Superstar > Wrestling fans are undoubtedly familiar with Titus O?Neil. The former football player and WWE superstar has been a fixture on the wrestling circuit for 10 years, and has won several championships. Less familiar for many, though, is the story of his upbringing. O?Neil, whose real name is Thaddeus Bullard, was born to Daria Bullard when she was just 11 years old. Read more > MORE PRO-LIFE NEWS > > > Oldest Abortion Facility in Ohio Closes for Good > Two years ago, Founder?s Women?s Health Center in Columbus, Ohio, closed its doors. That, however, turned out to be just temporary, with the abortion facility shutting down only to handle maintenance and management issues. Now Greater Columbus Right to Life (GCRL) is reporting that the facility is closed permanently. Read more > > Kanye West: Planned Parenthood Is ?White Supremacist? > West announced over Independence Day weekend that he intends to run for president in 2020, and because of this announcement, recently gave what Forbes called ?four rambling hours of interviews.? Amongst remarks that some would label conspiracy theory, West for the second time publicly addressed his views on abortion. Read more > > Awesome: Gucci?s First Model With Down Syndrome Goes Viral > A British teenager with Down syndrome has made history by starring in a Gucci Beauty campaign, which was featured in Italian Vogue. Eighteen-year-old Ellie Goldstein from Essex is the first model with Down syndrome to pose for Gucci, and she has quickly gone viral on social media for this huge accomplishment. Read more > > > Little Sisters of the Poor Win at Supreme Court Against Contraception Mandate > In a 7-2 ruling on Wednesday, The Supreme Court of the United States upheld rules allowing employers to opt-out of paying for birth control in their health care plans based on their religious beliefs. Read more > > Newly Obtained Records Indicate FDA Purchased Organs and Tissue of Aborted Babies > Judicial Watch announced on Tuesday that it has received 165 pages of records from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through a Freedom of Information request and lawsuit showing contracts between the FDA and Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for the purchase of tissue from aborted babies. The watchdog group said the eight contracts, which were dated from 2012 to 2018, requested ?fresh and never frozen? tissue from first and second-trimester aborted babies. Read more > > Actress Alyssa Milano and Others Mislead Public About Murdered Newborns in El Salvador > A war against life is being waged in El Salvador where abortion is illegal. The Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood are both helping to fund the effort to legalize abortion in the pro-life nation, but to do so, they are building a case built on lies and on the bodies of murdered newborns. Read more > > Husband ?Crushed? After Planned Parenthood Worker Convinces Wife to Abort Without His Knowledge > The deception could have ended the marriage. Planned Parenthood showed no concern about the most important relationship in this woman?s life. The father was given no say in the decision. Instead, his wife was pressured to abort to benefit him, even though it was not what he wanted. Pro-abortion activists claim that the father has no say in abortion, even if he is married to the woman. Many men suffer emotionally due to abortion, yet abortion advocates mock men who feel post-abortion grief. Read more > > Planned Parenthood Employees Describe Corporation?s ?Systemic Racism? and ?White Supremacy? Problem > Planned Parenthood?s century of racist, eugenicist history has been relatively ignored by members of the media, Hollywood, and political allies. These elites have, at times, lectured the public that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her board members (including a Ku Klux Klan leader), who started the infamous ?Negro Project? and recommended that parents obtain licenses to bear children, were simply products of their time. Yet, reports indicate that the corporation is still steeped in racist philosophies and practices. Read more > > Victim of Jeffrey Epstein Claims He Forced Her to Have an Abortion as a Teen > An unnamed woman has come forward alleging that she was drugged and raped by the now-deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his socialite associate Ghislaine Maxwell. When the abuse began in 1991 in Florida, the victim says she was only 14. The woman said the repeated sexual assaults stopped when she was 16, and after she became pregnant, Epstein forced her to have an abortion. Read more > > Live Action News is the publishing arm of Live Action > > Live Action is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Gifts are tax-deductible in the United States. > No goods or services are offered or given in exchange for contributions > > Live Action 2200 Wilson Blvd. Suite 102 PMB 111 Arlington VA 22201 > > You received this email because you are subscribed to Live Action News Weekly Updates from Live Action. > > Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. > > Unsubscribe from all future emails > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Jul 12 20:40:01 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2020 13:40:01 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Missed The Inaugural Pivot to Peace Webinar? Watch Now! References: <1134534446871.1134260918491.1893705606.0.301318JL.2002@scheduler.constantcontact.com> Message-ID: Many will be speaking, making this worthwhile listening?.. > > > > > Inaugural Live Stream Follow Up: > Why there should be a Pivot to Peace not war with China > > > We wanted to express our deepest gratitude to all who joined in and watched our inaugural live stream "Why there should be a Pivot to Peace not war with China". Without your support, we would not have been able to reach so many people across the country and world. > > In case folks missed it, here is the link to watch the live-stream: > Watch Now: Inaugural Pivot to Peace Live Stream > > > > Pivot to Peace | Mission Statement | Articles > ?? ?? ?? > Pivot to Peace | 617 Florida Ave NW, Lower Level, Washington, DC 20001 > Update Profile | About Constant Contact > Sent by info at peacepivot.org in collaboration with > > Try email marketing for free today! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jul 13 11:24:46 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 04:24:46 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Letter to the Editor by David Green Message-ID: Exploitation is real problem The origins of policing are often connected to slavery. However, they are more generally connected to the needs of industrial and urban capitalism to control the work force, the working poor and the ?reserve army of labor? (un-engaged in the work force). The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow determines that Blacks will be disproportionately represented among the latter two groups and that police (of any background) are more likely to adopt racist attitudes as part of their socialization process. Nevertheless, the foundational problem is that of social inequality generated by capitalist exploitation of the working class and the violence ?or implicit threat of violence and imprisonment? that is required to maintain economic production and social order, as increased inequality and decreased social welfare heighten the desperation of the most marginalized in globalized, neo-liberal capitalism. The educational system ?fails? a significant percentage of students because it must, given the structure and ?demands? of the labor market and the stressed conditions of working-class families. Thus, anger directed at public schools by the NAACP, ACLU and those who claim to represent Black Lives Matter is misdirected at best and lurid at worst. Silence is not violence, and local superintendents present themselves as cowardly managerial tools of capitalism when they give credence to such charges. Exhortations to ?defund? or ?abolish? the police are similarly pathetic and can only result in more privatization of public services. Rich liberals will pay for protection while reading about ?White fragility? to ease their racialized guilt, as capitalist accumulation continues apace. DAVID GREEN Champaign -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jul 13 11:36:03 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 04:36:03 -0700 Subject: [Peace] A worthwhile listen related to trust of governments Message-ID: https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/494540-governments-mutual-recognition-lack/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jul 13 18:27:16 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 11:27:16 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Max and Aaron critique the "Letter......" Message-ID: Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate appear to be on the same page as I?????in respect to the hypocrisy of the signatories on the Letter. There is nothing wrong with the letter but??. https://soundcloud.com/pushbackshow/max-blumenthal-cancel-culture-hypocrites-cancel-open-debate-and-foreign-countries -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Jul 14 01:31:42 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 18:31:42 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Jonathan Cook on Mondoweiss Message-ID: HOME NEWS OPINION CULTURE ACTIVISM MEDIA ANALYSIS OPINION ?Cancel culture? letter is about stifling free speech, not protecting it Criticisms of ?cancel culture? are really about prioritizing speech that shores up the status quo. BY JONATHAN COOK JULY 13, 2020 ?Share on Facebook ?Share on Twitter BARI WEISS ON MSNBC?S MORNING JOE An open letter published by Harper?s magazine, and signed by 150 prominent writers and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new ?cancel culture?. The letter brings together an unlikely alliance of genuine leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and Matt Karp, centrists such as J K Rowling and Ian Buruma, and neoconservatives such as David Frum and Bari Weiss, all speaking out in defence of free speech. Although the letter doesn?t explicitly use the term ?cancel culture?, it is clearly what is meant in the complaint about a ?stifling? cultural climate that is imposing ?ideological conformity? and weakening ?norms of open debate and toleration of differences?. It is easy to agree with the letter?s generalized argument for tolerance and free and fair debate. But the reality is that many of those who signed are utter hypocrites, who have shown precisely zero commitment to free speech, either in their words or in their deeds. Further, the intent of many them in signing the letter is the very reverse of their professed goal: they want to stifle free speech, not protect it. To understand what is really going on with this letter, we first need to scrutinize the motives, rather than the substance, of the letter. A new ?illiberalism? ?Cancel culture? started as the shaming, often on social media, of people who were seen to have said offensive things. But of late, cancel culture has on occasion become more tangible, as the letter notes, with individuals fired or denied the chance to speak at a public venue or to publish their work. The letter denounces this supposedly new type of ?illiberalism?: ?We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. ? ?Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; ? The result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.? Tricky identity politics The array of signatories is actually more troubling than reassuring. If we lived in a more just world, some of those signing ? like Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former US State Department official ? would be facing a reckoning before a Hague war crimes tribunal for their roles in promoting ?interventions? in Iraq and Libya respectively, not being held up as champions of free speech. That is one clue that these various individuals have signed the letter for very different reasons. Chomsky signed because he has been a lifelong and consistent defender of the right to free speech, even for those with appalling opinions such as Holocaust denial. Frum, who coined the term ?axis of evil? that rationalised the invasion of Iraq, and Weiss, a New York Times columnist, signed because they have found their lives getting tougher. True, it is easy for them to dominate platforms in the corporate media while advocating for criminal wars abroad, and they have paid no career price when their analyses and predictions have turned out to be so much dangerous hokum. But they are now feeling the backlash on university campuses and social media. Meanwhile, centrists like Buruma and Rowling have discovered that it is getting ever harder to navigate the tricky terrain of identity politics without tripping up. The reputational damage can have serious consequences. Buruma famously lost his job as editor of the New York Review of Books two years ago after after he published and defended an article that violated the new spirit of the #MeToo movement. And Rowling made the mistake of thinking her followers would be as fascinated by her traditional views on transgender issues as they are by her Harry Potter books. ?Fake news, Russian trolls? But the fact that all of these writers and intellectuals agree that there is a price to be paid in the new, more culturally sensitive climate does not mean that they are all equally interested in protecting the right to be controversial or outspoken. Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all, because he correctly understands that the powerful are only too keen to find justifications to silence those who challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their interests in dominating the public space. If those on the progressive left do not defend the speech rights of everyone, even their political opponents, then any restrictions will soon be turned against them. The establishment will always tolerate the hate speech of a Trump or a Bolsonaro over the justice speech of a Sanders or a Corbyn. By contrast, most of the rest of those who signed ? the rightwingers and the centrists ? are interested in free speech for themselves and those like them. They care about protecting free speech only in so far as it allows them to continue dominating the public space with their views ? something they were only too used to until a few years ago, before social media started to level the playing field a little. The center and the right have been fighting back ever since with claims that anyone who seriously challenges the neoliberal status quo at home and the neoconservative one abroad is promoting ?fake news? or is a ?Russian troll?. This updating of the charge of being ?un-American? embodies cancel culture at its very worst. Social media accountability In other words, apart from in the case of a few progressives, the letter is simply special pleading ? for a return to the status quo. And for that reason, as we shall see, Chomsky might have been better advised not to have added his name, however much he agrees with the letter?s vague, ostensibly pro-free speech sentiments. What is striking about a significant proportion of those who signed is their self-identification as ardent supporters of Israel. And as Israel?s critics know only too well, advocates for Israel have been at the forefront of the cancel culture ? from long before the term was even coined. For decades, pro-Israel activists have sought to silence anyone seen to be seriously critiquing this small, highly militarized state, sponsored by the colonial powers, that was implanted in a region rich with a natural resource, oil, needed to lubricate the global economy, and at a terrible cost to its native, Palestinian population. Nothing should encourage us to believe that zealous defenders of Israel among those signing the letter have now seen the error of their ways. Their newfound concern for free speech is simply evidence that they have begun to suffer from the very same cancel culture they have always promoted in relation to Israel. They have lost control of the ?cancel culture? because of two recent developments: a rapid growth in identity politics among liberals and leftists, and a new popular demand for ?accountability? spawned by the rise of social media. Cancelling Israel?s critics In fact, despite their professions of concern, the evidence suggests that some of those signing the letter have been intensifying their own contribution to cancel culture in relation to Israel, rather than contesting it. That is hardly surprising. The need to counter criticism of Israel has grown more pressing as Israel has more obviously become a pariah state. Israel has refused to countenance peace talks with the Palestinians and it has intensified its efforts to realize long-harbored plans to annex swaths of the West Bank in violation of international law. Rather than allow ?robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters? on Israel, Israel?s supporters have preferred the tactics of those identified in the letter as enemies of free speech: ?swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought?. Just ask Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour party who was reviled, along with his supporters, as an antisemite ? one of the worst smears imaginable ? by several people on the Harper?s list, including Rowling and Weiss . Such claims were promoted even though his critics could produce no actual evidence of an antisemitism problem in the Labour party. Similarly, think of the treatment of Palestinian solidarity activists who support a boycott of Israel (BDS), modeled on the one that helped push South Africa?s leaders into renouncing apartheid. BDS activists too have been smeared as antisemites ? and Weiss again has been a prime offender . The incidents highlighted in the Harper?s letter in which individuals have supposedly been cancelled is trivial compared to the cancelling of a major political party and of a movement that stands in solidarity with a people who have been oppressed for decades. And yet how many of these free speech warriors have come forward to denounce the fact that leftists ? including many Jewish anti-Zionists ? have been pilloried as antisemites to prevent them from engaging in debates about Israel?s behavior and its abuses of Palestinian rights? How many of them have decried the imposition of a new definition of antisemitism, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that has been rapidly gaining ground in western countries? That definition is designed to silence a large section of the left by prioritizing the safety of Israel from being criticized before the safety of Jews from being vilified and attacked ? something that even the lawyer who authored the definition has come to regret . Why has none of this ?cancel culture? provoked an open letter to Harper?s from these champions of free speech? Double-edge sword The truth is that many of those who signed the letter are defending not free speech but their right to continue dominating the public square ? and their right to do so without being held accountable. Bari Weiss, before she landed a job at the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times, spent her student years trying to get Muslim professors fired from her university ? cancelling them ? because of their criticism of Israel. And she explicitly did so under the banner of ?academic freedom?, claiming pro-Israel students felt intimidated in the classroom. The New York Civil Liberties Union concluded that it was Weiss, not the professors, who was the real threat to academic freedom. This was not some youthful indiscretion. In a book last year Weiss cited her efforts to rid Columbia university of these professors as a formative experience on which she still draws. Weiss and many of the others listed under the letter are angry that the rhetorical tools they used for so long to stifle the free speech of others have now been turned against them. Those who lived for so long by the sword of identity politics ? on Israel, for example ? are worried that their reputations may die by that very same sword ? on issues of race, sex and gender. Narcissistic concern To understand how the cancel culture is central to the worldview of many of these writers and intellectuals, and how blind they are to their own complicity in that culture, consider the case of Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with the supposedly liberal-left British newspaper the Guardian. Although Freedland is not among those signing the letter, he is very much aligned with the centrists among them and, of course, supported the letter in an article published in the Guardian. Freedland, we should note, led the ?cancel culture? campaign against the Labour party referenced above. He was one of the key figures in Britain?s Jewish community who breathed life into the antisemitism smears against Corbyn and his supporters. But note the brief clip below. In it, Freedland?s voice can be heard cracking as he explains how he has been a victim of the cancel culture himself: he confesses that he has suffered verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of Israel?s most extreme apologists ? those who are even more unapologetically pro-Israel than he is. He reports that he has been called a ?kapo?, the term for Jewish collaborators in the Nazi concentration camps, and a ?sonderkommando?, the Jews who disposed of the bodies of fellow Jews killed in the gas chambers. He admits such abuse ?burrows under your skin? and ?hurts tremendously?. And yet, despite the personal pain he has experienced of being unfairly accused, of being cancelled by a section of his own community, Freedland has been at the forefront of the campaign to tar critics of Israel, including anti-Zionist Jews, as antisemites on the flimsiest of evidence. He is entirely oblivious to the ugly nature of the cancel culture ?unless it applies to himself. His concern is purely narcissistic. And so it is with the majority of those who signed the letter. Conducting a monologue The letter?s main conceit is the pretence that ?illiberalism? is a new phenomenon, that free speech is under threat, and that the cancel culture only arrived at the moment it was given a name. That is simply nonsense. Anyone over the age of 35 can easily remember a time when newspapers and websites did not have a talkback section, when blogs were few in number and rarely read, and when there was no social media on which to challenge or hold to account ?the great and the good?. Writers and columnists like those who signed the letter were then able to conduct a monologue in which they revealed their opinions to the rest of us as if they were Moses bringing down the tablets from the mountaintop. In those days, no one noticed the cancel culture ? or was allowed to remark on it. And that was because only those who held approved opinions were ever given a media platform from which to present those opinions. Before the digital revolution, if you dissented from the narrow consensus imposed by the billionaire owners of the corporate media, all you could do was print your own primitive newsletter and send it by post to the handful of people who had heard of you. That was the real cancel culture. And the proof is in the fact that many of those formerly obscure writers quickly found they could amass tens of thousands of followers ? with no help from the traditional corporate media ? when they had access to blogs and social media. Silencing the left Which brings us to the most troubling aspect of the open letter in Harper?s. Under cover of calls for tolerance, given credibility by Chomsky?s name, a proportion of those signing actually want to restrict the free speech of one section of the population ? the part influenced by Chomsky. They are not against the big cancel culture from which they have benefited for so long. They are against the small cancel culture ? the new more chaotic, and more democratic, media environment we currently enjoy ? in which they are for the first time being held to account for their views, on a range of issues including Israel. Just as Weiss tried to get professors fired under the claim of academic freedom, many of these writers and public figures are using the banner of free speech to discredit speech they don?t like, speech that exposes the hollowness of their own positions. Their criticisms of ?cancel culture? are really about prioritizing ?responsible? speech, defined as speech shared by centrists and the right that shores up the status quo. They want a return to a time when the progressive left ? those who seek to disrupt a manufactured consensus, who challenge the presumed verities of neoliberal and neoconservative orthodoxy ? had no real voice. The new attacks on ?cancel culture? echo the attacks on Bernie Sanders? supporters, who were framed as ?Bernie Bros? ? the evidence-free allegation that he attracted a rabble of aggressive, women-hating men who tried to bully others into silence on social media. Just as this claim was used to discredit Sanders? policies, so the center and the right now want to discredit the left more generally by implying that, without curbs, they too will bully everyone else into silence and submission through their ?cancel culture?. If this conclusion sounds unconvincing, consider that President Donald Trump could easily have added his name to the letter alongside Chomsky?s. Trump used his recent Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore to make similar points to the Harper?s letter. He at least was explicit in equating ?cancel culture? with what he called ?far-left fascism?: ?One of [the left?s] political weapons is ?Cancel Culture? ? driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism ? This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly.? Trump, in all his vulgarity, makes plain what the Harper?s letter, in all its cultural finery, obscures. That attacks on the new ?cancel culture? are simply another front ? alongside supposed concerns about ?fake news? and ?Russian trolls? ? in the establishment?s efforts to limit speech by the left. Attention redirected This is not to deny that there is fake news on social media or that there are trolls, some of them even Russian. Rather, it is to point out that our attention is being redirected, and our concerns manipulated by a political agenda. Despite the way it has been presented in the corporate media, fake news on social media has been mostly a problem of the right. And the worst examples of fake news ? and the most influential ? are found not on social media at all, but on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. What genuinely fake news on Facebook has ever rivaled the lies justifying the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that were knowingly peddled by a political elite and their stenographers in the corporate media. Those lies led directly to more than a million Iraqi deaths, turned millions more into refugees, destroyed an entire country, and fuelled a new type of nihilistic Islamic extremism whose effects we are still feeling. Most of the worst lies from the current period ? those that have obscured or justified US interference in Syria and Venezuela, or rationalized war crimes against Iran, or approved the continuing imprisonment of Julian Assange for exposing war crimes ? can only be understood by turning our backs on the corporate media and looking to experts who can rarely find a platform outside of social media. Algorithms changed I say this as someone who has concerns about the fashionable focus on identity politics rather than class politics. I say it also as someone who rejects all forms of cancel culture ? whether it is the old-style, ?liberal? cancel culture that imposes on us a narrow ?consensus? politics (the Overton window), or the new ?leftwing? cancel culture that too often prefers to focus on easy cultural targets like Rowling than the structural corruption of western political systems. But those who are impressed by the letter simply because Chomsky?s name is attached should beware. Just as ?fake news? has provided the pretext for Google and social media platforms to change their algorithms to vanish left-wingers from searches and threads, just as ?antisemitism? has been redefined to demonize the left, so too the supposed threat of ?cancel culture? will be exploited to silence the left. Protecting Bari Weiss and J K Rowling from a baying left-wing ?mob? ? a mob that that claims a right to challenge their views on Israel or trans issues ? will become the new rallying cry from the establishment for action against ?irresponsible? or ?intimidating? speech. Progressive leftists who join these calls out of irritation with the current focus on identity politics, or because they fear being labelled an antisemite, or because they mistakenly assume that the issue really is about free speech, will quickly find that they are the main targets. In defending free speech, they will end up being the very ones who are silenced. UPDATE: You don?t criticise Chomsky however tangentially and respectfully ? at least not from a left perspective ? without expecting a whirlwind of opposition. But one issue that keeps being raised on my social media feeds in his defence is just plain wrong-headed, so I want to quickly address it. Here?s one my followers expressing the point succinctly: ?The sentiments in the letter stand or fall on their own merits, not on the characters or histories of some of the signatories, nor their future plans.? The problem, as I?m sure Chomsky would explain in any other context, is that this letter fails not just because of the other people who signed it but on its merit too. And that?s because, as I explain above, it ignores the most oppressive and most established forms of cancel culture, as Chomsky should have been the first to notice. Highlighting the small cancel culture, while ignoring the much larger, establishment-backed cancel culture, distorts our understanding of what is at stake and who wields power. Chomsky unwittingly just helped a group of mostly establishment stooges skew our perceptions of free speech problems so that we side with them against ourselves. There is no way that can be a good thing. UPDATE 2: There are still people holding out against the idea that it harmed the left to have Chomsky sign this letter. And rather than address their points individually, let me try another way of explaining my argument: Why has Chomsky not signed a letter backing the furore over ?fake news?, even though there is some fake news on social media? Why has he not endorsed the ?Bernie Bros? narrative, even though doubtless there are some bullying Sanders supporters on social media? Why has he not supported the campaign claiming the Labour party has an antisemitism problem, even though there are some antisemites in the Labour party (as there are everywhere)? He hasn?t joined any of those campaigns for a very obvious reason ? because he understands how power works, and that on the left you hit up, not down. You certainly don?t cheerlead those who are up as they hit down. Chomsky understands this principle only too well because here he is setting it out in relation to Iran: ?Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don?t agree with, like bombing.? For exactly the same reason he has not joined those pillorying Iran ? because his support would be used for nefarious ends ? he shouldn?t have joined this campaign. He made a mistake. He?s fallible. Also, this isn?t about the left eating itself. Really, Chomsky shouldn?t be the issue. The issue should be that a bunch of centrists and right-wingers used this letter to try to reinforce a narrative designed to harm the left, and lay the groundwork for further curbs on its access to social media. But because Chomsky signed the letter, many more leftists are now buying into that narrative ? a narrative intended to harm them. That?s why Chomsky?s role cannot be ignored, nor his mistake glossed over. UPDATE 3: I had not anticipated how many ways people on the left might find to justify this letter. Here?s the latest reasoning. Apparently, the letter sets an important benchmark that can in future be used to protect free speech by the left when we are threatened with being ?cancelled? ? as, for example, with the antisemitism smears that were used against anti-Zionist Jews and other critics of Israel in the British Labour party. I should hardly need to point out how naive this argument is. It completely ignores how power works in our societies: who gets to decide what words mean and how principles are applied. This letter won?t help the left because ?cancel culture? is being framed ? by this letter, by Trump, by the media ? as a ?loony left? problem. It is a new iteration of the ?politically correct gone mad? discourse, and it will be used in exactly the same way. It won?t help Steven Salaita, sacked from a university job because he criticised Israel?s killing of civilians in Gaza, or Chris Williamson, the Labour MP expelled because he defended the party?s record on being anti-racist. The ?cancel culture? furore isn?t interested in the fact that they were ?cancelled?. Worse still, this moral panic turns the whole idea of cancelling on its head: it is Salaita and Williamson who are accused ? and found guilty ? of doing the cancelling, of cancelling Israel and Jews. Israel?s supporters will continue to win this battle by claiming that criticism of Israel ?cancels? that country (?wipes it off the map?), ?cancels? Israel?s Jewish population (?drives them into the sea?), and ?cancels? Jews more generally (?denies a central component of modern Jewish identity?). Greater awareness of ?cancel culture? would not have saved Corbyn from the antisemitism smears because the kind of cancel culture that smeared Corbyn is never going to be defined as ?cancelling?. For anyone who wishes to see how this works in practice, watch Guardian columnist Owen Jones cave in ? as he has done so often ? to the power dynamics of the ?cancel culture? discourse in this interview with Sky News. I actually agree with almost everything Jones says in this clip, apart from his joining yet again in the witch-hunt against Labour?s anti-Zionists. He doesn?t see that witch-hunt as ?cancel culture?, and neither will anyone else with a large platform like his to protect: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Jul 14 18:01:33 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2020 11:01:33 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Shelter in places apart and unequal: by Paul Street Message-ID: Shelter in places apart and unequal: Topple all the monuments you want, but the real racism?s going unaddressed 13 Jul, 2020 12:51 Get short URL An inmate holds a sign to his cell window reading "We Matter" as Black Lives Matter supporters hold a protest against racial inequality on Father's Day outside Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. June 21, 2020 ? Reuters / Alexander Gouletas 78 Follow RT on By Paul Street, the author of numerous books, including They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Routledge, 2014) and The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Routledge, 2011). America pulls down monuments to racist oppressors, renames streets and paints Black Lives Matter all over them. But the real inequalities of cities like Chicago ? rooted in class as well as race ? are left to fester. It is good to see Confederate war memorials coming down and under attack in the American South. The Confederacy was a treasonous campaign to keep black people in bondage. It arose and seceded from the United States, leading to a Civil War that killed more than half a million Americans, because top southern slaveholders?determined that the presidency of Abraham Lincoln represented a mortal threat to the forced labor and torture system that was black chattel slavery. But symbolic change only goes so far. America can take down all the racist historical monuments it wants. It can strip slave owners? and slave traders? names from every structure they befoul. It can paint ?Black Lives Matter? on every major thoroughfare in the nation. But substance matters more than symbols, just as deeds matter more than words (you know, like ?hope? and ?change?). The technically black Barack Obama held the White House in the land of cotton slavery for eight years. During his presidency, Black Americans experienced an epic collapse in net?worth . ?Racially disparate mass incarceration?(a nice academic phrase for the disproportionate mass arrest and imprisonment of black and brown people) and racist police brutality proceeded apace while liberals congratulated themselves for having voted (twice) for a (deeply conservative) first black?president (an imperial Wall Street president who lectured poor blacks on their own responsibility for their poverty while bailing out financial institutions that collapsed black wealth along with the US and global economies). READ MORE The Donald?s safe space: Trump?s new ?national garden? with statues of ?heroes? is his image of America ? walled-off and sterile Take my hometown, Chicago, the one-third black city that Obama deceptively claimed to hail from. It recently elected a black, female and gay mayor (a symbolic identity politics trifecta!) and named one its leading downtown streets after the 20th century black civil rights activist Ida B. Wells. Black people are highly visible on the city?s nightly television news teams, in its sports and entertainment culture and across its entire roster of elected officials. Good. Has symbolic change challenged the massive concentration of deep Black poverty across vast ghettoized swaths of the city?s South and West Sides? Has it brought new opportunity and uplifted those communities? Has superficially integrated Chicago made any substantive effort to reverse the flows of profit, development, and?privilege from the richest and whitest parts of the city and metropolitan area to the poorest and most black parts of the metropolis? Has it switched tax increment?financing surpluses and other government subsidies from lining the already deep pockets of downtown developers to creating affordable housing, livable wage jobs, medical resources, and green spaces in the city?s multiply oppressed Black?communities ? Has it begun to compensate those communities for more than a century of harsh housing and school segregation, restrictive covenants, red-lining, disinvestment, employment discrimination, gentrification, and police-state torture and terrorism? Has Chicago moved to dismantle the giant racist holding pen and coronavirus breeding?ground called Cook County Jail? Has it de-funded its viciously racist and militarized police?department , diverting the taxpayer fortune it spends on repression to social protection and enrichment in the city?s communities of greatest need? No, it has not. And it?s the same in every other American metropolis. Americans need to think about ?place? in social as well as spatial terms. They also need to understand the longstanding core national problems of race at a deeper, class-informed level beyond just the color of faces in high places and symbols in public spaces. ALSO ON RT.COM Trump says Democrats 'hate America.' Their attacks on Mt. Rushmore seem designed to prove him right They could start by reflecting on how differently the phrase ?shelter in place? plays out across the nation?s interwoven boundaries of race and class. Think about the spaces where disproportionately middle- and upper-class people have ?sheltered in place? in Chicago this year. Comfortable city residents have been harboring in the vast, predominantly white affluent stretches of the city?s?North Side along with other cozy semi-integrated pockets in South Side neighborhoods like Hyde Park and Beverly. Residents of these pleasing neighborhoods work from often spacious, nicely furnished, and well-stocked homes, in good-paying jobs that come with gold-plated health insurance plans. They have high-end coffee shops, health carry-outs, doctors? and dentist offices, full-service grocery stores with organic food, and well-kept city parks and more nearby. (Some of these neighborhoods? residents will almost sheepishly tell you that Covid-19 has been a delightful opportunity to work in the comfort of their homes without commutes, business suits, and direct oversight from senior authorities). Things are different in the shockingly impoverished and jobless ghettoes on Chicago?s South and West Sides. There, black Americans shelter in savagely separate and unequal places. Grocery stores, banks, professional services, and green space are shockingly scarce in black Chicago. So are job networks and decent, well-funded schools. Sidewalks and parking lots in these neighborhoods are strewn with broken glass alongside boarded-up storefronts and ubiquitous liquor stores. Air conditioning is a luxury and social distancing is difficult in overcrowded, rent-racked apartments with shelves that are often all-too-bare. Heavily armed police patrol warily and menacingly. READ MORE Wayne Dupree: Hands off my history! Anarchic mobs tearing down statues are vanguard to socialist future Life expectancy, already low, is plummeting in these neighborhoods as residents struggle with numerous pre-existing??co-morbidities? ? including the lack of health insurance and a scarcity of medical services ? that make Covid-19 especially dangerous. To make matters worse, Black Chicagoans have been especially exposed to the virus thanks to their disproportionate presence in front-line service jobs. ?Working from home,? noted the journalist Carlos Ballesteros last April in the?Chicago Sun Times , ?is not an option for most Black and Latino workers during the coronavirus crisis.? None of this is unique to Chicago. America is telling tens of millions of black Americans to shelter in savagely unequal place as the uncompensated and living, compound-interest?legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, ghettoization, and more steal and maim black lives on an elevated scale in the coronavirus era. Is it any wonder that many urban black Americans exploded in rage after George Floyd was killed by white police officers in Minneapolis? And that some Black Americans came out of their assigned places to attack property and appropriate goods not just in their own assigned communities but in downtown commercial centers like Chicago?s Loop and Midtown Manhattan? Or that urban black America could be looking at a long, hot violence-prone?summer as misery mounts in the nation?s worst-off places? More statues will come down, more ?Black Lives Matter? signs will go up, more street names will change. Fine. What?s really required is a massive redirection of wealth and resources understood as reparations not just for past racial oppression but for ongoing systemic and institutional racism, deeply understood ? and a related frontal assault on the soulless class-rule profits system that has always underpinned American racism. ?The real issue to be faced? beyond surface matters like the technical skin color of an elected official, the socialist Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote near the end of his life, ?is the radical reconstruction of society itself.? There?s a word for that kind of reparation: revolution. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Jul 15 18:42:54 2020 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 13:42:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace] COVID-19 Cases Triple At Prison Where NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Is Incarcerated Message-ID: https://dissenter.substack.com/p/covid-19-cases-triple-at-prison-where?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Wed Jul 15 18:45:22 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 13:45:22 -0500 Subject: [Peace] US puts Reality Winner in danger of Covid Message-ID: <546015ED-B30B-4107-A3BF-20BD119F822C@newsfromneptune.com> https://dissenter.substack.com/p/covid-19-cases-triple-at-prison-where From jbn at forestfield.org Thu Jul 16 04:53:27 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 23:53:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace] "NOT IN OUR NAME: The Psychological Torture of Julian Assange" film is worth seeing Message-ID: <92b86c0b-2264-b136-9d35-910451642866@forestfield.org> https://youtu.be/xvR4dpz6LS4 (24m) https://johnfurse.wordpress.com/ has some more information. "NOT IN OUR NAME: The Psychological Torture of Julian Assange" is a short film on what led to Julian Assange's capture, imprisonment, and torture. I highly recommend watching this movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7M41Nbtp5Y is a discussion of this film (the first 24m is a lower-quality copy of the film, so you can skip ahead to the talk which follows immediately afterwards). I plan to include these in my next batch of recommended videos for AOTA and NFN timeslots so your UPTV-watching friends can catch it on TV. -J From carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Jul 17 05:42:39 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:42:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace] What we should do about Covid Message-ID: <8CA8AD3C-9B01-422D-BB08-C7725553A538@newsfromneptune.com> https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/14/fix-covid-19-dumpster-fire-us/ From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jul 17 11:33:28 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 04:33:28 -0700 Subject: [Peace] From the Real News: The Letter Message-ID: Jacqueline Luqman: ?Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.? This is how a short but intellectually and historically insulting letter begins that is published in Harper?s Magazine, unironically titled ?A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.? This letter, published by Harper?s Magazine contributor Thomas Chatterton Williams, and signed by a 160 people who I guess we?re supposed to be impressed with because of their intellectual and professional credentials, begins with an opening statement that is so dishonest that it undermines the entire argument ? the idea that the cultural institutions represented in the letter are ?OURS.? Whatever cultural institutions these people believe are being threatened by the renewed ? for the umpteenth time in the history of this country ? demands for justice and equality for marginalized people, they are decidedly NOT OURS. THOSE cultural institutions were not created by us or for us. We may have been allowed access into those cultural institutions of higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts, but we don?t run them, we aren?t the decision-makers, our contributions to them are still challenged and whitewashed to suit the sensibilities and opinions of the intellectual elite who run them, and the very existence of this letter basically proves that point. Now on to the rest of this mess. What ?new set of moral attitudes? in regard to justice for police terrorism and for centuries of perpetual discrimination and exclusion has ?intensified? that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity?? The loose moral attitudes that allowed the continued worship of a bunch of white men who slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved, tortured, and then marginalized African Americans, objectified and relegated women to second-class status, criminalized gueer and trans people, and act as if the disabled don?t exist or deserve to live at all are the moral attitudes and norms we are fighting. So what is it about the absolute right to equality and justice for every human being is there that still needs an open debate? For too long, we who believe in freedom have tried to reason with those enlightened liberals on our demands for justice, only to have our continued oppression intellectualized as something that couldn?t be addressed right now, so fast, this way, or with the attitude we had. It was allowing open debate to become the only activism that so many were willing to participate in, while the issues that were debated about that impacted our lives changed not one bit. But you got your robust debate, though, and you got to go home feeling good about how well you defended your augment, while we got to stay home and suffer and die. In a particularly offensive turn, this letter includes the dubiously Trumpian admonition ?The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.? The people who crafted, published, and signed onto this letter had the gall to use THEIR vaunted positions in these cultural institutions that are not our ours to look down upon us and tell us that we are just as bad as the people who have worshipped white supremacist idols, gave the police and white vigilantes carte blanche to kill us without real accountability, allowed the rich to get infinitely richer off the backbreaking and exploitative work of the working class while allowing the same people to pay politicians to codify their greedy practices into law, all while telling us that it?s Black people who are violent and Latinos who are lazy and Asians who are diseased and gays and trans who are amoral and abnormal. Just whose side are these supposedly super smart and super talented people on? It doesn?t look like yours or mine. They further claim that ?The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society,? but when has that ever happened in this society? OUR HISTORY, the history of the Black and Chicano and Native and Queer and Trans and disabled struggle and working-class and poor in this country was never freely given and the information about it was always ALWAYS false or watered down or just not told. This is why these monuments are coming down now ? because people have finally learned the truth about the people the statues honor, and will not continue to allow monuments to lies, genocide, slavery, imperialism, and exploitation to stand. For example, most people were supportive or at least understanding of monuments to Confederate generals being taken down by the people, but as soon as the statue of Ulysses S. Grant was toppled, some people pointed to this as a result of the ignorance of the protesters and an example of the effort to remove the monuments going too far because Grant was one of the good guys because he fought for the Union! When president, he signed the 15th Amendment, giving black men the right to vote, and the Ku Klux Klan Act to curb anti-Black violence in the South ! But the fact that those same people did not know that Ulysses S. Grant, who claimed to want to pursue peace between Indigenous people and white settlers, also used military force and violence to push Native people onto reservations to clear land for settlement and development points not only to their ignorance, but the danger of these cultural institutions and the false narratives they?re indoctrinated us with. Grant?s policies resulted in the Modoc War in California, the Red River War in Texas, the Nez Perce conflict in Oregon, the Black Hills campaign by Gen. George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The very institutions these people are defending from being ?attacked? ? higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts ? helped perpetuate the lie that Ulysses S. Grant was a ?good guy.? The worry expressed in the letter of ?an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty? that is being attributed to those seeking a more just society now, as it has been expected to come from the right, is really the epitome of hypocrisy, considering all of the so-called liberals who offered up academics, intellectuals, artists, and activists for standing in solidarity with Palestine, accusing them of anti-Semitism when they challenged Israel?s apartheid policies. I mean, aside from her beloved books and adapted movie series, JK Rowling is famous not only for her transphobia, but also for accusing Jeremy Corbyn of being an anti-semite in a Twitter thread that I suppose she meant to be clever, but was just disgusting. Another signer, Bari Weiss, also accused Corbyn of not only being an anti-semite , but also waged a campaign against Arab and Muslim academics who criticized Israel to try to get them fired and ruin their careers. So when the author of this letter bemoans all the professionals who are ?punished? for expressing unpopular ideas, understand that so-called liberals already did this to LEFTISTS who challenged Israel or zionism. But the hypocrites among signatories of this letter are not limited to staunch supporters of Israel and all of that government?s crimes. There are also defenders of THIS government?s crimes on the list, too! David Frum literally came up with the phrase ?Axis of Evil? that helped get this country mired into a war in Iraq that was based on complete lies, and he had a hand in the continued disaster that is the US intervention in Libya, but he?s mad that people are mean to rich capitalists and politicians who make their money off warmongering and maybe say mean things to them on Twitter? I?m curious to know who among those people concerned about ?cancel culture? that they are decrying actually lost their livelihoods making other people?s lives miserable because people called them out them on Twitter. And I know that for a lot of people on the left, the fact that venerated intellectual Noam Chomsky signed this letter immediately legitimizes it, and few who see his endorsement as such will take the time to examine the weaknesses in the letter?s content. I will just say that I find it ironic that people who believe that their right to disagree and debate is being trampled on in the current climate, are some of the same people who will refuse to consider that maybe the signature of their favorite intellectual doesn?t legitimize bad ideas. And would even attack YOU for suggesting that maybe this time, Chomsky is wrong. It wouldn?t be the first time. In truth, the arguments in this letter are as old as white supremacy itself, none of them are anything we haven?t heard before from so-called well-meaning people who claim they want the same things we do, but they just disagree with the way we go about getting them. For example, where the letter states, ?This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time,? that just sounds to me like another version of ?You?re going to turn people off from your cause.? And noting that ?The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation? is insulting to people who lack power because people who lack power can?t stop you from saying whatever you want. When has that happened in this country? And worse, the letter browbeats readers with, ?The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.? What do these people think we?ve been doing for the past 500 years? People have pointed out the lies told about the history of this country, have challenged the narratives, have peacefully protested and sang and prayed and pleaded and forgave, have testified at hearings and gave speeches and wrote think pieces and protested peacefully some more and asked nicely for justice and equality over and over and over again. People have debated and argued and tried to make the intellectual case to win others over to ?our cause.? Only to arrive at this moment once again when the author and signers of this letter to make the argument that it is those of us who are fighting for our very lives who have to continually bear the burden of listening to people argue against what we?ve been fighting for in every polite way imaginable. These people who continue to intellectualize the resistance to justice are really just the white moderates that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about in his Letter From The Birmingham Jail. And yes, not every signer of the letter is white. White supremacy is tricky like that ? give some oppressed folks enough money and status, and it will have them upholding the very system that uses them to keep the rest of the oppressed in line. Finally, the author closes with this: ?As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.? If this letter were written in good faith, that might be a valid argument. But I don?t believe that it was. It is possible that if the arguments in this letter were not framed to be directed at those currently fighting for justice and it were not published in this moment, it might seem less like a smackdown from the liberal elite comparing the unwashed masses yearning to truly be free to the selfish and greedy right-wing who wants only the freedom to exploit the marginalization of others for their own profit. But when you look at the arguments in it in the context of the uprisings happening around the world right now, the claims that there needs to be any more debate about justice and equality that people are demanding not only ring hollow, but they are insulting. And then when you read the list of neoconservative, warmongering, anti-Palestine, ideologues who are among the signatories, the tone and the intention of the letter takes a much more dark and dangerous turn. So this letter isn?t a plea for civility in discourse and a call to cancel ?cancel culture.? It is a demand to stop criticizing those people who sold us the lies we are dismantling in these streets in the first place. People have every right in the world to express whatever opinion they have. But regular folks on social media and in real life have every right to challenge those opinions, especially when those opinions are a threat to their lives. And honestly, no one has to sit on social media and go back and forth all day with people who want to argue against everyone having equality and justice. So cancelling someone on Twitter or boycotting or protesting institutions or calling out despicable arguments that are harmful to people is not stifling anyone?s speech. You can still espouse your bad ideas. We really just don?t have to listen to them anymore. And we?re not going to. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Fri Jul 17 16:18:54 2020 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 11:18:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace] What we should do about Covid In-Reply-To: <8CA8AD3C-9B01-422D-BB08-C7725553A538@newsfromneptune.com> References: <8CA8AD3C-9B01-422D-BB08-C7725553A538@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: Thank you, Carl. That was good. Would that our federal government was on board. John Wason On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 12:58 AM C. G. Estabrook via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/14/fix-covid-19-dumpster-fire-us/ > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Jul 18 18:06:38 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 13:06:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Data bypass Message-ID: https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/cdc-data-bypass-2?share=16e9e11b-0a74-4bb7-b98c-5c572dfa182f&source=email-share-button&utm_medium=&utm_source=email From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Jul 18 19:41:02 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 14:41:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Israel & Covid Message-ID: <316FE1A2-8332-4B4F-A84A-E2ED03423FC5@newsfromneptune.com> https://actionnetwork.org/letters/save-hebron-covid-center?source=direct_link& From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Jul 18 20:22:58 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 13:22:58 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Senator Duckworth's bill to sell off our water, cloaked as usual in propaganda and lies Message-ID: 'Inappropriate, Unjust, and Unreasonable': 300+ Groups Slam Duckworth Water Privatization Bill "This bill is an egregious handout to giant water corporations which would embolden them to manipulate and fleece struggling communities?particularly communities of color." byEoin Higgins, staff writer <> <> <> <> <>?69?Comments "As communities across the country search for relief from the ongoing pandemic, it would be short sighted and misguided to pass a bill that encourages the privatization of water systems." (Photo: Peter Werkman /Flickr/cc) Over 300 groups on Monday urged Senate leadership to reject a bill currently under consideration that would incentivize communities to sell off their public water supplies to private companies for pennies on the dollar. "This bill is an egregious handout to giant water corporations which would embolden them to manipulate and fleece struggling communities?particularly communities of color," said Food & Water Action executive director Wenonah Hauter. "The fact that this bill is being touted as an 'environmental justice' measure makes it all the more nefarious." Food & Water Action led the demand in a letter (pdf) taking aim at the "Voluntary Water Partnership for Distressed Communities Act," described in the document as "inappropriate, unjust, and unreasonable." "From California to Montana to New Jersey, we've seen how privatizing water harms communities, whether it's higher bills or dirtier water," Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, said in a statement. "It's simple: water is a basic human right, which means let's keep it in public hands." The bill was introduced by Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and acts as an amendment to the America's Water Infrastructure Act of 2020. Critics charge the legislation induces poor communities to sell off their water rights. As the American Prospect's Robert Kuttner explained , doing so would likely spell disaster for affected communities: Privatized systems are typically less reliable, far more expensive, and prone to corrupt deal-making. The average community with privatized water paid 59% more than those with government supplied water. In New Jersey, which has more private water than most, private systems charged 79% more. In Illinois, they charged 95% more. Private water corporations have also been implicated in environmental disasters. The French multinational, Veolia, issued a report in 2015 certifying that Flint, Michigan's water system met EPA standards, but neglected to mention high lead concentrations. "We know that Wall Street actors target Black and brown communities in moments of crisis to enrich themselves and Wall Street-backed water companies see opportunity in this moment," Maurice BP-Weeks, co-executive director of letter signatory Action Center on Race and the Economy, said in a statement. BP-Weeks added that incentivizing water privatization at such a vulnerable moment for poor communities in the country is exactly the wrong move for what the crisis demands. "As communities across the country search for relief from the ongoing pandemic, it would be short sighted and misguided to pass a bill that encourages the privatization of water systems," said BP-Weeks. "It is our government's job to protect our most vulnerable communities, not put them up for sale." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Mon Jul 20 05:36:18 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 00:36:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace] What the US should have done Message-ID: <5288C089-CCD5-491B-8F2D-15882555505B@newsfromneptune.com> The final judgement between today?s capitalism and socialism is clear. The latter stopped the pandemic. The former didn?t. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/16/covid-19-why-laos-vietnam-china-have-beaten-the-virus-and-india-brazil-and-the-us-have-not/? From carl at newsfromneptune.com Mon Jul 20 06:43:37 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 01:43:37 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Deadly hand sanitizers Message-ID: <3734A0B6-9A1B-4282-9CB5-5C73C7BA9427@newsfromneptune.com> https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-updates-hand-sanitizers-methanol From niloofar.peace at gmail.com Mon Jul 20 18:12:26 2020 From: niloofar.peace at gmail.com (Niloofar Shambayati) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 13:12:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Say no to a civilian ICE squad in Illinois In-Reply-To: <20200720125934.20935514.79242@sailthru.com> References: <20200720125934.20935514.79242@sailthru.com> Message-ID: Please sign the petition below to prevent extra funding for ICE to train anti-immigrant volunteers to target and arrest "undocumented" individuals in Illinois. Spread the word too. Niloofar ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: ACLU of Illinois Date: Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 12:02 PM Subject: Say no to a civilian ICE squad in Illinois [image: Illinois logo] [image: Take Action Now] Take Action Now Niloofar ? The Midwest office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Chicago recently announced intentions to host a Citizens Academy, a program designed to teach and train residents from several states about the work carried out by ICE against immigrants. Invitees to the training were told that they would "participate in scenario-based training and exercises conducted in a safe and positive environment, including, but not limited to *defensive tactics, firearms familiarization, and targeted arrests."* Tell your representatives in Congress to block all funding for these ICE training. Over the past couple of years, we have seen how ICE agents work in Illinois and other states ? using racial profiling and militaristic actions to separate families and destroy the lives of too many in our areas. We should not be training residents on carrying out these enforcement tactics on our immigrant neighbors. In Illinois, we have taken measures to welcome immigrants and newcomers, specifically rejecting the type of militarized enforcement advanced by the Trump Administration. Illinois law keeps state and local law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration law; average residents should not be part of this enforcement. We do not want this sort of unaccountable immigration enforcement in our communities. ICE is promising to use Chicago as a "model" for the rest of the country. Help block this training from going forward. *ACLU of Illinois* Donate Now [image: Facebook Icon] [image: Twitter Icon] [image: Instagram Icon] This email was sent to: *niloofar.peace at gmail.com * Unsubscribe Please note: If you forward or distribute, the links will open a page with your information filled in. We respect your right to privacy ? view our policy. This email was sent by: American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois 150 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 600 Chicago, IL 60601 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Tue Jul 21 03:27:15 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 22:27:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Suggested AOTA/NFN shows Message-ID: <9b89c378-d109-13e5-61a8-768db4a202b0@forestfield.org> Here are more videos which I've suggested to run during the AWARE on the Air and News from Neptune timeslots. I've also asked that if someone else has something else to to run please prioritize their suggestions above mine. Thanks. -J Consortium News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7M41Nbtp5Y -- (1h 10m) "NOT IN OUR NAME: The Psychological Torture of Julian Assange" film about Julian Assange's case, Assange's isolation, imprisonment, and torture. Followed by discussion with Director John Furse and Nils Melzer, UN Rapporteur on Torture. Very highly recommended viewing. If you want to run the film alone, run https://youtu.be/xvR4dpz6LS4 instead (24 minutes). It's a higher quality copy than the one with the discussion, but the discussion is good. Jimmy Dore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3IUV-4Y8mc -- (8m 02s) Why young black voters reportedly don't want to vote for 2020 Democratic Party nominee Sen. Joe Biden. A very good concise review of Biden's policies which would give anyone cause to not vote for the Democrats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK0k1BMUxl4 -- (7m 41s) "DEMOCRATS Prevent Trump Withdrawing Troops From Afghanistan!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBQ6ihQPsDU -- (4m 51s) Nancy Pelosi's corrupt bailout for her husband's business and how politicians profit while most people are told to "calm down" and wait for their bailout (which never comes) as they suffer immiseration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUQPUHSlquA -- (5m 02s) "The Reality of America -- A Tale of Two Economies!" on two events that happened in the same day: the Dow Jones breaks 29,000 for the first time, and a man robbed a pharmacy and left a note saying "I'm sorry, I have a sick child". As Jimmy Dore concluded, "It's almost as if the Wall Street doesn't reflect the real economy.". Black Agenda Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ4kCnbxy6s -- (36m19s) "Left Lens episode 2: Free Speech Against Black Lives" on the limits of allowable debate including calling out those who are credited as being "on the left" or "progressive" but are really for restricting speech that doesn't echo an establishment narrative, highlighting those whose struggle are left behind (even a mention of Steven Salaita and his firing plus subsequent difficulty finding a job in academia), the Democrats (kneeling in Kente cloth), NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio being photographed painting the street just outside Trump Tower with "BLACK LIVES MATTER" while not (and probably in an effort to avoid) changing police policy. From carl at newsfromneptune.com Tue Jul 21 03:38:58 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 22:38:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace] The US is torturing political prisoners References: <20200720230748.1.0ua9ey4hzuv@mg2.substack.com> Message-ID: > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Shadowproof > Subject: At Carswell, More Than 500 Women, Including Reality Winner, Have Tested Positive For COVID-19 > Date: July 20, 2020 at 6:07:48 PM CDT > To: galliher at illinois.edu > Reply-To: "Shadowproof" > > At Carswell, More Than 500 Women, Including Reality Winner, Have Tested Positive For COVID-19? > NSA whistleblower alleges retaliation from staff over media coverage > Kevin Gosztola > Jul 20 > > > > More than 500 women imprisoned at Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, have tested positive for COVID-19. The facility has the second-most cases out of all federal prisons in the United States, and one of the prisoners who has tested positive is NSA whistleblower Reality Winner. > > Last week, The Dissenter reported that COVID-19 cases tripled at Carswell in one week. The article included comments from Winner's sister Brittany Winner. Staff at Carswell apparently read the story, and according to Brittany Winner, she is experiencing retaliation for our reporting. > > "Reality is being retaliated against for speaking out about the conditions in the prison, but she won't stop fighting for better treatment for herself and her fellow inmates," Brittany Winner declared. "She will continue to update us, and I want everyone to know that we are watching and won't stop being her voice." > > Brittany Winner continued, "I am terrified that she will develop severe symptoms and require urgent medical care, but with the huge swell of cases in FMC Carswell and the likelihood that the region's hospitals are already overwhelmed, I have no confidence that she will receive the care she needs." > > "She belongs at home where she can be safely quarantined and receive medical care," Brittany Winner contended. > > It took at least five days for Reality Winner to receive the results of her COVID-19 test, and fortunately, she has not exhibited symptoms of the virus yet. > > Reality Winner is waiting on the 11th Circuit to rule on an appeal that she filed after a lower court denied her request for compassionate release. > > As her attorneys warned in May, "The entire basis for Reality?s motion?and so many like hers?is that she cannot afford to wait until she is removed from FMC Carswell in a stretcher, or worse, before she is afforded relief." > > Reality Winner pled guilty in 2018 to one count of violating the Espionage Act when she disclosed an NSA report to The Intercept. She believed the report contained evidence that Russian hackers targeted United States voter registration systems during the 2016 election. She has served well over half of her 63-month sentence. > > On July 20, the Bureau of Prisons? number for "inmates positive" with COVID-19 spiked dramatically from less than 200 cases to 509 cases. > > The spike raises questions about the extent to which the facility has failed to report or track the spread of an outbreak that seems to increasingly be out of control. > > According to Brittany Winner, Reality Winner is in a "home unit" that is quarantining more than 200 inmates that have tested positive for COVID-19. > > Reality Winner told her family that she sought "administrative remedies" for retaliation she experienced as a result of reporting that was published on her case and the prison outbreak. > > One corrections officer apparently visited Reality Winner to tell her, "I just wanted to congratulate you on your positive results," said Brittany Winner. > > As Brittany Winner recalled, the same officer confronted Reality Winner last week and refused to allow her to clean. She alleges this officer tried to have her thrown in isolation so she would not be able to talk to her attorney. > > "I think they know that she enjoys cleaning. It's how they are punishing her," Brittany Winner stated. > > For a prisoner, cleaning the little amount of space that they can call their own gives them some sense of control, and in a pandemic, that means being able to disinfect and dramatically slow the spread of the virus. But in a system, where facility personnel want prisoners to remain dependent on them, staff can impose their authority by refusing to permit cleaning is a cruel act. > > It effectively intensifies the trauma a prisoner is already feeling, as they deal with the fact they are trapped in a facility in which it is nearly impossible to social distance from fellow prisoners. > > Brittany Winner shared a story from Reality Winner about an incarcerated person, who has diabetes, COVID-19 symptoms, and can barely walk on the stairs. They tried to have this woman do Reality Winner's paid prison detail. > > Furthermore, according to Brittany Winner, Reality Winner said the virus spread in a hospital unit with chemo and dialysis patients after someone who tested positive was allowed into the unit. > > There are isolation units that did not have prisoners with COVID-19, but that is not the case anymore. Reality Winner believes this is a result of staff coming and going and spreading the virus. > > Previously, The Dissenter reported that Reality Winner?s bunkmate tested positive and was removed from her unit. > > Reality Winner's prosecution was a high-profile prosecution and received a substantial amount of attention. The warden at Carswell, as well as the staff, are well aware that she can marshal press coverage to a degree that no other prisoners in the facility can and may have even marked this down in her file. > > When CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou was imprisoned at Federal Correctional Institution Loretto in Pennsylvania, his file was marked with, "CAUTION ? Inmate has extensive access to the press," and, "CAUTION: Publicity.? > > "[Staff] will do everything in their power to stop prisoners from telling the world what conditions are like in these prisons, and they'll operate both within the rules and outside the rules," Kiriakou declared. "They know that there is so little that a prisoner can do to protect herself that they push the envelope daring that prisoner try to do something about it." > > "In my case, the media were my friends because they allowed me a voice that I otherwise would not have had. And, yes, I was punished for being outspoken in the media," Kiriakou added. "But it was worth it." > > Joe Whitley, an attorney for Reality Winner, told R. Robin McDonald at Law.com that they hoped the 11th Circuit would permit her to "serve the balance of her sentence in home confinement." > > "She fits all the parameters that have been set by the Bureau of Prisons for release. It serves no real purpose to have her confined any longer, given the incidents of COVID at Carswell," Whitley added. > > *** > > Reality Winner has not emailed or mailed any messages to The Dissenter. Everything we have published comes from Reality Winner's family, and the Bureau of Prisons should cease their retaliation against Reality Winner immediately. > > Image from StandWithReality.org and used with permission. > > If you liked this post from The Dissenter , why not share it? > Share > ? 2020 FDL Media Group Unsubscribe > PO Box 5087, Portland, ME 04101 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jul 22 01:02:09 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 18:02:09 -0700 Subject: [Peace] The role of Students in respect to change, brief podcast with Kwame Ture Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QWoMwsUZ0A&fbclid=IwAR06lSN8AcRnpOrkqhqY1YxqtTIoAGnFeYxnbm_JrSvZmEJdNoFE5q3N9DY -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jul 22 01:03:46 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 18:03:46 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: 40+ Cities Join in the July 25th National Day of Action References: <5f178b5fa83b5_2f3e778f58243d3@asgworker-qmb3-10.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: > > > Home About Join Us Support Sign up > Sat. July 25 Join 40+ cities in the > National Day of Action to demand: > Stop Evictions and Foreclosures, > Cancel the Rents & > End Racist Police Terror! > > > > The federal and police repression of the movement in Portland, and threats of the same being brought to Chicago demonstrate the Trump administration?s commitment to violently intimidate protesters to quell the uprising. We need to continue to mobilize and stand up to state terror. > > More than 40 cities have joined the National Day of Action to demand ?Stop Evictions and Foreclosures, Cancel the Rents & End Racist Police Terror!?. Protestors will adhere to social distancing guidelines and wear face masks. Join the movement today! > > Register an action here | Find an action here > Thirty percent of home buyers missed their June housing payments and at least 20 million tenants could not pay their rent. With more than 50 million people having lost their jobs, a wave of evictions and foreclosures is beginning to sweep the country. People are being evicted from their homes while at the same time the COVID-19 pandemic is surging and we are being told to ?stay home!? > > donate now > The number of homeless people is growing. Instead of providing real relief the government is unleashing police departments to evict people from their homes, harass the homeless and continue to carry out routine acts of violence and brutality in Black, Latino and Indigenous communities. That is why, on July 25 we will be taking to the streets to demand a ?Stop to Evictions and Foreclosures, Cancel the Rents & End Racist Police Terror!? JOIN US! > Questions? Comments? Contact us. > You can also keep up with the PSL on Twitter or Facebook . > > Created with NationBuilder , the essential toolkit for leaders. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Wed Jul 22 18:49:20 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 13:49:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Death penalty case Message-ID: <06AFB0F3-A9C4-4A24-9821-E04458A5D3AA@newsfromneptune.com> https://www.innocenceproject.org/petitions/stop-execution-pervis-payne/?p2asource=sumo_07222020 From carl at newsfromneptune.com Wed Jul 22 20:34:24 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2020 15:34:24 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Honduras Message-ID: <663DF87E-4BA9-4790-A1DE-E3DC541D2943@newsfromneptune.com> : https://actionnetwork.org/letters/take-action-on-behalf-of-garifuna-leaders-in-danger?source=direct_link& From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Jul 25 00:20:18 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2020 19:20:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Chomsky on the unparalleled danger of Trump Message-ID: <25F90BDA-DBE9-45D5-AC9B-A5F37F735FB3@newsfromneptune.com> (This transcript links to two following parts of the interview.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/7/24/noam_chomsky_on_trump_s_troop From carl at newsfromneptune.com Sat Jul 25 01:18:15 2020 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2020 20:18:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Dissenter Weekly: Massive COVID-19 Outbreak At Women's Medical Prison References: <20200724225821.1.oooikl9k8wq@mg2.substack.com> Message-ID: <5FA3D806-4A6A-4969-AA17-B789049CEB01@newsfromneptune.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Kevin Gosztola > Subject: Dissenter Weekly: Massive COVID-19 Outbreak At Women's Medical Prison > Date: July 24, 2020 at 5:58:21 PM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > Reply-To: "Kevin Gosztola" > > Dissenter Weekly: Massive COVID-19 Outbreak At Women's Medical Prison? > Plus, workers allege retaliation at Disney, McDonald's over COVID-19 safety > Kevin Gosztola > Jul 24 > > On this edition of the ?Dissenter Weekly,? host and Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola provides an update on the COVID-19 outbreak at Federal Medical Center Carswell, where the number of women who have tested positive spiked from around 200 to more than 500. NSA whistleblower Reality Winner is one of the prisoners that received positive results. > > Later in the show, Gosztola covers the Pentagon's "aggressive" leak investigation that Pentagon Secretary Mark Esper apparently launched in early 2020. He breaks down how the insider threat program was likely used and the impact it probably has had on potential whistleblowers. > > This edition also highlights multiple stories of workplace retaliation against employees at Disney and McDonald's because they demanded safety protections during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, McDonald's apparently has a "blacklist" of gossipers or troublemakers. > > To watch the show, click on the above player or go here . > > This week?s stories: > > At Carswell, More Than 500 Women, Including Reality Winner, Have Tested Positive For COVID-19 > In Early 2020, Pentagon Launched 'Aggressive' Investigation Into 'Bad Leaks' > McDonald's Worker Says Corporation Fired Her For Organizing, Seeking Safety Gear During COVID-19 > Disney Allegedly Fired Performers After They Demanded COVID-19 Testing > Lucasfilm Supports Sgt. Esqueda, Who Blew The Whistle On Eric Lurry's Death > > If you liked this post from The Dissenter , why not share it? > Share > ? 2020 FDL Media Group Unsubscribe > PO Box 5087, Portland, ME 04101 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sun Jul 26 01:38:44 2020 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 20:38:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AOTA & NFN recommended videos Message-ID: Videos I'll recommend for airing during AOTA & NFN. I highly recommend watching them all, even the ones UPTV doesn't end up running. Greyzone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG17cgS2-sU -- (30m 29s) Aaron Mate interviews Afshin Rattansi (host of RT's "Going Underground") on the UK government report which claims Russian interference in UK elections but does not back the claims with evidence. The committee putting this report together are a series of known neocons, western government propagandists, and liars (including Christopher Steele, author of the widely-debunked Russiagate report). The highest levels of establishment media repeat the baseless allegations and the allegations have considerable consequences for war profiteers and calls for censorship of social media & UK broadcast networks that don't fall in line such as RT, as Rattansi points out. This is more of the journalism that won Mate an Izzy award. Russiagate allegations continue from establishment media (which certainly includes Democracy Now since that show went from challenging this kind of narrative to being another member of the echo chamber). RT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctaUPbLhW38 -- (3m 7s) Caleb Maupin's RT report on the coming end of eviction moratorium from federally-backed rental units, the related job loss figures (and trend upward again), and a quote from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) trying to lay the blame on Senate Republicans for policy we need but aren't getting. What's missing from this report is any mention of any of the following: - a national jobs program, - Medicare for All (including no mention of the 2 extant bills which could be brought to the floors of the House & Senate and voted into law if there were the political will to do this), - a Universal Basic Income, - the trillions recently added to the economy (most of which went to the already wealthy), - and that there is bipartisan agreement that we ought not have policy which benefits the poor. Jimmy Dore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzkRP7FySUY -- (37m 22s) The myth of two parties, the baseless racism argument against Pres. Trump only works if we ignore continuing bombing people around the world, and the lack of Medicare for All & a Universal Basic Income. Dore interviews Nick Brana, who coordinated a series of protests at Congresspeople's houses demanding a stimulus consisting of a UBI, rent relief, and mortgage relief and received no establishment media coverage. According to Brana no establishment media covered this. Glenn Greenwald https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgxK9w5DSvQ -- (1h 52m) Greenwald examines the Bolivian coup which installed a neocon and neolib government. You won't find coverage of the Bolivian coup in many places, certainly not a lot of coverage in the establishment media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXDPPkuRimQ -- (40m 28s) Greenwald on how "elites are distorting the 'cancel culture' crisis". Some criticism of the recent Harper's letter here too. -J From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 20:49:15 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 15:49:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE minutes Message-ID: The first set of AWARE minutes I could find on the peace-discuss list was from March of 2003, a year and a half after the founding of AWARE, recently noted, by Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Simpson. Notice that neither of them are to be found at this meeting. Perhaps somebody can inform me of the patriarchy and sexism that they notice documented in this context by Linda Evans. This occasion was, of course, right before the beginning of the 2nd Persian Gulf War. Facilitator: Peter Rohloff Minutes: Linda Evans Time: Al Kagan Intros: over 40 people David Green spoke on the Israel/Palestine situation: David suggested the book 'Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy' by Kathleen Christison as a primer on this subject. He said this book is good for Americans who want to understand Palestine by beginning with the treatment of the Palestinians by successive U.S. administrations, going back to Woodrow Wilson. David discussed the US policy favoring Israel, which is structural and consistent, not an aberration or a mistake. He displayed several newspaper clippings showing violence on both sides during the past week and how they are covered in a manner that avoids addressing the fundamental nature of the occupation in shaping Israeli oppression and Palestinian resistance. While the word "terrorism" is no longer used to describe Palestinian violence, neither is the word "occupation" used to describe the fundamental reality of Palestinian lives. Thus Palestinian violence is seen as a force of nature, and Israeli violence is seen as retaliation or preemption. He suggested that Israel will not resolve the Palestinian problem in a just manner without a radical re-thinking of U.S. support, with the help of the international community, as Israel's right-wing government has never been more identified with a U.S. administration as it is now, and more free to pursue policies that murder Palestinians and put Israeli citizens in danger. He discussed the context of suicide bombings--the targeting of Hamas leaders by Israel, and their predictable response. While suicide bombings are immoral and condemnable, like other forms of "terrorism" they must be explained and understood. A couple questions were asked regarding the break down of peace talks. David expressed pessimism regarding "reforms" in the Palestinian authority. He said that the new boss would be the same as the old boss, his job being to sell out the interests of the Palestinian people. News of the week: Carl Estabrook (posted previously) Student Peace Action: A representative from Student Peace Action described their scheduled 'Day of War Event'. They are planning a march following the PRC event on the quad. The march will start around 1pm on the quad the day after a major US bombing of Iraq. AWARE agreed to endorse this event. A suggestion was made to SPA to contact Teachers for Peace. AWARE's Day of War Event: Charlotte Green and Jeff Sowers discussed AWARE's Day of War event and flyers have been posted at local businesses. Remaining flyers were passed around for people to post them at business where we have yet to flyer. Finances: Gabe said we have approximately $2000 in the bank. Approximately $60 was collected at Prospect for Peace last Saturday. Linda Evans will be able to write checks soon and will try to have a financial report for next meeting. Since Raia will not be back for awhile, Linda will start handling finances with the help of Gabe. AWARE Care: Al Kagan reported on the AWARE Care meeting last Monday. Long term goals and AWARE's philosophy (non-violence?) was discussed. Al said 'another world is possible'. Organizing structure (openness vs. coordination), outreach, and cultural presentation were also discussed. It was suggested that people with announcements give them to the facilitator of the meeting so we can streamline the announcement part of the meetings. An AWARE notebook is being created by Linda Evans and Charlotte Green. This notebook will have meeting minutes, flyers, current literature, etc. Linda and Charlotte are also working on a list of working groups and their facilitators that will be available every meeting. This may help people find ways they can get more involved in AWARE. Linda and Charlotte are also working on a table with current information for every meeting. The welcome flyer will also be resurrected. Prospect for Peace: Ricky Baldwin said over 160 people were protesting on N. Prospect last Saturday. He estimated around half of the people were newcomers to the N. Prospect event. He thinks the word is out about N. Prospect so we may not need to publicize this weekly event as much. Security was discussed. A green van stayed on the street, but got very close to the protesters last Saturday. The P4P security working group scheduled to meet after the meeting. Even with the 'security' group, we all need to look out for one another during the P4P. Flyers: Randall Cotton showed the new P4P handout with a new more readable layout by John Baldwidge. Randall estimated 1,000 Move On flyers were handed out last week on the corner of Green and Wright. Tuesday March 11, 2003 at 11:45am on the same corner, literature will be handed out so anyone can come by and help. An estimated 350 flyers were put in doors around the C-U area. Janet has the original electronic copy of the literature. There was discussion regarding adding AWARE information to the Move On literature. March 15th: If anyone is interested in traveling to DC for March 15th, contact Randall Cotton. For those people staying in the CU area, we need to have a strong presence at Prospect for Peace. The New Gazette will be at P4P March 15th. Speaker's Bureau: Linda Evans reported on last Tuesday's meeting of the Speaker's Bureau. The list of speakers is being updated. All the speakers on the old list will be contacted to make sure they still would like to speak and new speakers are being added. If anyone is interested, contact Joe Parnarauskis. The Speaker's Bureau is working on ways to outreach to the community and is interested in looking at this as an exchange of speakers. We would ask people from the community to come speak to AWARE as well as making AWARE available to speak. Announcements: The Public I's next issue (due out April 1st) will have an article on war tax resistance. Ken Urban has started 'Parklanders for Peace' and so far eight faculty have come out to the Prospect for Peace. He tables at Parkland with AWARE literature. Ken Urban suggested AWARE support Care3 since they have supported AWARE. He mentioned four people running in the Unit 4 School Board; Nathaniel Banks, Scott Anderson, Margie Skirvin ( http://www.skirvin.net/), and Charles (Ken, please provide the last name here I couldn't find it during a quick web search). Ken also said Miles Robert thinks we should have another DI ad regarding the Day of War Event. Due to the amount of money involved, it was suggested we write a letter to the editor instead. Jeff Sowers offered to write the letter. There is a lock down in Milwaukee, but we were lacking specific information. Jay Mittenthal announced the Nonviolence working group is going to have a meeting at the IMC on March 30th prior to the AWARE meeting at 4pm. There will be role playing and information on nonviolent activism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 20:53:07 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 15:53:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace] More AWARE Minutes Message-ID: More minutes from March 2003: AWARE Meeting Notes 3/23/03 INTROS MUSIC FROM IRAQ: Sampled CD, short discussion NEWS OF THE WEEK (Carl): See www.anti-war.net for text EVENTS OF PAST WEEK: 1. Student Peace Action Rally?About 300 people marched around campus. No arrests. Marched through Illini Union, marched in the streets. Police re-routed traffic. Marched to West Side Park Vigil. 2. Move On Vigil?About 500 people participated. Diverse participants. 3. AWARE Vigil At West Side Park?People started arriving at 4:30 pm. Many groups marched to vigil. Lots of singing, candles. 4. PRC Rally?Over 1,000 people attended. Jello Biafra spoke briefly. 5. Prospect for Peace?About 280 people attended. Need more signs. Police were cooperative. Park at old Best Buy (around by O?brian Car Dealership. DO NOT PARK AT TIRES PLUS OR LOWES! They will tow you! Counter protesters were present also. Robert Mckim called about having signs like ?Methodists for Peace.? Security working group dealing with issues of confrontation with counter demonstrators. ELECTION UPDATE (Ken): Champaign City Council has 3 seats open. Openings on Champaign and Urbana School Boards. Ken interested in effort to get Representative Tim Johnson out of office. Ken is running for Champaign City Council. Cope Cumston is running for Urbana School Board. Vote on April 1st. FINANCIAL REPORT: We have $2,025. MOSQUE SECURITY (Robert): Mosque has had people checking on it during night hours. Anyone interested in helping out should indicate this to Robert. DISCUSSION (What Next?): Carl suggests talking more publicly in addition to demos, possibility of arranging a forum at the Champaign Library. Peter Miller spoke in favor of teach-ins, dialogue, canvassing, etc. in order reach people who are undecided. Working group on tax resistance. Working Group on Conscientious Objection.How do we break down the myth of Iraqi liberation?How do we step up resistance? Supporting the Impeach Bush movement? Republican congress is cutting veterans? benefits by 9 million, we need to disseminate this info. Could instigate a debate on WEFT between AWARE and Pro-War protestors. P4P signs could have specific info on them, statistics, etc. Could raise funds for humanitarian NGOs in Iraq. Could send care packages to troops to back up the ?Support Our Troops Send them Home? message. ANNOUNCEMENTS: 3/30 at 4pm at the IMC, the Nonviolence group will meet for role playing. Jeremy Glick (author of ?Another World is Possible?) will speak about peace on 4/10 at 7pm at the University YMCA. International Solidarity Movement (Palestinian Truth Tour) coming through on 4/13. More info on ISN event posted as it becomes available. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 21:01:11 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 16:01:11 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Where's Patriarchy? Where's Sexism? Message-ID: April 2003: Facilitator: Carol I. Time: Lisa C. Minutes: Linda E Intros: over 30 people News of the Week: Carl E. (posted previously) Election Results: Ken U. will review the recent local elections next Sunday. Ken U. came in 4th and Cope won. Art: Peter R. explained the art in the center of the room. 'Divided We Stand' chair from a Unity High school (Tolono) student. Events of the Past Week: Robert D. talked about a lecture at the local mosque on Friday and the Chicago Student Anti-war Network event (20,000? people) on Saturday. Meridith K. talked about 'Men in the Tree' at the IDF and 'Missing Women' at La Casa. PRC's weekly Thursday rally on campus from noon - 1pm was mentioned. The Buzz printed the name/address from an editorial letter and people are asked to contact the paper and ask them to not print personal info. The Yoga Institute was vandalized, apparently due to anti-war signs...any vandalizism should be reported to Ricky B. (as well as the police). Prospect for Peace: Numbers were down (on pro-war side as well). Estimated around 115 anti-war people present at P4P last Saturday. Buffer zone between the anti/pro-war groups seems to be working. Randall C. displayed revised casualty posters for possible use next Saturday. There was discussion for and against using US military pictures. Meeting at Linda E.'s house Tuesday night to discuss alternative protests and activities beyond P4P. Upcoming Events: Living Wage vote at the Champaign City counsel Tuesday April 8th at 7pm. Candlelight Vigil on the south side of the U of I quad Wednesday April 9th from 8-9pm. Jeremy Glick of Peaceful Tomorrows will be speaking Thursday April 10th 7pm at the University YMCA. Tax Resistance Working Group will meet at Kickapoo Landing Friday April 11th at 6pm. The Palestine Truth Tour will be at the Red Herring (basement of Channing-Murray Foundation on the corner of Oregon and Matthews, Urbana) Sunday April 13 from 1:30-3:30pm. Party for Peace (AWARE benefit) will be at the IMC Sunday April 13th from 6-10pm. Suggested donation is $5 - $20. Physicians for Social Responsibility will present a lecture by Doug Rokke, PhD on Gulf War Syndrome Wednesday April 16 noon - 1pm at the College of Medicine auditorium (free food!). The South Asian Collective will be at the Red Herring April 16th from 6:30-9pm. Boneyard Arts Festival April 18-19. Seewww.40north.org for more info. Carol I. is hosting a farewell party on April 26th (more info. to come later) for Meridith. Meridith K. is leaving the C-U area and moving on to do some very interesting work in other countries. The Non-Violence working group will show 'A Force More Powerful' April 27 4pm at the IMC (prior to the AWARE meeting). The CO Working Group will have a table at Urbana High school April 29th during the lunch periods. Announcements: The IMC is raising money to buy a building. The rent has been raised at the current location. They need to raise $100,000 by Dec. 31, 2003. Please give the IMC your support. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 21:07:20 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 16:07:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Where's Danielle? Where's patriarchy? Message-ID: What's on my mind? Well, frustration about being able to find Danielle, Elizabeth, sexism, or patriarchy at an AWARE meeting, more than 11/2 years after its founding by Danielle and Elizabeth, less than "a few years" after Danielle claimed to have left the organization: Randall's minutes are exemplary -- a piece of art -- with links to the articles mentioned, background info incorporated, succint but thorough summaries of what was said. Many thanks for such a good job. L. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Randall Cotton" To: Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 1:16 AM Subject: [Peace] Anti-war calendar and minutes of 5/4/03 AWARE meeting > Anti-War Calendar: > > May 3 (Saturday): AWARE's long-established "Prospect for Peace" > demonstration at Prospect and Marketview (2-4PM). > > May 4 (Sunday): AWARE's weekly meeting 5-7PM at the IMC (Independent Media > Center - 218 W. Main, Urbana). > > June 6-8 (Friday-Sunday) United for Peace and Justice Nationwide Anti-War > Conference in Chicago. AWARE may attend. > > October 7 (Tuesday): Noam Chomsky apparently coming to Illinois at ISU. More > info later. > --------------------------------------------- > meeting minutes: > > attendance: 20 > > presentation: Dave Johnson of the Carpenter's Union > > Dave promoted the idea of opposing anticipated anti-union, anti-worker > developments in Iraq as part of the larger opposition to the US occupation. > He pointed out it's only reasonable to expect the administration will > attempt to create a country-wide "free-trade" zone favorable to US corporate > interests and quash worker rights and organization as a result. > > Dave talked about Harry Kelber, who has spent his entire adult life (he is > now 90) in the service of the labor movement. Kelber is the editor and > founder of the newsletter "The Labor Educator" ( > http://www.laboreducator.org ). Kelber is a major proponent of actively > opposing anti-worker/anti-union developments in Iraq. > > handout: Harry Kelber article: "American Labor Can Play an Important Role as > Defender of Rights of Iraqi Workers" > > Dave noted that job site workers seemed to be about evenly divided > pro/anti-war. He noted that those who used the Internet to access news and > information were significantly more likely to be anti-war. > > He noted that the prospect of attacking Syria caused concern even among > pro-war workers. > > He described how once he informs workers of current developments regarding > the huge sweetheart contracts being doled out to anti-worker/anti-union > Bush-friendly/Bush-connected corporations such as Kellogg, Brown & Root and > Stevedoring, even pro-war workers became more skeptical of what's happening > in Iraq. > > During discussion, Dave made note of the fact that while many workers are > aware of and upset about NAFTA, many are uninformed about issues such as > GATT and WTO and the larger pattern of "free-trade" globalization. > --------------------------------------------- > news of the week (sadly, without Carl) > > Lisa: Good article in Sunday New York Times: "A Classicist's Legacy: New > Empire Builders" by James Atlas tracing back neo-conservative roots to the > late classicist and political philosopher Leo Strauss. (ed. note: here is a > link to the article: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/04/weekinreview/04ATLA.html > > Charlotte: Israel has explicitly announced they are cracking down on > International Solidarity Movement non-violent activists (members of ISM were > in town recently for the Palestinian Truth Tour). (ed. note: From May 3 New > York Times article: "Britain Holds 6th Person in Tel Aviv Blast": > > "Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, the chief of staff for the Israeli Army, announced > last month on army radio that he had given an order to remove the activists > from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where they have acted as human > shields to prevent military operations against the Palestinians, such as > house demolitions." > > (ed.note: for more information, also see: > > http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=402676 > > Matt: British cameraman James Miller was killed by Israeli Defense Forces, > though he was unmistakably and actively identifying himself as a journalist > (even carrying a white flag). (ed. note: News article covering this from the > British Independent is at: > > http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=402956 > > Lisa: Noted that WMD is yet to be found and mentioned she had read that the > US Administration may be planning to target "enemy" regimes directly > (assassination, essentially) in the future. > > Linda: Listened to Bob McChesney's WILL AM 580 show "Media Matters" (Sundays > 1PM) and heard an interview with the editor of "The Progressive", Matthew > Rothschild, during which an incident was recounted from 2001 in which > Chicago police and a Federal postal inspector were called to question Voices > in the Wilderness because they chose not to buy stamps that depicted the US > flag. (ed. note: Details at: > > http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc120801.html > > Mort: Mentioned there was an unusual, good article in Sunday's News-Gazette > on the rife disinformation in the media regarding the war. > > Ricky: Hawaii passed a state resolution which opposes the Patriot Act and > encourages resistance against it within the state. > (ed. note: An article from Hawaii indymedia is at: > > http://hawaii.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/2164.php > > also, see: > > http://www.hawaiinews.com/archives/politics/000133.shtml > > David H: Says he learned of a recent assassination of a Pro-U.S Shia cleric. > (ed. note: It was unclear whether David was referring to the killing of > pro-western cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf on April 10 (he had > returned from exile in London). Much detail on the al-Khoei killing is at: > > http://www.observer.co.uk/islam/story/0,1442,936060,00.html > > Jeff: Says he learned Iraqi oil experts and executives were refusing to > cooperate with US. He also mentioned a Guardian article that described how a > single family was decimated during the firing of US troops at protestors in > Fallujah. (ed. note: The article is at: > > http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,949043,00.html > > Ricky: Added that Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that medical staff > were fired on during the first Fallujah shooting. > > Mort: Said that a United Nations humanitarian relief flight was not allowed > to land at Basra. He said it's not the first time this happened. Someone > else added the same thing happened with a CARE flight in northern Iraq. > > Peter: Added that some magnate or celebrity was allowed to land their relief > flight in Baghdad. > > Franklin Graham's (Billy Graham's son) mission to convert Iraqis to > Christianity was mentioned. (ed. note: An interesting article on this is at: > > http://www.counterpunch.org/cajee04112003.html > > David G: Noted that Democracy Now did an excellent piece last Friday on the > Carlyle group (ed. note - Carlyle is a secretive, powerful business > investment firm including a half-brother of Osama Bin Laden, both Bushes, > Frank Carlucci, Dick Cheney, James Baker, Colin Powell, John Major and > others. There is a new book exposing Carlyle - "The Iron Triangle". The > Democracy Now piece is an interview of the author, Dan Briody, by Amy > Goodman. Link to the audio interview at: > > http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20030502.ra& > start=27:35.4 > > Jeff: Chimed in that Bush had a speech at United Defense in Silicon Valley > during his trip to the aircraft-carrier photo-op last week. United Defense > is owned by Carlyle. > --------------------------------------------- > events of the past week: > > Mike: Mentioned the last two sessions of the Chancellor's campus forum on > the war. He specifically referenced the last session and what Robert McKim > had to say. He like much of what McKim presented, including his taking > evangelicals to task for not opposing the war strongly. > > Mort: Chimed in on the forum sessions, saying attendance was 25-45. > Described the sessions as stimulating, but mostly comprised of sterile > academic discourse followed by more interesting discussion with the > audience. > > Ken: Attended a talk given by former president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda on > the role of Zambia in the liberation of South Africa. Kaunda is blamed for > mismanagement of Zambia since he came to power in 1964 and forcing > dictatorial one-party rule in 1972. These culminated in violent riots in > 1990, which ultimately forced him to allow a multi-party system which > resulted in his ouster in 1991. Ken noted how curious it was that dictators > like Kaunda somehow get recycled into lecture circuits. > > Randall: Attended a weekly Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative (PRC) > meeting to discuss the idea (touched on last week by Carl and Robert) of a > Sept. 6 anti-war conference bringing together anti-war and progressive > groups. Found there was solid enthusiasm for such an idea within PRC and > they encouraged it to go forward. Randall will help to move the idea > forward. > --------------------------------------------- > Working group reports: > > Farmer's Market: Farmer's Market at Lincoln Square starts next Saturday. A > working group headed by Jeff was formed to get a table out with literature, > signs, etc. Many agreed that tabling at Farmer's Market was very important. > The working group had their first meeting immediately after the main > meeting. > > CO: (Mike) Anti-militarism tabling event at Urbana High School went very > well. This proves that more tabling should be done at Urbana High and also > in Champaign, if possible. To find an inroad into Champaign, though, we may > need a parent of a Champaign high school student or a member of a high > school's faculty to help out (ed. note: can anyone out there help?). Other > future actions are also called for, such as leafleting students about their > opt-out rights under the "No Child Left Behind" rider which otherwise allows > the US to obtain student information from schools for recruitment purposes. > > P4P: (Ricky) Attendance was up at P4P this week. Attendance was down at Neil > St., though (and they wound up coming to Prospect). Due to lack of > attendance, there will no longer be an organized Neil St. component > (especially since the counter-demonstrators should be gone next week). There > were new signs. New literature was passed out (about 100 copies). > > Incident: The "pro-war" van often seen circling around heckling us (and > this week, even flashing us) was pulled over by the cops and subsequently > disappeared. > > Incident: A couple minutes before 4PM, as things were winding down, a > couple pro-war bikers apparently decided to go down our entire line, one of > them (a woman) taking individual close-up photos of people and verbally > attacking some. It was provocative harassment, though not violent and not > illegal. Lori asked the woman not to take a photo of her and then > unfortunately let her emotions get the best of her when she did. Lori > grabbed the camera and tried to destroy it (though she says she grabbed the > camera without actually touching the photographer). The cops came running > and one of them tackled Lori from behind, pinning her to the ground with a > knee in her back and then cuffed her. All our witnesses agreed that the cops > were unnecessarily violent with Lori. The photographer did not press charges > and Lori was not arrested. Lori was released on-site, but charged with > resisting arrest and has a court date. She plans to plead not guilty and > fight the charge. We got together a list of witnesses and asked them to > write down exactly what they saw as soon as possible. If Lori is fined, a > collection will be taken to help her out. As of Sunday, Kim Kranich was > setting up a meeting with Lieutenant Gallo to address this issue. Lesson > learned: don't let our guard down, even when all seems stable. This incident > could very well have been avoided if we had enforced the buffer zone by > protesting the crossover when it happened, appealing to the pro-war > organizers and the police as necessary. Luckily, this was the last week of > organized counter-protest. > > Ricky put forth the idea of winding down P4P during May and quitting at the > end of the month for the summer. > > He also suggested refreshments next week at P4P. > > Town Meeting: (Mort) Mark Thompson backed out from participating, so this > working group is reconsidering/re-evaluating the next step. > > Speaker's Bureau: (Linda) New meeting of speaker's bureau working group took > place immediately after main meeting. > > Literature: Mort and Ricky each have their new documents and continue to > revise them. It was suggested we have final versions ready to go for > Farmer's Market next week. > > Finances: Gabe reports a balance of $2073.51. Gabe will order buttons and > bumper stickers (for Farmer's Market among other things). > > Party 4 Peace: Lisa's place, Saturday May 17th. Lisa will post more > information later. > --------------------------------------------- > Upcoming Events/Miscellaneous > > RSO status: Mike pointed out that the semester is almost over and we need to > renew RSO status and request a table for Quad day NOW. > > Lisa: Wondered aloud whether we should try to have closer ties with and/or > enlist the support of prominent progressive/anti-war voices such as Bob > McChesney and Francis Boyle. > > Ricky: Alan Dershowitz (the legal scholar/celebrity who advocates torture in > some circumstances) is apparently speaking on Monday, May 5 at Foellinger > (ed. note - I couldn't find any reference to this presentation on any UIUC > web site, but it's Monday night already, so I guess it's moot). > > Lisa: Looking for socially responsible consumer tips to include in an > article for the Public I. Please forward them to her. > > Randall: United for Peace and Justice is conducting a national anti-war > conference in Chicago June 6-8 and offers funds to pay for travel and > conference attendance (possibly contingent on joining UFPJ as an affiliated > group). Randall is interested in going, is looking into this and will report > next week. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 21:12:03 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 16:12:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace] You know what Message-ID: Well, you know what's on mind by now. Apparently by July 2003, Linda Evans still hadn't got the memo from Danielle and Elizabeth about sexism and patriarchy at AWARE meetings. I guess she was too busy with her toddler, they can be really distracting as we all know: Racism: Linda Evans talked about the anti-racism meeting at her house on Friday, 27 June. From that meeting, the ARE (Anti-Racism Effort) Group was thought of as a working group to fulfill the mission of AWARE. This group will be involved in outreach and network with other groups such as the NAACP, Urban League, etc., and report to AWARE. Mike Simon presented to the group a passionate argument that international and domestic war are inseparable, that AWARE has not lived up to its name, and that a working group to address racism is not enough. Some members took umbrage to Mike's statements. Jeff Sowers was concerned that dealing with anti-war and anti-race simultaneously would shift the focus of AWARE. Others also agreed with Jeff. A proposal was made to change the name of AWARE to an anti-war effort (ARE). Another proposal was made to keep the acronym and include racism in the mission statement. Mission Statement: The current mission statement does not include racism. Morton Brussel had written a revised mission statement with racism included (Refer to Peace-Discuss Archive to read Morton's mission statement). Even though the mission statement was the topic of discussion, people still wanted to talk about the racism issue. One person suggested that a mission statement cannot be composed save an agreement is made on AWARE's aim. Process: An agreement was made that consensus is not always needed. The group also agreed that policy is not more important procedure. Ninety percent approval is sufficient in a group decision. There was talk on when a vote becomes final. Answer: Read meeting minutes and any objections should be raised at the next meeting. Announcements: Jeff Sowers distributed twelve video tapes on DU and Gulf War Syndrome. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 21:21:04 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 16:21:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace] More minutes! August 2003 Message-ID: Just look at all these women who hadn't yet figured out, as Danielle and Elizabeth had, that AWARE was no place for women to hang out. This is really interesting. Apparently this was the first time I took notes, because as a patriarchal and sexist male I tried to compensate by doing tasks that until recently could be considered womanly, especially because I was working as a secretary at U of I at that time. Anyway, fascinatingly, please notice the reference to David Roediger and Sundiata Cha-Jua, because of course AWARE was not interested in racism. Although of course, I'm not a big fan of either of these guys because I think they devote themselves to perpetuating the idea of whiteness. But that's for another day. Anyway, neither Danielle nor Elizabeth was there to take notes, like women are supposed to do in patriarchal and sexist contexts. So I did the dirty work, apparently for the first of many times. Minutes for AWARE Meeting ? August 17, 2003 Corrections and additions invited: 1. News of the Week ? Carl Estabrook Black-out related to de-regulation: see Greg Palast article at commondreams.org Families of soldiers speak out against occupation of Iraq Twice as many Americans feel it is more important to focus on the economy than foreign affairs. General Myers goes to Colombia, in the region that is a candidate for our next invasion. See complete notes, already posted on peace-discuss list. 2. Meredith Kruse discussed her trip to Guatemala?see her article in the current issue of the Public I. Rios Montt, now (illegally) running for President, claims to be endorsed by Ronald Reagan (who was supportive of mass murderers during an earlier period of his life), and pays campesinos to come to the capital and support him and intimidate others; but there is also conflict between R-M and local capitalist types?genocide is not always good for business. Police do nothing to defend journalists from FRG (R-M?s party) thugs. Elections will be November 9th. There are 22 parties. Del Monte Corporation is involved in corruption by subcontracting its land to local outfit, which keeps campesinos from farming on it for their subsistence crops. There is also massive corruption regarding social security, with retirees being neglected. Meredith will be returning to Guatemala as part of the Guatemala Accompaniment Project, and organizing a local support group to stand behind her in her continued efforts. Info about GAP and a sign-on sheet were passed around. Please contact Meredith for more information. 3. Voices in the Wilderness: Sharon Dorsey discussed Kathy Kelly?s visit on September 29-30, Monday and Tuesday. She will be speaking at the YMCA on Monday at 4. On Tuesday there will be a town meeting at the Champaign Public Library hosted by WILL-Jack Brighton, to be arranged, including various viewpoints. The tentative topic is ?Liberation or Occupation.? 4. Farmer?s Market, etc.: Tabling will be done at the Sweet Corn Festival this Saturday, August 23rd. There will be no Farmers Market tabling. Volunteers welcome, a sign-up sheet was circulated. We will work with the Public I people to jointly person the tables. Farmers? Market will continue on a week-by-week basis beginning August 30th, depending on volunteers. Contact David Green if you wish to be responsible for set-up and break-down. 5. Calendars: Carol Inskeep volunteered to order activism calendars for sale during the holiday season, or before. This was supported and approved. 6. Prospect for Peace ? Gabe Stanton is organizing a Prospect for Peace demonstration for the first Saturday of every month, beginning September 6th, 2 to 4 as usual. We will be protesting the occupation, military spending, etc. A sign-making party will be held in the morning before the event?location to be announced. 7. Quad Day: AWARE will participate in Quad Day by sharing a table with Student Peace Action, August 26th, Monday. Prime hours are from 11:30 to 1. Volunteers requested. 8. Labor Day Parade: AWARE members will be joining the Labor Day parade on September 1, which begins at Race and High Streets, formation at 9:30. The parade will end at the Brookens Center. Carol Inskeep will host a sign-making party for this parade on Thursday, August 28th, at 7 p.m., at her house. 9. Video Showing: Also on Saturday, August 23rd, at 7, Meredith Kruse will show ?The Color of Fear? at the home of Jan and Durl Kruse, 2007 George Huff Drive. All are welcome. 10. Anti-racism: Tentative plan for discussion prior to AWARE meeting of September 14th, at 3 p.m., with Dave Roediger and Sundiata Cha-Jua. To be confirmed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 21:29:46 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 16:29:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Sexism and Patriarchy rear their ugly heads at AWARE meeting Message-ID: Fooled you! For the second week in a row, in Sept. 2003, I took notes, in spite of secretarial work also being my day job. Notice that in spite of deciding not to give money for Danielle Chynoweth's ill-fated scheme to move the IMC to the Post Office, attendees were kind enough to encourage individuals to support it through there own funds. Danielle didn't even have to attend the meeting for that to happen; good thing, because I'm sure she would have been traumatized by the patriarchy and sexism that regularly occurred at AWARE meetings, but that I guess I didn't notice because I was busy taking notes and going on about Israel and Palestine, and issue not nearly as important as Danielle and Elizabeth's feelings. Facilitator: Jay Mittenthal Minutes: David Green Timekeeper: Durl Kruse Attendance: 20 For next week's meeting (September 14th), please send your agenda items to me (David Green). Note: Please feel free to make the necessary additions/modifications/corrections/clarifications. 1. News of the Week - Carl Estabrook General Anthony Zinni, a veteran of the Vietnam War, has reflected interestingly on the comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. George Bush is speaking tonight to the nation, while a movie about him called DC 911 is playing opposite to his speech. He ended up asking for $87 billion (in the speech, not the movie). Israeli incursions into Gaza put an exclamation point on the end of the ill-fated "roadmap" process. The Palestinian Prime Minister has since resigned. 69% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein is implicated in 9/11--there was a discussion about the meaning and validity of such a poll. Former members of Saddam Hussein's security apparatus are now being recruited in order to rule Iraq. 2. Mike Simon reported on a leadership building conference for minority students/students of color at the U of I. Mike presented some information about AWARE at this conference. He stressed to them (and us) the importance of connecting issues of war and peace to issues of domestic racism. AWARE needs to work more on networking with minorities and groups dealing with minority issues (such as the Urban League), and to examine our own issues of "whiteness." As an example of a domestic issue that connects to war, effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on education need to be understood--not only in terms of unfunded mandates, but in terms of the nature of the mandates themselves, which hardly promote racial justice. Reminder: David Roediger and Sundiata Cha-Jua will speak prior to the AWARE meeting on September 21st, at 3:00. 3. Working groups The AWARE literature, etc. table was at the Farmer's Market Saturday a.m. and then WEFTfest Saturday p.m. About $120 was raised at both, although "business" was not heavy. Peter, Carl, Al, and David enjoyed the interaction (even with each other). Thanks to Peter for two deliveries and pick-ups. Carol Inskeep is ordering 2004 peace/activism calendars for sale. A pamphlet addressing the Democratic Presidential candidates views was passed around. If you have any comments on the pamphlet, please e-mail Peter Rohloff, rohloff at uiuc.edu. Ricky Baldwin--Other literature still needed, especially regarding Afghanistan, Liberia, Congo. Please use "Notes and Quotes" for copying literature. We also need some current pamphlets at the IMC. Gabe Stanton--Prospect For Peace -- About 30 people attended on a warm day. Over 100 fliers from U.S. Labor Against the War were distributed by Al Kagan. More positive than negative responses, some interesting interactions reported by Susan Parenti on peace-discuss. We will consider the possibility of going back to a weekly demo, but nothing decided yet. As of now, next P4P will be on October 4th. Thanks to Gabe Stanton for promoting P4P, and proposing a flier for distribution. There was an article about P4P in the DI, perhaps also in the N-G and the Parkland paper. Finances (Gabe for Linda Evans): Balance is about $2468. 4. Carol Inskeep had raised issue of AWARE donating $500 to IMC building fund. The view was expressed that those who contribute to AWARE do so with the intention of the money being spent on AWARE-related activities, which are expressly and specifically political, as opposed to the IMC, which is not a political organization in the same sense. On the other hand, it was argued that it is in the interests of AWARE are so closely related to the success of the IMC that a contribution is merited. In any event, it was agreed that the success of the IMC is vital to AWARE, and that individual AWARE members are encouraged to donate to the IMC building fund, which hopes to raise $100,000 by the end of the year, and has already been pledged over $50,000. No final decision was made, but it was agreed that we should at least contact the IMC to find out whether we can pay more than the $10 per week that we have been paying, an amount more in line with the customary space renta--if that proves to be more than $10. Gabe will work with Linda to consult the IMC on this. 5. Proposal: It was agreeed for AWARE to co-sponsor the Student Peace Action BBQ, this Saturday from 1 to 4. Brooke Anderson will be notified. 6. Events of the past week: An informative talk at the mosque was given by the imam on his recent visit to Iraq. 7. Coming events: Mike Simon proposed handing out literature at the Engineering Career Expo, Monday-Thursday at the Illini Union, from 9-4. Ricky suggested handing out the "Reconstruction of Iraq" pamphlets. It was also proposed that as a student organization, AWARE apply for SORF (??) funds on a case-by-case basis from the U of I (such as for a speaker or teach-in). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 21:39:38 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 16:39:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Last minutes for now Message-ID: May 2004, 2 1/2 years after Danielle and Elizabeth founded AWARE, leaving no evidence whatsoever that they ever did anything else beyond that. But surely, if I were to move ahead for a year or two, I would discover evidence of blatant sexism and patriarchy that caused them to abandon the organization "a few years later" after their immaculate efforts to inspire the organization with their vision of peace, love, and justice. Damn men, fuck em all. Carol Inskeep hadn't yet figured out that AWARE was patriarchal and sexist. But I think that eventually she did. Greetings - Here's the minutes. Email any corrections - my apologies in advance for any oversights or distortions. cpi AWARE Meeting 5/23 - Al Kagan Facilitating / 20 folks attending Poetry by Matt Murrey Introductions News of the Week by Carl Estabrook (posted separately) P4P - Next protest is on June 5th ? Keeping with the National Day of Protest, we will have signs about the Israeli invasion into Gaza. Ricky will bring sign-making materials to the next AWARE meeting so that folks can make some much-needed new signs. - Ricky also mentions that some folks periodically ask for more frequent protests; we can always go more frequently if there is interest. Legal Issues (Al, Carol and Ricky) - Folks on the working group are contacting additional lawyers since there has been a delay in Ellyn Bullock?s law firm okay-ing her working for AWARE. - Ricky is setting up a meeting with the Champaign Police and their legal department for next week. - We may want to keep in mind the option of approaching the Champaign City Council with our concerns since they are the oversight for the police. Tim Johnson: Public Meeting - Matt presented the letter to Tim Johnson requesting a public meeting to discuss concerns about the war. Group approved his version and it will be faxed to Johnson?s Washington office this week. I?ve included the letter at the end of these minutes. Farmer?s Market - We need folks to work the 10-12 slot at the table on Saturdays. Please email Peter if you?re available for the upcoming Saturdays. rohloff at uiuc.edu> - Durl volunteered to coordinate the Farmer?s Market tabling in July. - Susan and Carol will work on literature / info to encourage folks who stop by the table to send a postcard to Kerry (or any candidate running for office) to encourage anti-war positions. ( In general discussion, folks mentioned that we all can email candidates or use the candidates? postage-paid fundraising envelopes as an opportunity to pressure for stronger stands against the war. See Ricky?s posting to peace-discuss for one example) Finances -Linda reports that we?ve got $1,812.76, thanks to donations to AWARE at Farmer?s Market. WILL commentary policy Local public radio station WILL has turned down a commentary submitted by David Green because they have decided (after Randall?s commentary) to only accept pieces which deal with local/regional issues. Much discussion about the hypocrisy of this stand, and a suggestion to go to the News Gazette to publicize it, or to try to impact them during the next fund drive. Group agreed that a first step is to talk to sympathetic WILL staff in as timely a way as possible. Al will follow up. Democracy Now! -Randall reports progress is being made on bringing DN! to UPTV. No meeting yet about getting it on WILL. News Gazette drops Boondocks - Jan has written a letter to the News Gazette protesting their dropping of the popular comic strip Boondocks. The strip was removed because of its critical humor targetting Bush. Several folks added their names to the letter. If you would like to be included, please email Jan promptly. durljan at earthlink.net New Ideas - Linda is doing the groundwork to get AWARE a table at the Sweet Corn Festival held in Urbana in August. - David Cobb, a Green Party candidate, is speaking on June 2nd at 8 pm at the Illini Union. We?ve been invited to table there. - Tom Mackaman is running as a Socialist candidate in District 103. A petition to help him get on the ballot was circulated. He will speak at an upcoming AWARE meeting. Events of the Past Week - Carl reported on the Free Speech forum at the Champaign Public Library Upcoming Events - WEFT is tabling at Pages for All Ages from May 23-27, and 20% of purchases will support the station (if you mention WEFT). Stop by their table and tell them you appreciate the public affairs programming and would like to see more. http://www.weft.org/ Randall graciously agreed to facilitate next week. Please email me (carolinskeep at yahoo.com) with agenda items or to volunteer to try your hand at facilitating. Thanks to Al for facilitating and to all the hard-working folks who keep AWARE going... cpi Matt?s letter to Tim Johnson follows below: Dear Representative Johnson, I am writing to you as a representative of the Champaign-Urbana group AWARE, an anti-war, anti-racist group of citizens, most of whose members are your constituents. I am contacting you because our group would like to hold a public meeting with you to ask you questions about the ongoing war in Iraq. We are especially interested in the following topics: the secret intelligence that led you to vote for authorizing the President to wage war in Iraq, the torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq, exit strategy for US troops now in Iraq, the funding of the war, and the relation of the war to the Israel/Palestine conflict. It seems that the war and occupation of Iraq have reached a critical juncture, and with the "handover of sovereignty" planned for June 30th, your constituents should have an opportunity to ask you questions and give you their opinions about the war before your next public meeting in scheduled in August. I look forward to hearing from you about setting up this meeting as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Matthew Murrey -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Sun Jul 26 22:01:13 2020 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 22:01:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace] You know what In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <635B3E42-01B3-4FC0-8CD8-8BE67C3B317E@illinois.edu> Thanks David for digging up and reproducing this bit of history of early (2003) AWARE meetings. It reinforces my memory of who attended/participated, and who did not. The dangers now we all face are even more dire for humanity and the nation, but not as compelling, unfortunately for local organizing, as what the U.S. was waging then in the Middle East, especially in Iraq. Recent interviews with Chomsky, Richard Wolff, Paul Jay, and others, describe the present predicament compellingly. ?Desperate" is a word now in apt currency. "What is to be done?? Mort On Jul 26, 2020, at 4:12 PM, David Green via Peace > wrote: Well, you know what's on mind by now. Apparently by July 2003, Linda Evans still hadn't got the memo from Danielle and Elizabeth about sexism and patriarchy at AWARE meetings. I guess she was too busy with her toddler, they can be really distracting as we all know: Racism: Linda Evans talked about the anti-racism meeting at her house on Friday, 27 June. From that meeting, the ARE (Anti-Racism Effort) Group was thought of as a working group to fulfill the mission of AWARE. This group will be involved in outreach and network with other groups such as the NAACP, Urban League, etc., and report to AWARE. Mike Simon presented to the group a passionate argument that international and domestic war are inseparable, that AWARE has not lived up to its name, and that a working group to address racism is not enough. Some members took umbrage to Mike's statements. Jeff Sowers was concerned that dealing with anti-war and anti-race simultaneously would shift the focus of AWARE. Others also agreed with Jeff. A proposal was made to change the name of AWARE to an anti-war effort (ARE). Another proposal was made to keep the acronym and include racism in the mission statement. Mission Statement: The current mission statement does not include racism. Morton Brussel had written a revised mission statement with racism included (Refer to Peace-Discuss Archive to read Morton's mission statement). Even though the mission statement was the topic of discussion, people still wanted to talk about the racism issue. One person suggested that a mission statement cannot be composed save an agreement is made on AWARE's aim. Process: An agreement was made that consensus is not always needed. The group also agreed that policy is not more important procedure. Ninety percent approval is sufficient in a group decision. There was talk on when a vote becomes final. Answer: Read meeting minutes and any objections should be raised at the next meeting. Announcements: Jeff Sowers distributed twelve video tapes on DU and Gulf War Syndrome. _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Jul 26 22:09:36 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 17:09:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Adolph Reed says: Message-ID: ?Notwithstanding its performative evocations of the 1960s Black Power populist militancy, this antiracist politics is neither leftist in itself nor particularly compatible with a left politics as conventionally understood. At this political juncture, it is, like bourgeois feminism and other groupist tendencies, an oppositional epicycle within hegemonic neoliberalism, one might say a component of neoliberalism?s critical self-consciousness; it is thus in fact fundamentally *anti-leftist.* Black political elites? attacks on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential nomination campaign?s call for decommodified public higher education as frivolous, irresponsible, or even un-American underscores how deeply embedded this politics is within neoliberalism.? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Mon Jul 27 02:32:11 2020 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 21:32:11 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Adolph Reed says: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I didn't understand a single sentence of that. On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:10 PM David Green via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: ?Notwithstanding its performative evocations of the 1960s Black Power > populist militancy, this antiracist politics is neither leftist in itself > nor particularly compatible with a left politics as conventionally > understood. At this political juncture, it is, like bourgeois feminism and > other groupist tendencies, an oppositional epicycle within hegemonic > neoliberalism, one might say a component of neoliberalism?s critical > self-consciousness; it is thus in fact fundamentally *anti-leftist.* > Black political elites? attacks on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential > nomination campaign?s call for decommodified public higher education as > frivolous, irresponsible, or even un-American underscores how deeply > embedded this politics is within neoliberalism.? > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Mon Jul 27 02:40:06 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 21:40:06 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Adolph Reed says: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Corporate and foundation funded anti-racism, including BLM, is a bourgeois neoliberal project of the professional-managetial class, including POC. It is fundamentally antagonistic to the working class. Thus, we should oppose BLM, which I do. On Sun, Jul 26, 2020, 9:32 PM John W. wrote: > > I didn't understand a single sentence of that. > > > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:10 PM David Green via Peace < > peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > ?Notwithstanding its performative evocations of the 1960s Black Power >> populist militancy, this antiracist politics is neither leftist in itself >> nor particularly compatible with a left politics as conventionally >> understood. At this political juncture, it is, like bourgeois feminism and >> other groupist tendencies, an oppositional epicycle within hegemonic >> neoliberalism, one might say a component of neoliberalism?s critical >> self-consciousness; it is thus in fact fundamentally *anti-leftist.* >> Black political elites? attacks on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential >> nomination campaign?s call for decommodified public higher education as >> frivolous, irresponsible, or even un-American underscores how deeply >> embedded this politics is within neoliberalism.? >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace mailing list >> Peace at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Mon Jul 27 02:51:54 2020 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 21:51:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Adolph Reed says: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 9:40 PM David Green wrote: Corporate and foundation funded anti-racism, including BLM, is a bourgeois > neoliberal project of the professional-managetial class, including POC. It > is fundamentally antagonistic to the working class. Thus, we should oppose > BLM, which I do. > Ah. So boiled down to its essence and attempting to put matters into plain English, demanding that the police treat Black people the same way they treat white people, and quit murdering unarmed Black people wantonly, is somehow antagonistic to the working class? Asking for a friend, if I had one. > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020, 9:32 PM John W. wrote: > >> >> I didn't understand a single sentence of that. >> >> >> On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:10 PM David Green via Peace < >> peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> >> ?Notwithstanding its performative evocations of the 1960s Black Power >>> populist militancy, this antiracist politics is neither leftist in itself >>> nor particularly compatible with a left politics as conventionally >>> understood. At this political juncture, it is, like bourgeois feminism and >>> other groupist tendencies, an oppositional epicycle within hegemonic >>> neoliberalism, one might say a component of neoliberalism?s critical >>> self-consciousness; it is thus in fact fundamentally *anti-leftist.* >>> Black political elites? attacks on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential >>> nomination campaign?s call for decommodified public higher education as >>> frivolous, irresponsible, or even un-American underscores how deeply >>> embedded this politics is within neoliberalism.? >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace mailing list >>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Mon Jul 27 02:58:51 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 21:58:51 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Adolph Reed says: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Police violence correlates more with class than race. BLM is in support of Democrats, who are equally if not more responsible for neoliberalism and accompanying state violence. Trump is used to justify BLM supported destruction in working class urban communities. We should oppose Trump and BLM. On Sun, Jul 26, 2020, 9:52 PM John W. wrote: > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 9:40 PM David Green > wrote: > > Corporate and foundation funded anti-racism, including BLM, is a bourgeois >> neoliberal project of the professional-managetial class, including POC. It >> is fundamentally antagonistic to the working class. Thus, we should oppose >> BLM, which I do. >> > > Ah. So boiled down to its essence and attempting to put matters into > plain English, demanding that the police treat Black people the same way > they treat white people, and quit murdering unarmed Black people wantonly, > is somehow antagonistic to the working class? Asking for a friend, if I > had one. > > > > > >> On Sun, Jul 26, 2020, 9:32 PM John W. wrote: >> >>> >>> I didn't understand a single sentence of that. >>> >>> >>> On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:10 PM David Green via Peace < >>> peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >>> >>> ?Notwithstanding its performative evocations of the 1960s Black Power >>>> populist militancy, this antiracist politics is neither leftist in itself >>>> nor particularly compatible with a left politics as conventionally >>>> understood. At this political juncture, it is, like bourgeois feminism and >>>> other groupist tendencies, an oppositional epicycle within hegemonic >>>> neoliberalism, one might say a component of neoliberalism?s critical >>>> self-consciousness; it is thus in fact fundamentally *anti-leftist.* >>>> Black political elites? attacks on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential >>>> nomination campaign?s call for decommodified public higher education as >>>> frivolous, irresponsible, or even un-American underscores how deeply >>>> embedded this politics is within neoliberalism.? >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace mailing list >>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>>> >>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jul 27 20:42:39 2020 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 13:42:39 -0700 Subject: [Peace] Adolph Reed says: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: David I understand what you and Adolph Reed are saying, and it should be noted, Adolphe Reed is African American and likely targets African Americans when speaking. Let me now express my simple interpretation and opinion: While we may not support the organization BLM given we know they are funded by the DNC and Soros as they support neoliberalism, and their criticism of Bernie for his stand on decommodification of education, etc. was counterproductive to helping African Americans, as well as working class white Americans, nonetheless I don?t propose opposing them. Many of the people protesting BLM are not part of or members of the BLM organization, they are simply people opposing racism against African Americans, nothing wrong with that. Yes, when it first began those of us opposing our many wars in the Middle East, and the massacre of millions of Muslims, cried out ?all lives matter,? meaning ?what about the millions we are killing now elsewhere in the world who are also not white?? Today by saying ?Black Lives Matter,? it is now inclusive of indigenous peoples everywhere, as opposed to just white lives mattering. You are absolutely correct the many problems are a class issue, not a race issue, and by making it just about race, not to negate African Americans have been targeted and suffer worse due to conditions of poverty and racist policy?s, continues to create division between the masses and becomes counterproductive as it ignores the cause, thus preventing solutions. Promoting people of color to positions of power initially was thought to be progressive, and it was as it provided opportunity to many, but not enough, certainly not all, and it supports the power of the ruling class providing them with tokens of diversity, as we know, power and money corrupts. One would think the Obama presidency with his failure to address the ills of African Americans, and working class, his expansion of the Bush wars from two to eight, bail out of the banks and wall street, as well as the implementation of the NDAA which now legitimizes the Trump administration bringing federal troops into cities across the nation to kidnap, incarcerate or just terrorize protestors, would make it clear neither Party has concern for the lives of working class Americans. The lives of the majority of working class Americans, whatever their race, continue to deteriorate as we fight among ourselves. Therefore we must keep our focus at all times on our system of capitalism as the culprit in need of change. > On Jul 26, 2020, at 19:58, David Green via Peace wrote: > > Police violence correlates more with class than race. BLM is in support of Democrats, who are equally if not more responsible for neoliberalism and accompanying state violence. Trump is used to justify BLM supported destruction in working class urban communities. We should oppose Trump and BLM. > > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020, 9:52 PM John W. > wrote: > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 9:40 PM David Green > wrote: > > Corporate and foundation funded anti-racism, including BLM, is a bourgeois neoliberal project of the professional-managetial class, including POC. It is fundamentally antagonistic to the working class. Thus, we should oppose BLM, which I do. > > Ah. So boiled down to its essence and attempting to put matters into plain English, demanding that the police treat Black people the same way they treat white people, and quit murdering unarmed Black people wantonly, is somehow antagonistic to the working class? Asking for a friend, if I had one. > > > > > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020, 9:32 PM John W. > wrote: > > I didn't understand a single sentence of that. > > > On Sun, Jul 26, 2020 at 5:10 PM David Green via Peace > wrote: > > ?Notwithstanding its performative evocations of the 1960s Black Power populist militancy, this antiracist politics is neither leftist in itself nor particularly compatible with a left politics as conventionally understood. At this political juncture, it is, like bourgeois feminism and other groupist tendencies, an oppositional epicycle within hegemonic neoliberalism, one might say a component of neoliberalism?s critical self-consciousness; it is thus in fact fundamentally anti-leftist. Black political elites? attacks on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential nomination campaign?s call for decommodified public higher education as frivolous, irresponsible, or even un-American underscores how deeply embedded this politics is within neoliberalism.? > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Mon Jul 27 20:53:40 2020 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 15:53:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace] virtual event Thurs Aug 6, 2020; 7pm / panelist from Champaign County Bailout Coalition Message-ID: Dear Peace List, A local (but virtual) event related to racism and policing. One of the panelists is from the Champaign County Bailout Coalition. Thursday, August 6, 2020; 7pm Navigating Arrest, Jail and Bond Processes A panel discussion about... * What happens after someone has been taken into custody by police? How to navigate the jail system (visitation, calls, and bailing someone out). * What is a bond and/or arraignment hearing? Hosted by Bend the Arc: CU Events REGISTRATION REQUIRED: https://cu.bendthearc.us/champaign_county_arrest_jail_and_bail_processes ABOUT THE DISCUSSION One in every three adults has a criminal record. At some point 70 million Americans have been arrested on a felony charge even if the arrest did not lead to conviction. If you have not personally been arrested, you likely know someone who has. Illinois Attorney Tony Allegretti will answer questions about the arrest process, and review some basics about the Champaign County legal system.* We will also hear from Nick Hopkins who will introduce the Champaign County Bailout Coalition, a grassroots organization that helps to pay low bonds for people who cannot afford to pay. // ABOUT THE SPEAKERS * TONY ALLEGRETTI is a practicing attorney in Champaign County, Illinois. He attended Chicago-Kent College of Law and attended DePaul University in Chicago for his undergraduate degree. Tony is currently a Staff Attorney with Student Legal Services at the University of Illinois. Previously he was an Assistant Public Defender with the Champaign County Public Defender's Office and prior to that with the Vermilion County Public Defender's Office. Before attending law school and after completing his undergraduate degree, Tony served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Kenya. * NICK HOPKINS has volunteered with the Champaign County Bailout Coalition since late 2018. He is an attorney and worked as an assistant public defender in Champaign County before moving to Connecticut this past November. He currently represents people on court-appointed post-conviction and innocence cases. NOTE: This presentation is informational only and general questions about legal processes will be answered. No specific cases will be discussed. Participants should contact their attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Tue Jul 28 22:03:07 2020 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2020 17:03:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Syracuse Cultural Workers -- want a Peace calendar? Let me know by 7/31 Message-ID: Hey all, Is anyone interested in a Peace Calendar for 2021??? Syracuse Cultural Workers is still printing their annual Peace Calendars. Speak quickly if you'd like one of their wall or desk calendars.?? If at least ten of us commit to buying, at say $12 apiece, then I'll get a batch. We have to place the order by 7/31 to get the wholesale price, so please respond soon if you'd like one (or two!). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Wed Jul 29 01:42:23 2020 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2020 20:42:23 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE: A Post-Mortem Message-ID: *An AWARE post-mortem: The Reactionary Wages of Identitarian, Neoliberal Wokeness* David Green July 28, 2020 This message addresses issues raised by a recent exchange on the AWARE (Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Urbana-Champaign) Facebook page, during which Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Simpson claimed that they had ?co-founded? AWARE (2001) but left ?years later? because of ?sexism? and ?patriarchy.? The post that they were responding to, from Carl Estabrook, promoted opposition to abortion. Chynoweth also created a new post, stating: ?I am calling for everyone on this group to please leave it. Long ago AWARE is taken over by sexists and should be abandoned. Good bye.? ************ I will speak from experience, knowledge, and interpretation; of course, I only speak for myself as someone highly if at times sporadically involved for many years, until 2018, when I continued to assist in tabling at the Farmers Market. I will refer to more general perspectives on the current *Woke/Identitarian/BLM ?anti-racism?* scene, which has, unfortunately, nothing but dire implications regarding what is still called the Left: a Left that no longer includes either the working class or even cogently class-based, material perspectives, no less ?anti-war? perspectives. My general political perspective is best characterized by this article on the current ?upper-middle class Left? by Swedish writer Malcom Kyeyune and this concise, clear 45 minute podcast by Marty McMarty that is referred to in that article, which is a post-mortem of the Bernie Sanders campaign and describes the evolution of U.S. political party/social class formations since World War II. I would also refer to an important recent blogpost by the political theorist, Benjamin Studebaker , which very much informs my understanding of insidious Wokeness in *ideological* categories and context. In addition, this article by Michael Lind plausibly if schematically lays out the material *class structure* that we have arrived at in the neoliberal era; nevertheless, the ideological categories that Studebaker articulates only map onto the *capitalist* (top of the horseshoe) class, broadly speaking; not onto the *working* (bottom of the horseshoe) class. ************ In brief, I would argue that, of course, AWARE is not likely meaningfully different than other localized, on-the-ground, material (as opposed to virtual) anti-war organizations, whether newly formed or pre-existing, that were activated by 9/11. These movements have receded or been disbanded as American military presence in the Middle East, etc.?along with an expanded volunteer army?has been normalized; as the neoliberal era has proceeded from crisis to crisis, whether financial, environmental, or medical; as capital accumulation and economic inequality has increasingly brutalized domestic material life in the U.S.; and as domestic politics has increasingly been characterized by submerged class conflict: ?right-wing? populism and ?left-wing? Wokeness (upper-middle class identitarianism). The latter is generated largely by the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC, or what Lind calls the Professional Bourgeoisie), and has politically weaponized Wokeness in a series of campaigns, since 9/11, regarding, sex, gender, immigration, and race?all to the economic benefit of no more than 20% of the population, over-represented in coastal urban regions. In that context, antiwar movements have obviously not only taken the back seat but have largely been thrown under the bus. The apotheosis of this trend, as I will argue below, is the one-two Woke punch that we see now in relation to (corporate, foundation-driven, neoliberal) Black Lives Matter and the panic-driven, anti-materialist transgender ?movement.? The consummation of this unholy matrimony was an event a few weeks ago in which, during a pandemic, an estimated 12,000 (tightly) gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum in order to declare that ?black trans lives matter.? One would be hard-pressed to imagine anything more incoherent as a ?movement? in relation to capitalism, class struggle, economic justice, and opposition to war and empire. But this is the point of Woke, ?progressive? neoliberalism; that is indeed *exactly* the point of what is surely a petty-bourgeois class project. ************ >From early on, as AWARE proceeded in a framework prescribed by neoliberal American politics, and by a Woke academic and activist community and context, it became increasingly clear that the ?anti-racist? aspect of this mission?as articulated by emerging local critics?was indeed in contradiction to the anti-war aspect. This was determined by the fundamentally neoliberal nature of ?anti-racism? as has been well-articulated by Adolph Reed . This contradiction played out nationally, ever more clearly during the political ascendancy of Barack Obama; and locally, in very concrete ways, given his presence as a Senator for this state and his ?controversial ? visit to our community. After Obama?s election as President, AWARE limped on while black lives (and wars) that allegedly now matter only got worse for nearly a full decade, regardless of the ?racial? background of the President. While AWARE for all practical purposes ceased public operations (demonstrations, tabling) last Fall, it?s only fitting that the coffin lid should finally be closed shut not only during the pandemic, but during the current racialized (and incredibly and under-reportedly violent ) moral panic that calls itself Black Lives Matter; with its attendant moral panics regarding gender and sex, intensified during the Trump Era for obvious (Democratic Party) reasons, in ways that such panics could not be intensified during the Trayvon Martin/Ferguson/Obama era. I would only add, perhaps in a self-serving way, that the anti-racism pertaining to what came to be called Islamophobia has arguably been the most successful aspect of either the anti-war or anti-racism efforts. AWARE made a distinct contribution to a community-wide effort. But this also has to be qualified in relation to ongoing wars, continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the inclusion of such anti-Islamophobic efforts into the current panoply of neoliberal, ?pro-immigrant? Wokeness in what is now, for all practical purposes, and notwithstanding Steven Salaita and Cary Nelson, the post-active Zionist era. AWARE?s function, from the start, was to bring the truth about our nation?s wars to the local community. I feel that it did quite well in this regard. We utilized many if not all of the local communal and media resources available. I would stress that regarding the general trajectory of AWARE over a period of 18 years, what happened was, for better or worse, *nobody?s fault*. Therefore, it should not be the subject of anybody?s *judgment*, least of all those who were essentially *non-participants*. I doubt that AWARE has been any different in its trajectory, for better or worse, than hundreds of other local organizations that arose after 9/11. Nevertheless, it?s clear that the material conditions of the American population do not currently lend themselves to an organized working-class opposition to the forces of Capital and War. Moreover, such a movement will never emanate from an academic community, not in 21st Century America, not in any-century America. ************ On July 21st, *Danielle Chynoweth* commented on the AWARE FB Page: *I am one of the founders of AWARE along with Laura Haber Mark Enslin (who conceived of the name) Susan Parenti (who started the first demonstrations) and others. There were over 100 people at our first meeting at the YMCA. I facilitated the first meetings. A few years in it was hijacked by Carl and a few other white men who discarded the anti-racist and anti-sexist roots. It became the Carl show. We formed CUCPJ to focus on the racism in the militarized criminal justice system here at home while always remaining connected to anti war.* *One day later*, I made two separate comments in a short period of time: *Could you be more specific? Or is your purpose just to play the victim?* *Danielle, you were nowhere to be found at meeting or other activities, well before "a few years in." Therefore I can hardly expect a specific answer regarding "other white men." Sorry Danielle, I don't buy your slanderous Woke feminism. It's utterly disingenuous, among other things.* Danielle responded: *thank you for illustrating my point. and i sponsored the anti war resolution before city council with AWARE, organizing intensively for months while dealing with the slander of sexists* I responded on the same day: *You live in a fantasy world of victimization. If someone challenges you on your exalted self-image, and calls you on your slanders, you then accuse them of being sexist, or patriarchal. I've always found you to be impersonal, condescending, and strangely detached from ordinary human connection. You are a raging narcissist, and you depend on having people around you who conform to your expectations of exaltation and obedience. That's not sexism on my part. That's calling a narcissist a narcissist, and I could probably call you worse, especially after the whole IMC post office fiasco. Yes, I'm sure you organized intensively for months (re Urbana City Council resolution). Just like Barack Obama in Chicago. What a sick joke. And of course, you pick up your toys and go crying home, taking your supplicants with you. How predictable.* Danielle responded on the same day: *I am calling for everyone on this group to please leave it. Long ago AWARE is taken over by sexists and should be abandoned. Good bye.* *Opening a different thread to reply to me, she stated in large letters:* *Cancel* She proceeded to tag several other people, including Aaron Ammons, Rachel Storm Sandra Ahten, Stuart Levy, and Karen Medina. At that point, I commented: *Yes Danielle, marshal your forces; you are loved, admired, worshipped, and feared.* On the first thread, after my comments, *Elizabeth Simpson* commented: *I was also a founder of AWARE, and also ended up leaving (MANY many years ago) because I found some members (enough to carry a majority) to be questionably evasive about the anti-racism aspect, and because my experience of it as being polluted by patriarchal and domineering (despite many members who wished otherwise) made it not worth my time. At some point, it could be really powerful to do a post-mortem about what worked and didn't, and why, so that current projects can learn from its strengths and drawbacks, especially the dynamic of so many folks leaving and those left not having the wherewithal to continue, though we all remain committed to an anti-war stance and for many, engaged anti-war activities. RIP AWARE. Many thanks to Stuart Levy and others who really stuck it out for the good reasons.* I responded to Elizabeth: *What has killed the antiwar movement in this country, such as it is or was, is invoking cultural politics rather than class politics. AWARE was no exception. Some more than others have been more blatant about invoking cultural (identity) politics as a way of avoiding the capitalist basis of war. No post-mortem is needed, saved you the trouble of a boring meeting.* I later continued my response to Elizabeth Simpson: *groups like SURJ, which you promote in this community, have exemplified the Woke Left's shallow, race-reductionist and white guilt approaches to politics. That leads us away from any coherent analysis of capitalism and war, and any understanding of the relationship between exploitation and racism. Instead, we have aestheticized, performative virtue signaling in what is basically a neoliberal, market-driven, therapeutic framework. Performative virtue signaling is something you excel at, and I find it irrelevant, cloying, and obnoxious. SURJ is ultimately reactionary, as is a group like School for Designing a Society. It leads to nonsense like painting over a historical mural in San Francisco. I have never known you to be seriously involved in antiwar discourse or action in this community, or any serious truth-telling in this community. Your accusations of "patriarchal" etc. are pro forma, performative, thoughtless, and off-base. You wouldn't know patriarchy if it bit your butt. You do not suffer from patriarchy, but the "left" community, such as it is, suffers from your Woke ignorance. Considering the source, I don't take your insulting and ignorant comments personally. Neither do you deserve to be taken seriously. Just rest assured that I don't.* On the second thread, that had been started by Danielle, there was also an interaction between me and Elizabeth Simpson, when she intervened between me and Danielle, which ended abruptly when I told her: *fuck you*. ************ Before moving on, I must say that I went to almost all the weekly meetings between 2001 and 2005; I can recall neither Danielle Chynoweth nor Elizabeth Simpson being at more than a handful of them. I suspect that, combined, they attended less than a dozen. They played no role whatsoever in organizing and participating in specific AWARE activities that I am cognizant of, and I certainly would recall if I had had any positive or productive interaction with either of them. They contributed no coherent perspectives, factually, historically, or theoretically, regarding issues surrounding war, foreign policy, the Middle East, etc. I have no problem with their not finding AWARE to have been their cup of tea; that?s their business, that?s their lives, and in lieu of their recent intervention I would have no reason to address their slanders. But after nearly two decades they both found it worthwhile, in tandem no less, to gratuitously level false and ugly criticism of those willing to sustain their participation in terms of time, effort, funding, and conscience; that included me, of course, in terms of hundreds of hours and at least $2,000, and I will respond accordingly. At bottom it must be stressed, because they claim to be ?antiwar,? that they evidence no genuine interest in the topic or the ?movement,? beyond a checklist of moral virtue signifiers. That?s not a problem, I don?t care. I do care that they somehow found their way to the AWARE FB page in order to denigrate those who do; and all of this based on the alleged and implied credibility of their now meaningless claim to have been ?co-founders.? ************ In relation to Danielle Chynoweth, I would add that I served on the Board of the Independent Media Center for two years, 2011-13, with Chynoweth. At no moment, before, during, or since, did I have any experience of an even superficially normal friendly connection, the kind that people experience routinely with their colleagues and co-workers. I seriously doubt that I was the problem in this regard. I haven?t really known Elizabeth over the years, but I?ve been aware of her career as an emotional manager . While I think that there are huge ethical issues with this sort of process, I will leave that aside for now. She also leads a group called Standing Up for Racial Justice. These are the same folks who wanted to whitewash the famous San Francisco murals . SURJ?s ?white privilege? approach, a la Tim Wise, should have long been discredited. But in relation to Robin DiAngelo and ?white fragility ,? it?s back, in the form of an intensified, white-administered version of ?white-shaming.? That?s what Elizabeth Simpson is about, beyond trying to shame men on the AWARE FB page. ************ Beyond these individuals, I would note the general local activist context, especially the *School for Designing a Society*, with which Elizabeth Simpson is identified. While I have no interest in their work as ?activists,? I would in this context only assert that their work has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, with the working class, and with the material needs of the population. Woke activism of this nature is characteristically affective, therapeutic, performative, and aestheticized. It is a distraction from understanding the world as it is, in material terms. I have no problem with people calling themselves artists or therapists or activists, however performative these labels are. But they aren?t serious political actors and shouldn?t claim to be. They are not part of any coherent movement, and they?re not doing politics; far from it, they in effect support the social order as it exists. This has never been clearer than during the Trump era and, and it is also highlighted by the problems of the Sanders campaign that are discussed in the podcast linked to above. ************ It is not by accident that SDAS took up the issue of immigration, which so easily lends itself to Woke activism. What follows is my letter to the editor that was published in the News-Gazette from October of last year. While immigration policy has historically been rhetorically shaped by racism, it has been more fundamentally structured by globalized economic exploitation and (since WW II) our foreign wars and geopolitical alliances. During this four-decade neoliberal era, *immigration policies of all administrations have been consistent with (i.e., supportive of) massive redistribution of income/wealth upwards*, decline of unions, austerity, and ?free trade? policies that offshore jobs, suppress wages, and send economic refugees north (NAFTA). Compassionate policies towards immigrants are obviously desirable. Nevertheless, such controversies obscure continuities regarding the abandonment of American workers (and children), while stereotyping them (especially African-American and rural folk) as ?unskilled,? if not worse. When Jeffrey Brown advocates for increased immigration, he promotes intensified immiseration of the working class; that?s what business school deans do. When Mike Doyle of the Campus YMCA supports business leaders? ?Heartland? and ?skilled immigrant? agenda, he displays his ignorance and compromises his institution. The well-publicized supporters of our ?welcoming community??Bend the Arc, Solidarity Sundays, CU Immigration Forum, Unitarian-Universalist Church, etc.?are oblivious to the class politics behind their agenda. That?s because they?re immersed in class privilege, while disingenuously claiming to have rejected ?white privilege.? Ironically, Thomas Garza of the Immigration Forum (read Immigration Doctrine) stereotypes those who disagree with his views as xenophobic bigots, thus revealing his own bigotry. Garza?s overtly anti-Trumpian electoral advocacy serves establishment Democrats (anti-Sanders/Gabbard, pro-Biden, etc.). Thus, when the Urbana Free Library endorses Garza?s annual awards program, it not only displays inappropriate partisanship, it effectively supports Brown?s 1%, Gies-driven, pitiless economic agenda. ************ I would emphasize the ability of immigration advocates to deny the need and demand of the wealthiest among us for cheap labor, and its relationship to the four-decade immiseration of the working class (black and white, etc.) accompanied by the accumulation of wealth into very few hands. Beyond that are the elitist and stereotypical assertions regarding the ?white working class,? the so-called ?deplorables,? who are easily and haughtily dispensed with in rhetoric and reality by those who claim to embody ?anti-racism? and use the phrases like ?white nationalism? and ?white supremacism? all too loosely. Indeed, what we have among the Democrats and the Woke, including locally, is the racialization of the working class, in order to obliterate them from political consideration as those who actually produce most of the items that still make this a rich country. Meanwhile, blacks have literally nowhere politically to go, aside from their ineffectual representation by black politicians. Immigration activists work hard to get themselves to think and believe that immigration has nothing to do with the black working class, to keep their ineffectual anti-racism credible. Again, if people want to support the well-being of immigrants in this country and protect them from the harms that may be inflicted upon them by our federal government, fine, I have no problem with that, obviously. But it?s a charitable (bourgeois class project) ?cause,? that?s all it is. Just don?t pretend that it?s serious politics, no less ?transformative? politics. ************ The interlude that follows is transcribed from the indispensable podcast What?s Left (June 4th), immediately following the George Floyd and reaction in Minneapolis; they are meant to re-iterate and expand upon my previous arguments: *Aimee Terese*: I usually have a few different drums I?m beating at any given time. I?ve been beating the anarcho-liberalism (Woke) drum for quite some time. I think for a lot of people it started to make a bit more sense this week as we see these complete wing-nut anarchists, and also the Hillary voters all using the same hymn book at once. A lot of people are having trouble making sense of that, and I think basically the constituency of the Democratic Party at this point is split between PMC (professional-managerial class) and then a lot of desperately poor people of color. And so the anarchic discontent, regardless of the class content of the proponents on the ground, that?s always going to line up behind the PMC constituency of the Party because *anarchism is inherently petty-bourgeois* in the way it operates. So that?s why you?re seeing all these rich liberals enjoy the chaos, and ultimately?because the Democratic Party is in bed with Silicon Valley, finance, and the Feds?they can reinvest in all sorts of surveillance technology, an increasing mandate for the use of discretionary force by the state. At the same time, the rich suburbanites can have their egos stroked with this race-reductionist narrative, knowing that ?it?s race not class,? that they?re the good ones, the woke ones, and the NGO-industrial complex will see another increase in jobs for activists, post-grads, organizers, politicians, failed sons, all of that. None of this organizing takes on Capital. It?s a self-reinforcing cycle that keeps most of the Democratic coalition occupied. As long as they can keep workers divided along nationalist ideological lines, then the repressive policing and violence and brutality is going to keep happening. But they?ve managed to set up this anarchic feedback loop where the more this happens the more this feeds its own circular dynamic. *Oliver Bateman*: The two worst things that we don?t want to happen will happen: the rich will continue to feel good because it?s not a class problem, in fact if they say the right words and donate to the right things, they?ll be fine. If policing methods can be made softer but no less harmful, not as visible, not going to create social media. You can see this among the policing of the protests right now. A lot of the forces are clearly being very careful; this is not like the 1968 Democratic Convention. Atlanta fired two or three officers today for misconduct during the protest, so they?re going to figure out ways to be just as repressive if not more, but with a heavily overlay of Human Resources, and that?s what people are thinking about right now. That?s where the minds are going. ************ Accusations of ?sexism? and ?patriarchy? are curious in this current political context, in any event. As Helen Pluckrose has argued, correctly I think, ?Activists are not so worried about women as a sex anymore. This is evident from all the *Karen memes*. Similarly, activists feel gay men are not consistently being intersectional, and have lost some of their interest in the gay identity cause. What we have ended up with is race and transgender.? This absolutely resonates with me in relation to recent events. In 2016 I wrote a long article on Counterpunch regarding ?rape culture? on college campuses. It was around then that the absurdities and contradictions of Woke politics during the #resistance era became impossible to ignore; it was around then that I was reminded of the capabilities of moral/sexual panics: A black woman could accuse a black man of having raped her, in relation to a case that had already been legally adjudicated against the plaintiff, on Democracy Now, without Amy Goodman batting an eye; indeed, she validated it. Many of the cases addressed in this ?documentary? involved black men accused of being rapists. ?Feminism? was thus on the top of the gender/race ?intersectional? Woke agenda, so to speak. Much has changed, as Pluckrose points out, and the contradictions are impossible not to notice. Now we have the ?Coopers affair.? A white woman, Amy Cooper, reacted quite stupidly and disturbingly to a black man, Christian Cooper, in Central Park; nobody was injured. But we are no longer amid a ?feminist,? ?rape culture,? moral panic. We are amid a ?Black Lives Matter? (+ black trans women) race panic. So this white woman, this ?Karen,? has to be punished and erased, with utmost derision and contempt, even though if this were 2016 perhaps the ?Hunting Ground? moral panic would have not only saved her but supported her; certainly so if she were on a college campus rather than in Central Park, where Title IX doesn?t apply. No, she must lose her job and career, from a Wall Street firm no less (so, in a perverse way, the Woke don?t have to feel sorry for her, as they pretend to be anti-Wall Street), and essentially have her life ruined, with no questions asked regarding the proportionality of her punishment ?and certainly not by ?feminists? in the current context. The red meat of BLM must be thoroughly grilled. This woman did not deserve this. But this is what you get from Woke Corporate Human Resources culture in the BLM era, along with all the ?diversity training.? Within a few years, we?ll move on to the next thing, with no improvement for the vast majority of ?black lives,? since the purpose of Woke neoliberalism is to keep moving from one panic to another, while nothing about our economic system changes, other than that it continues to get worse for the vast majority of people of all racialized backgrounds. ************ Notwithstanding all this, some folks, like the progenitors of this missive, can still cram in a little ?sexism? and ?patriarchy? so long as it stands apart from black, BIPOC, and transgender issues. But as Nina Paley will tell you, you have to be careful that your sectionals don?t get mixed up with other folks? sectionals in a non-intersectional way in the wrong place and at the historically wrong panic time. In that case, your radical feminism becomes the object of a moral panic, and you are cancelled. The currently fashionable and apparently acceptable ?Karens ? meme or epithet is blatantly sexist and racist, which is to say *misogynist*, and is now featured by black liberal Leonard Pitts, and perhaps others, in our local newspaper, and more generally in Woke and twitter culture. It?s not the least bit cute or funny; nor does it accurately describe female vs. male ?managerial? behavior (obviously). Who knows, maybe 1980s jokes about Jewish-American princesses will also come back into fashion. Certainly, some of those college women grew up to be ?Karens,? in which case we can combine misogyny and anti-Semitism for a neat intersectional twofer. Perhaps Leonard Pitts and others would be a better target for bored local self-styled feminists than the defunct local anti-war movement, especially as its ?partriarchal? and ?sexist? men enter their dotages. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Jul 30 12:29:05 2020 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2020 07:29:05 -0500 Subject: [Peace] 2021 Peace calendar? Let Stuart know by 7/31 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5f22bd19.1c69fb81.cb70c.9128@mx.google.com> ?Just a reminder to let Stuart know by Friday if you want one.?The peace calendars are always beautiful.?The 2021 calendar this coming year is no exception. Featuring art around themes like: green new deal, youth in the lead, climate refugees, resilience is rooted in relationships,...$15.95 each.?For an additional cost, we can mail a peace calendar to your favorite politician's office so for an entire year they are reminded of the goals and values of the peace movements. [Please provide the name and address]2021 is the 50th edition. You can see it here: https://www.syracuseculturalworkers.com/products/2021-peace-calendarOver the coming decade, we will either break the grip of fossil fuels or suffer ever-more extreme climate disasters. We hope this 50th Peace Calendar inspires action and support for efforts to stop the people, corporations and political actors bent on destroying the earth in the name of profit. Bottom art throughout draws from the rich history of powerful images published in past calendars.?Over 300 people's history annotations50th editionHolidays for many faithsLunar cycles, 13 native moons14X11 closed, 28x11 on wallEmail Stuart Levy: stuartnlevy at gmail.comSincerely,?Karen Medina -------- Original message --------From: Stuart Levy via Peace Date: 7/28/20 17:03 (GMT-06:00) To: Peace Subject: [Peace] Syracuse Cultural Workers -- want a Peace calendar? Let me know by 7/31 Hey all, Is anyone interested in a Peace Calendar for 2021??? Syracuse Cultural Workers is still printing their annual Peace Calendars. Speak quickly if you'd like one of their wall or desk calendars.?? If at least ten of us commit to buying, at say $12 apiece, then I'll get a batch. We have to place the order by 7/31 to get the wholesale price, so please respond soon if you'd like one (or two!). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: