From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sun Oct 1 05:04:22 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2017 05:04:22 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Pacification via occupational therapy ? References: <59D04D52.0000018E@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> Message-ID: <952ADCF0-1743-403A-BFB8-63F9EAAD46D4@illinois.edu> From: r-szoke at illinois.edu Subject: NYTimes.com: Professors Behaving Badly Date: September 30, 2017 Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: [http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo194x27.gif] [https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/10/01/opinion/sunday/01gray/01gray-thumbStandard.jpg] Gray Matter Professors Behaving Badly By NEIL GROSS Maybe it’s not left-wing politics. Maybe it’s bleak employment prospects. Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2yAcCn4 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 1 15:21:37 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2017 15:21:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] My Letter to the NG Message-ID: The most important issue facing humanity is global warming. If we don't do something now, all life on earth will perish. The experts know what to do, but it won't get done, without will. "Will" on the part of the government. We need their support which requires we stop funding the military/industrial war machine. We need to stop the killing, destruction, and control of other nations resources. This requires we stop the manufacture and proliferation of weapons. We need to fund alternative energies, clean air, infrastructure projects and provide proper public transportation. A bi product of infrastructure projects is the provision of jobs. Nuclear war is a major concern, given US provocations and the potential for "accidents." The two issues "global warming and war" are intertwined, we can't prevent one without preventing the other. The only thing our government representatives, within the beltway, care about is maximizing their profits by maintaining their control. It's up to the American people to take back control of their government, through civil resistance, it's the only thing that works. From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 2 01:47:04 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 01:47:04 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Catalonia References: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> September 29, 2017 When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia by Anna M. Hennessey by Facebook Twitter Google+ Reddit Email People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes. Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution, a point revealed brilliantly in the recent documentary, Las Cloacas de Interior (The State’s Secret Cesspit), which includes numerous interviews with Spanish police, officials, and politicians who describe the corruption in detail. After a media blackout of the film in Spain this summer, the creators made it available through various online outlets. Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia. And yet we on the outside continue to make excuses for Spain, often conflating its problems with Catalonia to a squabble about taxes. This week, we have watched passively as arrests, police activity and other alarming developments build in Barcelona. We refer to the Spanish Constitution, which was written in 1978, as a way of backing up Spain’s dictatorial assertion that the Catalans have no right to self-determination and that the referendum is illegal. The part of the Constitution that says Spain is indivisible was added not by the “fathers” of the Constitution, but by the military, as Jordi Soler Tura, one of two Catalan founders of the Constitution explained in 1985. Following the creation of the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, a law still active today, there has been no investigation or prosecution of the massive human rights violations that took place in Spain under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, and this was the same environment of suppression and authority in which the current Constitution was written. After all the years of trauma that finally led into the tedious transition to democracy in the late 1970s following Franco’s death, many people in Spain and Catalonia are reticent to talk about these issues. Franco died peacefully in his bed at age eighty-two after ruling over the country as dictator for almost half his life. Let’s imagine Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dying peacefully in his bed sometime in 1971 following decades as Germany’s Nazi leader. We likely cannot imagine this scenario, but it is exactly what happened in Spain. Franco and Hitler were both fascists who engaged in the mass murder of civilians for the purpose of “cleansing” their societies of those they believed to be of an inferior race or a threat. Franco in fact wrote the novel behind the movie, Raza (Race, 1941), which promoted the idea that hispanidad, or Spain’s superior race, comprised of those who were in line with Nationalist sentiment. The big difference between Franco and Hitler is that Franco won his war and Hitler lost his. Most of us know about Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, the horrific extermination of Jews and others not in line with fascism. Under Franco, there were concentration camps in Spain too, and many Spanish political prisoners were sent abroad to Nazi camps in Germany and Austria, or ended up in internment camps in France. Paul Preston’s book, The Spanish Holocaust, shows how bad the situation was inside Spain. As Adam Hochschild writes in his 2012 New York Times review of the book, some atrocities included, “soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood…Franco’s troops practiced gang rape to frighten newly captured towns into submission…Tens of thousands of women had their heads shaved and were force-fed castor oil (a powerful laxative), then jeered as they were paraded through the streets soiling themselves.” The list goes on, mentioning the branding of women on their breasts and the shooting of pregnant women in a maternity hospital. Thousands of the people who were tortured or sent to the camps were Catalans. During the years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia was one of Spain’s strongholds of resistance, and the Catalan people suffered enormously for it. Following a military trial in 1940 that lasted less than an hour, Lluís Companys (1882-1940), the president of Catalonia’s Generalitat, or its system of governance, was tortured and then executed by the Guardia Civil. Companys is a symbol for what the Catalans endured during and after the Civil War. Many were murdered, disappeared, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, had their children stolen, or were economically disenfranchised during these periods. Catalan people were also banned from speaking their language and saw other aspects of their culture suppressed by the fascist regime. Teaching and speaking of the language became legal only after Spain’s restoration to a democracy in 1978. Rising above their past, the Catalan people have flourished in the twenty-first century and are the main contributor to Spain’s economy. Barcelona and the larger region are renowned for their industrious and creative workers. The Catalan language and its culture are thriving. The Catalan people should not be confused with the Basques, whose militant organization, the ETA, has been responsible for much bloodshed in Spain. The Catalans have a history of peaceful and communal resistance to the Spanish government, a tradition that continues today. The referendum that they seek is part of a basic democratic process, just as was the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in the United Kingdom. Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe. Anna M. Hennessey is a philosopher who has lived in Spain and in Catalonia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 2 13:19:44 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 13:19:44 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Catalonia In-Reply-To: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: David An excellent article. I certainly support Catalonian independence as I did Irish independence from England, and reunification with Northern Ireland. Both are based upon culture, and history. However, I’ve been to both nations, Barcelona in 2014, pre referendum at that time, and heard both sides of the argument from Catalonians. Going forward I question the economic and political consequences of independent movements and look for guidelines, given so many nations are now looking to secede. Rather like Brexit from the EU. Ex: Venetians in Italy, and the many nations of Europe as well as the UK. It’s their peoples decision of course, but if we are to support such movements, questions need to be answered. Most especially with a very aggressive Nato on the borders of so many nations across Europe and looking to be strengthened rather than weakened. It begs the question how do small vulnerable nations deal with divisions, that only unification is likely to address. I also use Crimea as an example of a nation located within the Ukraine, with a majority of its peoples culturally Russian, thus the “takeover” by Russia, as viewed by the west, has saved them from the fascist government of Kiev. It has also preserved the most important Russian seaport and military base, from Nato. An example of independence movements based upon culture and history could also be used by Texas, New Mexico, and California……..Silicon Valley alone brings in more tax revenue than all the other states put together, or at least it would if our tax structure was just. On Oct 1, 2017, at 18:47, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: September 29, 2017 When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia by Anna M. Hennessey by Facebook Twitter Google+ Reddit Email [https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2017/09/atoa-print-icon.png] People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes. Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution, a point revealed brilliantly in the recent documentary, Las Cloacas de Interior (The State’s Secret Cesspit), which includes numerous interviews with Spanish police, officials, and politicians who describe the corruption in detail. After a media blackout of the film in Spain this summer, the creators made it available through various online outlets. Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia. And yet we on the outside continue to make excuses for Spain, often conflating its problems with Catalonia to a squabble about taxes. This week, we have watched passively as arrests, police activity and other alarming developments build in Barcelona. We refer to the Spanish Constitution, which was written in 1978, as a way of backing up Spain’s dictatorial assertion that the Catalans have no right to self-determination and that the referendum is illegal. The part of the Constitution that says Spain is indivisible was added not by the “fathers” of the Constitution, but by the military, as Jordi Soler Tura, one of two Catalan founders of the Constitution explained in 1985. Following the creation of the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, a law still active today, there has been no investigation or prosecution of the massive human rights violations that took place in Spain under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, and this was the same environment of suppression and authority in which the current Constitution was written. After all the years of trauma that finally led into the tedious transition to democracy in the late 1970s following Franco’s death, many people in Spain and Catalonia are reticent to talk about these issues. Franco died peacefully in his bed at age eighty-two after ruling over the country as dictator for almost half his life. Let’s imagine Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dying peacefully in his bed sometime in 1971 following decades as Germany’s Nazi leader. We likely cannot imagine this scenario, but it is exactly what happened in Spain. Franco and Hitler were both fascists who engaged in the mass murder of civilians for the purpose of “cleansing” their societies of those they believed to be of an inferior race or a threat. Franco in fact wrote the novel behind the movie, Raza (Race, 1941), which promoted the idea that hispanidad, or Spain’s superior race, comprised of those who were in line with Nationalist sentiment. The big difference between Franco and Hitler is that Franco won his war and Hitler lost his. Most of us know about Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, the horrific extermination of Jews and others not in line with fascism. Under Franco, there were concentration camps in Spain too, and many Spanish political prisoners were sent abroad to Nazi camps in Germany and Austria, or ended up in internment camps in France. Paul Preston’s book, The Spanish Holocaust, shows how bad the situation was inside Spain. As Adam Hochschild writes in his 2012 New York Times review of the book, some atrocities included, “soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood…Franco’s troops practiced gang rape to frighten newly captured towns into submission…Tens of thousands of women had their heads shaved and were force-fed castor oil (a powerful laxative), then jeered as they were paraded through the streets soiling themselves.” The list goes on, mentioning the branding of women on their breasts and the shooting of pregnant women in a maternity hospital. Thousands of the people who were tortured or sent to the camps were Catalans. During the years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia was one of Spain’s strongholds of resistance, and the Catalan people suffered enormously for it. Following a military trial in 1940 that lasted less than an hour, Lluís Companys (1882-1940), the president of Catalonia’s Generalitat, or its system of governance, was tortured and then executed by the Guardia Civil. Companys is a symbol for what the Catalans endured during and after the Civil War. Many were murdered, disappeared, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, had their children stolen, or were economically disenfranchised during these periods. Catalan people were also banned from speaking their language and saw other aspects of their culture suppressed by the fascist regime. Teaching and speaking of the language became legal only after Spain’s restoration to a democracy in 1978. Rising above their past, the Catalan people have flourished in the twenty-first century and are the main contributor to Spain’s economy. Barcelona and the larger region are renowned for their industrious and creative workers. The Catalan language and its culture are thriving. The Catalan people should not be confused with the Basques, whose militant organization, the ETA, has been responsible for much bloodshed in Spain. The Catalans have a history of peaceful and communal resistance to the Spanish government, a tradition that continues today. The referendum that they seek is part of a basic democratic process, just as was the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in the United Kingdom. Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe. Anna M. Hennessey is a philosopher who has lived in Spain and in Catalonia. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 2 14:00:19 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 14:00:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Catalonia In-Reply-To: References: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1871117899.1844043.1506952819513@mail.yahoo.com> Points well-taken; I had not understood the background of the Catalan/Spanish relationship to the extent that the article explains, and I wouldn't (nor is it my place) to "support" independence. It hasn't seemed to me that independence/secessionist movements leave most questions unanswered in and of themselves. On ‎Monday‎, ‎October‎ ‎2‎, ‎2017‎ ‎08‎:‎19‎:‎46‎ ‎AM, Karen Aram wrote: David An excellent article. I certainly support Catalonian independence as I did Irish independence from England, and reunification with Northern Ireland. Both are based upon culture, and history. However, I’ve been to both nations, Barcelona in 2014, pre referendum at that time, and heard both sides of the argument from Catalonians.  Going forward I question the economic and political consequences of independent movements and look for guidelines, given so many nations are now looking to secede. Rather like Brexit from the EU.  Ex: Venetians in Italy, and the many nations of Europe as well as the UK. It’s their peoples decision of course, but if we are to support such movements, questions need to be answered. Most especially with a very aggressive Nato on the borders of so many nations across Europe and looking to be strengthened rather than weakened. It begs the question how do small vulnerable nations deal with divisions, that only unification is likely to address.  I also use Crimea as an example of a nation located within the Ukraine, with a majority of its peoples culturally Russian, thus the “takeover” by Russia, as viewed by the west, has saved them from the fascist government of Kiev. It has also preserved the most important Russian seaport and military base, from Nato.   An example of independence movements based upon culture and history could also be used by Texas, New Mexico, and California……..Silicon Valley alone brings in more tax revenue than all the other states put together, or at least it would if our tax structure was just.  On Oct 1, 2017, at 18:47, David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: September 29, 2017 When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia byAnna M. Hennessey by FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditEmail People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now.The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes. Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution, a point revealed brilliantly in the recent documentary,Las Cloacas de Interior(The State’s Secret Cesspit), which includes numerous interviews with Spanish police, officials, and politicians who describe the corruption in detail. After a media blackout of the film in Spain this summer, the creators made it available through various online outlets. Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia. And yet we on the outside continue to make excuses for Spain, often conflating its problems with Catalonia to a squabble about taxes. This week, we have watched passively as arrests, police activity and other alarming developments build in Barcelona. We refer to the Spanish Constitution, which was written in 1978, as a way of backing up Spain’s dictatorial assertion that the Catalans have no right to self-determination and that the referendum isillegal. The part of the Constitution that says Spain is indivisible was added not by the “fathers” of the Constitution, but by the military, as Jordi Soler Tura, one of two Catalan founders of the Constitutionexplained in 1985. Following the creation of the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, a law still active today, there has been no investigation or prosecution of the massive human rights violations that took place in Spain under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, and this was the same environment of suppression and authority in which the current Constitution was written. After all the years of trauma that finally led into the tedious transition to democracy in the late 1970s following Franco’s death, many people in Spain and Catalonia are reticent to talk about these issues. Franco died peacefully in his bed at age eighty-two after ruling over the country as dictator for almost half his life. Let’s imagine Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dying peacefully in his bed sometime in 1971 following decades as Germany’s Nazi leader. We likely cannot imagine this scenario, but it is exactly what happened in Spain. Franco and Hitler were both fascists who engaged in the mass murder of civilians for the purpose of “cleansing” their societies of those they believed to be of an inferior race or a threat. Franco in fact wrote the novel behind the movie, Raza (Race, 1941), which promoted the idea that hispanidad, or Spain’s superior race, comprised of those who were in line with Nationalist sentiment. The big difference between Franco and Hitler is that Franco won his war and Hitler lost his. Most of us know about Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, the horrific extermination of Jews and others not in line with fascism. Under Franco, there were concentration camps in Spain too, and many Spanish political prisoners were sent abroad to Nazi camps in Germany and Austria, or ended up in internment camps in France. Paul Preston’s book,The Spanish Holocaust, shows how bad the situation was inside Spain. As Adam Hochschild writes in his 2012 New York Timesreview of the book, some atrocities included, “soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood…Franco’s troops practiced gang rape to frighten newly captured towns into submission…Tens of thousands of women had their heads shaved and were force-fed castor oil (a powerful laxative), then jeered as they were paraded through the streets soiling themselves.” The list goes on, mentioning the branding of women on their breasts and the shooting of pregnant women in a maternity hospital. Thousands of the people who were tortured or sent to the camps were Catalans. During the years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia was one of Spain’s strongholds of resistance, and the Catalan people suffered enormously for it. Following a military trial in 1940 that lasted less than an hour, Lluís Companys (1882-1940), the president of Catalonia’s Generalitat, or its system of governance, was tortured and then executed by the Guardia Civil. Companys is a symbol for what the Catalans endured during and after the Civil War. Many were murdered, disappeared, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, had their children stolen, or were economically disenfranchised during these periods. Catalan people were alsobanned from speaking their language and saw other aspects of their culture suppressed by the fascist regime. Teaching and speaking of the language became legal only after Spain’s restoration to a democracy in 1978. Rising above their past, the Catalan people have flourished in the twenty-first century and are themain contributor to Spain’s economy. Barcelona and the larger region are renowned for their industrious and creative workers.The Catalan language and its culture are thriving. The Catalan people should not be confused with the Basques, whose militant organization, the ETA, has been responsible for much bloodshed in Spain. The Catalans have a history of peaceful and communal resistance to the Spanish government, a tradition that continues today. The referendum that they seek is part of a basic democratic process, just as was the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in the United Kingdom. Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe. Anna M. Hennessey is a philosopher who has lived in Spain and in Catalonia. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 2 20:25:53 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 20:25:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Catalonia In-Reply-To: <1871117899.1844043.1506952819513@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> <1871117899.1844043.1506952819513@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: A partial answer to my question of independence, in relation to Catalonia and other nations, by Pepe Escobar The future of the EU at stake in Catalonia Fascist Franco may have been dead for more than four decades, but Spain is still encumbered with his dictatorial corpse. A new paradigm has been coined right inside the lofty European Union, self-described home/patronizing dispenser of human rights to lesser regions across the planet: “In the name of democracy, refrain from voting, or else.” Call it democracy nano-Franco style. Nano-Franco is Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose heroic shock troops were redeployed from a serious nationwide terrorist alert to hammer with batons and fire rubber bullets not against jihadis but … voters. At least six schools became the terrain of what was correctly called The Battle of Barcelona. THE DAILYBrief Extreme right-wingers even held a demonstration inside Barcelona. Yet this was not shown on Spanish TV because it contradicted the official Madrid narrative. The Catalan government beat the fascist goons with two very simple codes – as revealed by La Vanguardia. “I’ve got the Tupperware. Where do we meet?” was the code on a prepaid mobile phone for people to collect and protect ballot boxes. “I’m the paper traveler” was the code to protect the actual paper ballots. Julian Assange/WikiLeaks had warned about the world’s first Internet war as deployed by Madrid to smash the electronic voting system. The counterpunch was – literally – on paper. The US National Security Agency must have learned a few lessons. So we had techno power combined with cowardly Francoist repression tactics countered by people power, as in parents conducting sit-ins in schools to make sure they were functional on referendum day. Some 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who made it to the polls ended up voting in favor of independence from Spain, according to preliminary results. Catalonia has 5.3 million registered voters. Roughly 770,000 votes were lost because of raids by Spanish police. Turnout at around 42% may not be high but it’s certainly not low. As the day went by, there was a growing feeling, all across Catalonia, all social classes involved, that this was not about independence any more; it was about fighting a new brand of fascism. What’s certain is there’s a Perfect Storm coming. No pasarán The “institutional declaration” of overwhelming mediocrity nano-Franco Rajoy, right after the polls were closed, invited disbelief. The highlight was a mediocre take on Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas un referendum.” This referendum never took place. And it could never take place because “Spain is a mature and advanced democracy, friendly and tolerant”. The day’s events proved it a lie. Rajoy said “the great majority of Catalan people did not want to participate in the secessionist script”. Another lie. Even before the “non-existent” referendum, between 70% and 80% of Catalans said they wanted to vote, yes or no, after an informed debate about their future. Crucially, Rajoy extolled the “unwavering support of the EU and the international community”. Of course; unelected EU “elites” in Brussels and the main European capitals are absolutely terrorized when EU citizens express themselves. Yet the top nano-Franco lie was that “democracy prevailed because the constitution was respected”. Rajoy spent weeks defending his repression of the referendum by invoking “the rule of law such as ours”. It’s “their” law, indeed. The heart of the matter are Articles 116 and 155 of a retrograde Spanish constitution, the first one describing how states of alarm, exception and siege work in Spain, and the latter applied in “order to compel the [autonomous community] forcibly to meet … obligations, or in order to protect the … general interests.” Well, these “obligations” and “general interests” are defined by – who else, Madrid and Madrid only. The Spanish Constitutional Court is a joke – it couldn’t care less about the principle of separation of powers. The court congregates a bunch of legalistic Mafiosi/patsies working for the two parties of the establishment, the so-called “socialists” of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the medieval right-wingers of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP). Few outside Spain may remember the failed coup of February 23, 1981 – when there was an attempt to hurl Spain back into the long dark Francoist night. Well, I was in Barcelona when it happened – and that vividly reminded me of the South American military coups in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the coup, what passes for “justice” in Spain never ceased to be a mere lackey to these two political parties. The Constitutional Court actually suspended the Catalan referendum law, arguing that it was violating the – medieval – Spanish constitution. This disgraceful collusion is crystal-clear for most people in Catalonia. What Madrid is essentially up to amounts to a coup as well – against the Catalan government and, of course, against democracy. So no wonder the immortal civil-war mantra was back in the streets of Catalonia: “¡No pasarán!” They shall not pass. Brussels does demophobia Rajoy, thuggish, mediocre and corrupt (that’s another long story), lied even more when he said he keeps the “door open to dialogue”. He never wanted any dialogue with Catalonia – always refusing a referendum in any shape or form or transferring any powers to the Catalan regional government. Catalonia’s regional president, Carles Puigdemont, insists he had to call the referendum because this is what separatist parties promised when they won regional elections two years ago. And of course no one is an angel in this hardcore power play. The PDeCaT (the Democratic Party of Catalonia), the main force behind the referendum, has also been mired in corruption. Catalonia in itself is as economically powerful as Denmark; 7.5 million people, around 16% of Spain’s population, but responsible for 20% of gross domestic product, attracting one-third of foreign investment and producing one-third of exports. In a country where unemployment is at a horribly high 30%, losing Catalonia would be the ultimate disaster. The demophobia of Brussels elites knows no bounds; the historical record shows EU citizens are not allowed to express themselves freely, especially by using democratic practices in questions related to self-determination. Madrid in effect subscribes to only two priorities: dutifully obey EU austerity diktats, and crush by all means any regional push for autonomy. Catalan historian Josep Fontana, in a wide-ranging, enlightening interview, has identified the heart of the matter: “What, for me, is scandalous is that the PP is whipping up public opinion by saying that holding the referendum means the secession of Catalonia afterwards, when it knows that secession is impossible. It is impossible because it would mean that the Generalitat would have to ask the Madrid government to be so kind as to withdraw its army, Guardia Civil and National Police from Catalonia, and to meekly renounce a territory that provides 20% of its GDP … so why are they using this excuse to stir up a climate reminiscent of a civil war?” Beyond the specter of civil war, the Big Picture is even more incandescent. The Scottish National Party is sort of blood cousins with Catalan separatists in its rejection of a perceived illegitimate central authority, with all the accompanying negative litany. SNP members complain they are forced to cope with different languages; political diktats from above; unfair taxes; and what is felt as outright economic exploitation. This phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with the EU-wide rise of extreme right-wing nationalism, populism and xenophobia – as Madrid insists. And then there’s the silence of the wolves. It would be easy to picture the EU’s reaction if the drama in Catalonia were happening in distant, “barbarian” Eurasian lands. The peaceful referendum in Crimea was condemned as “illegal” and dictatorial while a violent attack against freedom of expression of millions of people living inside the EU gets a pass. The demophobia of Brussels elites knows no bounds; the historical record shows EU citizens are not allowed to express themselves freely, especially by using democratic practices in questions related to self-determination. Whatever torrent of spin may come ahead, the silence of the EU betrays the fact Brussels is puling the strings behind Madrid. After all the Brave New Euroland project implies the destruction of European nations to the profit of a centralized Brussels eurocracy. Referenda are untamable animals. Kosovo was a by-product of the amputation/bombing into democracy of Serbia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; a gangster/narco mini-state useful as the host of Camp Bondsteel, the largest Pentagon base outside of the US. Crimea was part of a legitimate reunification drive to rectify Nikita Khrushchev’s idiocy of separating it from Russia. London did not send goons to prevent the referendum in Scotland; an amicable negotiation is in effect. No set rules apply. Neocons screamed in vain when Crimea was reunited with Russia after shedding tears of joy when Kosovo was carved out of Serbia. As for Madrid, a lesson should be learned from Ireland in 1916. In the beginning the majority of the population was against an uprising. But brutal British repression led to the war of independence – and the rest is history. After this historic, (relatively) bloody Sunday, more and more Catalans will be asking: If Slovenia and Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the tiny Baltic republics, not to mention even tinier Luxembourg, Cyprus and Malta, can be EU members, why not us? And a stampede might be ahead; Flanders and Wallonia, the Basque country and Galicia, Wales and Northern Ireland. All across the EU, the centralized Eurocrat dream is splintering. It’s Catalonia that may be pointing toward a not so brave, but more realistic, new world. * * * * On Oct 2, 2017, at 07:00, David Green > wrote: Points well-taken; I had not understood the background of the Catalan/Spanish relationship to the extent that the article explains, and I wouldn't (nor is it my place) to "support" independence. It hasn't seemed to me that independence/secessionist movements leave most questions unanswered in and of themselves. On ‎Monday‎, ‎October‎ ‎2‎, ‎2017‎ ‎08‎:‎19‎:‎46‎ ‎AM, Karen Aram > wrote: David An excellent article. I certainly support Catalonian independence as I did Irish independence from England, and reunification with Northern Ireland. Both are based upon culture, and history. However, I’ve been to both nations, Barcelona in 2014, pre referendum at that time, and heard both sides of the argument from Catalonians. Going forward I question the economic and political consequences of independent movements and look for guidelines, given so many nations are now looking to secede. Rather like Brexit from the EU. Ex: Venetians in Italy, and the many nations of Europe as well as the UK. It’s their peoples decision of course, but if we are to support such movements, questions need to be answered. Most especially with a very aggressive Nato on the borders of so many nations across Europe and looking to be strengthened rather than weakened. It begs the question how do small vulnerable nations deal with divisions, that only unification is likely to address. I also use Crimea as an example of a nation located within the Ukraine, with a majority of its peoples culturally Russian, thus the “takeover” by Russia, as viewed by the west, has saved them from the fascist government of Kiev. It has also preserved the most important Russian seaport and military base, from Nato. An example of independence movements based upon culture and history could also be used by Texas, New Mexico, and California……..Silicon Valley alone brings in more tax revenue than all the other states put together, or at least it would if our tax structure was just. On Oct 1, 2017, at 18:47, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: September 29, 2017 When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia by Anna M. Hennessey by Facebook Twitter Google+ Reddit Email [https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2017/09/atoa-print-icon.png] People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes. Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution, a point revealed brilliantly in the recent documentary, Las Cloacas de Interior (The State’s Secret Cesspit), which includes numerous interviews with Spanish police, officials, and politicians who describe the corruption in detail. After a media blackout of the film in Spain this summer, the creators made it available through various online outlets. Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia. And yet we on the outside continue to make excuses for Spain, often conflating its problems with Catalonia to a squabble about taxes. This week, we have watched passively as arrests, police activity and other alarming developments build in Barcelona. We refer to the Spanish Constitution, which was written in 1978, as a way of backing up Spain’s dictatorial assertion that the Catalans have no right to self-determination and that the referendum is illegal. The part of the Constitution that says Spain is indivisible was added not by the “fathers” of the Constitution, but by the military, as Jordi Soler Tura, one of two Catalan founders of the Constitution explained in 1985. Following the creation of the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, a law still active today, there has been no investigation or prosecution of the massive human rights violations that took place in Spain under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, and this was the same environment of suppression and authority in which the current Constitution was written. After all the years of trauma that finally led into the tedious transition to democracy in the late 1970s following Franco’s death, many people in Spain and Catalonia are reticent to talk about these issues. Franco died peacefully in his bed at age eighty-two after ruling over the country as dictator for almost half his life. Let’s imagine Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dying peacefully in his bed sometime in 1971 following decades as Germany’s Nazi leader. We likely cannot imagine this scenario, but it is exactly what happened in Spain. Franco and Hitler were both fascists who engaged in the mass murder of civilians for the purpose of “cleansing” their societies of those they believed to be of an inferior race or a threat. Franco in fact wrote the novel behind the movie, Raza (Race, 1941), which promoted the idea that hispanidad, or Spain’s superior race, comprised of those who were in line with Nationalist sentiment. The big difference between Franco and Hitler is that Franco won his war and Hitler lost his. Most of us know about Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, the horrific extermination of Jews and others not in line with fascism. Under Franco, there were concentration camps in Spain too, and many Spanish political prisoners were sent abroad to Nazi camps in Germany and Austria, or ended up in internment camps in France. Paul Preston’s book, The Spanish Holocaust, shows how bad the situation was inside Spain. As Adam Hochschild writes in his 2012 New York Times review of the book, some atrocities included, “soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood…Franco’s troops practiced gang rape to frighten newly captured towns into submission…Tens of thousands of women had their heads shaved and were force-fed castor oil (a powerful laxative), then jeered as they were paraded through the streets soiling themselves.” The list goes on, mentioning the branding of women on their breasts and the shooting of pregnant women in a maternity hospital. Thousands of the people who were tortured or sent to the camps were Catalans. During the years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia was one of Spain’s strongholds of resistance, and the Catalan people suffered enormously for it. Following a military trial in 1940 that lasted less than an hour, Lluís Companys (1882-1940), the president of Catalonia’s Generalitat, or its system of governance, was tortured and then executed by the Guardia Civil. Companys is a symbol for what the Catalans endured during and after the Civil War. Many were murdered, disappeared, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, had their children stolen, or were economically disenfranchised during these periods. Catalan people were also banned from speaking their language and saw other aspects of their culture suppressed by the fascist regime. Teaching and speaking of the language became legal only after Spain’s restoration to a democracy in 1978. Rising above their past, the Catalan people have flourished in the twenty-first century and are the main contributor to Spain’s economy. Barcelona and the larger region are renowned for their industrious and creative workers. The Catalan language and its culture are thriving. The Catalan people should not be confused with the Basques, whose militant organization, the ETA, has been responsible for much bloodshed in Spain. The Catalans have a history of peaceful and communal resistance to the Spanish government, a tradition that continues today. The referendum that they seek is part of a basic democratic process, just as was the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in the United Kingdom. Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe. Anna M. Hennessey is a philosopher who has lived in Spain and in Catalonia. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 2 21:30:13 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 16:30:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] What to do with Europe In-Reply-To: References: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> <1871117899.1844043.1506952819513@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <571CDD54-E915-41CD-8D24-58C96B6BDAE0@illinois.edu> [Half in jest…] Let’s think about this. The Empire was abolished in 1806 by the Corsican usurper who a decade earlier had extinguished the Republic of Venice and turned it over to the Austrians. In the course of his wars, the German usurpation of the thrones of England and Scotland was confirmed. The rightful heir to the British thrones today is Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein Sophie von Wittelsbach (born 1967), descendant of the Stuart monarchs of Scotland and England. She inherits - through the Wittelsbachs, the royal house of Bavaria - the title "Princess of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland.” She used the title "Duchess in Bavaria,” but also bore the title "Princess of Bavaria.” A restored Empire would have an elective monarch, and Sophie would be an obvious candidate. An Empire of devolved, democratic states - including Catalonia, Scotland, Veneto (the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio being revoked) et al. - would encompass not only the EU but also the UK. The political form of a post-EU, socialist Europe, could turn out to be an imperial restoration - as political philosopher Richard Tuck almost suggests in his defense of Brexit: "The Left Case for Brexit," Dissent Magazine . —CGE > On Oct 2, 2017, at 3:25 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > A partial answer to my question of independence, in relation to Catalonia and other nations, by Pepe Escobar > > The future of the EU at stake in Catalonia > > Fascist Franco may have been dead for more than four decades, but Spain is still encumbered with his dictatorial corpse. A new paradigm has been coined right inside the lofty European Union, self-described home/patronizing dispenser of human rights to lesser regions across the planet: “In the name of democracy, refrain from voting, or else.” Call it democracy nano-Franco style. > > Nano-Franco is Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose heroic shock troops were redeployed from a serious nationwide terrorist alert to hammer with batons and fire rubber bullets not against jihadis but … voters. At least six schools became the terrain of what was correctly called The Battle of Barcelona. > > THE DAILY > Brief > Extreme right-wingers even held a demonstration inside Barcelona. Yet this was not shown on Spanish TV because it contradicted the official Madrid narrative. > > The Catalan government beat the fascist goons with two very simple codes – as revealed by La Vanguardia. “I’ve got the Tupperware. Where do we meet?” was the code on a prepaid mobile phone for people to collect and protect ballot boxes. “I’m the paper traveler” was the code to protect the actual paper ballots. Julian Assange/WikiLeaks had warned about the world’s first Internet war as deployed by Madrid to smash the electronic voting system. The counterpunch was – literally – on paper. The US National Security Agency must have learned a few lessons. > > So we had techno power combined with cowardly Francoist repression tactics countered by people power, as in parents conducting sit-ins in schools to make sure they were functional on referendum day. Some 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who made it to the polls ended up voting in favor of independence from Spain, according to preliminary results. Catalonia has 5.3 million registered voters. > > Roughly 770,000 votes were lost because of raids by Spanish police. Turnout at around 42% may not be high but it’s certainly not low. As the day went by, there was a growing feeling, all across Catalonia, all social classes involved, that this was not about independence any more; it was about fighting a new brand of fascism. What’s certain is there’s a Perfect Storm coming. > > No pasarán > > The “institutional declaration” of overwhelming mediocrity nano-Franco Rajoy, right after the polls were closed, invited disbelief. The highlight was a mediocre take on Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas un referendum.” This referendum never took place. And it could never take place because “Spain is a mature and advanced democracy, friendly and > tolerant”. The day’s events proved it a lie. > > Rajoy said “the great majority of Catalan people did not want to participate in the secessionist script”. Another lie. Even before the “non-existent” referendum, between 70% and 80% of Catalans said they wanted to vote, yes or no, after an informed debate about their future. > > Crucially, Rajoy extolled the “unwavering support of the EU and the international community”. Of course; unelected EU “elites” in Brussels and the main European capitals are absolutely terrorized when EU citizens express themselves. > > Yet the top nano-Franco lie was that “democracy prevailed because > the constitution was respected”. > > Rajoy spent weeks defending his repression of the referendum by invoking “the rule of law such as ours”. It’s “their” law, indeed. The heart of the matter are Articles 116 and 155 of a retrograde Spanish constitution, the first one describing how states of alarm, exception and siege work in Spain, and the latter applied in “order to compel the [autonomous community] forcibly to meet … obligations, or in order to protect the … general interests.” > > Well, these “obligations” and “general interests” are defined by – who else, Madrid and Madrid only. The Spanish Constitutional Court is a joke – it couldn’t care less about the principle of separation of powers. The court congregates a bunch of legalistic Mafiosi/patsies working for the two parties of the establishment, the so-called “socialists” of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the medieval right-wingers of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP). > > Few outside Spain may remember the failed coup of February 23, 1981 – when there was an attempt to hurl Spain back into the long dark Francoist night. Well, I was in Barcelona when it happened – and that vividly reminded me of the South American military coups in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the coup, what passes for “justice” in Spain never ceased to be a mere lackey to these two political parties. > > The Constitutional Court actually suspended the Catalan referendum law, arguing that it was violating the – medieval – Spanish constitution. This disgraceful collusion is crystal-clear for most people in Catalonia. What Madrid is essentially up to amounts to a coup as well – against the Catalan government and, of course, against democracy. So no wonder the immortal civil-war mantra was back in the streets of Catalonia: “¡No pasarán!” They shall not pass. > > Brussels does demophobia > > Rajoy, thuggish, mediocre and corrupt (that’s another long story), lied even more when he said he keeps the “door open to dialogue”. He never wanted any dialogue with Catalonia – always refusing a referendum in any shape or form or transferring any powers to the Catalan regional government. Catalonia’s regional president, Carles Puigdemont, insists he had to call the referendum because this is what separatist parties promised when they won regional elections two years ago. > > And of course no one is an angel in this hardcore power play. The PDeCaT (the Democratic Party of Catalonia), the main force behind the referendum, has also been mired in corruption. > > Catalonia in itself is as economically powerful as Denmark; 7.5 million people, around 16% of Spain’s population, but responsible for 20% of gross domestic product, attracting one-third of foreign investment and producing one-third of exports. In a country where unemployment is at a horribly high 30%, losing Catalonia would be the ultimate disaster. > > The demophobia of Brussels elites knows no bounds; the historical record shows EU citizens are not allowed to express themselves freely, especially by using democratic practices in questions related to self-determination. > Madrid in effect subscribes to only two priorities: dutifully obey EU austerity diktats, and crush by all means any regional push for autonomy. > > Catalan historian Josep Fontana, in a wide-ranging, enlightening interview, has identified the heart of the matter: “What, for me, is scandalous is that the PP is whipping up public opinion by saying that holding the referendum means the secession of Catalonia afterwards, when it knows that secession is impossible. It is impossible because it would mean that the Generalitat would have to ask the Madrid government to be so kind as to withdraw its army, Guardia Civil and National Police from Catalonia, and to meekly renounce a territory that provides 20% of its GDP … so why are they using this excuse to stir up a climate reminiscent of a civil war?” > > Beyond the specter of civil war, the Big Picture is even more incandescent. > > The Scottish National Party is sort of blood cousins with Catalan separatists in its rejection of a perceived illegitimate central authority, with all the accompanying negative litany. SNP members complain they are forced to cope with different languages; political diktats from above; unfair taxes; and what is felt as outright economic exploitation. This phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with the EU-wide rise of extreme right-wing nationalism, populism and xenophobia – as Madrid insists. > > And then there’s the silence of the wolves. It would be easy to picture the EU’s reaction if the drama in Catalonia were happening in distant, “barbarian” Eurasian lands. The peaceful referendum in Crimea was condemned as “illegal” and dictatorial while a violent attack against freedom of expression of millions of people living inside the EU gets a pass. > > The demophobia of Brussels elites knows no bounds; the historical record shows EU citizens are not allowed to express themselves freely, especially by using democratic practices in questions related to self-determination. Whatever torrent of spin may come ahead, the silence of the EU betrays the fact Brussels is puling the strings behind Madrid. After all the Brave New Euroland project implies the destruction of European nations to the profit of a centralized Brussels eurocracy. > > Referenda are untamable animals. Kosovo was a by-product of the amputation/bombing into democracy of Serbia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; a gangster/narco mini-state useful as the host of Camp Bondsteel, the largest Pentagon base outside of the US. > > Crimea was part of a legitimate reunification drive to rectify Nikita Khrushchev’s idiocy of separating it from Russia. London did not send goons to prevent the referendum in Scotland; an amicable negotiation is in effect. No set rules apply. Neocons screamed in vain when Crimea was reunited with Russia after shedding tears of joy when Kosovo was carved out of Serbia. > > As for Madrid, a lesson should be learned from Ireland in 1916. In the beginning the majority of the population was against an uprising. But brutal British repression led to the war of independence – and the rest is history. > > After this historic, (relatively) bloody Sunday, more and more Catalans will be asking: If Slovenia and Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the tiny Baltic republics, not to mention even tinier Luxembourg, Cyprus and Malta, can be EU members, why not us? And a stampede might be ahead; Flanders and Wallonia, the Basque country and Galicia, Wales and Northern Ireland. > > All across the EU, the centralized Eurocrat dream is splintering. It’s Catalonia that may be pointing toward a not so brave, but more realistic, new world. > > • > • > • > • >> On Oct 2, 2017, at 07:00, David Green wrote: >> >> Points well-taken; I had not understood the background of the Catalan/Spanish relationship to the extent that the article explains, and I wouldn't (nor is it my place) to "support" independence. It hasn't seemed to me that independence/secessionist movements leave most questions unanswered in and of themselves. >> >> On ‎Monday‎, ‎October‎ ‎2‎, ‎2017‎ ‎08‎:‎19‎:‎46‎ ‎AM, Karen Aram wrote: >> >> >> David >> >> An excellent article. I certainly support Catalonian independence as I did Irish independence from England, and reunification with Northern Ireland. Both are based upon culture, and history. >> >> However, I’ve been to both nations, Barcelona in 2014, pre referendum at that time, and heard both sides of the argument from Catalonians. >> >> Going forward I question the economic and political consequences of independent movements and look for guidelines, given so many nations are now looking to secede. Rather like Brexit from the EU. >> >> Ex: Venetians in Italy, and the many nations of Europe as well as the UK. It’s their peoples decision of course, but if we are to support such movements, questions need to be answered. Most especially with a very aggressive Nato on the borders of so many nations across Europe and looking to be strengthened rather than weakened. It begs the question how do small vulnerable nations deal with divisions, that only unification is likely to address. >> >> I also use Crimea as an example of a nation located within the Ukraine, with a majority of its peoples culturally Russian, thus the “takeover” by Russia, as viewed by the west, has saved them from the fascist government of Kiev. It has also preserved the most important Russian seaport and military base, from Nato. >> >> An example of independence movements based upon culture and history could also be used by Texas, New Mexico, and California……..Silicon Valley alone brings in more tax revenue than all the other states put together, or at least it would if our tax structure was just. >> >> >> >> >> >> >>> On Oct 1, 2017, at 18:47, David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> September 29, 2017 >>> When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia >>> >>> by Anna M. Hennessey >>> >>> by >>> >>> Facebook Twitter Google+ Reddit Email >>> People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. >>> >>> Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes. >>> >>> Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution, a point revealed brilliantly in the recent documentary, Las Cloacas de Interior (The State’s Secret Cesspit), which includes numerous interviews with Spanish police, officials, and politicians who describe the corruption in detail. After a media blackout of the film in Spain this summer, the creators made it available through various online outlets. >>> >>> Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. >>> >>> It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia. And yet we on the outside continue to make excuses for Spain, often conflating its problems with Catalonia to a squabble about taxes. This week, we have watched passively as arrests, police activity and other alarming developments build in Barcelona. We refer to the Spanish Constitution, which was written in 1978, as a way of backing up Spain’s dictatorial assertion that the Catalans have no right to self-determination and that the referendum is illegal. The part of the Constitution that says Spain is indivisible was added not by the “fathers” of the Constitution, but by the military, as Jordi Soler Tura, one of two Catalan founders of the Constitution explained in 1985. Following the creation of the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, a law still active today, there has been no investigation or prosecution of the massive human rights violations that took place in Spain under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, and this was the same environment of suppression and authority in which the current Constitution was written. After all the years of trauma that finally led into the tedious transition to democracy in the late 1970s following Franco’s death, many people in Spain and Catalonia are reticent to talk about these issues. >>> >>> Franco died peacefully in his bed at age eighty-two after ruling over the country as dictator for almost half his life. Let’s imagine Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dying peacefully in his bed sometime in 1971 following decades as Germany’s Nazi leader. We likely cannot imagine this scenario, but it is exactly what happened in Spain. Franco and Hitler were both fascists who engaged in the mass murder of civilians for the purpose of “cleansing” their societies of those they believed to be of an inferior race or a threat. Franco in fact wrote the novel behind the movie, Raza (Race, 1941), which promoted the idea that hispanidad, or Spain’s superior race, comprised of those who were in line with Nationalist sentiment. The big difference between Franco and Hitler is that Franco won his war and Hitler lost his. >>> >>> Most of us know about Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, the horrific extermination of Jews and others not in line with fascism. Under Franco, there were concentration camps in Spain too, and many Spanish political prisoners were sent abroad to Nazi camps in Germany and Austria, or ended up in internment camps in France. Paul Preston’s book, The Spanish Holocaust, shows how bad the situation was inside Spain. As Adam Hochschild writes in his 2012 New York Times review of the book, some atrocities included, “soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood…Franco’s troops practiced gang rape to frighten newly captured towns into submission…Tens of thousands of women had their heads shaved and were force-fed castor oil (a powerful laxative), then jeered as they were paraded through the streets soiling themselves.” The list goes on, mentioning the branding of women on their breasts and the shooting of pregnant women in a maternity hospital. >>> >>> Thousands of the people who were tortured or sent to the camps were Catalans. During the years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia was one of Spain’s strongholds of resistance, and the Catalan people suffered enormously for it. Following a military trial in 1940 that lasted less than an hour, Lluís Companys (1882-1940), the president of Catalonia’s Generalitat, or its system of governance, was tortured and then executed by the Guardia Civil. Companys is a symbol for what the Catalans endured during and after the Civil War. Many were murdered, disappeared, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, had their children stolen, or were economically disenfranchised during these periods. Catalan people were also banned from speaking their language and saw other aspects of their culture suppressed by the fascist regime. Teaching and speaking of the language became legal only after Spain’s restoration to a democracy in 1978. >>> >>> Rising above their past, the Catalan people have flourished in the twenty-first century and are the main contributor to Spain’s economy. Barcelona and the larger region are renowned for their industrious and creative workers. The Catalan language and its culture are thriving. The Catalan people should not be confused with the Basques, whose militant organization, the ETA, has been responsible for much bloodshed in Spain. The Catalans have a history of peaceful and communal resistance to the Spanish government, a tradition that continues today. The referendum that they seek is part of a basic democratic process, just as was the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in the United Kingdom. >>> >>> Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe. >>> >>> Anna M. Hennessey is a philosopher who has lived in Spain and in Catalonia. >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 2 21:59:23 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 21:59:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?FW=3A_Galveston=E2=80=99s_BioLab_Amid_G?= =?utf-8?q?lobal_Warming?= Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Posted on: Monday, October 2, 2017 8:20 AM Author: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Subject: Galveston’s BioLab Amid Global Warming I interviewed Prof. Francis Boyle, who wrote the U.S. implementing legislation for the Biological Warfare Convention. He expressed concern for a power failure that could disrupt the containment system. My piece prompted the university’s public relations ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 2 21:59:23 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 21:59:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?FW=3A_Galveston=E2=80=99s_BioLab_Amid_G?= =?utf-8?q?lobal_Warming?= Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Posted on: Monday, October 2, 2017 8:20 AM Author: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Subject: Galveston’s BioLab Amid Global Warming I interviewed Prof. Francis Boyle, who wrote the U.S. implementing legislation for the Biological Warfare Convention. He expressed concern for a power failure that could disrupt the containment system. My piece prompted the university’s public relations ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 3 13:59:58 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 13:59:58 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Catalonia In-Reply-To: References: <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1110030953.1606170.1506908824343@mail.yahoo.com> <1871117899.1844043.1506952819513@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: This from a FB friend, which supports my opinion on Catalonian independence: "The Spanish left, jointly with Catalan workers’ parties, has spoken against independence, while maintaining the legitimate right to call a referendum and denouncing the repression by Madrid. The PCE launched a call for mobilization against the monarchy, to give birth to a Federal Republic in solidarity with all the peoples of Spain, to destroy forever the legacy of Franco but also the reactionary legacy of nationalism in the form of chauvinist ethnicities and identity.” Another individual wrote: " Partition will only make things worse. Look no further than Yugoslavia/Iraq and now Spain!! The Ruling Catalonian Elites are no longer getting their hands out from the Spanish Government so now they're socially manipulating the people of Catalonia to secede. This is how the EU will try and maintain control by Balkanizing nation states. Ever since Brexit? The EU is Desperate to maintain control.” On Oct 2, 2017, at 13:25, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: A partial answer to my question of independence, in relation to Catalonia and other nations, by Pepe Escobar The future of the EU at stake in Catalonia Fascist Franco may have been dead for more than four decades, but Spain is still encumbered with his dictatorial corpse. A new paradigm has been coined right inside the lofty European Union, self-described home/patronizing dispenser of human rights to lesser regions across the planet: “In the name of democracy, refrain from voting, or else.” Call it democracy nano-Franco style. Nano-Franco is Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose heroic shock troops were redeployed from a serious nationwide terrorist alert to hammer with batons and fire rubber bullets not against jihadis but … voters. At least six schools became the terrain of what was correctly called The Battle of Barcelona. THE DAILYBrief Extreme right-wingers even held a demonstration inside Barcelona. Yet this was not shown on Spanish TV because it contradicted the official Madrid narrative. The Catalan government beat the fascist goons with two very simple codes – as revealed by La Vanguardia. “I’ve got the Tupperware. Where do we meet?” was the code on a prepaid mobile phone for people to collect and protect ballot boxes. “I’m the paper traveler” was the code to protect the actual paper ballots. Julian Assange/WikiLeaks had warned about the world’s first Internet war as deployed by Madrid to smash the electronic voting system. The counterpunch was – literally – on paper. The US National Security Agency must have learned a few lessons. So we had techno power combined with cowardly Francoist repression tactics countered by people power, as in parents conducting sit-ins in schools to make sure they were functional on referendum day. Some 90% of the 2.26 million Catalans who made it to the polls ended up voting in favor of independence from Spain, according to preliminary results. Catalonia has 5.3 million registered voters. Roughly 770,000 votes were lost because of raids by Spanish police. Turnout at around 42% may not be high but it’s certainly not low. As the day went by, there was a growing feeling, all across Catalonia, all social classes involved, that this was not about independence any more; it was about fighting a new brand of fascism. What’s certain is there’s a Perfect Storm coming. No pasarán The “institutional declaration” of overwhelming mediocrity nano-Franco Rajoy, right after the polls were closed, invited disbelief. The highlight was a mediocre take on Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas un referendum.” This referendum never took place. And it could never take place because “Spain is a mature and advanced democracy, friendly and tolerant”. The day’s events proved it a lie. Rajoy said “the great majority of Catalan people did not want to participate in the secessionist script”. Another lie. Even before the “non-existent” referendum, between 70% and 80% of Catalans said they wanted to vote, yes or no, after an informed debate about their future. Crucially, Rajoy extolled the “unwavering support of the EU and the international community”. Of course; unelected EU “elites” in Brussels and the main European capitals are absolutely terrorized when EU citizens express themselves. Yet the top nano-Franco lie was that “democracy prevailed because the constitution was respected”. Rajoy spent weeks defending his repression of the referendum by invoking “the rule of law such as ours”. It’s “their” law, indeed. The heart of the matter are Articles 116 and 155 of a retrograde Spanish constitution, the first one describing how states of alarm, exception and siege work in Spain, and the latter applied in “order to compel the [autonomous community] forcibly to meet … obligations, or in order to protect the … general interests.” Well, these “obligations” and “general interests” are defined by – who else, Madrid and Madrid only. The Spanish Constitutional Court is a joke – it couldn’t care less about the principle of separation of powers. The court congregates a bunch of legalistic Mafiosi/patsies working for the two parties of the establishment, the so-called “socialists” of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the medieval right-wingers of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP). Few outside Spain may remember the failed coup of February 23, 1981 – when there was an attempt to hurl Spain back into the long dark Francoist night. Well, I was in Barcelona when it happened – and that vividly reminded me of the South American military coups in the 1960s and 1970s. Since the coup, what passes for “justice” in Spain never ceased to be a mere lackey to these two political parties. The Constitutional Court actually suspended the Catalan referendum law, arguing that it was violating the – medieval – Spanish constitution. This disgraceful collusion is crystal-clear for most people in Catalonia. What Madrid is essentially up to amounts to a coup as well – against the Catalan government and, of course, against democracy. So no wonder the immortal civil-war mantra was back in the streets of Catalonia: “¡No pasarán!” They shall not pass. Brussels does demophobia Rajoy, thuggish, mediocre and corrupt (that’s another long story), lied even more when he said he keeps the “door open to dialogue”. He never wanted any dialogue with Catalonia – always refusing a referendum in any shape or form or transferring any powers to the Catalan regional government. Catalonia’s regional president, Carles Puigdemont, insists he had to call the referendum because this is what separatist parties promised when they won regional elections two years ago. And of course no one is an angel in this hardcore power play. The PDeCaT (the Democratic Party of Catalonia), the main force behind the referendum, has also been mired in corruption. Catalonia in itself is as economically powerful as Denmark; 7.5 million people, around 16% of Spain’s population, but responsible for 20% of gross domestic product, attracting one-third of foreign investment and producing one-third of exports. In a country where unemployment is at a horribly high 30%, losing Catalonia would be the ultimate disaster. The demophobia of Brussels elites knows no bounds; the historical record shows EU citizens are not allowed to express themselves freely, especially by using democratic practices in questions related to self-determination. Madrid in effect subscribes to only two priorities: dutifully obey EU austerity diktats, and crush by all means any regional push for autonomy. Catalan historian Josep Fontana, in a wide-ranging, enlightening interview, has identified the heart of the matter: “What, for me, is scandalous is that the PP is whipping up public opinion by saying that holding the referendum means the secession of Catalonia afterwards, when it knows that secession is impossible. It is impossible because it would mean that the Generalitat would have to ask the Madrid government to be so kind as to withdraw its army, Guardia Civil and National Police from Catalonia, and to meekly renounce a territory that provides 20% of its GDP … so why are they using this excuse to stir up a climate reminiscent of a civil war?” Beyond the specter of civil war, the Big Picture is even more incandescent. The Scottish National Party is sort of blood cousins with Catalan separatists in its rejection of a perceived illegitimate central authority, with all the accompanying negative litany. SNP members complain they are forced to cope with different languages; political diktats from above; unfair taxes; and what is felt as outright economic exploitation. This phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with the EU-wide rise of extreme right-wing nationalism, populism and xenophobia – as Madrid insists. And then there’s the silence of the wolves. It would be easy to picture the EU’s reaction if the drama in Catalonia were happening in distant, “barbarian” Eurasian lands. The peaceful referendum in Crimea was condemned as “illegal” and dictatorial while a violent attack against freedom of expression of millions of people living inside the EU gets a pass. The demophobia of Brussels elites knows no bounds; the historical record shows EU citizens are not allowed to express themselves freely, especially by using democratic practices in questions related to self-determination. Whatever torrent of spin may come ahead, the silence of the EU betrays the fact Brussels is puling the strings behind Madrid. After all the Brave New Euroland project implies the destruction of European nations to the profit of a centralized Brussels eurocracy. Referenda are untamable animals. Kosovo was a by-product of the amputation/bombing into democracy of Serbia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; a gangster/narco mini-state useful as the host of Camp Bondsteel, the largest Pentagon base outside of the US. Crimea was part of a legitimate reunification drive to rectify Nikita Khrushchev’s idiocy of separating it from Russia. London did not send goons to prevent the referendum in Scotland; an amicable negotiation is in effect. No set rules apply. Neocons screamed in vain when Crimea was reunited with Russia after shedding tears of joy when Kosovo was carved out of Serbia. As for Madrid, a lesson should be learned from Ireland in 1916. In the beginning the majority of the population was against an uprising. But brutal British repression led to the war of independence – and the rest is history. After this historic, (relatively) bloody Sunday, more and more Catalans will be asking: If Slovenia and Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the tiny Baltic republics, not to mention even tinier Luxembourg, Cyprus and Malta, can be EU members, why not us? And a stampede might be ahead; Flanders and Wallonia, the Basque country and Galicia, Wales and Northern Ireland. All across the EU, the centralized Eurocrat dream is splintering. It’s Catalonia that may be pointing toward a not so brave, but more realistic, new world. * * * * On Oct 2, 2017, at 07:00, David Green > wrote: Points well-taken; I had not understood the background of the Catalan/Spanish relationship to the extent that the article explains, and I wouldn't (nor is it my place) to "support" independence. It hasn't seemed to me that independence/secessionist movements leave most questions unanswered in and of themselves. On ‎Monday‎, ‎October‎ ‎2‎, ‎2017‎ ‎08‎:‎19‎:‎46‎ ‎AM, Karen Aram > wrote: David An excellent article. I certainly support Catalonian independence as I did Irish independence from England, and reunification with Northern Ireland. Both are based upon culture, and history. However, I’ve been to both nations, Barcelona in 2014, pre referendum at that time, and heard both sides of the argument from Catalonians. Going forward I question the economic and political consequences of independent movements and look for guidelines, given so many nations are now looking to secede. Rather like Brexit from the EU. Ex: Venetians in Italy, and the many nations of Europe as well as the UK. It’s their peoples decision of course, but if we are to support such movements, questions need to be answered. Most especially with a very aggressive Nato on the borders of so many nations across Europe and looking to be strengthened rather than weakened. It begs the question how do small vulnerable nations deal with divisions, that only unification is likely to address. I also use Crimea as an example of a nation located within the Ukraine, with a majority of its peoples culturally Russian, thus the “takeover” by Russia, as viewed by the west, has saved them from the fascist government of Kiev. It has also preserved the most important Russian seaport and military base, from Nato. An example of independence movements based upon culture and history could also be used by Texas, New Mexico, and California……..Silicon Valley alone brings in more tax revenue than all the other states put together, or at least it would if our tax structure was just. On Oct 1, 2017, at 18:47, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: September 29, 2017 When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia by Anna M. Hennessey by Facebook Twitter Google+ Reddit Email [https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2017/09/atoa-print-icon.png] People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years. Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona. Over the past week, Spain’s military body, the Guardia Civil, has forcibly taken control of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Catalonia’s own police force. It has also detained government officials, closed multiple websites, and ordered seven hundred Catalan mayors to appear in court. Ominously, Spanish police from all over the country have traveled up to Barcelona or are en route to the Catalan capital, holing up in three giant cruise ships, two anchored in the city’s port, one in the port of nearby Tarragona. They are doing this at a time when Spain is on high alert for terrorist attacks, removing their police forces from numerous regions that could be in danger of attack, including Madrid, in preparation to stop Catalan people from putting pieces of paper into voting boxes. Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution, a point revealed brilliantly in the recent documentary, Las Cloacas de Interior (The State’s Secret Cesspit), which includes numerous interviews with Spanish police, officials, and politicians who describe the corruption in detail. After a media blackout of the film in Spain this summer, the creators made it available through various online outlets. Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia. And yet we on the outside continue to make excuses for Spain, often conflating its problems with Catalonia to a squabble about taxes. This week, we have watched passively as arrests, police activity and other alarming developments build in Barcelona. We refer to the Spanish Constitution, which was written in 1978, as a way of backing up Spain’s dictatorial assertion that the Catalans have no right to self-determination and that the referendum is illegal. The part of the Constitution that says Spain is indivisible was added not by the “fathers” of the Constitution, but by the military, as Jordi Soler Tura, one of two Catalan founders of the Constitution explained in 1985. Following the creation of the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law, a law still active today, there has been no investigation or prosecution of the massive human rights violations that took place in Spain under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, and this was the same environment of suppression and authority in which the current Constitution was written. After all the years of trauma that finally led into the tedious transition to democracy in the late 1970s following Franco’s death, many people in Spain and Catalonia are reticent to talk about these issues. Franco died peacefully in his bed at age eighty-two after ruling over the country as dictator for almost half his life. Let’s imagine Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) dying peacefully in his bed sometime in 1971 following decades as Germany’s Nazi leader. We likely cannot imagine this scenario, but it is exactly what happened in Spain. Franco and Hitler were both fascists who engaged in the mass murder of civilians for the purpose of “cleansing” their societies of those they believed to be of an inferior race or a threat. Franco in fact wrote the novel behind the movie, Raza (Race, 1941), which promoted the idea that hispanidad, or Spain’s superior race, comprised of those who were in line with Nationalist sentiment. The big difference between Franco and Hitler is that Franco won his war and Hitler lost his. Most of us know about Hitler’s ethnic cleansing, the horrific extermination of Jews and others not in line with fascism. Under Franco, there were concentration camps in Spain too, and many Spanish political prisoners were sent abroad to Nazi camps in Germany and Austria, or ended up in internment camps in France. Paul Preston’s book, The Spanish Holocaust, shows how bad the situation was inside Spain. As Adam Hochschild writes in his 2012 New York Times review of the book, some atrocities included, “soldiers who flourished enemy ears and noses on their bayonets, the mass public executions carried out in bullrings or with band music and onlookers dancing in the victims’ blood…Franco’s troops practiced gang rape to frighten newly captured towns into submission…Tens of thousands of women had their heads shaved and were force-fed castor oil (a powerful laxative), then jeered as they were paraded through the streets soiling themselves.” The list goes on, mentioning the branding of women on their breasts and the shooting of pregnant women in a maternity hospital. Thousands of the people who were tortured or sent to the camps were Catalans. During the years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia was one of Spain’s strongholds of resistance, and the Catalan people suffered enormously for it. Following a military trial in 1940 that lasted less than an hour, Lluís Companys (1882-1940), the president of Catalonia’s Generalitat, or its system of governance, was tortured and then executed by the Guardia Civil. Companys is a symbol for what the Catalans endured during and after the Civil War. Many were murdered, disappeared, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, had their children stolen, or were economically disenfranchised during these periods. Catalan people were also banned from speaking their language and saw other aspects of their culture suppressed by the fascist regime. Teaching and speaking of the language became legal only after Spain’s restoration to a democracy in 1978. Rising above their past, the Catalan people have flourished in the twenty-first century and are the main contributor to Spain’s economy. Barcelona and the larger region are renowned for their industrious and creative workers. The Catalan language and its culture are thriving. The Catalan people should not be confused with the Basques, whose militant organization, the ETA, has been responsible for much bloodshed in Spain. The Catalans have a history of peaceful and communal resistance to the Spanish government, a tradition that continues today. The referendum that they seek is part of a basic democratic process, just as was the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence in the United Kingdom. Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe. Anna M. Hennessey is a philosopher who has lived in Spain and in Catalonia. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 3 15:12:21 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 15:12:21 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] News from Neptune last Friday Message-ID: https://youtu.be/0JNopW8xpM4 From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Oct 4 01:39:33 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 20:39:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Militarism talk - M. Brussel References: Message-ID: <77F222BB-D283-43BF-97B0-E6659D54D29B@illinois.edu> Mort Brussel’s talk, prepared for the Teach-in & delivered on AWARE ON THE AIR today. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Militarization.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 172007 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- From brussel at illinois.edu Wed Oct 4 01:41:22 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 01:41:22 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: [ufpj-activist] Fwd: Vietnam! References: Message-ID: I don’t believe that one should comment on the Burns and Novick “Vietnam” programs without having watched its episodes, even all 18 of them. Glick did watch, and here he gives his impressions. He states that the series does not give adequate credit to the domestic resistance to the continuation of the war. In addition, although both sides were guilty of atrocities against civilians, as asserted and shown in the series, the N. Vietnamese and Vietcong were fighting for unification of Vietnam, their independence and their land, whereas the American soldiers were pawns who had no moral business there. —mkb https://tedglick.com/future-hope-columns/vietnam-2/ Future Hope column, October 1, 2017 Vietnam! By Ted Glick After everything, after all 18 hours of Ken Burns’ and Lynn Novicks’ epic 10-part documentary of the Vietnam War, what was their conclusion? They framed it this way: the war was a terrible thing; leaders on each side of the war lied to and deceived their people; both sides did very bad things to the other side and to innocent people in the middle; and people who had fought each other in brutal battles and survived could still ultimately find ways to shake hands and even embrace years afterwards. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees! Although there is some truth to these points, their 10-part series—and I watched every one—ended up being an exercise in obfuscation and denial. And what was so insidious about it is that they actually reported accurately in the very first episode the truth which should have led to the right conclusion: that the United States should never have supported the French in their efforts to maintain brutal colonial rule over Vietnam after World War II, and that it should never have moved in to replace the French as a brutal occupying power after the French were forced to leave in 1954. Why did the US do this? It isn’t complicated. Two quotes from 1954 make it plain: “It is rich in many raw materials such as tin, oil, rubber and iron ore. . . The area has great strategic value. . . It has major naval and air bases.” -Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, March 29, 1954 “”One of the world’s richest areas is open to the winner in Indochina. That’s behind the growing U.S. concern. . . tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials are what the war is really about. The U.S. sees it as a place to hold—at any cost.” -US News & World Report, April 4, 1954 Both quotes are taken from the excellent book published in 1966, “Vietnam! Vietnam!,” by Felix Greene. “The Vietnam War” series was mesmerizing for me. I learned many things I didn’t know, and I re-remembered many things I had forgotten. The war was the issue which changed my life. From 1968 to 1973 it was the issue that drove me to do things I’ve never done since as part of what was called the Catholic Left, like breaking and entering into Selective Service draft boards, an FBI office, and a war corporation office and production site. It led to my spending 11 months in county jails and federal prisons and being a defendant in two major political trials, in Rochester, NY in 1970 and in Harrisburg, Pa. in 1972. The Burns and Novick series made no mention of this Catholic priest-initiated movement; it gave short shrift to the massive and impactful draft resistance movement out of which it came [the military draft was abolished]; and with the exception of the emergence of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1971, provided little substantive coverage of the organized anti-war movement which played an essential role in bringing the war to an end. The war took place at a time when fear of what was called “communism” was very strong, when people like J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon were seen as defenders of the “free world” against a ruthless enemy out to take over the world. Never mind that in the vast majority of cases where U.S.-friendly regimes were threatened by so-called communists, overwhelmingly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the fact is that it was really popular movements with broad support, including communists, liberals, students, religious people, labor and more, which were fighting for independence and self-determination. The United States treating these movements in a hostile way unquestionably led to the movements being further radicalized, more hostile to the US, more willing to use—experiencing the need to use-- increasing violence to gain their freedom. In that first episode it was reported that when the Vietnamese popular movement proclaimed their independence at a massive rally in Hanoi in September, 1945, they put forward a Vietnamese “Declaration of Independence” whose first three sentences came straight from the US version: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It went on to say, “This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense it means, all the people on earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.” The remainder of it delineated all of the specific violent abuses and depradations visited upon them by the French “for more than 80 years.” Tragically, despite this decidedly non-communist statement, and as the series shows in graphic detail, neither the French nor the US governments were willing to adjust their view of the Vietnamese independence movement for the next 30 years as anything other than an implacable enemy. The defeat of the US government and the unification of Vietnam in 1975 was an historic victory for people everywhere. The emergence of a mass anti-war movement to end it, in combination with the civil rights and Black Freedom movement, changed the USA in ways that continue to echo today. To keep changing our country in the right direction, however, we should learn the right lessons from that terrible war. Unfortunately, Burns and Novick have thrown up roadblocks to that happening which we will have to overcome. Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. Past writings and other information can be found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jtglick. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Wed Oct 4 13:37:57 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 13:37:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Experts Explain Why Congress Won't Limit Sale of Assault Weapons in US Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Posted on: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 4:36 PM Author: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Subject: Experts Explain Why Congress Won't Limit Sale of Assault Weapons in US University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle agreed with Brenner’s assessment. He said there was no indication that the NRA would lose any of its enormous political influence in the foreseeable future. "Regretfully, based upon previous mass ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Wed Oct 4 13:37:57 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 13:37:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Experts Explain Why Congress Won't Limit Sale of Assault Weapons in US Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Posted on: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 4:36 PM Author: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Subject: Experts Explain Why Congress Won't Limit Sale of Assault Weapons in US University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle agreed with Brenner’s assessment. He said there was no indication that the NRA would lose any of its enormous political influence in the foreseeable future. "Regretfully, based upon previous mass ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 4 14:10:28 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 14:10:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Experts Explain Why Congress Won't Limit Sale of Assault Weapons in US References: Message-ID: Professor Brenner of the University of Pittsburgh and Professor Boyle of the U of Illinois explain why: University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle agreed with Brenner’s assessment. He said there was no indication that the NRA would lose any of its enormous political influence in the foreseeable future. "Regretfully, based upon previous mass ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Oct 4 14:54:46 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2017 09:54:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Quaker from Burundi, E. Africa, Speaks on Women's Issues Message-ID: <0vydcfmn45q1txy63si41xy2.1507128886682@email.android.com> Women Helping Women: Addressing Gender-Based Violence and HIV in Burundi Parfaite Ntahuba, a Quaker pastor and Director of Friends Women's Association (FWA) in Burundi, will give a talk on addressing gender-based violence and HIV on Wednesday, October 11 at 7 PM at the Quaker Meetinghouse, 1904 E. Main, Urbana.  Light refreshments will be served.  The public is invited.   See below for more on this event - passing it along from Charlotte Green. -------- Original message --------From: Charlotte Green Date: 10/3/17 09:33 (GMT-06:00) To: Karen Medina , Stuart Levy Subject: Quaker from Burundi, E. Africa, Speaks on Women's Issues Hi Karen and Stuart, I hope you are both doing well.  I thought you'd be interested in attending one or more of these talks by our visitor from Burundi.  Could you post it on the AWARE list serve. Thanks!Charlotte  Women Helping Women: Addressing Gender-Based Violence and HIV in Burundi Parfaite Ntahuba, a Quaker pastor and Director of Friends Women's Association (FWA) in Burundi, will give a talk on addressing gender-based violence and HIV on Wednesday, October 11 at 7 PM at the Quaker Meetinghouse, 1904 E. Main, Urbana.  Light refreshments will be served.  The public is invited.   FWA is a grassroots organization founded by and for Burundian women to address their needs in a post-conflict environment.  FWA operates several projects, including a health clinic for women and their families affected by HIV/AIDS and a program that helps women who have survived gender-based violence to reintegrate in their communities.  Donations to FWA will be welcomed. Checks may be made out to Friends Peace Teams with FWA on the memo line. Parfaite will also give a talk on campus on Thursday, October 12 at 1 PM in the Lucy Ellis Lounge of the Foreign Language Building, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana.  The public is also invited to this talk, co-sponsored by the Center for African Studies and the Gender and Women's Studies Department. On Thursday, October 12 at 6 PM at the Quaker Meetinghouse, Friends invite the public to a potluck meal for an opportunity to visit with Parfaite. For more information, please contact Charlotte Green, charlotteg588 at gmail.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Parfaite flyer.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 246688 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 4 16:20:19 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 16:20:19 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases, January 12-14, Baltimore, Maryland References: <090bb12a9ccf856210dc6105b.d18ddf229a.20171004154913.d394a1e291.bb73757a@mail112.atl71.mcdlv.net> Message-ID: Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases January 12-14, 2018 University of Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland Hosted By: Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases Thirteen prominent peace and justice organizations in the United States are collectively organizing a 3-day national conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases on January 12-14, 2018, at the University of Baltimore, Maryland: * Alliance for Global Justice * Black Alliance for Peace * CODEPINK * Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space * International Action Center * MLK Justice Coalition * Nuclear Age Peace Foundation * Popular Resistance * United National Antiwar Coalition * U.S. Peace Council * Veterans For Peace * Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom * World Beyond War The conference will feature national and international experts. Several expert panels will discuss the economic, political, environmental and health costs and impact of U.S. foreign military bases in various regions of the world, including South America, Asia-Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The conference will be live streamed for the international audience. For more information and to register for the conference: Visit the Coalition's Website [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/090bb12a9ccf856210dc6105b/images/f6af85ca-7e40-4dbf-b2ae-7fbbfb5c6189.jpg] [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-twitter-48.png] [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-facebook-48.png] [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-link-48.png] Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Thu Oct 5 04:29:01 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 04:29:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger References: <59D5A76A.000000E0@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> Message-ID: <44889F70-34A4-44EB-9BC5-513043BFB9DA@illinois.edu> From: r-szoke > Subject: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger Date: October 4, 2017 Reply-To: > Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: [http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo194x27.gif] [https://www.nytimes.com/images/common/icons/t_wb_75.gif] 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger By ERIC SCHMITT Army Green Berets were on a routine patrol as part of a training exercise with troops from Niger, American military officials said. Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2xVaVS0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 5 11:19:12 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 06:19:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger In-Reply-To: <44889F70-34A4-44EB-9BC5-513043BFB9DA@illinois.edu> References: <59D5A76A.000000E0@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> <44889F70-34A4-44EB-9BC5-513043BFB9DA@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Why is our government killing people from a base in Niger? https://theintercept.com/2016/09/29/u-s-military-is-building-a-100-million-drone-base-in-africa/ ‘...The U.S. military activity in Niger is not isolated. “There’s a trend toward greater engagement and a more permanent presence in West Africa — the Maghreb and the Sahel,” noted Adam Moore of the department of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and the co-author of an academic study of the U.S. military’s presence in Africa. 'Since 9/11, in fact, the United States has poured vast amounts of military aid into the region. In 2002, for example, the State Department launched a counterterrorism program — known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which later became the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) — to assist the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the U.S. allocated $288 million in TSCTP funding, according to a 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office. Niger was one of the top three recipients, netting more than $30 million. 'U.S. special operations forces regularly train with Niger’s army and the U.S. has transferred millions of dollars’ worth of planes, trucks, and other gear to that impoverished nation. In a 2015 report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Lauren Ploch Blanchard of the Congressional Research Service noted that since 2006 Niger had received more than $82 million in assistance through the Department of Defense’s Global Train and Equip program…' > On Oct 4, 2017, at 11:29 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > From: r-szoke > Subject: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger > Date: October 4, 2017 > Reply-To: > > Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: > > 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger > BY ERIC SCHMITT > > Army Green Berets were on a routine patrol as part of a training exercise with troops from Niger, American military officials said. > Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2xVaVS0 > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 5 13:43:26 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:43:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger In-Reply-To: References: <59D5A76A.000000E0@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> <44889F70-34A4-44EB-9BC5-513043BFB9DA@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Yes, as we move away from the Middle East, according to Trita Parsi and others, we have become more entrenched in West Africa. It has gone mostly unnoticed but by a few. Those who read Nick Turse, and the World Socialist Website, etc are aware. And its all about ………. According to the President of Namibia, in his interview with Chris Hedges, “there is little US presence now in Africa, its all Chinese.” He was referring to business and development projects, not US military troops and bases, which flourished under the Obama Administration, and now continues almost on “autopilot” under the Trump Administration, according to Vukoni Lupa Lasaga, at our recent Anti-War Teach In. > On Oct 5, 2017, at 04:19, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Why is our government killing people from a base in Niger? > > https://theintercept.com/2016/09/29/u-s-military-is-building-a-100-million-drone-base-in-africa/ > > ‘...The U.S. military activity in Niger is not isolated. “There’s a trend toward greater engagement and a more permanent presence in West Africa — the Maghreb and the Sahel,” noted Adam Moore of the department of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and the co-author of an academic study of the U.S. military’s presence in Africa. > > 'Since 9/11, in fact, the United States has poured vast amounts of military aid into the region. In 2002, for example, the State Department launched a counterterrorism program — known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which later became the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) — to assist the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the U.S. allocated $288 million in TSCTP funding, according to a 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office. Niger was one of the top three recipients, netting more than $30 million. > > 'U.S. special operations forces regularly train with Niger’s army and the U.S. has transferred millions of dollars’ worth of planes, trucks, and other gear to that impoverished nation. In a 2015 report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Lauren Ploch Blanchard of the Congressional Research Service noted that since 2006 Niger had received more than $82 million in assistance through the Department of Defense’s Global Train and Equip program…' > > >> On Oct 4, 2017, at 11:29 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> From: r-szoke >> Subject: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger >> Date: October 4, 2017 >> Reply-To: >> >> Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: >> >> 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger >> BY ERIC SCHMITT >> >> Army Green Berets were on a routine patrol as part of a training exercise with troops from Niger, American military officials said. >> Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2xVaVS0 >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 5 13:52:13 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:52:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The War you've never heard of........ Message-ID: The war you’ve never heard of by Nick Turse May 18th, 2017 The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe. Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe. In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners in their fight against terrorism and extremism. “At any given time, you will find SOCAFRICA conducting approximately 96 activities in 20 countries,” Donald Bolduc, the U.S. Army general who runs the special operations command in Africa (SOCAFRICA), wrote in an October 2016 strategic planning guidance report. (The report was obtained by VICE News in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and is published in its entirety below.) VICE News reached out to SOCAFRICA and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) for clarification on these numbers; email return receipts show an AFRICOM spokesperson “read” three such requests, but the command did not offer a reply. “Africa’s challenges could create a threat that surpasses the threat that the U.S. currently faces from conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.” The October 2016 report offers insight into what the U.S. military’s most elite forces are currently doing in Africa and what they hope to achieve. In so doing, it paints a picture of reality on the ground in Africa today and what it could be 30 years from now. That picture is bleak. “Africa’s challenges could create a threat that surpasses the threat that the United States currently faces from conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria,” Bolduc warned. He went on to cite a laundry list of challenges with which he and his personnel must contend: ever-expanding illicit networks, terrorist safe havens, attempts to subvert government authority, a steady stream of new recruits and resources. Bolduc indicated his solution was the “acceleration of SOF [special operations forces] missions [filling] a strategic gap as the military adjusts force structure now and in the future.” Translation: U.S. commandos “in more places, doing more” in Africa going forward. At the same time, Bolduc says the U.S. is not at war in Africa. But this assertion is challenged by the ongoing operations aimed at the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia, which operates often in all-but-ungoverned and extraordinarily complex areas Bolduc calls “gray zones.” In January, for example, U.S. advisers conducting a counterterrorism operation alongside local Somali forces and troops from the African Union Mission in Somalia “observed al-Shabaab fighters threatening their safety and security” and “conducted a self-defense strike to neutralize the threat,” according to a press release from AFRICOM. A U.S. Army Green Beret patrols with Nigerian soldiers during a training exercise in February. Earlier this month, in what AFRICOM described as “an advise-and-assist operation alongside Somali National Army forces,” Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two other U.S. personnel were injured during a firefight with al-Shabaab militants about 40 miles west of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The battle occurred shortly after President Donald Trump loosened Obama-era restrictions on offensive operations in Somalia, thereby allowing U.S. forces more discretion and leeway in conducting missions and opening up the possibility of more frequent airstrikes and commando raids. “It allows us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, said of the change. In April, the U.S. military reportedly requested the locations of aid groups working in the country, an indication that yet a greater escalation in the war against al-Shabaab may be imminent. “Looking at counterterrorism operations in Somalia, it’s clear the U.S. has been relying heavily on the remote-control form of warfare so favored by President Obama,” said Jack Serle, who covers the subject for the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Recently, the U.S. has augmented this strategy, working alongside local Somali forces and African Union troops under the banner of “train, advise, and assist” missions and other types of “support” operations, according to Serle. “Now they partner with local security forces but don’t engage in actual combat, the Pentagon says. The truth of that is hard to divine.” U.S. operations in Somalia are part of a larger continent-spanning counterterrorism campaign that saw special operations forces deploy to at least 32 African nations in 2016, according to open source data and information supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command. The cornerstone of this strategy involves training local proxies and allies — “building partner capacity” in the military lexicon. “Providing training and equipment to our partners helps us improve their ability to organize, sustain, and employ a counter violent extremist force against mutual threats,” the SOCAFRICA report says. As part of its increasing involvement in the war against Boko Haram militants in the Lake Chad Basin — it spans parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad — for example, the U.S. provided $156 million to support regional proxies last year. In addition to training, U.S. special operators, including members of SEAL Team 6, reportedly assist African allies in carrying out a half dozen or more raids every month. In April, a U.S. special operator reportedly killed a fighter from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army during an operation in the Central African Republic. U.S. forces also remain intimately involved in conflict in Libya after the U.S. ended an air campaign there against the Islamic State group in December. “We’re going to keep a presence on the ground… and we’re going to develop intelligence and take out targets when they arise,” Waldhauser said in March. “We believe the situation in Africa will get worse without our assistance.” Though Bolduc said special operators are carrying out about 96 missions on any given day, he didn’t specify how many total missions are being carried out per year. SOCAFRICA officials did not respond to several requests for that number. The marked increase in U.S. activity tracks with the rising number of major terror groups in Africa. A 2012 version of SOCAFRICA’s strategic planning documents also obtained by VICE News lists five major terror groups. The October 2016 files list seven by name — al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Magreb, ISIS, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Murabitun, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and al-Shabaab — in addition to “other violent extremist organizations,” also known as VEOs. In 2015, Bolduc said that there are nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” operating on the African continent. Terror attacks in sub-Saharan Africa have skyrocketed in the past decade. Between 2006 and 2015, the last year covered by data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, attacks jumped from about 100 per year to close to 2,000. “From 2010 to the present,” Bolduc says in the report, “VEOs in Africa have been some of the most lethal on the planet.” “Many of Africa’s indicators are trending downward,” he writes. “We believe the situation in Africa will get worse without our assistance.” Colby Goodman, the director of the Washington, D.C.–based Security Assistance Monitor, pointed to some recent tactical gains against terror groups, but warned that progress might be short-lived and unsustainable. “My continuing concerns about U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Africa,” he said, “is an over-focus on tactical military support to partner countries at the expense of a more whole-government approach and a lack of quality assessments and evaluations of U.S. security aid to these countries.” -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Fri Oct 6 00:15:04 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 19:15:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE ON THE AIR for Tuesday 26 September In-Reply-To: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> > AWARE on the Air - Episode #423 Produced by the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana ### -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Fri Oct 6 14:37:39 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2017 14:37:39 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Andreas Cangellaris is a disgusting human being References: <592900529.2606125.1507300659641.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <592900529.2606125.1507300659641@mail.yahoo.com> You can get up a demonstration against a crackpot libertarian, but probably not against this.--DG UI leading $25 million effort to build 'smart' link for military Fri, 10/06/2017 - 7:00am | Julie Wurth First came the internet. Then the "internet of things," connecting devices from coffee makers to washing machines with the internet and each other. Now the University of Illinois is leading a five-year, $25 million initiative to develop an "internet of battlefield things." The idea is to have humans and technology work together in a seamless network, giving soldiers a competitive edge, and keeping troops and civilians out of harm's way, officials said. The UI will lead the effort to develop the scientific foundations for battlefield analytics and services, officials said. The Alliance for IoBT Research on Evolving Intelligent Goal-driven Networks, funded by the Army Research Lab, includes collaborators from that lab, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California at Berkeley, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Massachusetts, University of Southern California and SRI International, a research institute created by Stanford University. The funding covers the first five years of a potential 10-year effort. Experts said military operations of the future will rely less on human soldiers and more on interconnected technology. Advances in unmanned systems and machine intelligence can be used to improve military capabilities, they said. The internet of battlefield things will connect soldiers with smart technology in armor, radios, weapons and other objects to give troops a better understanding of battlefield situations and help them assess risks, officials said. UI computer science Professor Tarek Abdelzaher, who will lead the alliance, said the collaboration between Army researchers and those in academia and industry will change the fundamental understanding of what's possible with "smart battlefield services" — networks of sensors, computers, data and analytics. Similar technology has already brought us smart homes and wearable devices, said Abdelzaher, who researches computing systems that interact with the physical world and has done commercial work on the internet of things. But that technology isn't directly applicable to the battlefield, where conditions are adversarial, he said. "Nobody is shooting at Amazon Echo," he said. Military situations require capabilities such as autonomy and resilience. If a group of devices or sensors are separated from their home base, they still have to be able to complete their mission, he said. The devices could be in everything from soldiers' helmets to their armor to the guns they use — "everything you can imagine," he said. "Everything on the battlefield is going to have a little bit of a brain and communications capability and collaborate with other entities," he said. Soldiers in battle are constantly making quick decisions in the face of adverse conditions that can change in an instant, so they need a continual flow of information to make the best decisions possible, he said. "You need to connect to the right sensors, the right cameras, the right devices to collect the right pieces of information," Abdelzaher said. Researchers hope to create a network of intelligent devices that adapt as a mission evolves, analyzing their available resources and reassembling to meet new requirements. On a rescue mission, the goal might be to find the survivors and bring them to a safe place. A drone or airborne robot could be sent out to try to find them and figure out how to extricate them safely, Abdelzaher said. The systems have to be self-aware and able to reason about goals, vulnerabilities and other characteristics to meet a commander's intent. They have to be able to counteract attacks in near real-time and provide stability under uncertain conditions. They must be able to fuse data from technology and from humans, learn from previous actions and anticipate future moves, to provide the most relevant information at any given time, experts said. And they have to understand what they can and can't do without human permission, Abdelzaher said. The ethical implications of autonomous machines on the battlefield are enormous, and one challenge for scientists is to ensure that the machines "know the bounds of autonomy," he said. "One of the things that is not on the menu is to build machines that can inflict harm or kill without humans explicitly pushing the button to do so. That is not part of the picture," Abdelzaher said. The technology could have commercial or civilian applications — improving the response after a hurricane or other disasters, for example. "Illinois is proud to lead this effort, which will not only advance military science, but also could lead to breakthroughs that impact many other fields," said Andreas Cangellaris, dean of the UI College of Engineering. "The excellence brought forth by this team could transform 21st century technology." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mickalideh at gmail.com Fri Oct 6 18:55:23 2017 From: mickalideh at gmail.com (Harry Mickalide) Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2017 13:55:23 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Andreas Cangellaris is a disgusting human being In-Reply-To: <592900529.2606125.1507300659641@mail.yahoo.com> References: <592900529.2606125.1507300659641.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <592900529.2606125.1507300659641@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hey if anyone hears of him giving a talk about this, let me know so I can organize an interruption through *STEM Strikes the War Machine* On Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 9:37 AM, David Green wrote: > You can get up a demonstration against a crackpot libertarian, but > probably not against this.--DGUI leading $25 million effort to build > 'smart' link for military > Fri, 10/06/2017 - 7:00am | *Julie Wurth* > > > > > > First came the internet. > > Then the "internet of things," connecting devices from coffee makers to > washing machines with the internet and each other. > > Now the University of Illinois is leading a five-year, $25 million > initiative to develop an "internet of battlefield things." > > The idea is to have humans and technology work together in a seamless > network, giving soldiers a competitive edge, and keeping troops and > civilians out of harm's way, officials said. > > The UI will lead the effort to develop the scientific foundations for > battlefield analytics and services, officials said. > > The Alliance for IoBT Research on Evolving Intelligent Goal-driven > Networks, funded by the Army Research Lab, includes collaborators from that > lab, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California at Berkeley, > University of California at Los Angeles, University of Massachusetts, > University of Southern California and SRI International, a research > institute created by Stanford University. The funding covers the first five > years of a potential 10-year effort. > > Experts said military operations of the future will rely less on human > soldiers and more on interconnected technology. Advances in unmanned > systems and machine intelligence can be used to improve military > capabilities, they said. > > The internet of battlefield things will connect soldiers with smart > technology in armor, radios, weapons and other objects to give troops a > better understanding of battlefield situations and help them assess risks, > officials said. > > UI computer science Professor Tarek Abdelzaher, who will lead the > alliance, said the collaboration between Army researchers and those in > academia and industry will change the fundamental understanding of what's > possible with "smart battlefield services" — networks of sensors, > computers, data and analytics. > Similar technology has already brought us smart homes and wearable > devices, said Abdelzaher, who researches computing systems that interact > with the physical world and has done commercial work on the internet of > things. But that technology isn't directly applicable to the battlefield, > where conditions are adversarial, he said. > > "Nobody is shooting at Amazon Echo," he said. > > Military situations require capabilities such as autonomy and resilience. > If a group of devices or sensors are separated from their home base, they > still have to be able to complete their mission, he said. > > The devices could be in everything from soldiers' helmets to their armor > to the guns they use — "everything you can imagine," he said. > > "Everything on the battlefield is going to have a little bit of a brain > and communications capability and collaborate with other entities," he said. > > Soldiers in battle are constantly making quick decisions in the face of > adverse conditions that can change in an instant, so they need a continual > flow of information to make the best decisions possible, he said. > > "You need to connect to the right sensors, the right cameras, the right > devices to collect the right pieces of information," Abdelzaher said. > > Researchers hope to create a network of intelligent devices that adapt as > a mission evolves, analyzing their available resources and reassembling to > meet new requirements. > On a rescue mission, the goal might be to find the survivors and bring > them to a safe place. A drone or airborne robot could be sent out to try to > find them and figure out how to extricate them safely, Abdelzaher said. > > The systems have to be self-aware and able to reason about goals, > vulnerabilities and other characteristics to meet a commander's intent. > They have to be able to counteract attacks in near real-time and provide > stability under uncertain conditions. They must be able to fuse data from > technology and from humans, learn from previous actions and anticipate > future moves, to provide the most relevant information at any given time, > experts said. And they have to understand what they can and can't do > without human permission, Abdelzaher said. > > The ethical implications of autonomous machines on the battlefield are > enormous, and one challenge for scientists is to ensure that the machines > "know the bounds of autonomy," he said. > > "One of the things that is not on the menu is to build machines that can > inflict harm or kill without humans explicitly pushing the button to do so. > That is not part of the picture," Abdelzaher said. > > The technology could have commercial or civilian applications — improving > the response after a hurricane or other disasters, for example. > > "Illinois is proud to lead this effort, which will not only advance > military science, but also could lead to breakthroughs that impact many > other fields," said Andreas Cangellaris, dean of the UI College of > Engineering. "The excellence brought forth by this team could transform > 21st century technology." > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Sat Oct 7 05:21:33 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 00:21:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NEWS FROM NEPTUNE for Friday 6 October In-Reply-To: <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.” --Rosa Luxembourg News from Neptune - Episode #253: A MASS MURDER EDITION ‘From a Concert in Las Vegas to Funerals in Yemen, We Must Stop Mass Murder’ --Kathy Kelly [commondreams.org] ### From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 8 13:53:42 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 13:53:42 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: [New post] From Catalonia to Patani References: <61854989.1952.0@wordpress.com> Message-ID: The expert on Thai politics, sees Catalonia and Patani the same as I. Balkanization only leads to vulnerability. It’s preferable to join with others in solidarity against oppressive governments. While Patani should be reunited with Malaysia, that would result in war between two nations, so Giles suggestion makes more sense. Begin forwarded message: From: Uglytruth-Thailand > Subject: [New post] From Catalonia to Patani Date: October 7, 2017 at 22:52:08 PDT New post on Uglytruth-Thailand [http://s0.wp.com/i/emails/blavatar.png] [http://2.gravatar.com/avatar/b94c98491e599510a5ec039e64af3261?s=50&d=identicon&r=G] From Catalonia to Patani by uglytruththailand Giles Ji Ungpakorn The recent events in Catalonia throw up some similarities and lessons for understanding the struggle of the people of Patani. The independence movements in Catalonia and Patani both deserve our support and solidarity. [https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/22089703_10154780982867601_9152765857129887815_n.jpg?w=300] In both cases, a conservative constitution rules out the democratic right of self-determination for peoples in different regions. The Spanish constitution, which was drawn up by many of Franco’s nationalist supporters after his death, stipulates that the Spanish state is indivisible. For many people living in Catalonia and the Basque country, the unitary Spanish state was imposed upon them by force. In the years of the Franco fascist dictatorship their local languages were also banned. We have just seen the brutal violence of the national police and the hated Guardia civil in trying to prevent voting in the referendum and the Spanish king also went on television to condemn Catalan independence. [https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/140620112436-spain-king-felipe-vi-salutes-story-top.jpg?w=300] [https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/e0b8aae0b8b4e0b8a3e0b8b4e0b881e0b8b4e0b895e0b8b4e0b98c-e0b8abe0b899e0b989e0b8b2e0b980e0b882e0b989e0b8a1-e0b8ade0b989e0b8a7e0b899.jpg?w=223] In Thailand, the first constitution, which was written under the guidance of Pridi Panaomyong immediately after the 1932 revolution, did not stipulate that Thailand was a unitary and indivisible state. Pridi even supported a level of autonomy for the Muslim Malays of Patani. But successive right-wing military dictators inserted the clause about an indivisible state in all subsequent constitutions. The formation of the Thai state was carried out using military force and an agreement with the British to carve up the independent state of Patani. The Thai state has also systematically tried to suppress the local Malay language in Patani and used brute force to enforce its rule. The Thai Queen is also on record as saying that she wished she could pick up a gun to fight against the Patani separatists. The current Catalan government has introduced measures against evictions and energy poverty; a ban on fracking; a tax on nuclear power; a law promoting women’s equality at work and against sexual harassment; a ban on bullfighting… All of these measures have been overturned by the Spanish Constitutional Court. In Thailand the Constitutional court has been used to axe progressive infrastructure improvements and to sack democratically elected governments In recent years those who wish to see an independent Patani state have mainly resorted to taking up arms against the Thai state. This is quite understandable given the level of repression. A recent example of such repression is the massacre at Tak Bai in 2004. [https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/e0b895e0b8b2e0b881e0b983e0b89a-2.jpg?w=300] In contrast, the recent independence struggle in Catalonia has taken the form of a mass movement, including organised labour. The mass of the population turned out to defend polling stations and dockers, fire fighters and other workers staged actions in support, including the general strike to protest against police violence. [https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/workers-march.jpg?w=300] In terms of the power to challenge the state, the Catalan mass movement is much more powerful than the armed struggle in Patani. Of course the small population in Patani and the low level of unionisation means that the struggle in Patani cannot copy the exact tactics from Catalonia. However, an emphasis on building a mass social movement and on attempting to win solidarity for their demands in other areas of the Thai state would be much more productive than the current armed struggle. Linking up with those who are opposed to the Thai military junta would also be vital. This would mean that those seeking independence for Patani should view ordinary Thai citizens as potential allies and ordinary Thai citizens need to be encouraged to support the people of Patani rather than listening to islamophobic politicians and priests. Progressive Thais need to oppose Thai nationalism and the current clause in the constitution about an indivisible Thai state. To achieve this we need to build a left-wing party. The present situation means that this will not be achieved easily in the short term but there is no objective reason why it cannot be done in the longer term. [https://uglytruththailand.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/patdemo3.jpg?w=300] uglytruththailand | October 8, 2017 at 5:52 am | Tags: Catalonia, constitution, Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Patani, Thai politics | Categories: Thai politics | URL: http://wp.me/p4bxj7-vu Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Uglytruth-Thailand. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://uglytruththailand.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/from-catalonia-to-patani/ Thanks for flying with [https://s0.wp.com/i/emails/blavatar-default.png] WordPress.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 8 14:45:28 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 14:45:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] John Perkins "The Secret History of American Empire" Message-ID: This dates back to 2009, thus it is overly positive in relation to Latin America, nonetheless there is important information………. https://youtu.be/7fVAifnnlg0 From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 8 15:00:12 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 15:00:12 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why Catalonia is important Message-ID: #21SilkRdPolitics #CataloniaSpain Catalonia in the context of big power politics and EurAsian integration. Here is a very cogent analysis by David Kersten. ||This is just theatre. Sure, people get hurt, they may even die. But look at the bigger picture. Catalonia is a rich part of Spain. It doesn't want its taxes paying for the poor. Think of it as balkanisation imploding from the inside. The more Europe breaks up into little pieces the more places the US can install puppets and bases. Just look at what happened to the former Yugoslavia as well as the former Soviet states which it promised it wouldn't bring its troops to. A promise it broke. Since the American Empire is losing its grip on the world as both Russia and China seek to secure the Eurasian landmass, it is in America's interests to not only do everything it can to prevent this and to prevent losing Europe to the Russians and Chinese but also gain a stronger territorial foothold. Poking sticks at China through North Korea, the South China Sea, and Myanmar are small potatoes. Seizing greater control of Europe by weakening it in the name of "independence" and "democracy" is a much better prize for far less effort. The balkanisation of Yugoslavia was just the start. The catastrophe in the Ukraine was another step forward for American imperialism. If Catalonia secedes then the snowball will be well and truly rolling, and rolling back to the city states of Europe's Middle Ages, or something like that. The rest of Europe will fall into chaos, Europe will be broken and malleable, (even more than now), and Washington will meet both Russia and China from its latest colonial acquisition - Europe, or at least, what's left of it. As for the EU, what can it say? Either way, it's fucked. Watching how things pan out on the ground is, from its vantage point, the smartest thing it can do.|| -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sun Oct 8 17:28:53 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 17:28:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most Message-ID: <121B5302-675B-47AA-923D-1D7F94339369@illinois.edu> https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-picture-north-korea-fears-133500000.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=ma This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most Zachary Keck Security, Asia [cid:498EFC2B-AA4A-4FD2-814D-0C8DB9772740 at hsd1.il.comcast.net] Air power destroyed the DPRK in the 1950s. This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most North Korea actually repaired the war damage faster than South Korea, which had been far less damaged during the war. A more enduring impact of the bombing is that it has been used as a propaganda tool by the Kim regime to instill hatred in all their citizens from a very young age. As Bruce Cumings explained: “Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds.” As tensions between North Korea and the United States reach a fever pitch, it’s worth remembering the origins of the hostility: the Korean War. The general parameters of the war are well known. The conflict began when Kim Il-sung’s forces invaded South Korea in June 1950 with the tacit (if reluctant) support of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Kim’s forces quickly overran their southern counterparts and were on the brink of unifying the peninsula before U.S. forces intervened under the guise of the United Nations. They quickly pushed the North Korean forces back across the thirty-eighth parallel and threatened to unify the entire peninsula until a massive force of Chinese “volunteers” intervened and pushed the American and South Korean forces back to the thirty-eighth parallel. Thereafter, the two sides settled into a stalemate that more or less persisted until an armistice was signed in 1953. Recommended: Russia's Battlecruisers Could Be a Super Weapon Less well remembered, at least in the United States, is that America waged a mercilessly air campaign against North Korea during the conflict. As the eminent historian on the war, Bruce Cumings,puts it: “What hardly any Americans know or remember . . . is that we carpet-bombed the North for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.” Recommended: Report - U.S. Army is Now "Weak" Indeed, Maj. Gen. Emmett O’Donnell, who led the Far East Bomber Command of B-29s that participated in the bombings,described the plan as going “to work burning five major cities in North Korea to the ground, and to destroy completely everyone of of about 18 major strategic targets.” Curtis Lemay boasted that Strategic Air Command “burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both.” He alsoestimated that “over a period of three years or so, we killed off . . . 20 percent of the population.” And future secretary of state Dean Rusk, who also served in the State Department under the Truman administration, would say that the United States bombed: “Everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” Recommended: A Hypersonic Arms Race is Coming. The sheer number of explosives used is absolutely astonishing. As Tom O’Connor has recounted in Newsweek, the “U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm.” To put this in perspective, throughout the entire Pacific Theatre in World War II, the United States dropped 503,000 tons of bombs. And that was throughout an area that was multitudes larger than North Korea (Japan alone is roughly three times the size of North Korea). Not surprising, then, that the historian Charles K. Armstronghas written, “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others.” North Korea’s lack of industrialization limited the number of enticing targets for strategic bombing. Consequently, as Armstrong again points out, “By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed.”This is barely hyperbole: the bombings destroyed 100 percent of Sinanju, 95 percent of Sariwon, 85 percent of Hungnam, 80 percent of Wonsan, and Hamhung, and 75 percent of Pyongyang. Thereafter, American and allied aircraft turned their sights to North Korea’s hydroelectric plant and the the twenty dams in North Korea that controlled 75 percent of the country’s water, which was needed for agricultural and the production of rice. In May 1953, U.S. forcesknocked five of these dams out, causing massive flooding. It also put millions in North Korea at risk for starvation, although the worst of that was prevented because of a massive influx of food aid from the Soviet Union and China. The bombings did cause widespread electrical outages, and by the U.S. Air Force’s estimates destroyed all but 4 to 5 percent of North Korea’s railways. As the official U.S. Air Force historynoted of this time period: “During the last year of the Korean hostilities, American air power executed the dominant role in the achievement of the military objectives of the United States and of the United Nations. . . . No single air operation so gravely affected the Communists as the simple destruction of two agricultural irrigation dams, for this operation, too terrible to execute in its entirety, portended the devastation of the most important segment of the North Korean agricultural economy.” Most outside analysts are far more skeptical that the U.S. strategic bombing campaign had much impact on the course of the war. The political scientist Robert Papeargues that North Korea and China’s major concessions in 1951 were the result of the air campaign weakening their military forces’ ability to achieve their objectives (coercion by denial) rather than the strategic bombing (coercion by punishment). Many othershave argued that air power’s most effective contribution to the Korean War was in the interdiction of enemy lines. In particular, aircraft focused on destroying the bridges near the Yalu River to cut off Chinese and Soviet support. Still, since these bridges were often heavily defended by antiaircraft weapons, and the aircraft of the day had severe limitations, this campaign also had only limited success. North Korea actually repaired the war damage faster than South Korea, which had been far less damaged during the war. A more enduring impact of the bombing is that it has been used as a propaganda tool by the Kim regime to instill hatred in all their citizens from a very young age. As Bruce Cumingsexplained: “Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds.” Related: For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android. Zachary Keck (@ZacharyKeck) is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. This first appeared in August. Read full article -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 45389d79daf2e313c6bfd428abfbb563.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 60602 bytes Desc: 45389d79daf2e313c6bfd428abfbb563.jpeg URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 8 18:36:32 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 18:36:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most In-Reply-To: <121B5302-675B-47AA-923D-1D7F94339369@illinois.edu> References: <121B5302-675B-47AA-923D-1D7F94339369@illinois.edu> Message-ID: “U.S. forces intervened under the guise of the United Nations.” Who would have thought the US would be so deceptive as to use the UN in order to deceive? On Oct 8, 2017, at 10:28, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss > wrote: https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-picture-north-korea-fears-133500000.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=ma This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most Zachary Keck Security, Asia <45389d79daf2e313c6bfd428abfbb563.jpeg> Air power destroyed the DPRK in the 1950s. This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most North Korea actually repaired the war damage faster than South Korea, which had been far less damaged during the war. A more enduring impact of the bombing is that it has been used as a propaganda tool by the Kim regime to instill hatred in all their citizens from a very young age. As Bruce Cumings explained: “Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds.” As tensions between North Korea and the United States reach a fever pitch, it’s worth remembering the origins of the hostility: the Korean War. The general parameters of the war are well known. The conflict began when Kim Il-sung’s forces invaded South Korea in June 1950 with the tacit (if reluctant) support of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Kim’s forces quickly overran their southern counterparts and were on the brink of unifying the peninsula before U.S. forces intervened under the guise of the United Nations. They quickly pushed the North Korean forces back across the thirty-eighth parallel and threatened to unify the entire peninsula until a massive force of Chinese “volunteers” intervened and pushed the American and South Korean forces back to the thirty-eighth parallel. Thereafter, the two sides settled into a stalemate that more or less persisted until an armistice was signed in 1953. Recommended: Russia's Battlecruisers Could Be a Super Weapon Less well remembered, at least in the United States, is that America waged a mercilessly air campaign against North Korea during the conflict. As the eminent historian on the war, Bruce Cumings,puts it: “What hardly any Americans know or remember . . . is that we carpet-bombed the North for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.” Recommended: Report - U.S. Army is Now "Weak" Indeed, Maj. Gen. Emmett O’Donnell, who led the Far East Bomber Command of B-29s that participated in the bombings,described the plan as going “to work burning five major cities in North Korea to the ground, and to destroy completely everyone of of about 18 major strategic targets.” Curtis Lemay boasted that Strategic Air Command “burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both.” He alsoestimated that “over a period of three years or so, we killed off . . . 20 percent of the population.” And future secretary of state Dean Rusk, who also served in the State Department under the Truman administration, would say that the United States bombed: “Everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” Recommended: A Hypersonic Arms Race is Coming. The sheer number of explosives used is absolutely astonishing. As Tom O’Connor has recounted in Newsweek, the “U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm.” To put this in perspective, throughout the entire Pacific Theatre in World War II, the United States dropped 503,000 tons of bombs. And that was throughout an area that was multitudes larger than North Korea (Japan alone is roughly three times the size of North Korea). Not surprising, then, that the historian Charles K. Armstronghas written, “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others.” North Korea’s lack of industrialization limited the number of enticing targets for strategic bombing. Consequently, as Armstrong again points out, “By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed.”This is barely hyperbole: the bombings destroyed 100 percent of Sinanju, 95 percent of Sariwon, 85 percent of Hungnam, 80 percent of Wonsan, and Hamhung, and 75 percent of Pyongyang. Thereafter, American and allied aircraft turned their sights to North Korea’s hydroelectric plant and the the twenty dams in North Korea that controlled 75 percent of the country’s water, which was needed for agricultural and the production of rice. In May 1953, U.S. forcesknocked five of these dams out, causing massive flooding. It also put millions in North Korea at risk for starvation, although the worst of that was prevented because of a massive influx of food aid from the Soviet Union and China. The bombings did cause widespread electrical outages, and by the U.S. Air Force’s estimates destroyed all but 4 to 5 percent of North Korea’s railways. As the official U.S. Air Force historynoted of this time period: “During the last year of the Korean hostilities, American air power executed the dominant role in the achievement of the military objectives of the United States and of the United Nations. . . . No single air operation so gravely affected the Communists as the simple destruction of two agricultural irrigation dams, for this operation, too terrible to execute in its entirety, portended the devastation of the most important segment of the North Korean agricultural economy.” Most outside analysts are far more skeptical that the U.S. strategic bombing campaign had much impact on the course of the war. The political scientist Robert Papeargues that North Korea and China’s major concessions in 1951 were the result of the air campaign weakening their military forces’ ability to achieve their objectives (coercion by denial) rather than the strategic bombing (coercion by punishment). Many othershave argued that air power’s most effective contribution to the Korean War was in the interdiction of enemy lines. In particular, aircraft focused on destroying the bridges near the Yalu River to cut off Chinese and Soviet support. Still, since these bridges were often heavily defended by antiaircraft weapons, and the aircraft of the day had severe limitations, this campaign also had only limited success. North Korea actually repaired the war damage faster than South Korea, which had been far less damaged during the war. A more enduring impact of the bombing is that it has been used as a propaganda tool by the Kim regime to instill hatred in all their citizens from a very young age. As Bruce Cumingsexplained: “Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds.” Related: For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android. Zachary Keck (@ZacharyKeck) is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. This first appeared in August. Read full article _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Sun Oct 8 19:01:09 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 14:01:09 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most In-Reply-To: References: <121B5302-675B-47AA-923D-1D7F94339369@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <11B23A80-CFB3-4BF8-8396-4B9A00514C75@illinois.edu> The story that most Americans have heard of the Korean War is largely US propaganda - as some people saw at the time: see I. F. Stone, “The Hidden History of the Korean War’ (1952). 'In 1945 US troops arrived in Korea for what would become America’s longest-lasting conflict. While history books claim without equivocation that the war lasted from 1950 to 1953, those who have actually served there know better. By closely analyzing US intelligence before June 25, 1950 (the war’s official start), and the actions of key players like John Foster Dulles, General Douglas MacArthur, and Chiang Kai-shek, the great investigative reporter I. F. Stone demolishes the official story of America’s “forgotten war” by shedding new light on the tangled sequence of events that led to it. "The Hidden History of the Korean War" was first published in 1952—during the Korean War—and then republished during the Vietnam War. In the 1990s, documents from the former Soviet archives became available, further illuminating this controversial period in history.’ The leading historian of the war, Bruce Cumings, writes, "Because the top US commander in Korea had secretly told his superiors that South Korean military forces started the majority of fighting along the 38th parallel in 1949, with attacks from the South beginning in May and ending in December and with a near war in August, it was incumbent upon me to examine Stone’s thesis in any event. The South Korean commander of the parallel in the summer of 1949 was Kim Sok-won, a quisling who had chased after Kim Il Sung and other guerrillas in Manchuria in the 1930s, on behalf of the Japanese Kwantung Army—an army well known for provoking incidents, such as the one resulting in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931. My main point, though, was that the commanders of the respective Korean armies had chosen different sides in the long anticolonial struggle against Japan, and it should not have been surprising that once they had the means to do so, they would again clash with each other. What is more surprising is the direct American role, during the US occupation of Korea from 1945 to 1948, in putting in power an entire generation of Koreans in the military and the national police who had served Japanese imperialism.” A recent brief but accurate account: . —CGE > On Oct 8, 2017, at 1:36 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > “U.S. forces intervened under the guise of the United Nations.” > > Who would have thought the US would be so deceptive as to use the UN in order to deceive? > > > On Oct 8, 2017, at 10:28, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> https://www.yahoo.com/news/one-picture-north-korea-fears-133500000.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=ma >>> >>> This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most >>> >>> Zachary Keck >>> >>> Security, Asia >>> >>> >>> <45389d79daf2e313c6bfd428abfbb563.jpeg> >>> Air power destroyed the DPRK in the 1950s. >>> >>> This Is the One Picture All of North Korea Fears Most >>> >>> North Korea actually repaired the war damage faster than South Korea, which had been far less damaged during the war. A more enduring impact of the bombing is that it has been used as a propaganda tool by the Kim regime to instill hatred in all their citizens from a very young age. As Bruce Cumings explained: “Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds.” >>> >>> As tensions between North Korea and the United States reach a fever pitch, it’s worth remembering the origins of the hostility: the Korean War. >>> >>> The general parameters of the war are well known. The conflict began when Kim Il-sung’s forces invaded South Korea in June 1950 with the tacit (if reluctant) support of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Kim’s forces quickly overran their southern counterparts and were on the brink of unifying the peninsula before U.S. forces intervened under the guise of the United Nations. They quickly pushed the North Korean forces back across the thirty-eighth parallel and threatened to unify the entire peninsula until a massive force of Chinese “volunteers” intervened and pushed the American and South Korean forces back to the thirty-eighth parallel. Thereafter, the two sides settled into a stalemate that more or less persisted until an armistice was signed in 1953. >>> >>> Recommended: Russia's Battlecruisers Could Be a Super Weapon >>> >>> Less well remembered, at least in the United States, is that America waged a mercilessly air campaign against North Korea during the conflict. As the eminent historian on the war, Bruce Cumings,puts it: “What hardly any Americans know or remember . . . is that we carpet-bombed the North for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.” >>> >>> Recommended: Report - U.S. Army is Now "Weak" >>> >>> Indeed, Maj. Gen. Emmett O’Donnell, who led the Far East Bomber Command of B-29s that participated in the bombings,described the plan as going “to work burning five major cities in North Korea to the ground, and to destroy completely everyone of of about 18 major strategic targets.” Curtis Lemay boasted that Strategic Air Command “burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both.” He alsoestimated that “over a period of three years or so, we killed off . . . 20 percent of the population.” And future secretary of state Dean Rusk, who also served in the State Department under the Truman administration, would say that the United States bombed: “Everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” >>> >>> Recommended: A Hypersonic Arms Race is Coming. >>> >>> The sheer number of explosives used is absolutely astonishing. As Tom O’Connor has recounted in Newsweek, the “U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm.” To put this in perspective, throughout the entire Pacific Theatre in World War II, the United States dropped 503,000 tons of bombs. And that was throughout an area that was multitudes larger than North Korea (Japan alone is roughly three times the size of North Korea). Not surprising, then, that the historian Charles K. Armstronghas written, “The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others.” >>> >>> North Korea’s lack of industrialization limited the number of enticing targets for strategic bombing. Consequently, as Armstrong again points out, “By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed.”This is barely hyperbole: the bombings destroyed 100 percent of Sinanju, 95 percent of Sariwon, 85 percent of Hungnam, 80 percent of Wonsan, and Hamhung, and 75 percent of Pyongyang. >>> >>> Thereafter, American and allied aircraft turned their sights to North Korea’s hydroelectric plant and the the twenty dams in North Korea that controlled 75 percent of the country’s water, which was needed for agricultural and the production of rice. In May 1953, U.S. forcesknocked five of these dams out, causing massive flooding. It also put millions in North Korea at risk for starvation, although the worst of that was prevented because of a massive influx of food aid from the Soviet Union and China. The bombings did cause widespread electrical outages, and by the U.S. Air Force’s estimates destroyed all but 4 to 5 percent of North Korea’s railways. >>> >>> As the official U.S. Air Force historynoted of this time period: “During the last year of the Korean hostilities, American air power executed the dominant role in the achievement of the military objectives of the United States and of the United Nations. . . . No single air operation so gravely affected the Communists as the simple destruction of two agricultural irrigation dams, for this operation, too terrible to execute in its entirety, portended the devastation of the most important segment of the North Korean agricultural economy.” >>> >>> Most outside analysts are far more skeptical that the U.S. strategic bombing campaign had much impact on the course of the war. The political scientist Robert Papeargues that North Korea and China’s major concessions in 1951 were the result of the air campaign weakening their military forces’ ability to achieve their objectives (coercion by denial) rather than the strategic bombing (coercion by punishment). Many othershave argued that air power’s most effective contribution to the Korean War was in the interdiction of enemy lines. In particular, aircraft focused on destroying the bridges near the Yalu River to cut off Chinese and Soviet support. Still, since these bridges were often heavily defended by antiaircraft weapons, and the aircraft of the day had severe limitations, this campaign also had only limited success. >>> >>> North Korea actually repaired the war damage faster than South Korea, which had been far less damaged during the war. A more enduring impact of the bombing is that it has been used as a propaganda tool by the Kim regime to instill hatred in all their citizens from a very young age. As Bruce Cumingsexplained: “Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds.” >>> >>> Related: >>> >>> For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android. >>> >>> Zachary Keck (@ZacharyKeck) is the Wohlstetter Public Affairs Fellow at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. >>> >>> This first appeared in August. >>> >>> Read full article >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From brussel at illinois.edu Sun Oct 8 22:23:02 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 22:23:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why Catalonia is important In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9BBB1E6B-2395-47E9-AC35-F2DFA7F890A4@illinois.edu> If Catalonia secedes then the snowball will be well and truly rolling, and rolling back to the city states of Europe's Middle Ages, or something like that. The rest of Europe will fall into chaos, Europe will be broken and malleable, (even more than now), and Washington will meet both Russia and China from its latest colonial acquisition - Europe, or at least, what's left of it. Fantastic. Cogent?? Will an autonomous Catalonia be more friendly to the USA than Spain now is? Europe needs less governing from Brussels, not more. —mkb On Oct 8, 2017, at 10:00 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: #21SilkRdPolitics #CataloniaSpain Catalonia in the context of big power politics and EurAsian integration. Here is a very cogent analysis by David Kersten. ||This is just theatre. Sure, people get hurt, they may even die. But look at the bigger picture. Catalonia is a rich part of Spain. It doesn't want its taxes paying for the poor. Think of it as balkanisation imploding from the inside. The more Europe breaks up into little pieces the more places the US can install puppets and bases. Just look at what happened to the former Yugoslavia as well as the former Soviet states which it promised it wouldn't bring its troops to. A promise it broke. Since the American Empire is losing its grip on the world as both Russia and China seek to secure the Eurasian landmass, it is in America's interests to not only do everything it can to prevent this and to prevent losing Europe to the Russians and Chinese but also gain a stronger territorial foothold. Poking sticks at China through North Korea, the South China Sea, and Myanmar are small potatoes. Seizing greater control of Europe by weakening it in the name of "independence" and "democracy" is a much better prize for far less effort. The balkanisation of Yugoslavia was just the start. The catastrophe in the Ukraine was another step forward for American imperialism. If Catalonia secedes then the snowball will be well and truly rolling, and rolling back to the city states of Europe's Middle Ages, or something like that. The rest of Europe will fall into chaos, Europe will be broken and malleable, (even more than now), and Washington will meet both Russia and China from its latest colonial acquisition - Europe, or at least, what's left of it. As for the EU, what can it say? Either way, it's fucked. Watching how things pan out on the ground is, from its vantage point, the smartest thing it can do.|| _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 00:51:04 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 00:51:04 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why Catalonia is important In-Reply-To: <9BBB1E6B-2395-47E9-AC35-F2DFA7F890A4@illinois.edu> References: <9BBB1E6B-2395-47E9-AC35-F2DFA7F890A4@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Exactly, Europe needs less governing from Brussels, thats why Catalonians need to join with others throughout Spain to fight their oppressive government. Montenegro opposed Nato troops initially when they invaded with tanks, but soon their government capitulated and as of June this year joined Nato, a clear case of Balkanization. “Its all due to fear of Russia,” we are led to believe, but is it? Or is it, fear of the US. Small vulnerable European nations have no power against Nato. On Oct 8, 2017, at 15:23, Brussel, Morton K > wrote: If Catalonia secedes then the snowball will be well and truly rolling, and rolling back to the city states of Europe's Middle Ages, or something like that. The rest of Europe will fall into chaos, Europe will be broken and malleable, (even more than now), and Washington will meet both Russia and China from its latest colonial acquisition - Europe, or at least, what's left of it. Fantastic. Cogent?? Will an autonomous Catalonia be more friendly to the USA than Spain now is? Europe needs less governing from Brussels, not more. —mkb On Oct 8, 2017, at 10:00 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: #21SilkRdPolitics #CataloniaSpain Catalonia in the context of big power politics and EurAsian integration. Here is a very cogent analysis by David Kersten. ||This is just theatre. Sure, people get hurt, they may even die. But look at the bigger picture. Catalonia is a rich part of Spain. It doesn't want its taxes paying for the poor. Think of it as balkanisation imploding from the inside. The more Europe breaks up into little pieces the more places the US can install puppets and bases. Just look at what happened to the former Yugoslavia as well as the former Soviet states which it promised it wouldn't bring its troops to. A promise it broke. Since the American Empire is losing its grip on the world as both Russia and China seek to secure the Eurasian landmass, it is in America's interests to not only do everything it can to prevent this and to prevent losing Europe to the Russians and Chinese but also gain a stronger territorial foothold. Poking sticks at China through North Korea, the South China Sea, and Myanmar are small potatoes. Seizing greater control of Europe by weakening it in the name of "independence" and "democracy" is a much better prize for far less effort. The balkanisation of Yugoslavia was just the start. The catastrophe in the Ukraine was another step forward for American imperialism. If Catalonia secedes then the snowball will be well and truly rolling, and rolling back to the city states of Europe's Middle Ages, or something like that. The rest of Europe will fall into chaos, Europe will be broken and malleable, (even more than now), and Washington will meet both Russia and China from its latest colonial acquisition - Europe, or at least, what's left of it. As for the EU, what can it say? Either way, it's fucked. Watching how things pan out on the ground is, from its vantage point, the smartest thing it can do.|| _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 02:26:10 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 02:26:10 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why Catalonia is important In-Reply-To: References: <9BBB1E6B-2395-47E9-AC35-F2DFA7F890A4@illinois.edu> Message-ID: My brilliant solution: Catalonia could declare itself a province of Andorra, where Catalan is already the official language, then join the EU & NATO as Andorra & demand protection from them. Andorra has no military to speak of — maybe a dozen guys as a color guard at official functions — & could have its way in a subsequent democracy. ~~ Ron, geopolitical genius From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Oct 9 09:13:38 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 04:13:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Why Catalonia is important In-Reply-To: References: <9BBB1E6B-2395-47E9-AC35-F2DFA7F890A4@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <4B20170B-C812-43A5-A2CB-0C649330F21B@gmail.com> I like it. But why stop there? Quebec becomes a New England state; the former Confederate states, part of Jamaica (or Cuba); California a province of Mexico, of course (and Trump’s wall along the Mason-Dixon line); Illinois could declare itself a province of Washington DC, funded by Congress as DC is... > On Oct 8, 2017, at 9:26 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > My brilliant solution: Catalonia could declare itself a province of Andorra, where Catalan is already the official language, then join the EU & NATO as Andorra & demand protection from them. Andorra has no military to speak of — maybe a dozen guys as a color guard at official functions — & could have its way in a subsequent democracy. > > ~~ Ron, geopolitical genius > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 09:16:33 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 04:16:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger In-Reply-To: References: <59D5A76A.000000E0@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> <44889F70-34A4-44EB-9BC5-513043BFB9DA@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <6AC49A7E-5B2D-41C4-A3BF-ED8ABC7632FA@illinois.edu> Well put. We’ll follow up on this important and under-reported matter on AWARE ON THE AIR. —CGE > On Oct 5, 2017, at 8:43 AM, Karen Aram wrote: > > Yes, as we move away from the Middle East, according to Trita Parsi and others, we have become more entrenched in West Africa. It has gone mostly unnoticed but by a few. Those who read Nick Turse, and the World Socialist Website, etc are aware. And its all about ………. > > According to the President of Namibia, in his interview with Chris Hedges, “there is little US presence now in Africa, its all Chinese.” He was referring to business and development projects, not US military troops and bases, which flourished under the Obama Administration, and now continues almost on “autopilot” under the Trump Administration, according to Vukoni Lupa Lasaga, at our recent Anti-War Teach In. > >> On Oct 5, 2017, at 04:19, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> Why is our government killing people from a base in Niger? >> >> https://theintercept.com/2016/09/29/u-s-military-is-building-a-100-million-drone-base-in-africa/ >> >> ‘...The U.S. military activity in Niger is not isolated. “There’s a trend toward greater engagement and a more permanent presence in West Africa — the Maghreb and the Sahel,” noted Adam Moore of the department of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and the co-author of an academic study of the U.S. military’s presence in Africa. >> >> 'Since 9/11, in fact, the United States has poured vast amounts of military aid into the region. In 2002, for example, the State Department launched a counterterrorism program — known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which later became the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) — to assist the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the U.S. allocated $288 million in TSCTP funding, according to a 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office. Niger was one of the top three recipients, netting more than $30 million. >> >> 'U.S. special operations forces regularly train with Niger’s army and the U.S. has transferred millions of dollars’ worth of planes, trucks, and other gear to that impoverished nation. In a 2015 report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, Lauren Ploch Blanchard of the Congressional Research Service noted that since 2006 Niger had received more than $82 million in assistance through the Department of Defense’s Global Train and Equip program…' >> >> >>> On Oct 4, 2017, at 11:29 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> From: r-szoke >>> Subject: NYTimes.com: 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger >>> Date: October 4, 2017 >>> Reply-To: >>> >>> Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: >>> >>> 3 Special Forces Troops Killed and 2 Are Wounded in an Ambush in Niger >>> BY ERIC SCHMITT >>> >>> Army Green Berets were on a routine patrol as part of a training exercise with troops from Niger, American military officials said. >>> Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2xVaVS0 >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 09:48:08 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 04:48:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 11:56:27 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:56:27 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G Cc: Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 12:42:13 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 12:42:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 13:04:55 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 13:04:55 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: Estabrook, Carl G ; Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 14:14:37 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:14:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: And I would add that Amy Badman is typical for what passes for most of the American “left” these days—warmongers. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 8:05 AM To: Karen Aram Cc: Estabrook, Carl G ; Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 14:46:01 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:46:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Exactly, when speaking with those opposed to war, any initial exhilaration I feel at hearing their opposition, is immediately dashed when they assume, its all about Trump and we need to get rid of him, and get a Democrat in power, or a third party candidate, Bernie. I control my need to ask, where have you been for over eight years now, by pointing out Bush put us into 2 wars, Obama extended those to now 7. On Oct 9, 2017, at 07:14, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: And I would add that Amy Badman is typical for what passes for most of the American “left” these days—warmongers. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 8:05 AM To: Karen Aram > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 14:58:06 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:58:06 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Yeah, just look at the list of “leftist” warmongers who called upon Obama to Bomb Syria over the bogus chemical weapons charges that I was doing everything humanly possible at the time to stop and was debunking too. Later Sy Hersh revealed it was all warmongering propaganda in his investigative report in the London Review of Books. It was obvious to me and others at the time that this was typical Obama Liberal Warmongering Propaganda. And most of these “leftist” warmongers could have easily figured it out if they wanted to. And many of them probably already had. Fab. From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Curtis Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 12:58 PM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left Wishful thinking on the “Left” really? Who are these supposed “Leftists” he has in mind? It is wishful thinking by liberals! From what I can tell we on the Left are very clear that the “rebels” in Syria are just mercenaries being paid by imperialist forces. The battle in Syria is to preserve sovereignty in the face of imperial aggression. Anyone who does not understand this is obviously not deserving of any respect (they are brain dead morons falling for imperial lies). I pasted the list of signatories below and most of the names I do not recognize. There are a few names (Alice Walker, Frederick Jameson, Norm Finkelstein and Tariq Ali) who ought to know better so I am puzzled that their names appear (I also recognized Michael Lowy, but I worry that his romanticism leads him to misunderstand the world generally, but that is just my personal view having read him in the past). But maybe someone hit them up with a distorted version or something. But what stands out from the list is that it is just a random list of names. It is not a list of political intellectuals on the left. Richard C Signatories Aaron Winslow, (Columbia University, United States) Abbas Beydoun, (Poet, Lebanon) Abdellatif Zeroual, (Left activist, Morocco) Abdeslam Cherkouk, (Journalist, Morocco) Abir Saksook, (Architect and activist, Lebanon) Adam Hanieh (SOAS University of London, United Kingdom) Adam Shapiro (Activist, United States) Aida Seif Ell Dawla, (Human Rights Activist, Egypt) Akram Zaatari, (Artist, Lebanon) Ala Hlehel, (Author, Palestine) Alex Todorova (University of Columbia, United States/Bulgaria) Ali Amin Suwaid, (Writer, Syria) Ali Atassi, (Journalist, Syria) Alice Walker, (Writer, United States) Amahl Bishara, (Tufts University, United States) Amr Al-Azm, (Shawnee State University, Activist and board member of The Day After NGO, Syria) Amr Saeddeine, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium/ Palestine) Amy Ansell, (Emerson College, United States) Ania Loomba, (University of Pennsylvania, United States) AnnJanette Rosga, (Human Rights Researcher, United States) Ann Ferguson (University of Massachusetts, United States) Anne Meneley, (Trent University, Canada) Anthony Arnove, (Author, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, United States) Arturo Escobar, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States/Colombia) Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, United States) Ashok Chowdhury, (India) Aziza Chaouni, (University of Toronto, Canada/Morocco) Azmi Bishara, (writer, Palestine) Bassem Chit, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Bernadette Daou, (leftist militant, Lebanon) Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University, United States) Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States) Bill Weinberg, (Journalist and author, United States) Brian Slocock, (University of Paisley, Scotland) Budour Hassan, (Author, Palestine) Cara Moyer, (Emerson College, United States) Caitlin Ella Wind, (Writer, United States) Can Irmak Özinanır, (Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey) Chandan Redd, (University of Washington, United States) Chandler Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Chandra Talpade Mohanty, (Feminist Scholar-Activist, India/United States) Charles Hirschkind, (UC Berkeley, United States) Chela Sandoval (University of California, Santa Barbara) Claudia Castañeda, (Emerson College, United States) David Byrne, McDonald III, (Photographer and activist, United States) David McNally (York University, Canada) David Wearing, (SOAS, United Kingdom) Dean Spade, (Seattle University Law, United States) Deepa Kumar (Rutgers University, United States) Diana Coryat, (University of Massachusetts, United States) Dyala Hamzah, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Elena Yehia, (University of North Carolina, United States/ Lebanon) Elias Khoury, (Writer, Lebanon) Elliott Colla, (Georgetown University, United States) Elsa Wiehe, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Mauritius) Erika Marquez, (Bryn Mawr College, United States/Colombia) Estella Carpi (University of Sydney / American University of Beirut) Etienne Balibar (Columbia University, United States/ France) Faraj Bayrakdar (Poet, Syria) Farouk Mardam Bey (Intellectual, Syria) Fawaz Traboulsi, (Writer, Lebanon) Felicia Pratto, (University of Connecticut, United States) Francois Burgat (CNRS, France) Fredric Jameson (Duke University, United States) Gail Daneker, (Director of Peace Education and Advocacy, Friends for a NonViolent World –St. Paul, United States) Gerry Emmett, (Resident Editorial Board, News and Letters Committees, Chicago, United States) Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne, Australia/ Lebanon) Ghassan Makarem, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Ghayath Naisse, (Surgeon, Left Revolutionary Current, Syria) Gilbert Achcar (SOAS, University of London, Lebanon/ United Kingdom) Golbarg Bashi, (Rutgers University, United States/Iran) Graham Peebles, (Artist and Writer, United Kingdom) Gustavo Esteva, (Universidad de la Tierra-Oaxaca, Mexico) Hamid Dabashi, (Columbia University, United States/ Iran) Hani al-Sayed (American University in Cairo, Syria/ Egypt) Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, (Sociologist, Cuba/Dominican Republic) Hazem al-Azmeh (Intellectual, Syria) Ibrahim Al-Assil, (Syrian Non-Violent Movement, Syria) Ibrahim Jalal, (Artist, Syria) Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) Isabelle Momméja, (Activist, France) Issam Aburaya, (Seton Hall University, United States) James Cohen, (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France/ United States) James L. Gelvin, (UCLA, United States) Jamie Allinson, (University of Westminster. UCU member, United Kingdom) Jean-Philippe Schreiber, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) Jean-Pierre Filiu (Institut d'études politiques de Paris, France) Jed Murr, (University of Washington, United States) Jeff Napolitano, (Activist, United States) Jens Hanssen ( University of Tornoto, Canada/ Germany) Jihad Yazigi (Journalist, Syria) Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Lebanon/ Belgium) Jillian Schwedler, (University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States) Joanne Landy, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Joe Vasicek, (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer, United States) John Chalcraft, (London School of Economics, United Kingdom) John Holloway (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, United States/ Mexico) John O’Brien, (Los Angeles California, Stonewall Rebellion Participant, United States) Joseph Daher, (University of Lausanne, Syria/ Switzerland) Karam Dana, (University of Washington, United States/Palestine) Karmen Abou Jaoudeh, (Legal activist, Lebanon) Kathy McDonough, (Wheelock College, United States) Khaled Khalifa, (Novelist, Syria) Khaled saghieh, (Journalist, Lebanon) Khawla Dunia, (Activist, Syria) Kifah Kayal, (Activist, Palestinian ex-political prisoner, Palestine) Kirsten scheid, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) Kmar Bandana (Université de La Manouba, Tunisia) Konstantin Kilibarda (York University, Mississauga territories) Laleh Khalili, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Lawrence Grossberg, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States) Leyla Dakhli, (Researcher, CNRS, France) Lieven De Cauter, (Catholic University of Leuven/RITS, Belgium) Lilia Marsali, (Teacher, United Kingdom) Linda Quiquivix, (Brown University, United States / Guatemala) Lindsey Collen, (left activist and novelist, Mauritius) Loulouwa Al Rachid, (Journalist, Saudi Arabia) Lucia Sorbera, (The University of Sydney, Australia) Manijeh Nasrabadi, (New York University, United States/ Iran) Manuel Barrera, (Metropolitan State University, United States) Manuel Castells, (University Professor of Communication, University of Southern California) Marc Saint-Upéry, (Journalist and translator, France/Ecuador) Maria Koundoura (Emerson College, United States/ Greece) Marisol de la Cadena, (UC Davis, United States/ Peru) Marnia Lazreg, sociologist, USA/Algeria Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto, Canada Mary Rizzo (blogger and activist translator, Italy) Max D. Weiss, (Princeton University, United States) Mayssun Succarie, (American University in Cairo, Egypt/ Lebanon) Mehdi Meftah, (Militant, France) Mélanie Cambrezy, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Mercedes Olivera B., (Antropóloga Feminista, UNICACH, México.) Michael Cisco, (writer and teacher, United States) Michael Lowy, (Social scientist, France) Mirta Tocci, (Emerson College, United States) Mirza Waheed (Novelist, United Kingdom) Mohamad Ali Attassi, (Writer, Syria/ Lebanon) Mohamad Al Bardan, (Syrian Non Violent Movement, United States/ Syria) Mohammad Moeini, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Iran) Mohammed Bamyeh, (University of Pittsburgh, United States) Mona Abaza, (American University in Cairo, Egypt) Muhammad Ali Khalidi, (York University, Canada) Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, (Writer and Sociologist, Scotland) Nader Atassi, (Writer, Syria / United States) Nadia Fadil, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Nadim N. Rouhana, (Tufts University -- United States, and Palestine) Nadine Bekdache, (Designer/ Activist, Lebanon) Nadje Al-Ali, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Nasser Rabbat, (MIT, United States/Syria) Natalie Zemon Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Nidal Al-Azraq, (United States/ Palestine) Nigel Gibson (Emerson college, United States/ Britain) Nimer Sultany, (SUNY Buffalo Law School, United States/Palestine) Noa Shaindlinger, (University of Toronto, Canada/Palestine) Norbert Hirschhorn, (Physician, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Norman Finkelstein (American researcher and writer, United Sates) Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (Scholar, France) Omar Dahi, (Hampshire College, Syria/ United States) Omar Dewachi, (American University of Beirut, Iraq/Canada) Omnia El Shakry, (UC Davis, United States) Oussama Mohamad (Film maker, Syria/ France) Ozlem Goner, (CUNY, Turkey/ United States) Pablo Stefanoni, (Chief editor, Nueva Sociedad, Argentina) Paul Kellogg, (Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada) Paul Kingston, (University of Toronto, Canada) Pierre Tevanian, (Writer, activist, France) R. Radhakrishnan (UC Irvine, United States/ India) Rabha Attaf, (Reporter, France) Raed Firas, (Activist, Syria) Raed Khartabil, (Activist, Syria) Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University, United States/Palestine) Razan Ghazzawi, (Activist, Syria) Richard Seymour, (Writer, London School of Economics, International Socialists Network, United Kingdom) Rime Allaf, (Writer and adviser, Syria) Robert Young, (New York University, United States) Robin Yassin-Kassab, (novelist and commentator, Syria/ United Kingdom) Rola Rukbi, (Syria) Ruba Alkhouli, (Activist, Spain) Rupert Read, (Chair of the Green House thinktank, United Kingdom) Saad Hajo (Cartoonist, Syria) Saba Mahmood (UC Berkeley, United States) Sabah Hallak, (Lebanon) Sadiq Jalal Azem, (Writer, Syria) Sadri Khiari (Writer, Tunisia) Salah Mosbah, (University of Tunis, Tunisia) Salam Kawakibi, (Arab Reform Initiative, Syria) Salam Said (Economist/Germany) Salameh Kaileh (Intellectual, Syria/Palestine) Salim Vally, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Sami Hermez, (University of Pittsburg, United States/ Lebanon) Samir Aita (Le Monde Diplomatique editions arabes, Cercle des Economistes Arabes) Samuel Binkley, (Emerson College, United States) Santiago de Rico Alba (Philosopher, Spain) Sarah Bracke, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Sarah Eltantawi, (Scholar of religion and writer, United States) Sari Hanafi, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon/ Palestine) Seda Altug, (Bogazici University, Turkey) Sherifa Zuhur, (historian, Director, Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies, United Kingdom) Sherry Wolf, (Author of Sexuality and Socialism, United States) Simon Assaf, (Activist, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Sinan Antoon, (New York University, Iraq/ United States) Sirisha Naidu, (Wright State University, India/ United States) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, (America University of Beirut, Lebanon) Srinivas Lankala, (University of Massachusetts, India/United States) Stephen R. Shalom, (William Paterson University, United States) Steve Graham, (Newcastle University, United Kingdom) Steven Friedman, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Suad Joseph, (University of California, Davis, United States/ Lebanon) Swati Birla, (University of Massachusetts, India/ United States) Sylvie Tissot (University of Paris-8, France) Talal Asad (CUNY, United States) Tamera Marko, (Emerson College, United States) Tariq Ali (Writer, journalist, and filmmaker, United Kingdom/ Pakistan) Tewfik Allal, (Activist, Manifeste des libertés, France) Thaer Alsahli (Activist, Syria/Palestine) Thierry Boissière (Institut français du Proche-Orient, France) Thomas Harrison, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Thomas Markus Kvilhaug, (International Socialist branch, Norway) Tiffany Kreierhoff, (writer, United States) Toufic Haddad, (author, SOAS, United Kingdom) Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, United States/ India) Walid Daaw, (Teacher, The left forum) Walter Mignolo, (Duke University, United States/ Argentina) Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley, United States) William E. Connolly, (Johns Hopkins University, United States) Yahya Madra, (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) Yasmine Farouk, (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University) Yasser Khanjar, (Poet, Ex political prisoner in Israeli Prisons, Occupied Golan, Syria) Yasser Munif, (Emerson College, Syria/ United States) Yassin el-Haj Saleh (Intellectual, Syria) Yazan Louai Al-Saadi, (Journalist, Al-Akhbar English, Lebanon) Youssef Fakhr el-Din, (Journalist, Syria/ Palestine) Yusef Khalil, (Activist, United States/Lebanon) Yveline, Delacroix, (Activist, France) Zaïneb Ben Lagha, (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, France) Zeinab Abul-Magd (Oberlin College, United States/ Egypt) Zena Hallak, (Tunisia) Zeynep Inanc, (United States) Ziad Majed (American University of Paris, Lebanon/ France) Ziauddin Sardar (Intellectual, Pakistan/ United Kingdom) From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Mitchel Cohen Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 9:30 AM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/14/the-wishful-thinking-left/print August 14, 2013 The Unwitting Agents of the Imperial Order The Wishful Thinking Left by JEAN BRICMONT Louvain, Belgium. Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, many people, including myself, thought that all the "struggles" of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European "dissidents", May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the "fascist" regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European "fascist" regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition "in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011", whose list of signatories includes a veritable who's who of the Western Left. The petition claims that "The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom." The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only "hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria". They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing "in support of the slaughter of people", although they are "allegedly friends of the Arabs"; they acknowledge that "the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries", but blame them for "having done so with a clear cynical self-interest" and trying to "crush and subvert the uprising". It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that "regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone". The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of "solidarity" from "intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements", "with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country." Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today's mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left's thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan ("solidarity with Afghan women") and Iraq ("they will be better off without Saddam"). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been relatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the "Alawi sect", something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of "Russia, China and Iran" in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the "U.S. and its Gulf allies". From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to "dictatorships", but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is "Russia and China" who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn't it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: "never again!"? The petition sees the events in Syria as an "extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.", but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the "immediate" departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a "free, unified and independent Syria"? Aren't the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the "Stalinist" regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the "revolution" in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by "Russia, China and Iran", as well as from the "Assad regime" with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the "U.S. and its Gulf allies"). Shouldn't one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The "Syrian regime" has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a "democratic future", while a violent revolution can? Shouldn't one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the "global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments" can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn't care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the "Palestine solidarity movement"? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that "our" priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must "support" want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to "crush and subvert the uprising"). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don't "support" the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the "world powers have left the Syrian people alone" (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that "we" must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the "people" revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded "N"GO's, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog's agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. ------------------------------------------ JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 9:46 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: Estabrook, Carl G ; Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Exactly, when speaking with those opposed to war, any initial exhilaration I feel at hearing their opposition, is immediately dashed when they assume, its all about Trump and we need to get rid of him, and get a Democrat in power, or a third party candidate, Bernie. I control my need to ask, where have you been for over eight years now, by pointing out Bush put us into 2 wars, Obama extended those to now 7. On Oct 9, 2017, at 07:14, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: And I would add that Amy Badman is typical for what passes for most of the American “left” these days—warmongers. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 8:05 AM To: Karen Aram > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 15:15:59 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:15:59 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: As you can see, at the time I was doing everything humanly possible to prevent Obama from bombing Syria, including debunking the bogus chemical weapons charges. Then these “leftist” warmongers came out against us. They are all Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. Fab. Institute for Public Accuracy 980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa at accuracy.org _______________________________________________________ Monday, September 9, 2013 * Key Author of War Powers Act: "Obama has no Authority to Attack Syria" * Impeachment Interviews Available PAUL FINDLEY, (217) 243-8444, findley1 at frontier.com Available for a limited number of interviews, Findley served as a member of United States House of Representatives for 22 years. He was a key author of the War Powers Act and a leader in securing its enactment by overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon. He is also the author of six books. The federal building in Springfield, Ill. is named for him. He just wrote the piece "Obama has no Authority to Attack Syria," which states: "Despite his own recent statements to the contrary, President Barack Obama has no legal authority to assault the government of Syria even as “a warning shot.” Neither the United States Constitution, nor the War Powers Act of 1973 gives him such authority in the absence of an emergency that allows Congress no time to react. Obama cannot cite the present situation as such an emergency, given his public statement that members of Congress need not act until the completion of their scheduled vacation. He has said that his proposal is 'not time sensitive.' If Congress fails to approve a resolution approving acts of war against Syria, he cannot order any military assault into Syria. "On several recent occasions the President and administration officials have mentioned a “sixty day” period during which he has authority to act without approval of Congress. Such authority does not exist. It is a misreading of a provision of the War Powers Act that provides only Congress with oversight constraints on executive actions. ..." Findley also recently wrote the piece "Syria — a War We Should Reject." FRANCIS BOYLE, (217) 333-7954, fboyle at illinois.edu Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. Boyle drafted articles of impeachment that were introduced by the late Rep. Henry Gonzalez against President George H. W. Bush in 1991. Boyle said today: "Impeachment is the remedy for a president taking extra-constitutional action. Obama claims he has the authority to attack Syria when -- under the Constitution -- he does not." See: "Cornel West: It’s 'Grounds For Impeachment' If Obama Bombs Syria Without Congressional Approval." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 9:58 AM To: 'Karen Aram' Cc: Estabrook, Carl G ; Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Yeah, just look at the list of “leftist” warmongers who called upon Obama to Bomb Syria over the bogus chemical weapons charges that I was doing everything humanly possible at the time to stop and was debunking too. Later Sy Hersh revealed it was all warmongering propaganda in his investigative report in the London Review of Books. It was obvious to me and others at the time that this was typical Obama Liberal Warmongering Propaganda. And most of these “leftist” warmongers could have easily figured it out if they wanted to. And many of them probably already had. Fab. From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Curtis Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 12:58 PM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left Wishful thinking on the “Left” really? Who are these supposed “Leftists” he has in mind? It is wishful thinking by liberals! From what I can tell we on the Left are very clear that the “rebels” in Syria are just mercenaries being paid by imperialist forces. The battle in Syria is to preserve sovereignty in the face of imperial aggression. Anyone who does not understand this is obviously not deserving of any respect (they are brain dead morons falling for imperial lies). I pasted the list of signatories below and most of the names I do not recognize. There are a few names (Alice Walker, Frederick Jameson, Norm Finkelstein and Tariq Ali) who ought to know better so I am puzzled that their names appear (I also recognized Michael Lowy, but I worry that his romanticism leads him to misunderstand the world generally, but that is just my personal view having read him in the past). But maybe someone hit them up with a distorted version or something. But what stands out from the list is that it is just a random list of names. It is not a list of political intellectuals on the left. Richard C Signatories Aaron Winslow, (Columbia University, United States) Abbas Beydoun, (Poet, Lebanon) Abdellatif Zeroual, (Left activist, Morocco) Abdeslam Cherkouk, (Journalist, Morocco) Abir Saksook, (Architect and activist, Lebanon) Adam Hanieh (SOAS University of London, United Kingdom) Adam Shapiro (Activist, United States) Aida Seif Ell Dawla, (Human Rights Activist, Egypt) Akram Zaatari, (Artist, Lebanon) Ala Hlehel, (Author, Palestine) Alex Todorova (University of Columbia, United States/Bulgaria) Ali Amin Suwaid, (Writer, Syria) Ali Atassi, (Journalist, Syria) Alice Walker, (Writer, United States) Amahl Bishara, (Tufts University, United States) Amr Al-Azm, (Shawnee State University, Activist and board member of The Day After NGO, Syria) Amr Saeddeine, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium/ Palestine) Amy Ansell, (Emerson College, United States) Ania Loomba, (University of Pennsylvania, United States) AnnJanette Rosga, (Human Rights Researcher, United States) Ann Ferguson (University of Massachusetts, United States) Anne Meneley, (Trent University, Canada) Anthony Arnove, (Author, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, United States) Arturo Escobar, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States/Colombia) Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, United States) Ashok Chowdhury, (India) Aziza Chaouni, (University of Toronto, Canada/Morocco) Azmi Bishara, (writer, Palestine) Bassem Chit, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Bernadette Daou, (leftist militant, Lebanon) Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University, United States) Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States) Bill Weinberg, (Journalist and author, United States) Brian Slocock, (University of Paisley, Scotland) Budour Hassan, (Author, Palestine) Cara Moyer, (Emerson College, United States) Caitlin Ella Wind, (Writer, United States) Can Irmak Özinanır, (Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey) Chandan Redd, (University of Washington, United States) Chandler Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Chandra Talpade Mohanty, (Feminist Scholar-Activist, India/United States) Charles Hirschkind, (UC Berkeley, United States) Chela Sandoval (University of California, Santa Barbara) Claudia Castañeda, (Emerson College, United States) David Byrne, McDonald III, (Photographer and activist, United States) David McNally (York University, Canada) David Wearing, (SOAS, United Kingdom) Dean Spade, (Seattle University Law, United States) Deepa Kumar (Rutgers University, United States) Diana Coryat, (University of Massachusetts, United States) Dyala Hamzah, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Elena Yehia, (University of North Carolina, United States/ Lebanon) Elias Khoury, (Writer, Lebanon) Elliott Colla, (Georgetown University, United States) Elsa Wiehe, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Mauritius) Erika Marquez, (Bryn Mawr College, United States/Colombia) Estella Carpi (University of Sydney / American University of Beirut) Etienne Balibar (Columbia University, United States/ France) Faraj Bayrakdar (Poet, Syria) Farouk Mardam Bey (Intellectual, Syria) Fawaz Traboulsi, (Writer, Lebanon) Felicia Pratto, (University of Connecticut, United States) Francois Burgat (CNRS, France) Fredric Jameson (Duke University, United States) Gail Daneker, (Director of Peace Education and Advocacy, Friends for a NonViolent World –St. Paul, United States) Gerry Emmett, (Resident Editorial Board, News and Letters Committees, Chicago, United States) Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne, Australia/ Lebanon) Ghassan Makarem, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Ghayath Naisse, (Surgeon, Left Revolutionary Current, Syria) Gilbert Achcar (SOAS, University of London, Lebanon/ United Kingdom) Golbarg Bashi, (Rutgers University, United States/Iran) Graham Peebles, (Artist and Writer, United Kingdom) Gustavo Esteva, (Universidad de la Tierra-Oaxaca, Mexico) Hamid Dabashi, (Columbia University, United States/ Iran) Hani al-Sayed (American University in Cairo, Syria/ Egypt) Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, (Sociologist, Cuba/Dominican Republic) Hazem al-Azmeh (Intellectual, Syria) Ibrahim Al-Assil, (Syrian Non-Violent Movement, Syria) Ibrahim Jalal, (Artist, Syria) Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) Isabelle Momméja, (Activist, France) Issam Aburaya, (Seton Hall University, United States) James Cohen, (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France/ United States) James L. Gelvin, (UCLA, United States) Jamie Allinson, (University of Westminster. UCU member, United Kingdom) Jean-Philippe Schreiber, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) Jean-Pierre Filiu (Institut d'études politiques de Paris, France) Jed Murr, (University of Washington, United States) Jeff Napolitano, (Activist, United States) Jens Hanssen ( University of Tornoto, Canada/ Germany) Jihad Yazigi (Journalist, Syria) Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Lebanon/ Belgium) Jillian Schwedler, (University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States) Joanne Landy, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Joe Vasicek, (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer, United States) John Chalcraft, (London School of Economics, United Kingdom) John Holloway (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, United States/ Mexico) John O’Brien, (Los Angeles California, Stonewall Rebellion Participant, United States) Joseph Daher, (University of Lausanne, Syria/ Switzerland) Karam Dana, (University of Washington, United States/Palestine) Karmen Abou Jaoudeh, (Legal activist, Lebanon) Kathy McDonough, (Wheelock College, United States) Khaled Khalifa, (Novelist, Syria) Khaled saghieh, (Journalist, Lebanon) Khawla Dunia, (Activist, Syria) Kifah Kayal, (Activist, Palestinian ex-political prisoner, Palestine) Kirsten scheid, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) Kmar Bandana (Université de La Manouba, Tunisia) Konstantin Kilibarda (York University, Mississauga territories) Laleh Khalili, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Lawrence Grossberg, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States) Leyla Dakhli, (Researcher, CNRS, France) Lieven De Cauter, (Catholic University of Leuven/RITS, Belgium) Lilia Marsali, (Teacher, United Kingdom) Linda Quiquivix, (Brown University, United States / Guatemala) Lindsey Collen, (left activist and novelist, Mauritius) Loulouwa Al Rachid, (Journalist, Saudi Arabia) Lucia Sorbera, (The University of Sydney, Australia) Manijeh Nasrabadi, (New York University, United States/ Iran) Manuel Barrera, (Metropolitan State University, United States) Manuel Castells, (University Professor of Communication, University of Southern California) Marc Saint-Upéry, (Journalist and translator, France/Ecuador) Maria Koundoura (Emerson College, United States/ Greece) Marisol de la Cadena, (UC Davis, United States/ Peru) Marnia Lazreg, sociologist, USA/Algeria Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto, Canada Mary Rizzo (blogger and activist translator, Italy) Max D. Weiss, (Princeton University, United States) Mayssun Succarie, (American University in Cairo, Egypt/ Lebanon) Mehdi Meftah, (Militant, France) Mélanie Cambrezy, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Mercedes Olivera B., (Antropóloga Feminista, UNICACH, México.) Michael Cisco, (writer and teacher, United States) Michael Lowy, (Social scientist, France) Mirta Tocci, (Emerson College, United States) Mirza Waheed (Novelist, United Kingdom) Mohamad Ali Attassi, (Writer, Syria/ Lebanon) Mohamad Al Bardan, (Syrian Non Violent Movement, United States/ Syria) Mohammad Moeini, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Iran) Mohammed Bamyeh, (University of Pittsburgh, United States) Mona Abaza, (American University in Cairo, Egypt) Muhammad Ali Khalidi, (York University, Canada) Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, (Writer and Sociologist, Scotland) Nader Atassi, (Writer, Syria / United States) Nadia Fadil, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Nadim N. Rouhana, (Tufts University -- United States, and Palestine) Nadine Bekdache, (Designer/ Activist, Lebanon) Nadje Al-Ali, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Nasser Rabbat, (MIT, United States/Syria) Natalie Zemon Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Nidal Al-Azraq, (United States/ Palestine) Nigel Gibson (Emerson college, United States/ Britain) Nimer Sultany, (SUNY Buffalo Law School, United States/Palestine) Noa Shaindlinger, (University of Toronto, Canada/Palestine) Norbert Hirschhorn, (Physician, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Norman Finkelstein (American researcher and writer, United Sates) Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (Scholar, France) Omar Dahi, (Hampshire College, Syria/ United States) Omar Dewachi, (American University of Beirut, Iraq/Canada) Omnia El Shakry, (UC Davis, United States) Oussama Mohamad (Film maker, Syria/ France) Ozlem Goner, (CUNY, Turkey/ United States) Pablo Stefanoni, (Chief editor, Nueva Sociedad, Argentina) Paul Kellogg, (Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada) Paul Kingston, (University of Toronto, Canada) Pierre Tevanian, (Writer, activist, France) R. Radhakrishnan (UC Irvine, United States/ India) Rabha Attaf, (Reporter, France) Raed Firas, (Activist, Syria) Raed Khartabil, (Activist, Syria) Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University, United States/Palestine) Razan Ghazzawi, (Activist, Syria) Richard Seymour, (Writer, London School of Economics, International Socialists Network, United Kingdom) Rime Allaf, (Writer and adviser, Syria) Robert Young, (New York University, United States) Robin Yassin-Kassab, (novelist and commentator, Syria/ United Kingdom) Rola Rukbi, (Syria) Ruba Alkhouli, (Activist, Spain) Rupert Read, (Chair of the Green House thinktank, United Kingdom) Saad Hajo (Cartoonist, Syria) Saba Mahmood (UC Berkeley, United States) Sabah Hallak, (Lebanon) Sadiq Jalal Azem, (Writer, Syria) Sadri Khiari (Writer, Tunisia) Salah Mosbah, (University of Tunis, Tunisia) Salam Kawakibi, (Arab Reform Initiative, Syria) Salam Said (Economist/Germany) Salameh Kaileh (Intellectual, Syria/Palestine) Salim Vally, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Sami Hermez, (University of Pittsburg, United States/ Lebanon) Samir Aita (Le Monde Diplomatique editions arabes, Cercle des Economistes Arabes) Samuel Binkley, (Emerson College, United States) Santiago de Rico Alba (Philosopher, Spain) Sarah Bracke, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Sarah Eltantawi, (Scholar of religion and writer, United States) Sari Hanafi, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon/ Palestine) Seda Altug, (Bogazici University, Turkey) Sherifa Zuhur, (historian, Director, Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies, United Kingdom) Sherry Wolf, (Author of Sexuality and Socialism, United States) Simon Assaf, (Activist, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Sinan Antoon, (New York University, Iraq/ United States) Sirisha Naidu, (Wright State University, India/ United States) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, (America University of Beirut, Lebanon) Srinivas Lankala, (University of Massachusetts, India/United States) Stephen R. Shalom, (William Paterson University, United States) Steve Graham, (Newcastle University, United Kingdom) Steven Friedman, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Suad Joseph, (University of California, Davis, United States/ Lebanon) Swati Birla, (University of Massachusetts, India/ United States) Sylvie Tissot (University of Paris-8, France) Talal Asad (CUNY, United States) Tamera Marko, (Emerson College, United States) Tariq Ali (Writer, journalist, and filmmaker, United Kingdom/ Pakistan) Tewfik Allal, (Activist, Manifeste des libertés, France) Thaer Alsahli (Activist, Syria/Palestine) Thierry Boissière (Institut français du Proche-Orient, France) Thomas Harrison, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Thomas Markus Kvilhaug, (International Socialist branch, Norway) Tiffany Kreierhoff, (writer, United States) Toufic Haddad, (author, SOAS, United Kingdom) Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, United States/ India) Walid Daaw, (Teacher, The left forum) Walter Mignolo, (Duke University, United States/ Argentina) Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley, United States) William E. Connolly, (Johns Hopkins University, United States) Yahya Madra, (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) Yasmine Farouk, (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University) Yasser Khanjar, (Poet, Ex political prisoner in Israeli Prisons, Occupied Golan, Syria) Yasser Munif, (Emerson College, Syria/ United States) Yassin el-Haj Saleh (Intellectual, Syria) Yazan Louai Al-Saadi, (Journalist, Al-Akhbar English, Lebanon) Youssef Fakhr el-Din, (Journalist, Syria/ Palestine) Yusef Khalil, (Activist, United States/Lebanon) Yveline, Delacroix, (Activist, France) Zaïneb Ben Lagha, (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, France) Zeinab Abul-Magd (Oberlin College, United States/ Egypt) Zena Hallak, (Tunisia) Zeynep Inanc, (United States) Ziad Majed (American University of Paris, Lebanon/ France) Ziauddin Sardar (Intellectual, Pakistan/ United Kingdom) From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Mitchel Cohen Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 9:30 AM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/14/the-wishful-thinking-left/print August 14, 2013 The Unwitting Agents of the Imperial Order The Wishful Thinking Left by JEAN BRICMONT Louvain, Belgium. Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, many people, including myself, thought that all the "struggles" of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European "dissidents", May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the "fascist" regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European "fascist" regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition "in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011", whose list of signatories includes a veritable who's who of the Western Left. The petition claims that "The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom." The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only "hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria". They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing "in support of the slaughter of people", although they are "allegedly friends of the Arabs"; they acknowledge that "the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries", but blame them for "having done so with a clear cynical self-interest" and trying to "crush and subvert the uprising". It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that "regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone". The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of "solidarity" from "intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements", "with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country." Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today's mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left's thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan ("solidarity with Afghan women") and Iraq ("they will be better off without Saddam"). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been relatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the "Alawi sect", something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of "Russia, China and Iran" in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the "U.S. and its Gulf allies". From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to "dictatorships", but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is "Russia and China" who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn't it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: "never again!"? The petition sees the events in Syria as an "extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.", but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the "immediate" departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a "free, unified and independent Syria"? Aren't the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the "Stalinist" regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the "revolution" in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by "Russia, China and Iran", as well as from the "Assad regime" with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the "U.S. and its Gulf allies"). Shouldn't one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The "Syrian regime" has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a "democratic future", while a violent revolution can? Shouldn't one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the "global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments" can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn't care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the "Palestine solidarity movement"? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that "our" priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must "support" want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to "crush and subvert the uprising"). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don't "support" the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the "world powers have left the Syrian people alone" (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that "we" must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the "people" revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded "N"GO's, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog's agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. ------------------------------------------ JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 9:46 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Exactly, when speaking with those opposed to war, any initial exhilaration I feel at hearing their opposition, is immediately dashed when they assume, its all about Trump and we need to get rid of him, and get a Democrat in power, or a third party candidate, Bernie. I control my need to ask, where have you been for over eight years now, by pointing out Bush put us into 2 wars, Obama extended those to now 7. On Oct 9, 2017, at 07:14, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: And I would add that Amy Badman is typical for what passes for most of the American “left” these days—warmongers. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 8:05 AM To: Karen Aram > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 15:22:31 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:22:31 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Excellent article Message-ID: From Prof. Francis Boyle, An article from Counterpunch 2013 By JEAN BRICMONT Once upon a time, in the early 1970’s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition “in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.” The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”. They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”. The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been bricmontimprelatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”? The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the “Palestine solidarity movement”? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 15:28:51 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:28:51 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Our threats against North Korea are very dangerous Message-ID: * WSWS * ICFI * Mehring Books * Mobile * RSS Feeds * Podcast * Newsletter * Select a language Afrikaans >العربية Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικά English Español فارسی Français Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Srpskohrvatski Sinhalese தமிழ் Türkçe اُردُو‎ 中文 [http://www.wsws.org/img/title.png] [http://www.wsws.org/img/logo.png] Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Click here for advanced search » * Home * Perspectives * World News * World Economy * Arts Review * History * Science * Philosophy * Workers Struggles * ICFI/Marxist Library * Chronology * Full Archive * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Trump’s threats against North Korea signify real danger of war 9 October 2017 Donald Trump continued his campaign of incendiary statements over the weekend, threatening to launch a war with North Korea that could unleash a nuclear catastrophe. On Saturday afternoon, the US president tweeted that past administrations “have been talking to North Korea for 25 years.” This “hasn’t worked,” he wrote, adding: “Sorry, but only one thing will work!” Asked later to elaborate on what he meant, Trump replied, “You’ll figure that out pretty soon.” These threats came three weeks after Trump’s tirade at the United Nations General Assembly September 19, when he declared that the US was “ready, willing, and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea, a country of 25 million people. Four days later, Trump threatened to assassinate the North Korean leader. If the North Korean foreign minister’s speech at the UN “echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man [Kim Jong-Un],” Trump wrote, “they won’t be around much longer!” On Thursday, Trump organized a White House dinner with US military leaders, which had all the hallmarks of a meeting of a war cabinet. During a photo op before the dinner, Trump, surrounded by generals in military uniform, likened the moment to “the calm before the storm.” Asked what storm he was talking about, Trump would only say, “You’ll find out soon.” To the extent that Trump’s words are interpreted as a genuine expression of the policy and plans of the United States government, the inescapable conclusion is that the world stands on the brink of the most devastating military conflict since the outbreak of World War II. Were language and reality in correct political alignment, the present situation would be described officially as an “Imminent danger of war.” Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, embroiled in a political conflict with Trump, warned that the president’s reckless threats were leading the United States “on the path to World War III.” But despite Corker’s statement on Sunday, there is, within the ruling elite and its media, a staggering disconnect between consciousness and reality. The public declarations emanating from the White House are being reported by the media as if they will have no consequences. The thinking seems to be that Trump doesn’t mean what he says. The consequences of a war would prove to be so catastrophic that Trump is simply bluffing. But what if he isn’t? What if the North Korean government takes the threats of the American president, as it must, seriously? With Trump having publicly declared that he will destroy North Korea and that the doomsday hour is fast approaching, how will the Pyongyang government interpret American military actions near the borders of its country? With only minutes to make a decision, will the regime view the approach of a US bomber toward North Korean airspace as the beginning of a full-scale attack? Will it conclude that it has no choice but to assume the worst and initiate a military strike against South Korea? Will it fire missiles, as it has threatened, in the direction of Japan, Guam, Australia, or even the United States? From a purely legal standpoint, North Korea can claim, in light of Trump’s threats, that such action on its part would be an act of self-defense, a legitimate response to an imminent military threat. Aside from the calculations of Pyongyang, one must assume that the regimes in Beijing and Moscow are also looking at the unfolding developments with increasing alarm. While the American media, as is its wont, responds complacently and thoughtlessly to Trump’s threats, the Chinese regime cannot avoid viewing them with deadly seriousness. Trump is, after all, the commander in chief of the American military. He has the power—which Congress has shown no interest in challenging—to order military actions. A US attack on North Korea would pose an overwhelming threat to China. As in 1950, a war against North Korea would—even if it did not rapidly escalate into a nuclear exchange—lead inexorably to an American incursion across the 38th Parallel. The last time the US military crossed the border into North Korea, the Chinese responded with a massive military counterattack. There is no reason to believe that the present-day regime in Beijing would remain passive in the face of a new US invasion of North Korea. It would view an American invasion as an unacceptable violation of a geopolitical arrangement on the Korean peninsula that has been in existence for nearly 65 years. Beijing’s reaction would be influenced by the already tense conditions that exist in the Asia-Pacific region. For years, the US has been systematically building up its military forces in the South China Sea under the “Pivot to Asia” initiated by the Obama administration. The purpose has been to militarily encircle China, which dominant sections of the ruling class consider the major competitor to US interests. Over the weekend, China’s main regional competitor, Japan, declared that it fully backed Trump’s threats against North Korea. Thus, the outbreak of war between North Korea and the United States would inevitably involve China, which, in turn, would draw all of Asia, as well as Australia, into the bloody maelstrom. Nor would it be possible for Europe and Latin America, which have their own interests in Asia, to stand aside. Little has appeared in the American media about the consequences of war with North Korea. An article in Newsweekin April concluded that a war would leave one million people dead, assuming that it did not involve the use of nuclear weapons or any other outside powers. In a comment in the Los Angeles Times last month, retired Air Force Brigadier General Rob Givens calculated that 20,000 South Koreans would die every day in a war on the peninsula, even without the use of nuclear weapons. If the war were to develop into a nuclear exchange—as the Trump administration has threatened—the consequences would be catastrophic. In addition to the millions or tens of millions killed outright, climate experts warned in August that even a regional nuclear war would cool the planet by up to 10 degrees Celsius, potentially sparking a global nuclear winter that would wipe out agricultural production. Despite all the evidence that war could break out at any time, the American media persists in its refusal to take the events seriously. The New York Times epitomized this media effort at chloroforming the population in its October 6 article on Trump’s remarks before the generals, which stated that Trump has a “penchant for provocative statements” and takes “an obvious delight in keeping people guessing.” Writing as if what was involved was merely a matter of White House gossip and intrigue, the Times stated that the “timing” of the “calm before the storm” statement was “particularly tantalizing.” “But it is equally plausible,” the article concluded, “that Mr. Trump was merely being theatrical, using the backdrop of military officers to stir up some drama.” The efforts of the media to downplay the danger are contradicted by signs of serious divisions within the Trump administration. There are rumors that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be forced out or could resign, following statements from Trump last month directly undermining Tillerson’s moves to resume negotiations with the North Korean government. Thursday’s meeting of top advisers in the White House, decked out in their uniforms, may have been an effort by Trump to ensure that he has the military on his side in advance of war. These divisions, however, are tactical in character. In the final analysis, Trump speaks not simply for himself, but for the US ruling class. The dominant factions of the ruling oligarchy are united on the basic strategy of using its military force to maintain its hegemonic position abroad. Trump uses exceptionally crude and brutal language to justify American foreign policy. But he is not the author of Washington's hegemonic strategy. The United States has been at war almost continuously for more than 25 years. This weekend marked the sixteenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan. The Pentagon is conducting military actions all over the world, usually without the American people being informed of the deployment of military personnel. The death in combat this past week of four American soldiers in the African country of Niger came as a total surprise to the public. A war with Korea could break out at any time. This is the reality of the situation. Rather than speculating idly over whether Trump is merely bluffing, the critical task is the building of a powerful movement, based on the working class, against the drive to war. The very fact that the American president smirks and laughs as he threatens millions with annihilation is itself sufficient proof that the US political system is terminally sick and capable of any crime. Joseph Kishore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Oct 9 15:36:24 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 10:36:24 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00a501d34114$5dd3cf70$197b6e50$@comcast.net> Good article ! The only thing I would add to it is what I have said in the recent past. That opposition to the invasion of Iraq did not mean support for Saddam Hussein, and that despite the legitimate Arab Spring rebellions that happened in Syria in 2011, that what real secular opposition to Assad that was present at that time, has been nowhere to be found since 2011. The ONLY opposition in recent times to Assad are right-wing Islamic fundamentalist groups armed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.S., UK and probably Israel. David J. From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 10:23 AM To: Peace-discuss List Cc: peace Subject: [Peace] Excellent article >From Prof. Francis Boyle, An article from Counterpunch 2013 By JEAN BRICMONT Once upon a time, in the early 1970’s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition “in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.” The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”. They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”. The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been bricmontimprelatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”? The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the “Palestine solidarity movement”? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 15:37:00 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:37:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Below is my debunking of the bogus chemical weapons charges at the time they were made, later confirmed by Sy Hersh. Any idiot could have figured out that this was Warmongering Propaganda by Obama and his Harvard/Yale Law Mafia—including the “left” warmongers who called for Obama to bomb Syria. Fab. A Final Comment Francis Boyle critiqued the UN report. He cited: (1) Appendix 3, paragraph 3: UN inspectors "admit they were under the control of the opposition in order to make their inspection of Ghouta." (2) Appendix 4: "Admittedly this was a rush job designed to meet an artificial deadline of questionable significance." (3) Page 15: "So why did none of the 3 hair samples test positive for sarin?" (3) Statisticians should "do a run on the statistical significance of the findings here given the low number N=34-36 out of the alleged" 1,429 victims Kerry wrongfully claimed. (4) Appendix 5 - Munitions: (a) Page 18: Inspectors said "(f)ragments and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team." The above discussion suggests the same thing. The alleged crime scenes were manipulated. Doing so made evidence collected suspect, tainted and/or worthless. According to Boyle: So-called "munitions 'evidence' could have been easily planted beforehand by the opposition that was in complete control of this area" at the time. (b) According to UN inspectors: "During the time spent at these locations, individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated." In other words, said Boyle, perhaps so-called "evidence" isn't any at all. (5) Appendix 7: Lab 1 and 2 results show "large numbers of the samples indicated NO CW agents: 'NONE,' " said Boyle. Most likely they were largely conventional munitions fragments. Sarin was present in a small fraction of them. UN inspectors admitted crime scenes were "manipulated." They were tampered with. Contamination made them worthless. Note: Major media reports suppressed what's most important to report! They ignored vital truths! They wrongfully blamed Assad for insurgents' crimes! They did so based on manipulated/corrupted/fabricated evidence! According to Boyle: "At 7.2 on the Biomedical Results, of 36 samples, the 2 labs together could not confirm even ONE chem by means of a urine test." "Indeed, most of the urine tests were NA - not available, in other words, not reported." UN inspectors' "report is completely slipshod and worthless, even in accordance with (their) own terms." "It establishes almost nothing of any scientific significance. It was rushed on through to provide BKM and the Americans a pretext for further warmongering." Doing so shows so-called inspectors willfully deceived. They lied for power. UN agencies operate this way. They're little more than wholly owned US subsidiaries. They're corrupted and worthless. Don't expect major media scoundrels to explain. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour Syria Gas Attack: Assad Wrongfully Blamed by Stephen Lendman On Monday, UN inspectors released their eagerly awaited report. Security Council members were briefed in closed session. On Tuesday, the report was published online. It's titled "Report on the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of Damascus on 21 August 2013." On September 16, the UN News Centre headlined " 'Clear and convincing' evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria, UN team reports." Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom headed the UN team. It's called the Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic. On March 21, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon established it. World Health Organization (WHO) and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts were involved. Evidence confirmed sarin gas use. Ban called its Ghouta investigation findings "overwhelming and indisputable. The facts speak for themselves." "The United Nations Mission has now confirmed, unequivocally and objectively, that chemical weapons have been used in Syria." "There must be accountability for the use of chemical weapons. Any use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere, is a crime." "But our message today must be more than that: Do not slaughter your people with gas. There must also be no impunity for the crimes being committed with conventional weapons." "This is a war crime. The international community has a responsibility to hold the perpetrators accountable and to ensure that chemical weapons never re-emerge as an instrument of warfare." Sellstrom's team was mandated to determine if chemical weapons were used. "It is for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility," he said. "We may all have our own thoughts on this, but I would simply say that this was a grave crime and those responsible must be brought to justice as soon as possible." Evidence examined came from biomedical hair, urine and blood samples. Soil and environmental samples were analyzed. So were alleged munitions and impact sites. More than 50 "survivors, medical personnel and first responders" were interviewed. It's unclear how they were chosen. Lack of clarity raises concerns. Objectivity may have been compromised. Since conflict erupted in March 2011, Syria repeatedly has been wrongfully blamed for insurgents' crimes. The so-called UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry (COI) consistently lies for power. Its reports lack credibility. They largely point fingers one way. They do so duplicitously. They ignore clear evidence of insurgents use of chemical weapons. They're silent about numerous massacres they committed. They wrongfully blame Assad. Clear evidence showed insurgents responsible for Ghouta's attack. Nothing links Syrian forces. Previous articles explained. Following the Security Council's closed briefing, Britain's UN envoy Mark Lyall Grant lied saying: "(I)n our view, there is no remaining doubt that it was the (Syrian) regime that used chemical weapons" in Ghouta. Washington's UN ambassador Samantha Power issued a lengthy duplicitous statement. She lied saying: "(T)he technical details of the UN report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack." "But based on our preliminary review, I will note one particular observation. We have associated one type of munition cited in the UN report - 122mm rockets - with previous regime attacks." "We have reviewed thousands of open source videos related to the current conflict in Syria and have not observed the opposition manufacturing or using this style of rocket." "(M)r. Sellstrom (said sarin used was) professionally made. He said (it) bore none of the characteristics of improvised weapons." The UN report said nothing about sarin quality. Power lied claiming otherwise. She wrongfully said Assad "used (chemical weapons) multiple times over the last year." Throughout months of conflict, Washington, key NATO partners, Israel, and rogue Arab states armed, funded and trained mercenary killers. Saudi Arabia was caught red-handed supplying toxic agents. Last May, Turkish authorities arrested 12 suspected Al Nusra fighters. They had two grams of sarin nerve gas. On September 15, Russia Today headlined "Turkish prosecutors indict Syrian rebels for seeking chemical weapons," saying: "The prosecutor in the Turkish city of Adana has issued a 132-page indictment, alleging that six men of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham tried to seek out chemicals with the intent to produce the nerve agent, sarin gas, a number of Turkish publications reported." "The main suspect in the case, 35-year-old Syrian-national Hytham Qassap has been charged with 'being a member of a terrorist organization' and 'attempting to acquire weapons for a terrorist organization.' " "The other 5, all Turkish nationals are being charged with 'attempting to acquire weapons for a terrorist organization.' " "The indictment alleges that Qassap tried to setup a network in Turkey in order to obtain chemical materials for the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham Brigades." "Citing telephone calls made by the cell, the prosecution believes that the group ordered at least ten tons of chemicals, Al-Alam News Network reports." A previous article cited Mint Press News headlining "Exclusive: Syrians in Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack," saying: "Rebels and local residents in Ghouta accuse Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaida linked rebel group." Insurgents had "tube-like" weapons. Others were in a "huge gas bottle." Another previous article said the following: Pentagon contractors provided chemical weapons training. Syrian forces seized a warehouse. It contained barrels marked "Made in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia)." Protective masks were found. So were drugs used when inhaling chemicals. "The Qatari-German Company for Pharmaceutical Industries (was) inscribed on them." Throughout months of conflict, anti-Assad nations provided Western-enlisted death squads with heavy weapons. They still do. Insurgents bear fully responsibility for attacking Ghouta. Claiming they have no access to sarin, other chemical weapons, and high quality munitions doesn't wash. Power duplicitous accused Assad of "genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity." She wants him prosecuted in the Hague. She endorses military force to topple his government. She supports lawless aggression. Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Sellstrom's report requires careful evaluation. It's a "very technical report. It avoids categorical assessments and conclusions," he stressed. It says chemical weapons were used "on a relatively large scale." It excluded attribution. "There are no solid conclusions and data" suggesting Syria's responsibility, said Churkin. "In the process of further review, everyone will be able to make their own conclusions, and we can only hope that they will be professional, not inspired by some political pressure." UN inspectors didn't find warheads filled with sarin gas. They found munitions fragments. They suggest having been fired from multiple rocket launchers. Other evidence indicates they came "rebel" held territory. Pro-Assad civilians were targeted. Unaddressed was why would Assad attack his supporters? Why would he do it with UN inspectors close by? Why would he risk harming his own soldiers and innocent civilians? Why would he need to use chemical weapons? He's effectively routing insurgent fighters. He's doing it consistently. Other evidence indicates extremist anti-Assad fighters used chemical weapons multiple times. Material evidence of sarin use may have been transported from one location to another. It may have been done to deceive inspectors. Their report excluded numbers of victims killed. At most it was scores or perhaps two or three hundred. John Kerry claiming 1,429 conflicts with Britain and France estimating several hundred. UN inspectors found no evidence of huge numbers. Many questions remain unanswered. Knee-jerk Western conclusions point fingers the wrong way. Washington wants Assad toppled. It wants Syrian sovereignty destroyed. It wants subservient puppet governance replacing it. It wants Iran isolated. It wants Shah era harshness restored. It wants unchallenged regional dominance. War is Obama's option of choice. Plans to launch it remain firm. Timing alone is changed. Pretexts are easy to create. Ghouta was a classic false flag. Expect another major one ahead. Expect it used to wage war. Launching it could come any time. The fullness of time will tell. Following release of the UN report, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: Below is my debunking of the chemical weapons charges at the time, later confirmed by Sy Hersh. A Final Comment Francis Boyle critiqued the UN report. He cited: (1) Appendix 3, paragraph 3: UN inspectors "admit they were under the control of the opposition in order to make their inspection of Ghouta." (2) Appendix 4: "Admittedly this was a rush job designed to meet an artificial deadline of questionable significance." (3) Page 15: "So why did none of the 3 hair samples test positive for sarin?" (3) Statisticians should "do a run on the statistical significance of the findings here given the low number N=34-36 out of the alleged" 1,429 victims Kerry wrongfully claimed. (4) Appendix 5 - Munitions: (a) Page 18: Inspectors said "(f)ragments and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team." The above discussion suggests the same thing. The alleged crime scenes were manipulated. Doing so made evidence collected suspect, tainted and/or worthless. According to Boyle: So-called "munitions 'evidence' could have been easily planted beforehand by the opposition that was in complete control of this area" at the time. (b) According to UN inspectors: "During the time spent at these locations, individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated." In other words, said Boyle, perhaps so-called "evidence" isn't any at all. (5) Appendix 7: Lab 1 and 2 results show "large numbers of the samples indicated NO CW agents: 'NONE,' " said Boyle. Most likely they were largely conventional munitions fragments. Sarin was present in a small fraction of them. UN inspectors admitted crime scenes were "manipulated." They were tampered with. Contamination made them worthless. Note: Major media reports suppressed what's most important to report! They ignored vital truths! They wrongfully blamed Assad for insurgents' crimes! They did so based on manipulated/corrupted/fabricated evidence! According to Boyle: "At 7.2 on the Biomedical Results, of 36 samples, the 2 labs together could not confirm even ONE chem by means of a urine test." "Indeed, most of the urine tests were NA - not available, in other words, not reported." UN inspectors' "report is completely slipshod and worthless, even in accordance with (their) own terms." "It establishes almost nothing of any scientific significance. It was rushed on through to provide BKM and the Americans a pretext for further warmongering." Doing so shows so-called inspectors willfully deceived. They lied for power. UN agencies operate this way. They're little more than wholly owned US subsidiaries. They're corrupted and worthless. Don't expect major media scoundrels to explain. "The information provided in that report that the sarin agent was delivered on surface to surface rockets that only the Assad regime has, makes clear the responsibility." Last May, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte said: "According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas." "We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas." A summary fact sheet accompanied a detailed technical UN report. It said in part: "During a temporary ceasefire for five hours each day between 26 - 29 August 2013, the Mission was able to access affected sites in Moadamiyah, Ein Tarma and Zamalka in the Ghouta area of Damascus. Fact-Finding Activities: * Interviews with more than 50 survivors, including patients, other victims, health workers and first-responders; * Documentation of munitions and their sub-components; * Assessment of symptoms of intoxicated survivors; * Collection and analysis of bio-medical (hair, urine and blood) samples; * Collection and analysis of 30 soil and environmental samples. Analytical Results and Factual Findings: * Impacted and exploded surface-to-surface rockets, capable of carrying a chemical pay load, were found to still contain sarin; * Close to the rocket impact sites, survivors were affected, the environment was found to be contaminated by sarin; * A number of survivors clearly diagnosed for intoxification by and with organophosphorous compound and clearly presented symptoms of exposure; * Almost all of the blood samples from the above same survivors were found positive for sarin and sarin signatures. UN Missions Conclusions: "On the basis of the evidence obtained during the investigation of the Ghouta incident, the conclusion of the UN mission is that, on 21 August 2013, chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic on a relatively large scale. In particular, the environmental, chemical and medical samples collected by the Mission provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used in the Ghouta area of Damascus." In response, White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice said evidence UN inspectors reported "reinforces our assessment that these attacks were carried out by the Syrian regime, as only they had the capability to mount an attack in this manner." False! Insurgents are fully capable. They've been trained to be so. They're supplied with chemical weapons. They used them multiple times before. They used them in Ghouta. They bear full responsibility. They'll use them again. Assad's repeatedly blamed for their crimes. Expect more false accusations ahead. Big Lies launch wars. America takes full advantage. Obama plans shock and awe madness. He's ravaging one country after another. He's waging war on humanity. He risks annihilating it altogether. Stopping him matters most. A Final Comment Francis Boyle critiqued the UN report. He cited: (1) Appendix 3, paragraph 3: UN inspectors "admit they were under the control of the opposition in order to make their inspection of Ghouta." (2) Appendix 4: "Admittedly this was a rush job designed to meet an artificial deadline of questionable significance." (3) Page 15: "So why did none of the 3 hair samples test positive for sarin?" (3) Statisticians should "do a run on the statistical significance of the findings here given the low number N=34-36 out of the alleged" 1,429 victims Kerry wrongfully claimed. (4) Appendix 5 - Munitions: (a) Page 18: Inspectors said "(f)ragments and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team." The above discussion suggests the same thing. The alleged crime scenes were manipulated. Doing so made evidence collected suspect, tainted and/or worthless. According to Boyle: So-called "munitions 'evidence' could have been easily planted beforehand by the opposition that was in complete control of this area" at the time. (b) According to UN inspectors: "During the time spent at these locations, individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated." In other words, said Boyle, perhaps so-called "evidence" isn't any at all. (5) Appendix 7: Lab 1 and 2 results show "large numbers of the samples indicated NO CW agents: 'NONE,' " said Boyle. Most likely they were largely conventional munitions fragments. Sarin was present in a small fraction of them. UN inspectors admitted crime scenes were "manipulated." They were tampered with. Contamination made them worthless. Note: Major media reports suppressed what's most important to report! They ignored vital truths! They wrongfully blamed Assad for insurgents' crimes! They did so based on manipulated/corrupted/fabricated evidence! According to Boyle: "At 7.2 on the Biomedical Results, of 36 samples, the 2 labs together could not confirm even ONE chem by means of a urine test." "Indeed, most of the urine tests were NA - not available, in other words, not reported." UN inspectors' "report is completely slipshod and worthless, even in accordance with (their) own terms." "It establishes almost nothing of any scientific significance. It was rushed on through to provide BKM and the Americans a pretext for further warmongering." Doing so shows so-called inspectors willfully deceived. They lied for power. UN agencies operate this way. They're little more than wholly owned US subsidiaries. They're corrupted and worthless. Don't expect major media scoundrels to explain. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 10:16 AM To: Karen Aram Cc: Estabrook, Carl G ; Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war As you can see, at the time I was doing everything humanly possible to prevent Obama from bombing Syria, including debunking the bogus chemical weapons charges. Then these “leftist” warmongers came out against us. They are all Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. Fab. Institute for Public Accuracy 980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa at accuracy.org _______________________________________________________ Monday, September 9, 2013 * Key Author of War Powers Act: "Obama has no Authority to Attack Syria" * Impeachment Interviews Available PAUL FINDLEY, (217) 243-8444, findley1 at frontier.com Available for a limited number of interviews, Findley served as a member of United States House of Representatives for 22 years. He was a key author of the War Powers Act and a leader in securing its enactment by overriding the veto of President Richard Nixon. He is also the author of six books. The federal building in Springfield, Ill. is named for him. He just wrote the piece "Obama has no Authority to Attack Syria," which states: "Despite his own recent statements to the contrary, President Barack Obama has no legal authority to assault the government of Syria even as “a warning shot.” Neither the United States Constitution, nor the War Powers Act of 1973 gives him such authority in the absence of an emergency that allows Congress no time to react. Obama cannot cite the present situation as such an emergency, given his public statement that members of Congress need not act until the completion of their scheduled vacation. He has said that his proposal is 'not time sensitive.' If Congress fails to approve a resolution approving acts of war against Syria, he cannot order any military assault into Syria. "On several recent occasions the President and administration officials have mentioned a “sixty day” period during which he has authority to act without approval of Congress. Such authority does not exist. It is a misreading of a provision of the War Powers Act that provides only Congress with oversight constraints on executive actions. ..." Findley also recently wrote the piece "Syria — a War We Should Reject." FRANCIS BOYLE, (217) 333-7954, fboyle at illinois.edu Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. Boyle drafted articles of impeachment that were introduced by the late Rep. Henry Gonzalez against President George H. W. Bush in 1991. Boyle said today: "Impeachment is the remedy for a president taking extra-constitutional action. Obama claims he has the authority to attack Syria when -- under the Constitution -- he does not." See: "Cornel West: It’s 'Grounds For Impeachment' If Obama Bombs Syria Without Congressional Approval." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 9:58 AM To: 'Karen Aram' > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Yeah, just look at the list of “leftist” warmongers who called upon Obama to Bomb Syria over the bogus chemical weapons charges that I was doing everything humanly possible at the time to stop and was debunking too. Later Sy Hersh revealed it was all warmongering propaganda in his investigative report in the London Review of Books. It was obvious to me and others at the time that this was typical Obama Liberal Warmongering Propaganda. And most of these “leftist” warmongers could have easily figured it out if they wanted to. And many of them probably already had. Fab. From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Curtis Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 12:58 PM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left Wishful thinking on the “Left” really? Who are these supposed “Leftists” he has in mind? It is wishful thinking by liberals! From what I can tell we on the Left are very clear that the “rebels” in Syria are just mercenaries being paid by imperialist forces. The battle in Syria is to preserve sovereignty in the face of imperial aggression. Anyone who does not understand this is obviously not deserving of any respect (they are brain dead morons falling for imperial lies). I pasted the list of signatories below and most of the names I do not recognize. There are a few names (Alice Walker, Frederick Jameson, Norm Finkelstein and Tariq Ali) who ought to know better so I am puzzled that their names appear (I also recognized Michael Lowy, but I worry that his romanticism leads him to misunderstand the world generally, but that is just my personal view having read him in the past). But maybe someone hit them up with a distorted version or something. But what stands out from the list is that it is just a random list of names. It is not a list of political intellectuals on the left. Richard C Signatories Aaron Winslow, (Columbia University, United States) Abbas Beydoun, (Poet, Lebanon) Abdellatif Zeroual, (Left activist, Morocco) Abdeslam Cherkouk, (Journalist, Morocco) Abir Saksook, (Architect and activist, Lebanon) Adam Hanieh (SOAS University of London, United Kingdom) Adam Shapiro (Activist, United States) Aida Seif Ell Dawla, (Human Rights Activist, Egypt) Akram Zaatari, (Artist, Lebanon) Ala Hlehel, (Author, Palestine) Alex Todorova (University of Columbia, United States/Bulgaria) Ali Amin Suwaid, (Writer, Syria) Ali Atassi, (Journalist, Syria) Alice Walker, (Writer, United States) Amahl Bishara, (Tufts University, United States) Amr Al-Azm, (Shawnee State University, Activist and board member of The Day After NGO, Syria) Amr Saeddeine, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium/ Palestine) Amy Ansell, (Emerson College, United States) Ania Loomba, (University of Pennsylvania, United States) AnnJanette Rosga, (Human Rights Researcher, United States) Ann Ferguson (University of Massachusetts, United States) Anne Meneley, (Trent University, Canada) Anthony Arnove, (Author, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, United States) Arturo Escobar, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States/Colombia) Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, United States) Ashok Chowdhury, (India) Aziza Chaouni, (University of Toronto, Canada/Morocco) Azmi Bishara, (writer, Palestine) Bassem Chit, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Bernadette Daou, (leftist militant, Lebanon) Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University, United States) Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States) Bill Weinberg, (Journalist and author, United States) Brian Slocock, (University of Paisley, Scotland) Budour Hassan, (Author, Palestine) Cara Moyer, (Emerson College, United States) Caitlin Ella Wind, (Writer, United States) Can Irmak Özinanır, (Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey) Chandan Redd, (University of Washington, United States) Chandler Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Chandra Talpade Mohanty, (Feminist Scholar-Activist, India/United States) Charles Hirschkind, (UC Berkeley, United States) Chela Sandoval (University of California, Santa Barbara) Claudia Castañeda, (Emerson College, United States) David Byrne, McDonald III, (Photographer and activist, United States) David McNally (York University, Canada) David Wearing, (SOAS, United Kingdom) Dean Spade, (Seattle University Law, United States) Deepa Kumar (Rutgers University, United States) Diana Coryat, (University of Massachusetts, United States) Dyala Hamzah, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Elena Yehia, (University of North Carolina, United States/ Lebanon) Elias Khoury, (Writer, Lebanon) Elliott Colla, (Georgetown University, United States) Elsa Wiehe, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Mauritius) Erika Marquez, (Bryn Mawr College, United States/Colombia) Estella Carpi (University of Sydney / American University of Beirut) Etienne Balibar (Columbia University, United States/ France) Faraj Bayrakdar (Poet, Syria) Farouk Mardam Bey (Intellectual, Syria) Fawaz Traboulsi, (Writer, Lebanon) Felicia Pratto, (University of Connecticut, United States) Francois Burgat (CNRS, France) Fredric Jameson (Duke University, United States) Gail Daneker, (Director of Peace Education and Advocacy, Friends for a NonViolent World –St. Paul, United States) Gerry Emmett, (Resident Editorial Board, News and Letters Committees, Chicago, United States) Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne, Australia/ Lebanon) Ghassan Makarem, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Ghayath Naisse, (Surgeon, Left Revolutionary Current, Syria) Gilbert Achcar (SOAS, University of London, Lebanon/ United Kingdom) Golbarg Bashi, (Rutgers University, United States/Iran) Graham Peebles, (Artist and Writer, United Kingdom) Gustavo Esteva, (Universidad de la Tierra-Oaxaca, Mexico) Hamid Dabashi, (Columbia University, United States/ Iran) Hani al-Sayed (American University in Cairo, Syria/ Egypt) Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, (Sociologist, Cuba/Dominican Republic) Hazem al-Azmeh (Intellectual, Syria) Ibrahim Al-Assil, (Syrian Non-Violent Movement, Syria) Ibrahim Jalal, (Artist, Syria) Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) Isabelle Momméja, (Activist, France) Issam Aburaya, (Seton Hall University, United States) James Cohen, (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France/ United States) James L. Gelvin, (UCLA, United States) Jamie Allinson, (University of Westminster. UCU member, United Kingdom) Jean-Philippe Schreiber, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) Jean-Pierre Filiu (Institut d'études politiques de Paris, France) Jed Murr, (University of Washington, United States) Jeff Napolitano, (Activist, United States) Jens Hanssen ( University of Tornoto, Canada/ Germany) Jihad Yazigi (Journalist, Syria) Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Lebanon/ Belgium) Jillian Schwedler, (University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States) Joanne Landy, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Joe Vasicek, (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer, United States) John Chalcraft, (London School of Economics, United Kingdom) John Holloway (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, United States/ Mexico) John O’Brien, (Los Angeles California, Stonewall Rebellion Participant, United States) Joseph Daher, (University of Lausanne, Syria/ Switzerland) Karam Dana, (University of Washington, United States/Palestine) Karmen Abou Jaoudeh, (Legal activist, Lebanon) Kathy McDonough, (Wheelock College, United States) Khaled Khalifa, (Novelist, Syria) Khaled saghieh, (Journalist, Lebanon) Khawla Dunia, (Activist, Syria) Kifah Kayal, (Activist, Palestinian ex-political prisoner, Palestine) Kirsten scheid, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) Kmar Bandana (Université de La Manouba, Tunisia) Konstantin Kilibarda (York University, Mississauga territories) Laleh Khalili, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Lawrence Grossberg, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States) Leyla Dakhli, (Researcher, CNRS, France) Lieven De Cauter, (Catholic University of Leuven/RITS, Belgium) Lilia Marsali, (Teacher, United Kingdom) Linda Quiquivix, (Brown University, United States / Guatemala) Lindsey Collen, (left activist and novelist, Mauritius) Loulouwa Al Rachid, (Journalist, Saudi Arabia) Lucia Sorbera, (The University of Sydney, Australia) Manijeh Nasrabadi, (New York University, United States/ Iran) Manuel Barrera, (Metropolitan State University, United States) Manuel Castells, (University Professor of Communication, University of Southern California) Marc Saint-Upéry, (Journalist and translator, France/Ecuador) Maria Koundoura (Emerson College, United States/ Greece) Marisol de la Cadena, (UC Davis, United States/ Peru) Marnia Lazreg, sociologist, USA/Algeria Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto, Canada Mary Rizzo (blogger and activist translator, Italy) Max D. Weiss, (Princeton University, United States) Mayssun Succarie, (American University in Cairo, Egypt/ Lebanon) Mehdi Meftah, (Militant, France) Mélanie Cambrezy, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Mercedes Olivera B., (Antropóloga Feminista, UNICACH, México.) Michael Cisco, (writer and teacher, United States) Michael Lowy, (Social scientist, France) Mirta Tocci, (Emerson College, United States) Mirza Waheed (Novelist, United Kingdom) Mohamad Ali Attassi, (Writer, Syria/ Lebanon) Mohamad Al Bardan, (Syrian Non Violent Movement, United States/ Syria) Mohammad Moeini, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Iran) Mohammed Bamyeh, (University of Pittsburgh, United States) Mona Abaza, (American University in Cairo, Egypt) Muhammad Ali Khalidi, (York University, Canada) Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, (Writer and Sociologist, Scotland) Nader Atassi, (Writer, Syria / United States) Nadia Fadil, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Nadim N. Rouhana, (Tufts University -- United States, and Palestine) Nadine Bekdache, (Designer/ Activist, Lebanon) Nadje Al-Ali, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Nasser Rabbat, (MIT, United States/Syria) Natalie Zemon Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Nidal Al-Azraq, (United States/ Palestine) Nigel Gibson (Emerson college, United States/ Britain) Nimer Sultany, (SUNY Buffalo Law School, United States/Palestine) Noa Shaindlinger, (University of Toronto, Canada/Palestine) Norbert Hirschhorn, (Physician, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Norman Finkelstein (American researcher and writer, United Sates) Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (Scholar, France) Omar Dahi, (Hampshire College, Syria/ United States) Omar Dewachi, (American University of Beirut, Iraq/Canada) Omnia El Shakry, (UC Davis, United States) Oussama Mohamad (Film maker, Syria/ France) Ozlem Goner, (CUNY, Turkey/ United States) Pablo Stefanoni, (Chief editor, Nueva Sociedad, Argentina) Paul Kellogg, (Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada) Paul Kingston, (University of Toronto, Canada) Pierre Tevanian, (Writer, activist, France) R. Radhakrishnan (UC Irvine, United States/ India) Rabha Attaf, (Reporter, France) Raed Firas, (Activist, Syria) Raed Khartabil, (Activist, Syria) Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University, United States/Palestine) Razan Ghazzawi, (Activist, Syria) Richard Seymour, (Writer, London School of Economics, International Socialists Network, United Kingdom) Rime Allaf, (Writer and adviser, Syria) Robert Young, (New York University, United States) Robin Yassin-Kassab, (novelist and commentator, Syria/ United Kingdom) Rola Rukbi, (Syria) Ruba Alkhouli, (Activist, Spain) Rupert Read, (Chair of the Green House thinktank, United Kingdom) Saad Hajo (Cartoonist, Syria) Saba Mahmood (UC Berkeley, United States) Sabah Hallak, (Lebanon) Sadiq Jalal Azem, (Writer, Syria) Sadri Khiari (Writer, Tunisia) Salah Mosbah, (University of Tunis, Tunisia) Salam Kawakibi, (Arab Reform Initiative, Syria) Salam Said (Economist/Germany) Salameh Kaileh (Intellectual, Syria/Palestine) Salim Vally, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Sami Hermez, (University of Pittsburg, United States/ Lebanon) Samir Aita (Le Monde Diplomatique editions arabes, Cercle des Economistes Arabes) Samuel Binkley, (Emerson College, United States) Santiago de Rico Alba (Philosopher, Spain) Sarah Bracke, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Sarah Eltantawi, (Scholar of religion and writer, United States) Sari Hanafi, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon/ Palestine) Seda Altug, (Bogazici University, Turkey) Sherifa Zuhur, (historian, Director, Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies, United Kingdom) Sherry Wolf, (Author of Sexuality and Socialism, United States) Simon Assaf, (Activist, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Sinan Antoon, (New York University, Iraq/ United States) Sirisha Naidu, (Wright State University, India/ United States) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, (America University of Beirut, Lebanon) Srinivas Lankala, (University of Massachusetts, India/United States) Stephen R. Shalom, (William Paterson University, United States) Steve Graham, (Newcastle University, United Kingdom) Steven Friedman, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Suad Joseph, (University of California, Davis, United States/ Lebanon) Swati Birla, (University of Massachusetts, India/ United States) Sylvie Tissot (University of Paris-8, France) Talal Asad (CUNY, United States) Tamera Marko, (Emerson College, United States) Tariq Ali (Writer, journalist, and filmmaker, United Kingdom/ Pakistan) Tewfik Allal, (Activist, Manifeste des libertés, France) Thaer Alsahli (Activist, Syria/Palestine) Thierry Boissière (Institut français du Proche-Orient, France) Thomas Harrison, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Thomas Markus Kvilhaug, (International Socialist branch, Norway) Tiffany Kreierhoff, (writer, United States) Toufic Haddad, (author, SOAS, United Kingdom) Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, United States/ India) Walid Daaw, (Teacher, The left forum) Walter Mignolo, (Duke University, United States/ Argentina) Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley, United States) William E. Connolly, (Johns Hopkins University, United States) Yahya Madra, (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) Yasmine Farouk, (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University) Yasser Khanjar, (Poet, Ex political prisoner in Israeli Prisons, Occupied Golan, Syria) Yasser Munif, (Emerson College, Syria/ United States) Yassin el-Haj Saleh (Intellectual, Syria) Yazan Louai Al-Saadi, (Journalist, Al-Akhbar English, Lebanon) Youssef Fakhr el-Din, (Journalist, Syria/ Palestine) Yusef Khalil, (Activist, United States/Lebanon) Yveline, Delacroix, (Activist, France) Zaïneb Ben Lagha, (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, France) Zeinab Abul-Magd (Oberlin College, United States/ Egypt) Zena Hallak, (Tunisia) Zeynep Inanc, (United States) Ziad Majed (American University of Paris, Lebanon/ France) Ziauddin Sardar (Intellectual, Pakistan/ United Kingdom) From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Mitchel Cohen Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 9:30 AM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/14/the-wishful-thinking-left/print August 14, 2013 The Unwitting Agents of the Imperial Order The Wishful Thinking Left by JEAN BRICMONT Louvain, Belgium. Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, many people, including myself, thought that all the "struggles" of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European "dissidents", May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the "fascist" regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European "fascist" regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition "in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011", whose list of signatories includes a veritable who's who of the Western Left. The petition claims that "The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom." The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only "hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria". They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing "in support of the slaughter of people", although they are "allegedly friends of the Arabs"; they acknowledge that "the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries", but blame them for "having done so with a clear cynical self-interest" and trying to "crush and subvert the uprising". It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that "regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone". The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of "solidarity" from "intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements", "with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country." Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today's mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left's thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan ("solidarity with Afghan women") and Iraq ("they will be better off without Saddam"). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been relatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the "Alawi sect", something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of "Russia, China and Iran" in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the "U.S. and its Gulf allies". From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to "dictatorships", but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is "Russia and China" who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn't it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: "never again!"? The petition sees the events in Syria as an "extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.", but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the "immediate" departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a "free, unified and independent Syria"? Aren't the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the "Stalinist" regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the "revolution" in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by "Russia, China and Iran", as well as from the "Assad regime" with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the "U.S. and its Gulf allies"). Shouldn't one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The "Syrian regime" has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a "democratic future", while a violent revolution can? Shouldn't one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the "global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments" can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn't care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the "Palestine solidarity movement"? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that "our" priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must "support" want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to "crush and subvert the uprising"). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don't "support" the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the "world powers have left the Syrian people alone" (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that "we" must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the "people" revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded "N"GO's, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog's agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. ------------------------------------------ JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 9:46 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Exactly, when speaking with those opposed to war, any initial exhilaration I feel at hearing their opposition, is immediately dashed when they assume, its all about Trump and we need to get rid of him, and get a Democrat in power, or a third party candidate, Bernie. I control my need to ask, where have you been for over eight years now, by pointing out Bush put us into 2 wars, Obama extended those to now 7. On Oct 9, 2017, at 07:14, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: And I would add that Amy Badman is typical for what passes for most of the American “left” these days—warmongers. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 8:05 AM To: Karen Aram > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Oct 9 15:57:40 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 10:57:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! Message-ID: <00db01d34117$568dc060$03a94120$@comcast.net> Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! By Andrew J. Bacevich, an author, most recently, of America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. Originally published at TomDispatch Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven. Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. Nor can it be said that we don't care because we don't know. True, government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week: September 19: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 20: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive September 21: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 22: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 23: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty September 25: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 26: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military's various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details - on civilian casualties, for example - that government authorities prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and "experts" booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective. But here's the truth of it. None of it matters. Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal. While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the "greatest contribution" of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States "to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire." With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara's War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality. Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn't the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don't we give a [expletive deleted]? Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television. Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why we don't give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative. Americans don't attend all that much to ongoing American wars because: 1. U.S. casualty rates are low. By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on airpower, America's war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 American soldiers have been lost in Afghanistan - about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000.) But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As long as they don't impede U.S. military operations, they literally don't count (and generally aren't counted). 2. The true costs of Washington's wars go untabulated. In a famous speech, dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt. "This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense," he continued. "[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions. Imagine the benefits of investing such sums in upgrading the nation's aging infrastructure. Yet don't count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that connection. Description: https://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/bacevichamericaswar.jpg 3. On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. Others have made the point so frequently that it's the equivalent of hearing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation to "support the troops" in the narrowest imaginable terms, ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulate themselves from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. What we don't do is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability. 4. Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international terrorism isn't a trivial problem (and wasn't for decades before 9/11), it comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans. Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than "Islamic radicalism." Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a "war on terror" that is essential for "keeping America safe," mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all. 5. Blather crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is - not to put too fine a point on it - vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country's role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon the World's Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy. Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous references to Munich. Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious thought. 6. Besides, we're too busy. Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright, who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago. Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 - hugely significant and instantly forgotten - those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. As a result, a dwindling number of Americans - those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts - have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn't the finest fighting force in history actually win? Can't package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then, slowpoke, don't expect anyone to attend to what you have to say. 7. Anyway, the next president will save us. At regular intervals, Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, Americans - members of the media above all - pretend to take all this seriously. Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial. One might think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice. 8. Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism. As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton's administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. Culturally, the armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting that the military "cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back. Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military's embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning. A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But don't expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them - and us - to care. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 51005 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 947 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 16:11:18 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 16:11:18 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Violence doesn't work, only non violent resistance is effective. Message-ID: https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/406026-antifa-charlottesville-protest-resistance/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Oct 9 16:11:38 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:11:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted Message-ID: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> Description: http://inthesetimes.com/features/images/41_10_ufd.jpg The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue _____ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 56498 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 16:27:59 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 16:27:59 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Excellent article References: Message-ID: With the list of names of signatories. From Prof. Francis Boyle, An article from Counterpunch 2013 By JEAN BRICMONT Once upon a time, in the early 1970’s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition “in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom. The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”. They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”. The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been bricmontimprelatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”? The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the “Palestine solidarity movement”? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioner. Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be most of these “leftist” warmongers could have easily figured it out if they wanted to. And many of them probably already had. Fab. From: Radical Philosophy Association [mailto:RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Curtis Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 12:58 PM To: RPA-LIST at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: [RPA-LIST] Jean Bricmont: The Wishful Thinking Left Wishful thinking on the “Left” really? Who are these supposed “Leftists” he has in mind? It is wishful thinking by liberals! From what I can tell we on the Left are very clear that the “rebels” in Syria are just mercenaries being paid by imperialist forces. The battle in Syria is to preserve sovereignty in the face of imperial aggression. Anyone who does not understand this is obviously not deserving of any respect (they are brain dead morons falling for imperial lies). I pasted the list of signatories below and most of the names I do not recognize. There are a few names (Alice Walker, Frederick Jameson, Norm Finkelstein and Tariq Ali) who ought to know better so I am puzzled that their names appear (I also recognized Michael Lowy, but I worry that his romanticism leads him to misunderstand the world generally, but that is just my personal view having read him in the past). But maybe someone hit them up with a distorted version or something. But what stands out from the list is that it is just a random list of names. It is not a list of political intellectuals on the left. Richard C Signatories Aaron Winslow, (Columbia University, United States) Abbas Beydoun, (Poet, Lebanon) Abdellatif Zeroual, (Left activist, Morocco) Abdeslam Cherkouk, (Journalist, Morocco) Abir Saksook, (Architect and activist, Lebanon) Adam Hanieh (SOAS University of London, United Kingdom) Adam Shapiro (Activist, United States) Aida Seif Ell Dawla, (Human Rights Activist, Egypt) Akram Zaatari, (Artist, Lebanon) Ala Hlehel, (Author, Palestine) Alex Todorova (University of Columbia, United States/Bulgaria) Ali Amin Suwaid, (Writer, Syria) Ali Atassi, (Journalist, Syria) Alice Walker, (Writer, United States) Amahl Bishara, (Tufts University, United States) Amr Al-Azm, (Shawnee State University, Activist and board member of The Day After NGO, Syria) Amr Saeddeine, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium/ Palestine) Amy Ansell, (Emerson College, United States) Ania Loomba, (University of Pennsylvania, United States) AnnJanette Rosga, (Human Rights Researcher, United States) Ann Ferguson (University of Massachusetts, United States) Anne Meneley, (Trent University, Canada) Anthony Arnove, (Author, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, United States) Arturo Escobar, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States/Colombia) Asef Bayat (University of Illinois, United States) Ashok Chowdhury, (India) Aziza Chaouni, (University of Toronto, Canada/Morocco) Azmi Bishara, (writer, Palestine) Bassem Chit, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Bernadette Daou, (leftist militant, Lebanon) Bernardine Dohrn (Northwestern University, United States) Bill Ayers (University of Illinois at Chicago, United States) Bill Weinberg, (Journalist and author, United States) Brian Slocock, (University of Paisley, Scotland) Budour Hassan, (Author, Palestine) Cara Moyer, (Emerson College, United States) Caitlin Ella Wind, (Writer, United States) Can Irmak Özinanır, (Faculty of Communication, Ankara University, Turkey) Chandan Redd, (University of Washington, United States) Chandler Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Chandra Talpade Mohanty, (Feminist Scholar-Activist, India/United States) Charles Hirschkind, (UC Berkeley, United States) Chela Sandoval (University of California, Santa Barbara) Claudia Castañeda, (Emerson College, United States) David Byrne, McDonald III, (Photographer and activist, United States) David McNally (York University, Canada) David Wearing, (SOAS, United Kingdom) Dean Spade, (Seattle University Law, United States) Deepa Kumar (Rutgers University, United States) Diana Coryat, (University of Massachusetts, United States) Dyala Hamzah, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Elena Yehia, (University of North Carolina, United States/ Lebanon) Elias Khoury, (Writer, Lebanon) Elliott Colla, (Georgetown University, United States) Elsa Wiehe, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Mauritius) Erika Marquez, (Bryn Mawr College, United States/Colombia) Estella Carpi (University of Sydney / American University of Beirut) Etienne Balibar (Columbia University, United States/ France) Faraj Bayrakdar (Poet, Syria) Farouk Mardam Bey (Intellectual, Syria) Fawaz Traboulsi, (Writer, Lebanon) Felicia Pratto, (University of Connecticut, United States) Francois Burgat (CNRS, France) Fredric Jameson (Duke University, United States) Gail Daneker, (Director of Peace Education and Advocacy, Friends for a NonViolent World –St. Paul, United States) Gerry Emmett, (Resident Editorial Board, News and Letters Committees, Chicago, United States) Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne, Australia/ Lebanon) Ghassan Makarem, (Socialist Forum, Lebanon) Ghayath Naisse, (Surgeon, Left Revolutionary Current, Syria) Gilbert Achcar (SOAS, University of London, Lebanon/ United Kingdom) Golbarg Bashi, (Rutgers University, United States/Iran) Graham Peebles, (Artist and Writer, United Kingdom) Gustavo Esteva, (Universidad de la Tierra-Oaxaca, Mexico) Hamid Dabashi, (Columbia University, United States/ Iran) Hani al-Sayed (American University in Cairo, Syria/ Egypt) Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, (Sociologist, Cuba/Dominican Republic) Hazem al-Azmeh (Intellectual, Syria) Ibrahim Al-Assil, (Syrian Non-Violent Movement, Syria) Ibrahim Jalal, (Artist, Syria) Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) Isabelle Momméja, (Activist, France) Issam Aburaya, (Seton Hall University, United States) James Cohen, (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France/ United States) James L. Gelvin, (UCLA, United States) Jamie Allinson, (University of Westminster. UCU member, United Kingdom) Jean-Philippe Schreiber, (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) Jean-Pierre Filiu (Institut d'études politiques de Paris, France) Jed Murr, (University of Washington, United States) Jeff Napolitano, (Activist, United States) Jens Hanssen ( University of Tornoto, Canada/ Germany) Jihad Yazigi (Journalist, Syria) Jihane Sfeir (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Lebanon/ Belgium) Jillian Schwedler, (University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States) Joanne Landy, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Joe Vasicek, (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer, United States) John Chalcraft, (London School of Economics, United Kingdom) John Holloway (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, United States/ Mexico) John O’Brien, (Los Angeles California, Stonewall Rebellion Participant, United States) Joseph Daher, (University of Lausanne, Syria/ Switzerland) Karam Dana, (University of Washington, United States/Palestine) Karmen Abou Jaoudeh, (Legal activist, Lebanon) Kathy McDonough, (Wheelock College, United States) Khaled Khalifa, (Novelist, Syria) Khaled saghieh, (Journalist, Lebanon) Khawla Dunia, (Activist, Syria) Kifah Kayal, (Activist, Palestinian ex-political prisoner, Palestine) Kirsten scheid, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon) Kmar Bandana (Université de La Manouba, Tunisia) Konstantin Kilibarda (York University, Mississauga territories) Laleh Khalili, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Lawrence Grossberg, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, United States) Leyla Dakhli, (Researcher, CNRS, France) Lieven De Cauter, (Catholic University of Leuven/RITS, Belgium) Lilia Marsali, (Teacher, United Kingdom) Linda Quiquivix, (Brown University, United States / Guatemala) Lindsey Collen, (left activist and novelist, Mauritius) Loulouwa Al Rachid, (Journalist, Saudi Arabia) Lucia Sorbera, (The University of Sydney, Australia) Manijeh Nasrabadi, (New York University, United States/ Iran) Manuel Barrera, (Metropolitan State University, United States) Manuel Castells, (University Professor of Communication, University of Southern California) Marc Saint-Upéry, (Journalist and translator, France/Ecuador) Maria Koundoura (Emerson College, United States/ Greece) Marisol de la Cadena, (UC Davis, United States/ Peru) Marnia Lazreg, sociologist, USA/Algeria Mary Nyquist, University of Toronto, Canada Mary Rizzo (blogger and activist translator, Italy) Max D. Weiss, (Princeton University, United States) Mayssun Succarie, (American University in Cairo, Egypt/ Lebanon) Mehdi Meftah, (Militant, France) Mélanie Cambrezy, (Université de Montréal, Canada) Mercedes Olivera B., (Antropóloga Feminista, UNICACH, México.) Michael Cisco, (writer and teacher, United States) Michael Lowy, (Social scientist, France) Mirta Tocci, (Emerson College, United States) Mirza Waheed (Novelist, United Kingdom) Mohamad Ali Attassi, (Writer, Syria/ Lebanon) Mohamad Al Bardan, (Syrian Non Violent Movement, United States/ Syria) Mohammad Moeini, (University of Massachusetts, United States/ Iran) Mohammed Bamyeh, (University of Pittsburgh, United States) Mona Abaza, (American University in Cairo, Egypt) Muhammad Ali Khalidi, (York University, Canada) Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, (Writer and Sociologist, Scotland) Nader Atassi, (Writer, Syria / United States) Nadia Fadil, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Nadim N. Rouhana, (Tufts University -- United States, and Palestine) Nadine Bekdache, (Designer/ Activist, Lebanon) Nadje Al-Ali, (SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom) Nasser Rabbat, (MIT, United States/Syria) Natalie Zemon Davis, (University of Toronto, Canada) Nidal Al-Azraq, (United States/ Palestine) Nigel Gibson (Emerson college, United States/ Britain) Nimer Sultany, (SUNY Buffalo Law School, United States/Palestine) Noa Shaindlinger, (University of Toronto, Canada/Palestine) Norbert Hirschhorn, (Physician, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Norman Finkelstein (American researcher and writer, United Sates) Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (Scholar, France) Omar Dahi, (Hampshire College, Syria/ United States) Omar Dewachi, (American University of Beirut, Iraq/Canada) Omnia El Shakry, (UC Davis, United States) Oussama Mohamad (Film maker, Syria/ France) Ozlem Goner, (CUNY, Turkey/ United States) Pablo Stefanoni, (Chief editor, Nueva Sociedad, Argentina) Paul Kellogg, (Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada) Paul Kingston, (University of Toronto, Canada) Pierre Tevanian, (Writer, activist, France) R. Radhakrishnan (UC Irvine, United States/ India) Rabha Attaf, (Reporter, France) Raed Firas, (Activist, Syria) Raed Khartabil, (Activist, Syria) Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University, United States/Palestine) Razan Ghazzawi, (Activist, Syria) Richard Seymour, (Writer, London School of Economics, International Socialists Network, United Kingdom) Rime Allaf, (Writer and adviser, Syria) Robert Young, (New York University, United States) Robin Yassin-Kassab, (novelist and commentator, Syria/ United Kingdom) Rola Rukbi, (Syria) Ruba Alkhouli, (Activist, Spain) Rupert Read, (Chair of the Green House thinktank, United Kingdom) Saad Hajo (Cartoonist, Syria) Saba Mahmood (UC Berkeley, United States) Sabah Hallak, (Lebanon) Sadiq Jalal Azem, (Writer, Syria) Sadri Khiari (Writer, Tunisia) Salah Mosbah, (University of Tunis, Tunisia) Salam Kawakibi, (Arab Reform Initiative, Syria) Salam Said (Economist/Germany) Salameh Kaileh (Intellectual, Syria/Palestine) Salim Vally, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Sami Hermez, (University of Pittsburg, United States/ Lebanon) Samir Aita (Le Monde Diplomatique editions arabes, Cercle des Economistes Arabes) Samuel Binkley, (Emerson College, United States) Santiago de Rico Alba (Philosopher, Spain) Sarah Bracke, (KU Leuven, Belgium) Sarah Eltantawi, (Scholar of religion and writer, United States) Sari Hanafi, (American University of Beirut, Lebanon/ Palestine) Seda Altug, (Bogazici University, Turkey) Sherifa Zuhur, (historian, Director, Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic and Strategic Studies, United Kingdom) Sherry Wolf, (Author of Sexuality and Socialism, United States) Simon Assaf, (Activist, United Kingdom/ Lebanon) Sinan Antoon, (New York University, Iraq/ United States) Sirisha Naidu, (Wright State University, India/ United States) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, (America University of Beirut, Lebanon) Srinivas Lankala, (University of Massachusetts, India/United States) Stephen R. Shalom, (William Paterson University, United States) Steve Graham, (Newcastle University, United Kingdom) Steven Friedman, (University of Johannesburg, South Africa) Suad Joseph, (University of California, Davis, United States/ Lebanon) Swati Birla, (University of Massachusetts, India/ United States) Sylvie Tissot (University of Paris-8, France) Talal Asad (CUNY, United States) Tamera Marko, (Emerson College, United States) Tariq Ali (Writer, journalist, and filmmaker, United Kingdom/ Pakistan) Tewfik Allal, (Activist, Manifeste des libertés, France) Thaer Alsahli (Activist, Syria/Palestine) Thierry Boissière (Institut français du Proche-Orient, France) Thomas Harrison, (Co-Director, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, United States) Thomas Markus Kvilhaug, (International Socialist branch, Norway) Tiffany Kreierhoff, (writer, United States) Toufic Haddad, (author, SOAS, United Kingdom) Vijay Prashad (Trinity College, United States/ India) Walid Daaw, (Teacher, The left forum) Walter Mignolo, (Duke University, United States/ Argentina) Wendy Brown (UC Berkeley, United States) William E. Connolly, (Johns Hopkins University, United States) Yahya Madra, (Boğaziçi University, Turkey) Yasmine Farouk, (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University) Yasser Khanjar, (Poet, Ex political prisoner in Israeli Prisons, Occupied Golan, Syria) Yasser Munif, (Emerson College, Syria/ United States) Yassin el-Haj Saleh (Intellectual, Syria) Yazan Louai Al-Saadi, (Journalist, Al-Akhbar English, Lebanon) Youssef Fakhr el-Din, (Journalist, Syria/ Palestine) Yusef Khalil, (Activist, United States/Lebanon) Yveline, Delacroix, (Activist, France) Zaïneb Ben Lagha, (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, France) Zeinab Abul-Magd (Oberlin College, United States/ Egypt) Zena Hallak, (Tunisia) Zeynep Inanc, (United States) Ziad Majed (American University of Paris, Lebanon/ France) Ziauddin Sardar (Intellectual, Pakistan/ United Kingdom) _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 10 01:59:18 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 01:59:18 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! In-Reply-To: <00db01d34117$568dc060$03a94120$@comcast.net> References: <00db01d34117$568dc060$03a94120$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Excellent article, and as you say, unfortunately accurate. On Oct 9, 2017, at 08:57, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! By Andrew J. Bacevich, an author, most recently, of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. Originally published at TomDispatch Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven. Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know. True, government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week: September 19: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 20: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive September 21: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 22: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 23: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty September 25: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 26: Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective. But here’s the truth of it. None of it matters. Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal. While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality. Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don’t we give a [expletive deleted]? Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television. Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative. Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because: 1. U.S. casualty rates are low. By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 Americansoldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000.) But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t count (and generally aren’t counted). 2. The true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated. In a famous speech, dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt. “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” he continued. “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions. Imagine the benefits of investing such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure. Yet don’t count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that connection. 3. On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. Others have made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the narrowest imaginable terms, ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulatethemselves from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability. 4. Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades before 9/11), it comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans. Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.” Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,” mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all. 5. Blather crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy. Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous references to Munich. Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious thought. 6. Besides, we’re too busy. Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright, who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago. Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn’t the finest fighting force in history actually win? Can’t package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say. 7. Anyway, the next president will save us. At regular intervals, Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this seriously. Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial. One might think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice. 8. Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism. As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. Culturally, the armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back. Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning. A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them — and us — to care. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 10 02:22:50 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:22:50 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue ________________________________ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rwhelbig at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 03:53:03 2017 From: rwhelbig at gmail.com (Roger Helbig) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 20:53:03 -0700 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! In-Reply-To: References: <00db01d34117$568dc060$03a94120$@comcast.net> Message-ID: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/us/16prof.html Former Soldier, Now a Professor, Loses His Only Son to a War He Actively Opposed - this is Andrew Bacevich On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 6:59 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Excellent article, and as you say, unfortunately accurate. > > On Oct 9, 2017, at 08:57, David Johnson via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > *Disturbing but unfortunately accurate !* > > *By Andrew J. Bacevich, an author, most recently, of *America’s War for > the Greater Middle East: A Military History > . > Originally published at TomDispatch > > Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United > States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one > faraway place, but at least seven > . > Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. > Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know. True, > government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military > operations or release only details that they find convenient. Yet > information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily > available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential > tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United > States Central Command for just one recent week: > September 19 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > September 20 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > Iraqi Security Forces > begin > Hawijah offensive > September 21 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > September 22 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > September 23 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > Operation Inherent Resolve > > Casualty > September 25 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > September 26 > : > Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq > Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of > military press releases have poured forth. And those are just for > starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing > campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly > testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. > From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the > details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities > prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and > “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of > retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books > and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective. > But here’s the truth of it. None of it matters. > Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things > that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In > twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal. > While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once > mused > > that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to > make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity > of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely > referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet > a half-century later, his wish has become reality. > Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their > name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and > on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued > arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in > short, don’t we give a [*expletive deleted*]? > Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of > the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin > Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television. > Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me > take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&! Here are eight > distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence > that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative. > > Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because: > 1. *U.S. casualty* *rates are low*. By using proxies and contractors, and > relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep > a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all > of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 > Americansoldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the > number of shooting deaths in Chicago > over the course of > a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the > U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of > people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The estimated > number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000 > .) But those casualties have > next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As > long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t > count (and generally aren’t counted). > 2. *The true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated. *In a famous > speech > , > dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every > gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in > the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who > are cold and are not clothed.” Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, > translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power > plants that would go unbuilt. “This is not a way of life at all, in any > true sense,” he continued. “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of > iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated > themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a boon, a source > of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As > such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending > wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will > ultimately number in the multi-trillions > . Imagine the benefits of investing > such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure > . Yet don’t count on > Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to > pursue that connection. > > > > 3. *On > matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. *Others have > made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph > the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the > American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the > narrowest > > imaginable terms > , > ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on > their part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking > steps to insulate > themselves > from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected representatives > in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander > in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing > makes the slightest sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to > applaud those in uniform and boo > > those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. > What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual > accountability. > 4. *Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. *While > international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades > before 9/11), it comes nowhere close > > to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other > threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater > danger to the wellbeing of Americans. Worried about the safety of your > children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely > greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.” Yet having been sold a bill of > goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,” > mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout > the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping > win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition > becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two > stone tablets after all. > 5. *Blather crowds out substance. *When it comes to foreign policy, > American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, > insipid, and mindlessly repetitive. William Safire of the *New York > Times *once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with > those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man > and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to > expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for > some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon > the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy. Terms like > *leadership *and *indispensable *are introduced, along with warnings > about the dangers of *isolationism *and *appeasement, *embellished with > ominous references to *Munich*. Such grandiose posturing makes it > unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of > American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars > ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces > serious thought. > 6. *Besides, we’re too busy. * Think of this as a corollary to point > five. Even if the present-day American political scene included figures > like Senators Robert La Follette > > or J. William Fulbright > , who > long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans > may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the > demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep > reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking > has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost > obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The > matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago. > Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly > forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be > superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. > As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively > checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination > to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end? Why has it > lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn’t the finest fighting force > in history actually win? Can’t > package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? > Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say. > 7. *Anyway, the next president will save us.* At regular intervals, > Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person > in the White House, all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to > exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to > differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in > one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. > Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and > presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, > Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this > seriously. Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and > ever less substantial. One might think that the election of Donald Trump > would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents > putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting > rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) > has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to > restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution. The > irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then > handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending > them almost entirely escapes notice. > 8. *Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from > criticism. *As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment > aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can > forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s > administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders > publicly denounced their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. > Culturally, the armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out > of their way to project an image of tolerance > > and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and > sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to > transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting > > that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs > and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior > officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back > . > Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political > agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from > criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling > performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an earlier day > might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a > successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate > > from Ranger School or command > > Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning. > A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary > America. But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of > the *New York Times* to lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it > would require them — and us — to care. > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 03:58:58 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:58:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: I expect better from Phyllis Bennis than this collection of - at best - obvious truths and bromides. It shows the malign effect of a generation of identity politics. US presidents have killed 30 million people in 40 countries since WWII, but not because of racism. But "Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War”! What nonsense (repeated by Prashad). US foreign policy - and war policy - is remarkably consistent over more than a century. (So long as we don’t think it’s primarily a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”! That’s true only if liberty means the liberty of the 1% to kill people and plunder the planet.) And this is not just a matter today for a soi-disant, omphalos-obsessed 'Left.’ (The most anti-war senior politician in the US is Ron Paul; consistent anti-war positions have been enunciated by paleoconservatives.) Against the rather pusillanimous suggestions of the following articles, AWARE like many other anti-war groups across the country has called for the US to ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations (notably Russia, China, Iran and Syria); ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere); stop the drone attacks, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”; and end the war provocations against Russia and China; ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 800 US military bases ringing Eurasia (Russia has 15 bases outside its territory; China has one); bring all US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; ~ (4) stop US support of human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament; revoke the last administration’s trillion dollar plan to ‘update’ US nuclear weapons. When the ‘Left’ works seriously and effectively for these goals, they might be taken seriously again. (And BTW, the problem is US war making - not Trump.) —CGE > On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. > > One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. > > Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. > > At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. > > >> On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> >> The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? >> A discussion of the future of the peace movement. >> October 5, 2017 | October Issue >> Phyllis Bennis >> Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice >> Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. >> Share  Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print >> When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. >> But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. >> Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. >> An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. >> During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. >> When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. >> The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. >> This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. >> Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. >> Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. >> Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. >> Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. >> To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. >> We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. >> Vijay Prashad >> We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists >> An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. >> Share  Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print >> Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. >> As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. >> We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. >> If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. >> But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: >> • Reduction of the military budget. >> • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. >> • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. >> • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. >> • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. >> • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. >> Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. >> Ali Issa >> The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World >> We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. >> Share  Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print >> Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? >> Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. >> But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. >> Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. >> Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? >> These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. >> Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 10 13:39:15 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:39:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa according to D. Johnstone References: <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122@mail.yahoo.com> - www.counterpunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org - Antifa in Theory and in Practice Posted By Diana Johnstone On October 9, 2017 @ 2:05 am In articles 2015,Leading Article | Comments Disabled Photo by jcrakow | CC BY 2.0 “Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists.” – Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts. In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist.  Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political.  It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as “fascists”. Despite its imported European name, Antifa is basically just another example of America’s steady descent into violence. Historical Pretensions Antifa first came to prominence from its role in reversing Berkeley’s proud “free speech” tradition by preventing right wing personalities from speaking there. But its moment of glory was its clash with rightwingers in Charlottesville on August 12, largely because Trump commented that there were “good people on both sides”. With exuberant Schadenfreude, commentators grabbed the opportunity to condemn the despised President for his “moral equivalence”, thereby bestowing a moral blessing on Antifa. Charlottesville served as a successful book launching for Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook, whose author, young academic Mark Bray, is an Antifa in both theory and practice. The book is “really taking off very fast”, rejoiced the publisher, Melville House. It instantly won acclaim from leading mainstream media such as the New York Times, The Guardian and NBC, not hitherto known for rushing to review leftwing books, least of all those by revolutionary anarchists. The Washington Post welcomed Bray as spokesman for “insurgent activist movements” and observed that: “The book’s most enlightening contribution is on the history of anti-fascist efforts over the past century, but its most relevant for today is its justification for stifling speech and clobbering white supremacists.” Bray’s “enlightening contribution” is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today’s Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label “Antifa” by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism. The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association.  Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic. The original Antifascist movement was an effort by the Communist International to cease hostilities with Europe’s Socialist Parties in order to build a common front against the triumphant movements led by Mussolini and Hitler. Since Fascism thrived, and Antifa was never a serious adversary, its apologists thrive on the “nipped in the bud” claim: “if only” Antifascists had beat up the fascist movements early enough, the latter would have been nipped in the bud.  Since reason and debate failed to stop the rise of fascism, they argue, we must use street violence – which, by the way, failed even more decisively. This is totally ahistorical.  Fascism exalted violence, and violence was its preferred testing ground. Both Communists and Fascists were fighting in the streets and the atmosphere of violence helped fascism thrive as a bulwark against Bolshevism, gaining the crucial support of leading capitalists and militarists in their countries, which brought them to power. Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray’s Antifa have broadened their notion of “fascism” to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from “patriarchy” (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to “transphobia” (decidedly a post-fascist problem). The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin. Storm Troopers of the Neoliberal War Party Since Mark Bray offers European credentials for current U.S. Antifa, it is appropriate to observe what Antifa amounts to in Europe today. In Europe, the tendency takes two forms. Black Bloc activists regularly invade various leftist demonstrations in order to smash windows and fight the police. These testosterone exhibits are of minor political significance, other than provoking public calls to strengthen police forces. They are widely suspected of being influenced by police infiltration. As an example, last September 23, several dozen black-clad masked ruffians, tearing down posters and throwing stones, attempted to storm the platform where the flamboyant Jean-Luc Mélenchon was to address the mass meeting of La France Insoumise, today the leading leftist party in France. Their unspoken message seemed to be that nobody is revolutionary enough for them. Occasionally, they do actually spot a random skinhead to beat up.  This establishes their credentials as “anti-fascist”. They use these credentials to arrogate to themselves the right to slander others in a sort of informal self-appointed inquisition. As prime example, in late 2010, a young woman named Ornella Guyet appeared in Paris seeking work as a journalist in various leftist periodicals and blogs. She “tried to infiltrate everywhere”, according to the former director of Le Monde diplomatique, Maurice Lemoine, who “always intuitively distrusted her” when he hired her as an intern. Viktor Dedaj, who manages one of the main leftist sites in France, Le Grand Soir, was among those who tried to help her, only to experience an unpleasant surprise a few months later.  Ornella had become a self-appointed inquisitor dedicated to denouncing “conspirationism, confusionism, anti-Semitism and red-brown” on Internet.  This took the form of personal attacks on individuals whom she judged to be guilty of those sins. What is significant is that all her targets were opposed to U.S. and NATO aggressive wars in the Middle East. Indeed, the timing of her crusade coincided with the “regime change” wars that destroyed Libya and tore apart Syria.  The attacks singled out leading critics of those wars. Viktor Dedaj was on her hit list.  So was Michel Collon, close to the Belgian Workers Party, author, activist and manager of the bilingual site Investig’action. So was François Ruffin, film-maker, editor of the leftist journal Fakir elected recently to the National Assembly on the list of Mélenchon’s party La France Insoumise. And so on. The list is long. The targeted personalities are diverse, but all have one thing in common: opposition to aggressive wars.  What’s more, so far as I can tell, just about everyone opposed to those wars is on her list. The main technique is guilt by association.  High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with “nationalism” which is associated with “fascism” which is associated with “anti-Semitism”, hinting at a penchant for genocide.  This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language. In mid-June 2011, the anti-EU party Union Populaire Républicaine led by François Asselineau was the object of slanderous insinuations on Antifa internet sites signed by “Marie-Anne Boutoleau” (a pseudonym for Ornella Guyet).  Fearing violence, owners cancelled scheduled UPR meeting places in Lyon.  UPR did a little investigation, discovering that Ornella Guyet was on the speakers list at a March 2009 Seminar on International Media organized in Paris by the Center for the Study of International Communications and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.  A surprising association for such a zealous crusader against “red-brown”. In case anyone has doubts, “red-brown” is a term used to smear anyone with generally leftist views – that is, “red” – with the fascist color “brown”.  This smear can be based on having the same opinion as someone on the right, speaking on the same platform with someone on the right, being published alongside someone on the right, being seen at an anti-war demonstration also attended by someone on the right, and so on.  This is particularly useful for the War Party, since these days, many conservatives are more opposed to war than leftists who have bought into the “humanitarian war” mantra. The government doesn’t need to repress anti-war gatherings.  Antifa does the job. The Franco-African comedien Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, stigmatized for anti-Semitism since 2002 for his tv sketch lampooning an Israeli settler as part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Good”, is not only a target, but serves as a guilty association for anyone who defends his right to free speech – such as Belgian professor Jean Bricmont, virtually blacklisted in France for trying to get in a word in favor of free speech during a TV talk show.  Dieudonné has been banned from the media, sued and fined countless times, even sentenced to jail in Belgium, but continues to enjoy a full house of enthusiastic supporters at his one-man shows, where the main political message is opposition to war. Still, accusations of being soft on Dieudonné can have serious effects on individuals in more precarious positions, since the mere hint of “anti-Semitism” can be a career killer in France. Invitations are cancelled, publications refused, messages go unanswered. In April 2016, Ornella Guyet dropped out of sight, amid strong suspicions about her own peculiar associations. The moral of this story is simple.  Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party. I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are self-anointed and usually more or less disguised. Silencing Necessary Debate One who is certainly sincere is Mark Bray, author of The Intifa Handbook.  It is clear where Mark Bray is coming from when he writes (p.36-7): “… Hitler’s ‘final solution’ murdered six million Jews in gas chambers, with firing squads, through hunger an lack of medical treatment in squalid camps and ghettoes, with beatings, by working them to death, and through suicidal despair.  Approximately two out of every three Jews on the continent were killed, including some of my relatives.” This personal history explains why Mark Bray feels passionately about “fascism”. This is perfectly understandable in one who is haunted by fear that “it can happen again”. However, even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily contribute to wise counsel.  Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual. We are in a period of great political confusion.  Labeling every manifestation of “political incorrectness” as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues that very much need to be defined and clarified. The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism.  This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves. The issue of immigration has different aspects in different places.  It is not the same in European countries as in the United States. There is a basic distinction between immigrants and immigration.  Immigrants are people who deserve consideration.  Immigration is a policy that needs to be evaluated.  It should be possible to discuss the policy without being accused of persecuting the people.  After all, trade union leaders have traditionally opposed mass immigration, not out of racism, but because it can be a deliberate capitalist strategy to bring down wages. In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise.  But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion.  Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against.  And who will win such a confrontation? A recent survey* shows that mass immigration is increasingly unpopular in all European countries. The complexity of the issue is shown by the fact that in the vast majority of European countries, most people believe they have a duty to welcome refugees, but disapprove of continued mass immigration. The official argument that immigration is a good thing is accepted by only 40%, compared to 60% of all Europeans who believe that “immigration is bad for our country”.  A left whose principal cause is open borders will become increasingly unpopular. Childish Violence The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles.  Banding together with others “like us” to fight against gangs of “them” for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances.  The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist.  For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines. American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare.  Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with “the most powerful kid in the block” and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang. That is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, which habitually declares of its chosen enemies: “All they understand is force.”  Although Antifa claim to be radical revolutionaries, their mindset is perfectly typical the atmosphere of violence which prevails in militarized America. In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia.  Words are considered so dangerous that “safe spaces” must be established to protect people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely linked to tolerance of real physical violence. Wild Goose Chase In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary “fascists” instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction.  The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward “anti-fascists” simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves. Antifa USA, by defining “resistance to fascism” as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular “resistance to Trump” to make him even worse than he already was. The facile use of the term “fascist” gets in the way of thoughtful identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism.  This amounts to a multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity and the megalomania of leaders of lesser “Western” powers, notably Israel.  It could be called simply “imperialism”, except that it is much vaster and more destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries.  It is also much more disguised.  And since it bears no clear label such as “fascism”, it is difficult to denounce in simple terms. The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago, under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat. Donald Trump is an outsider who will not be let inside. The election of Donald Trump is above all a grave symptom of the decadence of the American political system, totally ruled by money, lobbies, the military-industrial complex and corporate media. Their lies are undermining the very basis of democracy.  Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of the people: the right to free speech and assembly. Diana Johnstone is author of the introduction to her father’s memoir, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning, by Paul H. Johnstone (Clarity Press).  She can be reached at diana.johnstone at wanadoo.fr Notes. * «Où va la démocratie?», une enquête  de la Fondation pour l’innovation politique sous la direction de Dominique Reynié, (Plon, Paris, 2017).     Article printed from www.counterpunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/09/antifa-in-theory-and-in-practice/ Click here to print. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 14:20:08 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:20:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article In-Reply-To: <15f068f6f1a-c0d-7933@webjas-vad053.srv.aolmail.net> References: <00a501d34114$5dd3cf70$197b6e50$@comcast.net> <15f068f6f1a-c0d-7933@webjas-vad053.srv.aolmail.net> Message-ID: <004f01d341d2$e0d0bc30$a2723490$@comcast.net> In the beginning they were legitimate but were hijacked by the elites. David J. From: Mildred O'brien [mailto:moboct1 at aim.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 8:53 AM To: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article WHAT "legitimate" Arab Spring revolutions? They ended up as disasterous elite power-grabs in my recollection. Midge ----Original Message----- From: David Johnson via Peace-discuss To: 'Karen Aram' ; peace-discuss Sent: Mon, Oct 9, 2017 10:36 am Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article Good article ! The only thing I would add to it is what I have said in the recent past. That opposition to the invasion of Iraq did not mean support for Saddam Hussein, and that despite the legitimate Arab Spring rebellions that happened in Syria in 2011, that what real secular opposition to Assad that was present at that time, has been nowhere to be found since 2011. The ONLY opposition in recent times to Assad are right-wing Islamic fundamentalist groups armed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.S., UK and probably Israel. David J. From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net ] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 10:23 AM To: Peace-discuss List Cc: peace Subject: [Peace] Excellent article >From Prof. Francis Boyle, An article from Counterpunch 2013 By JEAN BRICMONT Once upon a time, in the early 1970’s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition “in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.” The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”. They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”. The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been bricmontimprelatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”? The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the “Palestine solidarity movement”? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 14:21:56 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:21:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! In-Reply-To: References: <15f0688e130-c11-2ff8b@webjas-vae246.srv.aolmail.net> <8E45A719-700F-4C47-AB4B-FE5A15B688F4@gmail.com> Message-ID: <005f01d341d3$20df8220$629e8660$@comcast.net> That is the tricky part. Pushing for reforms that also empower people. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 9:10 AM To: C G Estabrook Cc: Mildred O'brien; David Johnson; davegreen84 at yahoo.com; Francis A Boyle Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! Carl is right, I see “universal income” as a neoliberal attempt to pacify the people from “system change”, but it maybe a first and necessary step in the process given our lack of jobs. On Oct 10, 2017, at 07:03, C G Estabrook wrote: J. K. Galbraith used to say that no one turns down a check signed by the US government. (Translation: we’ve got the money for good social programs.) The thousand US overseas bases is a jobs program, so bringing all US military home would require a new WPA - and a universal basic income at a living wage. That’s what we should be demanding. —CGE On Oct 10, 2017, at 8:45 AM, Mildred O'brien wrote: Bacevich has cogently categorized my answers to the question why Americans don't react to end (or prevent) the wars we conduct. I would add one more: Wars/Pentagon produce jobs for a lot of folks (grunts as well as officers) who otherwise would likely be unemployed. If all the military personnel from all over the world were brought home, how could they find jobs? Politicians are not inclined to expend budgetary allocations on infrastructure and many other critical domestic needs--because "we can't afford it"--because of the defense budget, of course. The old circuitous argument, the proverbial elephant in the living room! Midge -----Original Message----- From: Karen Aram via Peace-discuss To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss Sent: Mon, Oct 9, 2017 8:59 pm Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! Excellent article, and as you say, unfortunately accurate. On Oct 9, 2017, at 08:57, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! By Andrew J. Bacevich, an author, most recently, of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History . Originally published at TomDispatch Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven . Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know. True, government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week: September 19 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 20 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive September 21 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 22 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 23 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty September 25 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq September 26 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective. But here’s the truth of it. None of it matters. Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal. While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality. Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don’t we give a [expletive deleted]? Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television. Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative. Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because: 1. U.S. casualty rates are low. By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 Americansoldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000 .) But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t count (and generally aren’t counted). 2. The true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated. In a famous speech , dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt. “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” he continued. “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions . Imagine the benefits of investing such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure . Yet don’t count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that connection. 3. On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. Others have made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the narrowest imaginable terms , ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulate themselves from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability. 4. Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades before 9/11), it comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans. Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.” Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,” mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all. 5. Blather crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy. Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous references to Munich. Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious thought. 6. Besides, we’re too busy. Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright , who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago. Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn’t the finest fighting force in history actually win? Can’t package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say. 7. Anyway, the next president will save us. At regular intervals, Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this seriously. Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial. One might think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice. 8. Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism. As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. Culturally, the armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back . Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning. A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them — and us — to care. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Tue Oct 10 14:31:53 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:31:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! In-Reply-To: <005f01d341d3$20df8220$629e8660$@comcast.net> References: <15f0688e130-c11-2ff8b@webjas-vae246.srv.aolmail.net> <8E45A719-700F-4C47-AB4B-FE5A15B688F4@gmail.com> <005f01d341d3$20df8220$629e8660$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <3240CB12-ACEC-4054-8A68-2266165F9173@illinois.edu> Neoliberalism includes the attempt to reduce labor’s demands and exploit workers with as little hindrance as possible, to the benefit of capital. UBI flies in the face of that. With it, workers no longer have to accept whatever terms capital offers, in order to eat regularly. They can bargain on for the rental of labor, on a real threat of withdrawing it - without starving. > On Oct 10, 2017, at 9:21 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > That is the tricky part. > > Pushing for reforms that also empower people. > > David J. > > > From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com ] > Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 9:10 AM > To: C G Estabrook > Cc: Mildred O'brien; David Johnson; davegreen84 at yahoo.com ; Francis A Boyle > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! > > Carl is right, I see “universal income” as a neoliberal attempt to pacify the people from “system change”, but it maybe a first and necessary step in the process given our lack of jobs. > > >> On Oct 10, 2017, at 07:03, C G Estabrook > wrote: >> >> J. K. Galbraith used to say that no one turns down a check signed by the US government. (Translation: we’ve got the money for good social programs.) >> >> The thousand US overseas bases is a jobs program, so bringing all US military home would require a new WPA - and a universal basic income at a living wage. >> >> That’s what we should be demanding. —CGE >> >> >>> On Oct 10, 2017, at 8:45 AM, Mildred O'brien > wrote: >>> >>> Bacevich has cogently categorized my answers to the question why Americans don't react to end (or prevent) the wars we conduct. I would add one more: Wars/Pentagon produce jobs for a lot of folks (grunts as well as officers) who otherwise would likely be unemployed. If all the military personnel from all over the world were brought home, how could they find jobs? Politicians are not inclined to expend budgetary allocations on infrastructure and many other critical domestic needs--because "we can't afford it"--because of the defense budget, of course. The old circuitous argument, the proverbial elephant in the living room! >>> >>> Midge >>> >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > >>> To: David Johnson > >>> Cc: peace-discuss > >>> Sent: Mon, Oct 9, 2017 8:59 pm >>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! >>> >>> Excellent article, and as you say, unfortunately accurate. >>> >>>> On Oct 9, 2017, at 08:57, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>>> >>>> Disturbing but unfortunately accurate ! >>>> >>>> By Andrew J. Bacevich, an author, most recently, of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History . Originally published at TomDispatch >>>> Consider, if you will, these two indisputable facts. First, the United States is today more or less permanently engaged in hostilities in not one faraway place, but at least seven . Second, the vast majority of the American people could not care less. >>>> Nor can it be said that we don’t care because we don’t know. True, government authorities withhold certain aspects of ongoing military operations or release only details that they find convenient. Yet information describing what U.S. forces are doing (and where) is readily available, even if buried in recent months by barrages of presidential tweets. Here, for anyone interested, are press releases issued by United States Central Command for just one recent week: >>>> September 19 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> September 20 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> Iraqi Security Forces begin Hawijah offensive >>>> September 21 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> September 22 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> September 23 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> Operation Inherent Resolve Casualty >>>> September 25 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> September 26 : Military airstrikes continue against ISIS terrorists in Syria and Iraq >>>> Ever since the United States launched its war on terror, oceans of military press releases have poured forth. And those are just for starters. To provide updates on the U.S. military’s various ongoing campaigns, generals, admirals, and high-ranking defense officials regularly testify before congressional committees or brief members of the press. From the field, journalists offer updates that fill in at least some of the details — on civilian casualties, for example — that government authorities prefer not to disclose. Contributors to newspaper op-ed pages and “experts” booked by network and cable TV news shows, including passels of retired military officers, provide analysis. Trailing behind come books and documentaries that put things in a broader perspective. >>>> But here’s the truth of it. None of it matters. >>>> Like traffic jams or robocalls, war has fallen into the category of things that Americans may not welcome, but have learned to live with. In twenty-first-century America, war is not that big a deal. >>>> While serving as defense secretary in the 1960s, Robert McNamara once mused that the “greatest contribution” of the Vietnam War might have been to make it possible for the United States “to go to war without the necessity of arousing the public ire.” With regard to the conflict once widely referred to as McNamara’s War, his claim proved grotesquely premature. Yet a half-century later, his wish has become reality. >>>> Why do Americans today show so little interest in the wars waged in their name and at least nominally on their behalf? Why, as our wars drag on and on, doesn’t the disparity between effort expended and benefits accrued arouse more than passing curiosity or mild expressions of dismay? Why, in short, don’t we give a [expletive deleted]? >>>> Perhaps just posing such a question propels us instantly into the realm of the unanswerable, like trying to figure out why people idolize Justin Bieber, shoot birds, or watch golf on television. >>>> Without any expectation of actually piercing our collective ennui, let me take a stab at explaining why we don’t give a @#$%&! Here are eight distinctive but mutually reinforcing explanations, offered in a sequence that begins with the blindingly obvious and ends with the more speculative. >>>> Americans don’t attend all that much to ongoing American wars because: >>>> 1. U.S. casualty rates are low. By using proxies and contractors, and relying heavily on airpower, America’s war managers have been able to keep a tight lid on the number of U.S. troops being killed and wounded. In all of 2017, for example, a grand total of 11 Americansoldiers have been lost in Afghanistan — about equal to the number of shooting deaths in Chicago over the course of a typical week. True, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where the U.S. is engaged in hostilities, whether directly or indirectly, plenty of people who are not Americans are being killed and maimed. (The estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed this year alone exceeds 12,000 .) But those casualties have next to no political salience as far as the United States is concerned. As long as they don’t impede U.S. military operations, they literally don’t count (and generally aren’t counted). >>>> 2. The true costs of Washington’s wars go untabulated. In a famous speech , dating from early in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower said that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Dollars spent on weaponry, Ike insisted, translated directly into schools, hospitals, homes, highways, and power plants that would go unbuilt. “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense,” he continued. “[I]t is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” More than six decades later, Americans have long since accommodated themselves to that cross of iron. Many actually see it as a boon, a source of corporate profits, jobs, and, of course, campaign contributions. As such, they avert their eyes from the opportunity costs of our never-ending wars. The dollars expended pursuant to our post-9/11 conflicts will ultimately number in the multi-trillions . Imagine the benefits of investing such sums in upgrading the nation’s aging infrastructure . Yet don’t count on Congressional leaders, other politicians, or just about anyone else to pursue that connection. >>>> 3. On matters related to war, American citizens have opted out. Others have made the point so frequently that it’s the equivalent of hearing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at Christmastime. Even so, it bears repeating: the American people have defined their obligation to “support the troops” in the narrowest imaginable terms , ensuring above all that such support requires absolutely no sacrifice on their part. Members of Congress abet this civic apathy, while also taking steps to insulate themselves from responsibility. In effect, citizens and their elected representatives in Washington agree: supporting the troops means deferring to the commander in chief, without inquiring about whether what he has the troops doing makes the slightest sense. Yes, we set down our beers long enough to applaud those in uniform and boo those who decline to participate in mandatory rituals of patriotism. What we don’t do is demand anything remotely approximating actual accountability. >>>> 4. Terrorism gets hyped and hyped and hyped some more. While international terrorism isn’t a trivial problem (and wasn’t for decades before 9/11), it comes nowhere close to posing an existential threat to the United States. Indeed, other threats, notably the impact of climate change, constitute a far greater danger to the wellbeing of Americans. Worried about the safety of your children or grandchildren? The opioid epidemic constitutes an infinitely greater danger than “Islamic radicalism.” Yet having been sold a bill of goods about a “war on terror” that is essential for “keeping America safe,” mere citizens are easily persuaded that scattering U.S. troops throughout the Islamic world while dropping bombs on designated evildoers is helping win the former while guaranteeing the latter. To question that proposition becomes tantamount to suggesting that God might not have given Moses two stone tablets after all. >>>> 5. Blather crowds out substance. When it comes to foreign policy, American public discourse is — not to put too fine a point on it — vacuous, insipid, and mindlessly repetitive. William Safire of the New York Times once characterized American political rhetoric as BOMFOG, with those running for high office relentlessly touting the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. Ask a politician, Republican or Democrat, to expound on this country’s role in the world, and then brace yourself for some variant of WOSFAD, as the speaker insists that it is incumbent upon the World’s Only Superpower to spread Freedom and Democracy. Terms like leadership and indispensable are introduced, along with warnings about the dangers of isolationism and appeasement, embellished with ominous references to Munich. Such grandiose posturing makes it unnecessary to probe too deeply into the actual origins and purposes of American wars, past or present, or assess the likelihood of ongoing wars ending in some approximation of actual success. Cheerleading displaces serious thought. >>>> 6. Besides, we’re too busy. Think of this as a corollary to point five. Even if the present-day American political scene included figures like Senators Robert La Follette or J. William Fulbright , who long ago warned against the dangers of militarizing U.S. policy, Americans may not retain a capacity to attend to such critiques. Responding to the demands of the Information Age is not, it turns out, conducive to deep reflection. We live in an era (so we are told) when frantic multitasking has become a sort of duty and when being overscheduled is almost obligatory. Our attention span shrinks and with it our time horizon. The matters we attend to are those that happened just hours or minutes ago. Yet like the great solar eclipse of 2017 — hugely significant and instantly forgotten — those matters will, within another few minutes or hours, be superseded by some other development that briefly captures our attention. As a result, a dwindling number of Americans — those not compulsively checking Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — have the time or inclination to ponder questions like: When will the Afghanistan War end? Why has it lasted almost 16 years? Why doesn’t the finest fighting force in history actually win? Can’t package an answer in 140 characters or a 30-second made-for-TV sound bite? Well, then, slowpoke, don’t expect anyone to attend to what you have to say. >>>> 7. Anyway, the next president will save us. At regular intervals, Americans indulge in the fantasy that, if we just install the right person in the White House, all will be well. Ambitious politicians are quick to exploit this expectation. Presidential candidates struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but all of them promise in one way or another to wipe the slate clean and Make America Great Again. Ignoring the historical record of promises broken or unfulfilled, and presidents who turn out not to be deities but flawed human beings, Americans — members of the media above all — pretend to take all this seriously. Campaigns become longer, more expensive, more circus-like, and ever less substantial. One might think that the election of Donald Trump would prompt a downward revision in the exalted expectations of presidents putting things right. Instead, especially in the anti-Trump camp, getting rid of Trump himself (Collusion! Corruption! Obstruction! Impeachment!) has become the overriding imperative, with little attention given to restoring the balance intended by the framers of the Constitution. The irony of Trump perpetuating wars that he once roundly criticized and then handing the conduct of those wars to generals devoid of ideas for ending them almost entirely escapes notice. >>>> 8. Our culturally progressive military has largely immunized itself from criticism. As recently as the 1990s, the U.S. military establishment aligned itself with the retrograde side of the culture wars. Who can forget the gays-in-the-military controversy that rocked Bill Clinton’s administration during his first weeks in office, as senior military leaders publicly denounced their commander-in-chief? Those days are long gone. Culturally, the armed forces have moved left. Today, the services go out of their way to project an image of tolerance and a commitment to equality on all matters related to race, gender, and sexuality. So when President Trump announced his opposition to transgendered persons serving in the armed forces, tweeting that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,” senior officers politely but firmly disagreed and pushed back . Given the ascendency of cultural issues near the top of the U.S. political agenda, the military’s embrace of diversity helps to insulate it from criticism and from being called to account for a less than sterling performance in waging wars. Put simply, critics who in an earlier day might have blasted military leaders for their inability to bring wars to a successful conclusion hold their fire. Having women graduate from Ranger School or command Marines in combat more than compensates for not winning. >>>> A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America. But don’t expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact. Even to notice it would require them — and us — to care. >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >>> >>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 14:34:15 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:34:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa according to D. Johnstone In-Reply-To: <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <007501d341d4$d9c42920$8d4c7b60$@comcast.net> O.K. David, Since you posted your earlier article I am compelled to post this. I do NOT support physically attacking someone for speech, however when fascist thugs come into a community well-armed, then self-defense is appropriate. David J. What you need to know about antifa, the group that fought white supremacists in Charlottesville By Ben Sales August 16, 2017 5:37pm 379shares Description: Charlottesville Protesters and counterprotesters clashing at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (JTA ) — Is it OK to punch a Nazi in the face? That’s the question animating much of the discussion of Saturday’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which quickly devolved into a brawl between rally-goers and a contingent of anti-fascist counterprotesters known as antifa. Following the clashes, a white supremacist rammed his car into the counterprotest, killing Heather Heyer, 32. Leaders and activists across the spectrum — except President Donald Trump — have unequivocally condemned the racist, anti-Semitic rally. But they are divided on whether physically attacking white supremacists is justified simply because they are white supremacists. Some have celebrated the antifa activists for standing up to hate. But others have condemned them alongside neo-Nazis for engaging in violence. And on Tuesday, Trump appeared to equate them with the rabble of white supremacists, branding antifa the “alt-left” and saying “there’s blame on both sides.” Here’s what you need to know about antifa, the loose network that fights fascists on the streets. Antifa was born from groups that fought the original fascists. In 1934, Milwaukee police arrested three leftists who infiltrated a pro-Nazi meeting and began scuffling with supporters of Hitler. The leftists were part of a group of several hundred anti-fascists who entered the meeting, broke it up and pelted the keynote speaker with rotten eggs. The melee ended only after 100 police arrived to restore order. Today’s antifa (an abbreviation of “anti-fascist action”) sees itself as the ideological descendant of activists like these. Anti-fascist brawlers — many of them communists, socialists or anarchists — began organizing in the 1920s and ’30s to oppose the rising dictatorships in Italy, Germany and Spain through demonstrations and street fights. The groups re-emerged in Europe in the ’70s and ’80s to combat white supremacists and skinheads, and the idea migrated to America, where groups were originally known as “Anti-Racist Action.” While it’s hard to pin down numbers on antifa in the United States, members and experts say the movement has boomed since Trump’s election. Mark Bray, a lecturer on human rights and politics at Dartmouth College, estimates that there are a couple hundred antifa chapters of varying sizes and levels of activity across the country. “The threat posed by the ‘alt-right’ in the context of empowerment through Trump made a lot of people concerned about fascist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist violence,” said Bray, author of the forthcoming book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.” “They turned to the Antifa model as one option to resist it. The option of physically confronting these groups has spread among the left and been normalized.” It has no formal organization or leadership structure. Like the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter, antifa has no institutional structure or unified plan of action. Much of its activism comes through informal collaboration around certain cities or regions, and individual members taking initiative. Separate Facebook pages exist, for example, for New York antifa, New York City antifa and Western New York antifa. Long before antifa gets to physical altercations with the far right, members will attempt to prevent white supremacists from assembling or spreading their message. Bray said some antifa members will pressure white supremacists’ employers to fire them. Daniel Sieradski, a Jewish antifa member who became involved following the presidential election in November, said he and other activists try to pressure venues to cancel white supremacist events, and only show up to counterprotest once that fails. (Sieradski formerly worked at JTA as the director of digital media.) “I’ve always identified with the spirit of the movement, which is to challenge racists when they come into your community and try to incite hatred and violence,” Sieradski said. “Every effort is made to prevent the Nazis from showing up in the first place. Once they manage to do so, the demonstrations do not get violent until confrontations are provoked.” Antifa tends to align with the left — and some members are anti-Zionists. Because antifa is so loosely constructed, it has no formal ideological agenda beyond opposing fascism. But the movement has roots in left-wing movements like socialism or anarchism. Bray said that members may be part of other left-wing activist groups, like the Occupy movement, and subscribe to ideas popular in progressive circles. The Torch Network, a group of antifa chapters, includes in its “points of unity ” opposition to “all forms of oppression and exploitation.” That includes fighting “against racism, sexism, nativism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, and the most oppressed people.” The group is also pro-choice. Unlike the Movement for Black Lives platform, it does not single out Israel or Zionism. Bray said that while anti-Zionism is not a focus of antifa, many members tend to be anti-Zionist as part of their far-left activism. Anti-Racist Action groups, he said, had taken part in anti-Zionist events in the past. Sieradski said, however, that Jews play a significant role in the movement because “we’re fighting Nazis and anti-Semitism is the prime ideological viewpoint of Nazis.” Antifa has no problem with fighting Nazis … Antifa has no qualms about scuffling with white supremacists. The group gained publicity in February when it physically fought alt-righters at the University of California, Berkeley, during a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Tussles with the far right have followed at other events. Sieradski said violence is a “last resort,” but added there is nothing wrong with responding to anti-Semitic or racist rhetoric with a punch. Those who are advocating ethnic cleansing should be punched, he said, and showing white supremacists that their rallies will end with them being hurt will deter them from assembling. “When Nazis are screaming epithets in our faces, should we just smile?” Sieradski asked. “They come into our towns and yell at us and threaten us and say they want to kill us. Should we take that sitting down because fascists deserve free speech, too? When someone is threatening you with an existential threat, you fight back. You don’t stand there and take it.” Antifa members also reject the notion that the movement instigated the violence in Charlottesville or is as guilty as its white supremacist foes. Spencer Sunshine, who counterprotested at the Charlottesville rally and witnessed the deadly car ramming, said there certainly were fights, but there is no comparing antifa with the far right. “Any equivalence between antifa and fascists is a complete lie,” he said. “We were not armed the way the fascists were, and certainly did not drive a car into crowds. It was a total Nazi rally.” … but has been criticized for its violent tactics. Antifa has garnered its share of liberal critics who say nothing — even neo-Nazism — justifies violence and the suppression of free speech. Critics also say that antifa’s violence draws attention to the far right and allows white supremacists to claim they are acting in self-defense. “They’re troubling tactically because conservatives use antifa’s violence to justify — or at least distract from — the violence of white supremacists, as Trump did in his press conference,” the liberal Jewish essayist Peter Beinart wrote Wednesday in The Atlantic . “They’re troubling strategically because they allow white supremacists to depict themselves as victims being denied the right to freely assemble. And they’re troubling morally because antifa activists really do infringe upon that right.” Following Saturday’s rally, Anti-Defamation League National Director Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted “Whether by #AltRight or #Antifa, no excuses for violence and, keep in mind, this is exactly the response that the bigots seek to provoke.” Mark Pitcavage, an ADL senior researcher, said his group cannot condemn one side’s violence and condone the other. He added that the attention Charlottesville gained is also energizing the “alt-right” to hold more rallies. “I don’t know how you can put together a calculus of violence where some sort of act of violence is unacceptable if one group does it but if another group commits it, that’s acceptable,” he said. “We’d just rather not see violence.” But Pitcavage added that right-wing violence has been far more destructive than antifa’s, which to his knowledge has not led to any deaths. According to a 25-year study by the Cato Institute, nationalist and right-wing terrorists have killed about 10 times as many people since 1992 as left-wing terrorists, which may or may not include those who identify with antifa. “That doesn’t mean that the sides are equal, the causes are equal,” he said. “It’s important to realize that their violence does in no way compare in numbers or severity to the far-rightist violence in the United States.” From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of David Green via Peace-discuss Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 8:39 AM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa according to D. Johnstone - www.counterpunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org - Antifa in Theory and in Practice Posted By Diana Johnstone On October 9, 2017 @ 2:05 am In articles 2015,Leading Article | Comments Disabled Description: Image removed by sender. Photo by jcrakow | CC BY 2.0 “ Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists.” – Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts. In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as “fascists”. Despite its imported European name, Antifa is basically just another example of America’s steady descent into violence. Historical Pretensions Antifa first came to prominence from its role in reversing Berkeley’s proud “free speech” tradition by preventing right wing personalities from speaking there. But its moment of glory was its clash with rightwingers in Charlottesville on August 12, largely because Trump commented that there were “good people on both sides”. With exuberant Schadenfreude, commentators grabbed the opportunity to condemn the despised President for his “moral equivalence”, thereby bestowing a moral blessing on Antifa. Charlottesville served as a successful book launching for Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook, whose author, young academic Mark Bray, is an Antifa in both theory and practice. The book is “really taking off very fast”, rejoiced the publisher, Melville House. It instantly won acclaim from leading mainstream media such as the New York Times, The Guardian and NBC, not hitherto known for rushing to review leftwing books, least of all those by revolutionary anarchists. The Washington Post welcomed Bray as spokesman for “insurgent activist movements” and observed that: “The book’s most enlightening contribution is on the history of anti-fascist efforts over the past century, but its most relevant for today is its justification for stifling speech and clobbering white supremacists.” Bray’s “enlightening contribution” is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today’s Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label “Antifa” by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism. The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association. Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic. The original Antifascist movement was an effort by the Communist International to cease hostilities with Europe’s Socialist Parties in order to build a common front against the triumphant movements led by Mussolini and Hitler. Since Fascism thrived, and Antifa was never a serious adversary, its apologists thrive on the “nipped in the bud” claim: “if only” Antifascists had beat up the fascist movements early enough, the latter would have been nipped in the bud. Since reason and debate failed to stop the rise of fascism, they argue, we must use street violence – which, by the way, failed even more decisively. This is totally ahistorical. Fascism exalted violence, and violence was its preferred testing ground. Both Communists and Fascists were fighting in the streets and the atmosphere of violence helped fascism thrive as a bulwark against Bolshevism, gaining the crucial support of leading capitalists and militarists in their countries, which brought them to power. Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray’s Antifa have broadened their notion of “fascism” to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from “patriarchy” (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to “transphobia” (decidedly a post-fascist problem). The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin. Storm Troopers of the Neoliberal War Party Since Mark Bray offers European credentials for current U.S. Antifa, it is appropriate to observe what Antifa amounts to in Europe today. In Europe, the tendency takes two forms. Black Bloc activists regularly invade various leftist demonstrations in order to smash windows and fight the police. These testosterone exhibits are of minor political significance, other than provoking public calls to strengthen police forces. They are widely suspected of being influenced by police infiltration. As an example, last September 23, several dozen black-clad masked ruffians, tearing down posters and throwing stones, attempted to storm the platform where the flamboyant Jean-Luc Mélenchon was to address the mass meeting of La France Insoumise, today the leading leftist party in France. Their unspoken message seemed to be that nobody is revolutionary enough for them. Occasionally, they do actually spot a random skinhead to beat up. This establishes their credentials as “anti-fascist”. They use these credentials to arrogate to themselves the right to slander others in a sort of informal self-appointed inquisition. As prime example, in late 2010, a young woman named Ornella Guyet appeared in Paris seeking work as a journalist in various leftist periodicals and blogs. She “tried to infiltrate everywhere”, according to the former director of Le Monde diplomatique, Maurice Lemoine, who “always intuitively distrusted her” when he hired her as an intern. Viktor Dedaj, who manages one of the main leftist sites in France, Le Grand Soir, was among those who tried to help her, only to experience an unpleasant surprise a few months later. Ornella had become a self-appointed inquisitor dedicated to denouncing “conspirationism, confusionism, anti-Semitism and red-brown” on Internet. This took the form of personal attacks on individuals whom she judged to be guilty of those sins. What is significant is that all her targets were opposed to U.S. and NATO aggressive wars in the Middle East. Indeed, the timing of her crusade coincided with the “regime change” wars that destroyed Libya and tore apart Syria. The attacks singled out leading critics of those wars. Viktor Dedaj was on her hit list. So was Michel Collon, close to the Belgian Workers Party, author, activist and manager of the bilingual site Investig’action. So was François Ruffin, film-maker, editor of the leftist journal Fakir elected recently to the National Assembly on the list of Mélenchon’s party La France Insoumise. And so on. The list is long. The targeted personalities are diverse, but all have one thing in common: opposition to aggressive wars. What’s more, so far as I can tell, just about everyone opposed to those wars is on her list. The main technique is guilt by association. High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with “nationalism” which is associated with “fascism” which is associated with “anti-Semitism”, hinting at a penchant for genocide. This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language. In mid-June 2011, the anti-EU party Union Populaire Républicaine led by François Asselineau was the object of slanderous insinuations on Antifa internet sites signed by “Marie-Anne Boutoleau” (a pseudonym for Ornella Guyet). Fearing violence, owners cancelled scheduled UPR meeting places in Lyon. UPR did a little investigation, discovering that Ornella Guyet was on the speakers list at a March 2009 Seminar on International Media organized in Paris by the Center for the Study of International Communications and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. A surprising association for such a zealous crusader against “red-brown”. In case anyone has doubts, “red-brown” is a term used to smear anyone with generally leftist views – that is, “red” – with the fascist color “brown”. This smear can be based on having the same opinion as someone on the right, speaking on the same platform with someone on the right, being published alongside someone on the right, being seen at an anti-war demonstration also attended by someone on the right, and so on. This is particularly useful for the War Party, since these days, many conservatives are more opposed to war than leftists who have bought into the “humanitarian war” mantra. The government doesn’t need to repress anti-war gatherings. Antifa does the job. The Franco-African comedien Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, stigmatized for anti-Semitism since 2002 for his tv sketch lampooning an Israeli settler as part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Good”, is not only a target, but serves as a guilty association for anyone who defends his right to free speech – such as Belgian professor Jean Bricmont, virtually blacklisted in France for trying to get in a word in favor of free speech during a TV talk show. Dieudonné has been banned from the media, sued and fined countless times, even sentenced to jail in Belgium, but continues to enjoy a full house of enthusiastic supporters at his one-man shows, where the main political message is opposition to war. Still, accusations of being soft on Dieudonné can have serious effects on individuals in more precarious positions, since the mere hint of “anti-Semitism” can be a career killer in France. Invitations are cancelled, publications refused, messages go unanswered. In April 2016, Ornella Guyet dropped out of sight, amid strong suspicions about her own peculiar associations. The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party. I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are self-anointed and usually more or less disguised. Silencing Necessary Debate One who is certainly sincere is Mark Bray, author of The Intifa Handbook. It is clear where Mark Bray is coming from when he writes (p.36-7): “… Hitler’s ‘final solution’ murdered six million Jews in gas chambers, with firing squads, through hunger an lack of medical treatment in squalid camps and ghettoes, with beatings, by working them to death, and through suicidal despair. Approximately two out of every three Jews on the continent were killed, including some of my relatives.” This personal history explains why Mark Bray feels passionately about “fascism”. This is perfectly understandable in one who is haunted by fear that “it can happen again”. However, even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily contribute to wise counsel. Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual. We are in a period of great political confusion. Labeling every manifestation of “political incorrectness” as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues that very much need to be defined and clarified. The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism. This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves. The issue of immigration has different aspects in different places. It is not the same in European countries as in the United States. There is a basic distinction between immigrants and immigration. Immigrants are people who deserve consideration. Immigration is a policy that needs to be evaluated. It should be possible to discuss the policy without being accused of persecuting the people. After all, trade union leaders have traditionally opposed mass immigration, not out of racism, but because it can be a deliberate capitalist strategy to bring down wages. In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise. But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion. Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against. And who will win such a confrontation? A recent survey* shows that mass immigration is increasingly unpopular in all European countries. The complexity of the issue is shown by the fact that in the vast majority of European countries, most people believe they have a duty to welcome refugees, but disapprove of continued mass immigration. The official argument that immigration is a good thing is accepted by only 40%, compared to 60% of all Europeans who believe that “immigration is bad for our country”. A left whose principal cause is open borders will become increasingly unpopular. Childish Violence The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles. Banding together with others “like us” to fight against gangs of “them” for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances. The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist. For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines. American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare. Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with “the most powerful kid in the block” and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang. That is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, which habitually declares of its chosen enemies: “All they understand is force.” Although Antifa claim to be radical revolutionaries, their mindset is perfectly typical the atmosphere of violence which prevails in militarized America. In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia. Words are considered so dangerous that “safe spaces” must be established to protect people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely linked to tolerance of real physical violence. Wild Goose Chase In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary “fascists” instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction. The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward “anti-fascists” simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves. Antifa USA, by defining “resistance to fascism” as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular “resistance to Trump” to make him even worse than he already was. The facile use of the term “fascist” gets in the way of thoughtful identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism. This amounts to a multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity and the megalomania of leaders of lesser “Western” powers, notably Israel. It could be called simply “imperialism”, except that it is much vaster and more destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries. It is also much more disguised. And since it bears no clear label such as “fascism”, it is difficult to denounce in simple terms. The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago, under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat. Donald Trump is an outsider who will not be let inside. The election of Donald Trump is above all a grave symptom of the decadence of the American political system, totally ruled by money, lobbies, the military-industrial complex and corporate media. Their lies are undermining the very basis of democracy. Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of the people: the right to free speech and assembly. Diana Johnstone is author of the introduction to her father’s memoir, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning, by Paul H. Johnstone (Clarity Press). She can be reached at diana.johnstone at wanadoo.fr Notes. * «Où va la démocratie?», une enquête de la Fondation pour l’innovation politique sous la direction de Dominique Reynié, (Plon, Paris, 2017). Article printed from www.counterpunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/09/antifa-in-theory-and-in-practice/ Click here to print. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 174783 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2492 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 10 15:50:23 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:50:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa according to D. Johnstone In-Reply-To: <007501d341d4$d9c42920$8d4c7b60$@comcast.net> References: <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1135484557.4665865.1507642755122@mail.yahoo.com> <007501d341d4$d9c42920$8d4c7b60$@comcast.net> Message-ID: David Just the two paragraphs below, belie the intent for “peaceful protest, or protecting protestors.” Like bar room brawls, punching someone for that which they say……Eric Draitser, someone I once supported with his anti-war podcasts also supports punching a Nazi, or racist. It’s all over social media, dividing the nation. Preventing focus on the elites controlling the USG. Where does this vigilantism stop, after the government sends in the troops, known as police, given they have been militarized for a reason. We’re certainly giving them cause. Violence begets violence, not peace or progress. "Sieradski said violence is a “last resort,” but added there is nothing wrong with responding to anti-Semitic or racist rhetoric with a punch. Those who are advocating ethnic cleansing should be punched, he said, and showing white supremacists that their rallies will end with them being hurt will deter them from assembling.” “When Nazis are screaming epithets in our faces, should we just smile?” Sieradski asked. “They come into our towns and yell at us and threaten us and say they want to kill us. Should we take that sitting down because fascists deserve free speech, too? When someone is threatening you with an existential threat, you fight back. You don’t stand there and take it.” I just had a Black Veteran, yelling at the police in front of my house that “if he had a gun, he would kill all white people." This after I provided him food, water and my cell phone. The police were questioning him, because someone in the neighborhood called them, complaining he “appeared suspicious.” The police, thank god, just spoke with him and then left him alone. Had they taken the position of some, that he should be punched, things might have turned out differently for them, him and me. Turning the other cheek, takes a lot of courage, but its effective. On Oct 10, 2017, at 07:34, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: O.K. David, Since you posted your earlier article I am compelled to post this. I do NOT support physically attacking someone for speech, however when fascist thugs come into a community well-armed, then self-defense is appropriate. David J. What you need to know about antifa, the group that fought white supremacists in Charlottesville By Ben SalesAugust 16, 2017 5:37pm 379shares Protesters and counterprotesters clashing at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (JTA) — Is it OK to punch a Nazi in the face? That’s the question animating much of the discussion of Saturday’s white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which quickly devolved into a brawl between rally-goers and a contingent of anti-fascist counterprotesters known as antifa. Following the clashes, a white supremacist rammed his car into the counterprotest, killing Heather Heyer, 32. Leaders and activists across the spectrum — except President Donald Trump — have unequivocally condemned the racist, anti-Semitic rally. But they are divided on whether physically attacking white supremacists is justified simply because they are white supremacists. Some have celebrated the antifa activists for standing up to hate. But others have condemned them alongside neo-Nazis for engaging in violence. And on Tuesday, Trump appeared to equate them with the rabble of white supremacists, branding antifa the “alt-left” and saying “there’s blame on both sides.” Here’s what you need to know about antifa, the loose network that fights fascists on the streets. Antifa was born from groups that fought the original fascists. In 1934, Milwaukee police arrested three leftists who infiltrated a pro-Nazi meeting and began scuffling with supporters of Hitler. The leftists were part of a group of several hundred anti-fascists who entered the meeting, broke it up and pelted the keynote speaker with rotten eggs. The melee ended only after 100 police arrived to restore order. Today’s antifa (an abbreviation of “anti-fascist action”) sees itself as the ideological descendant of activists like these. Anti-fascist brawlers — many of them communists, socialists or anarchists — began organizing in the 1920s and ’30s to oppose the rising dictatorships in Italy, Germany and Spain through demonstrations and street fights. The groups re-emerged in Europe in the ’70s and ’80s to combat white supremacists and skinheads, and the idea migrated to America, where groups were originally known as “Anti-Racist Action.” While it’s hard to pin down numbers on antifa in the United States, members and experts say the movement has boomed since Trump’s election. Mark Bray, a lecturer on human rights and politics at Dartmouth College, estimates that there are a couple hundred antifa chapters of varying sizes and levels of activity across the country. “The threat posed by the ‘alt-right’ in the context of empowerment through Trump made a lot of people concerned about fascist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist violence,” said Bray, author of the forthcoming book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.” “They turned to the Antifa model as one option to resist it. The option of physically confronting these groups has spread among the left and been normalized.” It has no formal organization or leadership structure. Like the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter, antifa has no institutional structure or unified plan of action. Much of its activism comes through informal collaboration around certain cities or regions, and individual members taking initiative. Separate Facebook pages exist, for example, for New York antifa, New York City antifa and Western New York antifa. Long before antifa gets to physical altercations with the far right, members will attempt to prevent white supremacists from assembling or spreading their message. Bray said some antifa members will pressure white supremacists’ employers to fire them. Daniel Sieradski, a Jewish antifa member who became involved following the presidential election in November, said he and other activists try to pressure venues to cancel white supremacist events, and only show up to counterprotest once that fails. (Sieradski formerly worked at JTA as the director of digital media.) “I’ve always identified with the spirit of the movement, which is to challenge racists when they come into your community and try to incite hatred and violence,” Sieradski said. “Every effort is made to prevent the Nazis from showing up in the first place. Once they manage to do so, the demonstrations do not get violent until confrontations are provoked.” Antifa tends to align with the left — and some members are anti-Zionists. Because antifa is so loosely constructed, it has no formal ideological agenda beyond opposing fascism. But the movement has roots in left-wing movements like socialism or anarchism. Bray said that members may be part of other left-wing activist groups, like the Occupy movement, and subscribe to ideas popular in progressive circles. The Torch Network, a group of antifa chapters, includes in its “points of unity” opposition to “all forms of oppression and exploitation.” That includes fighting “against racism, sexism, nativism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination against the disabled, the oldest, the youngest, and the most oppressed people.” The group is also pro-choice. Unlike the Movement for Black Lives platform, it does not single out Israel or Zionism. Bray said that while anti-Zionism is not a focus of antifa, many members tend to be anti-Zionist as part of their far-left activism. Anti-Racist Action groups, he said, had taken part in anti-Zionist events in the past. Sieradski said, however, that Jews play a significant role in the movement because “we’re fighting Nazis and anti-Semitism is the prime ideological viewpoint of Nazis.” Antifa has no problem with fighting Nazis … Antifa has no qualms about scuffling with white supremacists. The group gained publicity in February when it physically fought alt-righters at the University of California, Berkeley, during a speech by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Tussles with the far right have followed at other events. Sieradski said violence is a “last resort,” but added there is nothing wrong with responding to anti-Semitic or racist rhetoric with a punch. Those who are advocating ethnic cleansing should be punched, he said, and showing white supremacists that their rallies will end with them being hurt will deter them from assembling. “When Nazis are screaming epithets in our faces, should we just smile?” Sieradski asked. “They come into our towns and yell at us and threaten us and say they want to kill us. Should we take that sitting down because fascists deserve free speech, too? When someone is threatening you with an existential threat, you fight back. You don’t stand there and take it.” Antifa members also reject the notion that the movement instigated the violence in Charlottesville or is as guilty as its white supremacist foes. Spencer Sunshine, who counterprotested at the Charlottesville rally and witnessed the deadly car ramming, said there certainly were fights, but there is no comparing antifa with the far right. “Any equivalence between antifa and fascists is a complete lie,” he said. “We were not armed the way the fascists were, and certainly did not drive a car into crowds. It was a total Nazi rally.” … but has been criticized for its violent tactics. Antifa has garnered its share of liberal critics who say nothing — even neo-Nazism — justifies violence and the suppression of free speech. Critics also say that antifa’s violence draws attention to the far right and allows white supremacists to claim they are acting in self-defense. “They’re troubling tactically because conservatives use antifa’s violence to justify — or at least distract from — the violence of white supremacists, as Trump did in his press conference,” the liberal Jewish essayist Peter Beinart wrote Wednesday in The Atlantic. “They’re troubling strategically because they allow white supremacists to depict themselves as victims being denied the right to freely assemble. And they’re troubling morally because antifa activists really do infringe upon that right.” Following Saturday’s rally, Anti-Defamation League National Director Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted “Whether by #AltRight or #Antifa, no excuses for violence and, keep in mind, this is exactly the response that the bigots seek to provoke.” Mark Pitcavage, an ADL senior researcher, said his group cannot condemn one side’s violence and condone the other. He added that the attention Charlottesville gained is also energizing the “alt-right” to hold more rallies. “I don’t know how you can put together a calculus of violence where some sort of act of violence is unacceptable if one group does it but if another group commits it, that’s acceptable,” he said. “We’d just rather not see violence.” But Pitcavage added that right-wing violence has been far more destructive than antifa’s, which to his knowledge has not led to any deaths. According to a 25-year study by the Cato Institute, nationalist and right-wing terrorists have killed about 10 times as many people since 1992 as left-wing terrorists, which may or may not include those who identify with antifa. “That doesn’t mean that the sides are equal, the causes are equal,” he said. “It’s important to realize that their violence does in no way compare in numbers or severity to the far-rightist violence in the United States.” From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of David Green via Peace-discuss Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 8:39 AM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa according to D. Johnstone - www.counterpunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org - Antifa in Theory and in Practice Posted By Diana Johnstone On October 9, 2017 @ 2:05 am In articles 2015,Leading Article | Comments Disabled Photo by jcrakow | CC BY 2.0 “Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists.” – Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts. In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as “fascists”. Despite its imported European name, Antifa is basically just another example of America’s steady descent into violence. Historical Pretensions Antifa first came to prominence from its role in reversing Berkeley’s proud “free speech” tradition by preventing right wing personalities from speaking there. But its moment of glory was its clash with rightwingers in Charlottesville on August 12, largely because Trump commented that there were “good people on both sides”. With exuberant Schadenfreude, commentators grabbed the opportunity to condemn the despised President for his “moral equivalence”, thereby bestowing a moral blessing on Antifa. Charlottesville served as a successful book launching for Antifa: the Antifascist Handbook, whose author, young academic Mark Bray, is an Antifa in both theory and practice. The book is “really taking off very fast”, rejoiced the publisher, Melville House. It instantly won acclaim from leading mainstream media such as the New York Times, The Guardian and NBC, not hitherto known for rushing to review leftwing books, least of all those by revolutionary anarchists. The Washington Post welcomed Bray as spokesman for “insurgent activist movements” and observed that: “The book’s most enlightening contribution is on the history of anti-fascist efforts over the past century, but its most relevant for today is its justification for stifling speech and clobbering white supremacists.” Bray’s “enlightening contribution” is to a tell a flattering version of the Antifa story to a generation whose dualistic, Holocaust-centered view of history has largely deprived them of both the factual and the analytical tools to judge multidimensional events such as the growth of fascism. Bray presents today’s Antifa as though it were the glorious legitimate heir to every noble cause since abolitionism. But there were no anti-fascists before fascism, and the label “Antifa” by no means applies to all the many adversaries of fascism. The implicit claim to carry on the tradition of the International Brigades who fought in Spain against Franco is nothing other than a form of innocence by association. Since we must revere the heroes of the Spanish Civil War, some of that esteem is supposed to rub off on their self-designated heirs. Unfortunately, there are no veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade still alive to point to the difference between a vast organized defense against invading fascist armies and skirmishes on the Berkeley campus. As for the Anarchists of Catalonia, the patent on anarchism ran out a long time ago, and anyone is free to market his own generic. The original Antifascist movement was an effort by the Communist International to cease hostilities with Europe’s Socialist Parties in order to build a common front against the triumphant movements led by Mussolini and Hitler. Since Fascism thrived, and Antifa was never a serious adversary, its apologists thrive on the “nipped in the bud” claim: “if only” Antifascists had beat up the fascist movements early enough, the latter would have been nipped in the bud. Since reason and debate failed to stop the rise of fascism, they argue, we must use street violence – which, by the way, failed even more decisively. This is totally ahistorical. Fascism exalted violence, and violence was its preferred testing ground. Both Communists and Fascists were fighting in the streets and the atmosphere of violence helped fascism thrive as a bulwark against Bolshevism, gaining the crucial support of leading capitalists and militarists in their countries, which brought them to power. Since historic fascism no longer exists, Bray’s Antifa have broadened their notion of “fascism” to include anything that violates the current Identity Politics canon: from “patriarchy” (a pre-fascist attitude to put it mildly) to “transphobia” (decidedly a post-fascist problem). The masked militants of Antifa seem to be more inspired by Batman than by Marx or even by Bakunin. Storm Troopers of the Neoliberal War Party Since Mark Bray offers European credentials for current U.S. Antifa, it is appropriate to observe what Antifa amounts to in Europe today. In Europe, the tendency takes two forms. Black Bloc activists regularly invade various leftist demonstrations in order to smash windows and fight the police. These testosterone exhibits are of minor political significance, other than provoking public calls to strengthen police forces. They are widely suspected of being influenced by police infiltration. As an example, last September 23, several dozen black-clad masked ruffians, tearing down posters and throwing stones, attempted to storm the platform where the flamboyant Jean-Luc Mélenchon was to address the mass meeting of La France Insoumise, today the leading leftist party in France. Their unspoken message seemed to be that nobody is revolutionary enough for them. Occasionally, they do actually spot a random skinhead to beat up. This establishes their credentials as “anti-fascist”. They use these credentials to arrogate to themselves the right to slander others in a sort of informal self-appointed inquisition. As prime example, in late 2010, a young woman named Ornella Guyet appeared in Paris seeking work as a journalist in various leftist periodicals and blogs. She “tried to infiltrate everywhere”, according to the former director of Le Monde diplomatique, Maurice Lemoine, who “always intuitively distrusted her” when he hired her as an intern. Viktor Dedaj, who manages one of the main leftist sites in France, Le Grand Soir, was among those who tried to help her, only to experience an unpleasant surprise a few months later. Ornella had become a self-appointed inquisitor dedicated to denouncing “conspirationism, confusionism, anti-Semitism and red-brown” on Internet. This took the form of personal attacks on individuals whom she judged to be guilty of those sins. What is significant is that all her targets were opposed to U.S. and NATO aggressive wars in the Middle East. Indeed, the timing of her crusade coincided with the “regime change” wars that destroyed Libya and tore apart Syria. The attacks singled out leading critics of those wars. Viktor Dedaj was on her hit list. So was Michel Collon, close to the Belgian Workers Party, author, activist and manager of the bilingual site Investig’action. So was François Ruffin, film-maker, editor of the leftist journal Fakir elected recently to the National Assembly on the list of Mélenchon’s party La France Insoumise. And so on. The list is long. The targeted personalities are diverse, but all have one thing in common: opposition to aggressive wars. What’s more, so far as I can tell, just about everyone opposed to those wars is on her list. The main technique is guilt by association. High on the list of mortal sins is criticism of the European Union, which is associated with “nationalism” which is associated with “fascism” which is associated with “anti-Semitism”, hinting at a penchant for genocide. This coincides perfectly with the official policy of the EU and EU governments, but Antifa uses much harsher language. In mid-June 2011, the anti-EU party Union Populaire Républicaine led by François Asselineau was the object of slanderous insinuations on Antifa internet sites signed by “Marie-Anne Boutoleau” (a pseudonym for Ornella Guyet). Fearing violence, owners cancelled scheduled UPR meeting places in Lyon. UPR did a little investigation, discovering that Ornella Guyet was on the speakers list at a March 2009 Seminar on International Media organized in Paris by the Center for the Study of International Communications and the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. A surprising association for such a zealous crusader against “red-brown”. In case anyone has doubts, “red-brown” is a term used to smear anyone with generally leftist views – that is, “red” – with the fascist color “brown”. This smear can be based on having the same opinion as someone on the right, speaking on the same platform with someone on the right, being published alongside someone on the right, being seen at an anti-war demonstration also attended by someone on the right, and so on. This is particularly useful for the War Party, since these days, many conservatives are more opposed to war than leftists who have bought into the “humanitarian war” mantra. The government doesn’t need to repress anti-war gatherings. Antifa does the job. The Franco-African comedien Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, stigmatized for anti-Semitism since 2002 for his tv sketch lampooning an Israeli settler as part of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Good”, is not only a target, but serves as a guilty association for anyone who defends his right to free speech – such as Belgian professor Jean Bricmont, virtually blacklisted in France for trying to get in a word in favor of free speech during a TV talk show. Dieudonné has been banned from the media, sued and fined countless times, even sentenced to jail in Belgium, but continues to enjoy a full house of enthusiastic supporters at his one-man shows, where the main political message is opposition to war. Still, accusations of being soft on Dieudonné can have serious effects on individuals in more precarious positions, since the mere hint of “anti-Semitism” can be a career killer in France. Invitations are cancelled, publications refused, messages go unanswered. In April 2016, Ornella Guyet dropped out of sight, amid strong suspicions about her own peculiar associations. The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party. I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are self-anointed and usually more or less disguised. Silencing Necessary Debate One who is certainly sincere is Mark Bray, author of The Intifa Handbook. It is clear where Mark Bray is coming from when he writes (p.36-7): “… Hitler’s ‘final solution’ murdered six million Jews in gas chambers, with firing squads, through hunger an lack of medical treatment in squalid camps and ghettoes, with beatings, by working them to death, and through suicidal despair. Approximately two out of every three Jews on the continent were killed, including some of my relatives.” This personal history explains why Mark Bray feels passionately about “fascism”. This is perfectly understandable in one who is haunted by fear that “it can happen again”. However, even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily contribute to wise counsel. Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual. We are in a period of great political confusion. Labeling every manifestation of “political incorrectness” as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues that very much need to be defined and clarified. The scarcity of fascists has been compensated by identifying criticism of immigration as fascism. This identification, in connection with rejection of national borders, derives much of its emotional force above all from the ancestral fear in the Jewish community of being excluded from the nations in which they find themselves. The issue of immigration has different aspects in different places. It is not the same in European countries as in the United States. There is a basic distinction between immigrants and immigration. Immigrants are people who deserve consideration. Immigration is a policy that needs to be evaluated. It should be possible to discuss the policy without being accused of persecuting the people. After all, trade union leaders have traditionally opposed mass immigration, not out of racism, but because it can be a deliberate capitalist strategy to bring down wages. In reality, immigration is a complex subject, with many aspects that can lead to reasonable compromise. But to polarize the issue misses the chances for compromise. By making mass immigration the litmus test of whether or not one is fascist, Antifa intimidation impedes reasonable discussion. Without discussion, without readiness to listen to all viewpoints, the issue will simply divide the population into two camps, for and against. And who will win such a confrontation? A recent survey* shows that mass immigration is increasingly unpopular in all European countries. The complexity of the issue is shown by the fact that in the vast majority of European countries, most people believe they have a duty to welcome refugees, but disapprove of continued mass immigration. The official argument that immigration is a good thing is accepted by only 40%, compared to 60% of all Europeans who believe that “immigration is bad for our country”. A left whose principal cause is open borders will become increasingly unpopular. Childish Violence The idea that the way to shut someone up is to punch him in the jaw is as American as Hollywood movies. It is also typical of the gang war that prevails in certain parts of Los Angeles. Banding together with others “like us” to fight against gangs of “them” for control of turf is characteristic of young men in uncertain circumstances. The search for a cause can involve endowing such conduct with a political purpose: either fascist or antifascist. For disoriented youth, this is an alternative to joining the U.S. Marines. American Antifa looks very much like a middle class wedding between Identity Politics and gang warfare. Mark Bray (page 175) quotes his DC Antifa source as implying that the motive of would-be fascists is to side with “the most powerful kid in the block” and will retreat if scared. Our gang is tougher than your gang. That is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, which habitually declares of its chosen enemies: “All they understand is force.” Although Antifa claim to be radical revolutionaries, their mindset is perfectly typical the atmosphere of violence which prevails in militarized America. In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia. Words are considered so dangerous that “safe spaces” must be established to protect people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely linked to tolerance of real physical violence. Wild Goose Chase In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary “fascists” instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive program. The United States has more than its share of weird individuals, of gratuitous aggression, of crazy ideas, and tracking down these marginal characters, whether alone or in groups, is a huge distraction. The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward “anti-fascists” simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of themselves. Antifa USA, by defining “resistance to fascism” as resistance to lost causes – the Confederacy, white supremacists and for that matter Donald Trump – is actually distracting from resistance to the ruling neoliberal establishment, which is also opposed to the Confederacy and white supremacists and has already largely managed to capture Trump by its implacable campaign of denigration. That ruling establishment, which in its insatiable foreign wars and introduction of police state methods, has successfully used popular “resistance to Trump” to make him even worse than he already was. The facile use of the term “fascist” gets in the way of thoughtful identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism. This amounts to a multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity and the megalomania of leaders of lesser “Western” powers, notably Israel. It could be called simply “imperialism”, except that it is much vaster and more destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries. It is also much more disguised. And since it bears no clear label such as “fascism”, it is difficult to denounce in simple terms. The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago, under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat. Donald Trump is an outsider who will not be let inside. The election of Donald Trump is above all a grave symptom of the decadence of the American political system, totally ruled by money, lobbies, the military-industrial complex and corporate media. Their lies are undermining the very basis of democracy. Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of the people: the right to free speech and assembly. Diana Johnstone is author of the introduction to her father’s memoir, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning, by Paul H. Johnstone (Clarity Press). She can be reached at diana.johnstone at wanadoo.fr Notes. * «Où va la démocratie?», une enquête de la Fondation pour l’innovation politique sous la direction de Dominique Reynié, (Plon, Paris, 2017). Article printed from www.counterpunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/09/antifa-in-theory-and-in-practice/ Click here to print. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 10 15:57:29 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:57:29 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article In-Reply-To: <004f01d341d2$e0d0bc30$a2723490$@comcast.net> References: <00a501d34114$5dd3cf70$197b6e50$@comcast.net> <15f068f6f1a-c0d-7933@webjas-vad053.srv.aolmail.net> <004f01d341d2$e0d0bc30$a2723490$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Though I supported the Arab Spring initially, in hindsight I’m no longer sure they were legitimate in the beginning. In fact, just based upon my own involvement and support, I think they were part of the plan for military intervention, that like most Americans, I didn’t see at the time. The peoples of Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Bahrain have suffered the consequences of the so called “Arab Spring Uprisings.” On Oct 10, 2017, at 07:20, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: In the beginning they were legitimate but were hijacked by the elites. David J. From: Mildred O'brien [mailto:moboct1 at aim.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 8:53 AM To: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article WHAT "legitimate" Arab Spring revolutions? They ended up as disasterous elite power-grabs in my recollection. Midge ----Original Message----- From: David Johnson via Peace-discuss > To: 'Karen Aram' >; peace-discuss > Sent: Mon, Oct 9, 2017 10:36 am Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Excellent article Good article ! The only thing I would add to it is what I have said in the recent past. That opposition to the invasion of Iraq did not mean support for Saddam Hussein, and that despite the legitimate Arab Spring rebellions that happened in Syria in 2011, that what real secular opposition to Assad that was present at that time, has been nowhere to be found since 2011. The ONLY opposition in recent times to Assad are right-wing Islamic fundamentalist groups armed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.S., UK and probably Israel. David J. From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 10:23 AM To: Peace-discuss List Cc: peace Subject: [Peace] Excellent article From Prof. Francis Boyle, An article from Counterpunch 2013 By JEAN BRICMONT Once upon a time, in the early 1970’s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition “in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.” The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”. They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”. The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been bricmontimprelatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”? The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the “Palestine solidarity movement”? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 16:06:12 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:06:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] JACOBIN The Lost History of Antifa Message-ID: <00b401d341e1$b1b8ed50$152ac7f0$@comcast.net> JACOBIN 05.08.2017 * The Lost History of Antifa Loren Balhorn 72 years after the triumph over Nazism, we look back to postwar Germany, when socialists gave birth to Antifa. The origins of the word “antifa” — shorthand for decentralized, militant street activism associated with its own aesthetic and subculture — might be murky to most readers. Even in Germany, few know much about the popular forms of antifascist resistance that coined the term. The movement’s short but inspiring political legacy proved too uncomfortable for both Cold War-era German states, and was ignored in schools and mainstream history. Today its legacy is almost entirely lost to the Left. Out of the Ruins By 1945, Hitler’s Third Reich lay physically destroyed and politically exhausted. Basic civil society ceased to function in many areas, as the Nazi grip on power faltered and regime supporters, particularly in the middle- and upper classes, realized that Hitler’s “final victory” was a fantasy. On the Left, many Communists and Social Democrats had either been outright murdered by the Nazis, or died in the ensuing war. The unimaginable human and material destruction wrought by Nazi rule killed millions and turned German society upside down, decimating the labor movement and murdering most of the country’s Jewish population. Millions who had supported or at least acquiesced to the regime ­— including many workers and even some former socialists — now faced a new beginning in unknown political terrain. Yet despite its failure to stop Hitler in 1933 and veritable dismantling in subsequent years, Germany’s socialist labor movement and its decidedly progressive traditions outlived Hitler in the factories of its industrial cities, and began gathering up the fragments as soon as open political activity became possible. As historian Gareth Dale describes: Of all sectors of the population, it was industrial workers in the major towns that showed the greatest immunity to Nazism. Many trade unionists and socialists were able to maintain their traditions and beliefs, at least in some form, through the Nazi era. A courageous minority, including some 150,000 Communists, took part in illegal resistance. Wider layers avoided danger but were able to keep labour movement values and memories alive amongst groups of friends, in workplaces and on housing estates. These groups, oftentimes launched from the aforementioned housing estates, were generally called “Antifaschistische Ausschüsse,” “Antifaschistische Kommittees,” or the now famous “Antifaschistische Aktion” – “Antifa” for short. They drew on the slogans and orientation of the prewar united front strategy, adopting the word “Antifa” from a last-ditch attempt to establish a cross-party alliance between Communist and Social Democratic workers in 1932. The alliance’s iconic logo, devised by Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists members Max Keilson and Max Gebhard, has been since become one of the Left’s most well-known symbols. After the war, Antifas varied in size and composition across the former Reich, now divided into four zones of occupation, and developed in interaction with the local occupying power. Emerging seemingly overnight in dozens of cities, most formed immediately after Allied forces arrived, while some such as the group in Wuppertal “liberated” themselves in street battles with Hitler loyalists before the Allies could. Pivotally, these circles were not spontaneous instances of solidarization between traumatized war survivors, but the product of Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Communist Party (KPD) veterans reactivating prewar networks. Albrecht Lein reports that the core of the Braunschweig Antifa was made up of KPD and SPD members in their forties and fifties who had avoided the front, though Catholic workers’ organizations and other forces were also involved. The Antifa groups numbered between several hundred and several thousand active members in most cities, while the openly decried lack of youth involvement can be ascribed to twelve years of Nazi education and socialization, which annihilated the once widespread proletarian-socialist attitude among most young Germans. Though the material needs of war and reconstruction incorporated women into economic life in new ways, the male dominance characteristic of German society at the time was also reflected in the Antifa movement, which consisted largely (but not entirely) of men. Antifas tended to focus on a combination of hunting down Nazi criminals and underground Nazi partisans (the so-called “Werewolves”) and practical concerns affecting the general population. Braunschweig’s Antifa, for example, printed a twelve-point program demanding, among other things, the removal of Nazis from all administrative bodies and their immediate replacement with “competent antifascists,” liquidation of Nazi assets to provide for war victims, emergency laws to prosecute local fascists, and the reestablishment of the public health-care service. Typical of an organization led by socialists and thus keenly aware of the need for print media as an organizing medium, the program’s twelfth and final point consisted bluntly of a “Daily newspaper.” Although surviving records indicate that many Antifas were dominated by the KPD, the political mood in the early months was far from the “Third Period” adventurism of the late Weimar period. Across the board, local Antifas were motivated by a desire to learn from the mistakes of 1933 and build a non-sectarian labor movement bridging divisions. This was buoyed by a widespread sense at the war’s end that the horrors of Nazism had been a result of the instability and inequality of capitalism, and that a new, egalitarian economic system was needed for the postwar order. Demands for nationalization of industry and other left-wing policies were widespread. Even the forced marriage between KPD and SPD into the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the Soviet zone drew on this sentiment and recruited many former oppositionists in the first year. In British-occupied Hamburg, a joint KPD-SPD action committee convened in July 1945 with broad support from their respective memberships to declare: The will to merge into a powerful political party lives in the hearts of the millions of supporters of the once warring German workers’ parties as the most meaningful outcome of their shared suffering. This desire is deeply etched into all of the surviving prisoners from the concentration camps, prisons, and Gestapo institutions. The rest of the document consisted of practical demands around which to unite Hamburg’s fragmented labor movement. Antifas enjoyed varying degrees of success depending on the composition of the local movement and the amount of leeway allowed to them by occupying powers. Despite forming outside of the Allied administration and pushing forward popular de-Nazification policies against occupying forces who sought reconciliation with the old authorities, they were in no position to contest Allied hegemony and represented militant minorities at best. The southwestern industrial city of Stuttgart, for example, was fortunate enough to be involved in territorial maneuvering between the United States and France, which occupied the city preemptively. Keen to avoid civil unrest and thus give the Americans a pretext to take it back, French authorities allowed Stuttgart’s antifascists considerable leeway in dismantling the Nazi-era German Labor Front (DAF), rebuilding shop-floor organization in the factories, and organizing the population in cross-party antifascist alliances. Antifascist rally at Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945. Stuttgart is also noteworthy for the presence of the Communist Party (Opposition), or KPO. This group around former KPD leaders August Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler had recruited a large number of the city’s mid-level KPD factory activists and functionaries following that party’s ultra-left turn in 1929. The KPO’s vocal advocacy for an anti-Nazi front of all workers’ organizations in the run-up to 1933 allowed it to consolidate a small but considerable base of experienced Communist cadre repulsed by the Stalinization of their party. Although never a mass organization and only a shadow of its former self after the war, what remained of the KPO had a decisive influence over Stuttgart’s metal workers’ union for several years and was able to play a role in the factories. These activists and others provided the city with a core of capable militants who understood, through experience, the need to unite workers on a cross-party basis around basic social demands. Like everywhere else in Germany, Stuttgart’s Antifa movement was soon neutralized and diverted back into the old divisions between SPD and KPD, but the city’s rebellious tradition and penchant for unity in action would reemerge in 1948, when widespread anger at drastic price rises triggered a citywide general strike that encompassed 79 percent of the workforce and spread to several other localities. Overdetermined The Antifa movement faced an almost impossible situation in 1945. The country lay in ruins in every sense imaginable, and had gone through a phase of destruction, brutality, and wanton murder unprecedented in scale. The Antifa’s predicament was by and large “overdetermined,” in the sense that historical forces beyond their control would ultimately seal their fate. These socialists and antifascists, though numbering in the tens of thousands across the country, could not have been expected to provide a plausible political alternative to the overwhelming might of the Cold War. Germany in 1945 was set to become the staging ground for the longest geopolitical confrontation in modern history, and there was no way the fragments of a shattered socialist movement could have influenced developments in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, statements and documents from the time reveal thousands of determined antifascists and socialists, keenly aware of the unprecedented nature of their historical moment and putting forward a political perspective for what remained of the country’s working class. Although their numbers were comparatively and regrettably few given the movement’s former glory, their existence refutes the notion that the prewar German left was entirely destroyed by Nazism. Hitler certainly broke the back of German socialism, but West Germany’s postwar prosperity laced with anti-Communist paranoia would finally bury what remained of the country’s radical prewar traditions. Albrecht Lein recounts how the incredibly difficult conditions facing the Antifa also necessarily restricted their political perspective. Though they attracted thousands of socialists and were soon bolstered by returning Communists and other political prisoners from the concentration camps, briefly becoming the dominant political force in cities like Braunschweig, they were unable to offer a political road out of the country’s social misery. In 1946, even the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was calling for nationalization and socialism in their propaganda. Lein argues that the labor movement’s failure to defeat Hitler and the fact that Germany had required liberation from without drove antifascists to a largely reactive policy, vigorously pursuing former Nazi officials and purging society of collaborators, but neglecting to build a plausible vision for a “new Germany” beyond both fascism and Cold War machinations. After the Communists dissolved the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD) in the weeks after the war, underground Nazi resistance groups began calling themselves the “Movement for a Free Germany.” Lein argues that this circumstance was symbolic of the overall political trajectory at the time: “Other than the notable exceptions of Leipzig, Berlin and Munich, the antifascist movements described themselves as fighting organizations against fascism, and not as Committees for a Free Germany. Leaving the task of gathering social forces for ‘liberation’ and thus, implicitly, renewing Germany to the Nazis and reactionaries characterized [. . .] their defensive position.” Germans’ failure to engage in popular resistance to Hitler even in the second half of the war understandably demoralized the Left and shook its faith in the masses’ capabilities — a trait historian Martin Sabrow also ascribes to the caste of Communist functionaries operating under Soviet tutelage in the East. In the French, British, and American zones, Antifas began to recede by the late summer of 1945, marginalized by Allied bans on political organization and re-emerging divisions within the movement itself. The Social Democratic leadership under Kurt Schumacher sided with the Western occupiers and returned the party to its prewar anti-Communist line by the end of the year, decreeing that SPD membership was incompatible with participation in the Antifa movement. In Stuttgart, the Antifa and what remained of the old trade union bureaucracy fought each other for political influence from the outset. The old leadership of the ADGB, prewar Germany’s central trade union federation, sought to reestablish formalized employment relations in the occupied zones, which would at least mean a return to normalcy for Germany’s working class. This ran counter to the approach of the Antifas, however, who cultivated strong ties to leftist shop stewards and factory committees, and usually called for nationalization and worker control of industry. These demands were ultimately not realistic in a shattered economy occupied by powerful foreign armies. The prospect of stability and a degree of economic recovery under the SPD simply proved more appealing to workers forced to choose between that and the principled but harrowing struggle put forward by the Antifa. Antifas were further hindered by the decision by the Allies, particularly the United States and Britain, to cooperate with what remained of the Nazi regime below its most executive levels. Antifas seeking to imprison local Nazi leaders or purge municipal bureaucracies were often stopped by occupying authorities who preferred to integrate functionaries of the old state into new, ostensibly democratic institutions. This had less to do with any particular affinity between the Allies and ex-fascist functionaries so much as it served the practical interests of keeping German society running under exceedingly difficult conditions without ceding influence to the reemerging radical left. Outnumbered and outgunned by the occupying powers and outmaneuvered by the SPD, the Antifa’s influence in the three western zones of occupation would evaporate in less than a year. West German society stabilized, the Cold War polarized the continent, and the political forces of old Germany in alliance with Social Democracy and the emerging Western bloc consolidated their hold over the country. The KPD, for its part, initially took on waves of new members, as its prestige rose in light of the Soviet victory over Hitler and broad anticapitalist sentiment. The party soon rebuilt its industrial bases, and by 1946 controlled just as many shop floor committees in the heavily industrialized Ruhr Region as the SPD. In his classic study of the German labor movement, Die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung, German scholar Arno Klönne places its total membership in the three Western zones of occupation at three hundred thousand in 1947, and six hundred thousand in the East prior to the founding of the SED in 1946. Early Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) poster. Following a brief period of participation in postwar provisional governments, however, the Allies sidelined the KPD, and the party soon returned to its ultra-leftist line. It sealed its political irrelevance in 1951 with the passage of “Thesis 37,” a position paper on labor strategy riddled with anti–Social Democratic and anti-trade-union slurs. The motion, passed at the party conference, obligated all KPD members to obey party decisions above and against trade union directives if necessary. This move obliterated Communist support in the factories veritably overnight and relegated the party to society’s fringes. It failed to re-enter parliament in the 1953 elections and was banned by the West German government outright in 1956. Developments were markedly different in the Soviet zone, but ultimately ended in perhaps an even grimmer dead end: that of SED leader Walter Ulbricht’s thoroughly Stalinized German Democratic Republic (GDR). An old-school Communist cadre from the party’s early years, Ulbricht had survived twenty years of Stalinist purges and fascist repression to lead the “Ulbricht Group,” a team of exiled KPD functionaries who now returned from Moscow to rebuild the country under Soviet occupation. Though the Red Army generals certainly did not have a particularly democratic or egalitarian vision for East Germany in mind, they rejected cooperation with the old Nazi hierarchy for their own reasons and for a while permitted Antifas and related institutions to operate relatively freely. Eyewitness accounts from as late as 1947 report of factories in East Germany’s prewar industrial centers like Halle (traditional Communist strongholds) where KPD-led works councils exerted a decisive influence over factory life, confident enough to conduct negotiations and argue with Soviet authorities in some instances. In an interview with Jacobin to be published later this year, veteran KPO activist Theodor Bergmann tells of Heinrich Adam, prewar KPO member and mechanic at the Zeiss optics factory in Jena who joined the SED in hopes of realizing socialist unity. Heinrich was an active Antifa and trade unionist who organized protests against the Soviets’ decision to take the Zeiss factory as war reparations (he suggested building a new factory in Russia instead). Adam was kicked out of the party for his independent views in 1952, although never persecuted, and lived out his days in Jena on a modest state pension for antifascist veterans. In Dresden, a group of roughly eighty Communists, Social Democrats, and members of the left-social democratic Socialist Workers Party (SAP) formed a committee in May 1945 to surrender the city to the Red Army, citing broadcasts from the NKFD as inspiration. In cooperation with Soviet authorities, this group subsequently raided food and weapons stores from the German Labor Front and other Nazi institutions, and organized a distribution system for the city’s populace in the first postwar weeks. Reports from Soviet officials and the Ulbricht Group describe rival antifascist groups, generally tolerated by the occupation, which beyond arming residents and organizing shooting practice also arrested local Nazis and opened soup kitchens for refugees from the eastern provinces. Internal communications reveal that leading Communists thought little of the Antifa, dismissed by Ulbricht as “ the antifascist sects” in a communiqué to Georgi Dimitrov in mid-1945. The Ulbricht Group’s initial goal was to incorporate as many of these antifascists into the KPD as possible, and feared that repression would repel rather than attract them. Former Ulbricht Group member Wolfgang Leonhard would later claim in his memoirs, Child of the Revolution, that Ulbricht explained to fellow Communist functionaries: “It’s quite clear – it’s got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control.” This period ended as the German Democratic Republic began to establish itself as a Soviet-style one-party state in the late 1940s, particularly after relatively free elections in 1946 delivered disappointing returns. Former KPO members and other oppositionists permitted to join after the war were investigated for past political crimes, purged, and often imprisoned. In the workplaces, the SED sought to rationalize production and thus neutralize the instances of factory control and democratic representation that had emerged. The establishment of the Free German Trade Federation (FDGB) in 1946 marked the beginning of the SED’s attempt to establish party control over the factories. These “unions” in fact organized East German workers in line with the interests of their practical bosses, the East German state, and sought to buy their loyalty through “socialist competition” schemes, piece work, and union-sponsored vacation packages. However, the “free” unions could not afford to phase out competitive elections overnight. Antifa activists were often elected to FDGB shop floor committees in early the years, thus exercising continued influence in the workplace for a bit longer. Some were integrated into mid-level management, while others refused to betray their principles and stepped down or were removed for political reasons. The public split between the Soviet Union and Tito’s Yugoslavia in 1948 accelerated Stalinization in the Soviet occupation zone, and these limited spaces of self-organization were soon shut down entirely. Subsequently, the GDR’s antifascist tradition would be diluted, distorted, and refashioned into an ahistorical national origins myth in which the citizens of East Germany were officially proclaimed the “victors of history,” but where little space remained for the real and complicated history, not to mention ambivalent role of Stalinized Communism, behind it. Dare to Dream Following their collapse in late 1945 and early 1946, Antifas would disappear from the German political stage for nearly four decades. The modern Antifa with which most people associate the term has no practical historical connection to the movement from which it takes its name, but is instead a product of West Germany’s squatter scene and autonomist movement in the 1980s — itself a unique outgrowth of 1968 considerably less oriented towards the industrial working class than its Italian counterpart. The first Antifas functioned as platforms to organize against far-right groups like the National Democratic Party (NPD) in an autonomist movement still numbering in the tens of thousands of active members and capable of occupying entire city blocks in some West German metropoles. As the far right began to rebuild in the wake of German reunification, expressed in shocking mob attacks against asylum-seekers in several eastern provinces in the early 1990s, Antifa increasingly became a movement unto itself: a national network of dedicated antifascist groups organized into the “Antifaschistische Aktion/Bundesweite Organisation” (AA/BO). In some ways, these groups were the inverse of their progenitors: rather than a broad alliance of socialists and progressives from separate, ideologically distinct currents, they were single-issue groups, expressly radical but vague and deeply heterogeneous in their specifics. Rather than a point of departure for young activists into a broader socialist and political left, Antifas outside of major cities are often the only political game in town, and function as a counter-cultural space with their own fashion styles, music scenes, and slang, rather than a component of a rooted mass movement within wider society. After the AA/BO split in 2001, Antifas continued to work locally and regionally as dedicated networks of antifascists opposing far-right demonstrations and gatherings, though many also take up other left-wing issues and causes. What remains of the squats and infrastructure built up between the 1970s and 1990s continue to serve as important organizing and socializing spaces for the radical left, and “Antifa” as movement, trope, and general political outlook will no doubt continue to exist for quite some time – but it would appear that this iteration of antifascism has also exhausted its political repertoire. The movement has shrunken continuously since the late 1990s, fragmented across ideological lines and unable to adjust its original autonomist strategies to shifting patterns of urbanization and the rise of right-populism. Its most promising products of late — the mass mobilizations against neo-Nazi marches in cities like Dresden, as well as the formation of a new, distinctively post-autonomist current in the form of the Interventionist Left — mark a departure from rather than a revival of classical Antifa strategy. Antifascism has surged to the fore of debates on the American left under Trump’s presidency, and many of the tactics and visual styles of the German Antifa can be seen emerging in cities like Berkeley and elsewhere. Some argue that with the arrival of European-style neo-fascist movements on American shores, it is also time to import European Antifa tactics in response. Yet the Antifa of today is not a product of a political victory from which we can draw our own strength, but of defeat — socialism’s defeat at the hands of Nazism and resurgent global capitalism, and later the exhaustion of the autonomist movement in the wake of the neoliberal turn and the sweeping gentrification of many German cities. Although Antifas continue to function as important poles of attraction for radicalizing youth and guarantee that the far right rarely goes unopposed in many European countries, its political form is of an exclusive nature, couched in its own aesthetic and rhetorical style and inaccessible to the masses of uninitiated people getting involved in activism for the first time. A left-wing subculture with its own social spaces and cultural life is not the same thing as a mass social movement, and we cannot afford to confuse the two. Of course, the Antifa’s experience in 1945 offers us equally few concrete lessons for how to fight a resurgent far right in the Trump era. Looking back at the history of the socialist left is not about distilling victorious formulas to be reproduced in the twenty-first century, but rather understanding how previous generations understood their own historical moment and built political organizations in response, in order to develop our own (hopefully more successfully models) for today. The Antifas in Stuttgart, Braunschweig, and elsewhere faced impossible odds, but still sought to articulate a series of political demands and a practical organizational vision for the radicalizing workers willing to listen. Antifas refused to capitulate to their seemingly hopeless predicament and dared to dream big. Facing an even more fragmented and weakened left than in 1945, American antifascists will have to do the same. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 16:09:26 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:09:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Montana Wobblies, Antifa Out-Organize Nazis Message-ID: <00c101d341e2$258f02a0$70ad07e0$@comcast.net> Montana Wobblies, Antifa Out-Organize Nazis Submitted on Mon, 01/30/2017 - 3:20pm Description: https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Whitefishgroupphoto-1.jp g Re-posted from Its Going Down >From When Andrew Anglin issued his call for an armed rally against the Jewish residents of Whitefish a month ago the working-class militants, radical leftists and antifascists of western Montana didn't waste any time in organizing a response. We have fought against multiple fascist attempts to make inroads into our state, some of which completely flopped (such as the National Alliance's move on Bozeman in 2004-5) and others of which have had some success before floundering, such as April Gaede's Pioneer Little Europe (which keeps its head down as far as openly organizing these days, but still moves the occasional Nazi into the Kalispell area to build a white supremacist "intentional community"). Determined to not let another group of goose stepping boneheads terrorize our neighbors and try to define our area, leftists and veterans of past antifascist struggles soon started meeting to discuss what to do. Before the new year, members of the Missoula IWW General Membership Branch, the Queer Insurrection Unit (QIU) and the Alliance for Intersectional Power (AIP) had already agreed to form an action-based coalition and set to hashing out the details. About a week before the proposed date for the rally Anglin canceled, claiming the city was putting "unreasonable demands" on the march. We decided to not let our guard down. While a permit would be legally required to take the street, the Nazis could still legally march - armed or not- down the sidewalk; we were not confident the cancellation wasn't a diversion. Figuring that it's best not to trust the word of fascists and that heading up to pre-empt them would be good practice for a later rally, we kept planning. There were respectful debates about how to best present a militant response to an open fascist threat without further endangering ourselves or the residents of Whitefish. Some initial plans were tabled and others were greatly modified, all with a view towards being able to decisively defend ourselves and others from fascist violence. We decided to group up for travel in case any vehicles broke down or any Nazis tried to waylay us on the road back to Missoula (a tactic which an AIP organizer had seen deployed against them in an unrelated campaign). We finalized our tactics and strategy at a meeting the night of the fifteenth, when we chose a rally spot outside of town and people decided which rides to take and who to ride with. The vehicles turned out to the agreed upon meetup point early the next morning, resolved some last-minute confusion and headed north over Evaro Hill around sunrise. Among other precautionary measures we drove in a tight convoy and kept in radio contact, managing to make it to Whitefish in less than three hours - in spite of the icy roads and constant fog we came into around Saint Ig. Once in town we had a quick planning session and decided to split up to comb for any Nazi presence on the streets of Whitefish and then meet back up after 1 PM. One group saw a couple of suspicious characters glaring from a blue pickup who were spotted again downtown shortly before we left later that day. Another team scoped out the 22 Lupfer Avenue building, owned by Richard Spencer's mother, which seemed fairly unoccupied and closed for business, and found a pretty entertaining anti-Spencer flier posted by an unknown Whitefisher nearby. There was one unconfirmed Spencer sighting, likely a case of mistaken identity as Richie Rich was probably in DC preparing for his now famous punching bag impersonation. At 1:30, we met back up at the parking lot and were approached by a plainclothes cop asking about the nature of our gathering and where we were from. Our appointed police liaison kept the chat short, affirming only that most of us were from Missoula and we were antifascists and not Nazis - a fact which the officer seemed fairly aware of before even asking. After the cop left, we grabbed some signs and made our way to Depot Park on the north end of downtown. Many townsfolk on the street stared reservedly until they could make out our signs and banners and then thew thumbs up, cracked wide grins and thanked us for turning out. "Oh man, here we were hearing about some group showing up, glad to see it's the good guys!" Said one person outside of a cafe on Central. A motorist in a black pickup yelled "love trumps hate!" at us as he drove past, still under the impression we were the Nazis. This same person later approached us, embarrassed about his mistake and said he hoped we would come back if Anglin made good on his threat (and as we told him, yes, without hesitation, we will). By the time we made it to Depot Park, the news that we were an assembly against a Nazi run on Whitefish had spread through the town and we received honks of approval, thumbs up and raised fists from drivers and pedestrians alike as we set up on the corner in front of the Parks and Recreation office. There were several residents who approached IWW/GDC members expressing their appreciation that our union, which is a prominent fixture in the history of Montana, was standing with them against the fascist outsiders. One older gentleman even mentioned that his father had been a Wobbly and now he was considering joining up. Another approached us slowly in his truck, mean-mugging out the window and yelled out to us "yeah, they're all a bunch of cowards, didn't even show! Good to see you out here. My old special forces buddies and I have been out all morning looking for them!" It soon became apparent that if any Nazis were around they didn't think it was a good day to poke their heads up and we decided to unload some cooking implements and a PA system from one of our vehicles. We set to making a few pots of strong coffee and talking with some of the locals, all of whom expressed their approval of our visit. A group of volunteers from the National Lawyers' Guild showed up to observe and a few members of the various groups traded contact information with them. It's worth mentioning that the whole time we were on the street, Whitefish Police Department vehicles circuited through the area and monitored our presence. Around 4 PM we took a group photo and decided to head to the corner of 2nd and Central, a few blocks down from the park. We set up the PA as some folks from the town prepared a table from which to distribute matzo ball soup. Both people from the community and our own groups both spoke, one speech went long and the cops tellingly decided to unplug the PA sometime after the speaker brought up issues of police brutality. The tension between parties in our group and the police peaked at this moment but luckily didn't escalate any further as cups of piping hot matzo ball soup were passed around, a welcome treat on a five degree day. Finally an indigenous organizer, activist and artist who brought some folks out from Washington with him sang unamplified and gave our rally's last speech. The sun set as we made our way back to our vehicles and reassembled our convoy back to Missoula. Although there was some concern we'd landed on the local cops' shit list (which wasn't alleviated by the officer in an unmarked truck who pacing us in the left lane for about five miles as we departed) we did not meet with any considerable police harassment. After another icy three hour trek we found ourselves back home in Missoula. Our experience in Whitefish was hugely positive, but upon later reflection there were a few things some of us feel we could have done better. Mainly, some of us feel that staying masked up after it was clear the Nazis were a no-show may have left a bad impression on some of the locals, while many still feel it was a good idea given the skill many fascists have shown with face search and doxxing technology, not to mention the high probability that members of April Gaede's Pioneer Little Europe group may have been skulking around trying to gather intel on area antifascists. There were multiple shady figures casing us at various points in the day and this is fine; they saw our numbers, our power and whose home this is. It was necessary to show the world that western Montana is not fertile ground for fascist growth, even in spite of a few weeds we occasionally have to pull up. There remains a good deal of skepticism that the con-man Anglin will ever make good on his threat, but given the success of our trial run we will be more than ready for him if he does, and undoubtedly in even greater numbers. Description: https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/0116171605-1024x768.jpg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 45153 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 34480 bytes Desc: not available URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 16:11:20 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:11:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Danville, VA: Triangle IWW Joins with Other Antifa Groups to Shut Down the KKK Message-ID: <00d001d341e2$693435c0$3b9ca140$@comcast.net> Danville, VA: Triangle IWW Joins with Other Antifa Groups to Shut Down the KKK Submitted on Tue, 12/13/2016 - 4:38pm Reposted from It's Going Down, December 4 DANVILLE, VA - On Saturday, December 3rd, the Triangle Area Industrial Workers of the World joined a broad coalition of over 100 protesters from different affinity groups responding to reports that the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan would be holding a "victory parade" in Pelham, North Carolina. The protesters ran the Klan out of both Pelham and Danville, Virginia, the other proposed location for their parade. We held the street and marched through both Pelham and Danville, while the Klan could only muster a car parade speeding through six blocks in Roxboro, NC (aided by NC state troopers, of course). The Loyal White Knights, considered the largest existing KKK chapter, is based in Pelham. Though they sent out information about the Dec. 3rd parade immediately following the election of Donald Trump for president, they did not include a location or a time. On Dec. 2nd, the KKK notified press that there would be a car parade at 9am in Pelham. Over 100 anti-fascist protesters representing myriad groups came together to confront the Klan in Pelham. Meanwhile, the Klan kept notifying press that they were pushing back the time of the parade, from 9am to 11am, and then finally saying it wouldn't occur until the afternoon. Around 11:30, we marched through the streets of Pelham, flying banners that said "John Brown Lives! Smash White Supremacy" and "Fags and Dykes Against White Knights." Protesters chanted, "No hate, no fear, the KKK's not welcome here!" With cops on our tail, we held the street and marched to the community center. There we learned that people waving confederate flags had shown up at the Sutherlin Mansion, considered the "last capitol of the confederacy," where Jefferson Davis and other slave owners fled after Richmond fell to the Union army. Comrades showed up at the mansion, which is now the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, and the flag-wavers literally ran off. Apparently, they were not directly affiliated with the Loyal White Knights. Description: https://itsgoingdown.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/exqntm2546.jpg Following a period of conflicting reports that involved much driving back and forth between Danville and Pelham, we acted on a report that the Klan would be in Danville at 2pm. We hit Danville and marched through the streets, chanting "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!" It was great to see local Danville folks coming outside and showing their support - a few even joined the march. Cops followed us throughout, insisting that we needed to disperse. Comrades marching in back kept a safe buffer between protesters and cop cars. There was no sign of the Klan throughout. After the march was over, we learned that the Klan's "parade" consisted of driving a few cars down the street in Roxboro, NC. Essentially, their "victory parade" was a cowardly flight from confrontation. There was one incident in Pelham that needs to be addressed: during the march, a small number of protesters began yelling at an elderly woman in her car and taking her picture/filming her. The Triangle IWW embraces a broad range of tactics in protests and does not wish to "police" peoples' behavior during demonstrations. But we do not believe harassing local people for no reason is a useful tactic. One reason the counter-demonstration in Burlington, NC went so well is that local folks felt empowered to confront the white supremacist groups themselves. When we demonstrate in a community not our own, we should be empowering and organizing with local people, not intimidating them for no apparent reason. However, that was a small blip on an otherwise successful day. The Klan called for a victory parade, and we shut it down. The Klan ran away scared. Triangle IWW will continue to organize with various anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, as well as local people in the areas of North Carolina where the Klan is strong. Dec 3rd was a great start, and it's time to turn spectacle into organizing! One way to do this is to form a General Defense Committee, which the Triangle IWW is committed to help organize. Organize working people, destroy white supremacy, and destroy capitalism. Please be aware that there is an event planned for January 14th in Lexington, VA by various white supremacist groups to commemorate "Lee Jackson Day." Triangle IWW will be organizing with other anti-fascist comrades to do to these white supremacists what we did to the Klan: SHUT THEM DOWN. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 243330 bytes Desc: not available URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 16:31:10 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:31:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism Message-ID: <00fa01d341e5$2edeb5a0$8c9c20e0$@comcast.net> In conclusion, fascism has returned to the West, East, and South; and this return is naturally connected with the spread of the systemic crisis of generalized, financialized, and globalized monopoly capitalism. Actual or even potential recourse to the services of the fascist movement by the dominant centers of this hard-pressed system calls for the greatest vigilance on our part. This crisis is destined to grow worse and, consequently, the threat of resorting to fascist solutions will become a real danger. Monthly Review The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism by Samir Amin Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His books published by Monthly Review Press include The Liberal Virus, The World We Wish to See, The Law of Worldwide Value, and, most recently, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. This article was translated from the French by James Membrez. It is not by chance that the very title of this contribution links the return of fascism on the political scene with the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Fascism is not synonymous with an authoritarian police regime that rejects the uncertainties of parliamentary electoral democracy. Fascism is a particular political response to the challenges with which the management of capitalist society may be confronted in specific circumstances. Unity and Diversity of Fascism Political movements that can rightly be called fascist were in the forefront and exercised power in a number of European countries, particularly during the 1930s up to 1945. These included Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Germany’s Adolf Hitler, Spain’s Francisco Franco, Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar, France’s Philippe Pétain, Hungary’s Miklós Horthy, Romania’s Ion Antonescu, and Croatia’s Ante Pavelic. The diversity of societies that were the victims of fascism—both major developed capitalist societies and minor dominated capitalist societies, some connected with a victorious war, others the product of defeat—should prevent us from lumping them all together. I shall thus specify the different effects that this diversity of structures and conjunctures produced in these societies. Yet, beyond this diversity, all these fascist regimes had two characteristics in common: (1) In the circumstances, they were all willing to manage the government and society in such a way as not to call the fundamental principles of capitalism into question, specifically private capitalist property, including that of modern monopoly capitalism. That is why I call these different forms of fascism particular ways of managing capitalism and not political forms that challenge the latter’s legitimacy, even if “capitalism” or “plutocracies” were subject to long diatribes in the rhetoric of fascist speeches. The lie that hides the true nature of these speeches appears as soon as one examines the “alternative” proposed by these various forms of fascism, which are always silent concerning the main point—private capitalist property. It remains the case that the fascist choice is not the only response to the challenges confronting the political management of a capitalist society. It is only in certain conjunctures of violent and deep crisis that the fascist solution appears to be the best one for dominant capital, or sometimes even the only possible one. The analysis must, then, focus on these crises. (2) The fascist choice for managing a capitalist society in crisis is always based—by definition even—on the categorical rejection of “democracy.” Fascism always replaces the general principles on which the theories and practices of modern democracies are based—recognition of a diversity of opinions, recourse to electoral procedures to determine a majority, guarantee of the rights of the minority, etc.—with the opposed values of submission to the requirements of collective discipline and the authority of the supreme leader and his main agents. This reversal of values is then always accompanied by a return of backward-looking ideas, which are able to provide an apparent legitimacy to the procedures of submission that are implemented. The proclamation of the supposed necessity of returning to the (“medieval”) past, of submitting to the state religion or to some supposed characteristic of the “race” or the (ethnic) “nation” make up the panoply of ideological discourses deployed by the fascist powers. The diverse forms of fascism found in modern European history share these two characteristics and fall into one of the following four categories: (1) The fascism of the major “developed” capitalist powers that aspired to become dominant hegemonic powers in the world, or at least in the regional, capitalist system. Nazism is the model of this type of fascism. Germany became a major industrial power beginning in the 1870s and a competitor of the hegemonic powers of the era (Great Britain and, secondarily, France) and of the country that aspired to become hegemonic (the United States). After the 1918 defeat, it had to deal with the consequences of its failure to achieve its hegemonic aspirations. Hitler clearly formulated his plan: to establish over Europe, including Russia and maybe beyond, the hegemonic domination of “Germany,” i.e., the capitalism of the monopolies that had supported the rise of Nazism. He was disposed to accept a compromise with his major opponents: Europe and Russia would be given to him, China to Japan, the rest of Asia and Africa to Great Britain, and the Americas to the United States. His error was in thinking that such a compromise was possible: Great Britain and the United States did not accept it, while Japan, in contrast, supported it. Japanese fascism belongs to the same category. Since 1895, modern capitalist Japan aspired to impose its domination over all of East Asia. Here the slide was made “softly” from the “imperial” form of managing a rising national capitalism—based on apparently “liberal” institutions (an elected Diet), but in fact completely controlled by the Emperor and the aristocracy transformed by modernization—to a brutal form, managed directly by the military High Command. Nazi Germany made an alliance with imperial/fascist Japan, while Great Britain and the United States (after Pearl Harbor, in 1941) clashed with Tokyo, as did the resistance in China—the deficiencies of the Kuomintang being compensated for by the support of the Maoist Communists. (2) The fascism of second rank capitalist powers. Italy’s Mussolini (the inventor of fascism, including its name) is the prime example. Mussolinism was the response of the Italian right (the old aristocracy, new bourgeoisie, middle classes) to the crisis of the 1920s and the growing communist threat. But neither Italian capitalism nor its political instrument, Mussolini’s fascism, had the ambition to dominate Europe, let alone the world. Despite all the boasts of the Duce about reconstructing the Roman Empire (!), Mussolini understood that the stability of his system rested on his alliance—as a subaltern—either with Great Britain (master of the Mediterranean) or Nazi Germany. Hesitation between the two possible alliances continued right up to the eve of the Second World War. The fascism of Salazar and Franco belong to this same type. They were both dictators installed by the right and the Catholic Church in response to the dangers of republican liberals or socialist republicans. The two were never, for this reason, ostracized for their anti-democratic violence (under the pretext of anti-communism) by the major imperialist powers. Washington rehabilitated them after 1945 (Salazar was a founding member of NATO and Spain consented to U.S. military bases), followed by the European Community—guarantor by nature of the reactionary capitalist order. After the Carnation Revolution (1974) and the death of Franco (1980), these two systems joined the camp of the new low-intensity “democracies” of our era. (3) The fascism of defeated powers. These include France’s Vichy government, as well as Belgium’s Léon Degrelle and the “Flemish” pseudo-government supported by the Nazis. In France, the upper class chose “Hitler rather than the Popular Front” (see Annie Lacroix-Riz’s books on this subject). This type of fascism, connected with defeat and submission to “German Europe,” was forced to retreat into the background following the defeat of the Nazis. In France, it gave way to the Resistance Councils that, for a time, united Communists with other Resistance fighters (Charles de Gaulle in particular). Its further evolution had to wait (with the initiation of European construction and France’s joining the Marshall Plan and NATO, i.e., the willing submission to U.S. hegemony) for the conservative right and anti-communist, social-democratic right to break permanently with the radical left that came out of the anti-fascist and potentially anti-capitalist Resistance. (4) Fascism in the dependent societies of Eastern Europe. We move down several degrees more when we come to examine the capitalist societies of Eastern Europe (Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, and western Ukraine during the Polish era). We should here speak of backward and, consequently, dependent capitalism. In the interwar period, the reactionary ruling classes of these countries supported Nazi Germany. It is, nevertheless, necessary to examine on a case-by-case basis their political articulation with Hitler’s project. In Poland, the old hostility to Russian domination (Tsarist Russia), which became hostility to the communist Soviet Union, encouraged by the popularity of the Catholic Papacy, would normally have made this country into Germany’s vassal, on the Vichy model. But Hitler did not understand it that way: the Poles, like the Russians, Ukrainians, and Serbs, were people destined for extermination, along with Jews, the Roma, and several others. There was, then, no place for a Polish fascism allied with Berlin. Horthy’s Hungary and Antonescu’s Romania were, in contrast, treated as subaltern allies of Nazi Germany. Fascism in these two countries was itself the result of social crises specific to each of them: fear of “communism” after the Béla Kun period in Hungary and the national chauvinist mobilization against Hungarians and Ruthenians in Romania. In Yugoslavia, Hitler’s Germany (followed by Mussolini’s Italy) supported an “independent” Croatia, entrusted to the management of the anti-Serb Ustashi with the decisive support of the Catholic Church, while the Serbs were marked for extermination. The Russian Revolution had obviously changed the situation with regard to the prospects of working-class struggles and the response of the reactionary propertied classes, not only in the territory of the pre–1939 Soviet Union, but also in the lost territories—the Baltic states and Poland. Following the Treaty of Riga in 1921, Poland annexed the western parts of Belarus (Volhynia) and Ukraine (southern Galicia, which was previously an Austrian Crownland; and northern Galicia, which had been a province of the Tsarist Empire). In this whole region, two camps took form from 1917 (and even from 1905 with the first Russian Revolution): pro-socialist (which became pro-Bolshevik), popular in large parts of the peasantry (which aspired to a radical agrarian reform for their benefit) and in intellectual circles (Jews in particular); and anti-socialist (and consequently complaisant with regard to anti-democratic governments under fascist influence) in all the landowning classes. The reintegration of the Baltic states, Belarus, and western Ukraine into the Soviet Union in 1939 emphasized this contrast. The political map of the conflicts between “pro-fascists” and “anti-fascists” in this part of Eastern Europe was blurred, on the one hand, by the conflict between Polish chauvinism (which persisted in its project of “Polonizing” the annexed Belarussian and Ukrainian regions by settler colonies) and the victimized peoples; and, on the other hand, by the conflict between the Ukrainian “nationalists,” who were both anti-Polish and anti-Russian (because of anti-communism) and Hitler’s project, which envisaged no Ukrainian state as a subaltern ally, since its people were simply marked for extermination. I here refer the reader to Olha Ostriitchouk’s authoritative work Les Ukrainiens face à leur passé. 1 Ostriitchouk’s rigorous analysis of the contemporary history of this region (Austrian Galicia, Polish Ukraine, Little Russia, which became Soviet Ukraine) will provide the reader with an understanding of the issues at stake in the still ongoing conflicts as well as the place occupied by local fascism. The Western Right’s Complaisant View of Past and Present Fascism The right in European parliaments between the two world wars was always complaisant about fascism and even about the more repugnant Nazism. Churchill himself, regardless of his extreme “Britishness,” never hid his sympathy for Mussolini. U.S. presidents, and the establishment Democratic and Republican parties, only discovered belatedly the danger presented by Hitler’s Germany and, above all, imperial/fascist Japan. With all the cynicism characteristic of the U.S. establishment, Truman openly avowed what others thought quietly: allow the war to wear out its protagonists—Germany, Soviet Russia, and the defeated Europeans—and intervene as late as possible to reap the benefits. That is not at all the expression of a principled anti-fascist position. No hesitation was shown in the rehabilitation of Salazar and Franco in 1945. Furthermore, connivance with European fascism was a constant in the policy of the Catholic Church. It would not strain credibility to describe Pius XII as a collaborator with Mussolini and Hitler. Hitler’s anti-Semitism itself aroused opprobrium only much later, when it reached the ultimate stage of its murderous insanity. The emphasis on hate for “Judeo-Bolshevism” stirred up by Hitler’s speeches was common to many politicians. It was only after the defeat of Nazism that it was necessary to condemn anti-Semitism in principle. The task was made easier because the self-proclaimed heirs to the title of “victims of the Shoah” had become the Zionists of Israel, allies of Western imperialism against the Palestinians and the Arab people—who, however, had never been involved in the horrors of European anti-Semitism! Obviously, the collapse of the Nazis and Mussolini’s Italy obliged rightist political forces in Western Europe (west of the “curtain”) to distinguish themselves from those who—within their own groups—had been accomplices and allies of fascism. Yet, fascist movements were only forced to retreat into the background and hide behind the scenes, without really disappearing. In West Germany, in the name of “reconciliation,” the local government and its patrons (the United States, and secondarily Great Britain and France) left in place nearly all those who had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. In France, legal proceedings were initiated against the Resistance for “abusive executions for collaboration” when the Vichyists reappeared on the political scene with Antoine Pinay. In Italy, fascism became silent, but was still present in the ranks of Christian Democracy and the Catholic Church. In Spain, the “reconciliation” compromise imposed in 1980 by the European Community (which later became the European Union) purely and simply prohibited any reminder of Francoist crimes. The support of the socialist and social-democratic parties of Western and Central Europe for the anti-communist campaigns undertaken by the conservative right shares responsibility for the later return of fascism. These parties of the “moderate” left had, however, been authentically and resolutely anti-fascist. Yet all of that was forgotten. With the conversion of these parties to social liberalism, their unconditional support for European construction—systematically devised as a guarantee for the reactionary capitalist order—and their no less unconditional submission to U.S. hegemony (through NATO, among other means), a reactionary bloc combining the classic right and the social liberals has been consolidated; one that could, if necessary, accommodate the new extreme right. Subsequently, the rehabilitation of East European fascism was quickly undertaken beginning in 1990. All of the fascist movements of the countries concerned had been faithful allies or collaborators to varying degrees with Hitlerism. With the approaching defeat, a large number of their active leaders had been redeployed to the West and could, consequently, “surrender” to the U.S. armed forces. None of them were returned to Soviet, Yugoslav, or other governments in the new people’s democracies to be tried for their crimes (in violation of Allied agreements). They all found refuge in the United States and Canada. And they were all pampered by the authorities for their fierce anti-communism! In Les Ukrainiens face à leur passé, Ostriitchouk provides everything necessary to establish irrefutably the collusion between the objectives of U.S. policy (and behind it of Europe) and those of the local fascists of Eastern Europe (specifically, Ukraine). For example, “Professor” Dmytro Dontsov, up to his death (in 1975), published all his works in Canada, which are not only violently anti-communist (the term “Judeo-Bolshevism” is customary with him), but also even fundamentally anti-democratic. The governments of the so-called democratic states of the West supported, and even financed and organized, the “Orange Revolution” (i.e., the fascist counter-revolution) in Ukraine. And all that is continuing. Earlier, in Yugoslavia, Canada had also paved the way for the Croatian Ustashis. The clever way in which the “moderate” media (which cannot openly acknowledge that they support avowed fascists) hide their support for these fascists is simple: they substitute the term “nationalist” for fascist. Professor Dontsov is no longer a fascist, he is a Ukrainian “nationalist,” just like Marine Le Pen is no longer a fascist, but a nationalist (as Le Monde, for example, has written)! Are these authentic fascists really “nationalists,” simply because they say so? That is doubtful. Nationalists today deserve this label only if they call into question the power of the actually dominant forces in the contemporary world, i.e., that of the monopolies of the United States and Europe. These so-called “nationalists” are friends of Washington, Brussels, and NATO. Their “nationalism” amounts to chauvinistic hatred of largely innocent neighboring people who were never responsible for their misfortunes: for Ukrainians, it is Russians (and not the Tsar); for Croatians, it is the Serbs; for the new extreme right in France, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, and elsewhere, it is “immigrants.” The danger represented by the collusion between major political forces in the United States (Republicans and Democrats) and Europe (the parliamentary right and the social liberals), on one side, and the fascists of the East, on the other, should not be underestimated. Hillary Clinton has set herself up as leading spokeswoman of this collusion and pushes war hysteria to the limit. Even more than George W. Bush, if that is possible, she calls for preventive war with a vengeance (and not only for repetition of the Cold War) against Russia—with even more open intervention in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, among other places—against China, and against people in revolt in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Unfortunately, this headlong flight of the United States in response to its decline could find sufficient support to allow Hillary Clinton to become “the first woman president of the United States!” Let’s not forget what hides behind this false feminist. Undoubtedly, the fascist danger might still appear today to be no threat to the “democratic” order in the United States and Europe west of the old “Curtain.” The collusion between the classic parliamentary right and the social liberals makes it unnecessary for dominant capital to resort to the services of an extreme right that follows in the wake of the historical fascist movements. But then what should we conclude about the electoral successes of the extreme right over the last decade? Europeans are clearly also victims of the spread of generalized monopoly capitalism. 2 We can see why, then, when confronted with collusion between the right and the so-called socialist left, they take refuge in electoral abstention or in voting for the extreme right. The responsibility of the potentially radical left is, in this context, huge: if this left had the audacity to propose real advances beyond current capitalism, it would gain the credibility that it lacks. An audacious radical left is necessary to provide the coherence that the current piecemeal protest movements and defensive struggles still lack. The “movement” could, then, reverse the social balance of power in favor of the working classes and make progressive advances possible. The successes won by the popular movements in South America are proof of that. In the current state of things, the electoral successes of the extreme right stem from contemporary capitalism itself. These successes allow the media to throw together, with the same opprobrium, the “populists of the extreme right and those of the extreme left,” obscuring the fact that the former are pro-capitalist (as the term extreme right demonstrates) and thus possible allies for capital, while the latter are the only potentially dangerous opponents of capital’s system of power. We observe, mutatis mutandis, a similar conjuncture in the United States, although its extreme right is never called fascist. The McCarthyism of yesterday, just like the Tea Party fanatics and warmongers (e.g., Hillary Clinton) of today, openly defend “liberties”—understood as exclusively belonging to the owners and managers of monopoly capital—against “the government,” suspected of acceding to the demands of the system’s victims. One last observation about fascist movements: they seem unable to know when and how to stop making their demands. The cult of the leader and blind obedience, the acritical and supreme valorization of pseudo-ethnic or pseudo-religious mythological constructions that convey fanaticism, and the recruitment of militias for violent actions make fascism into a force that is difficult to control. Mistakes, even beyond irrational deviations from the viewpoint of the social interests served by the fascists, are inevitable. Hitler was a truly mentally ill person, yet he could force the big capitalists who had put him in power to follow him to the end of his madness and even gained the support of a very large portion of the population. Although that is only an extreme case, and Mussolini, Franco, Salazar, and Pétain were not mentally ill, a large number of their associates and henchmen did not hesitate to perpetrate criminal acts. Fascism in the Contemporary South The integration of Latin America into globalized capitalism in the nineteenth century was based on the exploitation of peasants reduced to the status of “peons” and their subjection to the savage practices of large landowners. The system of Porfiro Diaz in Mexico is a good example. The furtherance of this integration in the twentieth century produced the “modernization of poverty.” The rapid rural exodus, more pronounced and earlier in Latin America than in Asia and Africa, led to new forms of poverty in the contemporary urban favelas, which came to replace older forms of rural poverty. Concurrently, forms of political control of the masses were “modernized” by establishing dictatorships, abolishing electoral democracy, prohibiting parties and trade unions, and conferring on “modern” secret services all rights to arrest and torture through their intelligence techniques. Clearly, these forms of political management are visibly similar to those of fascism found in the countries of dependent capitalism in Eastern Europe. The dictatorships of twentieth-century Latin America served the local reactionary bloc (large landowners, comprador bourgeoisies, and sometimes middle classes that benefited from this type of lumpen development), but above all, they served dominant foreign capital, specifically that of the United States, which, for this reason, supported these dictatorships up to their reversal by the recent explosion of popular movements. The power of these movements and the social and democratic advances that they have imposed exclude—at least in the short term—the return of para-fascist dictatorships. But the future is uncertain: the conflict between the movement of the working classes and local and world capitalism has only begun. As with all types of fascism, the dictatorships of Latin America did not avoid mistakes, some of which were fatal to them. I am thinking, for example, of Leonardo Fortunato Galtieri, who went to war over the Malvinas Islands to capitalize on Argentine national sentiment for his benefit. Beginning in the 1980s, the lumpen development characteristic of the spread of generalized monopoly capitalism took over from the national populist systems of the Bandung era (1955–1980) in Asia and Africa. 3 This lumpen development also produced forms akin both to the modernization of poverty and modernization of repressive violence. The excesses of the post–Nasserist and post–Baathist systems in the Arab world provide good examples of this. We should not lump together the national populist regimes of the Bandung era and those of their successors, which jumped on the bandwagon of globalized neoliberalism, because they were both “non-democratic.” The Bandung regimes, despite their autocratic political practices, benefitted from some popular legitimacy both because of their actual achievements, which benefited the majority of workers, and their anti-imperialist positions. The dictatorships that followed lost this legitimacy as soon as they accepted subjection to the globalized neoliberal model and accompanying lumpen development. Popular and national authority, although not democratic, gave way to police violence as such, in service of the neoliberal, anti-popular, and anti-national project. The recent popular uprisings, beginning in 2011, have called into question the dictatorships. But the dictatorships have only been called into question. An alternative will only find the means to achieve stability if it succeeds in combining the three objectives around which the revolts have been mobilized: continuation of the democratization of society and politics, progressive social advances, and the affirmation of national sovereignty. We are still far from that. That is why there are multiple alternatives possible in the visible short term. Can there be a possible return to the national popular model of the Bandung era, maybe with a hint of democracy? Or a more pronounced crystallization of a democratic, popular, and national front? Or a plunge into a backward-looking illusion that, in this context, takes on the form of an “Islamization” of politics and society? In the conflict over—in much confusion—these three possible responses to the challenge, the Western powers (the United States and its subaltern European allies) have made their choice: they have given preferential support to the Muslim Brotherhood and/or other “Salafist” organizations of political Islam. The reason for that is simple and obvious: these reactionary political forces accept exercising their power within globalized neoliberalism (and thus abandoning any prospect for social justice and national independence). That is the sole objective pursued by the imperialist powers. Consequently, political Islam’s program belongs to the type of fascism found in dependent societies. In fact, it shares with all forms of fascism two fundamental characteristics: (1) the absence of a challenge to the essential aspects of the capitalist order (and in this context this amounts to not challenging the model of lumpen development connected to the spread of globalized neoliberal capitalism); and (2) the choice of anti-democratic, police-state forms of political management (such as the prohibition of parties and organizations, and forced Islamization of morals). The anti-democratic option of the imperialist powers (which gives the lie to the pro-democratic rhetoric found in the flood of propaganda to which we are subjected), then, accepts the possible “excesses” of the Islamic regimes in question. Like other types of fascism and for the same reasons, these excesses are inscribed in the “genes” of their modes of thought: unquestioned submission to leaders, fanatic valorization of adherence to the state religion, and the formation of shock forces used to impose submission. In fact, and this can be seen already, the “Islamist” program makes progress only in the context of a civil war (between, among others, Sunnis and Shias) and results in nothing other than permanent chaos. This type of Islamist power is, then, the guarantee that the societies in question will remain absolutely incapable of asserting themselves on the world scene. It is clear that a declining United States has given up on getting something better—a stable and submissive local government—in favor of this “second best.” Similar developments and choices are found outside of the Arab-Muslim world, such as Hindu India, for example. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which just won the elections in India, is a reactionary Hindu religious party that accepts the inclusion of its government into globalized neoliberalism. It is the guarantor that India, under its government, will retreat from its project to be an emerging power. Describing it as fascist, then, is not really straining credibility too much. In conclusion, fascism has returned to the West, East, and South; and this return is naturally connected with the spread of the systemic crisis of generalized, financialized, and globalized monopoly capitalism. Actual or even potential recourse to the services of the fascist movement by the dominant centers of this hard-pressed system calls for the greatest vigilance on our part. This crisis is destined to grow worse and, consequently, the threat of resorting to fascist solutions will become a real danger. Hillary Clinton’s support for Washington’s warmongering does not bode well for the immediate future. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 16:45:11 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:45:11 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] American Billionaires Created MILO Message-ID: <010701d341e7$24038e60$6c0aab20$@comcast.net> American Billionaires Created MILO By Jesse Singal Description: https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2017/10/06/06-milo-yiannopoulos .w710.h473.jpg Milo Yiannopoulos. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images There are many shocking details in Joe Bernstein's blockbuster BuzzFeed article about the inner workings of Breitbart - so many that it's hard to know where to start in describing it. With Milo Yiannopoulos's extremely cozy relationships with white-nationalist and neo-Nazi figures? With the revelation that ostensibly liberal journalists and tech figures were tipping Milo off? With the video of Milo singing "America the Beautiful" to a room of Nazi-saluting white nationalists? Ultimately, the juicy details are just flourishes on a bigger picture, one that's essential to anyone trying to understand (and check) the rise of the alt-right. That picture shows the aggressive, coordinated way in which conservative billionaires helped turn Milo Yiannopoulos, once a failed British tech editor mired in legal trouble for not paying his contributors, into MILO, a conservative star famous for his popular, gonzo - and sometimes violence-provoking - appearances at college campuses around the country. It's important to be clear here: Yiannopoulos does have legitimate, organic appeal. It would be impossible to build a platform like his if he wasn't charismatic or even, to some people, charming. There is a big audience for content designed to shock and provoke, particularly when it targets women, minorities, and liberals. If Yiannopoulos hadn't figured out how to speak the language of predominantly white American conservative anger and resentment, and to do so in a way that appeals to young people, none of us would have heard of him. Related Stories How Breitbart Is Milking the Milo Yiannopoulos Campus-Outrage Outrage Cycle Milo Yiannopoulos Just Got $12 Million to Troll More Liberals But Bernstein's article shows very clearly just how much help he has had along the way. He has been veritably showered in far-right money from Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the billionaires described by the Huffington Post as "the reclusive duo who propelled Trump into the White House," who are also major Breitbart investors. As Bernstein reports, Steve Bannon first introduced Yiannopoulos to the Mercers on their yacht at Cannes in 2016, where they were in town to promote Clinton Cash, a film Bannon and the Mercers were releasing through Glittering Steel, their production studio. After the meeting, Bannon began pushing Yiannopoulos to do more and more live shows - apparently with the enthusiastic support of the Mercers. Soon "Dan Fleuette, Bannon's coproducer at Glittering Steel and the man who acted for months as the go-between for Yiannopoulos and the Mercers . was enlisted to process and wrangle the legion of young assistants, managers, trainers, and other talent the Breitbart tech editor demanded be brought along for the ride." When Yiannopoulos expressed security concerns, Bannon told him they would be using the Mercers' private security detail. Thus began a relationship that would extend past Yiannopoulos's tenure at Breitbart, which ended after a moderate-conservative group resurfaced video of him appearing to condone pedophilia: After firing Yiannopoulos, [Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex] Marlow accompanied him to the Mercers' Palm Beach home to discuss a new venture: MILO INC. On February 27, not quite two weeks after the scandal erupted, Yiannopoulos received an email from a woman who described herself as "Robert Mercer's accountant." "We will be sending a wire payment today," she wrote. Later that day, in an email to the accountant and Robert Mercer, Yiannopoulos personally thanked his patron. And as Yiannopoulos prepared to publish his book, he stayed close enough to Rebekah Mercer to ask her by text for a recommendation when he needed a periodontist in New York. That was February. In April, Yiannopoulos claimed to Vanity Fair that he had been given $12 million - he wanted to protect the identity of the donor - to start a new venture geared at "making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, and other professional victims a living hell." Which more or less brings us to today. Yiannopoulos continues to be a loud, well-funded traveling outrage machine - one who, thanks to his secretive benefactors, is able to charge student groups zero dollars to tell his young, adoring audiences that they are being screwed over by a small cabal of wealthy, powerful elitists who don't care about them. As this circus has raged on, of course, the farthest edges of the far-right have benefited greatly. The money that flows to Yiannopoulos benefits them in an indirect but important way. As the anti-racist group Hope Not Hate explained in a recent report and undercover investigation, the popularity of what the group calls "alt-light" figures like Yiannopoulos - "light" because they usually shy from the sorts of explicitly racist arguments made by the Richard Spencers and Jared Taylors of the world, with the exception of their rhetoric on Islam (seen as an acceptable punching bag, even for moderate conservatives) - have shifted the boundaries of the conversation, acting as a gateway drug to more extreme and explicit forms of political hate. After all, it's only natural that among the subset of young people who hear Yiannopoulos (or Mike Cernovich, or Paul Joseph Watson, or .) rant about "globalists" and migrants and liberals and Muslims over and over and over again, some of them are going to seek out harder fare. Just a few years ago, there simply wasn't much of a youthful reactionary movement, online or offline. That's changing, and it's in part because of, well, a small cabal of secretive conservative funders. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 67229 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mickalideh at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 20:07:13 2017 From: mickalideh at gmail.com (Harry Mickalide) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:07:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] a really good article Message-ID: expaining the apathy of the USA public to their country's perpetual war-making. These are good starting points on building an anti-war platform and suggest that we push the narrative about what we COULD spend money on if we cut the war budget https://www.thenation.com/article/8-reasons-americans-cant-shake-their-indifference-to-war/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 20:12:49 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:12:49 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] a really good article In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It’s not the case that the US can’t spend money on worthwhile things because the money’s been spent on war. As the late economist J. K. Galbraith put it, no one turns down a check signed by the US government. > On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:07 PM, Harry Mickalide via Peace-discuss wrote: > > expaining the apathy of the USA public to their country's perpetual war-making. > > These are good starting points on building an anti-war platform and suggest that we push the narrative about what we COULD spend money on if we cut the war budget > > https://www.thenation.com/article/8-reasons-americans-cant-shake-their-indifference-to-war/ > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mickalideh at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 20:22:12 2017 From: mickalideh at gmail.com (Harry Mickalide) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:22:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] a really good article In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Technically true, completely pedantic, and willfully ignorant of the spirit of the point: top form Carl On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 3:12 PM, C G Estabrook wrote: > It’s not the case that the US can’t spend money on worthwhile things > because the money’s been spent on war. > > As the late economist J. K. Galbraith put it, no one turns down a check > signed by the US government. > > > On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:07 PM, Harry Mickalide via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > expaining the apathy of the USA public to their country's perpetual > war-making. > > These are good starting points on building an anti-war platform and > suggest that we push the narrative about what we COULD spend money on if we > cut the war budget > > https://www.thenation.com/article/8-reasons-americans- > cant-shake-their-indifference-to-war/ > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mickalideh at gmail.com Tue Oct 10 20:38:16 2017 From: mickalideh at gmail.com (Harry Mickalide) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:38:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] a really good article In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In light of your point we could frame it like this: "How much would it cost to socialize health care, remake our energy grid into renewable energy, and feed every American suffering from hunger? It is estimated at X dollars. Now we could either increase the tax rate by 15% OR cut the military budget by 10%." I made the numbers up but you get the idea. On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 3:22 PM, Harry Mickalide wrote: > Technically true, completely pedantic, and willfully ignorant of the > spirit of the point: top form Carl > > On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 3:12 PM, C G Estabrook > wrote: > >> It’s not the case that the US can’t spend money on worthwhile things >> because the money’s been spent on war. >> >> As the late economist J. K. Galbraith put it, no one turns down a check >> signed by the US government. >> >> >> On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:07 PM, Harry Mickalide via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> >> expaining the apathy of the USA public to their country's perpetual >> war-making. >> >> These are good starting points on building an anti-war platform and >> suggest that we push the narrative about what we COULD spend money on if we >> cut the war budget >> >> https://www.thenation.com/article/8-reasons-americans-cant- >> shake-their-indifference-to-war/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Tue Oct 10 21:03:25 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:03:25 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> I was surprised by Bennis following statement: "Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable.” There is much wrong with this statement: • N. Korea, it seems evident, cares less about "Washington’s continued violation of the NPT" than about being attacked by the U.S. if it has no effective deterrent. • "Kim Jong-Un’s unacceptable threats”: They are threats to retaliate, not to start a war by attacking the U.S.. He’s not stupid. He may be undiplomatic, but that is somewhat understandable given the rantings and threats of Trump. Is Phyllis Bennis losing it—her analytic abilities? —mkb On Oct 9, 2017, at 10:58 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: I expect better from Phyllis Bennis than this collection of - at best - obvious truths and bromides. It shows the malign effect of a generation of identity politics. US presidents have killed 30 million people in 40 countries since WWII, but not because of racism. But "Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War”! What nonsense (repeated by Prashad). US foreign policy - and war policy - is remarkably consistent over more than a century. (So long as we don’t think it’s primarily a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”! That’s true only if liberty means the liberty of the 1% to kill people and plunder the planet.) And this is not just a matter today for a soi-disant, omphalos-obsessed 'Left.’ (The most anti-war senior politician in the US is Ron Paul; consistent anti-war positions have been enunciated by paleoconservatives.) Against the rather pusillanimous suggestions of the following articles, AWARE like many other anti-war groups across the country has called for the US to ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations (notably Russia, China, Iran and Syria); ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere); stop the drone attacks, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”; and end the war provocations against Russia and China; ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 800 US military bases ringing Eurasia (Russia has 15 bases outside its territory; China has one); bring all US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; ~ (4) stop US support of human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament; revoke the last administration’s trillion dollar plan to ‘update’ US nuclear weapons. When the ‘Left’ works seriously and effectively for these goals, they might be taken seriously again. (And BTW, the problem is US war making - not Trump.) —CGE On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue ________________________________ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 10 23:44:01 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 23:44:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh vs. Jailing a Grandma for Allegedly Protesting Drone Killings -- Interviews Available Message-ID: “…particularly to the drone assassinations, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - which have killed more than 5,000 people, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of children.” Chomsky Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Institute for Public Accuracy . [mailto:accuracy at accuracy.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 3:19 PM To: francis.a.boyle at gmail.com Subject: Jailing a Grandma for Allegedly Protesting Drone Killings -- Interviews Available [http://app.meltwaterpress.com/mpress/statistic.html?accessCode=ff20e8fa5726537b1c19e597ec9dba0a6d9b65d4&distributionId=551511&contact=francis.a.boyle at gmail.com] Jailing a Grandma for Allegedly Protesting Drone Killings -- Interviews Available Last month, the New York Times reported: "Trump Poised to Drop Some Limits on Drone Strikes and Commando Raids." MARY ANNE GRADY FLORES, (607) 280-8797, gradyflores08 at gmail.com ED KINANE, (315) 478-4571, edkinane340 at gmail.com Mary Anne Grady Flores is a grandmother who is part of the Ithaca Catholic Worker community. She has worked with UpstateDroneAction.org, which has organized civil resistance outside Hancock Air Force Base in upstate New York to protest the use of killer drones. The group states that her appeals case will be heard Wednesday. Depending on the verdict, Grady Flores, who has already served 56 days, may be forced to complete another 65 days. Her hearing is scheduled 2:15 to 2:40 p.m. ET -- see New York State Court of Appeals live stream. At 3:15 a press conference with Mary Anne’s attorney Lance Salisbury, Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Ed Kinane, and others will be held in the park across from the court, posted live on Grady Flores' Facebook page. See pieces on Truthout by Kinane, including "Weaponized Drones And The Phony 'War On Terror.'" Upstate Drone Action states: "On Feb. 13th, 2013, Ash Wednesday, Ithaca Catholic Worker Grady Flores took pictures of Catholic protesters from the road, unknowingly crossing what Hancock claims to be its boundary, 'the double yellow line in the middle of the road.' Where she stood in the road violated her 'order of protection' (OOP) which was given to protesters by a local DeWitt Court judge on behalf of Colonel Earl Evans to keep protesters away from the base. In an appeal, the OOP of another drone protester had been ruled invalid by Onondaga County Judge Brunetti because the OOP didn’t delineate how close or far people had to be from the base. Judge David S. Gideon sentenced Grady Flores to a year in jail to stop others protesters. However, many returned, despite having an OOP. "Grady Flores' appeal contends that an order of protection cannot be used on behalf of property. Normally OOPs are given on behalf of a victim or a witness. The use of a form of protective order developed to address domestic violence to deter protesters and chill speech raises important First Amendment issues, in which the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union has taken an interest, filing a friend of the court brief by NYC attorney Jonathan Wallace. "In Grady Flores’ 2014 sentencing she said, 'Who is the real victim here? The commander of a military base whose drones kill innocent people halfway around the world, or those innocent people who are the real ones in need of protection from the terror of U.S. drone attacks?' According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, approximately 10,000 people have been killed by drones since 2001. Oct. 6 and 7 were the 16th anniversary of both the beginning of the Afghan war and the first U.S. drone strike, with drone attacks worsening during the Trump administration. More U.S. bombs and missiles were dropped on Afghanistan in September than in any other month for nearly seven years, higher than any month since November 2010. "Drone warfare is a profitable enterprise for numerous military contractors, making fortunes off of the murder of defenseless people around the world. Hancock is the largest training and maintenance center for the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone program. Extra judicial killings are executed by Air Force crews sitting in front of computer screens in the Syracuse base, killing civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In a five-month period in 2015, up to 90 percent of drone assassination victims were civilians. The base shares facilities with civilian Syracuse International Airport. Hancock Air National Guard Base has been the site of protests of the U.S. killer drone program since 2010, resulting in over 200 arrests and numerous trials, appeals and incarcerations -- some ending in acquittal." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 421-6858, David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 October 10, 2017 Institute for Public Accuracy 980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * accuracy.org * ipa at accuracy.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 10 23:44:01 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 23:44:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh vs. Jailing a Grandma for Allegedly Protesting Drone Killings -- Interviews Available Message-ID: “…particularly to the drone assassinations, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - which have killed more than 5,000 people, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of children.” Chomsky Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Institute for Public Accuracy . [mailto:accuracy at accuracy.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 3:19 PM To: francis.a.boyle at gmail.com Subject: Jailing a Grandma for Allegedly Protesting Drone Killings -- Interviews Available [http://app.meltwaterpress.com/mpress/statistic.html?accessCode=ff20e8fa5726537b1c19e597ec9dba0a6d9b65d4&distributionId=551511&contact=francis.a.boyle at gmail.com] Jailing a Grandma for Allegedly Protesting Drone Killings -- Interviews Available Last month, the New York Times reported: "Trump Poised to Drop Some Limits on Drone Strikes and Commando Raids." MARY ANNE GRADY FLORES, (607) 280-8797, gradyflores08 at gmail.com ED KINANE, (315) 478-4571, edkinane340 at gmail.com Mary Anne Grady Flores is a grandmother who is part of the Ithaca Catholic Worker community. She has worked with UpstateDroneAction.org, which has organized civil resistance outside Hancock Air Force Base in upstate New York to protest the use of killer drones. The group states that her appeals case will be heard Wednesday. Depending on the verdict, Grady Flores, who has already served 56 days, may be forced to complete another 65 days. Her hearing is scheduled 2:15 to 2:40 p.m. ET -- see New York State Court of Appeals live stream. At 3:15 a press conference with Mary Anne’s attorney Lance Salisbury, Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Ed Kinane, and others will be held in the park across from the court, posted live on Grady Flores' Facebook page. See pieces on Truthout by Kinane, including "Weaponized Drones And The Phony 'War On Terror.'" Upstate Drone Action states: "On Feb. 13th, 2013, Ash Wednesday, Ithaca Catholic Worker Grady Flores took pictures of Catholic protesters from the road, unknowingly crossing what Hancock claims to be its boundary, 'the double yellow line in the middle of the road.' Where she stood in the road violated her 'order of protection' (OOP) which was given to protesters by a local DeWitt Court judge on behalf of Colonel Earl Evans to keep protesters away from the base. In an appeal, the OOP of another drone protester had been ruled invalid by Onondaga County Judge Brunetti because the OOP didn’t delineate how close or far people had to be from the base. Judge David S. Gideon sentenced Grady Flores to a year in jail to stop others protesters. However, many returned, despite having an OOP. "Grady Flores' appeal contends that an order of protection cannot be used on behalf of property. Normally OOPs are given on behalf of a victim or a witness. The use of a form of protective order developed to address domestic violence to deter protesters and chill speech raises important First Amendment issues, in which the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union has taken an interest, filing a friend of the court brief by NYC attorney Jonathan Wallace. "In Grady Flores’ 2014 sentencing she said, 'Who is the real victim here? The commander of a military base whose drones kill innocent people halfway around the world, or those innocent people who are the real ones in need of protection from the terror of U.S. drone attacks?' According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, approximately 10,000 people have been killed by drones since 2001. Oct. 6 and 7 were the 16th anniversary of both the beginning of the Afghan war and the first U.S. drone strike, with drone attacks worsening during the Trump administration. More U.S. bombs and missiles were dropped on Afghanistan in September than in any other month for nearly seven years, higher than any month since November 2010. "Drone warfare is a profitable enterprise for numerous military contractors, making fortunes off of the murder of defenseless people around the world. Hancock is the largest training and maintenance center for the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone program. Extra judicial killings are executed by Air Force crews sitting in front of computer screens in the Syracuse base, killing civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In a five-month period in 2015, up to 90 percent of drone assassination victims were civilians. The base shares facilities with civilian Syracuse International Airport. Hancock Air National Guard Base has been the site of protests of the U.S. killer drone program since 2010, resulting in over 200 arrests and numerous trials, appeals and incarcerations -- some ending in acquittal." For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 421-6858, David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 October 10, 2017 Institute for Public Accuracy 980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * accuracy.org * ipa at accuracy.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 10 23:45:26 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 23:45:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> Message-ID: I had a problem with many things Bennis said, especially that to which you refer. This is my list I wrote this morning, but didn’t send. I put in bold the statements that irritated. "During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt” Victories? A successful organization of a mass movement maybe, though it was unknown in the rest of the world, but victorious? Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. This is the most egregious statement given what we did to N. Korea. Promotion of UFPJ, where most of what I see is “criticism of Assad," not US intervention and support for ISIS On Oct 10, 2017, at 14:03, Brussel, Morton K > wrote: I was surprised by Bennis following statement: "Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable.” There is much wrong with this statement: • N. Korea, it seems evident, cares less about "Washington’s continued violation of the NPT" than about being attacked by the U.S. if it has no effective deterrent. • "Kim Jong-Un’s unacceptable threats”: They are threats to retaliate, not to start a war by attacking the U.S.. He’s not stupid. He may be undiplomatic, but that is somewhat understandable given the rantings and threats of Trump. Is Phyllis Bennis losing it—her analytic abilities? —mkb On Oct 9, 2017, at 10:58 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: I expect better from Phyllis Bennis than this collection of - at best - obvious truths and bromides. It shows the malign effect of a generation of identity politics. US presidents have killed 30 million people in 40 countries since WWII, but not because of racism. But "Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War”! What nonsense (repeated by Prashad). US foreign policy - and war policy - is remarkably consistent over more than a century. (So long as we don’t think it’s primarily a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”! That’s true only if liberty means the liberty of the 1% to kill people and plunder the planet.) And this is not just a matter today for a soi-disant, omphalos-obsessed 'Left.’ (The most anti-war senior politician in the US is Ron Paul; consistent anti-war positions have been enunciated by paleoconservatives.) Against the rather pusillanimous suggestions of the following articles, AWARE like many other anti-war groups across the country has called for the US to ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations (notably Russia, China, Iran and Syria); ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere); stop the drone attacks, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”; and end the war provocations against Russia and China; ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 800 US military bases ringing Eurasia (Russia has 15 bases outside its territory; China has one); bring all US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; ~ (4) stop US support of human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament; revoke the last administration’s trillion dollar plan to ‘update’ US nuclear weapons. When the ‘Left’ works seriously and effectively for these goals, they might be taken seriously again. (And BTW, the problem is US war making - not Trump.) —CGE On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue ________________________________ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 11 00:11:18 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:11:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <2CC77C6E-A90D-4E6A-8148-017DF15046D3@gmail.com> "We could simply accept North Korea’s offer to do what we are demanding. China and North Korea have already proposed that North Korea freeze its nuclear and missile programs. The proposal, though, was rejected at once by [the Trump administration], just as it had been two years earlier [by the Obama administration], because it includes a quid pro quo: It calls on the United States to halt its threatening military exercises on North Korea’s borders, including simulated nuclear-bombing attacks by B-52s." [Noam Chomsky] But both Trump and Obama preferred to have the excuse to harass the DPRK and the PRC - whose economic development is seen by the US elite as a threat to American hegemony - and profits. —CGE > On Oct 10, 2017, at 4:03 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: > > I was surprised by Bennis following statement: > > "Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable.” > > There is much wrong with this statement: > • N. Korea, it seems evident, cares less about "Washington’s continued violation of the NPT" than about being attacked by the U.S. if it has no effective deterrent. > • "Kim Jong-Un’s unacceptable threats”: They are threats to retaliate, not to start a war by attacking the U.S.. He’s not stupid. He may be undiplomatic, but that is somewhat understandable given the rantings and threats of Trump. > > Is Phyllis Bennis losing it—her analytic abilities? > > —mkb > >> On Oct 9, 2017, at 10:58 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> I expect better from Phyllis Bennis than this collection of - at best - obvious truths and bromides. >> >> It shows the malign effect of a generation of identity politics. >> >> US presidents have killed 30 million people in 40 countries since WWII, but not because of racism. >> >> But "Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War”! What nonsense (repeated by Prashad). US foreign policy - and war policy - is remarkably consistent over more than a century. (So long as we don’t think it’s primarily a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”! That’s true only if liberty means the liberty of the 1% to kill people and plunder the planet.) >> >> And this is not just a matter today for a soi-disant, omphalos-obsessed 'Left.’ (The most anti-war senior politician in the US is Ron Paul; consistent anti-war positions have been enunciated by paleoconservatives.) >> >> Against the rather pusillanimous suggestions of the following articles, AWARE like many other anti-war groups across the country has called for the US to >> >> ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations (notably Russia, China, Iran and Syria); >> ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere); stop the drone attacks, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”; and end the war provocations against Russia and China; >> ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 800 US military bases ringing Eurasia (Russia has 15 bases outside its territory; China has one); bring all US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; >> ~ (4) stop US support of human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and >> ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament; revoke the last administration’s trillion dollar plan to ‘update’ US nuclear weapons. >> >> When the ‘Left’ works seriously and effectively for these goals, they might be taken seriously again. (And BTW, the problem is US war making - not Trump.) >> >> —CGE >> >>> On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. >>> >>> One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. >>> >>> Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. >>> >>> At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. >>> >>> >>>> On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? >>>> A discussion of the future of the peace movement. >>>> October 5, 2017 | October Issue >>>> Phyllis Bennis >>>> Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice >>>> Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. >>>> Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint >>>> When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. >>>> But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. >>>> Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. >>>> An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. >>>> During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. >>>> When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. >>>> The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. >>>> This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. >>>> Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. >>>> Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. >>>> Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. >>>> Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. >>>> To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. >>>> We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. >>>> Vijay Prashad >>>> We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists >>>> An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. >>>> Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint >>>> Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. >>>> As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. >>>> We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. >>>> If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. >>>> But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: >>>> • Reduction of the military budget. >>>> • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. >>>> • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. >>>> • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. >>>> • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. >>>> • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. >>>> Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. >>>> Ali Issa >>>> The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World >>>> We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. >>>> Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint >>>> Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? >>>> Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. >>>> But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. >>>> Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. >>>> Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? >>>> These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. >>>> Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? >>>> From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 00:25:52 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 00:25:52 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] a really good article In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Harry David Johnson, and Mort Brussel covered this topic at the “Cost of War Panel” a couple months ago. Both prepared presentations of this nature as well for our Teach In, unfortunately we ran out of time and neither had a chance to speak. They both have published their previous presentations in the Public I Mort discussed it on AWARE a couple weeks ago, and when its available I will upload. I’m sure I speak for others when I say building an anti-war platform using your suggested narrative of “what we could be spending money on if we cut the war budget,” is a good idea, and would be very welcome. On Oct 10, 2017, at 13:07, Harry Mickalide via Peace-discuss > wrote: expaining the apathy of the USA public to their country's perpetual war-making. These are good starting points on building an anti-war platform and suggest that we push the narrative about what we COULD spend money on if we cut the war budget https://www.thenation.com/article/8-reasons-americans-cant-shake-their-indifference-to-war/ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 00:39:03 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:39:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Krugman, "Virginia is for Haters" In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <3665D5F3-75ED-4907-A054-AAF9576342E5@illinois.edu> [In ambiguous defense of the home of my youth.] I’ve never been a great fan of Krugman’s, but he used to be the source of reliably liberal (if boring) opinions. But he’s been driven nuts in the last year, like some other establishment pundits (e.g., Robert Reich), by the defeat of the neoliberal champions (Obama/Clinton). He asks a good question: "Why is America the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee essential health care for all? ... Why do we have much higher poverty than our economic peers … We are uniquely unwilling to take care of our fellow citizens.” But his answer is propagandistic and wrong: “...behind that political difference lies one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery.” No; it’s the legacy of capitalism. It comes from ‘slavery' only in the sense that the Civil War was the substitution of one method of exploiting labor (wage slavery) for another (chattel slavery). In the post-bellum US, the Southern states (including Virginia) were subjected to Northern capitalism as internal, largely agricultural, colonies - generally exempt from the subsequent social progress of the industrial north. Krugman follows the mythology of the Clinton campaign - that that splendid example of neoliberalism was defeated by racism. It’s nonsense. She was defeated by war and immiseration: . In order to avoid serious criticism of the our capitalist order, liberals like Krugman are desperate to see Trump’s victory and subsequent politics as fundamentally a matter of race relations. It’s not: it’s a matter of class relations. It’s a given among such people that "political difference” comes from "one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery” - our political and historical mythology agree. But serious US historians know better: "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the United States as primarily a system of race relations—as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’.7 He does not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating Africans would go to the trouble and expense of transporting them across the ocean for that purpose, when they could have achieved the same end so much more simply by leaving the Africans in Africa. No one dreams of analysing the struggle of the English against the Irish as a problem in race relations, even though the rationale that the English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’ Irish later served nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and indigenous American Indians.8 Nor does anyone dream of analysing serfdom in Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even though the Russian nobility invented fictions of their innate, natural superiority over the serfs as preposterous as any devised by American racists.” —Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” NLR I/181, May-June 1990 Krugman and his ilk are desperate to have us talk about race relations - in Virginia and elsewhere - and not look at class relations, after 40 years of increasing (and accelerating) inequality - the real reason Trump was elected, and the continuing chasm in US society - which the government, working for the 1%, covers over with war and rumors of war. —CGE From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 02:23:45 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:23:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Prairiegreens] Krugman, "Virginia is for Haters" In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <3665D5F3-75ED-4907-A054-AAF9576342E5@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Race was “a part of slavery” as Barbara Fields explains (cf. Ireland and Russia). Wage slavery is not the same as chattel slavery; e.g., antebellum New Orleanians would not risk the lives of valuable slaves for the dangerous job of draining the pestilential swamps around New Orleans: they hired cheap and easily replaceable Irishmen from New York. One distinguishing feature of the Confederacy was its explicit intention to defend the its economic and social order from the attack by the North, spear-headed by the Republican party: “...this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free ... it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." The attempt since the 1970s of US liberals to ignore issues of exploitation (wages in the US have been flat since 1973) by strenuously emphasizing issues of discrimination is increasingly threadbare - as Clinton’s defeat shows. —CGE > On Oct 10, 2017, at 8:37 PM, John Randolph wrote: > > Since it seems to be impossible to removed from this list, I think as a historian I should note that Mr. Estabrook's opinions that race was not a part of slavery is not shared by historians, that 'wage slavery' is not at all the same as chattel slavery, and that indeed one distinguishing feature of the confederacy was its explicit intention to found a racial order. Reductivist theories of capitalism impoverish our history when they exclude race. > > > On 10/10/17 7:39 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: >> >> >> [In ambiguous defense of the home of my youth.] >> >> I’ve never been a great fan of Krugman’s, but he used to be the source of reliably liberal (if boring) opinions. >> But he’s been driven nuts in the last year, like some other establishment pundits (e.g., Robert Reich), by the defeat of the neoliberal champions (Obama/Clinton). >> >> He asks a good question: "Why is America the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee essential health care for all? ... Why do we have much higher poverty than our economic peers … We are uniquely unwilling to take care of our fellow citizens.” But his answer is propagandistic and wrong: “...behind that political difference lies one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery.” >> >> No; it’s the legacy of capitalism. It comes from ‘slavery' only in the sense that the Civil War was the substitution of one method of exploiting labor (wage slavery) for another (chattel slavery). In the post-bellum US, the Southern states (including Virginia) were subjected to Northern capitalism as internal, largely agricultural, colonies - generally exempt from the subsequent social progress of the industrial north. >> >> Krugman follows the mythology of the Clinton campaign - that that splendid example of neoliberalism was defeated by racism. It’s nonsense. She was defeated by war and immiseration: . >> >> In order to avoid serious criticism of the our capitalist order, liberals like Krugman are desperate to see Trump’s victory and subsequent politics as fundamentally a matter of race relations. It’s not: it’s a matter of class relations. >> >> It’s a given among such people that "political difference” comes from "one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery” - our political and historical mythology agree. But serious US historians know better: >> >> "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the >> United States as primarily a system of race relations—as though the >> chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy >> rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One >> historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’.7 >> He does not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating >> Africans would go to the trouble and expense of transporting >> them across the ocean for that purpose, when they could have achieved >> the same end so much more simply by leaving the Africans in Africa. >> No one dreams of analysing the struggle of the English against the >> Irish as a problem in race relations, even though the rationale that the >> English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’ Irish later served >> nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and >> indigenous American Indians.8 Nor does anyone dream of analysing >> serfdom in Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even >> though the Russian nobility invented fictions of their innate, natural >> superiority over the serfs as preposterous as any devised by American >> racists.” >> —Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the >> United States of America,” NLR I/181, May-June 1990 >> >> Krugman and his ilk are desperate to have us talk about race relations - in Virginia and elsewhere - and not look at class relations, after 40 years of increasing (and accelerating) inequality - the real reason Trump was elected, and the continuing chasm in US society - which the government, working for the 1%, covers over with war and rumors of war. >> >> —CGE >> From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 02:33:43 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 02:33:43 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FBI: Targets Black Activists Message-ID: While this is hardly new, it is quite disturbing, when the details are revealed, by Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=20177#.Wd1_8avgEDc.facebook -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 12:52:49 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 12:52:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Focus war on nations in Africa Message-ID: This is a statement from Foreign Policy posted by Carl Estabrook this morning. "...the acting head of U.S. Army Africa [SIC] says that “approximately 80 percent of our theater security cooperation activities are going to be focused in Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon area for next year.” [REMEMBER CONGRESS' DECLARATION OF WAR THAT AUTHORIZED THIS?] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 12:58:21 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 12:58:21 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Focus war on nations in Africa In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Clearly violation of the War Powers Resolution of 1973—designed to prevent another Vietnam. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 7:53 AM To: Peace-discuss List ; peace Subject: [Peace] Focus war on nations in Africa This is a statement from Foreign Policy posted by Carl Estabrook this morning. "...the acting head of U.S. Army Africa [SIC] says that “approximately 80 percent of our theater security cooperation activities are going to be focused in Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon area for next year.” [REMEMBER CONGRESS' DECLARATION OF WAR THAT AUTHORIZED THIS?] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Wed Oct 11 16:29:37 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 16:29:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Goodman/Assange References: <741031672.5552382.1507739377754.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <741031672.5552382.1507739377754@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/10/julian_assange_accusations_of_wikileaks_trump A testy dynamic  between Amy Goodman and Julian Assange--no longer BFFs due to sexual assault charges against Assange, etc., (although Goodman will not simply as Assange what happened or did not happen in Sweden), as well as the credibility Goodman gives to Russiagate charges. DG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Wed Oct 11 18:25:01 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 13:25:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <006c01d342be$40ac9cf0$c205d6d0$@comcast.net> Karen, I don’t see this as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. But instead a VERY accurate analysis and plans to make the war more relevant to more Americans. Isn’t that what we have talked about ? I know that is why I wrote my recent article “ The Hidden Costs of War “, and that article only touched upon money issues, not other issues like – loss of civil liberties / right to privacy, as well as police militarization and the subsequent murders by police of unarmed citizens. Or do you lump that under the category of “ identity politics “ ??? None of the authors said ““The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” It is all interconnected and emphasis needs to be on how to show that these imperialist wars of U.S. 1% corporate aggression indirectly and directly effects Americans, ESPECIALLY Working class Americans. Phyllis Bennis To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? You are correct that a connection to capitalism should be shown, but that would need an entirely separate article in my opinion. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 9:23 PM To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue _____ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUpon Print When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 19:16:17 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:16:17 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: <006c01d342be$40ac9cf0$c205d6d0$@comcast.net> References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <006c01d342be$40ac9cf0$c205d6d0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Yes David, you did just that. You wrote on the costs of war, focusing on the loss of health services, loss of infrastructure which if we dealt with would create jobs, alternative energy creates jobs, loss of funding for education for all, not just the wealthy, loss of housing for many, etc., etc. due to military spending. Making “money” issues more relevant to Americans is what we talked about, and planned. First with the Costs of War Panel, and then with the Anti-War Teach In. I hope someone picks up where we left off, as Harry has suggested and continues…… Did I accuse you of IP? No, David I did not. I didn’t accuse you of anything in relation to these articles. I just don’t accept what the 3 authors posted as “hopeful,” especially Phillis Bennis whose analysis was clearly off. Is she like so many others now so impoverished by our system of capitalism and squeezing members of society, that she is afraid to offend power? I agreed totally with the article you provided by Andrew Bacevich, though I think many Americans are really "just too busy surviving” to involve themselves in the anti-war movement. Though with Trump in power, we now, when demonstrating against war, get a lot of positive response, much more than ever before. Trumps provocations against N. Korea have a lot of people I communicate with frightened of NK. I do have to explain that the fear, and solutions are on the part of our own government, something Bennis failed to do. On Oct 11, 2017, at 11:25, David Johnson > wrote: Karen, I don’t see this as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. But instead a VERY accurate analysis and plans to make the war more relevant to more Americans. Isn’t that what we have talked about ? I know that is why I wrote my recent article “ The Hidden Costs of War “, and that article only touched upon money issues, not other issues like – loss of civil liberties / right to privacy, as well as police militarization and the subsequent murders by police of unarmed citizens. Or do you lump that under the category of “ identity politics “ ??? None of the authors said ““The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” It is all interconnected and emphasis needs to be on how to show that these imperialist wars of U.S. 1% corporate aggression indirectly and directly effects Americans, ESPECIALLY Working class Americans. Phyllis Bennis To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? You are correct that a connection to capitalism should be shown, but that would need an entirely separate article in my opinion. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 9:23 PM To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue ________________________________ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 19:35:27 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 19:35:27 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Goodman/Assange In-Reply-To: <741031672.5552382.1507739377754@mail.yahoo.com> References: <741031672.5552382.1507739377754.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <741031672.5552382.1507739377754@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I never watch DN anymore, given she is so little different from mainstream media. She was very unfair to him in respect to coverage of Roger Stone etc. In relation to her interview with Assange on Catalonia, as he supports independence, I felt he was a bit naive, much to my surprise, given he’s a very bright guy. He suggested mainstream media coverage and support for Catalonian independence as being a result of Catalonia not possessing oil, thus journalists can be free to say as they like. It’s not all about the oil, its about total control of the world, its about Europe and small vulnerable nations relations to Nato, and the EU. When MS media most especially NYT or Washington Post covers anything positively, one must be suspect. However, he made one very important point: “the people of Catalonia being beaten and seriously oppressed by the Spanish government, and not one scene of any of the people fighting back” is important. They were utilizing the tactics of “non-violence” which brings about world support for their cause, I don’t support independence, but I certainly support the Catalonia people. On Oct 11, 2017, at 09:29, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/10/julian_assange_accusations_of_wikileaks_trump A testy dynamic between Amy Goodman and Julian Assange--no longer BFFs due to sexual assault charges against Assange, etc., (although Goodman will not simply as Assange what happened or did not happen in Sweden), as well as the credibility Goodman gives to Russiagate charges. DG _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4dafcd1fb77746585f3808d510c5611b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636433362269788506&sdata=Psj5rIJGCFCjCwZPWgboXL%2FrqhuFK0mBbn%2BL2pmZ5uw%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 20:00:32 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:00:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Catalonia on The Real News Message-ID: Good interviews on The Real News in relation to Catalonian independence. http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20195:A-Way-Out-for-Spain-and-Catalonia%3F -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 20:01:43 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:01:43 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <006c01d342be$40ac9cf0$c205d6d0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <4B43B8E4-2784-4D42-B2C1-3B6EF6777A36@illinois.edu> We have to get rid of the specious argument, “If we didn’t spend so much money on war and the military, we’d be able to afford socially useful programs.” In fact, we should be spending a lot more on war - not making war, but paying reparations for the criminal wars of this generation. War and the military should be opposed, regardless of the cost (even the "opportunity costs”). And war is not the reason that we don’t spend on socially useful programs. Neoliberal greed is. We should demand money be spent for (free) education, (single-payer) healthcare, and (universal basic) income. —CGE > On Oct 11, 2017, at 2:16 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Yes David, you did just that. > > You wrote on the costs of war, focusing on the loss of health services, loss of infrastructure which if we dealt with would create jobs, alternative energy creates jobs, loss of funding for education for all, not just the wealthy, loss of housing for many, etc., etc. due to military spending. > > Making “money” issues more relevant to Americans is what we talked about, and planned. First with the Costs of War Panel, and then with the Anti-War Teach In. I hope someone picks up where we left off, as Harry has suggested and continues…… > > Did I accuse you of IP? > > No, David I did not. I didn’t accuse you of anything in relation to these articles. I just don’t accept what the 3 authors posted as “hopeful,” especially Phillis Bennis whose analysis was clearly off. Is she like so many others now so impoverished by our system of capitalism and squeezing members of society, that she is afraid to offend power? > > I agreed totally with the article you provided by Andrew Bacevich, though I think many Americans are really "just too busy surviving” to involve themselves in the anti-war movement. Though with Trump in power, we now, when demonstrating against war, get a lot of positive response, much more than ever before. > > Trumps provocations against N. Korea have a lot of people I communicate with frightened of NK. I do have to explain that the fear, and solutions are on the part of our own government, something Bennis failed to do. > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 11:25, David Johnson > wrote: >> >> Karen, >> >> I don’t see this as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. But instead a VERY accurate analysis and plans to make the war more relevant to more Americans. >> Isn’t that what we have talked about ? >> >> I know that is why I wrote my recent article “ The Hidden Costs of War “, and that article only touched upon money issues, not other issues like – loss of civil liberties / right to privacy, as well as police militarization and the subsequent murders by police of unarmed citizens. Or do you lump that under the category of “ identity politics “ ??? >> >> None of the authors said ““The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” >> >> It is all interconnected and emphasis needs to be on how to show that these imperialist wars of U.S. 1% corporate aggression indirectly and directly effects Americans, ESPECIALLY Working class Americans. >> >> Phyllis Bennis >> To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. >> We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. >> Vijay Prashad >> Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. >> Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. >> Ali Issa >> Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? >> >> You are correct that a connection to capitalism should be shown, but that would need an entirely separate article in my opinion. >> >> David J. >> >> >> From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com ] >> Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 9:23 PM >> To: David Johnson >> Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted >> >> I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. >> >> One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. >> >> Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. >> >> At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. >> >> >>> On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>> >>> >>> The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? >>> A discussion of the future of the peace movement. >>> October 5, 2017 | October Issue >>> Phyllis Bennis >>> Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice >>> Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. >>> Share  Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print >>> When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. >>> But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. >>> Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. >>> An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. >>> During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. >>> When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. >>> The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. >>> This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. >>> Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. >>> Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. >>> Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. >>> Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. >>> To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. >>> We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. >>> Vijay Prashad >>> We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists >>> An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. >>> Share  Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print >>> Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. >>> As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. >>> We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. >>> If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. >>> But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: >>> • Reduction of the military budget. >>> • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. >>> • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. >>> • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. >>> • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. >>> • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. >>> Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. >>> Ali Issa >>> The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World >>> We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. >>> Share  Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print >>> Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? >>> Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. >>> But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. >>> Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. >>> Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? >>> These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. >>> Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 01:06:39 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:06:39 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Goodman/Assange In-Reply-To: References: <741031672.5552382.1507739377754.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <741031672.5552382.1507739377754@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: In what was Assange being naive? Most of what he said about Catalonia, and what he refused to answer about Russiagate, seemed reasonable. Goodman is always looking for a headline instead of what is truly significant, increasingly reflects mainstream media, and too often upholds Democrats’ party lines. —mkb On Oct 11, 2017, at 2:35 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: I never watch DN anymore, given she is so little different from mainstream media. She was very unfair to him in respect to coverage of Roger Stone etc. In relation to her interview with Assange on Catalonia, as he supports independence, I felt he was a bit naive, much to my surprise, given he’s a very bright guy. He suggested mainstream media coverage and support for Catalonian independence as being a result of Catalonia not possessing oil, thus journalists can be free to say as they like. It’s not all about the oil, its about total control of the world, its about Europe and small vulnerable nations relations to Nato, and the EU. When MS media most especially NYT or Washington Post covers anything positively, one must be suspect. However, he made one very important point: “the people of Catalonia being beaten and seriously oppressed by the Spanish government, and not one scene of any of the people fighting back” is important. They were utilizing the tactics of “non-violence” which brings about world support for their cause, I don’t support independence, but I certainly support the Catalonia people. On Oct 11, 2017, at 09:29, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/10/julian_assange_accusations_of_wikileaks_trump A testy dynamic between Amy Goodman and Julian Assange--no longer BFFs due to sexual assault charges against Assange, etc., (although Goodman will not simply as Assange what happened or did not happen in Sweden), as well as the credibility Goodman gives to Russiagate charges. DG _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4dafcd1fb77746585f3808d510c5611b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636433362269788506&sdata=Psj5rIJGCFCjCwZPWgboXL%2FrqhuFK0mBbn%2BL2pmZ5uw%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Thu Oct 12 01:18:35 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:18:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] how social media & new technologies are being used by ISIS and similar political organizations References: <946412735.211719.1507771115767.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <946412735.211719.1507771115767@mail.yahoo.com> It's hard to forward complicated emails to the peace list, alas.  So here's s link: - CSAMES Brown Bag Lecture: "From iPhones to ISIS: Social Media and the Non-State Actor" - 10/17/2017, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pmLucy Ells Lounge in the Foreign Languages Building Homepage « CSAMES, College of LAS, University of Illinois | | | | | | | | | | | Homepage « CSAMES, College of LAS, University of Illinois | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 01:19:58 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:19:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> counterpunch.org "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” by Janet Contursi The “Battle of Cable Street” is a key event in the “creation myth” of the anti-fascist movement. It goes like this: On Sunday, October 4, 1936, about 5,000 members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Sir Oswald Mosley, planned to march in full Blackshirt regalia through several Jewish neighborhoods in London’s East End. Six thousand police were assigned to protect them from about 100,000 anti-fascist protesters. The anti-fascists fought the police and erected barricades to block the marchers. When the fascists saw there was no possibility of moving beyond the barricades, they abandoned the march and dispersed. [1] Some accounts of the battle claim that the fascists and anti-fascists fought hand-to-hand, but Reg Weston, a journalist who was in his early twenties when he actually participated in the battle, makes it clear that the two sides never clashed. The police and barricades kept them apart. It’s a myth, Weston says, “that the ‘battle’ was between the protesters and the Blackshirts. It was not — it was a battle with the police.” [2] Nevertheless, the crowd celebrated that day. The “Battle of Cable Street” went down in history as a victory for anti-fascist forces and to this day is part of the heroic mythology of the ultra-left: “For many members of contemporary anti-Fascist groups, the incident remains central to their mythology, a kind of North Star in the fight against Fascism and white supremacy across Europe and, increasingly, the United States.” [3] But was it really a victory? On the surface, the battle appears to justify the preferred tactic of the ultra-left: direct physical confrontation in the streets. However, like all myths, the battle and its outcome have been distorted and embellished over the years. When we look at what actually happened in the weeks, months and years following the battle, two things become clear. First, as a tactic violence can, at best, bring short-term gains, but those have to be weighed against long-term consequences. In other words, we don’t want to win the battle but lose the war. This is what happened at Cable Street. Second, justifying violence by comparing the U.S. today with fascism in the 1930s is a red herring. In the 1930s, Nazis posed a real threat to democracy; in 2017 America, they do not. It’s time to ask, cui bono – who benefits? After the battle the fascists grew stronger Unfortunately, the anti-fascists celebrating their victory in 1936 couldn’t have known that their actions would ultimately do nothing to stop either the Nazi juggernaut that descended upon Europe three years later, or the immediate popularity of the BUF. In fact, the BUF benefitted from the violence and became even stronger over the next four years, until 1940, when it was banned by the government. What the anti-fascist forces did achieve at Cable Street was a singular victory in stopping a single march. But at what price? In the aftermath of that action, membership in the BUF grew. Rather than smashing fascism, the battle turned out to be a recruitment tool for the BUF. The organization gained an additional 2,000 members immediately, and its membership continued to climb steadily. Seven months before the battle, BUF membership was around 10,000; one month after the battle, it rose to 15,500. It continued to rise until, by 1939, the BUF had about 22,500 members. [4] The anti-fascist actions didn’t dampen the peoples’ enthusiasm for Mosely’s message. In the weeks after the battle, pro-fascist crowds in the thousands turned out for BUF meetings, listened to Mosley’s fascist proselytizing, and marched through London without much opposition. [1] An intelligence report on the battle noted that afterwards, “A definite pro-Fascist feeling has manifested itself. The alleged Fascist defeat is in reality a Fascist advance.” [1] Violence, it seems, provided free publicity for the fascists. The BUF “thrived off the publicity that violent opposition produced. The national media, under pressure from the government, largely avoided reporting on Fascist activity other than when disorder occurred. A leading Mosleyite lamented the ‘total silence’ in the press when BUF events passed without incident, complaining that only after disruption by opponents did newspapers show any interest.” [1] And the fascists were quick to make the best of their notoriety. They cast themselves in the role of victim and hammered home the charge that the Left was interfering with their right to free speech and assembly. Other confrontations with BUF fascists at Stockton (September 1933) and Newcastle (May 1934) had similar results. The anti-fascists succeeded in stopping the BUF temporarily, but as long as the fascists were perceived to be the victim of mob violence, their popularity and membership grew. If these arguments from the 1930s sound familiar it’s because what we’re witnessing today in the ultra-right vs. ultra-left skirmishes is a replay of the anti-fascist strategy – and failures – from that era. But does that mean that the only choice we have is between doing nothing and taking violent action? That’s the ultra-left position, but it’s a false dichotomy that smacks of a lack of imagination or commitment to social change. What stopped the British fascists? The single event that put a dent in the BUF’s power and propaganda was the end of its access to the press. The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror were its main propaganda tools. Their owner, Lord Rothermere, stopped supporting Mosley after the fascists were accused of initiating brutal violence during a meeting at Olympia in 1934. After that meeting, Rothermere’s Jewish advertisers in the UK threatened to pull their advertising unless he stopped editorially supporting Mosley. [5] Without the press, the BUF’s message was limited, and its membership dropped to 5,000 the following year. The final nail in the BUF’s coffin came in 1940, when the government banned them after the start of WW2. So, the lessons to draw from Cable Street and the other anti-fascist actions in the 1930s are: 1) Violence is not an effective long-term tactic against Nazi hate groups. When Mosley’s fascists were perceived to be the victims of violence, their membership grew; but when they were perceived to be the perpetrators of violence, it dropped. 2) What does work, but is more difficult for peace groups to achieve, is applying economic pressure to the fascists’ financial base and swamping their propaganda with truth. This requires a long-term organizing strategy beyond the occasional demonstration or peace march (a good example of a long-term nonviolent strategy is the BDS movement). No, today’s America does not resemble 1930s Germany While this notion is thrown around – mostly into the faces of people who don’t condone violent confrontation with white supremacists – as “common knowledge,” it’s never actually questioned. Peace workers are simply expected to quake at the very idea of 1930s Germany. But what did 1930s Germany look like, and is there really any comparison with today’s America? Hitler pretty much took over the German state in seven months, between January and July 1933. In January 1933, President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor under pressure from the German ruling political and business classes. In February, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler began his move against the Left, which inGermany was strong in the labor movement. Using the SA (Sturmabteilung–Storm Detachment, the paramilitary wing of the National Socialist party) and his Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State, Hitler suspended civil liberties and began a full-scale terror campaign against the German Communist Party (KPD), including arrests, occupation of their offices, and shutting down of their press (again, note the critical role communications play). Many Party leaders went underground and many were executed. Without visible leadership and a printing press, the Communists were effectively neutered. In early March, Hitler went after the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and confiscated its property, including its press. By late March, the regime passed the Enabling Bill, giving Hitler the power to rule by decree. With the Left parties out of the way, the trade unions no longer had effective leadership and Hitler was free to attack them next. In May he occupied the offices of the independent trade unions and confiscated their property. The regime then created the German Labour Front to “represent” German workers. In June, the SPD was banned, and in July the regime passed the Law Against the Establishment of Parties—outlawing all political parties except the National Socialists. With all political and trade union opposition out of the way, and Germany a police state, it remained only for Hindenburg to die, which he did the following year in August 1934, whereupon Hitler merged the offices of the Chancellery and Presidency and became dictator. [6] Even in this brief summation of the early years of 1930s Germany one would be hard pressed to see any comparison with today’s America, Trump notwithstanding, or any grounds for the irrational fear among liberals that the country is about to be overrun by Nazis. Instead, what should be clear is the continuity of the neocon and neoliberal agenda from the 1990s — under both political parties — that has brought us never-ending regime change wars, deep cuts in domestic programs, and internecine identity politics conflicts within the working and middle classes. Divided, we cannot effectively confront the ruling classes, and they know it. There is one issue capable of splitting and cracking the organized peace and justice movement, and that’s the issue of tactics — violence vs. nonviolence. Historically it has split the Left into smithereens over and over again. In fact, if the ultra-left hadn’t appeared at this point in history, the ruling class would have had to create it, sponsor it, glorify it in the media, and allow it the freedom to divide the left and destabilize protests that, in the past, have gone on without incident. Again, cui bono? Violence is a dead-end…time to get creatively nonviolent Why violence? "[Antifa] believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist. There’s this ‘It’s going down’ mentality and this ‘Hit them with your boots’ mentality that goes back many decades to confrontations that took place, not only here in the American South, but also in places like Europe." — Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. [7] "The idea in Antifa is that we go where they (right-wingers) go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece." — Scott Crow, a former 30-year member of an Antifa group. [7] "When you look at this grave and dangerous threat — and the violence it has already caused — is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it, or should we confront it? Their existence itself is violent and dangerous, so I don’t think using force or violence to oppose them is unethical." — Antifa activist [8] What strikes me in the rhetoric of the ultra-left is a sense of urgency and danger, which then feeds the perceived need for the use of force against an overwhelming enemy. This is a crusade, and the enemy is evil itself. So, to the question of, “Why do you use violence,” Antifa answers, “Violence is necessary against Nazis because you can’t talk to evil.” If this seems to mirror what imperialist America has been saying about its “enemies” for decades, that’s no coincidence. The war industry has become America’s bread and butter, and its world view has percolated down through every level of society. But “Why” is the wrong question. From a purely tactical stance, the question should be, “Does is work?” And the answer that comes down to us from history and experience is, “Not in the long-term.” The lesson from Cable Street is clear—the anti-fascists succeeded in shutting down one march. But in the aftermath of that action, fascist membership grew and, within a few weeks, the BUF was marching again—with little or no opposition. Most organizations working for social change do so with an explicit commitment to nonviolence, as stated in their mission statements. There are good reasons, and a lot of historical precedents, for this. These groups know that peace work is long-term work that requires decades, often generations of commitment. No organization can hope to sustain its work and maintain its membership over the long term through violence. Organizing the masses around hatred of an “Other” is not a long-term winning strategy, especially when that Other isn’t even the real enemy. There is some irony in the fact that the ultra-right hates the Deep State as much as the ultra-left does. The Nazi organizations in the U.S. are not the Italian Blackshirts or the German Brownshirts. Contemporary U.S. Nazis resemble their Italian and German idols only in their symbols and rhetoric. Beyond that, they are isolated groups that split, fracture, often kill one another, and have no political party backing. The fact that the media and its political handlers have chosen this moment in history to hype the “Nazi threat” should raise a few eyebrows, if not questions. Is nonviolence “pacifism”? Ultra-leftists use the “P” word to imply that those advocating nonviolence are cowards, do-nothings and enablers of fascism. These charges can be expected from individuals who have little foresight, little knowledge of history and little experience in actual organizing – but who have a lot of fear and confusion about current events. So, a word about what nonviolence is and is not. Nonviolence is not pacifism. It is not toleration. It is not cowardice. Nonviolent direct action is struggle. It is courage. It is thoughtful and creative strategizing. It is for the future of humankind. To the false and loaded question of, “Is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it?” we can let Howard Zinn, a life-long nonviolent fighter for peace and justice, have the final word: Thus, none of the traditionally approved mechanisms for social change (not war, nor revolution, nor reform) is adequate for the kind of problems we face today in the United States and in the world. We need apparently some technique which is more energetic than parliamentary reform and yet not subject to the dangers which war and revolution pose in the atomic age. This technique, I suggest, is that which has been used over the centuries by aggrieved groups in fitful, semi-conscious control of their own actions. With the Negro revolt inAmerica, the technique has begun to take on the quality of a deliberate use of power to effect the most change with the least harm. I speak of non-violent direct action. This encompasses a great variety of methods, limited only by our imaginations: sit-ins, freedom rides and freedom walks, prayer pilgrimages, wade-ins, pray-ins, freedom ballots, freedom schools, and who knows what is on the horizon? Whatever the specific form, this technique has certain qualities: it disturbs the status quo, it intrudes on the complacency of the majority, it expresses the anger and the hurt of the aggrieved, it publicizes an injustice, it demonstrates the inadequacy of whatever reforms have been instituted up to that point, it creates tension and trouble and thus forces the holders of power to move faster than they otherwise would have to redress grievances. [9] References [1] Daniel Tilles, “The Myth of Cable Street.” History Today, Volume 61 Issue 10 October 2011 [2] Reg Weston, “Fascists and police routed: the battle of Cable Street” [3] Daniel Penny, “An Intimate History of Antifa.” The New Yorker. August 22, 2017 [4] G. C. Webber, “Patterns of Membership and Support for the British Union of Fascists,” Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 19, No. 4, Reassessments of Fascism (Oct., 1984), pp. 575-606 [5] Steven Banks, “Revealed: The Extent of the Daily Mail’s Support for the British Union of Fascists.” [6] Stephen Salter, “The Object Lesson: The Division of the German Left and the Triumph of National Socialism.” In The Popular Front in Europe, ed. by Helen Graham and Paul Preston. NY: St. Martin’s Press. 1987. For a definitive account of 1930s Germany see Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Books. 2005. [7] Jessica Suerth, “What is Antifa?” [8] Thomas Fuller, Alan Feuer, Serge F. Kovaleski, “Antifa’ Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far Right.” The New York Times. August 17, 2017. [9] Howard Zinn, “Non-Violent Direct Action” Janet Contursi is a freelance writer and peace activist in Minneapolis. She can be reached at jancontursi at msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johncmilano at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:37:36 2017 From: johncmilano at gmail.com (johncmilano) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:37:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? Message-ID: <59dec762.0407240a.175ec.9393@mx.google.com>  Can someone remove  me from this email listserv? Thanks -------- Original message --------From: "Carl G. Estabrook via Peace" Date: 10/11/17 20:19 (GMT-06:00) To: Peace-discuss List , Peace Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net Subject: [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? counterpunch.org "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” by Janet Contursi The “Battle of Cable Street” is a key event in the “creation myth” of the anti-fascist movement. It goes like this: On Sunday, October 4, 1936, about 5,000 members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Sir Oswald Mosley, planned to march in full Blackshirt regalia through several Jewish neighborhoods in London’s East End. Six thousand police were assigned to protect them from about 100,000 anti-fascist protesters. The anti-fascists fought the police and erected barricades to block the marchers. When the fascists saw there was no possibility of moving beyond the barricades, they abandoned the march and dispersed. [1] Some accounts of the battle claim that the fascists and anti-fascists fought hand-to-hand, but Reg Weston, a journalist who was in his early twenties when he actually participated in the battle, makes it clear that the two sides never clashed. The police and barricades kept them apart. It’s a myth, Weston says, “that the ‘battle’ was between the protesters and the Blackshirts. It was not — it was a battle with the police.” [2] Nevertheless, the crowd celebrated that day. The “Battle of Cable Street” went down in history as a victory for anti-fascist forces and to this day is part of the heroic mythology of the ultra-left: “For many members of contemporary anti-Fascist groups, the incident remains central to their mythology, a kind of North Star in the fight against Fascism and white supremacy across Europe and, increasingly, the United States.” [3] But was it really a victory? On the surface, the battle appears to justify the preferred tactic of the ultra-left: direct physical confrontation in the streets. However, like all myths, the battle and its outcome have been distorted and embellished over the years. When we look at what actually happened in the weeks, months and years following the battle, two things become clear. First, as a tactic violence can, at best, bring short-term gains, but those have to be weighed against long-term consequences. In other words, we don’t want to win the battle but lose the war. This is what happened at Cable Street. Second, justifying violence by comparing the U.S. today with fascism in the 1930s is a red herring. In the 1930s, Nazis posed a real threat to democracy; in 2017 America, they do not. It’s time to ask, cui bono – who benefits? After the battle the fascists grew stronger  Unfortunately, the anti-fascists celebrating their victory in 1936 couldn’t have known that their actions would ultimately do nothing to stop either the Nazi juggernaut that descended upon Europe three years later, or the immediate popularity of the BUF. In fact, the BUF benefitted from the violence and became even stronger over the next four years, until 1940, when it was banned by the government. What the anti-fascist forces did achieve at Cable Street was a singular victory in stopping a single march. But at what price? In the aftermath of that action, membership in the BUF grew. Rather than smashing fascism, the battle turned out to be a recruitment tool for the BUF. The organization gained an additional 2,000 members immediately, and its membership continued to climb steadily. Seven months before the battle, BUF membership was around 10,000; one month after the battle, it rose to 15,500. It continued to rise until, by 1939, the BUF had about 22,500 members. [4] The anti-fascist actions didn’t dampen the peoples’ enthusiasm for Mosely’s message. In the weeks after the battle, pro-fascist crowds in the thousands turned out for BUF meetings, listened to Mosley’s fascist proselytizing, and marched through London without much opposition. [1] An intelligence report on the battle noted that afterwards, “A definite pro-Fascist feeling has manifested itself. The alleged Fascist defeat is in reality a Fascist advance.” [1] Violence, it seems, provided free publicity for the fascists. The BUF “thrived off the publicity that violent opposition produced. The national media, under pressure from the government, largely avoided reporting on Fascist activity other than when disorder occurred. A leading Mosleyite lamented the ‘total silence’ in the press when BUF events passed without incident, complaining that only after disruption by opponents did newspapers show any interest.” [1] And the fascists were quick to make the best of their notoriety. They cast themselves in the role of victim and hammered home the charge that the Left was interfering with their right to free speech and assembly. Other confrontations with BUF fascists at Stockton (September 1933) and Newcastle (May 1934) had similar results. The anti-fascists succeeded in stopping the BUF temporarily, but as long as the fascists were perceived to be the victim of mob violence, their popularity and membership grew. If these arguments from the 1930s sound familiar it’s because what we’re witnessing today in the ultra-right vs. ultra-left skirmishes is a replay of the anti-fascist strategy – and failures – from that era. But does that mean that the only choice we have is between doing nothing and taking violent action? That’s the ultra-left position, but it’s a false dichotomy that smacks of a lack of imagination or commitment to social change. What stopped the British fascists?   The single event that put a dent in the BUF’s power and propaganda was the end of its access to the press. The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror were its main propaganda tools. Their owner, Lord Rothermere, stopped supporting Mosley after the fascists were accused of initiating brutal violence during a meeting at Olympia in 1934. After that meeting, Rothermere’s Jewish advertisers in the UK threatened to pull their advertising unless he stopped editorially supporting Mosley. [5] Without the press, the BUF’s message was limited, and its membership dropped to 5,000 the following year. The final nail in the BUF’s coffin came in 1940, when the government banned them after the start of WW2. So, the lessons to draw from Cable Street and the other anti-fascist actions in the 1930s are: 1) Violence is not an effective long-term tactic against Nazi hate groups. When Mosley’s fascists were perceived to be the victims of violence, their membership grew; but when they were perceived to be the perpetrators of violence, it dropped. 2) What does work, but is more difficult for peace groups to achieve, is applying economic pressure to the fascists’ financial base and swamping their propaganda with truth. This requires a long-term organizing strategy beyond the occasional demonstration or peace march (a good example of a long-term nonviolent strategy is the BDS movement). No, today’s America does not resemble 1930s Germany  While this notion is thrown around – mostly into the faces of people who don’t condone violent confrontation with white supremacists – as “common knowledge,” it’s never actually questioned. Peace workers are simply expected to quake at the very idea of 1930s Germany. But what did 1930s Germany look like, and is there really any comparison with today’s America? Hitler pretty much took over the German state in seven months, between January and July 1933. In January 1933, President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor under pressure from the German ruling political and business classes. In February, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler began his move against the Left, which inGermany was strong in the labor movement. Using the SA (Sturmabteilung–Storm Detachment, the paramilitary wing of the National Socialist party) and his Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State, Hitler suspended civil liberties and began a full-scale terror campaign against the German Communist Party (KPD), including arrests, occupation of their offices, and shutting down of their press (again, note the critical role communications play). Many Party leaders went underground and many were executed. Without visible leadership and a printing press, the Communists were effectively neutered. In early March, Hitler went after the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and confiscated its property, including its press. By late March, the regime passed the Enabling Bill, giving Hitler the power to rule by decree. With the Left parties out of the way, the trade unions no longer had effective leadership and Hitler was free to attack them next. In May he occupied the offices of the independent trade unions and confiscated their property. The regime then created the  German Labour Front to “represent” German workers. In June, the SPD was banned, and in July the regime passed the Law Against the Establishment of Parties—outlawing all political parties except the National Socialists. With all political and trade union opposition out of the way, and Germany a police state, it remained only for Hindenburg to die, which he did the following year in August 1934, whereupon Hitler merged the offices of the Chancellery and Presidency and became dictator. [6] Even in this brief summation of the early years of 1930s Germany one would be hard pressed to see any comparison with today’s America, Trump notwithstanding, or any grounds for the irrational fear among liberals that the country is about to be overrun by Nazis. Instead, what should be clear is the continuity of the neocon and neoliberal agenda from the 1990s — under both political parties — that has brought us never-ending regime change wars, deep cuts in domestic programs, and internecine identity politics conflicts within the working and middle classes. Divided, we cannot effectively confront the ruling classes, and they know it. There is one issue capable of splitting and cracking the organized peace and justice movement, and that’s the issue of tactics — violence vs. nonviolence. Historically it has split the Left into smithereens over and over again. In fact, if the ultra-left hadn’t appeared at this point in history, the ruling class would have had to create it, sponsor it, glorify it in the media, and allow it the freedom to divide the left and destabilize protests that, in the past, have gone on without incident. Again, cui bono? Violence is a dead-end…time to get creatively nonviolent Why violence? "[Antifa] believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist. There’s this ‘It’s going down’ mentality and this ‘Hit them with your boots’ mentality that goes back many decades to confrontations that took place, not only here in the American South, but also in places like Europe." — Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. [7] "The idea in Antifa is that we go where they (right-wingers) go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece." — Scott Crow, a former 30-year member of an Antifa group. [7] "When you look at this grave and dangerous threat — and the violence it has already caused — is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it, or should we confront it? Their existence itself is violent and dangerous, so I don’t think using force or violence to oppose them is unethical." — Antifa activist [8] What strikes me in the rhetoric of the ultra-left is a sense of urgency and danger, which then feeds the perceived need for the use of force against an overwhelming enemy. This is a crusade, and the enemy is evil itself. So, to the question of, “Why do you use violence,” Antifa answers, “Violence is necessary against Nazis because you can’t talk to evil.” If this seems to mirror what imperialist America has been saying about its “enemies” for decades, that’s no coincidence. The war industry has become America’s bread and butter, and its world view has percolated down through every level of society. But “Why” is the wrong question. From a purely tactical stance, the question should be, “Does is work?” And the answer that comes down to us from history and experience is, “Not in the long-term.” The lesson from Cable Street is clear—the anti-fascists succeeded in shutting down one march. But in the aftermath of that action, fascist membership grew and, within a few weeks, the BUF was marching again—with little or no opposition. Most organizations working for social change do so with an explicit commitment to nonviolence, as stated in their mission statements. There are good reasons, and a lot of historical precedents, for this. These groups know that peace work is long-term work that requires decades, often generations of commitment. No organization can hope to sustain its work and maintain its membership over the long term through violence. Organizing the masses around hatred of an “Other” is not a long-term winning strategy, especially when that Other isn’t even the real enemy. There is some irony in the fact that the ultra-right hates the Deep State as much as the ultra-left does. The Nazi organizations in the U.S. are not the Italian Blackshirts or the German Brownshirts. Contemporary U.S. Nazis resemble their Italian and German idols only in their symbols and rhetoric. Beyond that, they are isolated groups that split, fracture, often kill one another, and have no political party backing. The fact that the media and its political handlers have chosen this moment in history to hype the “Nazi threat” should raise a few eyebrows, if not questions. Is nonviolence “pacifism”? Ultra-leftists use the “P” word to imply that those advocating nonviolence are cowards, do-nothings and enablers of fascism. These charges can be expected from individuals who have little foresight, little knowledge of history and little experience in actual organizing – but who have a lot of fear and confusion about current events. So, a word about what nonviolence is and is not. Nonviolence is not pacifism. It is not toleration. It is not cowardice. Nonviolent direct action is struggle. It is courage. It is thoughtful and creative strategizing. It is for the future of humankind. To the false and loaded question of, “Is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it?” we can let Howard Zinn, a life-long nonviolent fighter for peace and justice, have the final word: Thus, none of the traditionally approved mechanisms for social change (not war, nor revolution, nor reform) is adequate for the kind of problems we face today in the United States and in the world. We need apparently some technique which is more energetic than parliamentary reform and yet not subject to the dangers which war and revolution pose in the atomic age. This technique, I suggest, is that which has been used over the centuries by aggrieved groups in fitful, semi-conscious control of their own actions. With the Negro revolt inAmerica, the technique has begun to take on the quality of a deliberate use of power to effect the most change with the least harm. I speak of non-violent direct action. This encompasses a great variety of methods, limited only by our imaginations: sit-ins, freedom rides and freedom walks, prayer pilgrimages, wade-ins, pray-ins, freedom   ballots, freedom schools, and who knows what is on the horizon? Whatever the specific form, this technique has certain qualities: it disturbs the status quo, it intrudes on the complacency of the majority, it expresses the anger and the hurt of the aggrieved, it publicizes an injustice, it demonstrates the inadequacy of whatever reforms have been instituted up to that point, it creates tension and trouble and thus forces the holders of power to move faster than they otherwise would have to redress grievances. [9] References [1] Daniel Tilles, “The Myth of Cable Street.” History Today, Volume 61 Issue 10 October 2011 [2] Reg Weston, “Fascists and police routed: the battle of Cable Street” [3] Daniel Penny, “An Intimate History of Antifa.” The New Yorker. August 22, 2017 [4] G. C. Webber, “Patterns of Membership and Support for the British Union of Fascists,” Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 19, No. 4, Reassessments of Fascism (Oct., 1984), pp. 575-606 [5] Steven Banks, “Revealed: The Extent of the Daily Mail’s Support for the British Union of Fascists.” [6] Stephen Salter, “The Object Lesson: The Division of the German Left and the Triumph of National Socialism.” In The Popular Front in Europe, ed. by Helen Graham and Paul Preston. NY: St. Martin’s Press. 1987. For a definitive account of 1930s Germany see Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Books. 2005. [7] Jessica Suerth, “What is Antifa?” [8] Thomas Fuller, Alan Feuer, Serge F. Kovaleski, “Antifa’ Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far Right.” The New York Times. August 17, 2017. [9] Howard Zinn, “Non-Violent Direct Action” Janet Contursi is a freelance writer and peace activist in Minneapolis. She can be reached at jancontursi at msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:43:10 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:43:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: All, The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: > counterpunch.org > > "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” > by Janet Contursi > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 01:53:14 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:53:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Stuart et al.: The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I posted this link: >. Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. Regards, CGE > On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > All, > > The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. > > On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >> counterpunch.org >> >> "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” >> by Janet Contursi >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:55:21 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:55:21 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <92300a80-935c-bb62-641f-229ebb04ad14@gmail.com> Carl, I will set your Peace messages to be moderated for now.   Peace has never been the place for posting articles and the discussions about them. On 10/11/2017 08:53 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: > Stuart et al.: > > The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I > posted this link:  > > .  > > > Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. > > Regards, CGE > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss >> > > wrote: >> >> All, >> >> The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions >> and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. >> >> On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>> counterpunch.org >>> >>> "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” >>> by Janet Contursi >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:55:43 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:55:43 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Nope, Carl you are wrong. And have been told this numerous times. Peace is for events. Not links. Peace-discuss is for links, discussions, etc. From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 02:02:29 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 02:02:29 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Goodman/Assange In-Reply-To: References: <741031672.5552382.1507739377754.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <741031672.5552382.1507739377754@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Mort, He suggested mainstream media coverage and support for Catalonian independence, as being a result of Catalonia not possessing oil, thus journalists can be free to say as they like. I think he is being naive because It’s not “all about the oil," its about total control of the world, its about Europe and small vulnerable nations relations to Nato, and the EU. When MS media most especially NYT or Washington Post covers anything positively, one must be suspicious. It’s not all about the oil, its about total control of the world, its about Europe and small vulnerable nations relations to Nato, and the EU.On Oct 11, 2017, at 18:06, Brussel, Morton K > wrote: In what was Assange being naive? Most of what he said about Catalonia, and what he refused to answer about Russiagate, seemed reasonable. Goodman is always looking for a headline instead of what is truly significant, increasingly reflects mainstream media, and too often upholds Democrats’ party lines. —mkb On Oct 11, 2017, at 2:35 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: I never watch DN anymore, given she is so little different from mainstream media. She was very unfair to him in respect to coverage of Roger Stone etc. In relation to her interview with Assange on Catalonia, as he supports independence, I felt he was a bit naive, much to my surprise, given he’s a very bright guy. He suggested mainstream media coverage and support for Catalonian independence as being a result of Catalonia not possessing oil, thus journalists can be free to say as they like. It’s not all about the oil, its about total control of the world, its about Europe and small vulnerable nations relations to Nato, and the EU. When MS media most especially NYT or Washington Post covers anything positively, one must be suspect. However, he made one very important point: “the people of Catalonia being beaten and seriously oppressed by the Spanish government, and not one scene of any of the people fighting back” is important. They were utilizing the tactics of “non-violence” which brings about world support for their cause, I don’t support independence, but I certainly support the Catalonia people. On Oct 11, 2017, at 09:29, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/10/julian_assange_accusations_of_wikileaks_trump A testy dynamic between Amy Goodman and Julian Assange--no longer BFFs due to sexual assault charges against Assange, etc., (although Goodman will not simply as Assange what happened or did not happen in Sweden), as well as the credibility Goodman gives to Russiagate charges. DG _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4dafcd1fb77746585f3808d510c5611b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636433362269788506&sdata=Psj5rIJGCFCjCwZPWgboXL%2FrqhuFK0mBbn%2BL2pmZ5uw%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 02:08:03 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:08:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: <92300a80-935c-bb62-641f-229ebb04ad14@gmail.com> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <92300a80-935c-bb62-641f-229ebb04ad14@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1F3BD70C-A370-4BE6-A8B4-BBEF545A9AE7@illinois.edu> Stuart, you have no authority to do that. These lists belong to all members of AWARE. The rough distinction - hardly absolute - has been that is for discussion, for announcements and links. I do try to follow that. But the distinction is obviously a suggestion, for convenience' sake, not a requirement. I’ll take it a bit unkindly if you censor my postings. If nothing else, it's rather silly. We have more important things to do. . —CGE > On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:55 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Carl, I will set your Peace messages to be moderated for now. Peace has never been the place for posting articles and the discussions about them. > > On 10/11/2017 08:53 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: >> Stuart et al.: >> >> The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I posted this link: >> >> >. >> >> Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. >> >> Regards, CGE >> >>> On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>> >>> All, >>> >>> The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. >>> >>> On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>>> counterpunch.org >>>> >>>> "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” >>>> by Janet Contursi >>>> >>>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 02:14:44 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:14:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <1C69195C-7506-4B71-A0BC-1EDBCDDA309D@illinois.edu> When the lists were established, the idea was that one was for discussion by AWARE members, the other for information about events and articles that members might be interested in. > On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:55 PM, Karen Medina wrote: > > Nope, Carl you are wrong. And have been told this numerous times. > Peace is for events. Not links. > Peace-discuss is for links, discussions, etc. From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 02:15:51 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:15:51 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: <1F3BD70C-A370-4BE6-A8B4-BBEF545A9AE7@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <92300a80-935c-bb62-641f-229ebb04ad14@gmail.com> <1F3BD70C-A370-4BE6-A8B4-BBEF545A9AE7@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Carl, Peace = Events. It seems that you enjoy a personal audience that you get from a listserv. You can get it and you do have it on Peace-discuss. People on Peace specifically do want to be invited to public events but to not to be audience to individual people's rants. Suggestion: If you want these people's attention, you will need to invite them to a public event and see if they show up. -karen medina On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:08 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > Stuart, you have no authority to do that. These lists belong to all members > of AWARE. > > The rough distinction - hardly absolute - has been that is > for discussion, for announcements and links. > > I do try to follow that. But the distinction is obviously a suggestion, for > convenience' sake, not a requirement. > > I’ll take it a bit unkindly if you censor my postings. If nothing else, it's > rather silly. > > We have more important things to do. . > > —CGE > > > On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:55 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Carl, I will set your Peace messages to be moderated for now. Peace has > never been the place for posting articles and the discussions about them. > > On 10/11/2017 08:53 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: > > Stuart et al.: > > The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I > posted this link: > > . > > Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. > > Regards, CGE > > On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > All, > > The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and > articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. > > On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: > > counterpunch.org > > "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” > by Janet Contursi > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -- -- karen medina "The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 02:18:07 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:18:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: <1C69195C-7506-4B71-A0BC-1EDBCDDA309D@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <1C69195C-7506-4B71-A0BC-1EDBCDDA309D@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Ah, therein lies the misunderstanding. Peace was never for articles. On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:14 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: > When the lists were established, the idea was that one was for discussion by AWARE members, the other for information about events and articles that members might be interested in. From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 02:28:00 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:28:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <92300a80-935c-bb62-641f-229ebb04ad14@gmail.com> <1F3BD70C-A370-4BE6-A8B4-BBEF545A9AE7@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Have you been into the cooking sherry tonight, Karen? These are but wild and whirling words... The lists are supposed to further anti-war work. It’s not clear how censorship helps that (any more than punching a nazi does). It’s worthwhile perhaps to note the somewhat different purposes of the lists: but policing them is a bit de trop. > On Oct 11, 2017, at 9:15 PM, Karen Medina via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Carl, > > Peace = Events. > It seems that you enjoy a personal audience that you get from a > listserv. You can get it and you do have it on Peace-discuss. > > People on Peace specifically do want to be invited to public events > but to not to be audience to individual people's rants. > > Suggestion: If you want these people's attention, you will need to > invite them to a public event and see if they show up. > > -karen medina > > On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:08 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> Stuart, you have no authority to do that. These lists belong to all members >> of AWARE. >> >> The rough distinction - hardly absolute - has been that is >> for discussion, for announcements and links. >> >> I do try to follow that. But the distinction is obviously a suggestion, for >> convenience' sake, not a requirement. >> >> I’ll take it a bit unkindly if you censor my postings. If nothing else, it's >> rather silly. >> >> We have more important things to do. . >> >> —CGE >> >> >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:55 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: >> >> Carl, I will set your Peace messages to be moderated for now. Peace has >> never been the place for posting articles and the discussions about them. >> >> On 10/11/2017 08:53 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: >> >> Stuart et al.: >> >> The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I >> posted this link: >> >> . >> >> Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. >> >> Regards, CGE >> >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss >> wrote: >> >> All, >> >> The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and >> articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. >> >> On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >> >> counterpunch.org >> >> "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” >> by Janet Contursi >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > > > > -- > -- karen medina > "The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 02:31:55 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:31:55 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <1C69195C-7506-4B71-A0BC-1EDBCDDA309D@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Says who? Peace-discuss (as its name implies) was for discussion by AWARE members. Peace was for information. > On Oct 11, 2017, at 9:18 PM, Karen Medina via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Ah, therein lies the misunderstanding. > Peace was never for articles. > > On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:14 PM, Carl G. Estabrook > wrote: >> When the lists were established, the idea was that one was for discussion by AWARE members, the other for information about events and articles that members might be interested in. > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 12 03:30:53 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 03:30:53 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kagarlitsky on Catalonia References: <249830945.261419.1507779053229.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <249830945.261419.1507779053229@mail.yahoo.com> Excerpt: But who needs to take into account Spanish-speaking workers? They are the “invaders”! If we look for comparisons, what is happening is similar to the time of the collapse of the USSR, and Catalonia is dominated by the same monstrous illusions that were sown by nationalists at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, what is happening now has a deeper basis in the sphere of political economy. This is not an accident that the triumph of neo-liberalism was accompanied everywhere by the crisis of national states and federations, the emergence and flourishing of all sorts of separatism, including exotic ones. In this sense, there is no difference between the ruling circles of Madrid and Barcelona. They represent the same class interests, only each represents them at a different level. Disintegration of federations and crisis of state institutions, which are currently happening everywhere are closely linked to the austerity policies pursued by both Madrid and Barcelona. ​​This is a continuation of the general logic of de-solidarisation, privatization and fragmentation characteristic of neoliberalism. It was this political economic logic that underlay the collapse of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.  This logic assumes not only rejection of solidarity based on class and rejection of common humanistic values, but also substitution of the national values by the ethnic ones. It is ethnic nationalism that proves to be an ideal “substitute” for class or civic solidarity. It preserves the necessary sense of “community” for people, while narrowing it down to the size of an imaginary large family. Similar dynamics could be observed in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Rosa Luxemburg cautioned other leftists of the dangers of flirting with the petty-bourgeois nationalism of small nations. Reactionary and semi-fascist regimes were established in most of the new states formed in place of the disintegrating empires. The only lucky exception was Czechoslovakia, which was soon happily torn to pieces by neighbors such as Germany with a help from Poland and Hungary. It would seem that the lessons of the first half of the twentieth century should be enough to draw the necessary conclusions. Alas, the modern European left, which developed in the context of deindustrialization and decline of class solidarity, is itself a product of neoliberalism and is completely imbued with the spirit of petty-bourgeois romanticism. Therefore, the left does not dare to openly say that the nationalism of minorities in no less damaging for the working class cause than any other nationalism. There is a good news, nevertheless. The success of Jeremy Corbin and his renewed Labor Party in Scotland returns class agenda to the region once considered the backbone of the labor movement. Nationalist demagogy quickly loses appeal among the masses whenever a real, substantial left alternative appears.  The development of small-town nationalism (as, indeed, of other types of nationalism) is inversely proportional to the strength and influence of the left. Whenever supporters of social transformations fail, their place is immediately occupied by preachers of national exclusiveness. Conversely, the rise of the left forces inevitably leads to the decline of nationalist organizations. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/11/catalonia-the-revolt-of-the-rich/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 04:10:00 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 23:10:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <1C69195C-7506-4B71-A0BC-1EDBCDDA309D@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <449974ff-a6e0-cc44-dc9d-010787d42cac@gmail.com> Peace has been described as intended for announcements, and peace-discuss for discussions including discussion-worthy articles, since I began coming to AWARE meetings in 2004. On 10/11/2017 09:31 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > Says who? > > Peace-discuss (as its name implies) was for discussion by AWARE members. Peace was for information. > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 9:18 PM, Karen Medina via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> Ah, therein lies the misunderstanding. >> Peace was never for articles. >> >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:14 PM, Carl G. Estabrook >> wrote: >>> When the lists were established, the idea was that one was for discussion by AWARE members, the other for information about events and articles that members might be interested in. >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 04:53:18 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:53:18 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dam. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. Message-ID: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups By Tom Hall WSWS.ORG 11 October 2017 A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 04:59:57 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 23:59:57 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: <449974ff-a6e0-cc44-dc9d-010787d42cac@gmail.com> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> <1C69195C-7506-4B71-A0BC-1EDBCDDA309D@illinois.edu> <449974ff-a6e0-cc44-dc9d-010787d42cac@gmail.com> Message-ID: See the description of the list at >: "'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list. Posts from non-list-members are moderated to cut down on SPAM. There is a separate 'peace-discuss' mailing list for general discussion.” You should not censor the "calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues” that I or others post to this list and leave it for announcements alone. —CGE > On Oct 11, 2017, at 11:10 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Peace has been described as intended for announcements, and peace-discuss for discussions including discussion-worthy articles, since I began coming to AWARE meetings in 2004. > > On 10/11/2017 09:31 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> Says who? >> >> Peace-discuss (as its name implies) was for discussion by AWARE members. Peace was for information. >> >>> On Oct 11, 2017, at 9:18 PM, Karen Medina via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> Ah, therein lies the misunderstanding. >>> Peace was never for articles. >>> >>> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 9:14 PM, Carl G. Estabrook >>> wrote: >>>> When the lists were established, the idea was that one was for discussion by AWARE members, the other for information about events and articles that members might be interested in. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 05:02:18 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:02:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Event announcement In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <69A5E348-FA3F-4F19-B37C-89318F92F991@gmail.com> At the regular AWARE meeting on October 8, members of AWARE considered what their reaction should be - in conjunction with the antiwar movement at large - in the event of a US armed attack on North Korea, Iran, or elsewhere. It was suggested that the most prominent US government installation in Champaign County was probably the Federal Courthouse at 201 S. Vine St. in Urbana. A significant expansion of US war-making - we're already at war in eight countries - should produce anti-war demonstrations around the country. AWARE's should probably be centered on the sidewalk in the 200 block of S. Vine Street (and perhaps around the corner on E. Main Street). We should make plans for such a demonstration and use the means available to publicize them, and to communicate them to anti-war individuals and organizations in the area. Meanwhile, we should continue our presence at the Market, our monthly demonstration, and UPTV. Perhaps a new flyer discussing such plans is in order. —CGE From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Oct 12 05:13:34 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:13:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dam. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > > - Print > > - Leaflet > > - Feedback > > - Share » > > Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups By Tom Hall > WSWS.ORG > 11 October 2017 > > A *New York Times* report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, > Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and > millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing > and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. > > “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President > Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting > six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent > challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the > Democratic Party itself.” > > The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy > Alliance, which the *Times* describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who > have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the > institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has > shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations > that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new > “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of > the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the > development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and > youth. > > “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in > July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into > electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well > as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such > as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. > > Indivisible, the *Times* notes, was able to expand from little more than > an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration > into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 > volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated > nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. > > The *Times* article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding > from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or > coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco > mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress > Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative > from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from > billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the > Democratic Party. > > Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and > “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is > unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American > Progress, the *Times* observes, “has engendered resentment from others on > the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and > raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts > branded with the word “resist” on its website. > > Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street > millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from > their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions > in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of > the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military > and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular > pressure to the left. > > The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the > tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of > Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump > administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping > the control of the ruling class. > > Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the > Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s > party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the > perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly > backed and financed by Wall Street. > > “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” > David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, > told the *Times*. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique > role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in > decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The > *Times* also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl > Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. > > This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge > only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford > Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on > Black Lives Matter. > > The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups > espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent > upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from > the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working > class of all races. > > The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary > campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” > phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic > Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a > national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman > Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” > Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration > in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. > > The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. > Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has > ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals > with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, > and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to > Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership > of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they > can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and > block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 05:24:21 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 05:24:21 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dam. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman > wrote: Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups By Tom Hall WSWS.ORG 11 October 2017 A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Oct 12 05:33:22 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:33:22 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dam. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me off. Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. > > > On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman > wrote: > > Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is > useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. > > > > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > >> >> >> - Print >> >> - Leaflet >> >> - Feedback >> >> - Share » >> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups By Tom Hall >> WSWS.ORG >> 11 October 2017 >> >> A *New York Times* report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, >> Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and >> millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing >> and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. >> >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President >> Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting >> six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent >> challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the >> Democratic Party itself.” >> >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy >> Alliance, which the *Times* describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” >> who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape >> the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has >> shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations >> that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new >> “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of >> the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the >> development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and >> youth. >> >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in >> July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into >> electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well >> as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such >> as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. >> >> Indivisible, the *Times* notes, was able to expand from little more than >> an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration >> into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 >> volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated >> nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. >> >> The *Times* article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received >> funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or >> coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco >> mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress >> Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative >> from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from >> billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the >> Democratic Party. >> >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and >> “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is >> unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American >> Progress, the *Times* observes, “has engendered resentment from others >> on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and >> raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts >> branded with the word “resist” on its website. >> >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street >> millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from >> their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions >> in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of >> the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military >> and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular >> pressure to the left. >> >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the >> tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of >> Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump >> administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping >> the control of the ruling class. >> >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the >> Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s >> party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the >> perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly >> backed and financed by Wall Street. >> >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” >> David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, >> told the *Times*. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique >> role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in >> decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The >> *Times* also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl >> Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. >> >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not >> emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford >> Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on >> Black Lives Matter. >> >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups >> espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent >> upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from >> the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working >> class of all races. >> >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary >> campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” >> phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic >> Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a >> national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman >> Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” >> Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration >> in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. >> >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. >> Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has >> ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals >> with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, >> and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to >> Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership >> of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they >> can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and >> block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 06:25:40 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:25:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler arises from his recognition that it is. But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he was very young? See : '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about Jill Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear when he sees one... 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org" 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional Democrat progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John Stauber told me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate supported by Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who with Hillary lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is his champion while a woman running on the most progressive platform in America is just a damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself was exposed, he doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American politics. Naiman is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the funded progressive elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the Democrats liberal oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy Alliance.”’ —CGE > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me off. > > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. > > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman wrote: >> >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. >> >> >> Robert Naiman >> Policy Director >> Just Foreign Policy >> www.justforeignpolicy.org >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> (202) 448-2898 x1 >> >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups >> By Tom Hall >> WSWS.ORG >> 11 October 2017 >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. >> >> ________ From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Oct 12 06:33:41 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:33:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler > arises from his recognition that it is. > > But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob > have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he > was very young? > > See prime-time-green/>: > > '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about Jill > Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a > nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught > red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of > John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert > on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear > when he sees one... > > 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who > is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the > Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to > expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” > > '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: > Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? > I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill > Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org" > > 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or > “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as > it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US > have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown > cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. > > '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional Democrat > progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John Stauber told > me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate supported by > Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who with Hillary > lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is his champion > while a woman running on the most progressive platform in America is just a > damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself was exposed, he > doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American politics. Naiman > is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the funded progressive > elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the Democrats liberal > oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy Alliance.”’ > > —CGE > > > > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > > > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me > off. > > > > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? > > > > > > Robert Naiman > > Policy Director > > Just Foreign Policy > > www.justforeignpolicy.org > > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. > > > > > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman > wrote: > >> > >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is > useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. > >> > >> > >> Robert Naiman > >> Policy Director > >> Just Foreign Policy > >> www.justforeignpolicy.org > >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > >> (202) 448-2898 x1 > >> > >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > >> > >> > >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > >> > >> > >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups > >> By Tom Hall > >> WSWS.ORG > >> 11 October 2017 > >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, > Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and > millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing > and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. > >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President > Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting > six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent > challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the > Democratic Party itself.” > >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy > Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who > have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the > institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has > shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations > that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new > “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of > the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the > development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and > youth. > >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in > July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into > electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well > as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such > as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. > >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than > an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration > into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 > volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated > nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. > >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding > from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or > coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco > mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress > Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative > from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from > billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the > Democratic Party. > >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and > “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is > unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American > Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the > left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising > money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded > with the word “resist” on its website. > >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street > millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from > their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions > in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of > the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military > and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular > pressure to the left. > >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the > tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of > Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump > administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping > the control of the ruling class. > >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that > the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a > “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting > the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly > backed and financed by Wall Street. > >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our > resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton > supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, > unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t > seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. > The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl > Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. > >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not > emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford > Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on > Black Lives Matter. > >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these > groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the > affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 > years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of > the working class of all races. > >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary > campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” > phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic > Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a > national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman > Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” > Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration > in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. > >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working > class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic > Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make > deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass > deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up > hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. > The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy > donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate > program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist > revolution. > >> > >> ________ > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Oct 12 06:35:36 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:35:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> Message-ID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Socialist_Web_Site "The *World Socialist Web Site* (WSWS) is a widely accessed international socialist news site that is the online news and information center of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The site is closely associated with the Trotskyist Socialist Equality Party . " These people are Trots. American Trotskyism is a cult. Is there anyone here who doesn't know that? Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:33 AM, Robert Naiman wrote: > Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs. > > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > >> The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler >> arises from his recognition that it is. >> >> But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob >> have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he >> was very young? >> >> See > me-time-green/>: >> >> '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about >> Jill Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a >> nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught >> red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of >> John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert >> on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear >> when he sees one... >> >> 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who >> is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the >> Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to >> expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” >> >> '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: >> Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? >> I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill >> Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. >> Robert Naiman >> Policy Director >> Just Foreign Policy >> www.justforeignpolicy.org" >> >> 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or >> “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as >> it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US >> have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown >> cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. >> >> '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional >> Democrat progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John >> Stauber told me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate >> supported by Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who >> with Hillary lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is >> his champion while a woman running on the most progressive platform in >> America is just a damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself >> was exposed, he doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American >> politics. Naiman is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the >> funded progressive elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the >> Democrats liberal oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy >> Alliance.”’ >> >> —CGE >> >> >> > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> > >> > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me >> off. >> > >> > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? >> > >> > >> > Robert Naiman >> > Policy Director >> > Just Foreign Policy >> > www.justforeignpolicy.org >> > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> > (202) 448-2898 x1 >> > >> > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >> > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >> > >> > >> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. >> > >> > >> >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman >> wrote: >> >> >> >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is >> useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. >> >> >> >> >> >> Robert Naiman >> >> Policy Director >> >> Just Foreign Policy >> >> www.justforeignpolicy.org >> >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> >> (202) 448-2898 x1 >> >> >> >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >> >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >> >> >> >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups >> >> By Tom Hall >> >> WSWS.ORG >> >> 11 October 2017 >> >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, >> Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and >> millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing >> and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. >> >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against >> President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is >> attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing >> an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — >> and the Democratic Party itself.” >> >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy >> Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who >> have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the >> institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has >> shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations >> that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new >> “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of >> the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the >> development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and >> youth. >> >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors >> in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy >> into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as >> well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, >> such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. >> >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than >> an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration >> into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 >> volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated >> nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. >> >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received >> funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or >> coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco >> mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress >> Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative >> from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from >> billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the >> Democratic Party. >> >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and >> “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is >> unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American >> Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the >> left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising >> money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded >> with the word “resist” on its website. >> >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street >> millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from >> their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions >> in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of >> the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military >> and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular >> pressure to the left. >> >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the >> tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of >> Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump >> administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping >> the control of the ruling class. >> >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that >> the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a >> “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting >> the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly >> backed and financed by Wall Street. >> >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our >> resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton >> supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, >> unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t >> seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. >> The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl >> Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. >> >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not >> emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford >> Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on >> Black Lives Matter. >> >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these >> groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the >> affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 >> years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of >> the working class of all races. >> >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary >> campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” >> phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic >> Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a >> national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman >> Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” >> Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration >> in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. >> >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working >> class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic >> Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make >> deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass >> deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up >> hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. >> The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy >> donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate >> program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist >> revolution. >> >> >> >> ________ >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 06:43:13 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:43:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <31ADDEFE-813E-4E3D-A3EE-8AE8B4AD8608@illinois.edu> We should get to sleep, Bob. We obviously both need the rest. It’s affected your judgement (e.g., my AWARE colleague isn’t stupid). But in the clear light of dawn, give me some examples of “arrogance" and "dogmatic stupidity” in the WSWS piece. Put up or shut up. Regards, CGE > On Oct 12, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs. > > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: > The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler arises from his recognition that it is. > > But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he was very young? > > See >: > > '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about Jill Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear when he sees one... > > 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” > > '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: > Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? > I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org " > > 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. > > '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional Democrat progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John Stauber told me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate supported by Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who with Hillary lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is his champion while a woman running on the most progressive platform in America is just a damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself was exposed, he doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American politics. Naiman is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the funded progressive elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the Democrats liberal oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy Alliance.”’ > > —CGE > > > > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > > > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me off. > > > > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? > > > > > > Robert Naiman > > Policy Director > > Just Foreign Policy > > www.justforeignpolicy.org > > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. > > > > > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman > wrote: > >> > >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. > >> > >> > >> Robert Naiman > >> Policy Director > >> Just Foreign Policy > >> www.justforeignpolicy.org > >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > >> (202) 448-2898 x1 > >> > >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > >> > >> > >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: > >> > >> > >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups > >> By Tom Hall > >> WSWS.ORG > >> 11 October 2017 > >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. > >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” > >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. > >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. > >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. > >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. > >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. > >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. > >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. > >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. > >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. > >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. > >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. > >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. > >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. > >> > >> ________ > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 06:56:25 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:56:25 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <2C33A76E-AD6F-43FB-99CF-0853EADB67DB@illinois.edu> But I've already given myself heirs, and I think about the world we’re leaving them (or perhaps not). And that means opposing the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - not supporting it. > On Oct 12, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs. > > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: > The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler arises from his recognition that it is. > > But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he was very young? > > See >: > > '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about Jill Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear when he sees one... > > 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” > > '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: > Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? > I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org " > > 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. > > '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional Democrat progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John Stauber told me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate supported by Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who with Hillary lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is his champion while a woman running on the most progressive platform in America is just a damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself was exposed, he doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American politics. Naiman is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the funded progressive elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the Democrats liberal oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy Alliance.”’ > > —CGE > > > > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > > > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me off. > > > > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? > > > > > > Robert Naiman > > Policy Director > > Just Foreign Policy > > www.justforeignpolicy.org > > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. > > > > > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman > wrote: > >> > >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. > >> > >> > >> Robert Naiman > >> Policy Director > >> Just Foreign Policy > >> www.justforeignpolicy.org > >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > >> (202) 448-2898 x1 > >> > >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > >> > >> > >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: > >> > >> > >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups > >> By Tom Hall > >> WSWS.ORG > >> 11 October 2017 > >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. > >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” > >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. > >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. > >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. > >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. > >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. > >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. > >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. > >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. > >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. > >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. > >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. > >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. > >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. > >> > >> ________ > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Oct 12 07:29:55 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 02:29:55 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: <31ADDEFE-813E-4E3D-A3EE-8AE8B4AD8608@illinois.edu> References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> <31ADDEFE-813E-4E3D-A3EE-8AE8B4AD8608@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Be honest, Carl. Did you read the article? I don't believe you did. I don't believe you agree with it. I don't believe you're a Trot. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:43 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > We should get to sleep, Bob. We obviously both need the rest. It’s > affected your judgement (e.g., my AWARE colleague isn’t stupid). > > But in the clear light of dawn, give me some examples of “arrogance" and > "dogmatic stupidity” in the WSWS piece. > > Put up or shut up. > > Regards, CGE > > > > On Oct 12, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs. > > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > >> The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler >> arises from his recognition that it is. >> >> But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob >> have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he >> was very young? >> >> See > me-time-green/>: >> >> '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about >> Jill Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a >> nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught >> red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of >> John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert >> on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear >> when he sees one... >> >> 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who >> is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the >> Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to >> expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” >> >> '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: >> Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? >> I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill >> Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. >> Robert Naiman >> Policy Director >> Just Foreign Policy >> www.justforeignpolicy.org" >> >> 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or >> “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as >> it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US >> have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown >> cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. >> >> '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional >> Democrat progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John >> Stauber told me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate >> supported by Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who >> with Hillary lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is >> his champion while a woman running on the most progressive platform in >> America is just a damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself >> was exposed, he doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American >> politics. Naiman is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the >> funded progressive elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the >> Democrats liberal oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy >> Alliance.”’ >> >> —CGE >> >> >> > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> > >> > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me >> off. >> > >> > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? >> > >> > >> > Robert Naiman >> > Policy Director >> > Just Foreign Policy >> > www.justforeignpolicy.org >> > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> > (202) 448-2898 x1 >> > >> > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >> > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >> > >> > >> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. >> > >> > >> >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman >> wrote: >> >> >> >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is >> useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. >> >> >> >> >> >> Robert Naiman >> >> Policy Director >> >> Just Foreign Policy >> >> www.justforeignpolicy.org >> >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> >> (202) 448-2898 x1 >> >> >> >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >> >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >> >> >> >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups >> >> By Tom Hall >> >> WSWS.ORG >> >> 11 October 2017 >> >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, >> Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and >> millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing >> and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. >> >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against >> President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is >> attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing >> an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — >> and the Democratic Party itself.” >> >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy >> Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who >> have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the >> institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has >> shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations >> that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new >> “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of >> the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the >> development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and >> youth. >> >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors >> in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy >> into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as >> well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, >> such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. >> >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than >> an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration >> into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 >> volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated >> nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. >> >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received >> funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or >> coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco >> mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress >> Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative >> from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from >> billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the >> Democratic Party. >> >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and >> “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is >> unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American >> Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the >> left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising >> money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded >> with the word “resist” on its website. >> >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street >> millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from >> their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions >> in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of >> the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military >> and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular >> pressure to the left. >> >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the >> tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of >> Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump >> administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping >> the control of the ruling class. >> >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that >> the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a >> “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting >> the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly >> backed and financed by Wall Street. >> >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our >> resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton >> supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, >> unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t >> seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. >> The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl >> Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. >> >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not >> emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford >> Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on >> Black Lives Matter. >> >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these >> groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the >> affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 >> years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of >> the working class of all races. >> >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary >> campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” >> phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic >> Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a >> national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman >> Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” >> Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration >> in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. >> >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working >> class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic >> Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make >> deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass >> deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up >> hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. >> The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy >> donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate >> program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist >> revolution. >> >> >> >> ________ >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 13:15:17 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:15:17 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dam. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Robert You can’t dispute the information so you distract from the issue by attacking the messenger, with ad hominem. First the author of the article, then me. According to the author, the information is coming from the NYT’s, which should be questioned, but you don’t mention them. On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:33, Robert Naiman > wrote: It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me off. Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman > wrote: Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups By Tom Hall WSWS.ORG 11 October 2017 A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Thu Oct 12 13:48:36 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:48:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <006901d34360$cdc75330$6955f990$@comcast.net> Point one - “though it was unknown in the rest of the world,” Of course it was known to the rest of the world ??? But I will partly concede your point about the distinction of ; successful organization of a mass movement vs. Victory. Point two – agreed. Point three – agreed, UFPJ has devolved considerably over the last few years. HOWEVER, let’s not throw the baby out with the dirty bath water. Despite these points of yours the general analysis and suggestions are good ( in my opinion ). David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace-discuss Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 6:45 PM To: Brussel, Morton K Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted I had a problem with many things Bennis said, especially that to which you refer. This is my list I wrote this morning, but didn’t send. I put in bold the statements that irritated. "During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt” Victories? A successful organization of a mass movement maybe, though it was unknown in the rest of the world, but victorious? Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. This is the most egregious statement given what we did to N. Korea. Promotion of UFPJ, where most of what I see is “criticism of Assad," not US intervention and support for ISIS On Oct 10, 2017, at 14:03, Brussel, Morton K wrote: I was surprised by Bennis following statement: "Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable.” There is much wrong with this statement: • N. Korea, it seems evident, cares less about "Washington’s continued violation of the NPT" than about being attacked by the U.S. if it has no effective deterrent. • "Kim Jong-Un’s unacceptable threats”: They are threats to retaliate, not to start a war by attacking the U.S.. He’s not stupid. He may be undiplomatic, but that is somewhat understandable given the rantings and threats of Trump. Is Phyllis Bennis losing it—her analytic abilities? —mkb On Oct 9, 2017, at 10:58 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: I expect better from Phyllis Bennis than this collection of - at best - obvious truths and bromides. It shows the malign effect of a generation of identity politics. US presidents have killed 30 million people in 40 countries since WWII, but not because of racism. But "Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War”! What nonsense (repeated by Prashad). US foreign policy - and war policy - is remarkably consistent over more than a century. (So long as we don’t think it’s primarily a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”! That’s true only if liberty means the liberty of the 1% to kill people and plunder the planet.) And this is not just a matter today for a soi-disant, omphalos-obsessed 'Left.’ (The most anti-war senior politician in the US is Ron Paul; consistent anti-war positions have been enunciated by paleoconservatives.) Against the rather pusillanimous suggestions of the following articles, AWARE like many other anti-war groups across the country has called for the US to ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations (notably Russia, China, Iran and Syria); ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere); stop the drone attacks, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”; and end the war provocations against Russia and China; ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 800 US military bases ringing Eurasia (Russia has 15 bases outside its territory; China has one); bring all US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; ~ (4) stop US support of human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament; revoke the last administration’s trillion dollar plan to ‘update’ US nuclear weapons. When the ‘Left’ works seriously and effectively for these goals, they might be taken seriously again. (And BTW, the problem is US war making - not Trump.) —CGE On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue _____ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUpon Print When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 13:51:59 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:51:59 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US on the brink of war with N. Korea Message-ID: The US on the brink of war with North Korea 12 October 2017 Amid accelerating US preparations for conflict with North Korea, yesterday’s night-time flight by two B-1B bombers over the Korean Peninsula was designed to provoke a North Korean response that could be used as the casus belli for all-out war. The supersonic bombers were joined by Japanese and South Korean fighter jets for the first joint night-time training exercise that involved practicing air-to-ground missile drills in waters off the east coast of South Korea, then off the west coast. This rehearsal for war with North Korea followed another first when two B-1B bombers late last month flew the furthest north along the North Korean coast since the start of this century. At the same time, the Pentagon is assembling a naval armada off the Korean Peninsula. The nuclear attack submarine USS Tuscon arrived off South Korea on Saturday. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group of cruisers and destroyers is due to arrive later this month for joint exercises with the South Korean navy. Two Australian frigates are also en route to Korean waters. The Trump administration’s relentless campaign of bellicose threats and military provocations makes clear that the danger of a catastrophic war, which could drag in major powers such as China and Russia and escalate into a nuclear exchange, is real and imminent. As he faces a mounting political crisis at home, the US president may see a war with North Korea as a means of shoring up his administration and crushing domestic political opposition. From the standpoint of military logic, the US has deliberately placed the Pyongyang regime in an impossible situation. In his fascistic rant at the UN last month, Trump declared that North Korea confronted “total destruction” unless it capitulated completely to US demands. He flatly ruled out any negotiations with Pyongyang when he rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for “wasting his time” in sending out diplomatic feelers. North Korea’s foreign minister responded to Trump’s UN speech by declaring that it amounted to a declaration of war and warned that his country had the right to take countermeasures, including the shooting down of US strategic bombers in international airspace. Yet the Pentagon has continued to send B-1Bs to conduct war games in close proximity to North Korea. Confronted with the most powerful military on the planet armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons, the Pyongyang regime could conclude that it has to attack first, including with its limited nuclear arsenal, before its military is totally destroyed. Each B-1B flight poses the immediate question to the generals in Pyongyang: is this another drill, or the start of an all-out attack? In Washington, the military is being prepared and primed for war against North Korea. In a keynote speech to top army officers on Monday, Defence Secretary James Mattis insisted that the military had to be “ready to ensure we have military options that our president can employ if needed.” The Army Association paraphrased General Robert Abrams, commander of US Army Forces Command, who spoke at the same event as saying, “Sending American forces to fight a World War II-style all-out war would mean facing a harsh reality: Troops will die, and in large numbers. “ Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dunford met with Trump on Tuesday to review military options, including “to prevent North Korea from threatening the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons.” In other words, the Trump administration is on the brink of an illegal war of aggression on the pretext that North Korea's small nuclear arsenal poses a threat to the US. A US attack on North Korea would inevitably lead to a confrontation with China and Russia, which have repeatedly called for an easing of tensions and a return to negotiations. A war on their borders and the installation of a US puppet regime in Pyongyang cuts directly across their strategic interests in Asia. Moreover, the subjugation of North Korea is part of Washington’s far broader ambition to undermine, encircle and, if necessary, go to war with China to ensure American hegemony in Asia and the world. Trump has accelerated the Obama administration’s so-called “pivot to Asia” against Beijing on every front—diplomatically, economically and militarily. He has strengthened US ties throughout the region, threatened China with trade war and confronted Beijing militarily, not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in the South China Sea. On Tuesday, a US navy destroyer carried out another provocative intrusion near China’s Paracel Islands to challenge Beijing’s “excessive maritime claims.” The US drive to war is not simply the product of the fascistic President Trump. Rather, he is the expression of the deepening political, social and economic crisis of American imperialism, which has sought to arrest its historic decline through its aggressive use of military might. Having created one disaster after another in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, Washington is upping the ante and preparing for a direct conflict with its major rivals, China and Russia in the first instance. The danger of war is further heightened by the immense turmoil and conflicts within the American political establishment, including in the White House, and more broadly, popular opposition to war and austerity. Trump is publicly at odds with both Tillerson and Mattis, who have suggested that diplomatic efforts need to be exhausted before any attack on North Korea—not because they are opposed to war, but because they fear the immediate eruption of a mass anti-war movement in the event of undisguised US aggression. The bitterness of the infighting was underscored when a well-sourced NBC article last week revealed that Tillerson had threatened to resign and called Trump “a moron” following a top-level Pentagon meeting. On Wednesday, NBC reported that what prompted Tillerson to make that remark was a proposal by Trump to increase the number of US nuclear weapons ten-fold, which would put the US in violation of all existing nuclear treaties and effectively render it a pariah state. In a chilling expression of the type of crackdown that could be imposed in the context of a further escalation against North Korea, Trump threatened in a tweet to suspend NBC’s broadcasting license over the story. The deep divisions in American ruling circles that are fuelling speculation about Trump’s impeachment were summed up in a Washington Post editorial on Tuesday entitled “What to do with an unfit president.” Far from halting the drive to war, the political crisis only adds to the danger. Beset with conflict at home, Trump is being propelled to extricate himself by seeking to project political and social tensions outwards against a foreign foe. His critics and opponents are not opposed to war—many are criminally culpable for the US acts of aggression over the past 25 years. The differences are purely tactical—how to attack and who to attack first. Without the development of a mass anti-war movement of the working class in the United States and internationally, war is not only possible but inevitable. Such a movement cannot be based on appeals to the powers-that-be, but rather on a revolutionary socialist perspective to abolish the diseased capitalist order that threatens to drag humanity into the abyss. Peter Symonds WSWS.ORG [http://www.wsws.org/en/media/photos/legacy/frontpage/lectures1917-bottom.jpg] Fight Google's censorship! Google is blocking the World Socialist Web Sitefrom search results. To fight this blacklisting: Share this article with friends and coworkers * Facebook * Twitter * E-Mail * Reddit Commenting Discussion Rules » -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Thu Oct 12 13:57:55 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:57:55 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> <31ADDEFE-813E-4E3D-A3EE-8AE8B4AD8608@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <007901d34362$1afc8890$50f599b0$@comcast.net> Of course we know all too well your twisted view of reality Bob – Anyone who criticizes the democratic party, including the right wing corporate neo-liberal wing, is a “ sectarian “. Anyone who advocates for alternatives to policies of the neo-liberal democrats are ; “ Green party thugs”, “ Trots “ and “ Anarchists “. In fact, you’re not even a “ progressive “ democrat. You have consistently opposed progressive democrats in favor of corporate neo-liberal democrats like Ann Callis and Sam Rosenberg in the democratic primaries. And let’s not forget your advocating that the U-C IMC should be burned to the ground. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:30 AM To: Carl G. Estabrook Cc: Peace-discuss List; Karen Aram Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. Be honest, Carl. Did you read the article? I don't believe you did. I don't believe you agree with it. I don't believe you're a Trot. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:43 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: We should get to sleep, Bob. We obviously both need the rest. It’s affected your judgement (e.g., my AWARE colleague isn’t stupid). But in the clear light of dawn, give me some examples of “arrogance" and "dogmatic stupidity” in the WSWS piece. Put up or shut up. Regards, CGE On Oct 12, 2017, at 1:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: Oh Carl. You don't think anything. Don't give yourself airs. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:25 AM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: The WSWS article seems to me accurate and important: I think Bob’s choler arises from his recognition that it is. But he’s reduced to simple obloquy, which raises the question, Could Bob have been frightened by a Trotskyist (or maybe a Green party thug) when he was very young? See : '...One of the chief purveyors of this bilge of misinformation [about Jill Stein] is a previously obscure fellow named Robert Naiman, who runs a nearly invisible group called Just Foreign Policy. Naiman was caught red-handed (so to speak) when his junk mail made its way to the inbox of John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You and a leading expert on the politics of propaganda and disinformation. Stauber knows a smear when he sees one... 'In a nasty email exchange with longtime Green organizer Kevin Zeese, who is now co-director of Popular Resistance, a group which grew out of the Occupy movement, Naiman sunk even further into the slime and threatened to expose Jill Stein as “a Trotskyite cancer.” '"On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman wrote: Oh, is today my day to be harassed by Green Party thugs? I’ll make you a deal: call off your dogs and I won’t further expose Jill Stein as a Trokskyite cancer. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org " 'Slandering Stein and the Greens for being “Trotskyites” (or “Trokskyites,” in Naiman’s quaint verbiage) is as intellectually vapid as it is vile. Everyone knows that most of Leon’s former disciples in the US have long since morphed into neocons and thus can be spotted in Georgetown cafes polishing their resumés for slots on Hillary’s foreign policy team. '“Robert Naiman epitomizes the attitude of the paid, professional Democrat progressives attacking the Green Party and Jill Stein,” John Stauber told me. “These shills see no hypocrisy in embracing a candidate supported by Wall Street, the Koch brothers and the neoconservatives who with Hillary lied America into attacking Iraq. So there it is, Hillary is his champion while a woman running on the most progressive platform in America is just a damned Communist. Rather than back down when he himself was exposed, he doubled down with a smear befitting the worst of American politics. Naiman is not an aberration however; indeed, he embodies the funded progressive elite who since 2000 have become a front group for the Democrats liberal oligarchs such as George Soros and his Democracy Alliance.”’ —CGE > On Oct 12, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > It's the combination of arrogance and dogmatic stupidity that pisses me off. > > Don't you have any shame at all about being so stupid? > > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 12:24 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > I don’t know Bob, but I knew it would piss you off. > > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 22:13, Robert Naiman wrote: >> >> Do you honestly think that this criminally retarded Trot nonsense is useful? Monkeys on typewriters could produce more useful analysis. >> >> >> Robert Naiman >> Policy Director >> Just Foreign Policy >> www.justforeignpolicy.org >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> (202) 448-2898 x1 >> >> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 11:53 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups >> By Tom Hall >> WSWS.ORG >> 11 October 2017 >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. >> >> ________ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 14:26:45 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 09:26:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dem. Party donors funnel millions to protest groups. In-Reply-To: References: <77C4990B-544B-4C58-8A65-DE7AFF44D445@illinois.edu> <31ADDEFE-813E-4E3D-A3EE-8AE8B4AD8608@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <4326A16F-5361-4599-89E2-337F2661F307@illinois.edu> Yes, I did, and I do agree with it. And I’m still waiting to learn your specific disagreements with it. You seem to think that 'being a Trot’ is like being a typhoid carrier - an unacknowledged, often unrecognized infection… Let's talk about the analysis, not the label. > On Oct 12, 2017, at 2:29 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Be honest, Carl. Did you read the article? > > I don't believe you did. I don't believe you agree with it. I don't believe you're a Trot. > > >> >> […] >> >> >> >> Democratic Party donors funnel millions to protest groups >> >> By Tom Hall >> >> WSWS.ORG >> >> 11 October 2017 >> >> A New York Times report titled “The ‘Resistance,’ Raising Big Money, Upends Liberal Politics” details how the Democratic Party’s billionaire and millionaire donors are giving millions of dollars to so-called left-wing and progressive protest groups around the Democratic Party. >> >> “It started as a scrappy grass-roots protest movement against President Trump,” the article begins, “but now the so-called resistance is attracting six- and seven-figure checks from major liberal donors, posing an insurgent challenge to some of the left’s most venerable institutions — and the Democratic Party itself.” >> >> The article highlights the efforts of one particular group, Democracy Alliance, which the Times describes as “a club of wealthy liberals” who have donated more than $600 million since 2005 and have “helped shape the institutional left.” Since the election of Donald Trump, the group has shifted its funding priorities away from well-established organizations that supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries into a host of new “anti-Trump” groups. Their aim is to bolster the left-wing credentials of the Democratic Party, stem the growth of social opposition, and block the development of interest in socialism among tens of millions of workers and youth. >> >> “The Democracy Alliance distributed a ‘resistance map’ to its donors in July including new groups focused on converting the anti-Trump energy into electoral wins, such as Flippable, Swing Left and Sister District, as well as legal watchdog groups and others focused on mobilizing protesters, such as Women’s March and Indivisible,” the article states. >> >> Indivisible, the Times notes, was able to expand from little more than an online text document detailing how to “resist” the Trump administration into a national organization of 40 staff members, with more than 6,000 volunteer chapters across the country,” as well as two associated nonprofits which have raised $6 million dollars in donations. >> >> The Times article continues: “Yet Indivisible has also received funding from the tech entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, as well as foundations or coalitions tied to Democracy Alliance donors, including the San Francisco mortgage billionaire Herbert Sandler, the New York real estate heiress Patricia Bauman and the oil heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix.” A representative from the group said that they would “gladly” accept funding from billionaire investor George Soros, a major financial backer of the Democratic Party. >> >> Cloaked under rhetorical attacks on the supposed “neoliberal” and “establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, a ferocious struggle is unfolding over the division of the spoils. The Center for American Progress, the Times observes, “has engendered resentment from others on the left for casting itself as a leader of the anti-Trump movement and raising money off the resistance nomenclature,” including selling t-shirts branded with the word “resist” on its website. >> >> Only the politically naive will believe that these Wall Street millionaires and billionaires will not see a “return on investment” from their donations. All of the “left-wing” groups that are receiving millions in donations seek, in one way or another, to camouflage the character of the Democratic Party as a party of the financial oligarchy and the military and promote illusions that the Democrats can be shifted through popular pressure to the left. >> >> The political goal behind these fundraising efforts is to boost the tattered credibility of the Democratic Party, widely seen as a party of Wall Street and the military, and to channel mass opposition to the Trump administration behind the Democrats in order to prevent it from escaping the control of the ruling class. >> >> Workers and young people who have been taken in by the illusion that the Democrats can be transformed from a party of Wall Street into a “people’s party” should consider the fact that the very groups promoting the perspective of pressuring the Democrats are themselves being directly backed and financed by Wall Street. >> >> “The resistance is strongest when everyone has access to our resources,” David Brock, founder of Media Matters and a prominent Clinton supporter, told the Times. “These grass-roots groups play a different, unique role, and their energy is something the progressive movement hadn’t seen in decades,” an official with the Center for American Progress added. The Times also cited Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa, who praised these groups’ work in Democratic electoral campaigns. >> >> This type of funding of supposedly left-wing protest groups did not emerge only after the 2016 presidential elections. Last October, the Ford Foundation announced that it would spend $100 million over six years on Black Lives Matter. >> >> The perspective of racial and gender identity politics that these groups espouse corresponds to the interests of a narrow layer of the affluent upper-middle class that has benefited directly over the past 30 years from the rising stock market and whose gains come at the expense of the working class of all races. >> >> The bulk of the “left-wing” upper-middle class supported the primary campaign of Bernie Sanders, who combined progressive and even “socialist” phraseology with a total silence on the reactionary role of the Democratic Party. After unceremoniously capitulating to Clinton, Sanders went on a national postelection tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez to save the Democrats’ image as a party of “working people.” Sanders constantly papered over the experience of the Obama administration in order to bolster illusions in the Democrats. >> >> The result of Sanders’ efforts has been disastrous for the working class. Far from turning the Democratic Party to the left, the Democratic Party has ignored the votes of Sanders’ 13 million voters, promised to make deals with Trump on everything from tax cuts for the rich to mass deportation, and launched a nationalist campaign aimed at whipping up hostility to Russia, blaming “Russian interference” for Trump’s victory. The leadership of the Democratic Party now hopes that by mobilizing wealthy donors they can inject a popular veneer into their pro-war, pro-corporate program and block the development of a mass movement for socialist revolution. >> >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 14:32:53 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 09:32:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US on the brink of war with N. Korea In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "Korea? It’s Always Really Been About China!” - a 'calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues.' > On Oct 12, 2017, at 8:51 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > The US on the brink of war with North Korea > 12 October 2017 > Amid accelerating US preparations for conflict with North Korea, yesterday’s night-time flight by two B-1B bombers over the Korean Peninsula was designed to provoke a North Korean response that could be used as the casus belli for all-out war. > The supersonic bombers were joined by Japanese and South Korean fighter jets for the first joint night-time training exercise that involved practicing air-to-ground missile drills in waters off the east coast of South Korea, then off the west coast. This rehearsal for war with North Korea followed another first when two B-1B bombers late last month flew the furthest north along the North Korean coast since the start of this century. > At the same time, the Pentagon is assembling a naval armada off the Korean Peninsula. The nuclear attack submarine USS Tuscon arrived off South Korea on Saturday. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group of cruisers and destroyers is due to arrive later this month for joint exercises with the South Korean navy. Two Australian frigates are also en route to Korean waters. > The Trump administration’s relentless campaign of bellicose threats and military provocations makes clear that the danger of a catastrophic war, which could drag in major powers such as China and Russia and escalate into a nuclear exchange, is real and imminent. As he faces a mounting political crisis at home, the US president may see a war with North Korea as a means of shoring up his administration and crushing domestic political opposition. > From the standpoint of military logic, the US has deliberately placed the Pyongyang regime in an impossible situation. In his fascistic rant at the UN last month, Trump declared that North Korea confronted “total destruction” unless it capitulated completely to US demands. He flatly ruled out any negotiations with Pyongyang when he rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for “wasting his time” in sending out diplomatic feelers. > North Korea’s foreign minister responded to Trump’s UN speech by declaring that it amounted to a declaration of war and warned that his country had the right to take countermeasures, including the shooting down of US strategic bombers in international airspace. Yet the Pentagon has continued to send B-1Bs to conduct war games in close proximity to North Korea. > Confronted with the most powerful military on the planet armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons, the Pyongyang regime could conclude that it has to attack first, including with its limited nuclear arsenal, before its military is totally destroyed. Each B-1B flight poses the immediate question to the generals in Pyongyang: is this another drill, or the start of an all-out attack? > In Washington, the military is being prepared and primed for war against North Korea. In a keynote speech to top army officers on Monday, Defence Secretary James Mattis insisted that the military had to be “ready to ensure we have military options that our president can employ if needed.” > The Army Association paraphrased General Robert Abrams, commander of US Army Forces Command, who spoke at the same event as saying, “Sending American forces to fight a World War II-style all-out war would mean facing a harsh reality: Troops will die, and in large numbers. “ > Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dunford met with Trump on Tuesday to review military options, including “to prevent North Korea from threatening the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons.” In other words, the Trump administration is on the brink of an illegal war of aggression on the pretext that North Korea's small nuclear arsenal poses a threat to the US. > A US attack on North Korea would inevitably lead to a confrontation with China and Russia, which have repeatedly called for an easing of tensions and a return to negotiations. A war on their borders and the installation of a US puppet regime in Pyongyang cuts directly across their strategic interests in Asia. Moreover, the subjugation of North Korea is part of Washington’s far broader ambition to undermine, encircle and, if necessary, go to war with China to ensure American hegemony in Asia and the world. > Trump has accelerated the Obama administration’s so-called “pivot to Asia” against Beijing on every front—diplomatically, economically and militarily. He has strengthened US ties throughout the region, threatened China with trade war and confronted Beijing militarily, not only on the Korean Peninsula but also in the South China Sea. On Tuesday, a US navy destroyer carried out another provocative intrusion near China’s Paracel Islands to challenge Beijing’s “excessive maritime claims.” > The US drive to war is not simply the product of the fascistic President Trump. Rather, he is the expression of the deepening political, social and economic crisis of American imperialism, which has sought to arrest its historic decline through its aggressive use of military might. Having created one disaster after another in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa, Washington is upping the ante and preparing for a direct conflict with its major rivals, China and Russia in the first instance. > The danger of war is further heightened by the immense turmoil and conflicts within the American political establishment, including in the White House, and more broadly, popular opposition to war and austerity. Trump is publicly at odds with both Tillerson and Mattis, who have suggested that diplomatic efforts need to be exhausted before any attack on North Korea—not because they are opposed to war, but because they fear the immediate eruption of a mass anti-war movement in the event of undisguised US aggression. > The bitterness of the infighting was underscored when a well-sourced NBC article last week revealed that Tillerson had threatened to resign and called Trump “a moron” following a top-level Pentagon meeting. > On Wednesday, NBC reported that what prompted Tillerson to make that remark was a proposal by Trump to increase the number of US nuclear weapons ten-fold, which would put the US in violation of all existing nuclear treaties and effectively render it a pariah state. > In a chilling expression of the type of crackdown that could be imposed in the context of a further escalation against North Korea, Trump threatened in a tweet to suspend NBC’s broadcasting license over the story. > The deep divisions in American ruling circles that are fuelling speculation about Trump’s impeachment were summed up in a Washington Post editorial on Tuesday entitled “What to do with an unfit president.” > Far from halting the drive to war, the political crisis only adds to the danger. Beset with conflict at home, Trump is being propelled to extricate himself by seeking to project political and social tensions outwards against a foreign foe. His critics and opponents are not opposed to war—many are criminally culpable for the US acts of aggression over the past 25 years. The differences are purely tactical—how to attack and who to attack first. > Without the development of a mass anti-war movement of the working class in the United States and internationally, war is not only possible but inevitable. Such a movement cannot be based on appeals to the powers-that-be, but rather on a revolutionary socialist perspective to abolish the diseased capitalist order that threatens to drag humanity into the abyss. > Peter Symonds > WSWS.ORG > > Fight Google's censorship! > Google is blocking the World Socialist Web Sitefrom search results. > To fight this blacklisting: > Share this article with friends and coworkers > • Facebook > • Twitter > • E-Mail > • Reddit > > > Commenting Discussion Rules » > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 14:33:34 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 14:33:34 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: <006901d34360$cdc75330$6955f990$@comcast.net> References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <56856BD1-186A-43D7-9B57-D864392993EC@illinois.edu> <006901d34360$cdc75330$6955f990$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Point One: No, I’m sorry to say, the mass anti-war movement in the US against the war with Iraq was not covered worldwide. I was working in Manila at the time, with the Asian Development Bank. Working with people of many nationalities and we were all concerned. Online that is about 2,000 people. There was no coverage that we knew of related to the anti-war movement in the US against the Bush Administrations plans to attack Iraq, or after. This was a daily conversation by many, which included Muslims of various nations. We not only had CNN at home and in airports, we also received news from Al Jazeera. Maybe there was coverage in other parts of the world, but not in Asia at the time. I made the point during a meeting of about fifteen people discussing “where we go from here” "that we should focus on development of Afghanistan, given what my nation was about to do to it.” People were shocked at my statement, because though Afghanistan was a member of ADB, they had been inactive for years, and I was asked from whom I received my information, my answer was “no one, it was just obvious”. Soon after, not due to anything I said, we sent advisors to Afghanistan, finance and accounting people, and yes undercover as engineers, US military personnel, who were fluent in Pashtun as well as Urdu. I hope I don’t lose my pension over revealing this information. Most of the people working with me traveled on a regular basis, we weren’t living in a microcosym. Only after returning to the US some years later, did I learn of the world’s largest mass demonstration against war in the US after 9/11. Your point: “the suggestions are good,” thats why I suggested it, to you and others for both panel discussions. I hope someone takes up the lead on “events” focused on the “costs of war.” However, those who attended the one we did a couple months ago, or so I have been informed, now wish to focus on environmental concerns, not war. Bennis suggests that “anti-war groups deliver this message, but she does it in a critical fashion implying failure on the part of the Anti-war groups, or blaming the messenger for not arousing the people.” Does she bring this info. into her articles? Well, I guess now she will have to do so. Tom Dispatch, David Swanson, Prof. Francis Boyle, Max Blumenthal, all the others who speak out against war, utilizing their professional expertise, in what little alternative media coverage they receive, are now supposed to add in pie charts, domestic issues and costs of war in their articles as well? This is nonsense. Again, we need others to take up that mantle and spread the word, you David have done a good job on this topic, please keep up the good work. On Oct 12, 2017, at 06:48, David Johnson > wrote: Point one - “though it was unknown in the rest of the world,” Of course it was known to the rest of the world ??? But I will partly concede your point about the distinction of ; successful organization of a mass movement vs. Victory. Point two – agreed. Point three – agreed, UFPJ has devolved considerably over the last few years. HOWEVER, let’s not throw the baby out with the dirty bath water. Despite these points of yours the general analysis and suggestions are good ( in my opinion ). David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace-discuss Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 6:45 PM To: Brussel, Morton K Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted I had a problem with many things Bennis said, especially that to which you refer. This is my list I wrote this morning, but didn’t send. I put in bold the statements that irritated. "During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt” Victories? A successful organization of a mass movement maybe, though it was unknown in the rest of the world, but victorious? Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. This is the most egregious statement given what we did to N. Korea. Promotion of UFPJ, where most of what I see is “criticism of Assad," not US intervention and support for ISIS On Oct 10, 2017, at 14:03, Brussel, Morton K > wrote: I was surprised by Bennis following statement: "Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable.” There is much wrong with this statement: • N. Korea, it seems evident, cares less about "Washington’s continued violation of the NPT" than about being attacked by the U.S. if it has no effective deterrent. • "Kim Jong-Un’s unacceptable threats”: They are threats to retaliate, not to start a war by attacking the U.S.. He’s not stupid. He may be undiplomatic, but that is somewhat understandable given the rantings and threats of Trump. Is Phyllis Bennis losing it—her analytic abilities? —mkb On Oct 9, 2017, at 10:58 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: I expect better from Phyllis Bennis than this collection of - at best - obvious truths and bromides. It shows the malign effect of a generation of identity politics. US presidents have killed 30 million people in 40 countries since WWII, but not because of racism. But "Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War”! What nonsense (repeated by Prashad). US foreign policy - and war policy - is remarkably consistent over more than a century. (So long as we don’t think it’s primarily a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”! That’s true only if liberty means the liberty of the 1% to kill people and plunder the planet.) And this is not just a matter today for a soi-disant, omphalos-obsessed 'Left.’ (The most anti-war senior politician in the US is Ron Paul; consistent anti-war positions have been enunciated by paleoconservatives.) Against the rather pusillanimous suggestions of the following articles, AWARE like many other anti-war groups across the country has called for the US to ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations (notably Russia, China, Iran and Syria); ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere); stop the drone attacks, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times”; and end the war provocations against Russia and China; ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 800 US military bases ringing Eurasia (Russia has 15 bases outside its territory; China has one); bring all US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; ~ (4) stop US support of human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament; revoke the last administration’s trillion dollar plan to ‘update’ US nuclear weapons. When the ‘Left’ works seriously and effectively for these goals, they might be taken seriously again. (And BTW, the problem is US war making - not Trump.) —CGE On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue ________________________________ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 15:07:14 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:07:14 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Event announcement In-Reply-To: <69A5E348-FA3F-4F19-B37C-89318F92F991@gmail.com> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <69A5E348-FA3F-4F19-B37C-89318F92F991@gmail.com> Message-ID: I do hope we could get the AWARE September 23 Anti-War Teach-In on YouTube and circulated around the internet. We still have some time. Thanks to all involved. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C G Estabrook via Peace Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:02 AM To: C. G. ESTABROOK Cc: Peace-discuss List ; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Subject: [Peace] Event announcement At the regular AWARE meeting on October 8, members of AWARE considered what their reaction should be - in conjunction with the antiwar movement at large - in the event of a US armed attack on North Korea, Iran, or elsewhere. It was suggested that the most prominent US government installation in Champaign County was probably the Federal Courthouse at 201 S. Vine St. in Urbana. A significant expansion of US war-making - we're already at war in eight countries - should produce anti-war demonstrations around the country. AWARE's should probably be centered on the sidewalk in the 200 block of S. Vine Street (and perhaps around the corner on E. Main Street). We should make plans for such a demonstration and use the means available to publicize them, and to communicate them to anti-war individuals and organizations in the area. Meanwhile, we should continue our presence at the Market, our monthly demonstration, and UPTV. Perhaps a new flyer discussing such plans is in order. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 15:47:51 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 10:47:51 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20F8F77F-2F27-44A3-A4A6-1242B60A2B1E@gmail.com> Stuart— We’ve been friends and colleagues in AWARE for some time now, and I think you’re making a mistake in suppressing my posts to an AWARE email list, ostensibly to enforce procedural rules that in fact my posts meet (viz., "'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues”). The suspicion arises that my posts (“...rants...”) are being censored because you and others disagree with the content - but isn’t AWARE precisely for the open discussion of these issues? Which of my recent "calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues” do you think justify suppression? ~ Bennis et al. on identity politics? ~ articles on Antifa? ~ Krugman’s misleading attack on slavery? I think we contribute to the building of an anti-war movement by encouraging the liberty that the equivocal George Orwell spoke of, in the (suppressed) preface to his 1945 novella 'Animal Farm’: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Regards, CGE > On Oct 12, 2017, at 9:33 AM, peace-owner at lists.chambana.net wrote: > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > Re: [Peace-discuss] US on the brink of war with N. Korea > > Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. > > The reason it is being held: > > Post to moderated list > > Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive > notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel > this posting, please visit the following URL: > > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/confirm/peace/c7ba7f42ce719022b97749389a20841edb3029f1 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 15:48:54 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:48:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Robert et al Prof. Francis Boyle attempted to have Bush, and Cheney impeached to prevent US attacks on Iraq, but was prevented by John Podesta of the DNC, because they wanted to use the war for the next election. Prof. Boyle, again attempted impeachment of Obama for his drones and extension of our wars from two to eight. Unfortunately no one would take up the mantle for peace, against a popular Democratic President. Now you want to impeach Trump, if its for war, of which there is credible evidence to do so, according to Professor Boyle, then good for you. If it’s for Russiagate, or any lesser cause, don’t do it, that will only bury the American government and its people in more trivialities. Robert, you may call me a “stupid Trot” for posting their information. I would rather be a “stupid socialist," than one who wallows in trivia and propaganda. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Robert Naiman > wrote: Until now, I haven't been a devotee of the Trump impeachment push. I think the "Russian interference in the election" story has been greatly overblown, driven mainly by devotees of the national security state. This development could change my view. Tom Steyer is putting Trump's “seeming determination to go to war” on the marquee of his bill of charges. If that becomes central to the case, I will change my view. If Tom Steyer starts talking about ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, I will gladly fight under his flag. Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/tom-steyer-trump-impeachment.html === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 _______________________________________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist To Unsubscribe Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj-activist/davidcnswanson%40gmail.com You are subscribed as: davidcnswanson at gmail.com -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. _______________________________________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fufpj-activist&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181c00e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636434171317080250&sdata=WOGTQ6tzYyX91soE37fmvwRtQe8pBocSgcoL5dHvU2g%3D&reserved=0 To Unsubscribe Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org Or visit: https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst.org%2Fmailman%2Foptions%2Fufpj-activist%2Fkarenaram%2540hotmail.com&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181c00e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636434171317080250&sdata=QG7ssNUCwPtp9I9ribKIN8WB4IOtU8u%2Bp%2FdYWBtrql0%3D&reserved=0 You are subscribed as: karenaram at hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidcnswanson at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 15:53:57 2017 From: davidcnswanson at gmail.com (David Swanson) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 11:53:57 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Here is the no-Russia-BS impeach Trump campaign: http://RootsAction.org On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:48 AM, Karen Aram wrote: > Robert et al > > Prof. Francis Boyle attempted to have Bush, and Cheney impeached to > prevent US attacks on Iraq, but was prevented by John Podesta of the DNC, > because they wanted to use the war for the next election. > > Prof. Boyle, again attempted impeachment of Obama for his drones and > extension of our wars from two to eight. Unfortunately no one would take up > the mantle for peace, against a popular Democratic President. > > Now you want to impeach Trump, if its for war, of which there is credible > evidence to do so, according to Professor Boyle, then good for you. > > If it’s for Russiagate, or any lesser cause, don’t do it, that will only > bury the American government and its people in more trivialities. > > Robert, you may call me a “stupid Trot” for posting their information. I > would rather be a “stupid socialist," than one who wallows in trivia and > propaganda. > > > > >> On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Robert Naiman > justforeignpolicy.org> wrote: >> >>> Until now, I haven't been a devotee of the Trump impeachment push. I >>> think the "Russian interference in the election" story has been greatly >>> overblown, driven mainly by devotees of the national security state. >>> >>> This development could change my view. Tom Steyer is putting Trump's >>> “seeming determination to go to war” on the marquee of his bill of charges. >>> If that becomes central to the case, I will change my view. If Tom Steyer >>> starts talking about ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, I >>> will gladly fight under his flag. >>> >>> Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats >>> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/tom-steyer-trump-impeachment.html >>> >>> >>> === >>> >>> Robert Naiman >>> Policy Director >>> Just Foreign Policy >>> www.justforeignpolicy.org >>> >>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >>> (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> >>> >>> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen >>> https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> ufpj-activist mailing list >>> >>> Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org >>> List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist >>> >>> >>> To Unsubscribe >>> Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org >>> Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj- >>> activist/davidcnswanson%40gmail.com >>> >>> >>> You are subscribed as: davidcnswanson at gmail.com >>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> >> *David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He >> is director of WorldBeyondWar.org >> >> and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org >> . >> Swanson's books include *War Is A Lie >> *. >> He blogs at DavidSwanson.org >> >> and WarIsACrime.org >> . >> He hosts Talk Nation Radio >> >> . He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and >> photos and videos here >> . >> Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson >> >> and FaceBook >> , >> and sign up for: >> Activist alerts >> >> . >> Articles >> >> . >> David Swanson news >> >> . >> World Beyond War news >> >> . >> Charlottesville news >> >> . >> > > _______________________________________________ > ufpj-activist mailing list > > Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org > List info: https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo% > 2Fufpj-activist&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com% > 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181c00e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa > aaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636434171317080250&sdata=WOGTQ6tzYyX91soE37fmvwRtQe8pBo > cSgcoL5dHvU2g%3D&reserved=0 > > To Unsubscribe > Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org > Or visit: https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook. > com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst.org%2Fmailman% > 2Foptions%2Fufpj-activist%2Fkarenaram%2540hotmail.com& > data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181c00e% > 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636434171317080250&sdata= > QG7ssNUCwPtp9I9ribKIN8WB4IOtU8u%2Bp%2FdYWBtrql0%3D&reserved=0 > > You are subscribed as: karenaram at hotmail.com > > > -- *David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include *War Is A Lie *. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here . Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook , and sign up for: Activist alerts . Articles . David Swanson news . World Beyond War news . Charlottesville news . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 12 16:04:26 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:04:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The petition looks substantial enough, I signed and circulated it. On Oct 12, 2017, at 08:53, David Swanson > wrote: Here is the no-Russia-BS impeach Trump campaign: http://RootsAction.org On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:48 AM, Karen Aram > wrote: Robert et al Prof. Francis Boyle attempted to have Bush, and Cheney impeached to prevent US attacks on Iraq, but was prevented by John Podesta of the DNC, because they wanted to use the war for the next election. Prof. Boyle, again attempted impeachment of Obama for his drones and extension of our wars from two to eight. Unfortunately no one would take up the mantle for peace, against a popular Democratic President. Now you want to impeach Trump, if its for war, of which there is credible evidence to do so, according to Professor Boyle, then good for you. If it’s for Russiagate, or any lesser cause, don’t do it, that will only bury the American government and its people in more trivialities. Robert, you may call me a “stupid Trot” for posting their information. I would rather be a “stupid socialist," than one who wallows in trivia and propaganda. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Robert Naiman > wrote: Until now, I haven't been a devotee of the Trump impeachment push. I think the "Russian interference in the election" story has been greatly overblown, driven mainly by devotees of the national security state. This development could change my view. Tom Steyer is putting Trump's “seeming determination to go to war” on the marquee of his bill of charges. If that becomes central to the case, I will change my view. If Tom Steyer starts talking about ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, I will gladly fight under his flag. Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/tom-steyer-trump-impeachment.html === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 _______________________________________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist To Unsubscribe Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj-activist/davidcnswanson%40gmail.com You are subscribed as: davidcnswanson at gmail.com -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. _______________________________________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fufpj-activist&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181c00e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636434171317080250&sdata=WOGTQ6tzYyX91soE37fmvwRtQe8pBocSgcoL5dHvU2g%3D&reserved=0 To Unsubscribe Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org Or visit: https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst.org%2Fmailman%2Foptions%2Fufpj-activist%2Fkarenaram%2540hotmail.com&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181c00e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636434171317080250&sdata=QG7ssNUCwPtp9I9ribKIN8WB4IOtU8u%2Bp%2FdYWBtrql0%3D&reserved=0 You are subscribed as: karenaram at hotmail.com -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidcnswanson at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 17:32:35 2017 From: davidcnswanson at gmail.com (David Swanson) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:32:35 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com> References: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The main reason this is too weak to even risk being a self-fulfilling prophecy is that those pushing Russiagate want Trump around in order to "oppose" him. If they wanted him gone they'd switch to offenses for which there is evidence. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:29 PM, stansfield smith wrote: > > > > > > > The powerful and dominant forces for impeaching Trump, and the forces who > have the control in Congress to do it, will impeach him for bogus Russia > control, not for war-mongering, not for his racist and anti-immigrant > positions. > > If you want to get involved in impeaching Trump, those you will be aiding > are these anti-Russia neo-cons. You will not be helping the anti-war war > movement, or immigrants or Blacks or women. > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* David Swanson > *To:* Karen Aram > *Cc:* Robert Naiman ; Peace-discuss List < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>; ufpj-activist < > ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org> > *Sent:* Thursday, October 12, 2017 10:54 AM > *Subject:* Re: [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor > Demands of Democrats > > Here is the no-Russia-BS impeach Trump campaign: > http://RootsAction.org > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:48 AM, Karen Aram > wrote: > > Robert et al > > Prof. Francis Boyle attempted to have Bush, and Cheney impeached to > prevent US attacks on Iraq, but was prevented by John Podesta of the DNC, > because they wanted to use the war for the next election. > > Prof. Boyle, again attempted impeachment of Obama for his drones and > extension of our wars from two to eight. Unfortunately no one would take up > the mantle for peace, against a popular Democratic President. > > Now you want to impeach Trump, if its for war, of which there is credible > evidence to do so, according to Professor Boyle, then good for you. > > If it’s for Russiagate, or any lesser cause, don’t do it, that will only > bury the American government and its people in more trivialities. > > Robert, you may call me a “stupid Trot” for posting their information. I > would rather be a “stupid socialist," than one who wallows in trivia and > propaganda. > > > > > On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Robert Naiman justforeignpolicy.org > wrote: > > Until now, I haven't been a devotee of the Trump impeachment push. I think > the "Russian interference in the election" story has been greatly > overblown, driven mainly by devotees of the national security state. > > This development could change my view. Tom Steyer is putting Trump's > “seeming determination to go to war” on the marquee of his bill of charges. > If that becomes central to the case, I will change my view. If Tom Steyer > starts talking about ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, I > will gladly fight under his flag. > > Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1 0/11/us/tom-steyer-trump-impea chment.html > > > === > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen > https://petitions.moveon.org/s ign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_ by=1135580 > > > > > ______________________________ _________________ > ufpj-activist mailing list > > Post: ufpj-activist at lists. mayfirst.org > List info: https://lists.mayfirst. org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj- activist > > > To Unsubscribe > Send email to: ufpj-activist- unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org > > Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst. org/mailman/options/ufpj- > activist/davidcnswanson% 40gmail.com > > > You are subscribed as: davidcnswanson at gmail.com > > > > > -- > *David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is > director of WorldBeyondWar.org > > and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org > . > Swanson's books include *War Is A Lie > *. > He blogs at DavidSwanson.org > > and WarIsA Crime.org > . > He hosts Talk Nation Radio > > . He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and > photos and videos here > . > Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson > > and F aceBook > , > and sign up for: > Activist alerts > > . > Articles > > . > David Swanson news > > . > World Beyond War news > > . > Charlottesville news > > . > > > ______________________________ _________________ > ufpj-activist mailing list > > Post: ufpj-activist at lists. mayfirst.org > List info: https://nam03.safelinks. protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst. org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo% > 2Fufpj-activist&data=02%7C01% 7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com% > 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181 c00e% 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa > aaaa%7C1%7C0% 7C636434171317080250&sdata= WOGTQ6tzYyX91soE37fmvwRtQe8pBo > cSgcoL5dHvU2g%3D&reserved=0 > > > To Unsubscribe > Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe@ lists.mayfirst.org > > Or visit: https://nam03. safelinks.protection.outlook. > com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists. mayfirst.org%2Fmailman% > 2Foptions%2Fufpj-activist% 2Fkarenaram%2540hotmail.com& > data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram% 40hotmail.com% 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181 > c00e% 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa aaaa%7C1%7C0% > 7C636434171317080250&sdata= QG7ssNUCwPtp9I9ribKIN8WB4IOtU8 > u%2Bp%2FdYWBtrql0%3D&reserved= 0 > > > You are subscribed as: karenaram at hotmail.com > > > > > > -- > *David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is > director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign > coordinator for RootsAction.org . Swanson's > books include *War Is A Lie *. He blogs at > DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org > . He hosts Talk Nation Radio > . He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 > Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here > . Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson > and FaceBook > , and sign up > for: > Activist alerts > > . > Articles . > David Swanson news . > World Beyond War news > . > Charlottesville news > . > _______________________________________________ > ufpj-activist mailing list > > Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org > List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist > > To Unsubscribe > Send email to: ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org > Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/ > mailman/options/ufpj-activist/stansfieldsmith%40yahoo.com > > You are subscribed as: stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com > > > -- *David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include *War Is A Lie *. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here . Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook , and sign up for: Activist alerts . Articles . David Swanson news . World Beyond War news . Charlottesville news . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 10 14:43:26 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:43:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?iso-8859-1?q?=2E=09JACOBIN__The_Lost_History_of?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_Antifa?= Message-ID: <008d01d341d6$2203fd90$660bf8b0$@comcast.net> * JACOBIN The Lost History of Antifa Loren Balhorn 72 years after the triumph over Nazism, we look back to postwar Germany, when socialists gave birth to Antifa. Description: https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/08093346/Antifa-Conference-1932.png Scene from the 1932 Antifaschistische Aktion conference. The origins of the word “antifa” — shorthand for decentralized, militant street activism associated with its own aesthetic and subculture — might be murky to most readers. Even in Germany, few know much about the popular forms of antifascist resistance that coined the term. The movement’s short but inspiring political legacy proved too uncomfortable for both Cold War-era German states, and was ignored in schools and mainstream history. Today its legacy is almost entirely lost to the Left. Out of the Ruins By 1945, Hitler’s Third Reich lay physically destroyed and politically exhausted. Basic civil society ceased to function in many areas, as the Nazi grip on power faltered and regime supporters, particularly in the middle- and upper classes, realized that Hitler’s “final victory” was a fantasy. On the Left, many Communists and Social Democrats had either been outright murdered by the Nazis, or died in the ensuing war. The unimaginable human and material destruction wrought by Nazi rule killed millions and turned German society upside down, decimating the labor movement and murdering most of the country’s Jewish population. Millions who had supported or at least acquiesced to the regime ­— including many workers and even some former socialists — now faced a new beginning in unknown political terrain. Yet despite its failure to stop Hitler in 1933 and veritable dismantling in subsequent years, Germany’s socialist labor movement and its decidedly progressive traditions outlived Hitler in the factories of its industrial cities, and began gathering up the fragments as soon as open political activity became possible. As historian Gareth Dale describes: Of all sectors of the population, it was industrial workers in the major towns that showed the greatest immunity to Nazism. Many trade unionists and socialists were able to maintain their traditions and beliefs, at least in some form, through the Nazi era. A courageous minority, including some 150,000 Communists, took part in illegal resistance. Wider layers avoided danger but were able to keep labour movement values and memories alive amongst groups of friends, in workplaces and on housing estates. These groups, oftentimes launched from the aforementioned housing estates, were generally called “Antifaschistische Ausschüsse,” “Antifaschistische Kommittees,” or the now famous “Antifaschistische Aktion” – “Antifa” for short. They drew on the slogans and orientation of the prewar united front strategy, adopting the word “Antifa” from a last-ditch attempt to establish a cross-party alliance between Communist and Social Democratic workers in 1932. The alliance’s iconic logo, devised by Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists members Max Keilson and Max Gebhard, has been since become one of the Left’s most well-known symbols. Description: https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/08093521/antifa_aktion_1932.png After the war, Antifas varied in size and composition across the former Reich, now divided into four zones of occupation, and developed in interaction with the local occupying power. Emerging seemingly overnight in dozens of cities, most formed immediately after Allied forces arrived, while some such as the group in Wuppertal “liberated” themselves in street battles with Hitler loyalists before the Allies could. Pivotally, these circles were not spontaneous instances of solidarization between traumatized war survivors, but the product of Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Communist Party (KPD) veterans reactivating prewar networks. Albrecht Lein reports that the core of the Braunschweig Antifa was made up of KPD and SPD members in their forties and fifties who had avoided the front, though Catholic workers’ organizations and other forces were also involved. The Antifa groups numbered between several hundred and several thousand active members in most cities, while the openly decried lack of youth involvement can be ascribed to twelve years of Nazi education and socialization, which annihilated the once widespread proletarian-socialist attitude among most young Germans. Though the material needs of war and reconstruction incorporated women into economic life in new ways, the male dominance characteristic of German society at the time was also reflected in the Antifa movement, which consisted largely (but not entirely) of men. Antifas tended to focus on a combination of hunting down Nazi criminals and underground Nazi partisans (the so-called “Werewolves”) and practical concerns affecting the general population. Braunschweig’s Antifa, for example, printed a twelve-point program demanding, among other things, the removal of Nazis from all administrative bodies and their immediate replacement with “competent antifascists,” liquidation of Nazi assets to provide for war victims, emergency laws to prosecute local fascists, and the reestablishment of the public health-care service. Typical of an organization led by socialists and thus keenly aware of the need for print media as an organizing medium, the program’s twelfth and final point consisted bluntly of a “Daily newspaper.” Although surviving records indicate that many Antifas were dominated by the KPD, the political mood in the early months was far from the “Third Period” adventurism of the late Weimar period. Across the board, local Antifas were motivated by a desire to learn from the mistakes of 1933 and build a non-sectarian labor movement bridging divisions. This was buoyed by a widespread sense at the war’s end that the horrors of Nazism had been a result of the instability and inequality of capitalism, and that a new, egalitarian economic system was needed for the postwar order. Demands for nationalization of industry and other left-wing policies were widespread. Even the forced marriage between KPD and SPD into the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the Soviet zone drew on this sentiment and recruited many former oppositionists in the first year. In British-occupied Hamburg, a joint KPD-SPD action committee convened in July 1945 with broad support from their respective memberships to declare: The will to merge into a powerful political party lives in the hearts of the millions of supporters of the once warring German workers’ parties as the most meaningful outcome of their shared suffering. This desire is deeply etched into all of the surviving prisoners from the concentration camps, prisons, and Gestapo institutions. The rest of the document consisted of practical demands around which to unite Hamburg’s fragmented labor movement. Antifas enjoyed varying degrees of success depending on the composition of the local movement and the amount of leeway allowed to them by occupying powers. Despite forming outside of the Allied administration and pushing forward popular de-Nazification policies against occupying forces who sought reconciliation with the old authorities, they were in no position to contest Allied hegemony and represented militant minorities at best. The southwestern industrial city of Stuttgart, for example, was fortunate enough to be involved in territorial maneuvering between the United States and France, which occupied the city preemptively. Keen to avoid civil unrest and thus give the Americans a pretext to take it back, French authorities allowed Stuttgart’s antifascists considerable leeway in dismantling the Nazi-era German Labor Front (DAF), rebuilding shop-floor organization in the factories, and organizing the population in cross-party antifascist alliances. Description: https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/08093528/Antifascist-Rally-Buchenwald- Concentration-Camp-1945.pngAntifascist rally at Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945. Stuttgart is also noteworthy for the presence of the Communist Party (Opposition), or KPO. This group around former KPD leaders August Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler had recruited a large number of the city’s mid-level KPD factory activists and functionaries following that party’s ultra-left turn in 1929. The KPO’s vocal advocacy for an anti-Nazi front of all workers’ organizations in the run-up to 1933 allowed it to consolidate a small but considerable base of experienced Communist cadre repulsed by the Stalinization of their party. Although never a mass organization and only a shadow of its former self after the war, what remained of the KPO had a decisive influence over Stuttgart’s metal workers’ union for several years and was able to play a role in the factories. These activists and others provided the city with a core of capable militants who understood, through experience, the need to unite workers on a cross-party basis around basic social demands. Like everywhere else in Germany, Stuttgart’s Antifa movement was soon neutralized and diverted back into the old divisions between SPD and KPD, but the city’s rebellious tradition and penchant for unity in action would reemerge in 1948, when widespread anger at drastic price rises triggered a citywide general strike that encompassed 79 percent of the workforce and spread to several other localities. Overdetermined The Antifa movement faced an almost impossible situation in 1945. The country lay in ruins in every sense imaginable, and had gone through a phase of destruction, brutality, and wanton murder unprecedented in scale. The Antifa’s predicament was by and large “overdetermined,” in the sense that historical forces beyond their control would ultimately seal their fate. These socialists and antifascists, though numbering in the tens of thousands across the country, could not have been expected to provide a plausible political alternative to the overwhelming might of the Cold War. Germany in 1945 was set to become the staging ground for the longest geopolitical confrontation in modern history, and there was no way the fragments of a shattered socialist movement could have influenced developments in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, statements and documents from the time reveal thousands of determined antifascists and socialists, keenly aware of the unprecedented nature of their historical moment and putting forward a political perspective for what remained of the country’s working class. Although their numbers were comparatively and regrettably few given the movement’s former glory, their existence refutes the notion that the prewar German left was entirely destroyed by Nazism. Hitler certainly broke the back of German socialism, but West Germany’s postwar prosperity laced with anti-Communist paranoia would finally bury what remained of the country’s radical prewar traditions. Albrecht Lein recounts how the incredibly difficult conditions facing the Antifa also necessarily restricted their political perspective. Though they attracted thousands of socialists and were soon bolstered by returning Communists and other political prisoners from the concentration camps, briefly becoming the dominant political force in cities like Braunschweig, they were unable to offer a political road out of the country’s social misery. Description: https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/08093536/CDU-Poster-1946-for-Socialism .jpgIn 1946, even the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was calling for nationalization and socialism in their propaganda. Lein argues that the labor movement’s failure to defeat Hitler and the fact that Germany had required liberation from without drove antifascists to a largely reactive policy, vigorously pursuing former Nazi officials and purging society of collaborators, but neglecting to build a plausible vision for a “new Germany” beyond both fascism and Cold War machinations. After the Communists dissolved the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD) in the weeks after the war, underground Nazi resistance groups began calling themselves the “Movement for a Free Germany.” Lein argues that this circumstance was symbolic of the overall political trajectory at the time: “Other than the notable exceptions of Leipzig, Berlin and Munich, the antifascist movements described themselves as fighting organizations against fascism, and not as Committees for a Free Germany. Leaving the task of gathering social forces for ‘liberation’ and thus, implicitly, renewing Germany to the Nazis and reactionaries characterized [. . .] their defensive position.” Germans’ failure to engage in popular resistance to Hitler even in the second half of the war understandably demoralized the Left and shook its faith in the masses’ capabilities — a trait historian Martin Sabrow also ascribes to the caste of Communist functionaries operating under Soviet tutelage in the East. In the French, British, and American zones, Antifas began to recede by the late summer of 1945, marginalized by Allied bans on political organization and re-emerging divisions within the movement itself. The Social Democratic leadership under Kurt Schumacher sided with the Western occupiers and returned the party to its prewar anti-Communist line by the end of the year, decreeing that SPD membership was incompatible with participation in the Antifa movement. In Stuttgart, the Antifa and what remained of the old trade union bureaucracy fought each other for political influence from the outset. The old leadership of the ADGB, prewar Germany’s central trade union federation, sought to reestablish formalized employment relations in the occupied zones, which would at least mean a return to normalcy for Germany’s working class. This ran counter to the approach of the Antifas, however, who cultivated strong ties to leftist shop stewards and factory committees, and usually called for nationalization and worker control of industry. These demands were ultimately not realistic in a shattered economy occupied by powerful foreign armies. The prospect of stability and a degree of economic recovery under the SPD simply proved more appealing to workers forced to choose between that and the principled but harrowing struggle put forward by the Antifa. Antifas were further hindered by the decision by the Allies, particularly the United States and Britain, to cooperate with what remained of the Nazi regime below its most executive levels. Antifas seeking to imprison local Nazi leaders or purge municipal bureaucracies were often stopped by occupying authorities who preferred to integrate functionaries of the old state into new, ostensibly democratic institutions. This had less to do with any particular affinity between the Allies and ex-fascist functionaries so much as it served the practical interests of keeping German society running under exceedingly difficult conditions without ceding influence to the reemerging radical left. Outnumbered and outgunned by the occupying powers and outmaneuvered by the SPD, the Antifa’s influence in the three western zones of occupation would evaporate in less than a year. West German society stabilized, the Cold War polarized the continent, and the political forces of old Germany in alliance with Social Democracy and the emerging Western bloc consolidated their hold over the country. The KPD, for its part, initially took on waves of new members, as its prestige rose in light of the Soviet victory over Hitler and broad anticapitalist sentiment. The party soon rebuilt its industrial bases, and by 1946 controlled just as many shop floor committees in the heavily industrialized Ruhr Region as the SPD. In his classic study of the German labor movement, Die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung, German scholar Arno Klönne places its total membership in the three Western zones of occupation at three hundred thousand in 1947, and six hundred thousand in the East prior to the founding of the SED in 1946. Description: https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/08093544/SED-Poster.jpgEarly Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) poster. Following a brief period of participation in postwar provisional governments, however, the Allies sidelined the KPD, and the party soon returned to its ultra-leftist line. It sealed its political irrelevance in 1951 with the passage of “Thesis 37,” a position paper on labor strategy riddled with anti–Social Democratic and anti-trade-union slurs. The motion, passed at the party conference, obligated all KPD members to obey party decisions above and against trade union directives if necessary. This move obliterated Communist support in the factories veritably overnight and relegated the party to society’s fringes. It failed to re-enter parliament in the 1953 elections and was banned by the West German government outright in 1956. Developments were markedly different in the Soviet zone, but ultimately ended in perhaps an even grimmer dead end: that of SED leader Walter Ulbricht’s thoroughly Stalinized German Democratic Republic (GDR). An old-school Communist cadre from the party’s early years, Ulbricht had survived twenty years of Stalinist purges and fascist repression to lead the “Ulbricht Group,” a team of exiled KPD functionaries who now returned from Moscow to rebuild the country under Soviet occupation. Though the Red Army generals certainly did not have a particularly democratic or egalitarian vision for East Germany in mind, they rejected cooperation with the old Nazi hierarchy for their own reasons and for a while permitted Antifas and related institutions to operate relatively freely. Eyewitness accounts from as late as 1947 report of factories in East Germany’s prewar industrial centers like Halle (traditional Communist strongholds) where KPD-led works councils exerted a decisive influence over factory life, confident enough to conduct negotiations and argue with Soviet authorities in some instances. In an interview with Jacobin to be published later this year, veteran KPO activist Theodor Bergmann tells of Heinrich Adam, prewar KPO member and mechanic at the Zeiss optics factory in Jena who joined the SED in hopes of realizing socialist unity. Heinrich was an active Antifa and trade unionist who organized protests against the Soviets’ decision to take the Zeiss factory as war reparations (he suggested building a new factory in Russia instead). Adam was kicked out of the party for his independent views in 1952, although never persecuted, and lived out his days in Jena on a modest state pension for antifascist veterans. In Dresden, a group of roughly eighty Communists, Social Democrats, and members of the left-social democratic Socialist Workers Party (SAP) formed a committee in May 1945 to surrender the city to the Red Army, citing broadcasts from the NKFD as inspiration. In cooperation with Soviet authorities, this group subsequently raided food and weapons stores from the German Labor Front and other Nazi institutions, and organized a distribution system for the city’s populace in the first postwar weeks. Reports from Soviet officials and the Ulbricht Group describe rival antifascist groups, generally tolerated by the occupation, which beyond arming residents and organizing shooting practice also arrested local Nazis and opened soup kitchens for refugees from the eastern provinces. Internal communications reveal that leading Communists thought little of the Antifa, dismissed by Ulbricht as “ the antifascist sects” in a communiqué to Georgi Dimitrov in mid-1945. The Ulbricht Group’s initial goal was to incorporate as many of these antifascists into the KPD as possible, and feared that repression would repel rather than attract them. Former Ulbricht Group member Wolfgang Leonhard would later claim in his memoirs, Child of the Revolution, that Ulbricht explained to fellow Communist functionaries: “It’s quite clear – it’s got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control.” This period ended as the German Democratic Republic began to establish itself as a Soviet-style one-party state in the late 1940s, particularly after relatively free elections in 1946 delivered disappointing returns. Former KPO members and other oppositionists permitted to join after the war were investigated for past political crimes, purged, and often imprisoned. In the workplaces, the SED sought to rationalize production and thus neutralize the instances of factory control and democratic representation that had emerged. The establishment of the Free German Trade Federation (FDGB) in 1946 marked the beginning of the SED’s attempt to establish party control over the factories. These “unions” in fact organized East German workers in line with the interests of their practical bosses, the East German state, and sought to buy their loyalty through “socialist competition” schemes, piece work, and union-sponsored vacation packages. However, the “free” unions could not afford to phase out competitive elections overnight. Antifa activists were often elected to FDGB shop floor committees in early the years, thus exercising continued influence in the workplace for a bit longer. Some were integrated into mid-level management, while others refused to betray their principles and stepped down or were removed for political reasons. The public split between the Soviet Union and Tito’s Yugoslavia in 1948 accelerated Stalinization in the Soviet occupation zone, and these limited spaces of self-organization were soon shut down entirely. Subsequently, the GDR’s antifascist tradition would be diluted, distorted, and refashioned into an ahistorical national origins myth in which the citizens of East Germany were officially proclaimed the “victors of history,” but where little space remained for the real and complicated history, not to mention ambivalent role of Stalinized Communism, behind it. Dare to Dream Following their collapse in late 1945 and early 1946, Antifas would disappear from the German political stage for nearly four decades. The modern Antifa with which most people associate the term has no practical historical connection to the movement from which it takes its name, but is instead a product of West Germany’s squatter scene and autonomist movement in the 1980s — itself a unique outgrowth of 1968 considerably less oriented towards the industrial working class than its Italian counterpart. The first Antifas functioned as platforms to organize against far-right groups like the National Democratic Party (NPD) in an autonomist movement still numbering in the tens of thousands of active members and capable of occupying entire city blocks in some West German metropoles. As the far right began to rebuild in the wake of German reunification, expressed in shocking mob attacks against asylum-seekers in several eastern provinces in the early 1990s, Antifa increasingly became a movement unto itself: a national network of dedicated antifascist groups organized into the “Antifaschistische Aktion/Bundesweite Organisation” (AA/BO). In some ways, these groups were the inverse of their progenitors: rather than a broad alliance of socialists and progressives from separate, ideologically distinct currents, they were single-issue groups, expressly radical but vague and deeply heterogeneous in their specifics. Rather than a point of departure for young activists into a broader socialist and political left, Antifas outside of major cities are often the only political game in town, and function as a counter-cultural space with their own fashion styles, music scenes, and slang, rather than a component of a rooted mass movement within wider society. After the AA/BO split in 2001, Antifas continued to work locally and regionally as dedicated networks of antifascists opposing far-right demonstrations and gatherings, though many also take up other left-wing issues and causes. What remains of the squats and infrastructure built up between the 1970s and 1990s continue to serve as important organizing and socializing spaces for the radical left, and “Antifa” as movement, trope, and general political outlook will no doubt continue to exist for quite some time – but it would appear that this iteration of antifascism has also exhausted its political repertoire. The movement has shrunken continuously since the late 1990s, fragmented across ideological lines and unable to adjust its original autonomist strategies to shifting patterns of urbanization and the rise of right-populism. Its most promising products of late — the mass mobilizations against neo-Nazi marches in cities like Dresden, as well as the formation of a new, distinctively post-autonomist current in the form of the Interventionist Left — mark a departure from rather than a revival of classical Antifa strategy. Antifascism has surged to the fore of debates on the American left under Trump’s presidency, and many of the tactics and visual styles of the German Antifa can be seen emerging in cities like Berkeley and elsewhere. Some argue that with the arrival of European-style neo-fascist movements on American shores, it is also time to import European Antifa tactics in response. Yet the Antifa of today is not a product of a political victory from which we can draw our own strength, but of defeat — socialism’s defeat at the hands of Nazism and resurgent global capitalism, and later the exhaustion of the autonomist movement in the wake of the neoliberal turn and the sweeping gentrification of many German cities. Description: https://images.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/05142008/antifa.pngmightymightymatze / Flickr Although Antifas continue to function as important poles of attraction for radicalizing youth and guarantee that the far right rarely goes unopposed in many European countries, its political form is of an exclusive nature, couched in its own aesthetic and rhetorical style and inaccessible to the masses of uninitiated people getting involved in activism for the first time. A left-wing subculture with its own social spaces and cultural life is not the same thing as a mass social movement, and we cannot afford to confuse the two. Of course, the Antifa’s experience in 1945 offers us equally few concrete lessons for how to fight a resurgent far right in the Trump era. Looking back at the history of the socialist left is not about distilling victorious formulas to be reproduced in the twenty-first century, but rather understanding how previous generations understood their own historical moment and built political organizations in response, in order to develop our own (hopefully more successfully models) for today. The Antifas in Stuttgart, Braunschweig, and elsewhere faced impossible odds, but still sought to articulate a series of political demands and a practical organizational vision for the radicalizing workers willing to listen. Antifas refused to capitulate to their seemingly hopeless predicament and dared to dream big. Facing an even more fragmented and weakened left than in 1945, American antifascists will have to do the same. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image006.png Type: image/png Size: 1187250 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jwr at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 01:37:20 2017 From: jwr at illinois.edu (John Randolph) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 20:37:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Prairiegreens] Krugman, "Virginia is for Haters" In-Reply-To: <3665D5F3-75ED-4907-A054-AAF9576342E5@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <3665D5F3-75ED-4907-A054-AAF9576342E5@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Since it seems to be impossible to removed from this list, I think as a historian I should note that Mr. Estabrook's opinions that race was not a part of slavery is not shared by historians, that 'wage slavery' is not at all the same as chattel slavery, and that indeed one distinguishing feature of the confederacy was its explicit intention to found a racial order.  Reductivist theories of capitalism impoverish our history when they exclude race. On 10/10/17 7:39 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: > > > [In ambiguous defense of the home of my youth.] > > I’ve never been a great fan of Krugman’s, but he used to be the source of reliably liberal (if boring) opinions. > But he’s been driven nuts in the last year, like some other establishment pundits (e.g., Robert Reich), by the defeat of the neoliberal champions (Obama/Clinton). > > He asks a good question: "Why is America the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee essential health care for all? ... Why do we have much higher poverty than our economic peers … We are uniquely unwilling to take care of our fellow citizens.” But his answer is propagandistic and wrong: “...behind that political difference lies one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery.” > > No; it’s the legacy of capitalism. It comes from ‘slavery' only in the sense that the Civil War was the substitution of one method of exploiting labor (wage slavery) for another (chattel slavery). In the post-bellum US, the Southern states (including Virginia) were subjected to Northern capitalism as internal, largely agricultural, colonies - generally exempt from the subsequent social progress of the industrial north. > > Krugman follows the mythology of the Clinton campaign - that that splendid example of neoliberalism was defeated by racism. It’s nonsense. She was defeated by war and immiseration: . > > In order to avoid serious criticism of the our capitalist order, liberals like Krugman are desperate to see Trump’s victory and subsequent politics as fundamentally a matter of race relations. It’s not: it’s a matter of class relations. > > It’s a given among such people that "political difference” comes from "one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery” - our political and historical mythology agree. But serious US historians know better: > > "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the > United States as primarily a system of race relations—as though the > chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy > rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One > historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’.7 > He does not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating > Africans would go to the trouble and expense of transporting > them across the ocean for that purpose, when they could have achieved > the same end so much more simply by leaving the Africans in Africa. > No one dreams of analysing the struggle of the English against the > Irish as a problem in race relations, even though the rationale that the > English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’ Irish later served > nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and > indigenous American Indians.8 Nor does anyone dream of analysing > serfdom in Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even > though the Russian nobility invented fictions of their innate, natural > superiority over the serfs as preposterous as any devised by American > racists.” > —Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the > United States of America,” NLR I/181, May-June 1990 > > Krugman and his ilk are desperate to have us talk about race relations - in Virginia and elsewhere - and not look at class relations, after 40 years of increasing (and accelerating) inequality - the real reason Trump was elected, and the continuing chasm in US society - which the government, working for the 1%, covers over with war and rumors of war. > > —CGE > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Prairiegreens mailing list > Prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/prairiegreens > http://www.prairienet.org/greens/ From stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com Thu Oct 12 17:29:25 2017 From: stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com (stansfield smith) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 17:29:25 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com>    The powerful and dominant forces for impeaching Trump, and the forces who have the control in Congress to do it, will impeach him for bogus Russia control, not for war-mongering, not for his racist and anti-immigrant positions.  If you want to get involved in impeaching Trump, those you will be aiding are these anti-Russia neo-cons. You will not be helping the anti-war war movement, or immigrants or Blacks or women.   From: David Swanson To: Karen Aram Cc: Robert Naiman ; Peace-discuss List ; ufpj-activist Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 10:54 AM Subject: Re: [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats Here is the no-Russia-BS impeach Trump campaign: http://RootsAction.org On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:48 AM, Karen Aram wrote:  Robert et al Prof. Francis Boyle attempted to have Bush, and Cheney impeached to prevent US attacks on Iraq, but was prevented by John Podesta of the DNC, because they wanted to use the war for the next election. Prof. Boyle, again attempted impeachment of Obama for his drones and extension of our wars from two to eight. Unfortunately no one would take up the mantle for peace, against a popular Democratic President. Now you want to impeach Trump, if its for war, of which there is credible evidence to do so, according to Professor Boyle, then good for you.  If it’s for Russiagate, or any lesser cause, don’t do it, that will only bury the American government and its people in more trivialities. Robert, you may call me a “stupid Trot” for posting their information. I would rather be a “stupid socialist," than one who wallows in trivia and propaganda. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Robert Naiman  wrote: Until now, I haven't been a devotee of the Trump impeachment push. I think the "Russian interference in the election" story has been greatly overblown, driven mainly by devotees of the national security state.  This development could change my view. Tom Steyer is putting Trump's “seeming determination to go to war” on the marquee of his bill of charges. If that becomes central to the case, I will change my view. If Tom Steyer starts talking about ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, I will gladly fight under his flag.  Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1 0/11/us/tom-steyer-trump-impea chment.html === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/s ign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_ by=1135580 ______________________________ _________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists. mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst. org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj- activist To Unsubscribe         Send email to:  ufpj-activist- unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org         Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst. org/mailman/options/ufpj- activist/davidcnswanson% 40gmail.com You are subscribed as: davidcnswanson at gmail.com --  David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsA Crime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and F aceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. ______________________________ _________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists. mayfirst.org List info: https://nam03.safelinks. protection.outlook.com/?url= https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst. org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo% 2Fufpj-activist&data=02%7C01% 7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com% 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181 c00e% 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa aaaa%7C1%7C0% 7C636434171317080250&sdata= WOGTQ6tzYyX91soE37fmvwRtQe8pBo cSgcoL5dHvU2g%3D&reserved=0 To Unsubscribe        Send email to:  ufpj-activist-unsubscribe@ lists.mayfirst.org        Or visit: https://nam03. safelinks.protection.outlook. com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists. mayfirst.org%2Fmailman% 2Foptions%2Fufpj-activist% 2Fkarenaram%2540hotmail.com& data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram% 40hotmail.com% 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181 c00e% 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa aaaa%7C1%7C0% 7C636434171317080250&sdata= QG7ssNUCwPtp9I9ribKIN8WB4IOtU8 u%2Bp%2FdYWBtrql0%3D&reserved= 0 You are subscribed as: karenaram at hotmail.com -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. _______________________________________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist To Unsubscribe         Send email to:  ufpj-activist-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org         Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/ufpj-activist/stansfieldsmith%40yahoo.com You are subscribed as: stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 12 03:30:53 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 03:30:53 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kagarlitsky on Catalonia References: <249830945.261419.1507779053229.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <249830945.261419.1507779053229@mail.yahoo.com> Excerpt: But who needs to take into account Spanish-speaking workers? They are the “invaders”! If we look for comparisons, what is happening is similar to the time of the collapse of the USSR, and Catalonia is dominated by the same monstrous illusions that were sown by nationalists at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, what is happening now has a deeper basis in the sphere of political economy. This is not an accident that the triumph of neo-liberalism was accompanied everywhere by the crisis of national states and federations, the emergence and flourishing of all sorts of separatism, including exotic ones. In this sense, there is no difference between the ruling circles of Madrid and Barcelona. They represent the same class interests, only each represents them at a different level. Disintegration of federations and crisis of state institutions, which are currently happening everywhere are closely linked to the austerity policies pursued by both Madrid and Barcelona. ​​This is a continuation of the general logic of de-solidarisation, privatization and fragmentation characteristic of neoliberalism. It was this political economic logic that underlay the collapse of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.  This logic assumes not only rejection of solidarity based on class and rejection of common humanistic values, but also substitution of the national values by the ethnic ones. It is ethnic nationalism that proves to be an ideal “substitute” for class or civic solidarity. It preserves the necessary sense of “community” for people, while narrowing it down to the size of an imaginary large family. Similar dynamics could be observed in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Rosa Luxemburg cautioned other leftists of the dangers of flirting with the petty-bourgeois nationalism of small nations. Reactionary and semi-fascist regimes were established in most of the new states formed in place of the disintegrating empires. The only lucky exception was Czechoslovakia, which was soon happily torn to pieces by neighbors such as Germany with a help from Poland and Hungary. It would seem that the lessons of the first half of the twentieth century should be enough to draw the necessary conclusions. Alas, the modern European left, which developed in the context of deindustrialization and decline of class solidarity, is itself a product of neoliberalism and is completely imbued with the spirit of petty-bourgeois romanticism. Therefore, the left does not dare to openly say that the nationalism of minorities in no less damaging for the working class cause than any other nationalism. There is a good news, nevertheless. The success of Jeremy Corbin and his renewed Labor Party in Scotland returns class agenda to the region once considered the backbone of the labor movement. Nationalist demagogy quickly loses appeal among the masses whenever a real, substantial left alternative appears.  The development of small-town nationalism (as, indeed, of other types of nationalism) is inversely proportional to the strength and influence of the left. Whenever supporters of social transformations fail, their place is immediately occupied by preachers of national exclusiveness. Conversely, the rise of the left forces inevitably leads to the decline of nationalist organizations. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/11/catalonia-the-revolt-of-the-rich/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Oct 13 02:31:21 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 21:31:21 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kagarlitsky on Catalonia In-Reply-To: <249830945.261419.1507779053229@mail.yahoo.com> References: <249830945.261419.1507779053229.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <249830945.261419.1507779053229@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004501d343cb$5c037970$140a6c50$@comcast.net> Good article David ! Since the Catalonia separatist movement began in earnest, I have seen conflicting analysis from a lot of different Left sources, and frankly I was uncertain as to support it or not. This article really helped to clarify everything. My initial knee jerk reaction was inclination to support, based on the fact that if the neo-liberal rulers in Madrid and the EU opposed it that it must be a good thing especially since it appeared to be the will of the vast majority of the people in Catalonia. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of David Green via Peace-discuss Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 10:31 PM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kagarlitsky on Catalonia Excerpt: But who needs to take into account Spanish-speaking workers? They are the “invaders”! If we look for comparisons, what is happening is similar to the time of the collapse of the USSR, and Catalonia is dominated by the same monstrous illusions that were sown by nationalists at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, what is happening now has a deeper basis in the sphere of political economy. This is not an accident that the triumph of neo-liberalism was accompanied everywhere by the crisis of national states and federations, the emergence and flourishing of all sorts of separatism, including exotic ones. In this sense, there is no difference between the ruling circles of Madrid and Barcelona. They represent the same class interests, only each represents them at a different level. Disintegration of federations and crisis of state institutions, which are currently happening everywhere are closely linked to the austerity policies pursued by both Madrid and Barcelona. ​​This is a continuation of the general logic of de-solidarisation, privatization and fragmentation characteristic of neoliberalism. It was this political economic logic that underlay the collapse of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. This logic assumes not only rejection of solidarity based on class and rejection of common humanistic values, but also substitution of the national values by the ethnic ones. It is ethnic nationalism that proves to be an ideal “substitute” for class or civic solidarity. It preserves the necessary sense of “community” for people, while narrowing it down to the size of an imaginary large family. Similar dynamics could be observed in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Rosa Luxemburg cautioned other leftists of the dangers of flirting with the petty-bourgeois nationalism of small nations. Reactionary and semi-fascist regimes were established in most of the new states formed in place of the disintegrating empires. The only lucky exception was Czechoslovakia, which was soon happily torn to pieces by neighbors such as Germany with a help from Poland and Hungary. It would seem that the lessons of the first half of the twentieth century should be enough to draw the necessary conclusions. Alas, the modern European left, which developed in the context of deindustrialization and decline of class solidarity, is itself a product of neoliberalism and is completely imbued with the spirit of petty-bourgeois romanticism. Therefore, the left does not dare to openly say that the nationalism of minorities in no less damaging for the working class cause than any other nationalism. There is a good news, nevertheless. The success of Jeremy Corbin and his renewed Labor Party in Scotland returns class agenda to the region once considered the backbone of the labor movement. Nationalist demagogy quickly loses appeal among the masses whenever a real, substantial left alternative appears. The development of small-town nationalism (as, indeed, of other types of nationalism) is inversely proportional to the strength and influence of the left. Whenever supporters of social transformations fail, their place is immediately occupied by preachers of national exclusiveness. Conversely, the rise of the left forces inevitably leads to the decline of nationalist organizations. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/11/catalonia-the-revolt-of-the-rich/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 13 12:23:00 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:23:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kagarlitsky on Catalonia In-Reply-To: <004501d343cb$5c037970$140a6c50$@comcast.net> References: <249830945.261419.1507779053229.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <249830945.261419.1507779053229@mail.yahoo.com> <004501d343cb$5c037970$140a6c50$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Agree, its the best I’ve seen yet, and further confirmed my thinking on the topic. On Oct 12, 2017, at 19:31, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: Good article David ! Since the Catalonia separatist movement began in earnest, I have seen conflicting analysis from a lot of different Left sources, and frankly I was uncertain as to support it or not. This article really helped to clarify everything. My initial knee jerk reaction was inclination to support, based on the fact that if the neo-liberal rulers in Madrid and the EU opposed it that it must be a good thing especially since it appeared to be the will of the vast majority of the people in Catalonia. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of David Green via Peace-discuss Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 10:31 PM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kagarlitsky on Catalonia Excerpt: But who needs to take into account Spanish-speaking workers? They are the “invaders”! If we look for comparisons, what is happening is similar to the time of the collapse of the USSR, and Catalonia is dominated by the same monstrous illusions that were sown by nationalists at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, what is happening now has a deeper basis in the sphere of political economy. This is not an accident that the triumph of neo-liberalism was accompanied everywhere by the crisis of national states and federations, the emergence and flourishing of all sorts of separatism, including exotic ones. In this sense, there is no difference between the ruling circles of Madrid and Barcelona. They represent the same class interests, only each represents them at a different level. Disintegration of federations and crisis of state institutions, which are currently happening everywhere are closely linked to the austerity policies pursued by both Madrid and Barcelona. ​​This is a continuation of the general logic of de-solidarisation, privatization and fragmentation characteristic of neoliberalism. It was this political economic logic that underlay the collapse of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. This logic assumes not only rejection of solidarity based on class and rejection of common humanistic values, but also substitution of the national values by the ethnic ones. It is ethnic nationalism that proves to be an ideal “substitute” for class or civic solidarity. It preserves the necessary sense of “community” for people, while narrowing it down to the size of an imaginary large family. Similar dynamics could be observed in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Rosa Luxemburg cautioned other leftists of the dangers of flirting with the petty-bourgeois nationalism of small nations. Reactionary and semi-fascist regimes were established in most of the new states formed in place of the disintegrating empires. The only lucky exception was Czechoslovakia, which was soon happily torn to pieces by neighbors such as Germany with a help from Poland and Hungary. It would seem that the lessons of the first half of the twentieth century should be enough to draw the necessary conclusions. Alas, the modern European left, which developed in the context of deindustrialization and decline of class solidarity, is itself a product of neoliberalism and is completely imbued with the spirit of petty-bourgeois romanticism. Therefore, the left does not dare to openly say that the nationalism of minorities in no less damaging for the working class cause than any other nationalism. There is a good news, nevertheless. The success of Jeremy Corbin and his renewed Labor Party in Scotland returns class agenda to the region once considered the backbone of the labor movement. Nationalist demagogy quickly loses appeal among the masses whenever a real, substantial left alternative appears. The development of small-town nationalism (as, indeed, of other types of nationalism) is inversely proportional to the strength and influence of the left. Whenever supporters of social transformations fail, their place is immediately occupied by preachers of national exclusiveness. Conversely, the rise of the left forces inevitably leads to the decline of nationalist organizations. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/11/catalonia-the-revolt-of-the-rich/ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Fri Oct 13 12:39:23 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:39:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: US Withdrawal From UNESCO Indicates Growing Washington's Isolation Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Friday, October 13, 2017 7:37 AM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: FW: US Withdrawal From UNESCO Indicates Growing Washington's Isolation US Seeking to Keep UN, UNESCO Weak Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of UNESCO was part of Washington’s ongoing campaign to keep the United Nations and its associate organizations powerless from helping the Palestinians, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle said. "Historically the US government has always bullied, threatened and intimidated the United Nations Organization and all of its specialized agencies and institutions like UNESCO in order to prevent them from taking meaningful action against Israel to save the Palestinians," he said. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Posted on: Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:41 PM Author: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Subject: US Withdrawal From UNESCO Indicates Growing Washington's Isolation University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle said. "Historically the US government has always bullied, threatened and intimidated the United Nations Organization and all of its specialized agencies and institutions like UNESCO in order to prevent ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Fri Oct 13 12:39:23 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:39:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: US Withdrawal From UNESCO Indicates Growing Washington's Isolation Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Friday, October 13, 2017 7:37 AM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: FW: US Withdrawal From UNESCO Indicates Growing Washington's Isolation US Seeking to Keep UN, UNESCO Weak Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of UNESCO was part of Washington’s ongoing campaign to keep the United Nations and its associate organizations powerless from helping the Palestinians, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle said. "Historically the US government has always bullied, threatened and intimidated the United Nations Organization and all of its specialized agencies and institutions like UNESCO in order to prevent them from taking meaningful action against Israel to save the Palestinians," he said. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Posted on: Thursday, October 12, 2017 2:41 PM Author: "Francis Boyle" - BingNews Subject: US Withdrawal From UNESCO Indicates Growing Washington's Isolation University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle said. "Historically the US government has always bullied, threatened and intimidated the United Nations Organization and all of its specialized agencies and institutions like UNESCO in order to prevent ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 13 13:29:10 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 13:29:10 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Letter to the Editor, by David Green. Basis for his presentation at the Anti-War Teach In Message-ID: Jews misinformed on Israel-Palestine Fri, 10/13/2017 - 7:00am | The News-Gazette The idea of a Jewish nation, replacing Judaism, inspired the Zionist movement that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. But national liberation for the Jews meant expulsion or subordination for the Palestinians. Zionism's settler-colonialist character and resulting nation-state has determined the violent, expansionist and discriminatory ethos of the Jewish state, just as settler-colonialism similarly shaped American history. But instead of the indigenous population being largely exterminated, Jews and Palestinian Arabs now exist in roughly equal numbers within the collective boundaries of Israel and Palestine. Only 22 percent of what was British Mandatory Palestine (1920-48) forms the Palestinian basis for the "two-state solution" that most Jewish-Americans support, and that our government claims as the goal of the "peace process." Yet, in their subordination to U.S. and Israeli geopolitical interests, Jewish-American institutions facilitate settlement expansion on the West Bank and the siege of Gaza. Most Jewish-Americans, although fewer than 20 years ago, wrongly blame the Palestinians for the failure of the "peace process." This absolves them and their institutional representatives of the need for historical understanding and self-critical reflection that would lead to effective political action in relation to U.S. government policies that maintain an untenable status quo. Any Jewish community, including Champaign County's, could begin to achieve informed political consensus and act in solidarity to effectively challenge this state of affairs, beginning with our elected representatives, academic administrators and media. This would, however, require openness to productive dialogue among our (Jewish) selves that is still, in effect, culturally and institutionally prohibited. DAVID GREEN Champaign -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Oct 13 13:33:56 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 08:33:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <006c01d342be$40ac9cf0$c205d6d0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <005b01d34427$ebb99de0$c32cd9a0$@comcast.net> Thank you for your clarification Karen. However, I will still have to disagree with you IN PART about Phyllis Bennis’s article. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 2:16 PM To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted Yes David, you did just that. You wrote on the costs of war, focusing on the loss of health services, loss of infrastructure which if we dealt with would create jobs, alternative energy creates jobs, loss of funding for education for all, not just the wealthy, loss of housing for many, etc., etc. due to military spending. Making “money” issues more relevant to Americans is what we talked about, and planned. First with the Costs of War Panel, and then with the Anti-War Teach In. I hope someone picks up where we left off, as Harry has suggested and continues…… Did I accuse you of IP? No, David I did not. I didn’t accuse you of anything in relation to these articles. I just don’t accept what the 3 authors posted as “hopeful,” especially Phillis Bennis whose analysis was clearly off. Is she like so many others now so impoverished by our system of capitalism and squeezing members of society, that she is afraid to offend power? I agreed totally with the article you provided by Andrew Bacevich, though I think many Americans are really "just too busy surviving” to involve themselves in the anti-war movement. Though with Trump in power, we now, when demonstrating against war, get a lot of positive response, much more than ever before. Trumps provocations against N. Korea have a lot of people I communicate with frightened of NK. I do have to explain that the fear, and solutions are on the part of our own government, something Bennis failed to do. On Oct 11, 2017, at 11:25, David Johnson wrote: Karen, I don’t see this as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. But instead a VERY accurate analysis and plans to make the war more relevant to more Americans. Isn’t that what we have talked about ? I know that is why I wrote my recent article “ The Hidden Costs of War “, and that article only touched upon money issues, not other issues like – loss of civil liberties / right to privacy, as well as police militarization and the subsequent murders by police of unarmed citizens. Or do you lump that under the category of “ identity politics “ ??? None of the authors said ““The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” It is all interconnected and emphasis needs to be on how to show that these imperialist wars of U.S. 1% corporate aggression indirectly and directly effects Americans, ESPECIALLY Working class Americans. Phyllis Bennis To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? You are correct that a connection to capitalism should be shown, but that would need an entirely separate article in my opinion. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 9:23 PM To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue _____ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share Tweet Reddit StumbleUpon Print Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 13 13:37:20 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 13:37:20 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted In-Reply-To: <005b01d34427$ebb99de0$c32cd9a0$@comcast.net> References: <010c01d34119$498be890$dca3b9b0$@comcast.net> <006c01d342be$40ac9cf0$c205d6d0$@comcast.net> <005b01d34427$ebb99de0$c32cd9a0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: David Thats fine, no one agrees with everyone, on everything. It’s the discussions focused on the "issues,” that is important. On Oct 13, 2017, at 06:33, David Johnson > wrote: Thank you for your clarification Karen. However, I will still have to disagree with you IN PART about Phyllis Bennis’s article. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 2:16 PM To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted Yes David, you did just that. You wrote on the costs of war, focusing on the loss of health services, loss of infrastructure which if we dealt with would create jobs, alternative energy creates jobs, loss of funding for education for all, not just the wealthy, loss of housing for many, etc., etc. due to military spending. Making “money” issues more relevant to Americans is what we talked about, and planned. First with the Costs of War Panel, and then with the Anti-War Teach In. I hope someone picks up where we left off, as Harry has suggested and continues…… Did I accuse you of IP? No, David I did not. I didn’t accuse you of anything in relation to these articles. I just don’t accept what the 3 authors posted as “hopeful,” especially Phillis Bennis whose analysis was clearly off. Is she like so many others now so impoverished by our system of capitalism and squeezing members of society, that she is afraid to offend power? I agreed totally with the article you provided by Andrew Bacevich, though I think many Americans are really "just too busy surviving” to involve themselves in the anti-war movement. Though with Trump in power, we now, when demonstrating against war, get a lot of positive response, much more than ever before. Trumps provocations against N. Korea have a lot of people I communicate with frightened of NK. I do have to explain that the fear, and solutions are on the part of our own government, something Bennis failed to do. On Oct 11, 2017, at 11:25, David Johnson > wrote: Karen, I don’t see this as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. But instead a VERY accurate analysis and plans to make the war more relevant to more Americans. Isn’t that what we have talked about ? I know that is why I wrote my recent article “ The Hidden Costs of War “, and that article only touched upon money issues, not other issues like – loss of civil liberties / right to privacy, as well as police militarization and the subsequent murders by police of unarmed citizens. Or do you lump that under the category of “ identity politics “ ??? None of the authors said ““The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” It is all interconnected and emphasis needs to be on how to show that these imperialist wars of U.S. 1% corporate aggression indirectly and directly effects Americans, ESPECIALLY Working class Americans. Phyllis Bennis To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? You are correct that a connection to capitalism should be shown, but that would need an entirely separate article in my opinion. David J. From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 9:23 PM To: David Johnson Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] A counter balance of hope to the previous article I posted I don’t see this as “hope.” I see it as “blame the anti-war movement” for not arousing more public concern over war. One statement “The Anti-War Movement needs to care more for racial and economic injustice” is rather telling. Placing the focus on domestic issues, which are tied to our wars, and won’t be solved unless we end our wars. Most, like the authors of these articles, make no attempt to address the “root” of the problem which encompasses all of the injustice referred to, that is “our system of capitalism." “Reform” is not a solution. At least focus on war, if one really researches the subject, prevents any illusions that “elections” or “candidates” with our two party system, will bring about change. It educates one as to “why” we have wars, and it becomes inescapable, that “imperialism” is the reason, and cannot be eradicated within a capitalistic system. On Oct 9, 2017, at 09:11, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: The U.S. Is Bombing at Least Six Countries. How Can the Anti-War Movement Step Up? A discussion of the future of the peace movement. October 5, 2017 | October Issue ________________________________ Phyllis Bennis Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down for Racial and Economic Justice Why peace activists must look beyond our own movement. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint When the United States threatened to bomb Syria in 2013, an outpouring of public opposition helped stop the Obama administration from launching a new air war. But this success also transformed existing disagreement over the conflict among anti-war organizers into bitter debates. Activists disputed the nature of the Assad regime and Syria’s domestic opposition forces; they diverged on what to do about ISIS, the neighboring countries and their militia proxies, and intervention by global powers. The intense intra-movement battle involved only a small cohort of people, largely on social media. But, while both sides agreed on many things, the feud derailed the rise of a unified and internationalist anti-war movement—a movement that would focus on ending the Syrian wars, rather than urging victory for a preferred side. Of course, the movement’s mission extends beyond Syria. Anyone monitoring U.S. wars today is whipsawed as military crises—along with U.S. drones, bombers, troops, weapons and more—bounce from continent to continent, target to target. Iraq to Syria, North Korea to Yemen, Iran to Afghanistan, the Philippines to Somalia. Ending those lethal wars demands our urgent attention even as Charlottesville, Flint and Standing Rock continue to claim our time, commitment and passion. An independent anti-war movement, especially a divided one, cannot take this on alone. Challenging the wars abroad, while at the same time addressing domestic crises, requires that we focus on building a larger, broader people’s movement in which the struggle against war and militarism is inextricably linked to the fight against racism, for equality, for the Earth and for justice. During the George W. Bush years, the movement achieved significant victories, most notably the Feb. 15, 2003, global mobilization against the Iraq War. This may not have prevented the U.S. invasion, but it created a model for what a truly international protest could look like, helped keep Bush from attacking Iran and later helped inspire the 2011 overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. When Barack Obama was elected, some activists believed that with a supposedly anti-war president, they could move on. In addition, the economic crisis meant that many more people faced newly desperate circumstances, necessitating a greater focus on urgent domestic issues, including housing, jobs and healthcare. The movement strategized on how to respond. Should we focus on rebuilding an independent movement? Or prioritize building an anti-war component into other progressive movements? Supporters of the first idea won the debate, and produced some powerful short-term mobilizations. But subsequent movement-building efforts failed to sufficiently respond to the new political conditions. People of color and (excepting veterans) younger people were still underrepresented, and the movement still failed to sufficiently link militarism to the economic and racial justice campaigns on which younger activists had cut their political teeth. This is why we must build on the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who, in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech, called for a unified movement against “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism”—adding, as Dr. King surely would have, protection of the planet. Yet, we still must figure out the dynamics of particular conflicts to determine how—and convince others why—to end specific wars. Today’s wars are vastly more complex than U.S. interventions during the Cold War. In those years, many activists supported “the other side”—the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Sandinistas and the FMLN in Central America. It’s more difficult to ground our movements in international solidarity when “the other side” is composed of fighters we don’t support, who hold anti-democratic, extremist religious, misogynist or other reactionary views. We still have progressive counterparts—the Iraqi oil workers union, some Syrian opposition activists and more—but they’re not the ones engaged on the battlefield. Here, we can learn from the strong anti-war movement following the 9/11 attacks. The two big coalitions—United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and ANSWER—divided over organizing strategy and whether to criticize the Saddam Hussein government. The broader of the two, UFPJ—powerfully anti-war but willing to criticize Hussein—grew far more influential, partly because its more nuanced position encouraged engaging a wider range of domestic and international organizations. Today, we must ensure that opposing U.S. intervention in Syria does not blind us to Bashar al-Assad’s legacy of torture and collaboration with other U.S. wars, just as we have to acknowledge that however progressive and indeed heroic the original protest movement of Syria’s Arab Spring, the majority of those now engaged in armed anti-regime fighting are not those progressive heroes. While activists facing brutal repression in Syria or Libya or elsewhere may call for U.S. intervention, we must not uncritically accept that call. Similarly, we have to recognize that Washington’s continued violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, requiring it to move toward full nuclear disarmament, is a major reason North Korea is so determined to produce nuclear weapons of its own. At the same time, we must insist that Kim Jong-Un’s threats are unacceptable. To strengthen all our movements, we must also understand that militarism is a key cause of domestic crises: Military spending strips funds from the social safety net; excess Pentagon equipment sent to local police departments militarizes our communities; Islamophobia rises in response to wars abroad; militarism’s outsized carbon footprint threatens us all. The Movement for Black Lives, the new Poor People’s Campaign, various environmental and economic justice organizations, and many others already recognize this. We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance. Vijay Prashad We Must Find Common Ground Without Giving In to Liberal Interventionists An effective anti-war movement's first priority must be stopping U.S. imperialism. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis writes with characteristic sense and sensitivity about the dilemmas of the U.S. anti-war movement. She is right that the current conjuncture is quite different than that of the Cold War. Then, there was a clearer sense of international solidarity—in the U.S. wars and coups of that period, the U.S. Left could find progressive allies. No such easy solidarity is possible today. Comparing the two eras, there is a wide gulf between Algeria’s FLN and al-Qaeda, between El Salvador’s FMLN and Mexican drug gangs. A great deal of confusion reigns. As Phyllis notes, the Western Left tore itself apart over Syria. One section sees the Assad government as the enemy, while another sees that government as the victim of imperialist attack. But the vast bulk of Western leftists fall between these two poles, in part because they do not know how to understand the Syrian war. The imperialist media has confounded judgment, offering a theory of humanitarian intervention that clouds over previous certainty about the wrongness of imperialist wars of aggression. It is this bewilderment and insecurity that has led to fratricidal debates. We saw evidence of the American anti-war movement’s weakness at the Women’s March, where few anti-war positions took center stage. There have been marches against the Muslim Ban and for science, but no comparable march against U.S. bombings in Syria and Iraq, U.S. arms delivery to Saudi Arabia for its brutal war on Yemen, and U.S. escalation in Afghanistan. The liberal wing of the resistance to Trump is simply disoriented when it comes to war, having been associated with the Democratic Party’s wars during the Obama years. It has surrendered to liberal interventionism and the war machine. If a serious anti-war movement is to be part of the new resistance to Trump, it would have to come from the Left. But this is not possible given that this Left is not only weak but fractured. The divides are old—the American Left has been arguing about Cuba, for instance, since 1959, and some continue to believe the country’s government is a state capitalist system that should be removed. Infighting has prevented the American Left from uniting around a clear anti-imperialist platform—one that centers the violence wrought by the U.S. government. But there ought to be agreement on some core issues that could unite the Left and rejuvenate the anti-war movement: • Reduction of the military budget. • Freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel. • Reduction of the U.S. military footprint through bases and naval expansion. • Call for an investigation of civilian casualties by U.S. bombings and U.S.-backed militias from Afghanistan to Syria. • End to the CIA secret arming of reactionary forces across the Third World. • Call for the conversion of military industrialism into a peace economy not rooted in arms sales. Such a concrete platform would find broad agreement across the American Left. Unity in action should be possible if we are able to set aside—for now—the debates around Syria and Venezuela. The American Left, weak beyond measure, can be strengthened by taking a strong class position against the warfare state—one that not only itches to sell arms and bomb countries abroad, but then turns these same weapons on its own people. Ali Issa The U.S. Anti-War Movement Must Reject a U.S.-Centric View of the World We don't have to choose between U.S. empire and regional dictatorships—activists on the ground are fighting for a better alternative. Share TweetReddit StumbleUponPrint Phyllis and Vijay’s reflections on how to rebuild the U.S. anti-war movement couldn’t come at a better time. In the wake of Trump’s recent announcement that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, and his escalation of U.S. bombings in several other countries, one wonders: Is there an anti-war movement at all? Phyllis and Vijay rightly perceive a lack of large-scale political work against U.S. militarism. Both point to debates around Syria and other conflicts, and suggest areas of common ground. Engaging these debates is essential. But I would like to offer another reason for the movement’s absence: Many in the anti-war Left fall prey to an inverted form of U.S. exceptionalism, in which U.S.-caused harm is so central to our messaging, analysis and strategy that little room remains for the agency of people in other parts of the world, or the solutions they could offer. Growing up in an Iraqi-American household in the 1990s—a period when military attacks and crippling sanctions on Iraq provided frequent reminders of U.S. cruelty—I’ve long been aware of the harmful role the United States plays in the world. It wasn’t until 2014, however, that I discovered the work that Iraqi organizations on the ground were doing to respond to the skyrocketing number of birth defects linked to radiation from U.S. munitions in the northern town of Hawija. I spoke to local leaders over Skype, and learned how, through fundraising, lobbying the Iraqi government and building global awareness, they were able to open a needed treatment clinic. They were also organizing against both right-wing movements linked to ISIS and anti-woman laws backed by the neighboring government of Iran. This helped me understand that, while the liberation Iraqis were working toward depended on what we did here in the United States, we were also completing a much broader picture together—one that involves building alternatives that could someday replace U.S. (and regional) hegemonies. This understanding honestly changed my life. Going forward, deepening our internationalist engagements is necessary in opposing U.S.—indeed all—militarism. Though it takes effort, grounding strategic campaigns in the lived experience of those on the front lines provides the accountability and inspiration we need. The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), in its opposition to U.S. support of repression abroad, highlights the legacy of Berta Cáceres, a remarkable indigenous leader assassinated in the fallout from the U.S.-backed coup in Honduras eight years ago. GGJ has educated people in the United States on the Honduran indigenous land-protector movement of which Cáceres was part, pushed for Congress to suspend U.S. security assistance to the Honduran military and police, and helped build in-person relationships between U.S. grassroots organizers and Honduran activists. Bringing this lesson to Syria, how very different would our relationship to that war be if our analysis began with the popular 2011 movement for freedom and justice that was crushed by the Assad regime? These are not easy questions, but as Vijay acknowledges, these debates aren’t new. Anti-war organizers have been navigating this terrain for decades. In 1982, for example, the U.S.-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy was founded to support dissidents working for human rights in the Soviet Bloc. Just as we need not choose between “domestic” and “global” concerns, but rather must see them as intertwined, we need not choose between a focus on U.S. empire and regional dictatorships, as ultimately each relies on the other. The deeper question is: Can we step back from our insistence on a U.S. focus, allow others the spotlight and see an internationalist vision through? _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 14:12:02 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:12:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Letter to the Editor, by David Green. Basis for his presentation at the Anti-War Teach In In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <576E26F0-2B4D-4AAD-844D-094B9283CDD9@gmail.com> David’s important letter should be read with his posting of Kagarlitsky’s account of petty-bourgois nationalisms - that’s what Israel is - and their conflict with the working class: . That was a point obvious to insightful observers like Rosa Luxemburg, more than a century ago. As was clear in an uncomfortable terminological conjunction in Depression-era Germany, you could have nationalism or socialism - but not both. ('Socialism in one country’ didn't work very well, either.) —CGE > On Oct 13, 2017, at 8:29 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > Jews misinformed on Israel-Palestine > Fri, 10/13/2017 - 7:00am | The News-Gazette > The idea of a Jewish nation, replacing Judaism, inspired the Zionist movement that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. But national liberation for the Jews meant expulsion or subordination for the Palestinians. > > Zionism's settler-colonialist character and resulting nation-state has determined the violent, expansionist and discriminatory ethos of the Jewish state, just as settler-colonialism similarly shaped American history. > > But instead of the indigenous population being largely exterminated, Jews and Palestinian Arabs now exist in roughly equal numbers within the collective boundaries of Israel and Palestine. > > Only 22 percent of what was British Mandatory Palestine (1920-48) forms the Palestinian basis for the "two-state solution" that most Jewish-Americans support, and that our government claims as the goal of the "peace process." > > Yet, in their subordination to U.S. and Israeli geopolitical interests, Jewish-American institutions facilitate settlement expansion on the West Bank and the siege of Gaza. > > Most Jewish-Americans, although fewer than 20 years ago, wrongly blame the Palestinians for the failure of the "peace process." This absolves them and their institutional representatives of the need for historical understanding and self-critical reflection that would lead to effective political action in relation to U.S. government policies that maintain an untenable status quo. > > Any Jewish community, including Champaign County's, could begin to achieve informed political consensus and act in solidarity to effectively challenge this state of affairs, beginning with our elected representatives, academic administrators and media. > > This would, however, require openness to productive dialogue among our (Jewish) selves that is still, in effect, culturally and institutionally prohibited. > > > DAVID GREEN > > Champaign > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From gwoodiii3 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 15:09:48 2017 From: gwoodiii3 at gmail.com (Gus Wood) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:09:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] GEO Protest This Evening, 7PM-8PM, UIUC "With Illinois" Event Message-ID: Greetings, On Friday October 13th from 7pm-8pm, the University of Illinois chancellor Robert Jones is holding a mega event at the State Farm Center to launch “With Illinois,” a campaign that Jones considers to be the “largest philanthropic” push in the school’s history. While the University celebrates itself for “alleged” philanthropy, it also neglects the graduate employees, faculty, and staff workers. We are treated unfairly, our working conditions are deteriorating, and the university is stalling at the bargaining table. As we continue to fight for a fair GEO contract, we will use this event to protest the university’s treatment of the workers on campus. Join us at 6:30pm at the State Farm Center to protest the University of Illinois administration. *We will meet and coordinate at Kirby and 1st Street.* We will be chanting, playing drums, and holding signs with the purpose of educating people on our struggle in GEO bargaining and shaming the university administration for disrespecting graduate employees. We must make the university care about graduate employees and fight for our fair contract! The University only works because WE DO. Reply to this email with any questions, concerns, etc. Thank you all so much. Gus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 13 16:25:32 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 16:25:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Letter to the Editor, by David Green. Basis for his presentation at the Anti-War Teach In In-Reply-To: <576E26F0-2B4D-4AAD-844D-094B9283CDD9@gmail.com> References: <576E26F0-2B4D-4AAD-844D-094B9283CDD9@gmail.com> Message-ID: A comment by Luciana Bohne, a friend of Carl’s, in respect to Kagarlitsky’s article: “No analysis like class analysis: Scotland and Catalonia." "(one caveat though: not exactly correct to say the Catalonian nationalist class was not requesting independent/autonomy back in the 30s; it did; same with Basque region, which was given autonomy, which is why the Catholic church in this region was the only church in Spain that supported the Republic. In Catalonia, in 1936 there even was a separate and parallel election— separate from Madrid—but in both the United Front won--and Catalonia was more anarchist than proletarian "red" I'm surprised this wasn't noted.)" I mention this only because in Chomsky’s “On Anarchism” it is stated by “Roselli” that Catalonia was built on “Anarchism” and in Chomsky’s discussion with “Foucault debate On Human Nature,” Chomsky apologizes on behalf of “anarchists” to “socialists” for attacking and killing them, after working together in Catalonia. I’m sorry I’m unable to provide better reference, as I’m working from memory. On Oct 13, 2017, at 07:12, C G Estabrook > wrote: David’s important letter should be read with his posting of Kagarlitsky’s account of petty-bourgois nationalisms - that’s what Israel is - and their conflict with the working class: . That was a point obvious to insightful observers like Rosa Luxemburg, more than a century ago. As was clear in an uncomfortable terminological conjunction in Depression-era Germany, you could have nationalism or socialism - but not both. ('Socialism in one country’ didn't work very well, either.) —CGE On Oct 13, 2017, at 8:29 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: Jews misinformed on Israel-Palestine Fri, 10/13/2017 - 7:00am | The News-Gazette The idea of a Jewish nation, replacing Judaism, inspired the Zionist movement that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. But national liberation for the Jews meant expulsion or subordination for the Palestinians. Zionism's settler-colonialist character and resulting nation-state has determined the violent, expansionist and discriminatory ethos of the Jewish state, just as settler-colonialism similarly shaped American history. But instead of the indigenous population being largely exterminated, Jews and Palestinian Arabs now exist in roughly equal numbers within the collective boundaries of Israel and Palestine. Only 22 percent of what was British Mandatory Palestine (1920-48) forms the Palestinian basis for the "two-state solution" that most Jewish-Americans support, and that our government claims as the goal of the "peace process." Yet, in their subordination to U.S. and Israeli geopolitical interests, Jewish-American institutions facilitate settlement expansion on the West Bank and the siege of Gaza. Most Jewish-Americans, although fewer than 20 years ago, wrongly blame the Palestinians for the failure of the "peace process." This absolves them and their institutional representatives of the need for historical understanding and self-critical reflection that would lead to effective political action in relation to U.S. government policies that maintain an untenable status quo. Any Jewish community, including Champaign County's, could begin to achieve informed political consensus and act in solidarity to effectively challenge this state of affairs, beginning with our elected representatives, academic administrators and media. This would, however, require openness to productive dialogue among our (Jewish) selves that is still, in effect, culturally and institutionally prohibited. DAVID GREEN Champaign _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C652d9bc01c1b476dc34508d5124464e8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636435007305659370&sdata=D1vh11vz43gHUMkWjUOqy8eOUYu2fR2s6h2R%2BoIgOl4%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 13 17:31:09 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 17:31:09 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Rant on Spain by Prof. Luciana Bohne References: Message-ID: I believe this is meant to be against the media, and those today referring to Spain as fascist. One may wonder why I post some of this on the Peace List. It is because I believe we are seeing similar scenario’s arising today, to that which occurred in the past, in Catalonia, Spain, and across Europe. See below: "You call ALL of Spain "fascist" from 1930s to today? I cannot believe your ignorance. First: you do not apply classic Marxist class analysis. Second: you insult the memory of the hundreds of thousands of “reds" killed, detained, tortured in Asturias in 1934 Third: you insult the 400,000 who managed to escape IN RAGS across the Pyrenees in 1939—who found no comfort anywhere in Europe. Fourth: you ignore the leading role the Spanish Republican "reds" in exile played in organizing the anti-nazi Resistance against the occupation of Europe (Especially in France). Fifth: you ignore Franco's brutal repression of "reds" in Spain from 1939-1969 ("Causa General," juridically)--a virtual genocide which started with the death of 150,000 killed in slave labor building the ludicrous monument to the fraudulent "reconciliation" in the Valle de los Caidos. This repression tells you how strong opposition to fascism was in that tragic country. 6th: you disrespect one of the fiercest anti-fascist struggle in Europe to oppose Catholic Fascist monarchism and fascism in general. Stop spitting on Spain, will you? You irk me. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com Thu Oct 12 20:28:35 2017 From: stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com (stansfield smith) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:28:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: References: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <432898758.769129.1507840115512@mail.yahoo.com>      I think the Democrats and Republicans would be fine with Pence as president. I don't think there is any lack of evidence to impeach Trump. In fact, there is no lack of evidence for impeaching any of the presidents. I don't think anyone can name one who did not repeatedly violate the Constitution.   From: David Swanson To: stansfield smith Cc: Karen Aram ; Robert Naiman ; Peace-discuss List ; ufpj-activist Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:32 PM Subject: Re: [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats The main reason this is too weak to even risk being a self-fulfilling prophecy is that those pushing Russiagate want Trump around in order to "oppose" him. If they wanted him gone they'd switch to offenses for which there is evidence. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:29 PM, stansfield smith wrote:    The powerful and dominant forces for impeaching Trump, and the forces who have the control in Congress to do it, will impeach him for bogus Russia control, not for war-mongering, not for his racist and anti-immigrant positions.  If you want to get involved in impeaching Trump, those you will be aiding are these anti-Russia neo-cons. You will not be helping the anti-war war movement, or immigrants or Blacks or women.   From: David Swanson To: Karen Aram Cc: Robert Naiman ; Peace-discuss List ; ufpj-activist Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 10:54 AM Subject: Re: [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats Here is the no-Russia-BS impeach Trump campaign: http://RootsAction.org On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 11:48 AM, Karen Aram wrote:  Robert et al Prof. Francis Boyle attempted to have Bush, and Cheney impeached to prevent US attacks on Iraq, but was prevented by John Podesta of the DNC, because they wanted to use the war for the next election. Prof. Boyle, again attempted impeachment of Obama for his drones and extension of our wars from two to eight. Unfortunately no one would take up the mantle for peace, against a popular Democratic President. Now you want to impeach Trump, if its for war, of which there is credible evidence to do so, according to Professor Boyle, then good for you.  If it’s for Russiagate, or any lesser cause, don’t do it, that will only bury the American government and its people in more trivialities. Robert, you may call me a “stupid Trot” for posting their information. I would rather be a “stupid socialist," than one who wallows in trivia and propaganda. On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Robert Naiman  wrote: Until now, I haven't been a devotee of the Trump impeachment push. I think the "Russian interference in the election" story has been greatly overblown, driven mainly by devotees of the national security state.  This development could change my view. Tom Steyer is putting Trump's “seeming determination to go to war” on the marquee of his bill of charges. If that becomes central to the case, I will change my view. If Tom Steyer starts talking about ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, I will gladly fight under his flag.  Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1 0/11/us/tom-steyer-trump-impea chment.html === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/s ign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_ by=1135580 ______________________________ _________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists. mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst. org/mailman/listinfo/ufpj- activist To Unsubscribe         Send email to:  ufpj-activist- unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org         Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst. org/mailman/options/ufpj- activist/davidcnswanson% 40gmail.com You are subscribed as: davidcnswanson at gmail.com --  David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsA Crime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and F aceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. ______________________________ _________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists. mayfirst.org List info: https://nam03.safelinks. protection.outlook.com/?url= https%3A%2F%2Flists.mayfirst. org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo% 2Fufpj-activist&data=02%7C01% 7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com% 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181 c00e% 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa aaaa%7C1%7C0% 7C636434171317080250&sdata= WOGTQ6tzYyX91soE37fmvwRtQe8pBo cSgcoL5dHvU2g%3D&reserved=0 To Unsubscribe        Send email to:  ufpj-activist-unsubscribe@ lists.mayfirst.org        Or visit: https://nam03. safelinks.protection.outlook. com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists. mayfirst.org%2Fmailman% 2Foptions%2Fufpj-activist% 2Fkarenaram%2540hotmail.com& data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram% 40hotmail.com% 7C4e95ddcdaef24481ebf608d51181 c00e% 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaa aaaa%7C1%7C0% 7C636434171317080250&sdata= QG7ssNUCwPtp9I9ribKIN8WB4IOtU8 u%2Bp%2FdYWBtrql0%3D&reserved= 0 You are subscribed as: karenaram at hotmail.com -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. ______________________________ _________________ ufpj-activist mailing list Post: ufpj-activist at lists.mayfirst. org List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/ mailman/listinfo/ufpj-activist To Unsubscribe         Send email to:  ufpj-activist-unsubscribe@ lists.mayfirst.org         Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/ mailman/options/ufpj-activist/ stansfieldsmith%40yahoo.com You are subscribed as: stansfieldsmith at yahoo.com -- David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From officer3 at uigeo.org Fri Oct 13 15:18:41 2017 From: officer3 at uigeo.org (=?UTF-8?Q?Zo=C3=AB_A=2E_MacDowell_Kaswan?=) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:18:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [campus_labor] GEO Protest This Evening, 7PM-8PM, UIUC "With Illinois" Event In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Please DO NOT POST THIS TO SOCIAL MEDIA. On Oct 13, 2017 10:09 AM, "Gus Wood" wrote: > Greetings, > > On Friday October 13th from 7pm-8pm, the University of Illinois > chancellor Robert Jones is holding a mega event at the State Farm Center to > launch “With Illinois,” a campaign that Jones considers to be the “largest > philanthropic” push in the school’s history. While the University > celebrates itself for “alleged” philanthropy, it also neglects the graduate > employees, faculty, and staff workers. We are treated unfairly, our > working conditions are deteriorating, and the university is stalling at the > bargaining table. > > As we continue to fight for a fair GEO contract, we will use this event to > protest the university’s treatment of the workers on campus. Join us at > 6:30pm at the State Farm Center to protest the University of Illinois > administration. *We will meet and coordinate at Kirby and 1st Street.* We > will be chanting, playing drums, and holding signs with the purpose of > educating people on our struggle in GEO bargaining and shaming the > university administration for disrespecting graduate employees. We must > make the university care about graduate employees and fight for our fair > contract! The University only works because WE DO. > > > Reply to this email with any questions, concerns, etc. Thank you all so > much. > > > Gus > > > -- > Campus Labor List > Graduate Employees’ Organization > 809 S. 5th St > ., Geneva > Room > Champaign, IL 61820 > Phone: 217-344-8283 <(217)%20344-8283> > Email: geo at uigeo.org > Website: https://www.uigeo.org > Twitter: @geo_uiuc > Facebook: @uigeo @geosolcomm > Instagram: @geo_uiuc > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Campus Labor List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to campuslaborlist+unsubscribe at uigeo.org. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/a/uigeo.org/group/ > campuslaborlist/. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/a/uigeo.org/d/optout. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 20:45:29 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 15:45:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Message-ID: Dear Carl, We care about you.  And we care about the participants on the Peace list who specifically signed up to get only announcements.  Your posts are quite welcome on Peace-discuss.   Peace-discuss is for articles and discussions about those articles. -Karen Medina -------- Original message --------From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss Date: 10/12/17 10:47 (GMT-06:00) To: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net, Stuart Levy Cc: peace , Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Stuart— We’ve been friends and colleagues in AWARE for some time now, and I think you’re making a mistake in suppressing my posts to an AWARE email list, ostensibly to enforce procedural rules that in fact my posts meet (viz., "'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues”). The suspicion arises that my posts (“...rants...”) are being censored because you and others disagree with the content - but isn’t AWARE precisely for the open discussion of  these issues? Which of my recent "calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues” do you think justify suppression?   ~ Bennis et al. on identity politics? ~ articles on Antifa? ~ Krugman’s misleading attack on slavery? I think we contribute to the building of an anti-war movement by encouraging the liberty that the equivocal George Orwell spoke of, in the (suppressed) preface to his 1945 novella 'Animal Farm’: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Regards, CGE On Oct 12, 2017, at 9:33 AM, peace-owner at lists.chambana.net wrote: Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject    Re: [Peace-discuss] US on the brink of war with N. Korea Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. The reason it is being held:    Post to moderated list Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive notification of the moderator's decision.  If you would like to cancel this posting, please visit the following URL:    https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/confirm/peace/c7ba7f42ce719022b97749389a20841edb3029f1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 21:39:28 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 16:39:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [ufpj-activist] NYT: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats In-Reply-To: <432898758.769129.1507840115512@mail.yahoo.com> References: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com> <432898758.769129.1507840115512@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Noam Chomsky pointed out a generation ago, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.” The same is obviously true of the presidents of this generation, up to and including Obama and Trump. In the judgment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, "War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” It is clear that all US presidents since that judgement have initiated wars of aggression. (To say one is merely continuing a predecessor’s war of aggression is obviously not an exculpation.) —CGE > On Oct 12, 2017, at 3:28 PM, stansfield smith via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > I think the Democrats and Republicans would be fine with Pence as president. I don't think there is any lack of evidence to impeach Trump. In fact, there is no lack of evidence for impeaching any of the presidents. I don't think anyone can name one who did not repeatedly violate the Constitution. > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 22:07:37 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 17:07:37 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <72C884E9-A160-4E82-8AB2-BC2940A049F8@gmail.com> Karen— Read the description of the list as established by >: "'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list. Posts from non-list-members are moderated to cut down on SPAM." My censored posts obviously fit that description. Further, AWARE has authorized no one to censor its email lists. —CGE > On Oct 13, 2017, at 3:45 PM, kmedina67 wrote: > > Dear Carl, > > We care about you. > > And we care about the participants on the Peace list who specifically signed up to get only announcements. > > Your posts are quite welcome on Peace-discuss. > > Peace-discuss is for articles and discussions about those articles. > > -Karen Medina > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > Date: 10/12/17 10:47 (GMT-06:00) > To: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net, Stuart Levy > Cc: peace , Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > > Stuart— > > We’ve been friends and colleagues in AWARE for some time now, and I think you’re making a mistake in suppressing my posts to an AWARE email list, ostensibly to enforce procedural rules that in fact my posts meet (viz., "'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues”). > > The suspicion arises that my posts (“...rants...”) are being censored because you and others disagree with the content - but isn’t AWARE precisely for the open discussion of these issues? > > Which of my recent "calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues” do you think justify suppression? > > ~ Bennis et al. on identity politics? > > ~ articles on Antifa? > > ~ Krugman’s misleading attack on slavery? > > I think we contribute to the building of an anti-war movement by encouraging the liberty that the equivocal George Orwell spoke of, in the (suppressed) preface to his 1945 novella 'Animal Farm’: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” > > Regards, CGE > > >> On Oct 12, 2017, at 9:33 AM, peace-owner at lists.chambana.net wrote: >> >> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >> >> Re: [Peace-discuss] US on the brink of war with N. Korea >> >> Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. >> >> The reason it is being held: >> >> Post to moderated list >> >> Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive >> notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel >> this posting, please visit the following URL: >> >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/confirm/peace/c7ba7f42ce719022b97749389a20841edb3029f1 >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 22:43:50 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 17:43:50 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I suggest the ‘moderator’ is suppressing this post because s/he disagrees with it. Is this an internet version of an ‘antifa' response? Should I await a punch? It would be better - and closer to the purpose of AWARE - to state the disagreement and discuss it. —CGE > On Oct 13, 2017, at 5:07 PM, peace-owner at lists.chambana.net wrote: > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator > approval > > Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. > > The reason it is being held: > > Post to moderated list > > Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive > notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel > this posting, please visit the following URL: > > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/confirm/peace/3ec5f807444eab5060a9c7e5dd0fb67cccc03388 > From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Fri Oct 13 23:19:35 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 18:19:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Message-ID: <2uatn8h0954xawsb9b48g4rc.1507936775025@email.android.com> Discussion is open on peace-discuss as it ever was.  It is off topic for Peace, also as it ever was.  -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: C G Estabrook Date: 10/13/17 17:43 (GMT-06:00) To: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net Cc: Peace , Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval I suggest the ‘moderator’ is suppressing this post because s/he disagrees with it. Is this an internet version of an ‘antifa' response? Should I await a punch? It would be better - and closer to the purpose of AWARE - to state the disagreement and discuss it. —CGE > On Oct 13, 2017, at 5:07 PM, peace-owner at lists.chambana.net wrote: > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > >    Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator > approval > > Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. > > The reason it is being held: > >    Post to moderated list > > Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive > notification of the moderator's decision.  If you would like to cancel > this posting, please visit the following URL: > >    https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/confirm/peace/3ec5f807444eab5060a9c7e5dd0fb67cccc03388 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Fri Oct 13 23:20:57 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 23:20:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Free speech References: <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877@mail.yahoo.com> This comment by David Prochaska, a retired history professor, appeared in response to an editorial the other day by the NG board, with the assumption that it was written by Jim Dey: http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2017-10-09/campus-conflict.html "Dey is a free speech absolutist. What that means is that if someone wants to speak, you let him or her. No matter the message. No matter the cost. You are either in favor, or not. It’s black and white. In theory, it’s simple, straightforward. In practice, it’s difficult, fraught. Absolutists like Dey talk about free speech as if it existed in a theoretical vacuum divorced from real life. They don’t discuss the way it actually works in practice. Because to do so undermines their purist argument. But it’s not as simplistic and easy as true-believer absolutists like Dey make it out. It’s gray, it’s complicated, it’s fraught. What if someone wants to come not with a message to impart but to provoke, to throw a verbal firebomb in the public square? Alt-right provocateurs do that regularly. What if a person on stage throws out the name, photo and personal contact information of a person with a minority sexual orientation? Milo Younnapoulis does that regularly. What if a small but well-organized, national group with deep pockets with a systematic agenda to flood campuses with alt-right provocateurs pays all their costs? That’s what the Young America’s Foundation does regularly. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/us/college-conservative-speeches.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article The Conservative Force Behind Speeches Roiling College Campuses By STEPHANIE SAULMAY 20, 2017 What if due to the provocative nature of these appearances universities are forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on police and logistics? It cost Berkeley $600,000 for Ben Shapiro recently. They were looking at having to spend $1 million for Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Free Speech Week” at Berkeley. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/us/milo-berkeley-free-speech.html Free Speech Week at Berkeley Is Canceled, but Milo Yiannopoulos Still Plans to Talk By JACEY FORTINSEPT. 23, 2017 What if this cost to schools is part of the alt-right plan to attack and criticize public universities and liberal education across the board? http://www.starvingthebeast.net/ What if some people, some students – women, minorities -- feel more physically threatened than whites, especially males, in the presence of alt-right speech provocateurs? Free speech absolutists and provocateurs like Dey respond to such concerns mostly by attacking and denigrating the messenger. Get a life. Suck it up. Quit being a wussy snowflake. Easy for male, white-privileged Dey to say. He doesn’t know what it’s like. Free speech absolutists like Dey exhibit the very same lack of empathy as… Donald Trump. What if this is not about “free speech” so much as hate speech? Dey and his ilk don’t want to talk about hate speech. They want the conversation to stick to “free speech” – as if it occurs in a political and moral vacuum. The question is not that free speech guarantees speech to those who say things we don’t agree with. The question is whether a free speech platform should be extended to those who say and believe things completely inimical to the aims and values we hold as a society, even when we don’t live up to them. It’s one thing to give free speech to someone who attacks individuals and individual beliefs. It’s something else entirely to give free speech to someone who attacks entire groups, or classes of people based simply on their ascribed identities. “Speech that questions the very humanity of any person on campus has no place in a university. Let’s call it what it is: hate speech. There are people claiming that certain members of our community are not fully human, and we’re being asked to legitimize this as an admissible argument? This is speech that attempts to limit the free speech rights of entire categories of people by virtue of their ascribed identities. It’s the ultimate irony: suppressing free speech under the banner of free speech.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/berkeley-free-speech.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=articlehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/berkeley-free-speech.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article Would you, Jim Dey, let an avowed neo-Nazi speak? Would you, Jim Dey, let an avowed Holocaust denier speak? Yes, and yes, because Jim Dey is a free speech absolutist. Elsewhere in the western world, free speech exists, as both conservatives and liberals would agree, but there are also strictures on hate speech. In Germany, Nazism and Holocaust denial is considered hate speech, and not allowed. France, too, has strictures on unlimited free speech. But for free speech absolutist Jim Dey, hate speech is just fine." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Oct 14 03:48:29 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 22:48:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Free speech In-Reply-To: <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <03D3CD61-E3D6-4E97-9BAB-36D4EF404331@gmail.com> I have a great deal of respect for David Prochaska, who’s written well on a number of political topics, many of them related to the university. But in this case, I think he’s wrong, and Jim Dey (if it is he) is right. “If you don’t believe in free speech for people you despise, you don’t believe in it at all.” [Noam Chomsky] Some subsidiary points: 1.) I don’t have too much sympathy for universities (especially, given how they in fact spend their money) that have to bear the cost of doing what they're meant to do - provide space for discussion; even "if this cost to schools is part of the alt-right plan to attack and criticize public universities and liberal education across the board." 2) “Hate speech” is a specious category, designed to evade the canons of free speech. 3) Free speech can’t be abridged because a speaker has an evil motive (e.g., " to throw a verbal firebomb in the public square”). These matters were supposed to have been decided in the Enlightenment: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." > On Oct 13, 2017, at 6:20 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: > > This comment by David Prochaska, a retired history professor, appeared in response to an editorial the other day by the NG board, with the assumption that it was written by Jim Dey: > > http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2017-10-09/campus-conflict.html > > > "Dey is a free speech absolutist. > > What that means is that if someone wants to speak, you let him or her. No matter the message. No matter the cost. You are either in favor, or not. It’s black and white. > > In theory, it’s simple, straightforward. In practice, it’s difficult, fraught. > > Absolutists like Dey talk about free speech as if it existed in a theoretical vacuum divorced from real life. They don’t discuss the way it actually works in practice. Because to do so undermines their purist argument. > > But it’s not as simplistic and easy as true-believer absolutists like Dey make it out. It’s gray, it’s complicated, it’s fraught. > > What if someone wants to come not with a message to impart but to provoke, to throw a verbal firebomb in the public square? > > Alt-right provocateurs do that regularly. > > What if a person on stage throws out the name, photo and personal contact information of a person with a minority sexual orientation? > > Milo Younnapoulis does that regularly. > > What if a small but well-organized, national group with deep pockets with a systematic agenda to flood campuses with alt-right provocateurs pays all their costs? > > That’s what the Young America’s Foundation does regularly. > > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/us/college-conservative-speeches.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article > > The Conservative Force Behind Speeches Roiling College Campuses By STEPHANIE SAULMAY 20, 2017 > > What if due to the provocative nature of these appearances universities are forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on police and logistics? > > It cost Berkeley $600,000 for Ben Shapiro recently. They were looking at having to spend $1 million for Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Free Speech Week” at Berkeley. > > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/us/milo-berkeley-free-speech.html > Free Speech Week at Berkeley Is Canceled, but Milo Yiannopoulos Still Plans to Talk By JACEY FORTINSEPT. 23, 2017 > > What if this cost to schools is part of the alt-right plan to attack and criticize public universities and liberal education across the board? > > http://www.starvingthebeast.net/ > What if some people, some students – women, minorities -- feel more physically threatened than whites, especially males, in the presence of alt-right speech provocateurs? > > Free speech absolutists and provocateurs like Dey respond to such concerns mostly by attacking and denigrating the messenger. Get a life. Suck it up. Quit being a wussy snowflake. > > Easy for male, white-privileged Dey to say. He doesn’t know what it’s like. Free speech absolutists like Dey exhibit the very same lack of empathy as… Donald Trump. > > What if this is not about “free speech” so much as hate speech? Dey and his ilk don’t want to talk about hate speech. They want the conversation to stick to “free speech” – as if it occurs in a political and moral vacuum. > > The question is not that free speech guarantees speech to those who say things we don’t agree with. The question is whether a free speech platform should be extended to those who say and believe things completely inimical to the aims and values we hold as a society, even when we don’t live up to them. > > It’s one thing to give free speech to someone who attacks individuals and individual beliefs. It’s something else entirely to give free speech to someone who attacks entire groups, or classes of people based simply on their ascribed identities. > > “Speech that questions the very humanity of any person on campus has no place in a university. Let’s call it what it is: hate speech. There are people claiming that certain members of our community are not fully human, and we’re being asked to legitimize this as an admissible argument? > > This is speech that attempts to limit the free speech rights of entire categories of people by virtue of their ascribed identities. It’s the ultimate irony: suppressing free speech under the banner of free speech.” > > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/berkeley-free-speech.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=articlehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/berkeley-free-speech.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article > Would you, Jim Dey, let an avowed neo-Nazi speak? > Would you, Jim Dey, let an avowed Holocaust denier speak? > > Yes, and yes, because Jim Dey is a free speech absolutist. > > Elsewhere in the western world, free speech exists, as both conservatives and liberals would agree, but there are also strictures on hate speech. > > In Germany, Nazism and Holocaust denial is considered hate speech, and not allowed. France, too, has strictures on unlimited free speech. > > But for free speech absolutist Jim Dey, hate speech is just fine." > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Oct 14 03:57:53 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 22:57:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Call to action on an AWARE issue In-Reply-To: <2uatn8h0954xawsb9b48g4rc.1507936775025@email.android.com> References: <2uatn8h0954xawsb9b48g4rc.1507936775025@email.android.com> Message-ID: <56BC55A0-AA49-407C-B957-451BCB3A0DBA@gmail.com> But "calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues (and AWARE meeting minutes)” are not off topic for Peace (sic chambana.net ). —CGE > On Oct 13, 2017, at 6:19 PM, stuartnlevy wrote: > > Discussion is open on peace-discuss as it ever was. It is off topic for Peace, also as it ever was. > > > -- Stuart > > -------- Original message -------- > From: C G Estabrook > Date: 10/13/17 17:43 (GMT-06:00) > To: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net > Cc: Peace , Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > > I suggest the ‘moderator’ is suppressing this post because s/he disagrees with it. > > Is this an internet version of an ‘antifa' response? Should I await a punch? > > It would be better - and closer to the purpose of AWARE - to state the disagreement and discuss it. > > —CGE > > > On Oct 13, 2017, at 5:07 PM, peace-owner at lists.chambana.net wrote: > > > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > > > Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator > > approval > > > > Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. > > > > The reason it is being held: > > > > Post to moderated list > > > > Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive > > notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel > > this posting, please visit the following URL: > > > > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/confirm/peace/3ec5f807444eab5060a9c7e5dd0fb67cccc03388 > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Sat Oct 14 04:15:55 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 04:15:55 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Free speech In-Reply-To: <03D3CD61-E3D6-4E97-9BAB-36D4EF404331@gmail.com> References: <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1259068353.1440654.1507936857877@mail.yahoo.com> <03D3CD61-E3D6-4E97-9BAB-36D4EF404331@gmail.com> Message-ID: <2043648266.1546345.1507954555093@mail.yahoo.com> Nor do I agree at all with Prochaska's statement, which perhaps I should have made clear when I posted it; then again, it speaks for itself. On ‎Friday‎, ‎October‎ ‎13‎, ‎2017‎ ‎10‎:‎48‎:‎33‎ ‎PM, C G Estabrook wrote: I have a great deal of respect for David Prochaska, who’s written well on a number of political topics, many of them related to the university.  But in this case, I think he’s wrong, and Jim Dey (if it is he) is right. “If you don’t believe in free speech for people you despise, you don’t believe in it at all.”  [Noam Chomsky] Some subsidiary points: 1.) I don’t have too much sympathy for universities (especially, given how they in fact spend their money) that have to bear the cost of doing what they're meant to do - provide space for discussion; even "if this cost to schools is part of the alt-right plan to attack and criticize public universities and liberal education across the board." 2) “Hate speech” is a specious category, designed to evade the canons of free speech. 3) Free speech can’t be abridged because a speaker has an evil motive (e.g., " to throw a verbal firebomb in the public square”). These matters were supposed to have been decided in the Enlightenment: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."   On Oct 13, 2017, at 6:20 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: This comment by David Prochaska, a retired history professor, appeared in response to an editorial the other day by the NG board, with the assumption that it was written by Jim Dey: http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2017-10-09/campus-conflict.html "Dey is a free speech absolutist. What that means is that if someone wants to speak, you let him or her. No matter the message. No matter the cost. You are either in favor, or not. It’s black and white. In theory, it’s simple, straightforward. In practice, it’s difficult, fraught. Absolutists like Dey talk about free speech as if it existed in a theoretical vacuum divorced from real life. They don’t discuss the way it actually works in practice. Because to do so undermines their purist argument. But it’s not as simplistic and easy as true-believer absolutists like Dey make it out. It’s gray, it’s complicated, it’s fraught. What if someone wants to come not with a message to impart but to provoke, to throw a verbal firebomb in the public square? Alt-right provocateurs do that regularly. What if a person on stage throws out the name, photo and personal contact information of a person with a minority sexual orientation? Milo Younnapoulis does that regularly. What if a small but well-organized, national group with deep pockets with a systematic agenda to flood campuses with alt-right provocateurs pays all their costs? That’s what the Young America’s Foundation does regularly. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/us/college-conservative-speeches.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article The Conservative Force Behind Speeches Roiling College Campuses By STEPHANIE SAULMAY 20, 2017 What if due to the provocative nature of these appearances universities are forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on police and logistics? It cost Berkeley $600,000 for Ben Shapiro recently. They were looking at having to spend $1 million for Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Free Speech Week” at Berkeley. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/us/milo-berkeley-free-speech.html Free Speech Week at Berkeley Is Canceled, but Milo Yiannopoulos Still Plans to Talk By JACEY FORTINSEPT. 23, 2017 What if this cost to schools is part of the alt-right plan to attack and criticize public universities and liberal education across the board? http://www.starvingthebeast.net/ What if some people, some students – women, minorities -- feel more physically threatened than whites, especially males, in the presence of alt-right speech provocateurs? Free speech absolutists and provocateurs like Dey respond to such concerns mostly by attacking and denigrating the messenger. Get a life. Suck it up. Quit being a wussy snowflake. Easy for male, white-privileged Dey to say. He doesn’t know what it’s like. Free speech absolutists like Dey exhibit the very same lack of empathy as… Donald Trump. What if this is not about “free speech” so much as hate speech? Dey and his ilk don’t want to talk about hate speech. They want the conversation to stick to “free speech” – as if it occurs in a political and moral vacuum. The question is not that free speech guarantees speech to those who say things we don’t agree with. The question is whether a free speech platform should be extended to those who say and believe things completely inimical to the aims and values we hold as a society, even when we don’t live up to them. It’s one thing to give free speech to someone who attacks individuals and individual beliefs. It’s something else entirely to give free speech to someone who attacks entire groups, or classes of people based simply on their ascribed identities. “Speech that questions the very humanity of any person on campus has no place in a university. Let’s call it what it is: hate speech. There are people claiming that certain members of our community are not fully human, and we’re being asked to legitimize this as an admissible argument? This is speech that attempts to limit the free speech rights of entire categories of people by virtue of their ascribed identities. It’s the ultimate irony: suppressing free speech under the banner of free speech.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/berkeley-free-speech.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=articlehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/us/berkeley-free-speech.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article Would you, Jim Dey, let an avowed neo-Nazi speak? Would you, Jim Dey, let an avowed Holocaust denier speak? Yes, and yes, because Jim Dey is a free speech absolutist. Elsewhere in the western world, free speech exists, as both conservatives and liberals would agree, but there are also strictures on hate speech. In Germany, Nazism and Holocaust denial is considered hate speech, and not allowed. France, too, has strictures on unlimited free speech. But for free speech absolutist Jim Dey, hate speech is just fine." _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Oct 14 15:23:00 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 15:23:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The George Carlin of Milllenials? Message-ID: https://www.rt.com/shows/redacted-tonight-summary/406667-war-afghanistan-trump-statements/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sat Oct 14 21:13:00 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 21:13:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester References: <59E25856.0000007B@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> Message-ID: <09ECB99F-5FD8-462B-8BF8-F2E9BF966F86@illinois.edu> From: r-szoke Subject: NYTimes.com: The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester Date: October 14, 2017 Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: [http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo194x27.gif] [https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/10/14/opinion/14vietnamWeb/14vietnamWeb-thumbStandard-v4.jpg] Vietnam '67 The Myth of the Spitting Antiwar Protester By JERRY LEMBCKE Nobody spat on returning Vietnam veterans. So why does the story persist? Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html?emc=eta1 To ensure delivery to your inbox, please add nytdirect at nytimes.com to your address book. Copyright 2017 | The New York Times Company | NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 [http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=hdaNaYedr2/IomeWRKt0nffrak8aSGLbvtkkq/r7ihwOf5XePlpJ1w==&user_id=ee7558d54531b290bd05280f4b7d6eb4&email_type=eta&task_id=1508005974712610®i_id=0] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sat Oct 14 21:16:23 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 21:16:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?b?VGhlIEMuSS5BLuKAmXMgRmFrZSBOZXdzIENh?= =?utf-8?q?mpaign?= References: <59E24873.00000009@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> Message-ID: From: r-szoke Subject: NYTimes.com: The C.I.A.’s Fake News Campaign Date: October 14, 2017 Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: [http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo194x27.gif] [https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/10/14/opinion/14Osgood/14Osgood-thumbStandard-v2.jpg] Op-Ed Contributor The C.I.A.’s Fake News Campaign By KENNETH OSGOOD Russia’s election-hacking wasn’t the first time someone manipulated American news media for political ends. Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/cia-fake-news-russia.html?emc=eta1 Copyright 2017 | The New York Times Company | NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 [http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=hdaNaYedr2/IomeWRKt0nffrak8aSGLbvtkkq/r7ihwOf5XePlpJ1w==&user_id=ee7558d54531b290bd05280f4b7d6eb4&email_type=eta&task_id=1508001907283928®i_id=0] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Oct 14 23:30:48 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 18:30:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues Message-ID: <67DF44A6-75AC-42D3-A3C9-23734C11D5DC@gmail.com> Stuart— You ask, What’s wrong with Phyllis Bennis' article "Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down [sic] for Racial and Economic Justice” >? Short answer: it’s an exercise in ‘intersectionality’ (“that opiate of the professional managerial class,” as W. B. Michaels put it). Bennis attempts to incorporate identity politics into the antiwar movement, without admitting that identity politics was constructed to deny and replace class politics, the true basis of US wars and therefore of opposition to them. The US is not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for the profits of the one percent. Class is objective (i.e., you belong to it, whether you know it or not), but ‘identity’ is subjective. Identity politics attempts to turn class into ‘classism,’ another attitude about identity, parallel to racism, sexism, etc. It’s a snare and a delusion. Intersectionality leads to Bennis' curiously anemic conclusion on how to revitalize the anti-war movement: "We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance.” One would think we should be more accurate about the causes of the killing - not the costs (which are fairly obvious) "and the integral links between war and racism” (which is a cover story, not a cause). Regards, CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 15 12:42:14 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 12:42:14 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: AWARE Teach-In Video References: Message-ID: Subject: RE: AWARE Teach-In Video Date: October 14, 2017 at 20:41:23 PDT https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 15 13:33:02 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 13:33:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: AWARE Teach-In Video In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 7:42 AM To: Peace-discuss List ; peace Subject: [Peace] Fwd: AWARE Teach-In Video Subject: RE: AWARE Teach-In Video Date: October 14, 2017 at 20:41:23 PDT https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: ATT00001.txt URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 15 13:33:02 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 13:33:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: AWARE Teach-In Video In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 7:42 AM To: Peace-discuss List ; peace Subject: [Peace] Fwd: AWARE Teach-In Video Subject: RE: AWARE Teach-In Video Date: October 14, 2017 at 20:41:23 PDT https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: ATT00001.txt URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 15 14:27:36 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 14:27:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE Teach-In Video References: Message-ID: "...particularly to the drone assassinations, "the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times" - which have killed more than 5,000 {now 10,000+} people, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of children." Chomsky Everyone did a great job. We all pulled together and made this happen. Just like last year we all pulled together against Obama's Drone Genocider Killer Koh. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 8:33 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: AWARE Teach-In Video Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 7:42 AM To: Peace-discuss List >; peace > Subject: [Peace] Fwd: AWARE Teach-In Video Subject: RE: AWARE Teach-In Video Date: October 14, 2017 at 20:41:23 PDT https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 15 14:27:36 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 14:27:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE Teach-In Video References: Message-ID: "...particularly to the drone assassinations, "the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times" - which have killed more than 5,000 {now 10,000+} people, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of children." Chomsky Everyone did a great job. We all pulled together and made this happen. Just like last year we all pulled together against Obama's Drone Genocider Killer Koh. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 8:33 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: AWARE Teach-In Video Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 7:42 AM To: Peace-discuss List >; peace > Subject: [Peace] Fwd: AWARE Teach-In Video Subject: RE: AWARE Teach-In Video Date: October 14, 2017 at 20:41:23 PDT https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Oct 15 19:25:01 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 14:25:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Support free speech at UI Message-ID: <1FCB0AA1-9503-4104-B6BA-F9B2CA643A2B@gmail.com> I’ve admired Jim Dey’s investigative reporting - particularly on legal matters - for some time, but I often disagree with his political opinions. I think he’s quite right, though, in his column in today’s News-Gazette - especially his asseveration “that so-called ‘hate speech’ is constitutionally protected.” Noam Chomsky (with whom Mr. Dey would perhaps not often agree) pointed out long ago, “If you don’t believe in free speech for people you despise, you don’t believe in it at all.” I think that’s correct, and I appreciate Dey’s speaking up for it. His greatest sin in that piece is the solecism, “...these kind of events...” Surely he means “...this kind of event...” —CGE ========================== Sunday, October 15, 2017 Jim Dey: Free speech: It's not a hard concept A camel is a horse designed by a committee. Bear that old aphorism in mind when members of a proposed campus task force charged with developing policies on maintaining free speech and a welcoming campus environment for all finally get around to turning in their report. The way things are going in connection with this issue on campus it should be considered a plus if the free-speech horse the committee configures only resembles a camel, not something even more unrecognizable. But even that hope is a stretch given the hand-wringing nervousness displayed by campus higher-ups on an issue that is just not that complicated. The reality surrounding free speech can be, and sometimes is, contentious. But the issue itself is relatively simple. Let everyone speak. Let people decide on their own whether to listen or not to listen. Provide security, if necessary, to ensure the rules of decorum are followed. Impose disciplinary measures against those who would try to silence a speaker or take over a meeting where a lecture is being presented. That seems to be pretty much what happened at a recent event, where audience members inside the Illini Union listened to a guest speaker while protesters outside denounced the speaker as, according to one sign, "a fascist alt-right sympathizer who looks like a mashed potato." Some on campus seemed to be scandalized this particular speaker was a conservative who spoke enthusiastically about free-market capitalism as the best method of building wealth and reducing poverty. Most people would find that type of event wholly ordinary on campus. At the same time, most people would be similarly undisturbed if a liberal gave a talk on why single-payer is the best approach on health care, a socialist asserted government should take over private enterprise or a libertarian advocated the legalization of illegal drugs. These speakers advocate points of view, and people make of them what they will. No nannies are needed to ensure that dissenters' feelings not be hurt by being exposed to an opinion they do not share. But that common-sense viewpoint seems alien to members of the campus community, which explains why University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen has decided to appoint a task force made up of faculty, administrators and students to develop permanent policies addressing speech issues. (By the way, will there be any requirement that members of this group actually understand what the free speech clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution actually means? There should be because it appears that only a few people outside the law school faculty actually understand that so-called "hate speech" is constitutionally protected.) Killeen has been wasting his and a lot of people's time for weeks now on this issue. Maybe there's a method to his madness. But this task force likely appears to represent another exercise in somehow trying to appease faculty members, like Bruce Rosenstock, as well as campus groups that resent the possibility that the UI might host a speaker of whom they do not approve. UI officials characterize these kind of events as "challenging conversations" and say they want to avoid "divisive things." Given what's transpired on other campuses, that concern is easy to understand. But the division on campus is being sown by those who seek to limit speech on topics, even innocuous ones, they do not wish to be addressed. Here are some examples: — On Oct. 6, a group of thuggish students took over a platform at the University of Oregon and refused to allow President Michael Schill deliver his annual "State of the University" speech. — On Oct. 9, a member of the Texas Legislature was shouted down before he could deliver a talk about the Texas Southern University Law School. — On Oct. 11, a speech by noted author Charles Murray at the University of Michigan was severely disrupted. News reports indicate "Murray was able to speak only for brief periods in between disruptions lasting 40 minutes." Here's the answer to the problem those events created — universities shouldn't put up with that kind of behavior. That kind of mindless authoritarianism is not only an affront to good manners but an assault on civil society. There always will be those who wish to distinguish, based on their personal opinion, between good speech that should be heard and bad speech they believe should not be heard. The question, of course, is who decides. The answer is to let the speakers compete in the marketplace of ideas, letting audience members decide for themselves whether their remarks make sense or not. In a cliche-ridden resolution he considered offering to the UI Faculty Senate, Professor Rosenstock called for "ways to balance freedom of speech and academic freedom" with "the goal of creating a welcoming climate and safe environment for all university members who want their voices to be heard and respected in our common struggle against the alarming growth of open displays of intolerance and bigotry on college campuses today." Rosenstock — and others like him — don't mean his speech rights should be balanced against anything because he considers himself on the side of the angels. But it's a different story altogether for those who, in his view, are not similarly situated. If the UI wants to adopt a policy on speech issues that sets the proper standard, it can look to the positions taken at Purdue, the University of Chicago or other institutions who have indicated that their campuses will remain forums for the free exchange of ideas. If that's not good enough,let President Killeen say that theFirst Amendment sets the proper standing. By bobbing and weaving and hemming and hawing, President Killeen, Chancellor Robert Jones and acting Provost John Wilkins only demean themselves, their positions and this great university with their continuing profiles in vacillation and cowardice. Jim Dey, a member of The News-Gazette staff, can be reached by email at jdey at news-gazette.com or by phone at 217-351-5369. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sun Oct 15 21:57:53 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 21:57:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Almost half of Republicans want war with North Korea, a new poll says. Is it the Trump Effect? from The Washington Post References: <8B468CA1-421C-4B2E-9844-1307B733D2FC@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <13AAFCF0-0910-4378-81FE-2E10BFAAADEA@illinois.edu> From: "Szoke, Ron" > Subject: Almost half of Republicans want war with North Korea, a new poll says. Is it the Trump Effect? from The Washington Post Date: October 15, 2017 http://wapo.st/2wTsrVs?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.c43eb72236ae -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Oct 16 12:26:57 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 07:26:57 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues In-Reply-To: <67DF44A6-75AC-42D3-A3C9-23734C11D5DC@gmail.com> References: <67DF44A6-75AC-42D3-A3C9-23734C11D5DC@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003401d3467a$0f64b910$2e2e2b30$@comcast.net> Carl, There are two types of Intersectionality . Type one is class based intersectionality where class is the nucleus or center where all identities intersect. This type is useful and accurate. Type two is what you are referring to which the liberals use all of the time in which class is not mentioned at all or if it is, it is considered just another identity, resulting in merely a smorgasbord of identity politics. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2017 6:31 PM To: stuartnlevy Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues Stuart— You ask, What’s wrong with Phyllis Bennis' article "Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down [sic] for Racial and Economic Justice” ? Short answer: it’s an exercise in ‘intersectionality’ (“that opiate of the professional managerial class,” as W. B. Michaels put it). Bennis attempts to incorporate identity politics into the antiwar movement, without admitting that identity politics was constructed to deny and replace class politics, the true basis of US wars and therefore of opposition to them. The US is not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for the profits of the one percent. Class is objective (i.e., you belong to it, whether you know it or not), but ‘identity’ is subjective. Identity politics attempts to turn class into ‘classism,’ another attitude about identity, parallel to racism, sexism, etc. It’s a snare and a delusion. Intersectionality leads to Bennis' curiously anemic conclusion on how to revitalize the anti-war movement: "We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance.” One would think we should be more accurate about the causes of the killing - not the costs (which are fairly obvious) "and the integral links between war and racism” (which is a cover story, not a cause). Regards, CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 12:51:28 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 07:51:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues In-Reply-To: <003401d3467a$0f64b910$2e2e2b30$@comcast.net> References: <67DF44A6-75AC-42D3-A3C9-23734C11D5DC@gmail.com> <003401d3467a$0f64b910$2e2e2b30$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Bennis’ would seem to be the latter. What’s an example of the former? —CGE > On Oct 16, 2017, at 7:26 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Carl, > > There are two types of Intersectionality . Type one is class based intersectionality where class is the nucleus or center where all identities intersect. This type is useful and accurate. > > Type two is what you are referring to which the liberals use all of the time in which class is not mentioned at all or if it is, it is considered just another identity, resulting in merely a smorgasbord of identity politics. > > David J. > > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net ] On Behalf Of C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2017 6:31 PM > To: stuartnlevy > Cc: Peace-discuss List > Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues > > Stuart— > > You ask, What’s wrong with Phyllis Bennis' article "Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down [sic] for Racial and Economic Justice” >? > > Short answer: it’s an exercise in ‘intersectionality’ (“that opiate of the professional managerial class,” as W. B. Michaels put it). > > Bennis attempts to incorporate identity politics into the antiwar movement, without admitting that identity politics was constructed to deny and replace class politics, the true basis of US wars and therefore of opposition to them. > > The US is not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for the profits of the one percent. > > Class is objective (i.e., you belong to it, whether you know it or not), but ‘identity’ is subjective. > > Identity politics attempts to turn class into ‘classism,’ another attitude about identity, parallel to racism, sexism, etc. > > It’s a snare and a delusion. Intersectionality leads to Bennis' curiously anemic conclusion on how to revitalize the anti-war movement: > > "We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance.” > > One would think we should be more accurate about the causes of the killing - not the costs (which are fairly obvious) "and the integral links between war and racism” (which is a cover story, not a cause). > > Regards, CGE > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 13:04:08 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:04:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Police connivance in Charlottesville In-Reply-To: References: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Does the Intercept article imply the police encouraged the disorders at the Charlottesville rally? Or at least purposely looked the other way? https://theintercept.com/2017/10/12/before-charlottesville-was-in-the-spotlight-police-arrested-their-most-prominent-critic-in-the-middle-of-the-night/ Regards, CGE From davidcnswanson at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 13:06:38 2017 From: davidcnswanson at gmail.com (David Swanson) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 09:06:38 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Police connivance in Charlottesville In-Reply-To: References: <858740200.679660.1507829365047@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: This is not a secret The governor said the next day that they had to stand down because the fascists were armed Please sign these https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/tell-charlottesville-to-ban-weapons https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/put-a-peace-pole-in-charlottesville THANKS On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 9:04 AM, C G Estabrook wrote: > Does the Intercept article imply the police encouraged the disorders at > the Charlottesville rally? Or at least purposely looked the other way? > > https://theintercept.com/2017/10/12/before-charlottesville- > was-in-the-spotlight-police-arrested-their-most-prominent- > critic-in-the-middle-of-the-night/ > > Regards, CGE -- *David Swanson *is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include *War Is A Lie *. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org . He hosts Talk Nation Radio . He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Longer bio and photos and videos here . Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook , and sign up for: Activist alerts . Articles . David Swanson news . World Beyond War news . Charlottesville news . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 16 13:21:01 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:21:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues In-Reply-To: References: <67DF44A6-75AC-42D3-A3C9-23734C11D5DC@gmail.com> <003401d3467a$0f64b910$2e2e2b30$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <585883CC-3744-48E9-BCFA-819EEFA05286@illinois.edu> Identity politics arose forty years ago, when American liberals - under assault frorm neoliberalism - began cravenly to assert that discrimination, not exploitation, was the problem. As various discriminations were descried, ‘intersectionality’ - connections among them, leading to combined opposition to them - was spuriously suggested as a strategy. —CGE > On Oct 16, 2017, at 7:51 AM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Bennis’ would seem to be the latter. > > What’s an example of the former? > > —CGE > > >> On Oct 16, 2017, at 7:26 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Carl, >> >> There are two types of Intersectionality . Type one is class based intersectionality where class is the nucleus or center where all identities intersect. This type is useful and accurate. >> >> Type two is what you are referring to which the liberals use all of the time in which class is not mentioned at all or if it is, it is considered just another identity, resulting in merely a smorgasbord of identity politics. >> >> David J. >> >> From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net ] On Behalf Of C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss >> Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2017 6:31 PM >> To: stuartnlevy >> Cc: Peace-discuss List >> Subject: [Peace-discuss] A call to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues >> >> Stuart— >> >> You ask, What’s wrong with Phyllis Bennis' article "Time for the Anti-War Movement to Throw Down [sic] for Racial and Economic Justice” >? >> >> Short answer: it’s an exercise in ‘intersectionality’ (“that opiate of the professional managerial class,” as W. B. Michaels put it). >> >> Bennis attempts to incorporate identity politics into the antiwar movement, without admitting that identity politics was constructed to deny and replace class politics, the true basis of US wars and therefore of opposition to them. >> >> The US is not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for the profits of the one percent. >> >> Class is objective (i.e., you belong to it, whether you know it or not), but ‘identity’ is subjective. >> >> Identity politics attempts to turn class into ‘classism,’ another attitude about identity, parallel to racism, sexism, etc. >> >> It’s a snare and a delusion. Intersectionality leads to Bennis' curiously anemic conclusion on how to revitalize the anti-war movement: >> >> "We in the anti-war movement must do better in getting accessible information and analysis—on the human, environmental and economic costs of war and militarism, and the integral links between war and racism—into the hands of today’s resistance.” >> >> One would think we should be more accurate about the causes of the killing - not the costs (which are fairly obvious) "and the integral links between war and racism” (which is a cover story, not a cause). >> >> Regards, CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Tue Oct 17 03:40:10 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 03:40:10 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Support free speech at UI In-Reply-To: <1FCB0AA1-9503-4104-B6BA-F9B2CA643A2B@gmail.com> References: <1FCB0AA1-9503-4104-B6BA-F9B2CA643A2B@gmail.com> Message-ID: <99E3EAE2-55C7-4A5B-984B-AF553AA86DE6@illinois.edu> Did you admire the attack by Dey on the free speech rights of Steven Salaita? Dey persecuted that man in the columns of the N-G. Total hypocrisy? Also, curious word you employ—asseveration = Solemn affirmation? mkb On Oct 15, 2017, at 2:25 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: I’ve admired Jim Dey’s investigative reporting - particularly on legal matters - for some time, but I often disagree with his political opinions. I think he’s quite right, though, in his column in today’s News-Gazette - especially his asseveration “that so-called ‘hate speech’ is constitutionally protected.” Noam Chomsky (with whom Mr. Dey would perhaps not often agree) pointed out long ago, “If you don’t believe in free speech for people you despise, you don’t believe in it at all.” I think that’s correct, and I appreciate Dey’s speaking up for it. His greatest sin in that piece is the solecism, “...these kind of events...” Surely he means “...this kind of event...” —CGE ========================== [http://www.news-gazette.com/sites/all/themes/custom/ng_fbg/images/news-gazette-full.png] Sunday, October 15, 2017 Jim Dey: Free speech: It's not a hard concept A camel is a horse designed by a committee. Bear that old aphorism in mind when members of a proposed campus task force charged with developing policies on maintaining free speech and a welcoming campus environment for all finally get around to turning in their report. The way things are going in connection with this issue on campus it should be considered a plus if the free-speech horse the committee configures only resembles a camel, not something even more unrecognizable. But even that hope is a stretch given the hand-wringing nervousness displayed by campus higher-ups on an issue that is just not that complicated. The reality surrounding free speech can be, and sometimes is, contentious. But the issue itself is relatively simple. Let everyone speak. Let people decide on their own whether to listen or not to listen. Provide security, if necessary, to ensure the rules of decorum are followed. Impose disciplinary measures against those who would try to silence a speaker or take over a meeting where a lecture is being presented. That seems to be pretty much what happened at a recent event, where audience members inside the Illini Union listened to a guest speaker while protesters outside denounced the speaker as, according to one sign, "a fascist alt-right sympathizer who looks like a mashed potato." Some on campus seemed to be scandalized this particular speaker was a conservative who spoke enthusiastically about free-market capitalism as the best method of building wealth and reducing poverty. Most people would find that type of event wholly ordinary on campus. At the same time, most people would be similarly undisturbed if a liberal gave a talk on why single-payer is the best approach on health care, a socialist asserted government should take over private enterprise or a libertarian advocated the legalization of illegal drugs. These speakers advocate points of view, and people make of them what they will. No nannies are needed to ensure that dissenters' feelings not be hurt by being exposed to an opinion they do not share. But that common-sense viewpoint seems alien to members of the campus community, which explains why University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen has decided to appoint a task force made up of faculty, administrators and students to develop permanent policies addressing speech issues. (By the way, will there be any requirement that members of this group actually understand what the free speech clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution actually means? There should be because it appears that only a few people outside the law school faculty actually understand that so-called "hate speech" is constitutionally protected.) Killeen has been wasting his and a lot of people's time for weeks now on this issue. Maybe there's a method to his madness. But this task force likely appears to represent another exercise in somehow trying to appease faculty members, like Bruce Rosenstock, as well as campus groups that resent the possibility that the UI might host a speaker of whom they do not approve. UI officials characterize these kind of events as "challenging conversations" and say they want to avoid "divisive things." Given what's transpired on other campuses, that concern is easy to understand. But the division on campus is being sown by those who seek to limit speech on topics, even innocuous ones, they do not wish to be addressed. Here are some examples: — On Oct. 6, a group of thuggish students took over a platform at the University of Oregon and refused to allow President Michael Schill deliver his annual "State of the University" speech. — On Oct. 9, a member of the Texas Legislature was shouted down before he could deliver a talk about the Texas Southern University Law School. — On Oct. 11, a speech by noted author Charles Murray at the University of Michigan was severely disrupted. News reports indicate "Murray was able to speak only for brief periods in between disruptions lasting 40 minutes." Here's the answer to the problem those events created — universities shouldn't put up with that kind of behavior. That kind of mindless authoritarianism is not only an affront to good manners but an assault on civil society. There always will be those who wish to distinguish, based on their personal opinion, between good speech that should be heard and bad speech they believe should not be heard. The question, of course, is who decides. The answer is to let the speakers compete in the marketplace of ideas, letting audience members decide for themselves whether their remarks make sense or not. In a cliche-ridden resolution he considered offering to the UI Faculty Senate, Professor Rosenstock called for "ways to balance freedom of speech and academic freedom" with "the goal of creating a welcoming climate and safe environment for all university members who want their voices to be heard and respected in our common struggle against the alarming growth of open displays of intolerance and bigotry on college campuses today." Rosenstock — and others like him — don't mean his speech rights should be balanced against anything because he considers himself on the side of the angels. But it's a different story altogether for those who, in his view, are not similarly situated. If the UI wants to adopt a policy on speech issues that sets the proper standard, it can look to the positions taken at Purdue, the University of Chicago or other institutions who have indicated that their campuses will remain forums for the free exchange of ideas. If that's not good enough,let President Killeen say that theFirst Amendment sets the proper standing. By bobbing and weaving and hemming and hawing, President Killeen, Chancellor Robert Jones and acting Provost John Wilkins only demean themselves, their positions and this great university with their continuing profiles in vacillation and cowardice. Jim Dey, a member of The News-Gazette staff, can be reached by email at jdey at news-gazette.com or by phone at 217-351-5369. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 04:26:03 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 23:26:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Support free speech at UI In-Reply-To: <99E3EAE2-55C7-4A5B-984B-AF553AA86DE6@illinois.edu> References: <1FCB0AA1-9503-4104-B6BA-F9B2CA643A2B@gmail.com> <99E3EAE2-55C7-4A5B-984B-AF553AA86DE6@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <038BEE14-C20F-469F-9AC0-15BA3152170E@gmail.com> An example of LIDS - Liberal Israel Derangement Syndrome. Jim seems able to live with that massive contradiction. Of course he’s right about free speech and quite wrong about Salaita. A couple of people have written me about Salaita/free speech - I’ve urged them to write the N-G about academic freedom. From the OED: asseveration, n. Etymology: < Latin assevērātiōn-em, noun of action < assevērāre : see assever v. and -ation suffix . Compare Italian asseueratione (Florio 1611). 1. The action of asseverating; solemn affirmation, emphatic assertion, positive declaration, avouchment. 1566 Briefe Exam. Certaine Declar. sig. ******2v You so confidently bare the matter downe with your vndoubted asseueration. 1605 Bacon Of Aduancem. Learning i. sig. G3 Men ought..to propound things sincerely, with more or lesse asseueration: as they stand in a man's owne iudgement, prooued more or lesse. 1782 W. Cowper Conversation in Poems 215 Asseveration blust'ring in your face Makes contradiction such an hopeless case. 2. That which is asseverated; a solemn or emphatic declaration or assertion. 1551 T. Cranmer Answer S. Gardiner 75 Suche abomynable and beastly asseuerations as you neuer heard. 1658 T. Wall God's Revenge 25 The wise man's constant asseveration, by pride only cometh contention. 1753 T. Smollett Ferdinand Count Fathom II. li. 135 Incensed at this asseveration, which he was not prepared to refute. 1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. IV. 520 In spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his servants. (Maybe I should have said ‘avouchment.’) —CGE > On Oct 16, 2017, at 10:40 PM, Brussel, Morton K wrote: > > Did you admire the attack by Dey on the free speech rights of Steven Salaita? Dey persecuted that man in the columns of the N-G. Total hypocrisy? Also, curious word you employ—asseveration = Solemn affirmation? > > mkb > > > >> On Oct 15, 2017, at 2:25 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> I’ve admired Jim Dey’s investigative reporting - particularly on legal matters - for some time, but I often disagree with his political opinions. >> >> I think he’s quite right, though, in his column in today’s News-Gazette - especially his asseveration “that so-called ‘hate speech’ is constitutionally protected.” >> >> Noam Chomsky (with whom Mr. Dey would perhaps not often agree) pointed out long ago, “If you don’t believe in free speech for people you despise, you don’t believe in it at all.” >> >> I think that’s correct, and I appreciate Dey’s speaking up for it. >> >> His greatest sin in that piece is the solecism, “...these kind of events...” Surely he means “...this kind of event...” >> >> —CGE >> >> ========================== >> >> Sunday, October 15, 2017 >> >> >> Jim Dey: Free speech: It's not a hard concept >> >> A camel is a horse designed by a committee. >> >> Bear that old aphorism in mind when members of a proposed campus task force charged with developing policies on maintaining free speech and a welcoming campus environment for all finally get around to turning in their report. >> >> The way things are going in connection with this issue on campus it should be considered a plus if the free-speech horse the committee configures only resembles a camel, not something even more unrecognizable. But even that hope is a stretch given the hand-wringing nervousness displayed by campus higher-ups on an issue that is just not that complicated. >> >> The reality surrounding free speech can be, and sometimes is, contentious. But the issue itself is relatively simple. >> >> Let everyone speak. Let people decide on their own whether to listen or not to listen. Provide security, if necessary, to ensure the rules of decorum are followed. Impose disciplinary measures against those who would try to silence a speaker or take over a meeting where a lecture is being presented. >> >> That seems to be pretty much what happened at a recent event, where audience members inside the Illini Union listened to a guest speaker while protesters outside denounced the speaker as, according to one sign, "a fascist alt-right sympathizer who looks like a mashed potato." >> >> Some on campus seemed to be scandalized this particular speaker was a conservative who spoke enthusiastically about free-market capitalism as the best method of building wealth and reducing poverty. >> >> Most people would find that type of event wholly ordinary on campus. At the same time, most people would be similarly undisturbed if a liberal gave a talk on why single-payer is the best approach on health care, a socialist asserted government should take over private enterprise or a libertarian advocated the legalization of illegal drugs. >> >> These speakers advocate points of view, and people make of them what they will. No nannies are needed to ensure that dissenters' feelings not be hurt by being exposed to an opinion they do not share. >> >> But that common-sense viewpoint seems alien to members of the campus community, which explains why University of Illinois President Timothy Killeen has decided to appoint a task force made up of faculty, administrators and students to develop permanent policies addressing speech issues. >> >> (By the way, will there be any requirement that members of this group actually understand what the free speech clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution actually means? There should be because it appears that only a few people outside the law school faculty actually understand that so-called "hate speech" is constitutionally protected.) >> >> Killeen has been wasting his and a lot of people's time for weeks now on this issue. Maybe there's a method to his madness. >> >> But this task force likely appears to represent another exercise in somehow trying to appease faculty members, like Bruce Rosenstock, as well as campus groups that resent the possibility that the UI might host a speaker of whom they do not approve. >> >> UI officials characterize these kind of events as "challenging conversations" and say they want to avoid "divisive things." >> >> Given what's transpired on other campuses, that concern is easy to understand. But the division on campus is being sown by those who seek to limit speech on topics, even innocuous ones, they do not wish to be addressed. >> >> Here are some examples: >> >> — On Oct. 6, a group of thuggish students took over a platform at the University of Oregon and refused to allow President Michael Schill deliver his annual "State of the University" speech. >> >> — On Oct. 9, a member of the Texas Legislature was shouted down before he could deliver a talk about the Texas Southern University Law School. >> >> — On Oct. 11, a speech by noted author Charles Murray at the University of Michigan was severely disrupted. News reports indicate "Murray was able to speak only for brief periods in between disruptions lasting 40 minutes." >> >> Here's the answer to the problem those events created — universities shouldn't put up with that kind of behavior. That kind of mindless authoritarianism is not only an affront to good manners but an assault on civil society. >> >> There always will be those who wish to distinguish, based on their personal opinion, between good speech that should be heard and bad speech they believe should not be heard. The question, of course, is who decides. >> >> The answer is to let the speakers compete in the marketplace of ideas, letting audience members decide for themselves whether their remarks make sense or not. >> >> In a cliche-ridden resolution he considered offering to the UI Faculty Senate, Professor Rosenstock called for "ways to balance freedom of speech and academic freedom" with "the goal of creating a welcoming climate and safe environment for all university members who want their voices to be heard and respected in our common struggle against the alarming growth of open displays of intolerance and bigotry on college campuses today." >> >> Rosenstock — and others like him — don't mean his speech rights should be balanced against anything because he considers himself on the side of the angels. But it's a different story altogether for those who, in his view, are not similarly situated. >> >> If the UI wants to adopt a policy on speech issues that sets the proper standard, it can look to the positions taken at Purdue, the University of Chicago or other institutions who have indicated that their campuses will remain forums for the free exchange of ideas. >> >> If that's not good enough,let President Killeen say that theFirst Amendment sets the proper standing. >> >> By bobbing and weaving and hemming and hawing, President Killeen, Chancellor Robert Jones and acting Provost John Wilkins only demean themselves, their positions and this great university with their continuing profiles in vacillation and cowardice. >> >> Jim Dey, a member of The News-Gazette staff, can be reached by email at jdey at news-gazette.com or by phone at 217-351-5369. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 17 10:55:51 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 10:55:51 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS Message-ID: * Mobile * RSS Feeds * Podcast * Newsletter * Select a language Afrikaans >العربية Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικά English Español فارسی Français Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Srpskohrvatski Sinhalese தமிழ் Türkçe اُردُو‎ 中文 [http://www.wsws.org/img/title.png] [http://www.wsws.org/img/logo.png] Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Click here for advanced search » * Home * Perspectives * World News * World Economy * Arts Review * History * Science * Philosophy * Workers Struggles * ICFI/Marxist Library * Chronology * Full Archive * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges By David North 6 October 2017 On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Timescorrespondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt. [http://www.wsws.org/asset/4f8cc374-8241-425c-8633-fcbfc8e99a7D/image.png?rendition=image480]Chris Hedges In an article published in TruthdigSeptember 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’” Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.” North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media. David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation? Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia. I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events. But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party. This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive. The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times. When was that, exactly? CH: From 1990 to 2005. DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class. CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site. DN: Well, I hope more than balance it. CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail. The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times, along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich. Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times, like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion. I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard. DN: Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this? CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque. I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can’t go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie. The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them. CH: It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria. DN: It goes the other way too? CH: Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you. DN: The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.” CH: Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics. The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left. The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. DN: What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America? CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out. My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation. It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics. DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down. CH: Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down. DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework. CH: I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t. You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time. DN: Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class. CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color. Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face. DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage. CH: That’s why I read it and like it. DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy? CH: Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are. DN: I don’t agree with you on that. CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism. If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence. DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force. CH: That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 17 11:56:33 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 11:56:33 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Col. Wilkerson on Iran plus Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20242:On-Iran%2C-Trump-Follows-Iraq-War-Neocons -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 17 16:31:47 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 16:31:47 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: AOTA with Morton Brussel References: <1508257749744.26929@urbanaillinois.us> Message-ID: > > > https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FFPEhUIVTRt8&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C100ffa272c224ea59a2808d5157c3302%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636438545544128571&sdata=Yd6zfxB%2FLl8%2FZzl2P7FrYmlD7tYvPR1n5CWVQCqd7VQ%3D&reserved=0 > > The teach-in will show on UPTV, but I'm not sure when yet. I will most likely have to break it into at least 2 parts as we don't have any timeslots open that are 4 hours. I'll keep you posted as to when it will air. > > Jason > ________________________________________ > From: Karen Aram > Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 5:07 AM > To: Liggett, Jason > Subject: Programs > > Jason > > Thank you so much for the excellent VDO of the Teach In, it was very long requiring a lot of work editing on your part. > > Has it or will it be shown on UPTV6? > > There is one AWARE program which has not been uploaded. #424 > It was done with Carl and Prof. Morton Brussel, one of the panelists who wasn’t included in the Teach In, due to time constraints. It would have been done on the 3rd of October. > > From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 18:45:00 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:45:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] CODE PINK action: NO to Cotton-Corker bill which would kill the Iran nuclear deal In-Reply-To: <59e62c48c508e_c10f12f997c63615@asgworker-qmb2-20.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> References: <59e62c48c508e_c10f12f997c63615@asgworker-qmb2-20.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: In short:    Tell our senators to oppose the Cotton-Corker bill, and respect our international obligations.  Protect the nuclear deal with Iran:       http://www.codepink.org/cotton_corker_bill?utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=iran_33&n=2   See Medea Benjamin's article - ten reasons the US should stick with the Iran Nuclear Deal:      https://www.truthdig.com/articles/10-reasons-u-s-stick-iran-nuclear-deal/ More below. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: This bill could take us into war with Iran Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 16:14:00 +0000 (UTC) From: CODEPINK To: CODEPINK - Communications CODEPINK Iran_deal.jpg Dear Stuart, On Friday, Donald Trump struck a major blow to diplomacy by refusing to say the truth: that Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal. Now the administration wants Congress, in the next 60 days, to pass legislation that would kill the agreement. We can’t let that happen! Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Bob Corker have introduced dangerous legislation that would amend the “sunset clause” and add “triggers” to automatically impose new sanctions within a year of Iran gaining nuclear capabilities. It is an attempt to re-negotiate an international agreement, and it would put us on a dangerous path towards war. Tell your Senators to oppose the Cotton-Corker bill. Ask them to respect our international obligations by taking leadership to protect the Iran deal. Iran’s compliance with the deal has been certified in eight reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the past two years. The other six countries involved in the deal want it to be maintained. Trump’s refusal to certify the agreement has already isolated us from our allies. Destroying the deal, as Cotton-Corker bill would do, would free up Iran to rapidly reconstitute its nuclear program. It would also send a dangerous signal to North Korea not to engage in talks. Read Medea’s article in TruthDig, 10 Reasons the U.S. Should Stick with the Iran Nuclear Deal . Senators must not support the Cotton-Corker bill. Tell them to vote NO and to take leadership in protecting the Iran deal. Don't forget to share this message on Facebook and Twitter . Last week, ahead of Trump’s decertification announcement, we took a caravan to the embassies of the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran. We brought candy and flowers to thank them all for upholding the deal. Let’s hope we can soon thank Congress for upholding the deal as well. Hoping for peace! Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Haley, Jodie, Katie, Mariana, Mark, Mary, Medea, Nancy, Paki, Taylor and Tighe *P.S. * * Join us in *Washington D.C.* this weekend for our Divest from the War Machine Summit . * Time is running out to sign up for the November 23-December 1 human rights/election observer delegation to *Honduras*. This low-cost, high-impact delegation is a chance of a lifetime. To get more info and sign up, email lavozdelegations at gmail.com . Donate Now CODEPINK     Unsubscribe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Tue Oct 17 19:34:07 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 19:34:07 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AOTA with Morton Brussel In-Reply-To: References: <1508257749744.26929@urbanaillinois.us> Message-ID: <2C119B62-7084-41FE-9E2D-6694FCC484A2@illinois.edu> Should I feel a little put out by first, having been omitted from the teach-in presentations, and second, by having been invited to AOTA to present my talk, it was then not forwarded/uploaded to Utube ( as is customarily done)? I’m annoyed, to say the least. —mkb > On Oct 17, 2017, at 11:31 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > >> >> >> https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FFPEhUIVTRt8&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C100ffa272c224ea59a2808d5157c3302%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636438545544128571&sdata=Yd6zfxB%2FLl8%2FZzl2P7FrYmlD7tYvPR1n5CWVQCqd7VQ%3D&reserved=0 >> >> The teach-in will show on UPTV, but I'm not sure when yet. I will most likely have to break it into at least 2 parts as we don't have any timeslots open that are 4 hours. I'll keep you posted as to when it will air. >> >> Jason >> ________________________________________ >> From: Karen Aram >> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 5:07 AM >> To: Liggett, Jason >> Subject: Programs >> >> Jason >> >> Thank you so much for the excellent VDO of the Teach In, it was very long requiring a lot of work editing on your part. >> >> Has it or will it be shown on UPTV6? >> >> There is one AWARE program which has not been uploaded. #424 >> It was done with Carl and Prof. Morton Brussel, one of the panelists who wasn’t included in the Teach In, due to time constraints. It would have been done on the 3rd of October. >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 17 20:03:48 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 20:03:48 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AOTA with Morton Brussel In-Reply-To: <2C119B62-7084-41FE-9E2D-6694FCC484A2@illinois.edu> References: <1508257749744.26929@urbanaillinois.us> <2C119B62-7084-41FE-9E2D-6694FCC484A2@illinois.edu> Message-ID: I appreciate your annoyance, but if you’re asking me why AOTA didn’t upload the week you were on, I suggest you take it up with Carl or someone at AOTA, because I have no idea. It’s a good presentation and you didn’t offend anyone, other than the USG perhaps, but I doubt they were listening. > On Oct 17, 2017, at 12:34, Brussel, Morton K wrote: > > Should I feel a little put out by first, having been omitted from the teach-in presentations, and second, by having been invited to AOTA to present my talk, it was then not forwarded/uploaded to Utube ( as is customarily done)? > > I’m annoyed, to say the least. > > —mkb > >> On Oct 17, 2017, at 11:31 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> >>> >>> https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FFPEhUIVTRt8&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C100ffa272c224ea59a2808d5157c3302%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636438545544128571&sdata=Yd6zfxB%2FLl8%2FZzl2P7FrYmlD7tYvPR1n5CWVQCqd7VQ%3D&reserved=0 >>> >>> The teach-in will show on UPTV, but I'm not sure when yet. I will most likely have to break it into at least 2 parts as we don't have any timeslots open that are 4 hours. I'll keep you posted as to when it will air. >>> >>> Jason >>> ________________________________________ >>> From: Karen Aram >>> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 5:07 AM >>> To: Liggett, Jason >>> Subject: Programs >>> >>> Jason >>> >>> Thank you so much for the excellent VDO of the Teach In, it was very long requiring a lot of work editing on your part. >>> >>> Has it or will it be shown on UPTV6? >>> >>> There is one AWARE program which has not been uploaded. #424 >>> It was done with Carl and Prof. Morton Brussel, one of the panelists who wasn’t included in the Teach In, due to time constraints. It would have been done on the 3rd of October. >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C2699a0ca47df48b3b83108d515960aa4%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636438656520826403&sdata=jBmugP1gwpVhB9j4O7aA7NZXNIvM%2BBy%2FWVORlNS7eIc%3D&reserved=0 > From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 20:20:36 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:20:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AOTA with Morton Brussel In-Reply-To: <2C119B62-7084-41FE-9E2D-6694FCC484A2@illinois.edu> References: <1508257749744.26929@urbanaillinois.us> <2C119B62-7084-41FE-9E2D-6694FCC484A2@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <1c111056-3192-3079-b375-693dbc6883d2@gmail.com> As for the youtube question, the extremely helpful and conscientious UPTV staff - Jason and his production assistant - may be overstretched.  Jake, their other staff person, is out of commission for some while following a traffic accident.    So they are short-handed, and my guess is that they just forgot to post the show that included your talk as they usually would have done. Karen, glad to know that it is posted now.   We've been rebroadcasting AOTA audio on WRFU-FM 90.1 on Sundays at 1pm, so I'll aim to include the show with Mort's presentation for this coming Sunday's broadcast. Here's a cleaner version of that AOTA youtube link:       https://youtu.be/FPEhUIVTRt8 On 10/17/2017 02:34 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: > Should I feel a little put out by first, having been omitted from the teach-in presentations, and second, by having been invited to AOTA to present my talk, it was then not forwarded/uploaded to Utube ( as is customarily done)? > > I’m annoyed, to say the least. > > —mkb > >> On Oct 17, 2017, at 11:31 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> >>> https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FFPEhUIVTRt8&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C100ffa272c224ea59a2808d5157c3302%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636438545544128571&sdata=Yd6zfxB%2FLl8%2FZzl2P7FrYmlD7tYvPR1n5CWVQCqd7VQ%3D&reserved=0 >>> >>> The teach-in will show on UPTV, but I'm not sure when yet. I will most likely have to break it into at least 2 parts as we don't have any timeslots open that are 4 hours. I'll keep you posted as to when it will air. >>> >>> Jason >>> ________________________________________ >>> From: Karen Aram >>> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2017 5:07 AM >>> To: Liggett, Jason >>> Subject: Programs >>> >>> Jason >>> >>> Thank you so much for the excellent VDO of the Teach In, it was very long requiring a lot of work editing on your part. >>> >>> Has it or will it be shown on UPTV6? >>> >>> There is one AWARE program which has not been uploaded. #424 >>> It was done with Carl and Prof. Morton Brussel, one of the panelists who wasn’t included in the Teach In, due to time constraints. It would have been done on the 3rd of October. >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 22:09:20 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 17:09:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE ON THE AIR - Episode 424 Message-ID: October 3, 2017: > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 22:33:26 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 17:33:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE Message-ID: <470830B2-4F42-41E3-A198-696A5A88CE2A@gmail.com> AWARE has two email lists and . When they were founded, they were described as follows: “ is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list.” “ is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion.” The lists have different if overlapping lists of subscribers. Stuart Levy has taken it upon himself to censor my posts to on the grounds that the list is only for event announcements. That’s not what the description says, and in any case, AWARE as an organization has never authorized anyone to enforce the different descriptions of the two lists. It’s difficult to see how censorship of AWARE email lists contributes to the local anti-war movement. Stuart and I have disagreed about aspects of the antiwar movement in the past. Our most recent disagreement was about antifa - he’s for it; I’m against it. But it would seem far better to discuss these differences than to suppress comments to an AWARE email list. --CGE From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 03:34:26 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:34:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE Message-ID: Discussion remains open on peace-discuss.  Peace is not a list intended for discussions, including articles.  That understanding of the purposes of each list did not start with me.    If you are interested in establishing a new open antiwar e-mail list, you are welcome to create one, invite people to it, and run it however you wish.   An invitation to join such a list would be entirely appropriate for the Peace list.  -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss Date: 10/17/17 17:33 (GMT-06:00) To: Peace Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE AWARE has two email lists and . When they were founded, they were described as follows: “ is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list.” “ is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion.” The lists have different if overlapping lists of subscribers. Stuart Levy has taken it upon himself to censor my posts to on the grounds that the list is only for event announcements. That’s not what the description says, and in any case, AWARE as an organization has never authorized anyone to enforce the different descriptions of the two lists. It’s difficult to see how censorship of AWARE email lists contributes to the local anti-war movement. Stuart and I have disagreed about aspects of the antiwar movement in the past. Our most recent disagreement was about antifa - he’s for it; I’m against it. But it would seem far better to discuss these differences than to suppress comments to an AWARE email list. --CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 18 12:28:46 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:28:46 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Statement to the ILO in Geneva Message-ID: My recent statement to the ILO in Geneva, in respect to their concerns over the World Bank setting obstacles for social protections/pensions in Africa. Dear All It should be noted: The World Bank and IMF have been major contributors to the debt incurred by African nations. Most African nations are now utilizing Chinese loans for development, rather than US. “There is no longer any presence of activities in Africa by the US” According to Namibia’s President Hage Geingob. He was referring to business and development activities. See: Namibia’s President Hage Geingob’s interview with Chris Hedges “On Contact”. He was not referring however, to the US military bases, spread across the African nations during the Obama administration, nor the presence of US troops, as evidenced recently by the deaths of four US soldiers in Niger. Former colonial powers of Germany, and France also have a military presence as well. The only nations to have resisted US hegemony is Eritrea and Zambia. I highly applaud social protection successes throughout the world made by the ILO. As the US erodes that of which was once gained in our nation. We cannot separate economics from politics and the imperialist goals of the western powers, predominately the United States. See: Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc., etc. See: Vukoni Lupa Lasaga at the recent Anti-War Teach In at the University of Illinois, in relation to Africa. https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 18 12:34:11 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:34:11 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US soldier deaths in Niger Message-ID: According to CNN the White House has stated they will investigate the “deaths” of US soldiers in Niger. No mention by CNN of investigation related to why we have US soldiers in Niger. The American media, obfuscation of US imperialism and hegemony around the world is a blatant attempt to keep the American people ignorant of what we are doing. From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 18 12:51:13 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:51:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Yeah In VDO Message-ID: I hope the Teach In VDO wasn’t censored from the Peace List, as I promised people, those who aren’t on the Peace Discuss List that I would post it there. From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 13:52:02 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 08:52:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US soldier deaths in Niger In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6C4519B1-AC14-4419-B5FA-371E8BE5EF1A@gmail.com> An important point. I hope you’re well & can discuss it on AWARE ON THE AIR on Tuesday. Also, your response to McCoy on Mackinder (from the last AOTA) would be welcome on Tuesday. > On Oct 18, 2017, at 7:34 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > According to CNN the White House has stated they will investigate the “deaths” of US soldiers in Niger. > > No mention by CNN of investigation related to why we have US soldiers in Niger. > > The American media, obfuscation of US imperialism and hegemony around the world is a blatant attempt to keep the American people ignorant of what we are doing. > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 13:59:38 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 08:59:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "That understanding of the purposes of each list” is different from their original description. (See below.) In any case, it’s difficult to see how restricting information and discussion helps the antiwar movement. —CGE > On Oct 17, 2017, at 10:34 PM, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Discussion remains open on peace-discuss. Peace is not a list intended for discussions, including articles. That understanding of the purposes of each list did not start with me. > > If you are interested in establishing a new open antiwar e-mail list, you are welcome to create one, invite people to it, and run it however you wish. An invitation to join such a list would be entirely appropriate for the Peace list. > > -- Stuart > > -------- Original message -------- > From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > Date: 10/17/17 17:33 (GMT-06:00) > To: Peace > Cc: Peace-discuss List > Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE > > AWARE has two email lists and . When they were founded, they were described as follows: > > “ is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action > relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also > posted to this list.” > > “ is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion.” > > The lists have different if overlapping lists of subscribers. > > Stuart Levy has taken it upon himself to censor my posts to on the grounds that the list is only for event announcements. That’s not what the description says, and in any case, AWARE as an organization has never authorized anyone to enforce the different descriptions of the two lists. > > It’s difficult to see how censorship of AWARE email lists contributes to the local anti-war movement. > > Stuart and I have disagreed about aspects of the antiwar movement in the past. Our most recent disagreement was about antifa - he’s for it; I’m against it. But it would seem far better to discuss these differences than to suppress comments to an AWARE email list. > > --CGE > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 17:49:17 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:49:17 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Use of Peace vs Peace-Discuss e-mail lists In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3f5540b9-38a6-2e05-234d-42bb1c12d6e0@gmail.com> Carl, Here is the announcement that went to each person who joined the peace-discuss list as of 2006.   It hasn't changed since then: Welcome to the Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net mailing list! This is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion of anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. There is a separate mailing list (peace) for announcements, calls to action and AWARE meeting minutes. PLEASE DO NOT CROSSPOST messages to both lists. {followed by details of how to write to the list, find the list archives, remove yourself, reach the list moderators etc.} And here is the announcement that goes to people joining Peace: 'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list. Posts from non-list-members are moderated to cut down on SPAM. There is a separate 'peace-discuss' mailing list for general discussion. I think this is pretty much what I've been saying it was.   And you know this perfectly well - it has come up a number of times over the years. The above are also the policies that I've been describing when we invite people, typically at the Farmer's Market, to join the lists.    Peace is intended to be low-traffic, aimed at announcements.   Peace-discuss is an often-interesting place for discussions, articles, and arguments, sometimes including flame wars.   Sometimes interested people will sign up for Peace only, others for both lists. As to the question of whether policies like these are a good idea: > In any case, it’s difficult to see how restricting information and discussion helps the antiwar movement. I think there is a pretty plain reason for maintaining this sort of separation.   People come to us (or to a newspaper, or to a facebook group, or to a church) with some expectation about how their time will be used.   When they signed up, we gave them some indication of that. When people become members of Sierra Club, for example, they're invited to supply their e-mail addresses.   In return, Sierra Club promises that their local group won't just send them a bundle of messages every day.   They're promised that they'll get at most two messages per month, unless they explicitly sign up for mailing lists which receive more traffic than that (which many do, but many more don't). If SC didn't make such a promise, they'd quickly lose the patience of most of their members.   Under those circumstances - given the choice of receiving either lots of messages from anyone who had something to say, or nothing - most people would insist that they receive *no* e-mail at all.   So SC would lose any way of reaching them even for the highest priority messages.  They don't want that. The collection of Usenet news groups, a sort of distributed anarchic communication system, worked all this out in the early 1980s for the same reason.   Whether formally moderated or not, each group has a policy document, adopted when it was created, that says what is within the scope of that group. I think that's the spirit in which the AWARE e-mail policies were originally set up. On 10/18/2017 08:59 AM, C G Estabrook wrote: > "That understanding of the purposes of each list” is different from their original description. (See below.) > > In any case, it’s difficult to see how restricting information and discussion helps the antiwar movement. > > —CGE > >> On Oct 17, 2017, at 10:34 PM, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> Discussion remains open on peace-discuss. Peace is not a list intended for discussions, including articles. That understanding of the purposes of each list did not start with me. >> >> If you are interested in establishing a new open antiwar e-mail list, you are welcome to create one, invite people to it, and run it however you wish. An invitation to join such a list would be entirely appropriate for the Peace list. >> >> -- Stuart >> >> -------- Original message -------- >> From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss >> Date: 10/17/17 17:33 (GMT-06:00) >> To: Peace >> Cc: Peace-discuss List >> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE >> >> AWARE has two email lists and . When they were founded, they were described as follows: >> >> “ is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action >> relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also >> posted to this list.” >> >> “ is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion.” >> >> The lists have different if overlapping lists of subscribers. >> >> Stuart Levy has taken it upon himself to censor my posts to on the grounds that the list is only for event announcements. That’s not what the description says, and in any case, AWARE as an organization has never authorized anyone to enforce the different descriptions of the two lists. >> >> It’s difficult to see how censorship of AWARE email lists contributes to the local anti-war movement. >> >> Stuart and I have disagreed about aspects of the antiwar movement in the past. Our most recent disagreement was about antifa - he’s for it; I’m against it. But it would seem far better to discuss these differences than to suppress comments to an AWARE email list. >> >> --CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 18:18:04 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 13:18:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Use of Peace vs Peace-Discuss e-mail lists In-Reply-To: <3f5540b9-38a6-2e05-234d-42bb1c12d6e0@gmail.com> References: <3f5540b9-38a6-2e05-234d-42bb1c12d6e0@gmail.com> Message-ID: Stuart— My postings to that you’ve been suppressing have been "calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues” - often links and/or full texts from elsewhere. You shouldn’t do that, even with posts that don’t fall within that description. But mine usually do. —CGE > On Oct 18, 2017, at 12:49 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Carl, > > Here is the announcement that went to each person who joined the peace-discuss list as of 2006. It hasn't changed since then: > > Welcome to the Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net mailing list! This is > an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion of anti-war, > anti-racism and other AWARE issues. There is a separate mailing list > (peace) for announcements, calls to action and AWARE meeting minutes. > PLEASE DO NOT CROSSPOST messages to both lists. > > {followed by details of how to write to the list, find the list archives, remove yourself, reach the list moderators etc.} > > And here is the announcement that goes to people joining Peace: > 'peace' is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list. Posts from non-list-members are moderated to cut down on SPAM. There is a separate 'peace-discuss' mailing list for general discussion. > > I think this is pretty much what I've been saying it was. And you know this perfectly well - it has come up a number of times over the years. > > The above are also the policies that I've been describing when we invite people, typically at the Farmer's Market, to join the lists. Peace is intended to be low-traffic, aimed at announcements. Peace-discuss is an often-interesting place for discussions, articles, and arguments, sometimes including flame wars. Sometimes interested people will sign up for Peace only, others for both lists. > > As to the question of whether policies like these are a good idea: > >> In any case, it’s difficult to see how restricting information and discussion helps the antiwar movement. > > I think there is a pretty plain reason for maintaining this sort of separation. People come to us (or to a newspaper, or to a facebook group, or to a church) with some expectation about how their time will be used. When they signed up, we gave them some indication of that. > > When people become members of Sierra Club, for example, they're invited to supply their e-mail addresses. In return, Sierra Club promises that their local group won't just send them a bundle of messages every day. They're promised that they'll get at most two messages per month, unless they explicitly sign up for mailing lists which receive more traffic than that (which many do, but many more don't). > > If SC didn't make such a promise, they'd quickly lose the patience of most of their members. Under those circumstances - given the choice of receiving either lots of messages from anyone who had something to say, or nothing - most people would insist that they receive *no* e-mail at all. So SC would lose any way of reaching them even for the highest priority messages. They don't want that. > > The collection of Usenet news groups, a sort of distributed anarchic communication system, worked all this out in the early 1980s for the same reason. Whether formally moderated or not, each group has a policy document, adopted when it was created, that says what is within the scope of that group. > > I think that's the spirit in which the AWARE e-mail policies were originally set up. > > > > On 10/18/2017 08:59 AM, C G Estabrook wrote: >> "That understanding of the purposes of each list” is different from their original description. (See below.) >> >> In any case, it’s difficult to see how restricting information and discussion helps the antiwar movement. >> >> —CGE >> >>> On Oct 17, 2017, at 10:34 PM, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> Discussion remains open on peace-discuss. Peace is not a list intended for discussions, including articles. That understanding of the purposes of each list did not start with me. >>> >>> If you are interested in establishing a new open antiwar e-mail list, you are welcome to create one, invite people to it, and run it however you wish. An invitation to join such a list would be entirely appropriate for the Peace list. >>> >>> -- Stuart >>> >>> -------- Original message -------- >>> From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss >>> Date: 10/17/17 17:33 (GMT-06:00) >>> To: Peace >>> Cc: Peace-discuss List >>> Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE >>> >>> AWARE has two email lists and . When they were founded, they were described as follows: >>> >>> “ is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action >>> relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also >>> posted to this list.” >>> >>> “ is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion.” >>> >>> The lists have different if overlapping lists of subscribers. >>> >>> Stuart Levy has taken it upon himself to censor my posts to on the grounds that the list is only for event announcements. That’s not what the description says, and in any case, AWARE as an organization has never authorized anyone to enforce the different descriptions of the two lists. >>> >>> It’s difficult to see how censorship of AWARE email lists contributes to the local anti-war movement. >>> >>> Stuart and I have disagreed about aspects of the antiwar movement in the past. Our most recent disagreement was about antifa - he’s for it; I’m against it. But it would seem far better to discuss these differences than to suppress comments to an AWARE email list. >>> >>> --CGE >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 18:59:08 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 13:59:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III Message-ID: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 20:17:18 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 15:17:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa Message-ID: Diana Johnstone's recent article, "Antifa in Theory and in Practice,” begins "'Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists' [Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts]. In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as 'fascists’…" 'Johnstone (born 1934) is an American political writer based in Paris, France. She has a BA in Russian Area Studies and a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Minnesota. She was active in the movement against the Vietnam War, organizing the first international contacts between American citizens and Vietnamese representatives. Johnstone was European editor of the U.S. weekly 'In These Times' from 1979 to 1990. She was press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. From 1992 to 2000, she was associated editor of the Paris quarterly Dialogue concerned with Balkan geopolitics. Johnstone also regularly contributes to the online magazine CounterPunch. 'After the 2003 publication of her "Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions," Johnstone became the centre of controversy over her claim in the book that there is "no evidence whatsoever" that the Srebrenica massacre of the Bosniaks was genocidal. The book was rejected by publishers in Sweden, prompting an open letter in 2003 defending Johnstone's book—and her right to publish—that was signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali and John Pilger. The signatories stated, "We regard Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade as an outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition” … Richard Caplan of Reading and Oxford University reviewed the work in International Affairs, where he described the work as "a revisionist and highly contentious account of western policy and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. [… It] is insightful but overzealous […] well worth reading—but for the discriminating eye.” 'In April 2012, she wrote about the first round of the French Presidential elections a few days earlier and identified Front National leader Marine Le Pen as "notably" "basically on the left" while also labelling Le Pen as "demagogic". She also rejected claims Le Pen is antisemitic: "There is absolutely nothing attesting to anti-Semitism on the part of Marine Le Pen. She has actually tried to woo the powerful Jewish organisations, and her anti-Islam stance is also a way to woo such groups”. 'Her other books include • The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe's Role in America's World (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1985) • Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions (London: Pluto Press; New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003) • Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (CounterPunch, 2015)' A member of AWARE has recently been in contact with Johnstone. You can read a typical attack on her at >. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action - but not of the antifa sort. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should regard Antifa as Johnstone suggests: the US is not killing people around the world for white supremacy, but for the profits of the 1%. We should be talking to people about what the US is doing, and why, in order to oppose it - not 'de-platforming' (or punching) people with bad ideas. —CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Thu Oct 19 01:40:21 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 01:40:21 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 03:07:15 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 22:07:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> References: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <3176D6B1-B10F-4D35-BA56-A02AFF832736@gmail.com> They’re just not the criteria on which the lists were established, and they cut down the reach of the lists. AWARE hasn’t authorized anyone to reduce its communications. > On Oct 18, 2017, at 8:40 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: > > In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. > > Mort > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >> >> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >> >> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >> >> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 03:30:01 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 22:30:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> References: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <3C31FFE9-0753-4265-BB14-629824C60E6B@gmail.com> McCoy is unfairly provocative? Perhaps. K. Aram suggests that his article have a trigger-warning, viz., "Spoiler alert: we lose.” The ‘call to action’ is to consider McCoy’s argument - is it right? - and think about how we can communicate it to the yet unknowing world. Obama-Clinton’s war provocations of China continue in the current administration. Pettifogging censorship at AWARE is not much of an issue. I’ve been thrown out of better bars than this one... —CGE > On Oct 18, 2017, at 8:40 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: > > In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. > > Mort > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >> >> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >> >> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >> >> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Thu Oct 19 04:28:16 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 04:28:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No doubt Hedges in unaware of Aware on the Air when he talks about the character of the “left” . The left has a DNA that prevents unity, prizes difference, that has always been disjointed and contradictory within its diverse parts. Hedges claims he is no Marxist or Trotskyist. WSWS doesn’t agree with Hedges, thinking it is not ineffectual. But this interview is nonetheless insightful, and devastating for those who read and respect the NYT, the WP, and listen to TV news. AT Clark-Lindsey Village, we have fine example of what Hedges describes, a population that seems to read and rely predominantly on the NYT and the WSJ, and yet probably votes overwhelmingly “Democratic”. (N.B., a guess.) Those newspapers are the only ones subscribed by our library. But they are complemented on tables sprinkled around our corridors by The National Review, The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, This Week, among others. So, what does one expect of this comfortable middle class population? Discussing identity politics, Hedges never gets to the influence of Zionist influence on the "newspapers of record", and how this sets the agenda for the hysterical anti Russian stories of both major parties. Thanks for the link, Karen. —mkb On Oct 17, 2017, at 5:55 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: * Mobile * RSS Feeds * Podcast * Newsletter * Select a language Afrikaans >العربية Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικά English Español فارسی Français Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Srpskohrvatski Sinhalese தமிழ் Türkçe اُردُو‎ 中文 [http://www.wsws.org/img/title.png] [http://www.wsws.org/img/logo.png] Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Click here for advanced search » * Home * Perspectives * World News * World Economy * Arts Review * History * Science * Philosophy * Workers Struggles * ICFI/Marxist Library * Chronology * Full Archive * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges By David North 6 October 2017 On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Timescorrespondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt. [http://www.wsws.org/asset/4f8cc374-8241-425c-8633-fcbfc8e99a7D/image.png?rendition=image480]Chris Hedges In an article published in TruthdigSeptember 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’” Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.” North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media. David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation? Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia. I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events. But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party. This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive. The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times. When was that, exactly? CH: From 1990 to 2005. DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class. CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site. DN: Well, I hope more than balance it. CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail. The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times, along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich. Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times, like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion. I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard. DN: Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this? CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque. I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can’t go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie. The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them. CH: It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria. DN: It goes the other way too? CH: Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you. DN: The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.” CH: Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics. The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left. The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. DN: What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America? CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out. My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation. It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics. DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down. CH: Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down. DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework. CH: I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t. You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time. DN: Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class. CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color. Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face. DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage. CH: That’s why I read it and like it. DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy? CH: Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are. DN: I don’t agree with you on that. CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism. If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence. DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force. CH: That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Thu Oct 19 04:30:39 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 04:30:39 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: <3C31FFE9-0753-4265-BB14-629824C60E6B@gmail.com> References: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> <3C31FFE9-0753-4265-BB14-629824C60E6B@gmail.com> Message-ID: Not McCoy, Carl, but you here. On Oct 18, 2017, at 10:30 PM, C G Estabrook > wrote: McCoy is unfairly provocative? Perhaps. K. Aram suggests that his article have a trigger-warning, viz., "Spoiler alert: we lose.” The ‘call to action’ is to consider McCoy’s argument - is it right? - and think about how we can communicate it to the yet unknowing world. Obama-Clinton’s war provocations of China continue in the current administration. Pettifogging censorship at AWARE is not much of an issue. I’ve been thrown out of better bars than this one... —CGE On Oct 18, 2017, at 8:40 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss > wrote: In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 04:40:53 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 23:40:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> <3C31FFE9-0753-4265-BB14-629824C60E6B@gmail.com> Message-ID: <2F89B613-2091-45BA-BC83-7A422A91F4E7@gmail.com> I suspected that’s what you meant… But as I said, pettifogging censorship at AWARE is not much of an issue; WW3 is. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it may not be able to forget what we do here. —CGE > On Oct 18, 2017, at 11:30 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Not McCoy, Carl, but you here. > > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 10:30 PM, C G Estabrook > wrote: >> >> McCoy is unfairly provocative? Perhaps. K. Aram suggests that his article have a trigger-warning, viz., "Spoiler alert: we lose.” >> >> The ‘call to action’ is to consider McCoy’s argument - is it right? - and think about how we can communicate it to the yet unknowing world. >> >> Obama-Clinton’s war provocations of China continue in the current administration. >> >> Pettifogging censorship at AWARE is not much of an issue. >> >> I’ve been thrown out of better bars than this one... >> >> —CGE >> >>> On Oct 18, 2017, at 8:40 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>> >>> In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. >>> >>> Mort >>> >>>> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>>> >>>> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >>>> >>>> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >>>> >>>> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >>>> >>>> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 04:47:37 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 23:47:37 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III Message-ID: Thank you, Mort. Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system.  Really, are either of them calls to action?    Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups.   Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument.  Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of.    I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list.  -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) To: C G Estabrook Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria.  Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration.    To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 04:47:37 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 23:47:37 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III Message-ID: Thank you, Mort. Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system.  Really, are either of them calls to action?    Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups.   Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument.  Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of.    I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list.  -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) To: C G Estabrook Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria.  Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration.    To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 19 12:15:33 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 12:15:33 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I find myself offended at the suggestion “Democrats” are the “left” given how far to the right the Party has moved, those supporting that Party, should not be referred to as “left.” Unfortunately, today most refer to the “left” as those simply not on the “right” or those not neocons. Hedges may not be a Marxist or a Trotskyist, but he is a Socialist. He has on many occasions stated the only solution to end war, inequality, and the abuse of power by the elites is to change the system of capitalism, with socialism being the only alternative. Given most people in this country seems to subscribe to those newspapers and magazines that you refer, which provides some truth with “non truth,” in relation to major issues, as you say: “So, what does one expect of this comfortable middle class population? “ results in a future generation that is “doomed”. Everything we see happening around us whether global warming causing devastation in places like Puerto Rico, or famine and deaths in Somalia, and preparation for war with the major nuclear powers, is the result of Americans assuming that elections and voting every four years for the “right person” or the right Party, is the answer.. Where are our mass movements for change and progress? Focused on single issues, with superficial solutions, when what is required is much deeper. On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:28, Brussel, Morton K > wrote: No doubt Hedges in unaware of Aware on the Air when he talks about the character of the “left” . The left has a DNA that prevents unity, prizes difference, that has always been disjointed and contradictory within its diverse parts. Hedges claims he is no Marxist or Trotskyist. WSWS doesn’t agree with Hedges, thinking it is not ineffectual. But this interview is nonetheless insightful, and devastating for those who read and respect the NYT, the WP, and listen to TV news. AT Clark-Lindsey Village, we have fine example of what Hedges describes, a population that seems to read and rely predominantly on the NYT and the WSJ, and yet probably votes overwhelmingly “Democratic”. (N.B., a guess.) Those newspapers are the only ones subscribed by our library. But they are complemented on tables sprinkled around our corridors by The National Review, The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, This Week, among others. So, what does one expect of this comfortable middle class population? Discussing identity politics, Hedges never gets to the influence of Zionist influence on the "newspapers of record", and how this sets the agenda for the hysterical anti Russian stories of both major parties. Thanks for the link, Karen. —mkb On Oct 17, 2017, at 5:55 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: * Mobile * RSS Feeds * Podcast * Newsletter * Select a language Afrikaans >العربية Čeština Deutsch Ελληνικά English Español فارسی Français Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Norsk Polski Português Română Русский Srpskohrvatski Sinhalese தமிழ் Türkçe اُردُو‎ 中文 [http://www.wsws.org/img/title.png] [http://www.wsws.org/img/logo.png] Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Click here for advanced search » * Home * Perspectives * World News * World Economy * Arts Review * History * Science * Philosophy * Workers Struggles * ICFI/Marxist Library * Chronology * Full Archive * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges By David North 6 October 2017 On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Timescorrespondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt. [http://www.wsws.org/asset/4f8cc374-8241-425c-8633-fcbfc8e99a7D/image.png?rendition=image480]Chris Hedges In an article published in TruthdigSeptember 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’” Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.” North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media. David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation? Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia. I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events. But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party. This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive. The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times. When was that, exactly? CH: From 1990 to 2005. DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class. CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site. DN: Well, I hope more than balance it. CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail. The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times, along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich. Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times, like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion. I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard. DN: Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this? CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque. I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can’t go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie. The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them. CH: It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria. DN: It goes the other way too? CH: Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you. DN: The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.” CH: Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics. The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left. The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. DN: What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America? CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out. My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation. It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics. DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down. CH: Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down. DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework. CH: I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t. You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time. DN: Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class. CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color. Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face. DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage. CH: That’s why I read it and like it. DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy? CH: Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are. DN: I don’t agree with you on that. CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism. If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence. DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force. CH: That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 19 13:13:14 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:13:14 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At the expense of continuing this discussion related to the two lists, I will ask again, did the “link” allowing recipients choice, to either view or delete, that of the Teach In” get through the Peace List, or was it censored off? Ditto links to AOTA which includes the presentation by Mort. On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:47, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss > wrote: Thank you, Mort. Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system. Really, are either of them calls to action? Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups. Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument. Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of. I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list. -- Stuart -------- Original message -------- From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" > Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) To: C G Estabrook > Cc: Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C34e5da49b39944c7cef208d516ac9972%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439852921023793&sdata=g56%2FLTjK6Obn%2Fa1mF5ZhfF0TkS49CTxEVb1hBDItvcM%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 19 13:13:14 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:13:14 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At the expense of continuing this discussion related to the two lists, I will ask again, did the “link” allowing recipients choice, to either view or delete, that of the Teach In” get through the Peace List, or was it censored off? Ditto links to AOTA which includes the presentation by Mort. On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:47, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss > wrote: Thank you, Mort. Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system. Really, are either of them calls to action? Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups. Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument. Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of. I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list. -- Stuart -------- Original message -------- From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" > Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) To: C G Estabrook > Cc: Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C34e5da49b39944c7cef208d516ac9972%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439852921023793&sdata=g56%2FLTjK6Obn%2Fa1mF5ZhfF0TkS49CTxEVb1hBDItvcM%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 13:18:19 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:18:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Stuart— If by ‘game the system’ you mean, use the AWARE email lists for information and discussion about US war-making, then, yes, I am. Your motive in suppressing my postings to these lists is less clear. Cui bono? Who profits from cutting down on communication on these matters? Is it better to have less discussion of matters such as as antifa or intersectionality and let orthodoxies on such matters stand? ‘Deplatforming’ is not an anti-war strategy. As Orwell wrote, in the (suppressed) preface to ‘Animal Farm,’ “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” —CGE > On Oct 18, 2017, at 11:47 PM, stuartnlevy wrote: > > Thank you, Mort. > > Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system. Really, are either of them calls to action? > > Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. > > Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups. Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument. Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. > > I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of. I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. > > But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list. > > -- Stuart > > -------- Original message -------- > From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" > Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) > To: C G Estabrook > Cc: Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III > > In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. > > Mort > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >> >> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >> >> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >> >> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 13:18:19 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:18:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Stuart— If by ‘game the system’ you mean, use the AWARE email lists for information and discussion about US war-making, then, yes, I am. Your motive in suppressing my postings to these lists is less clear. Cui bono? Who profits from cutting down on communication on these matters? Is it better to have less discussion of matters such as as antifa or intersectionality and let orthodoxies on such matters stand? ‘Deplatforming’ is not an anti-war strategy. As Orwell wrote, in the (suppressed) preface to ‘Animal Farm,’ “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” —CGE > On Oct 18, 2017, at 11:47 PM, stuartnlevy wrote: > > Thank you, Mort. > > Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system. Really, are either of them calls to action? > > Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. > > Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups. Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument. Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. > > I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of. I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. > > But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list. > > -- Stuart > > -------- Original message -------- > From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" > Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) > To: C G Estabrook > Cc: Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III > > In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. > > Mort > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >> >> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >> >> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >> >> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 13:44:55 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:44:55 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The 'white working class' (WWC) Message-ID: <766DA0AB-E63F-451A-AF5B-DA2A2C7D56CF@gmail.com> The same is true in regard to reconstructing the anti-war movement: 'This is what zero-sum bourgeois identitarian anti-racists like Ta-Nehesi Coates fail to understand. Shaming white Americans for their stupid whiteness and lecturing them on their need to pay reparations and drop their white skin privilege (good luck telling a former factory worker who is struggling with diabetes and three months behind on her trailer-park fees how “privileged” she is) won’t get us very far when it comes to re-enlisting the WWC in the struggle for a better world. The real point to make to white workers is that they are killing themselves by failing to join in common struggle (in the spirit of the old CIO packinghouse union slogan “Black and White, Unite and Fight”) with their fellow workers of color, without whom they can never hope to prevail. As Asad Haider recently noted in a brilliant critique of Coates, “for the white people who are not owners of capital, white privilege is a poisoned bait.” So are the intimately related problems of white racial ignorance and fear.’ Full article at >. —CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 14:30:47 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 09:30:47 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] War provocation v. Russia Message-ID: A particularly extremist declaration of Cold War against Russia from the US political establishment, co-authored by a former Obama Defense Department official, Evelyn Farkas: >. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 15:35:16 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 10:35:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] 9/23 Anti-War Teach In at the U of I: who spoke when during 4-hour program, plus Mort Brussel on AOTA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <94b2908e-5649-cd49-91b3-6848bc60625f@gmail.com> Here is a short link to the video of the 9/23/17 Anti-War Teach-in:      https://youtu.be/-OrPE6ZQgEI Who spoke when:    00:00:00 - 00:03:17 Nick Goodell and Karen Aram - Introduction    00:03:17 - 00:20:03 Francis Boyle - Illegalities of US Wars    00:20:15 - 00:36:22 Carl Estabrook - History of US War    00:39:03 - 00:56:41 Rich Whitney - US Government Support for Dictatorships    00:57:16 - student groups        Nick Goodell on Students for Economic Empowerment, and Undergraduate-Graduate Alliance    01:01:15 - 01:15:23  questions for above speakers    01:15:24 - 01:41:16  Paula Bradshaw -- Libya and Syria    01:41:22 - 02:12:54  David Green -- Israel and Palestine    02:12:54 - 03:03:06  Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga -- Africa    03:03:12 - 03:14:11  question on Palestine - David Green, Francis Boyle    03:14:13 - 03:23:12  Harry Mickalide - STEM Students Rage Against the War Machine    03:23:18 - 04:00:00  Fr. Thomas Royer - El Salvador    04:00:06 - 04:09:38  F. Boyle (in place of David Johnson who'd had to leave) - US' threats against Venezuela The teach-in ran well past its scheduled time, and Mort Brussel also wasn't able to stay to speak that day but did later on AWARE on the Air on 10/3/2017.   That recording is here:     https://youtu.be/FPEhUIVTRt8     00:05:26 - 00:24:34  Mort Brussel - Militarization of US society, and the US military budget       with discussion between Mort Brussel and Carl Estabrook throughout the hour (I hope at some point to separate out the pieces so that we'd also have a collection of posted videos with one speaker each, as David Green suggested, but hope this helps in the mean time.) On 10/18/2017 07:49 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: >> >> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 16:29:35 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:29:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III Message-ID: Karen, yes, of course your postings went through to the Peace list! Here is what I've been using as a policy.   Generally any member of Peace can post freely to the Peace list.  If someone sends a bunch of messages that clearly don't belong there, and especially if there is a complaint about that, then somebody (sometimes me) sends a reminder to the list about what's appropriate there.  Usually that is all that is needed. But it can happen that people will keep posting off-topic stuff to Peace, either accidentally or deliberately - trying to use the larger audience of Peace to reach more people, say.  Ya'aqov, who used to be on these lists, did a lot of that.   I think Carl is doing that now.  For people who don't more or less play along with the established rules of the list, I set the list software to moderate their posts, so that I look at them individually and pass through ones that seem to fit - yes, in my own judgment.   As a list moderator, that's what I do. Right now the only people on Peace whose messages are held for review are Carl and a handful of people whose e-mail accounts appeared to have been hacked, such that they'd sent spam to the list in the past.   For everyone else, postings go through immediately. That's about all I have to say on this.   -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: Karen Aram Date: 10/19/17 08:13 (GMT-06:00) To: stuartnlevy Cc: "Brussel, Morton K" , C G Estabrook , Peace Discuss , Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III At the expense of continuing this discussion related to the two lists, I will ask again, did the “link” allowing recipients choice, to either view or delete, that of the Teach In” get through the Peace List, or was it censored off? Ditto links to AOTA which includes the presentation by Mort.  On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:47, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: Thank you, Mort. Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system.  Really, are either of them calls to action?    Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups.   Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument.  Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of.    I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list.  -- Stuart -------- Original message -------- From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) To: C G Estabrook Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria.  Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration.    To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C34e5da49b39944c7cef208d516ac9972%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439852921023793&sdata=g56%2FLTjK6Obn%2Fa1mF5ZhfF0TkS49CTxEVb1hBDItvcM%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 16:29:35 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:29:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III Message-ID: Karen, yes, of course your postings went through to the Peace list! Here is what I've been using as a policy.   Generally any member of Peace can post freely to the Peace list.  If someone sends a bunch of messages that clearly don't belong there, and especially if there is a complaint about that, then somebody (sometimes me) sends a reminder to the list about what's appropriate there.  Usually that is all that is needed. But it can happen that people will keep posting off-topic stuff to Peace, either accidentally or deliberately - trying to use the larger audience of Peace to reach more people, say.  Ya'aqov, who used to be on these lists, did a lot of that.   I think Carl is doing that now.  For people who don't more or less play along with the established rules of the list, I set the list software to moderate their posts, so that I look at them individually and pass through ones that seem to fit - yes, in my own judgment.   As a list moderator, that's what I do. Right now the only people on Peace whose messages are held for review are Carl and a handful of people whose e-mail accounts appeared to have been hacked, such that they'd sent spam to the list in the past.   For everyone else, postings go through immediately. That's about all I have to say on this.   -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: Karen Aram Date: 10/19/17 08:13 (GMT-06:00) To: stuartnlevy Cc: "Brussel, Morton K" , C G Estabrook , Peace Discuss , Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III At the expense of continuing this discussion related to the two lists, I will ask again, did the “link” allowing recipients choice, to either view or delete, that of the Teach In” get through the Peace List, or was it censored off? Ditto links to AOTA which includes the presentation by Mort.  On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:47, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: Thank you, Mort. Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system.  Really, are either of them calls to action?    Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups.   Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument.  Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of.    I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list.  -- Stuart -------- Original message -------- From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) To: C G Estabrook Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria.  Mort On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration.    To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the list, as a call to action. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C34e5da49b39944c7cef208d516ac9972%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439852921023793&sdata=g56%2FLTjK6Obn%2Fa1mF5ZhfF0TkS49CTxEVb1hBDItvcM%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 16:57:29 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:57:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I think it’s accurate - and candid - of Stuart to admit that he wants to deny my ability as a member of AWARE to "use the larger audience of Peace to reach more people.” But that’s not how AWARE communications should work. > On Oct 19, 2017, at 11:29 AM, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Karen, yes, of course your postings went through to the Peace list! > > Here is what I've been using as a policy. Generally any member of Peace can post freely to the Peace list. If someone sends a bunch of messages that clearly don't belong there, and especially if there is a complaint about that, then somebody (sometimes me) sends a reminder to the list about what's appropriate there. Usually that is all that is needed. > > But it can happen that people will keep posting off-topic stuff to Peace, either accidentally or deliberately - trying to use the larger audience of Peace to reach more people, say. Ya'aqov, who used to be on these lists, did a lot of that. I think Carl is doing that now. For people who don't more or less play along with the established rules of the list, I set the list software to moderate their posts, so that I look at them individually and pass through ones that seem to fit - yes, in my own judgment. As a list moderator, that's what I do. > > Right now the only people on Peace whose messages are held for review are Carl and a handful of people whose e-mail accounts appeared to have been hacked, such that they'd sent spam to the list in the past. For everyone else, postings go through immediately. > > That's about all I have to say on this. > > > -- Stuart > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Karen Aram > Date: 10/19/17 08:13 (GMT-06:00) > To: stuartnlevy > Cc: "Brussel, Morton K" , C G Estabrook , Peace Discuss , Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III > > At the expense of continuing this discussion related to the two lists, I will ask again, did the “link” allowing recipients choice, to either view or delete, that of the Teach In” get through the Peace List, or was it censored off? > > Ditto links to AOTA which includes the presentation by Mort. > > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:47, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Thank you, Mort. >> >> Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system. Really, are either of them calls to action? >> >> Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. >> >> Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups. Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument. Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. >> >> I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of. I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. >> >> But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list. >> >> -- Stuart >> >> -------- Original message -------- >> From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" > >> Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) >> To: C G Estabrook > >> Cc: Peace-discuss List > >> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III >> >> In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. >> >> Mort >> >>> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>> >>> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >>> >>> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >>> >>> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >>> >>> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C34e5da49b39944c7cef208d516ac9972%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439852921023793&sdata=g56%2FLTjK6Obn%2Fa1mF5ZhfF0TkS49CTxEVb1hBDItvcM%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 16:57:29 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:57:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I think it’s accurate - and candid - of Stuart to admit that he wants to deny my ability as a member of AWARE to "use the larger audience of Peace to reach more people.” But that’s not how AWARE communications should work. > On Oct 19, 2017, at 11:29 AM, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Karen, yes, of course your postings went through to the Peace list! > > Here is what I've been using as a policy. Generally any member of Peace can post freely to the Peace list. If someone sends a bunch of messages that clearly don't belong there, and especially if there is a complaint about that, then somebody (sometimes me) sends a reminder to the list about what's appropriate there. Usually that is all that is needed. > > But it can happen that people will keep posting off-topic stuff to Peace, either accidentally or deliberately - trying to use the larger audience of Peace to reach more people, say. Ya'aqov, who used to be on these lists, did a lot of that. I think Carl is doing that now. For people who don't more or less play along with the established rules of the list, I set the list software to moderate their posts, so that I look at them individually and pass through ones that seem to fit - yes, in my own judgment. As a list moderator, that's what I do. > > Right now the only people on Peace whose messages are held for review are Carl and a handful of people whose e-mail accounts appeared to have been hacked, such that they'd sent spam to the list in the past. For everyone else, postings go through immediately. > > That's about all I have to say on this. > > > -- Stuart > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Karen Aram > Date: 10/19/17 08:13 (GMT-06:00) > To: stuartnlevy > Cc: "Brussel, Morton K" , C G Estabrook , Peace Discuss , Peace-discuss List > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III > > At the expense of continuing this discussion related to the two lists, I will ask again, did the “link” allowing recipients choice, to either view or delete, that of the Teach In” get through the Peace List, or was it censored off? > > Ditto links to AOTA which includes the presentation by Mort. > > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 21:47, stuartnlevy via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Thank you, Mort. >> >> Carl, with these two postings it just looks like you are working to game the system. Really, are either of them calls to action? >> >> Earlier this week I passed along a Code Pink call to action which feels much more like one: to lobby our US Senators to publicly oppose a bill which would break the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. >> >> Earlier today I read two other calls to action from two other environmental groups. Those messages are not urging people to believe or disbelieve something, nor trying to start a discussion or an argument. Rather they are asking people to get out and do particular things which will advance their causes. >> >> I think it is worth talking about the role of the antifa, even though I think focusing on it is a distraction from anything we're doing to oppose war, to argue over the tactics of a group we aren't even a part of. I also think it's worth talking about Phyllis Bennis' comments on the value for the peace movement of recognizing linkages between our goals and other groups', and working together with them. >> >> But those aren't discussions that belong on the Peace list. >> >> -- Stuart >> >> -------- Original message -------- >> From: "Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss" > >> Date: 10/18/17 20:40 (GMT-06:00) >> To: C G Estabrook > >> Cc: Peace-discuss List > >> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] World War III >> >> In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. >> >> Mort >> >>> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >>> >>> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >>> >>> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >>> >>> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >>> >>> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C34e5da49b39944c7cef208d516ac9972%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636439852921023793&sdata=g56%2FLTjK6Obn%2Fa1mF5ZhfF0TkS49CTxEVb1hBDItvcM%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Thu Oct 19 17:45:12 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 17:45:12 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: You may get some insights into what is going on here from: Aaron James, _Assholes_: A Theory (Doubleday, 2012, 221 pp.) James is a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy & a professor of philosophy at UCal Irvine. “ According to James, an asshole ‘allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.’ “ “Do you know who I am?" A quintessential asshole question — from the epigraph -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Thu Oct 19 17:45:12 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 17:45:12 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: You may get some insights into what is going on here from: Aaron James, _Assholes_: A Theory (Doubleday, 2012, 221 pp.) James is a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy & a professor of philosophy at UCal Irvine. “ According to James, an asshole ‘allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.’ “ “Do you know who I am?" A quintessential asshole question — from the epigraph -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 19:33:56 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 14:33:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That’s an unnecessarily harsh thing to say about Stuart as ‘moderator,’ Ron. The matter’s not very important… > On Oct 19, 2017, at 12:45 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > You may get some insights into what is going on here from: > > Aaron James, _Assholes_: A Theory (Doubleday, 2012, 221 pp.) > > James is a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy & a professor of philosophy at UCal Irvine. > “ According to James, an asshole ‘allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.’ “ > “Do you know who I am?" > A quintessential asshole question > — from the epigraph > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 19:33:56 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 14:33:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: That’s an unnecessarily harsh thing to say about Stuart as ‘moderator,’ Ron. The matter’s not very important… > On Oct 19, 2017, at 12:45 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > You may get some insights into what is going on here from: > > Aaron James, _Assholes_: A Theory (Doubleday, 2012, 221 pp.) > > James is a Harvard Ph.D. in philosophy & a professor of philosophy at UCal Irvine. > “ According to James, an asshole ‘allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.’ “ > “Do you know who I am?" > A quintessential asshole question > — from the epigraph > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 19 20:19:04 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 20:19:04 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: The conspiracy to censor the Internet References: <380cabff931cd452085b8d4a5.2cb7388bc9.20171019190121.e79945a7a6.3120ca94@mail57.suw13.rsgsv.net> Message-ID: Subject: The conspiracy to censor the Internet Date: October 19, 2017 at 12:01:46 PDT [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/380cabff931cd452085b8d4a5/images/3f463dd2-fd12-43f3-8738-5ab4826bcca7.png] Dear Karen, The political representatives of the American ruling class are engaged in a conspiracy to suppress free speech. Under the guise of combating “trolls” and “fake news” supposedly controlled by Russia, the most basic constitutional rights enumerated in the First Amendment are under direct attack. Read the important statement on the World Socialist Web Site documenting the campaign, which is being led by the Democratic Party, working in collaboration with sections of the Republican Party, the mass media and the military-intelligence establishment. See also: * New club procedures at UC Berkeley give police effective veto power over campus events * India: Students and workers in Kolkata oppose Google censorship * The New York Times and the criminalization of dissent The WSWS petition against Google censorship now has more than 5,000 signatures from 100 countries around the world. Help to carry forward the fight by sharing these and other articles on social media, and by sending them to your friends and co-workers. We need your help to fight Internet censorship! 1. Donate so that we can continue to expose the blacklisting of left-wing media. Please make a donation today. 2. Share the Google petition on relevant websites, forums, Facebook groups and event pages, and engage with others to explain the importance of this campaign. The ruling class fears the Internet and social media because they can be powerful tools to spread the truth. The World Socialist Web Site will continue to publish additional exposures of Google censorship and the role of corporations like Facebook and Amazon. If you agree with this fight, take action today. Sincerely, The World Socialist Web Site [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-facebook-48.png] Share [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-twitter-48.png] Tweet [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-forwardtofriend-48.png] Forward World Socialist Web Site | wsws.org Articles: Copyright © 2017 wsws.org, All rights reserved. unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Fri Oct 20 01:49:28 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 01:49:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?LAPD=E2=80=99s_Drone_Program_Is_A_Threa?= =?utf-8?q?t_To_Liberty?= References: <1445183822.465363.1508464168777.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1445183822.465363.1508464168777@mail.yahoo.com> LAPD’s Drone Program Is A Threat To Liberty - The Advocates for Self-Government | | | | | | | | | | | LAPD’s Drone Program Is A Threat To Liberty - The Advocates for Self-Gov... Going against privacy advocates all across the district, the Los Angeles Police Department just approved a drone... | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Oct 20 02:10:03 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 21:10:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Democrats embarrass themselves even more, were that possible In-Reply-To: References: <4C1263AF-516A-42D3-B670-53E8150C7F84@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4D8DFEC7-F3F3-4DE7-830E-AD272C190E6D@gmail.com> NBC'S ALEX SEITZ-WALD: "Shakeup at Democratic National Committee, Longtime Officials Ousted: A shakeup is underway at the Democratic National Committee as several key longtime officials have lost their posts, exposing a still-raw rift in the party and igniting anger among those in its progressive wing who see retaliation for their opposition to DNC Chairman Tom Perez. "The ousters come ahead of the DNC's first meeting, in Las Vegas, Nevada, ...Those who have been pushed out include: Ray Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic chairman and longtime DNC official who ran against Perez for chair before backing Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., lost his spots on the Executive Committee and DNC Rules Committee; James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and prominent Sanders backer, is no longer co-chair of the Resolutions Committee and is off the Executive Committee ... "Alice Germond, the party's longtime former secretary and a vocal Ellison backer, who was removed from her at-large appointment to the DNC; and Barbra Casbar Siperstein, the first transgender member of the DNC who supported Ellison and Buckley, was tossed from the Executive Committee." ” From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Oct 20 16:33:48 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 11:33:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00a401d349c1$35176dc0$9f464940$@comcast.net> Maybe you can persuade the Clark Lindsey library to get subscriptions to ; Jacobin, Monthly Review, and In These Times ? David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 11:28 PM To: Karen Aram Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS No doubt Hedges in unaware of Aware on the Air when he talks about the character of the “left” . The left has a DNA that prevents unity, prizes difference, that has always been disjointed and contradictory within its diverse parts. Hedges claims he is no Marxist or Trotskyist. WSWS doesn’t agree with Hedges, thinking it is not ineffectual. But this interview is nonetheless insightful, and devastating for those who read and respect the NYT, the WP, and listen to TV news. AT Clark-Lindsey Village, we have fine example of what Hedges describes, a population that seems to read and rely predominantly on the NYT and the WSJ, and yet probably votes overwhelmingly “Democratic”. (N.B., a guess.) Those newspapers are the only ones subscribed by our library. But they are complemented on tables sprinkled around our corridors by The National Review, The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, This Week, among others. So, what does one expect of this comfortable middle class population? Discussing identity politics, Hedges never gets to the influence of Zionist influence on the "newspapers of record", and how this sets the agenda for the hysterical anti Russian stories of both major parties. Thanks for the link, Karen. —mkb On Oct 17, 2017, at 5:55 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: · Mobile · RSS Feeds · Podcast · Newsletter · [Select a language \/] Description: Image removed by sender. Description: Image removed by sender. Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Search the WSWS [Search] Click here for advanced search » · Home · Perspectives · World News · World Economy · Arts Review · History · Science · Philosophy · Workers Struggles · ICFI/Marxist Library · Chronology · Full Archive · Print · Leaflet · Feedback · Share » The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges By David North 6 October 2017 On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Timescorrespondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt. Description: Image removed by sender.Chris Hedges In an article published in TruthdigSeptember 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’” Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.” North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media. David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation? Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia. I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events. But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party. This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive. The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times. When was that, exactly? CH: From 1990 to 2005. DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class. CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site. DN: Well, I hope more than balance it. CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail. The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times, along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich. Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times, like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion. I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard. DN: Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this? CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque. I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can’t go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie. The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them. CH: It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria. DN: It goes the other way too? CH: Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you. DN: The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.” CH: Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics. The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left. The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. DN: What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America? CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out. My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation. It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics. DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down. CH: Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down. DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework. CH: I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t. You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time. DN: Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class. CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color. Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face. DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage. CH: That’s why I read it and like it. DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy? CH: Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are. DN: I don’t agree with you on that. CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism. If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence. DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force. CH: That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 545 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 422 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 800 bytes Desc: not available URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Oct 20 16:44:04 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 11:44:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa In-Reply-To: References: <15f3150295b-c0a-a7da@webjas-vab137.srv.aolmail.net> <00b601d34871$08fba450$1af2ecf0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <00b301d349c2$a40af160$ec20d420$@comcast.net> Well Carl, I can argue with you about this from now until who knows, but in the end, what good will it do ? The distraction lately at least on this list has been the constant focus on the merits of ANTIFA, as opposed to moving on and going back to focus on anti-war / anti-racism topics and actions, and perhaps getting out into the community more to find issues of concern for people that we can at least somewhat agree on and how the wars of corporate empire effect these issues ( directly or indirectly ) as opposed to focusing on and emphasizing what divides us. David J. From: C G Estabrook [mailto:cgestabrook at gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 11:00 PM To: Karen Aram Cc: David Johnson; David Green; Francis A Boyle; Mildred O'brien Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Antifa Antifa is the reddest of red herrings for the antiwar movement. It’s a smoke screen (smoked herring? a kipper?), a distraction from the vital work that should be done against neoliberalism and neoconservatism. And there is not much time. Seasoned anti-warriors like Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, and Diana Johnstone are unequivocal on the matter: Antifa is a “gift to the right’ (Chomksy). The best defenders of Anifa can muster is an obiter dictum from Cornell West (who once supported Obama) under duress. I don’t want to give a gift to the right; I do want to oppose US war-making; and we’re not killing people in MENA for white supremacy, but for elite profits. —CGE On Oct 18, 2017, at 7:50 PM, Karen Aram wrote: David I’ve added back the others in this conversation. They can read your response below, to my response to Midge on anti-fa. I was addressing Midge’s concerns, you and I have had this conversation many times, and I would have preferred it wasn’t raised again. I was going to delete you from my response because I wanted to retain you as a friend, but felt deleting you inappropriate. Just as your response deleting others is also inappropriate. I was not critiquing the IWW, I was critiquing anti-fa. Any suggestion that the IWW like the socialist organizations have not been infiltrated by government provocateurs is ridiculous. There are no “left” organizations in the US that have not been infiltrated and influenced, they’ve had 47 years to do it. Anti-fa is one of the results. Your insistence on making this personal, you keep addressing me as if I was the only one saying anything on the topic of anti-fa, just as you did the other day in reference to the Bennis article. This leaves me no alternative but to say I’m finished conversing on this topic, which I see as nonsense. I have one question, where is the anti-war movement? I have yet to see the IWW, the DSA, Socialist Alternative, Anti-fa, Democrats, say anything about US imperialism. And, if they do begin to do so, at this point, I will know its a facade. On Oct 18, 2017, at 17:27, David Johnson wrote: First of all Karen, You know absolutely nothing about the IWW. I have been a member of the IWW since 2004 and have been to several of their annual conventions and organizing trainings in Chicago and I know and have met Wobblies from all over the U.S., Canada and Europe. The IWW is a big tent in that there are no ideological requirements or dogma. The only requirements to being an IWW member are that you are a Worker including people who are self-employed with no employees, as well as students, retired people and homemakers. The only exception is for anyone who is an agent of law enforcement or a jailer / prison guard. The IWW has ALWAYS had Anarchist leanings ( Syndicalism ) and believed ( still believes ) in direct action and self-defense. Nothing has changed within the IWW since its founding in 1905 in regards to its tactics and principles. I also do not believe in physically assaulting someone including fascists just for speaking. However, when Klansmen, Nazis and other fascists come in to a community like Charlottesville armed and physically assault people and the police do NOTHING ( nowhere to be found ) than people have a right to defend themselves. Go watch the past episode of Democracy Now immediately after Charlottesville in which Cornell West described how he and other African American clergy activists were in a church and surrounded by the fascist thugs. West stated ; “ Thank God for the IWW and ANTIFA for arriving and chasing off the fascist white supremacists, otherwise we all would have been either badly beaten or killed “. I would hardly call that a “ distraction “. I don’t know where you keep getting your flawed and inaccurate information Karen, but the fact is that ANTIFA ( and the IWW ) ARE ; anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-war. You may disagree with SOME individuals who identify themselves as Antifa’s tactics, but to make everyone who is anti-fascist out to be the enemy ? I guess I am your enemy now ? David Johnson From: Karen Aram [ mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 5:27 PM To: Mildred O'brien Cc: C G Estabrook; David Green; Boyle, Francis A; David Johnson Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Antifa Midge Some support anti-fa because they relate it to the union, IWW and workers movements of the 30’s, a time when violence was perpetrated against the workers and their families by the police and hired thugs, forcing the people to defend themselves. Since then the IWW and socialist organizations have been infiltrated by anarchists and others (those anarchists who support chaos and violence) who see no problem punching a “Nazi," for what he “says." I do not believe I owe a Nazi a platform, a chair at my table in a cafe, or allow him/her in my home. However, I support his/her right to speak in public venues, or that which is provided by others, along with my right to protest and demonstrate against his/her presence. But with words, signs, or a bull horn, but never physical violence of any kind. Dianna Johnstone’s article is very good, along with many others, by others. She has been under terrible attack as a result. The article below that Carl referred to in Counterpunch attacking “her," made my skin crawl, so I was only able to get through the first half. I’m very disappointed in Jeffrey St. Clair for publishing rubbish. Rubbish which deals little with the issue and is merely a vilification of Dianna and others, like us. Anyone who has been politically active, opposing USG aggression should be able to see the machinations at play by government lackeys or paid provocateurs in respect to what is vigilantism, providing the militarized police with excuses to attack protestors. Unfortunately the appeal to the young whose political activism is more recent, buy into it. Anyone familiar with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights success, understands that working within the law, even when our laws are perverted, utilizing non violent means to achieve our goals is the only tried and true method. I support violent tactics only when under occupation by a foreign and cruel entity. We have quite a few nations in the middle east and north Africa, that have every right to use violence against the US and other western powers occupying them militarily and anti-fa keeps Americans distracted from this issue. On Oct 18, 2017, at 14:07, Mildred O'brien < moboct1 at aim.com> wrote: You can call me a wimp or coward, but I fail to see a legitimate interest in making a futile public showing of antagonism toward facist groups like re-invented Nazis who I think are out just to provoke "antifa" types in order to have a target to confront and attract attention. I could be wrong, but if the facists didn't have a target to attack they might not get their desired attention. I say better to ignore them by not showing up in the same space, let them have their rant (probably for the MSM who can't resist a story they might sell) and go home. If they become destructive or violent, let the cops take care of 'em, that's what they're there for. There are other ways to counteract knuckleheads (of course they helped manage electing a precedent sic). It just seems to me that getting into the fray that no one wins is an exercise in futility. Which is not to say that their ideas (if you can call them that) should not be opposed by intelligent discourse, not provocation. (Of course, if this was 1937 instead of 80 years later, I would probably have another opinion...) There are so many words on this subject, I don't know who to agree with, just wonder if anybody agrees with me? MO'B -----Original Message----- From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> To: Peace-discuss List < Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> Sent: Wed, Oct 18, 2017 3:17 pm Subject: [Peace-discuss] Antifa Diana Johnstone's recent article, "Antifa in Theory and in Practice,” begins "'Fascists are divided into two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists' [Ennio Flaiano, Italian writer and co-author of Federico Fellini’s greatest film scripts]. In recent weeks, a totally disoriented left has been widely exhorted to unify around a masked vanguard calling itself Antifa, for anti-fascist. Hooded and dressed in black, Antifa is essentially a variation of the Black Bloc, familiar for introducing violence into peaceful demonstrations in many countries. Imported from Europe, the label Antifa sounds more political. It also serves the purpose of stigmatizing those it attacks as 'fascists’…" 'Johnstone (born 1934) is an American political writer based in Paris, France. She has a BA in Russian Area Studies and a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Minnesota. She was active in the movement against the Vietnam War, organizing the first international contacts between American citizens and Vietnamese representatives. Johnstone was European editor of the U.S. weekly 'In These Times' from 1979 to 1990. She was press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. From 1992 to 2000, she was associated editor of the Paris quarterly Dialogue concerned with Balkan geopolitics. Johnstone also regularly contributes to the online magazine CounterPunch. 'After the 2003 publication of her "Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions," Johnstone became the centre of controversy over her claim in the book that there is "no evidence whatsoever" that the Srebrenica massacre of the Bosniaks was genocidal. The book was rejected by publishers in Sweden, prompting an open letter in 2003 defending Johnstone's book—and her right to publish—that was signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali and John Pilger. The signatories stated, "We regard Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade as an outstanding work, dissenting from the mainstream view but doing so by an appeal to fact and reason, in a great tradition” … Richard Caplan of Reading and Oxford University reviewed the work in International Affairs, where he described the work as "a revisionist and highly contentious account of western policy and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. [… It] is insightful but overzealous […] well worth reading—but for the discriminating eye.” 'In April 2012, she wrote about the first round of the French Presidential elections a few days earlier and identified Front National leader Marine Le Pen as "notably" "basically on the left" while also labelling Le Pen as "demagogic". She also rejected claims Le Pen is antisemitic: "There is absolutely nothing attesting to anti-Semitism on the part of Marine Le Pen. She has actually tried to woo the powerful Jewish organisations, and her anti-Islam stance is also a way to woo such groups”. 'Her other books include • The Politics of Euromissiles: Europe's Role in America's World (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1985) • Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions (London: Pluto Press; New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003) • Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton (CounterPunch, 2015)' A member of AWARE has recently been in contact with Johnstone. You can read a typical attack on her at < https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/16/the-nimpe-critique-of-antifa/>. To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the < peace at anti-war.net> list, as a call to action - but not of the antifa sort. AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should regard Antifa as Johnstone suggests: the US is not killing people around the world for white supremacy, but for the profits of the 1%. We should be talking to people about what the US is doing, and why, in order to oppose it - not 'de-platforming' (or punching) people with bad ideas. —CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace- discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moboct1 at aim.com Fri Oct 20 17:37:56 2017 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 13:37:56 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kelly, tRump's chief of prevarication Message-ID: <15f3adce484-c0b-879f@webjas-vaa076.srv.aolmail.net> " ...He knew what he was getting into when he joined the 1% (sic).  He knew the possibilities because we're at war"--John Kelly 10/18/2014.   At war?  Who declared war in Niger (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc)?  I don't recall fulfillment of the Constitutional requirement for a "declaration of war." Midge O'Brien -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moboct1 at aim.com Fri Oct 20 17:50:18 2017 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 13:50:18 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kelly, tRump's chief of prevarication In-Reply-To: <15f3adce484-c0b-879f@webjas-vaa076.srv.aolmail.net> References: <15f3adce484-c0b-879f@webjas-vaa076.srv.aolmail.net> Message-ID: <15f3ae83871-c13-262f@webjas-vac110.srv.aolmail.net> Correction: 2017 (par'me) MO'B -----Original Message----- From: Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss To: peace-discuss Sent: Fri, Oct 20, 2017 12:38 pm Subject: [Peace-discuss] Kelly, tRump's chief of prevarication "...He knew what he was getting into when he joined the 1% (sic).  He knew the possibilities because we're at war"--John Kelly 10/18/2014.  (Typo) At war?  Who declared war in Niger (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc)?  I don't recall fulfillment of the Constitutional requirement for a "declaration of war." Midge O'Brien _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 20 22:00:23 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 22:00:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS In-Reply-To: <00a401d349c1$35176dc0$9f464940$@comcast.net> References: <00a401d349c1$35176dc0$9f464940$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Mort Having seen many interviews and read many articles with, and by Chris Hedges, I know he condemns Zionism and Israeli policies, as well as the NYT’s, his former employer. I’m guessing, that given his focus is on “class” he would prefer to criticize the mainstream media for their “class” bias, than blame it on Zionisism, which implies to many, a focus on Israel. My understanding is that all Zionists support the elite, while not all elitists are necessarily Zionists. Correct me if I’m wrong. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2017 11:28 PM To: Karen Aram Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Very long, but well worth read. Interview with Chris Hedges by David North of WSWS No doubt Hedges in unaware of Aware on the Air when he talks about the character of the “left” . The left has a DNA that prevents unity, prizes difference, that has always been disjointed and contradictory within its diverse parts. Hedges claims he is no Marxist or Trotskyist. WSWS doesn’t agree with Hedges, thinking it is not ineffectual. But this interview is nonetheless insightful, and devastating for those who read and respect the NYT, the WP, and listen to TV news. AT Clark-Lindsey Village, we have fine example of what Hedges describes, a population that seems to read and rely predominantly on the NYT and the WSJ, and yet probably votes overwhelmingly “Democratic”. (N.B., a guess.) Those newspapers are the only ones subscribed by our library. But they are complemented on tables sprinkled around our corridors by The National Review, The Atlantic, Bloomberg News, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, This Week, among others. So, what does one expect of this comfortable middle class population? Discussing identity politics, Hedges never gets to the influence of Zionist influence on the "newspapers of record", and how this sets the agenda for the hysterical anti Russian stories of both major parties. Thanks for the link, Karen. —mkb On Oct 17, 2017, at 5:55 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: • Mobile • RSS Feeds • Podcast • Newsletter • [Select a language \/] Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Search the WSWS [Search]Click here for advanced search » • Home • Perspectives • World News • World Economy • Arts Review • History • Science • Philosophy • Workers Struggles • ICFI/Marxist Library • Chronology • Full Archive • Print • Leaflet • Feedback • Share » The elites “have no credibility left:” An interview with journalist Chris Hedges By David North 6 October 2017 On Monday, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North interviewed Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, lecturer and former New York Timescorrespondent. Among Hedges’ best-known books are War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, The Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion: the End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and Wages of Rebellion: the Moral Imperative of Revolt. Chris Hedges In an article published in TruthdigSeptember 17, titled “The Silencing of Dissent,” Hedges referenced the WSWS coverage of Google’s censorship of left-wing sites and warned about the growth of “blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of ‘fake news.’” Hedges wrote that “the Department of Justice called on RT America and its ‘associates’—which may mean people like me—to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. No doubt, the corporate state knows that most of us will not register as foreign agents, meaning we will be banished from the airwaves. This, I expect, is the intent.” North’s interview with Hedges began with a discussion of the significance of the anti-Russia campaign in the media. David North: How do you interpret the fixation on Russia and the entire interpretation of the election within the framework of Putin’s manipulation? Chris Hedges: It’s as ridiculous as Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It is an absolutely unproven allegation that is used to perpetuate a very frightening accusation—critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism are foreign agents for Russia. I have no doubt that the Russians invested time, energy and money into attempting to influence events in the United States in ways that would serve their interests, in the same way that we have done and do in Russia and all sorts of other countries throughout the world. So I’m not saying there was no influence, or an attempt to influence events. But the whole idea that the Russians swung the election to Trump is absurd. It’s really premised on the unproven claim that Russia gave the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks, and the release of these emails turned tens, or hundreds of thousands, of Clinton supporters towards Trump. This doesn’t make any sense. Either that, or, according to the director of national intelligence, RT America, where I have a show, got everyone to vote for the Green Party. This obsession with Russia is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working men and women and poor people of color. It is the result of disastrous trade agreements like NAFTA that abolished good-paying union jobs and shipped them to places like Mexico, where workers without benefits are paid $3.00 an hour. It is the result of the explosion of a system of mass incarceration, begun by Bill Clinton with the 1994 omnibus crime bill, and the tripling and quadrupling of prison sentences. It is the result of the slashing of basic government services, including, of course, welfare, that Clinton gutted; deregulation, a decaying infrastructure, including public schools, and the de facto tax boycott by corporations. It is the result of the transformation of the country into an oligarchy. The nativist revolt on the right, and the aborted insurgency within the Democratic Party, makes sense when you see what they have done to the country. Police forces have been turned into quasi-military entities that terrorize marginal communities, where people have been stripped of all of their rights and can be shot with impunity; in fact over three are killed a day. The state shoots and locks up poor people of color as a form of social control. They are quite willing to employ the same form of social control on any other segment of the population that becomes restive. The Democratic Party, in particular, is driving this whole Russia witch-hunt. It cannot face its complicity in the destruction of our civil liberties—and remember, Barack Obama’s assault on civil liberties was worse than those carried out by George W. Bush—and the destruction of our economy and our democratic institutions. Politicians like the Clintons, Pelosi and Schumer are creations of Wall Street. That is why they are so virulent about pushing back against the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Without Wall Street money, they would not hold political power. The Democratic Party doesn’t actually function as a political party. It’s about perpetual mass mobilization and a hyperventilating public relations arm, all paid for by corporate donors. The base of the party has no real say in the leadership or the policies of the party, as Bernie Sanders and his followers found out. They are props in the sterile political theater. These party elites, consumed by greed, myopia and a deep cynicism, have a death grip on the political process. They’re not going to let it go, even if it all implodes. DN: Chris, you worked for the New York Times. When was that, exactly? CH: From 1990 to 2005. DN: Since you have some experience with that institution, what changes do you see? We’ve stressed that it has cultivated a constituency among the affluent upper-middle class. CH: The New York Times consciously targets 30 million upper-middle class and affluent Americans. It is a national newspaper; only about 11 percent of its readership is in New York. It is very easy to see who the Times seeks to reach by looking at its special sections on Home, Style, Business or Travel. Here, articles explain the difficulty of maintaining, for example, a second house in the Hamptons. It can do good investigative work, although not often. It covers foreign affairs. But it reflects the thinking of the elites. I read the Times every day, maybe to balance it out with your web site. DN: Well, I hope more than balance it. CH: Yes, more than balance it. The Times was always an elitist publication, but it wholly embraced the ideology of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism at a time of financial distress, when Abe Rosenthal was editor. He was the one who instituted the special sections that catered to the elite. And he imposed a de facto censorship to shut out critics of unfettered capitalism and imperialism, such as Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn. He hounded out reporters like Sydney Schanberg, who challenged the real estate developers in New York, or Raymond Bonner, who reported the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador. He had lunch every week, along with his publisher, with William F. Buckley. This pivot into the arms of the most retrograde forces of corporate capitalism and proponents of American imperialism, for a time, made the paper very profitable. Eventually, of course, the rise of the internet, the loss of classified ads, which accounted for about 40 percent of all newspaper revenue, crippled the Times as it has crippled all newspapers. Newsprint has lost the monopoly that once connected sellers with buyers. Newspapers are trapped in an old system of information they call “objectivity” and “balance,” formulae designed to cater to the powerful and the wealthy and obscure the truth. But like all Byzantine courts, the Times will go down clinging to its holy grail. The intellectual gravitas of the paper—in particular the Book Review and the Week in Review—was obliterated by Bill Keller, himself a neocon, who, as a columnist, had been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq. He brought in figures like Sam Tanenhaus. At that point the paper embraced, without any dissent, the utopian ideology of neoliberalism and the primacy of corporate power as an inevitable form of human progress. The Times, along with business schools, economics departments at universities, and the pundits promoted by the corporate state, propagated the absurd idea that we would all be better off if we prostrated every sector of society before the dictates of the marketplace. It takes a unique kind of stupidity to believe this. You had students at Harvard Business School doing case studies of Enron and its brilliant business model, that is, until Enron collapsed and was exposed as a gigantic scam. This was never, really, in the end, about ideas. It was about unadulterated greed. It was pushed by the supposedly best educated among us, like Larry Summers, which exposes the lie that somehow our decline is due to deficient levels of education. It was due to a bankrupt and amoral elite, and the criminal financial institutions that make them rich. Critical thinking on the op-ed page, the Week in Review or the Book Review, never very strong to begin with, evaporated under Keller. Globalization was beyond questioning. Since the Times, like all elite institutions, is a hermetically sealed echo chamber, they do not realize how irrelevant they are becoming, or how ridiculous they look. Thomas Friedman and David Brooks might as well write for the Onion. I worked overseas. I wasn’t in the newsroom very much, but the paper is a very anxiety-ridden place. The rules aren’t written on the walls, but everyone knows, even if they do not articulate it, the paper’s unofficial motto: Do not significantly alienate those upon whom we depend for money and access! You can push against them some of the time. But if you are a serious reporter, like Charlie Leduff, or Sydney Schanberg, who wants to give a voice to people who don’t have a voice, to address issues of race, class, capitalist exploitation or the crimes of empire, you very swiftly become a management problem and get pushed out. Those who rise in the organization and hold power are consummate careerists. Their loyalty is to their advancement and the stature and profitability of the institution, which is why the hierarchy of the paper is filled with such mediocrities. Careerism is the paper’s biggest Achilles heel. It does not lack for talent. But it does lack for intellectual independence and moral courage. It reminds me of Harvard. DN: Let’s come back to this question of the Russian hacking news story. You raised the ability to generate a story, which has absolutely no factual foundation, nothing but assertions by various intelligence agencies, presented as an assessment that is beyond question. What is your evaluation of this? CH: The commercial broadcast networks, and that includes CNN and MSNBC, are not in the business of journalism. They hardly do any. Their celebrity correspondents are courtiers to the elite. They speculate about and amplify court gossip, which is all the accusations about Russia, and they repeat what they are told to repeat. They sacrifice journalism and truth for ratings and profit. These cable news shows are one of many revenue streams in a corporate structure. They compete against other revenue streams. The head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, who helped create the fictional persona of Donald Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice,” has turned politics on CNN into a 24-hour reality show. All nuance, ambiguity, meaning and depth, along with verifiable fact, are sacrificed for salacious entertainment. Lying, racism, bigotry and conspiracy theories are given platforms and considered newsworthy, often espoused by people whose sole quality is that they are unhinged. It is news as burlesque. I was on the investigative team at the New York Times during the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was based in Paris and covered Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. Lewis Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and maybe somebody in an intelligence agency, would confirm whatever story the administration was attempting to pitch. Journalistic rules at the Times say you can’t go with a one-source story. But if you have three or four supposedly independent sources confirming the same narrative, then you can go with it, which is how they did it. The paper did not break any rules taught at Columbia journalism school, but everything they wrote was a lie. The whole exercise was farcical. The White House would leak some bogus story to Judy Miller or Michael Gordon, and then go on the talk shows to say, ‘as the Times reported….’ It gave these lies the veneer of independence and reputable journalism. This was a massive institutional failing, and one the paper has never faced. DN: The CIA pitches the story, and then the Times gets the verification from those who pitch it to them. CH: It’s not always pitched. And not much of this came from the CIA. The CIA wasn’t buying the “weapons of mass destruction” hysteria. DN: It goes the other way too? CH: Sure. Because if you’re trying to have access to a senior official, you’ll constantly be putting in requests, and those officials will decide when they want to see you. And when they want to see you, it’s usually because they have something to sell you. DN: The media’s anti-Russia narrative has been embraced by large portions of what presents itself as the “left.” CH: Well, don’t get me started on the American left. First of all, there is no American left—not a left that has any kind of seriousness, that understands political or revolutionary theories, that’s steeped in economic study, that understands how systems of power work, especially corporate and imperial power. The left is caught up in the same kind of cults of personality that plague the rest of society. It focuses on Trump, as if Trump is the central problem. Trump is a product, a symptom of a failed system and dysfunctional democracy, not the disease. If you attempt to debate most of those on the supposedly left, they reduce discussion to this cartoonish vision of politics. The serious left in this country was decimated. It started with the suppression of radical movements under Woodrow Wilson, then the “Red Scares” in the 1920s, when they virtually destroyed our labor movement and our radical press, and then all of the purges in the 1950s. For good measure, they purged the liberal class—look at what they did to Henry Wallace—so that Cold War “liberals” equated capitalism with democracy, and imperialism with freedom and liberty. I lived in Switzerland and France. There are still residues of a militant left in Europe, which gives Europeans something to build upon. But here we almost have to begin from scratch. I’ve battled continuously with Antifa and the Black Bloc. I think they’re kind of poster children for what I would consider phenomenal political immaturity. Resistance is not a form of personal catharsis. We are not fighting the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The corporate elites we have to overthrow already hold power. And unless we build a broad, popular resistance movement, which takes a lot of patient organizing among working men and women, we are going to be steadily ground down. So Trump’s not the problem. But just that sentence alone is going to kill most discussions with people who consider themselves part of the left. The corporate state has made it very hard to make a living if you hold fast to this radical critique. You will never get tenure. You probably won’t get academic appointments. You won’t win prizes. You won’t get grants. The New York Times, if they review your book, will turn it over to a dutiful mandarin like George Packer to trash it—as he did with my last book. The elite schools, and I have taught as a visiting professor at a few of them, such as Princeton and Columbia, replicate the structure and goals of corporations. If you want to even get through a doctoral committee, much less a tenure committee, you must play it really, really safe. You must not challenge the corporate-friendly stance that permeates the institution and is imposed through corporate donations and the dictates of wealthy alumni. Half of the members of most of these trustee boards should be in prison! Speculation in the 17th century in Britain was a crime. Speculators were hanged. And today they run the economy and the country. They have used the capturing of wealth to destroy the intellectual, cultural and artistic life in the country and snuff out our democracy. There is a word for these people: traitors. DN: What about the impact that you’ve seen of identity politics in America? CH: Well, identity politics defines the immaturity of the left. The corporate state embraced identity politics. We saw where identity politics got us with Barack Obama, which is worse than nowhere. He was, as Cornel West said, a black mascot for Wall Street, and now he is going around to collect his fees for selling us out. My favorite kind of anecdotal story about identity politics: Cornel West and I, along with others, led a march of homeless people on the Democratic National Convention session in Philadelphia. There was an event that night. It was packed with hundreds of people, mostly angry Bernie Sanders supporters. I had been asked to come speak. And in the back room, there was a group of younger activists, one who said, “We’re not letting the white guy go first.” Then he got up and gave a speech about how everybody now had to vote for Hillary Clinton. That’s kind of where identity politics gets you. There is a big difference between shills for corporate capitalism and imperialism, like Corey Booker and Van Jones, and true radicals like Glen Ford and Ajamu Baraka. The corporate state carefully selects and promotes women, or people of color, to be masks for its cruelty and exploitation. It is extremely important, obviously, that those voices are heard, but not those voices that have sold out to the power elite. The feminist movement is a perfect example of this. The old feminism, which I admire, the Andrea Dworkin kind of feminism, was about empowering oppressed women. This form of feminism did not try to justify prostitution as sex work. It knew that it is just as wrong to abuse a woman in a sweatshop as it is in the sex trade. The new form of feminism is an example of the poison of neoliberalism. It is about having a woman CEO or woman president, who will, like Hillary Clinton, serve the systems of oppression. It posits that prostitution is about choice. What woman, given a stable income and security, would choose to be raped for a living? Identity politics is anti-politics. DN: I believe you spoke at a Socialist Convergence conference where you criticized Obama and Sanders, and you were shouted down. CH: Yes, I don’t even remember. I’ve been shouted down criticizing Obama in many places, including Berkeley. I have had to endure this for a long time as a supporter and speech writer for Ralph Nader. People don’t want the illusion of their manufactured personalities, their political saviors, shattered; personalities created by public relations industries. They don’t want to do the hard work of truly understanding how power works and organizing to bring it down. DN: You mentioned that you have been reading the World Socialist Web Site for some time. You know we are quite outside of that framework. CH: I’m not a Marxist. I’m not a Trotskyist. But I like the site. You report on important issues seriously and in a way a lot of other sites don’t. You care about things that are important to me—mass incarceration, the rights and struggles of the working class and the crimes of empire. I have read the site for a long time. DN: Much of what claims to be left—that is, the pseudo-left—reflects the interests of the affluent middle class. CH: Precisely. When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color. Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face. DN: The World Socialist Web Site has made the issue of inequality a central focus of its coverage. CH: That’s why I read it and like it. DN: Returning to the Russia issue, where do you see this going? How seriously do you see this assault on democratic rights? We call this the new McCarthyism. Is that, in your view, a legitimate analogy? CH: Yes, of course it’s the new McCarthyism. But let’s acknowledge how almost irrelevant our voices are. DN: I don’t agree with you on that. CH: Well, irrelevant in the sense that we’re not heard within the mainstream. When I go to Canada I am on the CBC on prime time. The same is true in France. That never happens here. PBS and NPR are never going to do that. Nor are they going to do that for any other serious critic of capitalism or imperialism. If there is a debate about attacking Syria, for example, it comes down to bombing Syria or bombing Syria and sending in troops, as if these are the only two options. Same with health care. Do we have Obamacare, a creation of the Heritage Foundation and the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, or no care? Universal health care for all is not discussed. So we are on the margins. But that does not mean we are not dangerous. Neoliberalism and globalization are zombie ideologies. They have no credibility left. The scam has been found out. The global oligarchs are hated and reviled. The elite has no counterargument to our critique. So they can’t afford to have us around. As the power elite becomes more frightened, they’re going to use harsher forms of control, including the blunt instrument of censorship and violence. DN: I think it can be a big mistake to be focused on the sense of isolation or marginalization. I’ll make a prediction. You will have, probably sooner than you think, more requests for interviews and television time. We are in a period of colossal political breakdown. We are going to see, more and more, the emergence of the working class as a powerful political force. CH: That’s why we are a target. With the bankruptcy of the ruling ideology, and the bankruptcy of the American liberal class and the American left, those who hold fast to intellectual depth and an examination of systems of power, including economics, culture and politics, have to be silenced. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7Cd8e0bf4065ec4ab02f3b08d517d86962%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636441140602617458&sdata=ZrZ0badl%2BWS5%2BFfgT%2BFGtGi8hZsRMdYgdVZwrVL2Vdw%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 21 02:44:56 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 02:44:56 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?windows-1252?q?FW=3A_US_Admitting_Syrian_Milita?= =?windows-1252?q?nts_Use_Chemical_Weapons_=91Welcome=92_Overdue_Correctiv?= =?windows-1252?q?e?= Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Friday, October 20, 2017 9:42 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue Corrective Shared from sputniknews.com US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue Corrective https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710211058422305-usa-terrorists-use-chemicals-syria/ US KNEW ALL ALONG The US government was finally started to acknowledge that groups it had supported had employed chemical weapons in Syria where the Trump and Obama administrations had sought to blame the Damascus government for such attacks, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle told Sputnik. These policies were part of a wider US strategy to topple the Damascus government that was clearly illegal under international law, Boyle pointed out. The United States had backed the Syrian terror groups "as part of an illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government in violation of the United Nations Charter and the rulings of the World Court in the Case of Nicaragua versus United States of America (1984-1986)," he said. US policymakers could have had no doubt that the terror groups they were financing, helping to organize and arming had been s using chemical weapons, Boyle observed. "Of course the United States government knows full well that some of its surrogate terrorist organizations in Syria have used chemical weapons," he said. [Buildings in Hama, Syria] © Sputnik/ Mikhail Voskresenskiy OPCW Says Found Evidence of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria's Hama in March Over the past four years, successive US administrations had deliberately and cynically blamed Damascus for chemical attacks that they knew their own allies had carried out, Boyle stated. "Both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration have maliciously exploited their surrogates’ uses of chemical weapons as pretexts and propaganda to justify direct US military intervention into Syria," he said. Boyle also warned that even after the admission buried deep in this week’s Travel Advisory, the US government could again in the future blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks that it knew had been carried out in reality by its own allies. "It very well could happen again. Caveat emptor!" he said. Al-Nusra Front controls Syria's Idlib Governorate through the umbrella terrorist group al-Sham and is still thought to be a front for al-Qaeda. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69100 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 21 02:44:56 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 02:44:56 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?windows-1252?q?FW=3A_US_Admitting_Syrian_Milita?= =?windows-1252?q?nts_Use_Chemical_Weapons_=91Welcome=92_Overdue_Correctiv?= =?windows-1252?q?e?= Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Friday, October 20, 2017 9:42 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue Corrective Shared from sputniknews.com US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue Corrective https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710211058422305-usa-terrorists-use-chemicals-syria/ US KNEW ALL ALONG The US government was finally started to acknowledge that groups it had supported had employed chemical weapons in Syria where the Trump and Obama administrations had sought to blame the Damascus government for such attacks, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle told Sputnik. These policies were part of a wider US strategy to topple the Damascus government that was clearly illegal under international law, Boyle pointed out. The United States had backed the Syrian terror groups "as part of an illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government in violation of the United Nations Charter and the rulings of the World Court in the Case of Nicaragua versus United States of America (1984-1986)," he said. US policymakers could have had no doubt that the terror groups they were financing, helping to organize and arming had been s using chemical weapons, Boyle observed. "Of course the United States government knows full well that some of its surrogate terrorist organizations in Syria have used chemical weapons," he said. [Buildings in Hama, Syria] © Sputnik/ Mikhail Voskresenskiy OPCW Says Found Evidence of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria's Hama in March Over the past four years, successive US administrations had deliberately and cynically blamed Damascus for chemical attacks that they knew their own allies had carried out, Boyle stated. "Both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration have maliciously exploited their surrogates’ uses of chemical weapons as pretexts and propaganda to justify direct US military intervention into Syria," he said. Boyle also warned that even after the admission buried deep in this week’s Travel Advisory, the US government could again in the future blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks that it knew had been carried out in reality by its own allies. "It very well could happen again. Caveat emptor!" he said. Al-Nusra Front controls Syria's Idlib Governorate through the umbrella terrorist group al-Sham and is still thought to be a front for al-Qaeda. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69100 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Oct 21 12:25:06 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 12:25:06 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?windows-1252?q?Fwd=3A_=5BPeace=5D_Fwd=3A_US_Adm?= =?windows-1252?q?itting_Syrian_Militants_Use_Chemical_Weapons_=91Welcome?= =?windows-1252?q?=92_Overdue_Corrective?= References: Message-ID: Shared from sputniknews.com US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue Corrective https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710211058422305-usa-terrorists-use-chemicals-syria/ US KNEW ALL ALONG The US government was finally started to acknowledge that groups it had supported had employed chemical weapons in Syria where the Trump and Obama administrations had sought to blame the Damascus government for such attacks, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle told Sputnik. These policies were part of a wider US strategy to topple the Damascus government that was clearly illegal under international law, Boyle pointed out. The United States had backed the Syrian terror groups "as part of an illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government in violation of the United Nations Charter and the rulings of the World Court in the Case of Nicaragua versus United States of America (1984-1986)," he said. US policymakers could have had no doubt that the terror groups they were financing, helping to organize and arming had been s using chemical weapons, Boyle observed. "Of course the United States government knows full well that some of its surrogate terrorist organizations in Syria have used chemical weapons," he said. [cid:image001.jpg at 01D349EC.323092F0] © SPUTNIK/ MIKHAIL VOSKRESENSKIY OPCW Says Found Evidence of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria's Hama in March Over the past four years, successive US administrations had deliberately and cynically blamed Damascus for chemical attacks that they knew their own allies had carried out, Boyle stated. "Both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration have maliciously exploited their surrogates’ uses of chemical weapons as pretexts and propaganda to justify direct US military intervention into Syria," he said. Boyle also warned that even after the admission buried deep in this week’s Travel Advisory, the US government could again in the future blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks that it knew had been carried out in reality by its own allies. "It very well could happen again. Caveat emptor!" he said. Al-Nusra Front controls Syria's Idlib Governorate through the umbrella terrorist group al-Sham and is still thought to be a front for al-Qaeda. _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C3c115f4d2f6b463479e008d518312ed3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636441521879782452&sdata=tArrWnbBYUutaWEMtw%2B7JKmaJkEK6XV1yYHjOoY1KzI%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69100 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Oct 21 14:54:49 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 09:54:49 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World War III In-Reply-To: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> References: <208424A8-32F9-4B5E-9DB0-3E02D31820E2@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <5777AA4C-2C10-42CB-8932-BBDE6F9242EB@gmail.com> Mort-- There may be an argument for separating AWARE’s email lists into the theoretical (for discussion) and the practical (for announcements), but it’s not a very good one. At worst, it supports the liberal attitude, “I know what I’m for and against, and I don’t want to have to be bothered with thinking about it - just impeach Trump and fight Russian meddling!” Even if such a distinction between the lists has been recommended, AWARE has never authorized anyone to enforce it by suppressing postings! That obviously flies in the face of the primary purpose of the lists, to organize and encourage anti-war activity. I suspect it’s being done now because those who’ve seized the means of email production in AWARE don’t agree with critiques of antifa, intersectionaliy, etc., and don’t want such views spread abroad under AWARE’s name. The soi-disant Left should be a little more mature than that. Regards, CGE > On Oct 18, 2017, at 8:40 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: > > In my mind this is unfairly provocative. Stuart has been doing a conscientious and good job monitoring the Peace list, and explaining his criteria. > > Mort > >> On Oct 18, 2017, at 1:59 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: >> >> Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is author of the forthcoming "In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power” (Dispatch Books, September). His previous books include: "Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation" (University of Wisconsin, 2012), "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (American Empire Project); "Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State," and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade." He has also convened the 'Empires in Transition/ project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as "Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State.” >> >> His recent article "World War III With China: How It Might Actually Be Fought” envisions the outcome of the US war provocations against China undertaken in the Bush-Obama-Clinton (as Secretary of State) administrations, and continued in the Trump administration. >> >> To avoid cross posting, I’ve sent the article to the > list, as a call to action. >> >> AWARE and the anti-war movement in general should work strenuously against the outcome McCoy envisages, by informing the generally anti-war US public of where our government’s policy is leading. —CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 21 18:14:16 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 18:14:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:11 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Copyright 2010 Newstex LLC All Rights Reserved Newstex Web Blogs Copyright 2010 Atlantic Free Press Atlantic Free Press April 3, 2010 Saturday 9:07 AM EST LENGTH: 1826 words HEADLINE: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies & Con-Artists: Bush to Obama BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     Apr. 3, 2010 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) -- by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli Neo-Conservative Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.     These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Hobbist/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science for many years. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con cabal. Strauss was a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Chicagos Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society (A.K.A.:"Feddies"), which originated in part at the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School. There Barack Obama would teach constitutional law. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprints for establishing an American Police State. Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. According to his own public estimate and boast in a 26 February 2003 speech before the American Enterprise Institute (another front-organization for Straussian Neo-Cons), President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere were and still are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed. These same principles hold true for the not-so-closet Neo-Cons in the Obama administration: e.g., Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan, Dennis Ross, Cass Sunstein, etc. In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil. To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago. As for the University of Chicago overall, its New Testament is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss (and thus the intellectual grandson of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt), as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, longtime member of the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom was and is still worshiped on a pedestal and his elitist screed against democratic education in America still revered as gospel truth. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warranted criminal investigation by the F.B.I. Immediately after the Bush Jr. administrations wanton aggression against Iraq, the University of Chicago chose the occasion to officially celebrate its Straussian Neo-Con cabal responsible therefore, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Hobbist, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy." Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in the United States let alone in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were/are Feddies? Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot. For eight years the Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists of the Bush Jr. administration did everything humanly possible to build an American Police State. So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle their totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz and totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool. As J.D. Rockefeller, the Original Robber Baron and Funder of the University of Chicago once commented about his progeny: It's the best investment I ever made. Still is. Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-43485955 _______________________________________________ AALSMIN-L mailing list AALSMIN-L at lists.ubalt.edu http://lists.ubalt.edu/mailman/listinfo/aalsmin-l This email was sent using the University of Baltimore mailing list system. Messages sent via a University of Baltimore mailing do not necessarily represent the opinion of the University. From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 21 18:14:16 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 18:14:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:11 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Copyright 2010 Newstex LLC All Rights Reserved Newstex Web Blogs Copyright 2010 Atlantic Free Press Atlantic Free Press April 3, 2010 Saturday 9:07 AM EST LENGTH: 1826 words HEADLINE: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies & Con-Artists: Bush to Obama BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     Apr. 3, 2010 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) -- by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli Neo-Conservative Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.     These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Hobbist/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science for many years. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con cabal. Strauss was a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Chicagos Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society (A.K.A.:"Feddies"), which originated in part at the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School. There Barack Obama would teach constitutional law. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprints for establishing an American Police State. Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. According to his own public estimate and boast in a 26 February 2003 speech before the American Enterprise Institute (another front-organization for Straussian Neo-Cons), President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere were and still are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed. These same principles hold true for the not-so-closet Neo-Cons in the Obama administration: e.g., Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan, Dennis Ross, Cass Sunstein, etc. In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil. To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago. As for the University of Chicago overall, its New Testament is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss (and thus the intellectual grandson of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt), as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, longtime member of the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom was and is still worshiped on a pedestal and his elitist screed against democratic education in America still revered as gospel truth. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warranted criminal investigation by the F.B.I. Immediately after the Bush Jr. administrations wanton aggression against Iraq, the University of Chicago chose the occasion to officially celebrate its Straussian Neo-Con cabal responsible therefore, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Hobbist, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy." Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in the United States let alone in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were/are Feddies? Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot. For eight years the Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists of the Bush Jr. administration did everything humanly possible to build an American Police State. So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle their totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz and totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool. As J.D. Rockefeller, the Original Robber Baron and Funder of the University of Chicago once commented about his progeny: It's the best investment I ever made. Still is. Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-43485955 _______________________________________________ AALSMIN-L mailing list AALSMIN-L at lists.ubalt.edu http://lists.ubalt.edu/mailman/listinfo/aalsmin-l This email was sent using the University of Baltimore mailing list system. Messages sent via a University of Baltimore mailing do not necessarily represent the opinion of the University. From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Oct 21 22:22:55 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 22:22:55 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Dan Glazebrook on US plans for Africa, relieving Libya of Gaddafi was only the 1st step. Message-ID: I was unable to post from RT.com which is being “compromised”. but found it on the authors website. DAN GLAZEBROOK Category Archives: Libya 10.21.17 by danglazebrook AFTER GADDAFI: THE WEST’S RECONQUEST OF AFRICA [https://nowaraga.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/gaddafi2.jpg?w=680&h=453] Exactly six years ago, on October 20th 2011, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was murdered, joining a long list of African revolutionaries martyred by the West for daring to dream of continental independence. Earlier that day, Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte had been occupied by Western-backed militias, following a month-long battle during which NATO and their ‘rebel’ allies pounded the city’s hospitals and residents with artillery, cut off its water and electricity, and publicly proclaimed their desire to ‘starve [the city] into submission’. The last defenders of the city, including Gaddafi, fled Sirte that morning, but their convoy was tracked and strafed by NATO jets, killing 95 people. Gaddafi escaped the wreckage but was captured shortly afterwards. I will spare you the gruesome details, which the Western media gloatingly broadcastacross the world as a triumphant snuff movie, suffice to say that he was tortured and eventually shot dead. We now know, if testimony from NATO’s key Libyan ally Mahmoud Jibril is to be believed, that it was a foreign agent, likely French, who delivered the fatal bullet. His death was the culmination of not only seven months of NATO aggression, but of a campaign against Gaddafi and his movement that the West had been waging for over three decades. Yet it was also the opening salvo in a new war – a war for the militarily recolonisation of Africa. The year 2009, two years before Gaddafi’s murder, was a pivotal one for US-African relations. First, because China surpassed the US as the continent’s largest trading partner; and second, because Gaddafi was elected President of the African Union. The significance of both for the decline of US influence on the continent could not be clearer. Whilst Gaddafi was spearheading attempts to unite Africa politically, committing serious amounts of Libyan oil wealth to make this dream a reality, China was quietly smashing the West’s monopoly over export markets and investment finance. Africa no longer had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for loans, agreeing to whatever self-defeating terms were on offer, but could turn to China – or indeed Libya – for investment. And if the US threatened to cut them off from their markets, China would happily buy up whatever was on offer. Western economic domination of Africa was under threat as never before. The response from the West, of course, was a military one. Economic dependence on the West – rapidly being shattered by Libya and China – would be replaced by a new military dependence. If African countries would no longer come begging for Western loans, export markets and investment finance, they would have to be put in a position where they would come begging for Western military aid. To this end, AFRICOM – the US army’s new ‘African command’ – had been launched the previous year, but humiliatingly for George W Bush, not a single African country would agree to host its HQ; instead, it was forced to open shop in Stuttgart, Germany. Gaddafi had led African opposition to AFRICOM, as exasperated US diplomatic memos later revealed by wikileaks made clear. And US pleas to African leaders to embrace AFRICOM in the ‘fight against terrorism’ fell on deaf ears. After all, as Muattisim Gaddafi, head of Libyan security, had explained to Hillary Clinton in 2009, North Africa already had an effective security system in place, through the African Union’s ‘standby forces’, on the one hand, and CEN-SAD on the other. CEN-SAD was a regional security organisation of Sahel and Saharan states, with a well-functioning security system, with Libya as the lynchpin. The sophisticated Libyan-led counter-terror structure meant there was simply no need for a US military presence. The job of Western planners, then, was to create such a need. NATO’s destruction of Libya simultaneously achieved three strategic goals for the West’s plans for military expansion in Africa. Most obviously, it removed the biggest obstacle and opponent of such expansion, Gaddafi himself. With Gaddafi gone, and with a quiescent pro-NATO puppet government in charge of Libya, there was no longer any chance that Libya would any longer act as a powerful force against Western militarism: quite the contrary – Libya’s new government was utterly dependent on such militarism, and knew it. Secondly, NATO’s aggression served to bring about a total collapse of the delicate but effective North African security system, which had been underpinned by Libya. And finally, NATO’s annihilation of the Libyan state effectively turned the country over to the region’s death squads and terror groups. These groups were then able to loot Libya’s military arsenals and set up training camps at their leisure, using these to expand operations right across the region. It is no coincidence that almost all of the recent terror attacks in North Africa – not to mention Manchester – have been either prepared in Libya or perpetrated by fighters trained in Libya. Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, ISIS, Mali’s Ansar Dine, and literally dozens of others, have all greatly benefitted from the destruction of Libya. By ensuring the spread of terror groups across the region, the Western powers had magically created a demand for their military assistance which hitherto did not exist. They had literally created a protection racket for Africa. In an excellent piece of research published last year, Nick Turse notes how the increase in AFRICOM operations across the continent has correlated precisely with the rise in terror threats: it’s growth, he notes, has been accompanied by “increasing numbers of lethal terror attacks across the continent including those in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon,Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger,Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Tunisia. In fact, data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Marylandshows that attacks have spiked over the last decade, roughly coinciding with AFRICOM’s establishment. In 2007, just before it became an independent command, there were fewer than 400 such incidents annually in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, the number reached nearly 2,000.” By AFRICOM’s own official standards, of course, this is a demonstration of massive failure. Viewed from the perspective of the protection racket, however, it is a resounding success, with US military power smoothly reproducing the conditions for its own expansion. This is the Africa policy Trump has now inherited. But because this policy has rarely been understood as the protection racket it really is, many commentators have, as with so many of Trump’s policies, mistakenly believed he is somehow ‘ignoring’ or ‘reversing’ the approach of his predecessors. In fact, far from abandoning this approach, Trump is escalating it with relish. What the Trump administration is doing, as it is doing in pretty much every policy area, is stripping the previous policy of its ‘soft power’ niceties to reveal and extend the iron fist which has in fact been in the driving seat all along. Trump, with his open disdain for Africa, has effectively ended US development aid for Africa – slashing overall African aid levels by one third, and transferring responsibility for much of the rest from the Agency for International Development to the Pentagon – whilst openly tying aid to the advancement of “US national security objectives”. In other words, the US has made a strategic decision to drop the carrot in favour of the stick. Given the overwhelming superiority of Chinese development assistance, this is unsurprising. The US has decided to stop trying to compete in this area, and instead to ruthlessly and unambiguously pursue the military approach which the Bush and Obama administrations had already mapped out. To this end, Trump has stepped up drone attacks, removing the (limited) restrictionsthat had been in place during the Obama era. The result has been a ramping up of civilian casualties, and consequently of the resentment and hatred which fuels militant recruitment. It is unlikely to be a coincidence, for example, that the Al Shabaab truck bombing that killed over 300 people in Mogadishu last weekend was carried out by men from a town in which had suffered a major drone attack on civilians, including women and children, in August. Indeed, a detailed study by the United Nations recently concluded that in “a majority of cases, state action appears to be the primary factor finally pushing individuals into violent extremism in Africa”. Of more than 500 former members of militant organisations interviewed for the report, 71% pointed to “government action”, including “killing of a family member or friend” or “arrest of a family member or friend” as the incident that prompted them to join a group. And so the cycle continues: drone attacks breed recruitment, which breeds further terror attacks, which leaves the states involved more dependent on US military support. Thus does the West create the demand for its own ‘products’. It does so in another way as well. Alexander Cockburn, in his book ‘Kill Chain’, explains how the policy of ‘targeted killings’ – another Obama policy ramped up under Trump – also increases the militancy of insurgent groups. Cockburn, reporting on a discussion with US soldiers about the efficacy of targeted killings, wrote that: “When the topic of conversation came round to ways of defeating the [roadside] bombs, everyone was in agreement. ‘They would have charts up on the wall showing the insurgent cells they were facing, often with the names and pictures of the guys running them,’ Rivolo remembers. ‘When we asked about going after the high-value individuals and what effect it was having, they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we killed that guy last month, and we’re getting more IEDs than ever.’ They all said the same thing, point blank: ‘[O]nce you knock them off, a day later you have a new guy who’s smarter, younger, more aggressive and is out for revenge.”’ Alex de Waal has noted how this is certainly true in Somalia, where, he notes,“each dead leader is followed by a more radical deputy. After a failed attempt in January 2007, the United States killed al Shabaab’s commander, Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, in a May 2008 air strike. Ayro’s successor, Ahmed Abdi Godane (alias Mukhtar Abu Zubair), was worse, affiliating the organization with al Qaeda. The United States succeeded in assassinating Godane in September 2014. In turn, Godane was succeeded by an even more determined extremist, Ahmad Omar (Abu Ubaidah).” It was presumably Omar who ordered the recent attack in Mogadishu, the worst in the country’s recent history. “If targeted killing remains a central strategy of the War on Terror”, De Waal wrote, “it is set to be an endless war.” But endless war is the whole point. For not only does it force African countries, finally freeing themselves from dependence on the IMF, into dependence on AFRICOM; it also undermines China’s blossoming relationship with Africa. Chinese trade and investment in Africa continues to grow apace. According to the China-Africa Research Initiative at John Hopkins University, Chinese FDI stocks in Africa have risen from just 2% of the value of US stocks in 2003 to 55% in 2015, when they totalled US$35 billion. This proportion is likely to rapidly increase, given that “Between 2009 and 2012, China’s direct investment in Africa grew at an annual rate of 20.5%, while levels of US FDI flows to Africa declined by US$8 billion in the wake of the global financial crisis”. Chinese-African trade, meanwhile, topped $100billion in 2015. China’s signature ‘One Belt One Road’ policy – to which President Xi Jinping has pledged $124billion to create global trade routes designed to facilitate $2trillion worth of annual trade – will also help to improve African links with China. Trump’s policy towards the project was summarised by Steve Bannon, his ideological mentor and former chief strategist, in just eight words: “Let’s go screw up One Belt One Road”. The West’s deeply destabilising Africa policy – of simultaneously creating the conditions for armed groups to thrive whilst offering protection against them – goes some way towards realising this ambitious goal. Removing Gaddafi was just the first step. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 22 00:14:41 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 00:14:41 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Another truth unveiled. Message-ID: 'No poison found' in Chile poet Pablo Neruda's remains * 8 November 2013 * From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean * Share this with Facebook * Share this with Twitter * Share this with Messenger * Share this with Email * Share Media captionEmily Thomas reports: ''Four decades of suspicion hang over Pablo Neruda's death'' No traces of poison have been found in the remains of Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, forensic experts say. The results were announced after more than six months of tests by 15 Chilean and foreign experts. The left-wing poet died in 1973, days after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. His body was exhumed in April to establish whether he died of poisoning, as his driver and others suspected. Neruda, who died aged 69, was a close friend of ousted Chilean President Salvador Allende. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not overEduardo Contreras, Chilean Communist Party lawyer "No traces of chemical agents have been found," said Patricio Bustos, director of the Chilean Forensic Service, on Friday. Mr Bustos confirmed that Neruda's remains seemed to support the official line that he had died of cancer. Suspicions However, Friday's highly-anticipated results did not satisfy everyone. "The Neruda case doesn't close today," said Chilean Communist Party lawyer Eduardo Contreras. "Today we are going to request more samples. They referred to chemical agents but there are no studies about biological agents. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not over." [Neruda and President Salvador Allende (undated image)]Image captionNeruda was a friend of ousted Chilean leader Salvador Allende, left Neruda's driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, had maintained that the poet was poisoned. Mr Araya said Neruda had called him from hospital, and told him he was feeling sick after having been given an injection in the stomach. Chile began investigating Mr Araya's allegations in 2011. The suspicions were backed by the Chilean Communist Party, which said Neruda did not exhibit any of the symptoms associated with the advanced prostate cancer he was said to have died of. They said that the military government feared Neruda would go into exile in Mexico and campaign against the Pinochet regime. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Oct 22 02:57:33 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 21:57:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Minutes from the AWARE Meeting, October 8 Message-ID: <39127FC0-9C7B-4348-A377-079AFB27251C@gmail.com> At their regular meeting (Sundays 5-6pm at Pizza M, 208 W Main St, Urbana) this week, members of AWARE considered what their reaction should be - in conjunction with the antiwar movement at large - in the event of a US armed attack on North Korea, Iran, or elsewhere. It was suggested that the most prominent US government installation in Champaign County was probably the Federal Courthouse at 201 S Vine St in Urbana. A significant expansion of US war-making - we're already at war in eight countries - should produce anti-war demonstrations around the country. AWARE's should probably be centered on Vine Street (and perhaps around the corner on E. Main Street). We should make plans for such a demonstration and use the means available to publicize them, and to communicate them to anti-war individuals and organizations in the area. Meanwhile, we should continue our presence at the Market, our monthly demonstration, and UPTV. Perhaps a new flyer discussing such plans is in order. ### -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Sun Oct 22 13:25:09 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 08:25:09 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The 'white working class' (WWC) In-Reply-To: <766DA0AB-E63F-451A-AF5B-DA2A2C7D56CF@gmail.com> References: <766DA0AB-E63F-451A-AF5B-DA2A2C7D56CF@gmail.com> Message-ID: <007801d34b39$2f6602f0$8e3208d0$@comcast.net> This is excellent Carl ! David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 8:45 AM To: Peace-discuss List Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net Subject: [Peace-discuss] The 'white working class' (WWC) The same is true in regard to reconstructing the anti-war movement: 'This is what zero-sum bourgeois identitarian anti-racists like Ta-Nehesi Coates fail to understand. Shaming white Americans for their stupid whiteness and lecturing them on their need to pay reparations and drop their white skin privilege (good luck telling a former factory worker who is struggling with diabetes and three months behind on her trailer-park fees how “privileged” she is) won’t get us very far when it comes to re-enlisting the WWC in the struggle for a better world. The real point to make to white workers is that they are killing themselves by failing to join in common struggle (in the spirit of the old CIO packinghouse union slogan “Black and White, Unite and Fight”) with their fellow workers of color, without whom they can never hope to prevail. As Asad Haider recently noted in a brilliant critique of Coates, “for the white people who are not owners of capital, white privilege is a poisoned bait.” So are the intimately related problems of white racial ignorance and fear.’ Full article at . —CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Oct 22 13:53:36 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 08:53:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The 'white working class' (WWC) In-Reply-To: <007801d34b39$2f6602f0$8e3208d0$@comcast.net> References: <766DA0AB-E63F-451A-AF5B-DA2A2C7D56CF@gmail.com> <007801d34b39$2f6602f0$8e3208d0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <68F0A510-0194-48CA-826C-2839411A7432@gmail.com> Paul Street is capable of missing the point … but when he’s accurate (as he was on Obama, early on), there are few better. More importantly, he points up the difference between those who see that exploitation is the problem - especially after 40 years of growing and accelerating inequality - and "bourgeois identitarian anti-racists” like Coates, and many of our IP friends. —CGE > On Oct 22, 2017, at 8:25 AM, David Johnson wrote: > > This is excellent Carl ! > > David J. > > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net ] On Behalf Of C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 8:45 AM > To: Peace-discuss List > Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net > Subject: [Peace-discuss] The 'white working class' (WWC) > > The same is true in regard to reconstructing the anti-war movement: > > 'This is what zero-sum bourgeois identitarian anti-racists like Ta-Nehesi Coates fail to understand. Shaming white Americans for their stupid whiteness and lecturing them on their need to pay reparations and drop their white skin privilege (good luck telling a former factory worker who is struggling with diabetes and three months behind on her trailer-park fees how “privileged” she is) won’t get us very far when it comes to re-enlisting the WWC in the struggle for a better world. The real point to make to white workers is that they are killing themselves by failing to join in common struggle (in the spirit of the old CIO packinghouse union slogan “Black and White, Unite and Fight”) with their fellow workers of color, without whom they can never hope to prevail. As Asad Haider recently noted in a brilliant critique of Coates, “for the white people who are not owners of capital, white privilege is a poisoned bait.” So are the intimately related problems of white racial ignorance and fear.’ > > Full article at >. —CGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 22 14:24:35 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 14:24:35 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Message-ID: At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:14 PM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:11 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Copyright 2010 Newstex LLC All Rights Reserved Newstex Web Blogs Copyright 2010 Atlantic Free Press Atlantic Free Press April 3, 2010 Saturday 9:07 AM EST LENGTH: 1826 words HEADLINE: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies & Con-Artists: Bush to Obama BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     Apr. 3, 2010 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) -- by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli Neo-Conservative Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.     These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Hobbist/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science for many years. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con cabal. Strauss was a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Chicagos Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society (A.K.A.:"Feddies"), which originated in part at the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School. There Barack Obama would teach constitutional law. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprints for establishing an American Police State. Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. According to his own public estimate and boast in a 26 February 2003 speech before the American Enterprise Institute (another front-organization for Straussian Neo-Cons), President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere were and still are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed. These same principles hold true for the not-so-closet Neo-Cons in the Obama administration: e.g., Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan, Dennis Ross, Cass Sunstein, etc. In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil. To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago. As for the University of Chicago overall, its New Testament is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss (and thus the intellectual grandson of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt), as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, longtime member of the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom was and is still worshiped on a pedestal and his elitist screed against democratic education in America still revered as gospel truth. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warranted criminal investigation by the F.B.I. Immediately after the Bush Jr. administrations wanton aggression against Iraq, the University of Chicago chose the occasion to officially celebrate its Straussian Neo-Con cabal responsible therefore, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Hobbist, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy." Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in the United States let alone in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were/are Feddies? Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot. For eight years the Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists of the Bush Jr. administration did everything humanly possible to build an American Police State. So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle their totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz and totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool. As J.D. Rockefeller, the Original Robber Baron and Funder of the University of Chicago once commented about his progeny: It's the best investment I ever made. Still is. Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-43485955 _______________________________________________ AALSMIN-L mailing list AALSMIN-L at lists.ubalt.edu http://lists.ubalt.edu/mailman/listinfo/aalsmin-l This email was sent using the University of Baltimore mailing list system. Messages sent via a University of Baltimore mailing do not necessarily represent the opinion of the University. From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 22 14:24:35 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 14:24:35 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Message-ID: At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:14 PM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:11 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Copyright 2010 Newstex LLC All Rights Reserved Newstex Web Blogs Copyright 2010 Atlantic Free Press Atlantic Free Press April 3, 2010 Saturday 9:07 AM EST LENGTH: 1826 words HEADLINE: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies & Con-Artists: Bush to Obama BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     Apr. 3, 2010 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) -- by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli Neo-Conservative Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.     These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Hobbist/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science for many years. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con cabal. Strauss was a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Chicagos Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society (A.K.A.:"Feddies"), which originated in part at the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School. There Barack Obama would teach constitutional law. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprints for establishing an American Police State. Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. According to his own public estimate and boast in a 26 February 2003 speech before the American Enterprise Institute (another front-organization for Straussian Neo-Cons), President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere were and still are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed. These same principles hold true for the not-so-closet Neo-Cons in the Obama administration: e.g., Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan, Dennis Ross, Cass Sunstein, etc. In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil. To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago. As for the University of Chicago overall, its New Testament is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss (and thus the intellectual grandson of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt), as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, longtime member of the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom was and is still worshiped on a pedestal and his elitist screed against democratic education in America still revered as gospel truth. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warranted criminal investigation by the F.B.I. Immediately after the Bush Jr. administrations wanton aggression against Iraq, the University of Chicago chose the occasion to officially celebrate its Straussian Neo-Con cabal responsible therefore, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Hobbist, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy." Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in the United States let alone in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were/are Feddies? Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot. For eight years the Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists of the Bush Jr. administration did everything humanly possible to build an American Police State. So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle their totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz and totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool. As J.D. Rockefeller, the Original Robber Baron and Funder of the University of Chicago once commented about his progeny: It's the best investment I ever made. Still is. Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-43485955 _______________________________________________ AALSMIN-L mailing list AALSMIN-L at lists.ubalt.edu http://lists.ubalt.edu/mailman/listinfo/aalsmin-l This email was sent using the University of Baltimore mailing list system. Messages sent via a University of Baltimore mailing do not necessarily represent the opinion of the University. From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 22 15:19:22 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 15:19:22 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Message-ID: On the perfidious "Chicago Boys" including Posner (a torture-mongerer) and his Law And Economics Movement, the best expose is by Naomi Klein in her "Shock Doctrine." Klein from the outside, and me from the Inside. We both can't be wrong. Fab. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2017 9:25 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: RE: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:14 PM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:11 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Copyright 2010 Newstex LLC All Rights Reserved Newstex Web Blogs Copyright 2010 Atlantic Free Press Atlantic Free Press April 3, 2010 Saturday 9:07 AM EST LENGTH: 1826 words HEADLINE: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies & Con-Artists: Bush to Obama BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     Apr. 3, 2010 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) -- by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli Neo-Conservative Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.     These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Hobbist/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science for many years. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con cabal. Strauss was a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Chicagos Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society (A.K.A.:"Feddies"), which originated in part at the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School. There Barack Obama would teach constitutional law. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprints for establishing an American Police State. Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. According to his own public estimate and boast in a 26 February 2003 speech before the American Enterprise Institute (another front-organization for Straussian Neo-Cons), President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere were and still are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed. These same principles hold true for the not-so-closet Neo-Cons in the Obama administration: e.g., Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan, Dennis Ross, Cass Sunstein, etc. In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil. To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago. As for the University of Chicago overall, its New Testament is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss (and thus the intellectual grandson of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt), as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, longtime member of the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom was and is still worshiped on a pedestal and his elitist screed against democratic education in America still revered as gospel truth. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warranted criminal investigation by the F.B.I. Immediately after the Bush Jr. administrations wanton aggression against Iraq, the University of Chicago chose the occasion to officially celebrate its Straussian Neo-Con cabal responsible therefore, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Hobbist, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy." Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in the United States let alone in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were/are Feddies? Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot. For eight years the Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists of the Bush Jr. administration did everything humanly possible to build an American Police State. So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle their totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz and totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool. As J.D. Rockefeller, the Original Robber Baron and Funder of the University of Chicago once commented about his progeny: It's the best investment I ever made. Still is. Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-43485955 _______________________________________________ AALSMIN-L mailing list AALSMIN-L at lists.ubalt.edu http://lists.ubalt.edu/mailman/listinfo/aalsmin-l This email was sent using the University of Baltimore mailing list system. Messages sent via a University of Baltimore mailing do not necessarily represent the opinion of the University. From fboyle at illinois.edu Sun Oct 22 15:19:22 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 15:19:22 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Message-ID: On the perfidious "Chicago Boys" including Posner (a torture-mongerer) and his Law And Economics Movement, the best expose is by Naomi Klein in her "Shock Doctrine." Klein from the outside, and me from the Inside. We both can't be wrong. Fab. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2017 9:25 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: RE: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:14 PM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 1:11 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Reply to NYT's NEOCONNING Stephens for NEOCONNING UCHICAGO & Zimmer: BULL-TWADDLE! Copyright 2010 Newstex LLC All Rights Reserved Newstex Web Blogs Copyright 2010 Atlantic Free Press Atlantic Free Press April 3, 2010 Saturday 9:07 AM EST LENGTH: 1826 words HEADLINE: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies & Con-Artists: Bush to Obama BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     Apr. 3, 2010 (Atlantic Free Press delivered by Newstex) -- by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. It is now a matter of public record that immediately after the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld and his pro-Israeli Neo-Conservative Deputy Paul Wolfowitz began to plot, plan, scheme and conspire to wage a war of aggression against Iraq by manipulating the tragic events of September 11th in order to provide a pretext for doing so. Of course Iraq had nothing at all to do with September 11th or supporting Al-Qaeda. But that made no difference to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, their Undersecretary of War Douglas Feith, and the numerous other pro-Israeli Neo-Cons inhabiting the Bush Jr. administration.     These pro-Israeli Neo-Cons had been schooled in the Machiavellian/Hobbist/Nietzschean theories of Professor Leo Strauss who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago in its Department of Political Science for many years. The best exposé of Strauss's pernicious theories on law, politics, government, for elitism, and against democracy can be found in two scholarly books by the Canadian Professor of Political Philosophy Shadia B. Drury: The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988); Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999). I entered the University of Chicago in September of 1968 shortly after Strauss had retired. But I was trained in Chicago's Political Science Department by Strauss's foremost protégé, co-author, and later literary executor Joseph Cropsey. Based upon my personal experience as an alumnus of Chicago's Political Science Department (A.B., 1971, in Political Science), I concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) completely with Professor Drury's devastating critique of Strauss. I also agree with her penetrating analysis of the degradation of the American political process that has been inflicted by Chicago's Straussian Neo-Con cabal. Strauss was a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Chicagos Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society (A.K.A.:"Feddies"), which originated in part at the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School. There Barack Obama would teach constitutional law. Feddies wrote the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) I and the draft for USAPA II, which constitute the blueprints for establishing an American Police State. Meanwhile, the Department of Injustice's own F.B.I. is still covering up the U.S. governmental origins of the post 11 September 2001 anthrax attacks on Washington D.C. that enabled Ashcroft and his Feddies to stampede the U.S. Congress into passing USAPA I into law. Integrally related to and overlapping with the Feddies are members of the University of Chicago Law School Movement of oeLaw-and-Kick-Them-in-the-Groin-Economics, which in turn was founded upon the Market Fundamentalism of Milton Friedman, now retired but long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys" have raped, robbed, looted, plundered, and pillaged economies and their respective peoples all over the developing world, especially People of Color, and now here in the United States. This Chicago gang of academic con-artists and charlatans are proponents of the Nazi Doctrine of "useless eaters" that was condemned by the Nuremberg Judgment (1946). Pursuant to Friedman's philosophy of Market Fundamentalism, the "privatization" of Iraq and its Oil Industry are already underway for the primary benefit of the U.S. energy companies (e.g., Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) , formerly under Bush Jr.s Vice President Dick Cheney) that had already interpenetrated the Bush Jr. administration as well as the Bush Family itself. Enron. Although miseducated at Yale and Harvard Business School, the "Ivies" proved to be too liberal for Bush Jr. and his fundamentalist Christian supporters, whose pointman and spearcarrier in the Bush Jr. administration was Ashcroft, a Fundie himself. The Neo-Cons and the Fundies contracted an "unholy alliance" in support of Bush Jr. For their own different reasons, both gangs also worked hand-in-hand to support Israel's genocidal Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an internationally acknowledged war criminal. According to his own public estimate and boast in a 26 February 2003 speech before the American Enterprise Institute (another front-organization for Straussian Neo-Cons), President Bush Jr. hired about 20 Straussians to occupy key positions in his administration, intentionally taking offices where they could push American foreign policy in favor of Israel and against its chosen enemies such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Most of the Straussian Neo-Cons in the Bush Jr. administration and elsewhere were and still are Israel-firsters: What is "good" for Israel is by definition "good" for the United States. Dual loyalties indeed. These same principles hold true for the not-so-closet Neo-Cons in the Obama administration: e.g., Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, Elena Kagan, Dennis Ross, Cass Sunstein, etc. In addition, it was the Chicago Straussian cabal of pro-Israeli Neo-Cons who set up a special "intelligence" unit within the Pentagon that was responsible for manufacturing many of the bald-faced lies, deceptions, half-truths, and sheer propaganda that the Bush Jr. administration then disseminated to the lap-dog U.S. news media in order to generate public support for a war of aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel and in order to steal Iraq's oil. To paraphrase advice Machiavelli once rendered to his Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book: Those who want to deceive will always find those willing to be deceived. As I can attest from my personal experience as an alumnus of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, the Bible of Chicago's Neo-Con Straussian cabal is Machiavelli's The Prince. We students had to know our Machiavelli by heart and rote at the University of Chicago. As for the University of Chicago overall, its New Testament is Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Of course Bloom was another protégé of Strauss (and thus the intellectual grandson of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt), as well as a mentor to Wolfowitz. In his Bloom-biographical novel Ravelstein (2000) Saul Bellow, longtime member of the University of Chicago Faculty, outed his self-styled friend Bloom as a hedonist, pederast, and most promiscuous homosexual who died of AIDS. All this was common knowledge at the University of Chicago, where Bloom was and is still worshiped on a pedestal and his elitist screed against democratic education in America still revered as gospel truth. In Ravelstein Wolfowitz appeared as Bloom's protégé Philip Gorman, leaking national security secrets to his mentor during the Bush Sr. war against Iraq. Strauss hovered around the novel as Bloom's mentor and guru Professor Davarr. Strauss/Davarr is really the eminence grise of Ravelstein. With friends like Bellow, Bloom did not need enemies. On the basis of Ravelstein alone, Wolfowitz warranted criminal investigation by the F.B.I. Immediately after the Bush Jr. administrations wanton aggression against Iraq, the University of Chicago chose the occasion to officially celebrate its Straussian Neo-Con cabal responsible therefore, highlighting Wolfowitz Ph.D. '72, Ahmad Chalabi, Ph.D. '69 (the CIA's Iraqi puppet), Abram Shulsky, A.M. '68, Ph.D. '72 (head of the Pentagon's special "intelligence" unit), Zalmay Khalilzad, Ph.D. '79 (Bush Jr.'s roving pro-consul for Afghanistan and then Iraq), as well as faculty members Bellow, X '39, and Bloom, A.B. '49, A.M. '53, Ph.D. '55, together with Strauss. According to the June 2003 University of Chicago Magazine, Bloom's rant "helped popularize Straussian ideals of democracy." It is correct to assert that Bloom's book helped to popularize Straussian "ideas," but they were blatantly anti-democratic, Machiavellian, Hobbist, Nietzschean, and elitist to begin with. Only the University of Chicago would have the unmitigated Orwellian gall to publicly assert that Strauss and Bloom cared one whit about democracy, let alone comprehended the "ideals of democracy." Does anyone seriously believe that a pro-Israeli Chicago/Strauss/Bloom product such as Wolfowitz could care less about democracy in the United States let alone in Iraq? Or for that matter anyone in the Bush Jr. administration? After they stole the 2000 presidential election from the American People in Florida and before the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, some of whom were/are Feddies? Justice Clarence Thomas is a Straussian to boot. For eight years the Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies, and Con-Artists of the Bush Jr. administration did everything humanly possible to build an American Police State. So far University of Chicago Constitutional Law Teacher President Barack Obama has failed and refused to deconstruct and dismantle their totalitarian handiwork. To the contrary, the Obama administration has defended and justified in court almost every hideous atrocity that the Bush Jr. administration perpetrated on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the behest of its Straussian Neo-Con Political Science Department, in 1979 the entire University of Chicago went out of its way to grant the "first Albert Pick Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to International Understanding" to Robert McNamara, who was personally responsible for exterminating 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 men of my generation. In other words, the University of Chicago itself maliciously strove to rehabilitate one of the greatest international war criminals in the post-World War II era. History shall always record that the University of Chicago gratuitously honored Bob Half-an-Eichmann McNamara. Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like Wolfowitz and totalitarians like Ashcroft! The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool. As J.D. Rockefeller, the Original Robber Baron and Funder of the University of Chicago once commented about his progeny: It's the best investment I ever made. Still is. Newstex ID: ATFR-0001-43485955 _______________________________________________ AALSMIN-L mailing list AALSMIN-L at lists.ubalt.edu http://lists.ubalt.edu/mailman/listinfo/aalsmin-l This email was sent using the University of Baltimore mailing list system. Messages sent via a University of Baltimore mailing do not necessarily represent the opinion of the University. From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 22 20:52:09 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 20:52:09 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] My cut and paste from Ben Norton's FB page, has been tampered with. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: When I copied and did a paste of this article the title was “Neruda didn’t die of cancer." it looks as if the article has been tainted, since I copied it. This is not what I posted. Poisoning has not yet been ruled out according to the previous article, which was posted on my FB. On Oct 21, 2017, at 17:14, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: 'No poison found' in Chile poet Pablo Neruda's remains * 8 November 2013 * From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean * Share this with Facebook * Share this with Twitter * Share this with Messenger * Share this with Email * Share Media captionEmily Thomas reports: ''Four decades of suspicion hang over Pablo Neruda's death'' No traces of poison have been found in the remains of Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, forensic experts say. The results were announced after more than six months of tests by 15 Chilean and foreign experts. The left-wing poet died in 1973, days after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. His body was exhumed in April to establish whether he died of poisoning, as his driver and others suspected. Neruda, who died aged 69, was a close friend of ousted Chilean President Salvador Allende. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not overEduardo Contreras, Chilean Communist Party lawyer "No traces of chemical agents have been found," said Patricio Bustos, director of the Chilean Forensic Service, on Friday. Mr Bustos confirmed that Neruda's remains seemed to support the official line that he had died of cancer. Suspicions However, Friday's highly-anticipated results did not satisfy everyone. "The Neruda case doesn't close today," said Chilean Communist Party lawyer Eduardo Contreras. "Today we are going to request more samples. They referred to chemical agents but there are no studies about biological agents. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not over." [Neruda and President Salvador Allende (undated image)]Image captionNeruda was a friend of ousted Chilean leader Salvador Allende, left Neruda's driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, had maintained that the poet was poisoned. Mr Araya said Neruda had called him from hospital, and told him he was feeling sick after having been given an injection in the stomach. Chile began investigating Mr Araya's allegations in 2011. The suspicions were backed by the Chilean Communist Party, which said Neruda did not exhibit any of the symptoms associated with the advanced prostate cancer he was said to have died of. They said that the military government feared Neruda would go into exile in Mexico and campaign against the Pinochet regime. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7Ccb9c9e5c93064d6b58af08d518e1f2b3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636442281069053763&sdata=cz7cBF2bo3xWHVumojuy0heUZLkHkCYQAGWgM%2FYWwSE%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Sun Oct 22 23:01:35 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2017 18:01:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Pablo Neruda - BBC articles on his death, whether poisoned or not -- was: My cut and paste from Ben Norton's FB page, has been tampered with. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5085d828-1431-e391-843d-01035cd31b2f@gmail.com> Hey Karen, This seems to be the article you had seen originally, and it's still on the BBC web site:      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41702706 Pablo Neruda 'did not die of cancer', say experts Chilean poet Pablo Neruda did not die of prostate cancer, forensic experts have said. The Nobel Laureate was said to have died of cancer in 1973, less than two weeks after a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. But his former driver Manuel Araya maintains he actually died after being poisoned by the secret service. New tests on Neruda's remains have now confirmed he did not die of cancer, but have yet to reveal the actual cause. * The mystery of Pablo Neruda's death Dr Aurelio Luna told a press conference the experts were "100% convinced" that the death certificate "does not reflect the reality of the death". The poet was suffering from prostate cancer, but it was not life-threatening - leading the 16 international experts to conclude a third party could have possibly been involved. They will now carry out tests on a toxin found in his remains, which were exhumed on a judge's orders in 2013. It could be up to a year before the results are known. Neruda was a supporter and personal friend of Chile's deposed socialist President, Salvador Allende. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Neruda's wife Matilde (pictured with the poet) did not believe he had died of cancer The poet died on 23 September 1973, 12 days after the military coup and three days after he had been offered asylum in Mexico. According to Mr Araya, the day he died he called to say he had been injected in the stomach while he was asleep, and to come to the hospital quickly. Neruda died that evening, and Mr Araya says he has no doubt what killed him. "Until the day I die I will not alter my story," Mr Araya told the BBC in 2013. "Neruda was murdered. They didn't want Neruda to leave the country so they killed him." On 10/22/2017 03:52 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > When I copied and did a paste of this article the title was “Neruda > didn’t die of cancer." it looks as if the article has been tainted, > since I copied it. This is not what I posted. Poisoning has not yet > been ruled out according to the previous article, which was posted on > my FB. > >> On Oct 21, 2017, at 17:14, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss >> > > wrote: >> >> >> >> 'No poison found' in Chile poet Pablo Neruda's remains >> >> * >> 8 November 2013 >>   >> * From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean >> >> >> * Share this with Facebook >>   >> * Share this with Twitter >>   >> * Share this with Messenger >>   >> * Share this with Email >>   >> * Share >> >> >> Media captionEmily Thomas reports: ''Four decades of suspicion hang >> over Pablo Neruda's death'' >> >> No traces of poison have been found in the remains of Chile's Nobel >> Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, forensic experts say. >> >> The results were announced after more than six months of tests by 15 >> Chilean and foreign experts. >> >> The left-wing poet died in 1973, days after the military coup that >> brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. >> >> His body was exhumed in April to establish whether he died of >> poisoning, as his driver and others suspected. >> >> Neruda, who died aged 69, was a close friend of ousted Chilean >> President Salvador Allende. >> >> A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously >> but this is not over >> Eduardo Contreras, Chilean Communist Party lawyer >> >> "No traces of chemical agents have been found," said Patricio Bustos, >> director of the Chilean Forensic Service, on Friday. >> >> Mr Bustos confirmed that Neruda's remains seemed to support the >> official line that he had died of cancer. >> >> >> Suspicions >> >> However, Friday's highly-anticipated results did not satisfy everyone. >> >> "The Neruda case doesn't close today," said Chilean Communist Party >> lawyer Eduardo Contreras. >> >> "Today we are going to request more samples. They referred to >> chemical agents but there are no studies about biological agents. A >> very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but >> this is not over." >> >> Neruda and President Salvador Allende (undated image)Image >> captionNeruda was a friend of ousted Chilean leader Salvador Allende, >> left >> >> Neruda's driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, had maintained >> that the poet was poisoned. >> >> Mr Araya said Neruda had called him from hospital, and told him he >> was feeling sick after having been given an injection in the stomach. >> >> Chile began investigating Mr Araya's allegations in 2011. >> >> The suspicions were backed by the Chilean Communist Party, which said >> Neruda did not exhibit any of the symptoms associated with the >> advanced prostate cancer he was said to have died of. >> >> They said that the military government feared Neruda would go into >> exile in Mexico and campaign against the Pinochet regime. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> >> https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7Ccb9c9e5c93064d6b58af08d518e1f2b3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636442281069053763&sdata=cz7cBF2bo3xWHVumojuy0heUZLkHkCYQAGWgM%2FYWwSE%3D&reserved=0 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 23 00:20:17 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 00:20:17 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Pablo Neruda - BBC articles on his death, whether poisoned or not -- was: My cut and paste from Ben Norton's FB page, has been tampered with. In-Reply-To: <5085d828-1431-e391-843d-01035cd31b2f@gmail.com> References: <5085d828-1431-e391-843d-01035cd31b2f@gmail.com> Message-ID: Thanks Stuart, and thanks for explaining what might have happened. On Oct 22, 2017, at 16:01, Stuart Levy > wrote: Hey Karen, This seems to be the article you had seen originally, and it's still on the BBC web site: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41702706 Pablo Neruda 'did not die of cancer', say experts Chilean poet Pablo Neruda did not die of prostate cancer, forensic experts have said. The Nobel Laureate was said to have died of cancer in 1973, less than two weeks after a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. But his former driver Manuel Araya maintains he actually died after being poisoned by the secret service. New tests on Neruda's remains have now confirmed he did not die of cancer, but have yet to reveal the actual cause. * The mystery of Pablo Neruda's death Dr Aurelio Luna told a press conference the experts were "100% convinced" that the death certificate "does not reflect the reality of the death". The poet was suffering from prostate cancer, but it was not life-threatening - leading the 16 international experts to conclude a third party could have possibly been involved. They will now carry out tests on a toxin found in his remains, which were exhumed on a judge's orders in 2013. It could be up to a year before the results are known. Neruda was a supporter and personal friend of Chile's deposed socialist President, Salvador Allende. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Neruda's wife Matilde (pictured with the poet) did not believe he had died of cancer The poet died on 23 September 1973, 12 days after the military coup and three days after he had been offered asylum in Mexico. According to Mr Araya, the day he died he called to say he had been injected in the stomach while he was asleep, and to come to the hospital quickly. Neruda died that evening, and Mr Araya says he has no doubt what killed him. "Until the day I die I will not alter my story," Mr Araya told the BBC in 2013. "Neruda was murdered. They didn't want Neruda to leave the country so they killed him." On 10/22/2017 03:52 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: When I copied and did a paste of this article the title was “Neruda didn’t die of cancer." it looks as if the article has been tainted, since I copied it. This is not what I posted. Poisoning has not yet been ruled out according to the previous article, which was posted on my FB. On Oct 21, 2017, at 17:14, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: 'No poison found' in Chile poet Pablo Neruda's remains * 8 November 2013 * From the sectionLatin America & Caribbean * Share this with Facebook * Share this with Twitter * Share this with Messenger * Share this with Email * Share Media captionEmily Thomas reports: ''Four decades of suspicion hang over Pablo Neruda's death'' No traces of poison have been found in the remains of Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda, forensic experts say. The results were announced after more than six months of tests by 15 Chilean and foreign experts. The left-wing poet died in 1973, days after the military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. His body was exhumed in April to establish whether he died of poisoning, as his driver and others suspected. Neruda, who died aged 69, was a close friend of ousted Chilean President Salvador Allende. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not over Eduardo Contreras, Chilean Communist Party lawyer "No traces of chemical agents have been found," said Patricio Bustos, director of the Chilean Forensic Service, on Friday. Mr Bustos confirmed that Neruda's remains seemed to support the official line that he had died of cancer. Suspicions However, Friday's highly-anticipated results did not satisfy everyone. "The Neruda case doesn't close today," said Chilean Communist Party lawyer Eduardo Contreras. "Today we are going to request more samples. They referred to chemical agents but there are no studies about biological agents. A very important chapter has closed and was done very seriously but this is not over." [Neruda and President Salvador Allende (undated image)]Image captionNeruda was a friend of ousted Chilean leader Salvador Allende, left Neruda's driver and personal assistant, Manuel Araya, had maintained that the poet was poisoned. Mr Araya said Neruda had called him from hospital, and told him he was feeling sick after having been given an injection in the stomach. Chile began investigating Mr Araya's allegations in 2011. The suspicions were backed by the Chilean Communist Party, which said Neruda did not exhibit any of the symptoms associated with the advanced prostate cancer he was said to have died of. They said that the military government feared Neruda would go into exile in Mexico and campaign against the Pinochet regime. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7Ccb9c9e5c93064d6b58af08d518e1f2b3%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636442281069053763&sdata=cz7cBF2bo3xWHVumojuy0heUZLkHkCYQAGWgM%2FYWwSE%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Mon Oct 23 03:09:01 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 03:09:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?America=E2=80=99s_Forever_Wars?= References: <59ED57F5.00000050@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> Message-ID: <9D0010E9-BF2C-4075-B3AE-EB0963056478@illinois.edu> Subject: NYTimes.com: America’s Forever Wars Date: October 22, 2017 Reply-To: > Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu: [http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo194x27.gif] [https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/10/23/opinion/23mon1web/23mon1web-thumbStandard.jpg] Editorial America’s Forever Wars By THE EDITORIAL BOARD How many foreign entanglements will the public tolerate, and why is Congress AWOL from this debate? Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2gZjWCv -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 23 14:12:31 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:12:31 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Monday morning rant Message-ID: My posting on FB in relation to the USG now placing our B52 bombers on high alert, had a response from one, non American, that I shouldn’t worry about the US attacking NK because the US is really smart. My reply: Oh, I’m so relieved, nothings going to happen because the USG is clever and it won't take on China or Russia? Silly me, along with thousands of other people, are worried for nothing. I mean, accidents never happen, and we have such “smart" people in power, and N.K. has such a smart leader, that nothing will happen. Yes, never mind the really smart people who dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the resultant horrors in Japan, never mind the really smart people who implemented the Holocaust, never mind the really smart people, as portrayed in "The Best and the Brightest" slaughtering how many Vietnamese with bombs, and agent orange? Never mind the really smart people dropping more bombs on Cambodia than any time previous to 2007. Never mind the really smart people who gave us the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, not to mention all the nations throughout the world which we have destroyed through intervention. The really smart people who have instigated Nato on the borders of Russia. Good, I’m so relieved, now I can relax because we have really smart people in charge of the world. Don't get me going on climate change, or the lack of healthcare in the US. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 23 14:27:00 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 14:27:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] World is a dangerous place: US prepares to put B-52 nuclear bombers on high alert Message-ID: ‘World is a dangerous place’: US prepares to put B-52 nuclear bombers on high alert Published time: 23 Oct, 2017 07:24Edited time: 23 Oct, 2017 08:20 Get short URL [‘World is a dangerous place’: US prepares to put B-52 nuclear bombers on high alert] FILE PHOTO: Bombs wait to be loaded on to a B-52H long range bomber (BACKGROUND), part of the US Eight Air Force, at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana © Pual J. Richards / AFP 4K The US Air Force is renovating Cold War-era launch pads as it prepares to put its strategic bombers on constant 24-hour alert to engage in potential nuclear conflict for the first time since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. “The world is a dangerous place and we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein told US military website Defense One. “It’s no longer a bipolar world where it’s just us and the Soviet Union. We’ve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It’s never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.” Read more [The still-to-be-developed weapon would replace Boeing's AGM-86B Air Launched Cruise Missile © Reuters]Lockheed & Raytheon to develop new US nuclear cruise missile – Pentagon Goldfein said that the order to return the B-52 bombers to high-readiness has not yet been issued, but showed journalists the ongoing construction work at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Nine alert pads branching off from an 11,000-foot runway are being renovated, along with a nearby building that will house more than 100 crew members assigned to the B-52 bombers, which have been in service since the 1950s. Despite their age, Goldfein believes that the bombers could play a role in a modern conflict – certain to be different from the mutually assured destruction of the Cold War. “I’ve challenged Air Force Global Strike Command to help lead the dialog, help with this discussion about ‘What does conventional conflict look like with a nuclear element?’ and ‘Do we respond as a global force if that were to occur?’ and ‘What are the options?’ ‘How do we think about it — how do we think about deterrence in that environment?’” The final authority to place the bombers outside rests with either the head of the US Strategic Command, STRATCOM, which oversees the country’s nuclear arsenals, or the head of US Northern Command, NORTHCOM, responsible for defending the US in case of war. Read more [People perform for nuclear scientists and engineers who contributed to a hydrogen bomb test in North Korea © KCNA]N. Korea may be ‘months’ away from capability to nuke US, CIA chief hints “Our job is options,” Goldfein said. “We provide best military advice and options for the commander in chief and the secretary of defense. Should the STRATCOM commander require or the NORTHCOM commander require us to be on a higher state of readiness to defend the homeland, then we have to have a place to put those forces.” Additionally, Goldfein said that Barksdale and other US bases are building storage facilities for new intercontinental ballistic missiles. In August, the White House issued an order to develop a replacement for the Minuteman III, the only land-based nuclear missile still in use by the US Army, which was introduced in 1970, and has since been superseded by several generations of strategic weapons developed by Russia, China, and other nuclear states. The US Air Force is also conducting operational tests of a new modification of its plane-delivered nuclear gravity bomb, with the B61-12 expected to enter service by 2020. READ MORE: US successfully tests new nuclear gravity bomb Asked whether these measures were likely to be an effective deterrent against North Korea, which has backed up its stated intention to become a nuclear state with a series of successful tests, or other volatile actors, Goldfein seemed less sure. “It depends on who, what kind of behavior are we talking about, and whether they’re paying attention to our readiness status,” he said. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Mon Oct 23 15:09:16 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 10:09:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?US_State_Dept_travel_warning_=2810/18/1?= =?utf-8?q?7=29_--_Fwd=3A_US_Admitting_Syrian_Militants_Use_Chemical_Weapo?= =?utf-8?q?ns_=E2=80=98Welcome=E2=80=99_Overdue_Corrective?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Francis Boyle pointed out the US State Dept. travel warning that's the basis for his comments to Sputnik.    Here's a link (dated 10/18/17) *and* the text that's there at the moment - in case a future version of the travel warning omits the parts Boyle refers to:     https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings/syria-travel-warning.html It's been assumed (publicly by our gov't and in our press) that when chemical weapons were used in Syria, it must have been the Syrian government which used them.   This travel advisory implies that our own State Dept doesn't believe that's necessarily so.  See this bit: > Tactics of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other violent extremist > groups include the use of suicide bombers, kidnapping, small and heavy > arms, improvised explosive devices, and chemical weapons. Syria Travel Warning Last Updated: October 18, 2017 *The Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens against all travel to Syria and strongly recommends that U.S. citizens remaining in Syria depart immediately. The security situation remains dangerous and unpredictable.  *Violent conflict between government and armed anti-government groups continues throughout the country. There is a serious risk for kidnappings, bombings, murder, and terrorism. This replaces the Travel Warning dated March 22, 2017.  No part of Syria is safe from violence. Small arms fire, improvised explosives, artillery shelling, airstrikes, kidnappings, arbitrary arrests, and the use of chemical weapons transpire with little or no warning, significantly raising the risk of death or serious injury. While there have been internationally supported efforts to de-escalate the conflict, violence still persists in many parts of the country. The Syrian government has demonstrated reluctance to comply with ceasefire agreements in East Ghouta, Homs, and Idlib. In addition, Russian and/or Syrian forces continue to conduct airstrikes in Idlib province, which have recently resulted in dozens of civilian casualties and the death of medical personnel. Moreover, the Syrian government and its partners continue to prohibit the free flow of humanitarian aid into besieged areas, resulting in severe food shortages. Terrorist and other violent extremist groups including ISIS and al-Qa’ida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (dominated by al-Qa’ida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusrah, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization), operate in Syria. In July 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham consolidated power in Idlib province after it clashed with other armed actors. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham control over Idlib threatens the ability of NGOs and states to deliver humanitarian aid to Syrians residing in Idlib. Moreover, Russia and/or the Syrian government initiated airstrikes in Idlib in September, which resulted in significant damage to medical facilities and dozens of civilian casualties. Tactics of ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other violent extremist groups include the use of suicide bombers, kidnapping, small and heavy arms, improvised explosive devices, and chemical weapons. They have targeted major city centers, road checkpoints, border crossings, government buildings, shopping areas, and open spaces, in Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr provinces. These groups have murdered and kidnapped U.S. citizens, both for ransom and political purposes; in some instances U.S. citizens have disappeared within Syria. Because of the security situation in Syria, the U.S. government’s ability to help U.S. citizens kidnapped or taken hostage is very limited. The U.S. government particularly warns private U.S. citizens against traveling to Syria to engage in armed conflict. U.S. citizens who undertake such activity face extreme personal risks, including kidnapping, injury, or death. The U.S. government does not support this activity, and our ability to provide consular assistance to individuals who are injured or kidnapped, or to the families of individuals who die in the conflict, is extremely limited. Individuals who demonstrate an interest in groups opposing ISIS, including on social media, could open themselves to being targeted by ISIS itself, especially if those individuals travel to Syria. Fighting on behalf of or providing other forms of support to designated terrorist organizations, including ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusrah (also known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham), can constitute the provision of material support for terrorism, which is a crime under U.S. law that can result in penalties including prison time and large fines. The destruction of infrastructure, housing, medical facilities, schools, and power and water utilities has also increased hardships inside the country. Communications in Syria are difficult as phone and internet connections are unreliable. U.S. citizens have reported facing dangers traveling within the country and when trying to leave Syria via land borders, given the diminishing availability of commercial air travel out of Syria. Opposition-held land border checkpoints should not be considered safe, as they are targeted by regime attacks and some armed groups have sought funding through kidnappings for ransom. Border areas are frequent targets of shelling and other attacks and are crowded because of internally-displaced refugees. Errant attacks will occasionally hit border towns just outside the borders as well. Road checkpoints controlled by armed terrorist and violent extremist groups have been utilized to conduct kidnappings, including of U.S. citizens. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) prohibits U.S. civil aviation from flying in the Damascus Flight Information Region (FIR) because of the ongoing armed conflict and volatile security environment. This FIR includes all the airspace over Syria and extends into adjacent international airspace. In addition, U.S. government personnel in Lebanon are prohibited from taking flights that pass through the Damascus FIR. A number of armed extremist groups are known to be equipped with a variety of antiaircraft weapons that have the capability to threaten civil aircraft. For additional background information regarding FAA flight prohibitions and advisories for U.S. civil aviation, U.S. citizens should consult the Federal Aviation Administration’s Prohibitions, Restrictions and Notices . The U.S. Embassy in Damascus suspended its operations in February 2012 and cannot provide protection or routine consular services to U.S. citizens in Syria. The Government of the Czech Republic, acting through its Embassy in Damascus, serves as the Protecting Power for U.S. interests in Syria. The range of consular services the Czech Republic provides to U.S. citizens is extremely limited, and those services, including U.S. passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad, may require significantly more processing time than at U.S. embassies or consulates outside Syria. U.S. citizens in Syria who seek consular services should try to quickly and safely leave the country and contact a U.S. embassy or consulate in a neighboring country, if at all possible.  U.S. citizens who are unable to safely leave Syria and require consular services may contact the U.S. Interests Section of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Damascus at USIS_damascus at embassy.mzv.cz . U.S. citizens in Syria who are in need of emergency assistance and are unable to reach the U.S. Interests Section of the Embassy of the Czech Republic, or must make contact outside business hours, should contact the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan : Telephone: +962 (6) 590-6950 (Daily 2-3:30 local time) Emergencies: +962 (6) 590-6500 E-mail: Amman-ACS at state.gov For additional information about U.S. citizens' services in Syria from the Office of Overseas Citizens' Services in Washington, e-mail: SyriaEmergencyUSC at state.gov . For information on "What the Department of State Can and Can't Do in a Crisis," please visit the Bureau of Consular Affairs' Emergencies and Crisis link at Travel.State.Gov . Up-to-date information on security can also be obtained by calling 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or, for callers outside the United States and Canada, on a regular toll line at 1-202-501-4444. These numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays). For additional information: * See the State Department's travel website  for the Worldwide Caution , Travel Warnings, Travel Alerts, and Syria Country Specific Information . * Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program  (STEP ) to receive security messages and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.  * Call 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or 1-202-501-4444 from other countries from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays). * Follow us on Twitter  and Facebook . Embassies & Consulates Assistance for U.S. Citizens Embassy of the Czech Republic The Government of the Czech Republic serves as the protecting power for U.S. interests in Syria. U.S. citizens in Syria who seek consular services should contact the U.S. Interests Section of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Damascus at USIS_damascus at embassy.mzv.cz. U.S. citizens in Syria who are in need of emergency assistance in Syria and are unable to reach the U.S. Interests Section of the Embassy of the Czech Republic or must make contact outside business hours, should contact the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan: * Emergency After-Hours Telephone +(962) (6) 590-6500 * Email AmmanACS at state.gov * Embassy of Jordan View more locations View Larger Map Learn About Your Destination Enroll in STEP Enrolling in this free service will allow us to better assist you in case of an emergency while you are abroad. Enroll On 10/20/2017 10:09 PM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: >> >>   >> Shared from sputniknews.com >>   >> US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue >> Corrective >> https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710211058422305-usa-terrorists-use-chemicals-syria/ >> >> >> *US KNEW ALL ALONG* >> >> The US government was finally started to acknowledge that groups it >> had supported had employed chemical weapons in Syria where the Trump >> and Obama administrations had sought to blame the Damascus government >> for such attacks, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis >> Boyle told Sputnik. >> >> These policies were part of a wider US strategy to topple the >> Damascus government that was clearly illegal under international law, >> Boyle pointed out. >> >> The United States had backed the Syrian terror groups "as part of an >> illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government in violation >> of the United Nations Charter and the rulings of the World Court >> in the Case of Nicaragua versus United States of America >> (1984-1986)," he said. >> >> US policymakers could have had no doubt that the terror groups they >> were financing, helping to organize and arming had been s using >> chemical weapons, Boyle observed. >> >> "Of course the United States government  >> knows >> full well that some of its surrogate terrorist organizations in Syria >> have used chemical weapons," he said. >> >> © SPUTNIK/ MIKHAIL VOSKRESENSKIY >> *OPCW Says Found Evidence of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria's Hama in >> March >> * >> Over the past four years, successive US administrations had >> deliberately and cynically blamed Damascus for chemical attacks that >> they knew their own allies had carried out, Boyle stated. >> >> "Both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration have >> maliciously exploited their surrogates’ uses of chemical weapons >> as pretexts and propaganda to justify direct US military intervention >> into Syria," he said. >> >> Boyle also warned that even after the admission buried deep in this >> week’s Travel Advisory, the US government could again in the future >> blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks that it knew had >> been carried out in reality by its own allies. >> >> "It very well could happen again. Caveat emptor!" he said. >> >> Al-Nusra Front controls Syria's Idlib Governorate through the >> umbrella terrorist group al-Sham and is still thought to be a front >> for al-Qaeda. >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69100 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Oct 23 23:53:40 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 18:53:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Minutes from the AWARE meeting, October 22 Message-ID: <4ABD0CCE-2055-491D-B6A4-E2621A37395A@gmail.com> At their regular meeting (Sundays 5-6pm at Pizza M, 208 W Main St, Urbana) this week, members of AWARE considered which AWARE activities in our communities best publicized US war making and the opposition to it: [1] The literature table at the Farmers’ Market in Lincoln Square is over for the year. This weekly activity will be replaced by an indoor market until Xmas, run by the Urbana Business Association. It was suggested that AWARE have a table there on three or four Saturdays - perhaps December 2, 9, 16, and/or 23 [2] Our monthly antiwar demonstration in downtown Champaign (the first Saturday of every month, 2-4pm, at the corner of Main and Neil Streets) will occur inshallah on Saturday 4 November. Suggestions (or drafts) of a flyer to be distributed then are welcome. [3] ‘AWARE on the Air’ (a TV program available on Urbana Public TV and YouTube) is our weekly one-hour discussion of the ongoing U.S. wars and the resistance to them. New programs are recorded every Tuesday, noon to 1pm, in the studios of UPTV, 200 Vine St., Urbana. Members and friends of AWARE are invited to participate in this unrehearsed discussion. [4] AWARE members at the meeting recommend the following articles this week: [5] The following appeared in the News-Gazette: “We want to hear your Vietnam stories... This is a forum open to all who lived during those years: servicemen, civilians, refugees, protesters, contractors, and local, state and federal officials. One objective: to continue this newspaper's tradition of sharing history through the stories of local people. But it's also our hope that by reading about each other's experiences, we as a society can bridge the divisions that were painfully obvious in the U.S. during the 1960s and '70s. Feel free to contact Managing Editor Dan Corkery at dcorkery at news-gazette.com or by mail at The News-Gazette, P.O. Box 677, Champaign, IL 61824-0677.” It’s suggested that members and friends of AWARE of the appropriate age should write a comment of this sort (perhaps 100-700 words) and send it in. Antiwar stories should counter war stories. [6] Note the following: . --CGE From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 01:57:57 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 01:57:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 8:54 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle .... and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night.... -------------------------- BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US foreign fighters in the AfPak theater under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 23 casualties in the week ending September 3 as the official casualty total for the Iraq and AfPak wars* rose to 122,128. The total includes 81,340 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations "Iraqi Freedom" and "New Dawn"). New Dawn ended Dec 31, 2011, although those who died of wounds or injuries later are included. Operation "Enduring Freedom" began with the invasion of Afghanistan in November, 2001 and has resulted in 40,788 casualties. AFGHANISTAN THEATER: US foreign fighters suffered 23 combat casualties during the week ending September 3 as the total rose to 40,788. The total includes 21,816 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 18,972 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec.3, 2012, when it stopped making the count public) from what it called "non-hostile" causes. IRAQ THEATER: Obama ordered about 250 more foreign fighters to Iraq, adding to the 1,000 he already sent since last month (together with his air force), but the total remains unclear, because most of several thousand armed US employees are designated as civilians. The casualty total recently stood at 35,771 dead and wounded from "hostile" causes and 45,569 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec 3, 2012) from "non-hostile" causes. US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by reporting regularly only the total killed (6,833- 4,491 in Iraq, 2,342 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (52,224 - 32,242 in Iraq; 19,982 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 59,908 (44,607 in Iraq,18,463 in AfPak (as of Dec 3, 2012) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medevac'd out of theater, even though the 6,831 total dead include 1,470 (962 in Iraq, 508 in Afghanistan) who died from those same "non hostile" causes of whom almost 25% (332) were suicides (as of Jan 9, 2013). LENGTH: 3653 words HEADLINE: O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     by Francis Boyle On the morning of 13 September 2001, that is 48 hours after the terrible tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11th, I received telephone call from a producer at Fox Television Network News in New York City. He asked me to go onto The O'Reilly Factor TV program live that evening in order to debate Bill O'Reilly on the question of war versus peace. O'Reilly would argue for the United States going to war in reaction to the terrorist attacks on 11 September, and I would argue for a peaceful resolution of this matter.    Up until then I had deliberately declined numerous requests for interviews about the terrible events of September 11 and what should be done about them because it was not clear to me precisely what was going on. But unfortunately The O'Reilly Factor had the Number One ranking in TV viewership for any news media talk program in America. I felt very strongly as a matter of principle that at least one person from the American Peace Movement had to go onto that program and argue the case directly to the American people that the United States of America must not go to war despite the terrible tragedy that had been inflicted upon us all. I had debated O'Reilly before so I was fully aware of the type of abuse to expect from him. So for the next few hours I negotiated with O'Reilly through his producer as to the terms and conditions of my appearance and our debate, which they agreed to. At the time I did not realize that O'Reilly was setting me up to be fired as he would next successfully do to Professor Sami Al-Arian soon after debating me. After our debate had concluded, I returned from the campus television studio to my office in order to shut the computer down, and then go home for what little remained of the evening. When I arrived in my office, I found that my voice mail message system had been flooded with mean, nasty, vicious complaints and threats. The same was true for my e-mail in-box. I deleted all these messages as best I could, and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night. When I returned to my office the next day, so many complaints had been filed and accumulated with numerous university officials that the then Dean of my law school issued a public statement repudiating me and then placing it on the law school's web-site. Obviously the then Dean of my law school believed that a Law Professor should advocate the Law of the Jungle instead of the Rule of Law. He is now "deaning" elsewhere, just like a previous Dean who had tried to get rid of me because of my fervid belief in the Rule of Law and public activities in support thereof. On the positive side, however, my besting of O'Reilly in the debate led to my being inundated by requests for interviews from mainstream and progressive news media sources all over the world. This plethora of interviews have continued apace until today during the course of all the terrible events that have transpired in the world since September 11: the war against Afghanistan; the global war on terrorism; massive assaults on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and the United States Constitution; the war against Iraq; Guantanamo; kangaroo courts; the Bush Jr. torture scandal, etc. I have done the best I can to oppose this Bush Jr. juggernaut of nihilism--now continued and expanded by Obama. Ultimately it will be up to the American people to decide the future direction of the United States of America and thus indirectly, because of America's preponderant power, unfairly for the rest of the world. The present danger still remains Machiavellian power politics. The only known antidote is international law, international organizations, human rights, and the United States Constitution. In our thermonuclear age, humankind's existential choice is that stark, ominous, and compelling. As Americans, we must not hesitate to apply this imperative regimen immediately before it becomes too late for the continuation of our human species itself. The Rush to War SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:29) September 13, 2001 Thursday Transcript # 091303cb.256 SECTION: News; Domestic LENGTH: 3973 words HEADLINE: America Unites: How Should the U.S. Bring Terrorists to Justice? GUESTS: Sam Huessini, Francis Boyle BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly O'REILLY: While most Americans are united in their support of President Bush and the desire to bring Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to justice, there are some differing voices. Joining us now from Washington is Sam Husseini, the former spokesman for the Arab Anti -- American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and from Urbana, Illinois, is Francis Boyle, an international law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[...] O'REILLY: Cut his mike. All right, now, Mr. Boyle, Professor Boyle, let's have a little bit more of a rational discussion here. That was absurd. The United States now has to take action against certain segments in this world who we know have been harbouring people like Osama bin Laden. That's going to happen. How will you react to that? FRANCIS BOYLE, LAW PROFESSOR: Well, first I think you have to look at the law involved. Clearly what we have here, under United States domestic law and statutes, is an act of international terrorism that should be treated as such. It is not yet elevated to an act of war. For an act of war, we need proof that a foreign state actually ordered or launched an attack upon the United States of America. So far, we do not yet have that evidence. We could... O'REILLY: All right, now why are you, why are you, why are you taking this position when you know forces have attacked the United States. Now, maybe they don't have a country, but they are forces. They have attacked the United States, all right? Without warning, without provocation. Civilian targets. They've done everything that an act of war does. So, I'm saying that because we live in a different world now, where borders don't really matter, where terrorism is the weapon of choice, that you would declare war -- if I were President Bush, I would declare war on any hostile forces, notice those words, professor, hostile forces to the United States. I would have a blanket declaration of war so I could go in and kill those people. Would I be wrong? BOYLE: Well, Bill, so far you'll note Congress has been unwilling to declare war. And indeed, this matter is being debated right now. Right now, it appears that what they are seeking is not a full declaration of war, but only what we law professors call an imperfect declaration, which means a limited use of military force under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Precisely for the problem that we don't know if any state was involved and we still do not know who was responsible for this undoubted terrorist attack upon the United States of America. O'REILLY: All right, but we have the secretary of state saying that Osama bin Laden now has been linked into and, you know, we don't have all the intelligence information, as President Bush said today. He's not going to give us, and he shouldn't, the people of America all the information that they have. But when the secretary of state gets up and says, look, we know this guy was involved to some extent, I believe him. And he's a wanted man, professor. He's been wanted for eight years. The Clinton administration didn't have the heart to get him and in the first few months the Bush administration didn't either. We now know, and you just heard the FBI agent say that Afghanistan has been involved for years harbouring and training these kinds of people. Certainly, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, those five countries, certainly have been hostile to the United States and given safe harbour to these terrorists. That's a fact. BOYLE: Well, let me point out, the secretary of state was very careful in the words he used. He said Osama bin Laden was a suspect. He did not accuse him. And, again, under these circumstances... O'REILLY: No, he didn't use the word suspect. He used another word. BOYLE: The account I read in, just off the wire service, said suspect. But let me continue my point. Under these circumstances, where we have 5,000 Americans dead and we could have many more Americans killed in a conflict, we have to be very careful, Congress and the American people and the president, in not to over-escalate the rhetoric, here. We have to look at this very rationally. This is a democracy. We have a right to see what the evidence is and proceed in a very slow and deliberate manner. O'REILLY: No, we don't. We do not, as a republic, we don't have the right to see what the evidence is if the evidence is of a national security situation, as you know. Now, I'm trusting my government to do the right thing, here. I am trusting. But I think it's beyond a doubt right now, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is, as you know, a court of law standard, that there are at least five, North Korea you could put in to, six states in the world that have harboured continually these terrorists. Now, we know that this was a well-coordinated effort. Our initial intelligence shows that some of the people that have been arrested have ties to Osama bin Laden. We know, as you just heard the FBI agent say, that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was tied in to a guy who knew bin Laden. So, bin Laden -- I agree with you, that you don't want to be a hothead. You don't want to overreact. You don't want to lob a missile at the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, which was terrible, and that was the one good point, or fair point, that Mr. Husseini made, you don't want to do that. But, on the other hand, professor, I think Americans are rightful, are right, to demand action against states that we know in the past have harboured these individuals and there's a warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest. So, if he is in Afghanistan, I would give that government a couple of days to hand him over, and if they did not, I'd go in. BOYLE: Well, again. The American people are right. We need to see the evidence. I remember people saying a generation ago, during the Vietnam war, I trusted my government. And I think people of my generation found out that that was wrong. We needed more evidence. O'REILLY: All right. Professor, let me stop you there, though. This is another point that Mr. Husseini tried to make. Just because the United States of America has made mistakes in the past, does not mean that we cannot defend ourselves now. This is a unique situation in history. We have now been attacked by forces without borders, OK? We've been attacked. And it hasn't been a military attack, it's been an attack on civilians. The reason, the sole reason a federal government exists is to protect the people of the United States. And as I said in my "Talking Points" memo, they haven't really done the job, for political reasons. But now's the time to correct those things. So, there's going to be a reckoning, Professor. You know it's going to happen. I know it's going to happen. And it's going to come down on Osama bin Laden first and maybe some of these rouge states later. Will you support that action? BOYLE: Before I support a war that will jeopardize the lives of tens of thousands of our servicemen and women, I want to see the evidence that we are relying on to justify this. So far, I do not see it. I see allegations. I see innuendo. I see winks and I see nods, but I do not see the evidence that you need under international law and the United States constitution so far to go to war. Maybe that evidence will be there, but it is not there now. My recommendation to Congress is to slow down, let's see what develops and let's see what this evidence is before we knowingly go out and not only kill large numbers of people, perhaps in Afghanistan and other countries, but undoubtedly in our own armed forces. 58,000 men of my generation will killed in Vietnam because of irresponsible behavior by the Johnson administration rushing that Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress, exactly what we're seeing now. And we need to pull back and stop and think and ask the hard questions and demand to see the evidence first, before we march off to war. O'REILLY: All right, so it's not enough that people arrested in the bombings of the embassies in Africa testified in court that Osama bin Laden was behind and financed and coordinated those bombings. That evidence is not enough for you? BOYLE: Well, Africa is a very is a very different story than what happened in the World Trade Center. O'REILLY: No, it's not. He's wanted, he's wanted in the United States for the bombings of those two embassies. Is that evidence enough for you, professor, for the United States to go in and get this man? Is it enough? BOYLE: That, that matter was treated and handled as an act of international terrorism in accordance with the normal laws and procedures of the United States of America as a question of domestic and international law enforcement. And I am suggesting that is the way we need to proceed here... O'REILLY: Well, wait. You're dodging the question professor. BOYLE: ... unless we have evidence that... O'REILLY: Wait, professor. Professor. This is a no spin zone. Hold it. Hold it. Even out in Urbana Champagne, the no spin zone rules. You're dodging the question. There is an absolutely rock solid arrest warrant out for this man. Evidence in court, testimony by people who did the bombings that this man was behind it. Is that enough evidence for you to have the United States go in and get him now? Is it enough? BOYLE: The United States has been attempting to secure his extradition from Afghanistan. I support... O'REILLY: Yeah, that's long enough. BOYLE: I support that approach as international... O'REILLY: Come on already, I mean, eight years, we've been attempting to extradite this guy. Now's the time to tell the Afghans you've got 48 hours or 72 hours to turn him over. You don't turn him over, we're coming in and getting him. You try to stop us, and you're toast. Enough is enough, professor. BOYLE: That's vigilantism. It is not what the United States of America is supposed to stand for. We are supposed to stand... O'REILLY: No, what that is is protecting the country from terrorists who kill civilians. BOYLE: ... for rule of law. O'REILLY: It's not vigilantism. BOYLE: We are supposed to stand for rule of law, and that is clearly vigilantism. There is a Security Council, there is Congress, there are procedures and there are laws, and they are there to protect all of us here in the United States as well as... O'REILLY: So, you're telling me... BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... O'REILLY: And that's their job. To protect us. But, professor, let me, you know, what you're saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. B0YLE: ... with the constitution and the laws of the United States. O'REILLY: We're not violating any laws here, professor. No one is going to violate the law. There is going to be a state of war induced against states, states, terroristic states, who have attacked us. And what you're saying is, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying that even though there is a legitimate warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest, and even though most civilized nations would honor that warrant and turn him over to us, extradite him to us, the vast majority of nations on earth would do that, you still are opposed for the United States to demand that the Taliban government arrest this man and turn him over? You are opposed to that? BOYLE: During the Gulf War, President Bush father, who has far more experience that the current president Bush, got a Security Council resolution authorizing the United States of America to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Second, President Bush father got a War Powers Authorization Resolution from Congress that gave him the constitutional authority to use military force to enforce that Security Council resolution. What I'm calling for here is the same adherence to international law and the United States constitution that the first President Bush adhered to in dealing with Iraq. O'REILLY: Well, you'll get that, professor. That's just a formality. There -- nobody on Capitol Hill right now, they're not going to -- there's no profile of courages up there anyway, usually. They're going to give President Bush what he wants. If he wants a War Powers Act, they're going to give it to him. He wants a declaration, they're going to give it to him. BOYLE: Actually, they're arguing about it right now... O'REILLY: They're going to give it to him. But I'm not interested in that, because it's going to happen. It's going to happen. BOYLE: The reports -- no, the reports I read was that this President Bush initially asked for a blank check, and Congress balked because they had been suckered once before... O'REILLY: All right, I'm not -- speculation is not what I'm in -- all right, professor. I don't want to speculate. I'm just going to say in my opinion he's going to have the authority to go in and get Osama bin Laden and his pals, wherever they are. He will get that authority, whether it takes a day or a week, he'll get it. And once he gets it, now, that's what I want to talk about here. Once he gets it, are you and others like you going to say, oh, no, we shouldn't do this, even though we have proof of the man's -- masterminded the bombings in Africa and the Cole,testimony in Yemen, are you going to still say, even after the authority is granted by Congress, which it will be, no, don't do it, let Afghanistan handle him? Are you going to still do that, professor? BOYLE: Second, like his father, his father also got authorization from the United States, the United Nations Security Council under chapter seven of the United Nations charter... O'REILLY: Oh, you want to go to U.N. now? You want the U.N. involved now. BOYLE: Is exactly what his father did... O'REILLY: So what? BOYLE: And that's exactly right. O'REILLY: His father made a huge mistake by not taking out Sadam Hussein when he could of. BOYLE: His father adhered to the required procedures under the United States constitution and the United Nations charter that is a treaty and the supreme law of our land. I expect the current President Bush to do exactly what his father did before he starts engaging in a massive military campaign in Iraq or against other countries... O'REILLY: All right, I don't know whether he's going to go -- I know he's not going to let the U.N. dictate. He might go for a consensus. He's already got it with Putin and all of our NATO allies, he's already go that. Whether he goes -- I think it would be a mistake to let -- empowering the U.N. in this situation. BOYLE: Then why did his father do this? O'REILLY: I'm going -- we're going to wrap this up with this. I'm going to give my last summation and then you can give yours, I'll give you the last word on it. This is a fugitive we're dealing with here. He has now been tied in by U.S. intelligence agencies, according to Attorney General Ashcroft and the secretary of state, tied into this horrendous bombing here in New York. The United States must make a response to this, and I am agreeing with you in a sense, it can't be a knee-jerk. It's got to be done in a methodical way. Congress will go along, they may debate it or whatever, but they will go along in either a War Powers, special War Powers Act or a declaration of war against forces hostile to the United States. Then they will go in and they will take him. This man you're looking at on the TV screen is a dead man. He should be a dead man. You don't do what he did and be allowed to walk around this earth. Now, I'm distressed, professor, by your reliance, reliance on the strict letter of propriety, when we've got 10,000 people laying in the street about 22 miles from me right now. I want deliberation. I want methodical discipline, but I also want action. We know who this guy is. We know the governments that are protecting him. We know the other rouge states that have terrorist camps there. They all have to be dealt with, in my opinion. I'll give you the last word. BOYLE: Sure, I agree with you, Bill. He is a fugitive from justice and this should be handled as a matter as other fugitives from justice of international law enforcement. If indeed there is evidence that a foreign state orchestrated and ordered an attack against the United States then clearly that is an act of war that should be dealt with as such... O'REILLY: What about harbouring? BOYLE: Right now... O'REILLY: Is harbouring an act of war? BOYLE: In my opinion, no. And under the current circumstances, I don't see it. O'REILLY: All right, professor. BOYLE: I think there is a distinction here. O'REILLY: OK, all right, wrap it up, if you would. BOYLE: I agree -- I agree that the -- if we go to war in a hasty manner here, we could see thousands of U.S. military personnel being killed without proper authorization by Congress or by the United Nations Security Council. O'REILLY: OK. BOYLE: Our founding fathers decided that the most awesome decision we would ever make would be to go to war, and we have to be very careful in making that decision. O'REILLY: All right, professor, I appreciate it very much. Thank you for your point of view. BOYLE: Thank you, Bill. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) _______________________________________________ vvawnet mailing list vvawnet at vvaw.org http://lists.shout.net/mailman/listinfo/vvawnet ************************************************************* Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. (773) 569-3520 vvaw at vvaw.org www.vvaw.org Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967 From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 01:57:57 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 01:57:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 8:54 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle .... and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night.... -------------------------- BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US foreign fighters in the AfPak theater under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 23 casualties in the week ending September 3 as the official casualty total for the Iraq and AfPak wars* rose to 122,128. The total includes 81,340 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations "Iraqi Freedom" and "New Dawn"). New Dawn ended Dec 31, 2011, although those who died of wounds or injuries later are included. Operation "Enduring Freedom" began with the invasion of Afghanistan in November, 2001 and has resulted in 40,788 casualties. AFGHANISTAN THEATER: US foreign fighters suffered 23 combat casualties during the week ending September 3 as the total rose to 40,788. The total includes 21,816 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 18,972 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec.3, 2012, when it stopped making the count public) from what it called "non-hostile" causes. IRAQ THEATER: Obama ordered about 250 more foreign fighters to Iraq, adding to the 1,000 he already sent since last month (together with his air force), but the total remains unclear, because most of several thousand armed US employees are designated as civilians. The casualty total recently stood at 35,771 dead and wounded from "hostile" causes and 45,569 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec 3, 2012) from "non-hostile" causes. US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by reporting regularly only the total killed (6,833- 4,491 in Iraq, 2,342 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (52,224 - 32,242 in Iraq; 19,982 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 59,908 (44,607 in Iraq,18,463 in AfPak (as of Dec 3, 2012) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medevac'd out of theater, even though the 6,831 total dead include 1,470 (962 in Iraq, 508 in Afghanistan) who died from those same "non hostile" causes of whom almost 25% (332) were suicides (as of Jan 9, 2013). LENGTH: 3653 words HEADLINE: O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     by Francis Boyle On the morning of 13 September 2001, that is 48 hours after the terrible tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11th, I received telephone call from a producer at Fox Television Network News in New York City. He asked me to go onto The O'Reilly Factor TV program live that evening in order to debate Bill O'Reilly on the question of war versus peace. O'Reilly would argue for the United States going to war in reaction to the terrorist attacks on 11 September, and I would argue for a peaceful resolution of this matter.    Up until then I had deliberately declined numerous requests for interviews about the terrible events of September 11 and what should be done about them because it was not clear to me precisely what was going on. But unfortunately The O'Reilly Factor had the Number One ranking in TV viewership for any news media talk program in America. I felt very strongly as a matter of principle that at least one person from the American Peace Movement had to go onto that program and argue the case directly to the American people that the United States of America must not go to war despite the terrible tragedy that had been inflicted upon us all. I had debated O'Reilly before so I was fully aware of the type of abuse to expect from him. So for the next few hours I negotiated with O'Reilly through his producer as to the terms and conditions of my appearance and our debate, which they agreed to. At the time I did not realize that O'Reilly was setting me up to be fired as he would next successfully do to Professor Sami Al-Arian soon after debating me. After our debate had concluded, I returned from the campus television studio to my office in order to shut the computer down, and then go home for what little remained of the evening. When I arrived in my office, I found that my voice mail message system had been flooded with mean, nasty, vicious complaints and threats. The same was true for my e-mail in-box. I deleted all these messages as best I could, and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night. When I returned to my office the next day, so many complaints had been filed and accumulated with numerous university officials that the then Dean of my law school issued a public statement repudiating me and then placing it on the law school's web-site. Obviously the then Dean of my law school believed that a Law Professor should advocate the Law of the Jungle instead of the Rule of Law. He is now "deaning" elsewhere, just like a previous Dean who had tried to get rid of me because of my fervid belief in the Rule of Law and public activities in support thereof. On the positive side, however, my besting of O'Reilly in the debate led to my being inundated by requests for interviews from mainstream and progressive news media sources all over the world. This plethora of interviews have continued apace until today during the course of all the terrible events that have transpired in the world since September 11: the war against Afghanistan; the global war on terrorism; massive assaults on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and the United States Constitution; the war against Iraq; Guantanamo; kangaroo courts; the Bush Jr. torture scandal, etc. I have done the best I can to oppose this Bush Jr. juggernaut of nihilism--now continued and expanded by Obama. Ultimately it will be up to the American people to decide the future direction of the United States of America and thus indirectly, because of America's preponderant power, unfairly for the rest of the world. The present danger still remains Machiavellian power politics. The only known antidote is international law, international organizations, human rights, and the United States Constitution. In our thermonuclear age, humankind's existential choice is that stark, ominous, and compelling. As Americans, we must not hesitate to apply this imperative regimen immediately before it becomes too late for the continuation of our human species itself. The Rush to War SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:29) September 13, 2001 Thursday Transcript # 091303cb.256 SECTION: News; Domestic LENGTH: 3973 words HEADLINE: America Unites: How Should the U.S. Bring Terrorists to Justice? GUESTS: Sam Huessini, Francis Boyle BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly O'REILLY: While most Americans are united in their support of President Bush and the desire to bring Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to justice, there are some differing voices. Joining us now from Washington is Sam Husseini, the former spokesman for the Arab Anti -- American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and from Urbana, Illinois, is Francis Boyle, an international law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[...] O'REILLY: Cut his mike. All right, now, Mr. Boyle, Professor Boyle, let's have a little bit more of a rational discussion here. That was absurd. The United States now has to take action against certain segments in this world who we know have been harbouring people like Osama bin Laden. That's going to happen. How will you react to that? FRANCIS BOYLE, LAW PROFESSOR: Well, first I think you have to look at the law involved. Clearly what we have here, under United States domestic law and statutes, is an act of international terrorism that should be treated as such. It is not yet elevated to an act of war. For an act of war, we need proof that a foreign state actually ordered or launched an attack upon the United States of America. So far, we do not yet have that evidence. We could... O'REILLY: All right, now why are you, why are you, why are you taking this position when you know forces have attacked the United States. Now, maybe they don't have a country, but they are forces. They have attacked the United States, all right? Without warning, without provocation. Civilian targets. They've done everything that an act of war does. So, I'm saying that because we live in a different world now, where borders don't really matter, where terrorism is the weapon of choice, that you would declare war -- if I were President Bush, I would declare war on any hostile forces, notice those words, professor, hostile forces to the United States. I would have a blanket declaration of war so I could go in and kill those people. Would I be wrong? BOYLE: Well, Bill, so far you'll note Congress has been unwilling to declare war. And indeed, this matter is being debated right now. Right now, it appears that what they are seeking is not a full declaration of war, but only what we law professors call an imperfect declaration, which means a limited use of military force under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Precisely for the problem that we don't know if any state was involved and we still do not know who was responsible for this undoubted terrorist attack upon the United States of America. O'REILLY: All right, but we have the secretary of state saying that Osama bin Laden now has been linked into and, you know, we don't have all the intelligence information, as President Bush said today. He's not going to give us, and he shouldn't, the people of America all the information that they have. But when the secretary of state gets up and says, look, we know this guy was involved to some extent, I believe him. And he's a wanted man, professor. He's been wanted for eight years. The Clinton administration didn't have the heart to get him and in the first few months the Bush administration didn't either. We now know, and you just heard the FBI agent say that Afghanistan has been involved for years harbouring and training these kinds of people. Certainly, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, those five countries, certainly have been hostile to the United States and given safe harbour to these terrorists. That's a fact. BOYLE: Well, let me point out, the secretary of state was very careful in the words he used. He said Osama bin Laden was a suspect. He did not accuse him. And, again, under these circumstances... O'REILLY: No, he didn't use the word suspect. He used another word. BOYLE: The account I read in, just off the wire service, said suspect. But let me continue my point. Under these circumstances, where we have 5,000 Americans dead and we could have many more Americans killed in a conflict, we have to be very careful, Congress and the American people and the president, in not to over-escalate the rhetoric, here. We have to look at this very rationally. This is a democracy. We have a right to see what the evidence is and proceed in a very slow and deliberate manner. O'REILLY: No, we don't. We do not, as a republic, we don't have the right to see what the evidence is if the evidence is of a national security situation, as you know. Now, I'm trusting my government to do the right thing, here. I am trusting. But I think it's beyond a doubt right now, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is, as you know, a court of law standard, that there are at least five, North Korea you could put in to, six states in the world that have harboured continually these terrorists. Now, we know that this was a well-coordinated effort. Our initial intelligence shows that some of the people that have been arrested have ties to Osama bin Laden. We know, as you just heard the FBI agent say, that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was tied in to a guy who knew bin Laden. So, bin Laden -- I agree with you, that you don't want to be a hothead. You don't want to overreact. You don't want to lob a missile at the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, which was terrible, and that was the one good point, or fair point, that Mr. Husseini made, you don't want to do that. But, on the other hand, professor, I think Americans are rightful, are right, to demand action against states that we know in the past have harboured these individuals and there's a warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest. So, if he is in Afghanistan, I would give that government a couple of days to hand him over, and if they did not, I'd go in. BOYLE: Well, again. The American people are right. We need to see the evidence. I remember people saying a generation ago, during the Vietnam war, I trusted my government. And I think people of my generation found out that that was wrong. We needed more evidence. O'REILLY: All right. Professor, let me stop you there, though. This is another point that Mr. Husseini tried to make. Just because the United States of America has made mistakes in the past, does not mean that we cannot defend ourselves now. This is a unique situation in history. We have now been attacked by forces without borders, OK? We've been attacked. And it hasn't been a military attack, it's been an attack on civilians. The reason, the sole reason a federal government exists is to protect the people of the United States. And as I said in my "Talking Points" memo, they haven't really done the job, for political reasons. But now's the time to correct those things. So, there's going to be a reckoning, Professor. You know it's going to happen. I know it's going to happen. And it's going to come down on Osama bin Laden first and maybe some of these rouge states later. Will you support that action? BOYLE: Before I support a war that will jeopardize the lives of tens of thousands of our servicemen and women, I want to see the evidence that we are relying on to justify this. So far, I do not see it. I see allegations. I see innuendo. I see winks and I see nods, but I do not see the evidence that you need under international law and the United States constitution so far to go to war. Maybe that evidence will be there, but it is not there now. My recommendation to Congress is to slow down, let's see what develops and let's see what this evidence is before we knowingly go out and not only kill large numbers of people, perhaps in Afghanistan and other countries, but undoubtedly in our own armed forces. 58,000 men of my generation will killed in Vietnam because of irresponsible behavior by the Johnson administration rushing that Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress, exactly what we're seeing now. And we need to pull back and stop and think and ask the hard questions and demand to see the evidence first, before we march off to war. O'REILLY: All right, so it's not enough that people arrested in the bombings of the embassies in Africa testified in court that Osama bin Laden was behind and financed and coordinated those bombings. That evidence is not enough for you? BOYLE: Well, Africa is a very is a very different story than what happened in the World Trade Center. O'REILLY: No, it's not. He's wanted, he's wanted in the United States for the bombings of those two embassies. Is that evidence enough for you, professor, for the United States to go in and get this man? Is it enough? BOYLE: That, that matter was treated and handled as an act of international terrorism in accordance with the normal laws and procedures of the United States of America as a question of domestic and international law enforcement. And I am suggesting that is the way we need to proceed here... O'REILLY: Well, wait. You're dodging the question professor. BOYLE: ... unless we have evidence that... O'REILLY: Wait, professor. Professor. This is a no spin zone. Hold it. Hold it. Even out in Urbana Champagne, the no spin zone rules. You're dodging the question. There is an absolutely rock solid arrest warrant out for this man. Evidence in court, testimony by people who did the bombings that this man was behind it. Is that enough evidence for you to have the United States go in and get him now? Is it enough? BOYLE: The United States has been attempting to secure his extradition from Afghanistan. I support... O'REILLY: Yeah, that's long enough. BOYLE: I support that approach as international... O'REILLY: Come on already, I mean, eight years, we've been attempting to extradite this guy. Now's the time to tell the Afghans you've got 48 hours or 72 hours to turn him over. You don't turn him over, we're coming in and getting him. You try to stop us, and you're toast. Enough is enough, professor. BOYLE: That's vigilantism. It is not what the United States of America is supposed to stand for. We are supposed to stand... O'REILLY: No, what that is is protecting the country from terrorists who kill civilians. BOYLE: ... for rule of law. O'REILLY: It's not vigilantism. BOYLE: We are supposed to stand for rule of law, and that is clearly vigilantism. There is a Security Council, there is Congress, there are procedures and there are laws, and they are there to protect all of us here in the United States as well as... O'REILLY: So, you're telling me... BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... O'REILLY: And that's their job. To protect us. But, professor, let me, you know, what you're saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. B0YLE: ... with the constitution and the laws of the United States. O'REILLY: We're not violating any laws here, professor. No one is going to violate the law. There is going to be a state of war induced against states, states, terroristic states, who have attacked us. And what you're saying is, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying that even though there is a legitimate warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest, and even though most civilized nations would honor that warrant and turn him over to us, extradite him to us, the vast majority of nations on earth would do that, you still are opposed for the United States to demand that the Taliban government arrest this man and turn him over? You are opposed to that? BOYLE: During the Gulf War, President Bush father, who has far more experience that the current president Bush, got a Security Council resolution authorizing the United States of America to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Second, President Bush father got a War Powers Authorization Resolution from Congress that gave him the constitutional authority to use military force to enforce that Security Council resolution. What I'm calling for here is the same adherence to international law and the United States constitution that the first President Bush adhered to in dealing with Iraq. O'REILLY: Well, you'll get that, professor. That's just a formality. There -- nobody on Capitol Hill right now, they're not going to -- there's no profile of courages up there anyway, usually. They're going to give President Bush what he wants. If he wants a War Powers Act, they're going to give it to him. He wants a declaration, they're going to give it to him. BOYLE: Actually, they're arguing about it right now... O'REILLY: They're going to give it to him. But I'm not interested in that, because it's going to happen. It's going to happen. BOYLE: The reports -- no, the reports I read was that this President Bush initially asked for a blank check, and Congress balked because they had been suckered once before... O'REILLY: All right, I'm not -- speculation is not what I'm in -- all right, professor. I don't want to speculate. I'm just going to say in my opinion he's going to have the authority to go in and get Osama bin Laden and his pals, wherever they are. He will get that authority, whether it takes a day or a week, he'll get it. And once he gets it, now, that's what I want to talk about here. Once he gets it, are you and others like you going to say, oh, no, we shouldn't do this, even though we have proof of the man's -- masterminded the bombings in Africa and the Cole,testimony in Yemen, are you going to still say, even after the authority is granted by Congress, which it will be, no, don't do it, let Afghanistan handle him? Are you going to still do that, professor? BOYLE: Second, like his father, his father also got authorization from the United States, the United Nations Security Council under chapter seven of the United Nations charter... O'REILLY: Oh, you want to go to U.N. now? You want the U.N. involved now. BOYLE: Is exactly what his father did... O'REILLY: So what? BOYLE: And that's exactly right. O'REILLY: His father made a huge mistake by not taking out Sadam Hussein when he could of. BOYLE: His father adhered to the required procedures under the United States constitution and the United Nations charter that is a treaty and the supreme law of our land. I expect the current President Bush to do exactly what his father did before he starts engaging in a massive military campaign in Iraq or against other countries... O'REILLY: All right, I don't know whether he's going to go -- I know he's not going to let the U.N. dictate. He might go for a consensus. He's already got it with Putin and all of our NATO allies, he's already go that. Whether he goes -- I think it would be a mistake to let -- empowering the U.N. in this situation. BOYLE: Then why did his father do this? O'REILLY: I'm going -- we're going to wrap this up with this. I'm going to give my last summation and then you can give yours, I'll give you the last word on it. This is a fugitive we're dealing with here. He has now been tied in by U.S. intelligence agencies, according to Attorney General Ashcroft and the secretary of state, tied into this horrendous bombing here in New York. The United States must make a response to this, and I am agreeing with you in a sense, it can't be a knee-jerk. It's got to be done in a methodical way. Congress will go along, they may debate it or whatever, but they will go along in either a War Powers, special War Powers Act or a declaration of war against forces hostile to the United States. Then they will go in and they will take him. This man you're looking at on the TV screen is a dead man. He should be a dead man. You don't do what he did and be allowed to walk around this earth. Now, I'm distressed, professor, by your reliance, reliance on the strict letter of propriety, when we've got 10,000 people laying in the street about 22 miles from me right now. I want deliberation. I want methodical discipline, but I also want action. We know who this guy is. We know the governments that are protecting him. We know the other rouge states that have terrorist camps there. They all have to be dealt with, in my opinion. I'll give you the last word. BOYLE: Sure, I agree with you, Bill. He is a fugitive from justice and this should be handled as a matter as other fugitives from justice of international law enforcement. If indeed there is evidence that a foreign state orchestrated and ordered an attack against the United States then clearly that is an act of war that should be dealt with as such... O'REILLY: What about harbouring? BOYLE: Right now... O'REILLY: Is harbouring an act of war? BOYLE: In my opinion, no. And under the current circumstances, I don't see it. O'REILLY: All right, professor. BOYLE: I think there is a distinction here. O'REILLY: OK, all right, wrap it up, if you would. BOYLE: I agree -- I agree that the -- if we go to war in a hasty manner here, we could see thousands of U.S. military personnel being killed without proper authorization by Congress or by the United Nations Security Council. O'REILLY: OK. BOYLE: Our founding fathers decided that the most awesome decision we would ever make would be to go to war, and we have to be very careful in making that decision. O'REILLY: All right, professor, I appreciate it very much. Thank you for your point of view. BOYLE: Thank you, Bill. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) _______________________________________________ vvawnet mailing list vvawnet at vvaw.org http://lists.shout.net/mailman/listinfo/vvawnet ************************************************************* Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. (773) 569-3520 vvaw at vvaw.org www.vvaw.org Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967 From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 02:28:12 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 02:28:12 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: [Peace] schedule for symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War In-Reply-To: <1414287449.2112908.1508811025507@mail.yahoo.com> References: <176384924.1088267.1508606108477.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <176384924.1088267.1508606108477@mail.yahoo.com> <1414287449.2112908.1508811025507@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The so-called Six Day War was just outright wars of aggression and ethnic cleansing by Israel against the surrounding Arab States and Peoples with the Full Support of the Johnson Administration and American Zionists. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Dianna Visek via Peace Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 9:10 PM To: Peace List Subject: [Peace] schedule for symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: csames-email > To: Dianna Visek > Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017, 2:40:08 PM CDT Subject: RE: schedules for symposia Hi, Please see attached the flyer and schedule for the symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War. Kindly circulate to all those you think might be interested. Thank you, Jovita Jovita Terpetschnig Office Support Associate Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 221 International Studies Building, MC-489 910 South Fifth Street Champaign, IL 217-244-7331 Email: csames at illinois.edu web: www.csames.illinois.edu Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/csamesuiuc Follow CSAMES on Twitter: https://twitter.com/csamesillinois -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 02:28:12 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 02:28:12 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: [Peace] schedule for symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War In-Reply-To: <1414287449.2112908.1508811025507@mail.yahoo.com> References: <176384924.1088267.1508606108477.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <176384924.1088267.1508606108477@mail.yahoo.com> <1414287449.2112908.1508811025507@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The so-called Six Day War was just outright wars of aggression and ethnic cleansing by Israel against the surrounding Arab States and Peoples with the Full Support of the Johnson Administration and American Zionists. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Dianna Visek via Peace Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 9:10 PM To: Peace List Subject: [Peace] schedule for symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: csames-email > To: Dianna Visek > Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017, 2:40:08 PM CDT Subject: RE: schedules for symposia Hi, Please see attached the flyer and schedule for the symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War. Kindly circulate to all those you think might be interested. Thank you, Jovita Jovita Terpetschnig Office Support Associate Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 221 International Studies Building, MC-489 910 South Fifth Street Champaign, IL 217-244-7331 Email: csames at illinois.edu web: www.csames.illinois.edu Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/csamesuiuc Follow CSAMES on Twitter: https://twitter.com/csamesillinois -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 02:56:19 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 02:56:19 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle Message-ID: "Obviously the then Dean of my law school believed that a Law Professor should advocate the Law of the Jungle instead of the Rule of Law." ---------------- Nothing has changed during the past 16+ years. Nothing will change. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 8:58 PM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 8:54 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle .... and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night.... -------------------------- BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US foreign fighters in the AfPak theater under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 23 casualties in the week ending September 3 as the official casualty total for the Iraq and AfPak wars* rose to 122,128. The total includes 81,340 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations "Iraqi Freedom" and "New Dawn"). New Dawn ended Dec 31, 2011, although those who died of wounds or injuries later are included. Operation "Enduring Freedom" began with the invasion of Afghanistan in November, 2001 and has resulted in 40,788 casualties. AFGHANISTAN THEATER: US foreign fighters suffered 23 combat casualties during the week ending September 3 as the total rose to 40,788. The total includes 21,816 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 18,972 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec.3, 2012, when it stopped making the count public) from what it called "non-hostile" causes. IRAQ THEATER: Obama ordered about 250 more foreign fighters to Iraq, adding to the 1,000 he already sent since last month (together with his air force), but the total remains unclear, because most of several thousand armed US employees are designated as civilians. The casualty total recently stood at 35,771 dead and wounded from "hostile" causes and 45,569 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec 3, 2012) from "non-hostile" causes. US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by reporting regularly only the total killed (6,833- 4,491 in Iraq, 2,342 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (52,224 - 32,242 in Iraq; 19,982 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 59,908 (44,607 in Iraq,18,463 in AfPak (as of Dec 3, 2012) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medevac'd out of theater, even though the 6,831 total dead include 1,470 (962 in Iraq, 508 in Afghanistan) who died from those same "non hostile" causes of whom almost 25% (332) were suicides (as of Jan 9, 2013). LENGTH: 3653 words HEADLINE: O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     by Francis Boyle On the morning of 13 September 2001, that is 48 hours after the terrible tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11th, I received telephone call from a producer at Fox Television Network News in New York City. He asked me to go onto The O'Reilly Factor TV program live that evening in order to debate Bill O'Reilly on the question of war versus peace. O'Reilly would argue for the United States going to war in reaction to the terrorist attacks on 11 September, and I would argue for a peaceful resolution of this matter.    Up until then I had deliberately declined numerous requests for interviews about the terrible events of September 11 and what should be done about them because it was not clear to me precisely what was going on. But unfortunately The O'Reilly Factor had the Number One ranking in TV viewership for any news media talk program in America. I felt very strongly as a matter of principle that at least one person from the American Peace Movement had to go onto that program and argue the case directly to the American people that the United States of America must not go to war despite the terrible tragedy that had been inflicted upon us all. I had debated O'Reilly before so I was fully aware of the type of abuse to expect from him. So for the next few hours I negotiated with O'Reilly through his producer as to the terms and conditions of my appearance and our debate, which they agreed to. At the time I did not realize that O'Reilly was setting me up to be fired as he would next successfully do to Professor Sami Al-Arian soon after debating me. After our debate had concluded, I returned from the campus television studio to my office in order to shut the computer down, and then go home for what little remained of the evening. When I arrived in my office, I found that my voice mail message system had been flooded with mean, nasty, vicious complaints and threats. The same was true for my e-mail in-box. I deleted all these messages as best I could, and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night. When I returned to my office the next day, so many complaints had been filed and accumulated with numerous university officials that the then Dean of my law school issued a public statement repudiating me and then placing it on the law school's web-site. Obviously the then Dean of my law school believed that a Law Professor should advocate the Law of the Jungle instead of the Rule of Law. He is now "deaning" elsewhere, just like a previous Dean who had tried to get rid of me because of my fervid belief in the Rule of Law and public activities in support thereof. On the positive side, however, my besting of O'Reilly in the debate led to my being inundated by requests for interviews from mainstream and progressive news media sources all over the world. This plethora of interviews have continued apace until today during the course of all the terrible events that have transpired in the world since September 11: the war against Afghanistan; the global war on terrorism; massive assaults on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and the United States Constitution; the war against Iraq; Guantanamo; kangaroo courts; the Bush Jr. torture scandal, etc. I have done the best I can to oppose this Bush Jr. juggernaut of nihilism--now continued and expanded by Obama. Ultimately it will be up to the American people to decide the future direction of the United States of America and thus indirectly, because of America's preponderant power, unfairly for the rest of the world. The present danger still remains Machiavellian power politics. The only known antidote is international law, international organizations, human rights, and the United States Constitution. In our thermonuclear age, humankind's existential choice is that stark, ominous, and compelling. As Americans, we must not hesitate to apply this imperative regimen immediately before it becomes too late for the continuation of our human species itself. The Rush to War SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:29) September 13, 2001 Thursday Transcript # 091303cb.256 SECTION: News; Domestic LENGTH: 3973 words HEADLINE: America Unites: How Should the U.S. Bring Terrorists to Justice? GUESTS: Sam Huessini, Francis Boyle BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly O'REILLY: While most Americans are united in their support of President Bush and the desire to bring Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to justice, there are some differing voices. Joining us now from Washington is Sam Husseini, the former spokesman for the Arab Anti -- American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and from Urbana, Illinois, is Francis Boyle, an international law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[...] O'REILLY: Cut his mike. All right, now, Mr. Boyle, Professor Boyle, let's have a little bit more of a rational discussion here. That was absurd. The United States now has to take action against certain segments in this world who we know have been harbouring people like Osama bin Laden. That's going to happen. How will you react to that? FRANCIS BOYLE, LAW PROFESSOR: Well, first I think you have to look at the law involved. Clearly what we have here, under United States domestic law and statutes, is an act of international terrorism that should be treated as such. It is not yet elevated to an act of war. For an act of war, we need proof that a foreign state actually ordered or launched an attack upon the United States of America. So far, we do not yet have that evidence. We could... O'REILLY: All right, now why are you, why are you, why are you taking this position when you know forces have attacked the United States. Now, maybe they don't have a country, but they are forces. They have attacked the United States, all right? Without warning, without provocation. Civilian targets. They've done everything that an act of war does. So, I'm saying that because we live in a different world now, where borders don't really matter, where terrorism is the weapon of choice, that you would declare war -- if I were President Bush, I would declare war on any hostile forces, notice those words, professor, hostile forces to the United States. I would have a blanket declaration of war so I could go in and kill those people. Would I be wrong? BOYLE: Well, Bill, so far you'll note Congress has been unwilling to declare war. And indeed, this matter is being debated right now. Right now, it appears that what they are seeking is not a full declaration of war, but only what we law professors call an imperfect declaration, which means a limited use of military force under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Precisely for the problem that we don't know if any state was involved and we still do not know who was responsible for this undoubted terrorist attack upon the United States of America. O'REILLY: All right, but we have the secretary of state saying that Osama bin Laden now has been linked into and, you know, we don't have all the intelligence information, as President Bush said today. He's not going to give us, and he shouldn't, the people of America all the information that they have. But when the secretary of state gets up and says, look, we know this guy was involved to some extent, I believe him. And he's a wanted man, professor. He's been wanted for eight years. The Clinton administration didn't have the heart to get him and in the first few months the Bush administration didn't either. We now know, and you just heard the FBI agent say that Afghanistan has been involved for years harbouring and training these kinds of people. Certainly, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, those five countries, certainly have been hostile to the United States and given safe harbour to these terrorists. That's a fact. BOYLE: Well, let me point out, the secretary of state was very careful in the words he used. He said Osama bin Laden was a suspect. He did not accuse him. And, again, under these circumstances... O'REILLY: No, he didn't use the word suspect. He used another word. BOYLE: The account I read in, just off the wire service, said suspect. But let me continue my point. Under these circumstances, where we have 5,000 Americans dead and we could have many more Americans killed in a conflict, we have to be very careful, Congress and the American people and the president, in not to over-escalate the rhetoric, here. We have to look at this very rationally. This is a democracy. We have a right to see what the evidence is and proceed in a very slow and deliberate manner. O'REILLY: No, we don't. We do not, as a republic, we don't have the right to see what the evidence is if the evidence is of a national security situation, as you know. Now, I'm trusting my government to do the right thing, here. I am trusting. But I think it's beyond a doubt right now, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is, as you know, a court of law standard, that there are at least five, North Korea you could put in to, six states in the world that have harboured continually these terrorists. Now, we know that this was a well-coordinated effort. Our initial intelligence shows that some of the people that have been arrested have ties to Osama bin Laden. We know, as you just heard the FBI agent say, that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was tied in to a guy who knew bin Laden. So, bin Laden -- I agree with you, that you don't want to be a hothead. You don't want to overreact. You don't want to lob a missile at the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, which was terrible, and that was the one good point, or fair point, that Mr. Husseini made, you don't want to do that. But, on the other hand, professor, I think Americans are rightful, are right, to demand action against states that we know in the past have harboured these individuals and there's a warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest. So, if he is in Afghanistan, I would give that government a couple of days to hand him over, and if they did not, I'd go in. BOYLE: Well, again. The American people are right. We need to see the evidence. I remember people saying a generation ago, during the Vietnam war, I trusted my government. And I think people of my generation found out that that was wrong. We needed more evidence. O'REILLY: All right. Professor, let me stop you there, though. This is another point that Mr. Husseini tried to make. Just because the United States of America has made mistakes in the past, does not mean that we cannot defend ourselves now. This is a unique situation in history. We have now been attacked by forces without borders, OK? We've been attacked. And it hasn't been a military attack, it's been an attack on civilians. The reason, the sole reason a federal government exists is to protect the people of the United States. And as I said in my "Talking Points" memo, they haven't really done the job, for political reasons. But now's the time to correct those things. So, there's going to be a reckoning, Professor. You know it's going to happen. I know it's going to happen. And it's going to come down on Osama bin Laden first and maybe some of these rouge states later. Will you support that action? BOYLE: Before I support a war that will jeopardize the lives of tens of thousands of our servicemen and women, I want to see the evidence that we are relying on to justify this. So far, I do not see it. I see allegations. I see innuendo. I see winks and I see nods, but I do not see the evidence that you need under international law and the United States constitution so far to go to war. Maybe that evidence will be there, but it is not there now. My recommendation to Congress is to slow down, let's see what develops and let's see what this evidence is before we knowingly go out and not only kill large numbers of people, perhaps in Afghanistan and other countries, but undoubtedly in our own armed forces. 58,000 men of my generation will killed in Vietnam because of irresponsible behavior by the Johnson administration rushing that Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress, exactly what we're seeing now. And we need to pull back and stop and think and ask the hard questions and demand to see the evidence first, before we march off to war. O'REILLY: All right, so it's not enough that people arrested in the bombings of the embassies in Africa testified in court that Osama bin Laden was behind and financed and coordinated those bombings. That evidence is not enough for you? BOYLE: Well, Africa is a very is a very different story than what happened in the World Trade Center. O'REILLY: No, it's not. He's wanted, he's wanted in the United States for the bombings of those two embassies. Is that evidence enough for you, professor, for the United States to go in and get this man? Is it enough? BOYLE: That, that matter was treated and handled as an act of international terrorism in accordance with the normal laws and procedures of the United States of America as a question of domestic and international law enforcement. And I am suggesting that is the way we need to proceed here... O'REILLY: Well, wait. You're dodging the question professor. BOYLE: ... unless we have evidence that... O'REILLY: Wait, professor. Professor. This is a no spin zone. Hold it. Hold it. Even out in Urbana Champagne, the no spin zone rules. You're dodging the question. There is an absolutely rock solid arrest warrant out for this man. Evidence in court, testimony by people who did the bombings that this man was behind it. Is that enough evidence for you to have the United States go in and get him now? Is it enough? BOYLE: The United States has been attempting to secure his extradition from Afghanistan. I support... O'REILLY: Yeah, that's long enough. BOYLE: I support that approach as international... O'REILLY: Come on already, I mean, eight years, we've been attempting to extradite this guy. Now's the time to tell the Afghans you've got 48 hours or 72 hours to turn him over. You don't turn him over, we're coming in and getting him. You try to stop us, and you're toast. Enough is enough, professor. BOYLE: That's vigilantism. It is not what the United States of America is supposed to stand for. We are supposed to stand... O'REILLY: No, what that is is protecting the country from terrorists who kill civilians. BOYLE: ... for rule of law. O'REILLY: It's not vigilantism. BOYLE: We are supposed to stand for rule of law, and that is clearly vigilantism. There is a Security Council, there is Congress, there are procedures and there are laws, and they are there to protect all of us here in the United States as well as... O'REILLY: So, you're telling me... BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... O'REILLY: And that's their job. To protect us. But, professor, let me, you know, what you're saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. B0YLE: ... with the constitution and the laws of the United States. O'REILLY: We're not violating any laws here, professor. No one is going to violate the law. There is going to be a state of war induced against states, states, terroristic states, who have attacked us. And what you're saying is, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying that even though there is a legitimate warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest, and even though most civilized nations would honor that warrant and turn him over to us, extradite him to us, the vast majority of nations on earth would do that, you still are opposed for the United States to demand that the Taliban government arrest this man and turn him over? You are opposed to that? BOYLE: During the Gulf War, President Bush father, who has far more experience that the current president Bush, got a Security Council resolution authorizing the United States of America to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Second, President Bush father got a War Powers Authorization Resolution from Congress that gave him the constitutional authority to use military force to enforce that Security Council resolution. What I'm calling for here is the same adherence to international law and the United States constitution that the first President Bush adhered to in dealing with Iraq. O'REILLY: Well, you'll get that, professor. That's just a formality. There -- nobody on Capitol Hill right now, they're not going to -- there's no profile of courages up there anyway, usually. They're going to give President Bush what he wants. If he wants a War Powers Act, they're going to give it to him. He wants a declaration, they're going to give it to him. BOYLE: Actually, they're arguing about it right now... O'REILLY: They're going to give it to him. But I'm not interested in that, because it's going to happen. It's going to happen. BOYLE: The reports -- no, the reports I read was that this President Bush initially asked for a blank check, and Congress balked because they had been suckered once before... O'REILLY: All right, I'm not -- speculation is not what I'm in -- all right, professor. I don't want to speculate. I'm just going to say in my opinion he's going to have the authority to go in and get Osama bin Laden and his pals, wherever they are. He will get that authority, whether it takes a day or a week, he'll get it. And once he gets it, now, that's what I want to talk about here. Once he gets it, are you and others like you going to say, oh, no, we shouldn't do this, even though we have proof of the man's -- masterminded the bombings in Africa and the Cole,testimony in Yemen, are you going to still say, even after the authority is granted by Congress, which it will be, no, don't do it, let Afghanistan handle him? Are you going to still do that, professor? BOYLE: Second, like his father, his father also got authorization from the United States, the United Nations Security Council under chapter seven of the United Nations charter... O'REILLY: Oh, you want to go to U.N. now? You want the U.N. involved now. BOYLE: Is exactly what his father did... O'REILLY: So what? BOYLE: And that's exactly right. O'REILLY: His father made a huge mistake by not taking out Sadam Hussein when he could of. BOYLE: His father adhered to the required procedures under the United States constitution and the United Nations charter that is a treaty and the supreme law of our land. I expect the current President Bush to do exactly what his father did before he starts engaging in a massive military campaign in Iraq or against other countries... O'REILLY: All right, I don't know whether he's going to go -- I know he's not going to let the U.N. dictate. He might go for a consensus. He's already got it with Putin and all of our NATO allies, he's already go that. Whether he goes -- I think it would be a mistake to let -- empowering the U.N. in this situation. BOYLE: Then why did his father do this? O'REILLY: I'm going -- we're going to wrap this up with this. I'm going to give my last summation and then you can give yours, I'll give you the last word on it. This is a fugitive we're dealing with here. He has now been tied in by U.S. intelligence agencies, according to Attorney General Ashcroft and the secretary of state, tied into this horrendous bombing here in New York. The United States must make a response to this, and I am agreeing with you in a sense, it can't be a knee-jerk. It's got to be done in a methodical way. Congress will go along, they may debate it or whatever, but they will go along in either a War Powers, special War Powers Act or a declaration of war against forces hostile to the United States. Then they will go in and they will take him. This man you're looking at on the TV screen is a dead man. He should be a dead man. You don't do what he did and be allowed to walk around this earth. Now, I'm distressed, professor, by your reliance, reliance on the strict letter of propriety, when we've got 10,000 people laying in the street about 22 miles from me right now. I want deliberation. I want methodical discipline, but I also want action. We know who this guy is. We know the governments that are protecting him. We know the other rouge states that have terrorist camps there. They all have to be dealt with, in my opinion. I'll give you the last word. BOYLE: Sure, I agree with you, Bill. He is a fugitive from justice and this should be handled as a matter as other fugitives from justice of international law enforcement. If indeed there is evidence that a foreign state orchestrated and ordered an attack against the United States then clearly that is an act of war that should be dealt with as such... O'REILLY: What about harbouring? BOYLE: Right now... O'REILLY: Is harbouring an act of war? BOYLE: In my opinion, no. And under the current circumstances, I don't see it. O'REILLY: All right, professor. BOYLE: I think there is a distinction here. O'REILLY: OK, all right, wrap it up, if you would. BOYLE: I agree -- I agree that the -- if we go to war in a hasty manner here, we could see thousands of U.S. military personnel being killed without proper authorization by Congress or by the United Nations Security Council. O'REILLY: OK. BOYLE: Our founding fathers decided that the most awesome decision we would ever make would be to go to war, and we have to be very careful in making that decision. O'REILLY: All right, professor, I appreciate it very much. Thank you for your point of view. BOYLE: Thank you, Bill. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) _______________________________________________ vvawnet mailing list vvawnet at vvaw.org http://lists.shout.net/mailman/listinfo/vvawnet ************************************************************* Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. (773) 569-3520 vvaw at vvaw.org www.vvaw.org Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967 From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 02:56:19 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 02:56:19 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle Message-ID: "Obviously the then Dean of my law school believed that a Law Professor should advocate the Law of the Jungle instead of the Rule of Law." ---------------- Nothing has changed during the past 16+ years. Nothing will change. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 8:58 PM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 8:54 PM To: sectns.aals at lists.aals.org Subject: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle .... and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night.... -------------------------- BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US foreign fighters in the AfPak theater under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 23 casualties in the week ending September 3 as the official casualty total for the Iraq and AfPak wars* rose to 122,128. The total includes 81,340 casualties since the US invaded Iraq in March, 2003 (Operations "Iraqi Freedom" and "New Dawn"). New Dawn ended Dec 31, 2011, although those who died of wounds or injuries later are included. Operation "Enduring Freedom" began with the invasion of Afghanistan in November, 2001 and has resulted in 40,788 casualties. AFGHANISTAN THEATER: US foreign fighters suffered 23 combat casualties during the week ending September 3 as the total rose to 40,788. The total includes 21,816 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 18,972 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec.3, 2012, when it stopped making the count public) from what it called "non-hostile" causes. IRAQ THEATER: Obama ordered about 250 more foreign fighters to Iraq, adding to the 1,000 he already sent since last month (together with his air force), but the total remains unclear, because most of several thousand armed US employees are designated as civilians. The casualty total recently stood at 35,771 dead and wounded from "hostile" causes and 45,569 dead or medically evacuated (as of Dec 3, 2012) from "non-hostile" causes. US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by reporting regularly only the total killed (6,833- 4,491 in Iraq, 2,342 in Afghanistan) but rarely mentioning those wounded in action (52,224 - 32,242 in Iraq; 19,982 in Afghanistan). They ignore the 59,908 (44,607 in Iraq,18,463 in AfPak (as of Dec 3, 2012) military casualties injured and ill seriously enough to be medevac'd out of theater, even though the 6,831 total dead include 1,470 (962 in Iraq, 508 in Afghanistan) who died from those same "non hostile" causes of whom almost 25% (332) were suicides (as of Jan 9, 2013). LENGTH: 3653 words HEADLINE: O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle BYLINE: Francis A Boyle BODY:     by Francis Boyle On the morning of 13 September 2001, that is 48 hours after the terrible tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11th, I received telephone call from a producer at Fox Television Network News in New York City. He asked me to go onto The O'Reilly Factor TV program live that evening in order to debate Bill O'Reilly on the question of war versus peace. O'Reilly would argue for the United States going to war in reaction to the terrorist attacks on 11 September, and I would argue for a peaceful resolution of this matter.    Up until then I had deliberately declined numerous requests for interviews about the terrible events of September 11 and what should be done about them because it was not clear to me precisely what was going on. But unfortunately The O'Reilly Factor had the Number One ranking in TV viewership for any news media talk program in America. I felt very strongly as a matter of principle that at least one person from the American Peace Movement had to go onto that program and argue the case directly to the American people that the United States of America must not go to war despite the terrible tragedy that had been inflicted upon us all. I had debated O'Reilly before so I was fully aware of the type of abuse to expect from him. So for the next few hours I negotiated with O'Reilly through his producer as to the terms and conditions of my appearance and our debate, which they agreed to. At the time I did not realize that O'Reilly was setting me up to be fired as he would next successfully do to Professor Sami Al-Arian soon after debating me. After our debate had concluded, I returned from the campus television studio to my office in order to shut the computer down, and then go home for what little remained of the evening. When I arrived in my office, I found that my voice mail message system had been flooded with mean, nasty, vicious complaints and threats. The same was true for my e-mail in-box. I deleted all these messages as best I could, and then finally went home to watch the rest of O'Reilly's 9/11 coverage that evening on Fox with my wife. By then he was replaying selected segments of our debate and asking for hostile commentaries from Newt Gingrich and Jeane Kirkpatrick. We turned off the TV in disgust when O'Reilly publicly accused me of being an Al Qaeda supporter. My understanding was that Fox then continued to rebroadcast a tape of this outright character assassination upon me for the rest of the night. When I returned to my office the next day, so many complaints had been filed and accumulated with numerous university officials that the then Dean of my law school issued a public statement repudiating me and then placing it on the law school's web-site. Obviously the then Dean of my law school believed that a Law Professor should advocate the Law of the Jungle instead of the Rule of Law. He is now "deaning" elsewhere, just like a previous Dean who had tried to get rid of me because of my fervid belief in the Rule of Law and public activities in support thereof. On the positive side, however, my besting of O'Reilly in the debate led to my being inundated by requests for interviews from mainstream and progressive news media sources all over the world. This plethora of interviews have continued apace until today during the course of all the terrible events that have transpired in the world since September 11: the war against Afghanistan; the global war on terrorism; massive assaults on international law, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and the United States Constitution; the war against Iraq; Guantanamo; kangaroo courts; the Bush Jr. torture scandal, etc. I have done the best I can to oppose this Bush Jr. juggernaut of nihilism--now continued and expanded by Obama. Ultimately it will be up to the American people to decide the future direction of the United States of America and thus indirectly, because of America's preponderant power, unfairly for the rest of the world. The present danger still remains Machiavellian power politics. The only known antidote is international law, international organizations, human rights, and the United States Constitution. In our thermonuclear age, humankind's existential choice is that stark, ominous, and compelling. As Americans, we must not hesitate to apply this imperative regimen immediately before it becomes too late for the continuation of our human species itself. The Rush to War SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:29) September 13, 2001 Thursday Transcript # 091303cb.256 SECTION: News; Domestic LENGTH: 3973 words HEADLINE: America Unites: How Should the U.S. Bring Terrorists to Justice? GUESTS: Sam Huessini, Francis Boyle BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly O'REILLY: While most Americans are united in their support of President Bush and the desire to bring Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to justice, there are some differing voices. Joining us now from Washington is Sam Husseini, the former spokesman for the Arab Anti -- American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and from Urbana, Illinois, is Francis Boyle, an international law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[...] O'REILLY: Cut his mike. All right, now, Mr. Boyle, Professor Boyle, let's have a little bit more of a rational discussion here. That was absurd. The United States now has to take action against certain segments in this world who we know have been harbouring people like Osama bin Laden. That's going to happen. How will you react to that? FRANCIS BOYLE, LAW PROFESSOR: Well, first I think you have to look at the law involved. Clearly what we have here, under United States domestic law and statutes, is an act of international terrorism that should be treated as such. It is not yet elevated to an act of war. For an act of war, we need proof that a foreign state actually ordered or launched an attack upon the United States of America. So far, we do not yet have that evidence. We could... O'REILLY: All right, now why are you, why are you, why are you taking this position when you know forces have attacked the United States. Now, maybe they don't have a country, but they are forces. They have attacked the United States, all right? Without warning, without provocation. Civilian targets. They've done everything that an act of war does. So, I'm saying that because we live in a different world now, where borders don't really matter, where terrorism is the weapon of choice, that you would declare war -- if I were President Bush, I would declare war on any hostile forces, notice those words, professor, hostile forces to the United States. I would have a blanket declaration of war so I could go in and kill those people. Would I be wrong? BOYLE: Well, Bill, so far you'll note Congress has been unwilling to declare war. And indeed, this matter is being debated right now. Right now, it appears that what they are seeking is not a full declaration of war, but only what we law professors call an imperfect declaration, which means a limited use of military force under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Precisely for the problem that we don't know if any state was involved and we still do not know who was responsible for this undoubted terrorist attack upon the United States of America. O'REILLY: All right, but we have the secretary of state saying that Osama bin Laden now has been linked into and, you know, we don't have all the intelligence information, as President Bush said today. He's not going to give us, and he shouldn't, the people of America all the information that they have. But when the secretary of state gets up and says, look, we know this guy was involved to some extent, I believe him. And he's a wanted man, professor. He's been wanted for eight years. The Clinton administration didn't have the heart to get him and in the first few months the Bush administration didn't either. We now know, and you just heard the FBI agent say that Afghanistan has been involved for years harbouring and training these kinds of people. Certainly, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, those five countries, certainly have been hostile to the United States and given safe harbour to these terrorists. That's a fact. BOYLE: Well, let me point out, the secretary of state was very careful in the words he used. He said Osama bin Laden was a suspect. He did not accuse him. And, again, under these circumstances... O'REILLY: No, he didn't use the word suspect. He used another word. BOYLE: The account I read in, just off the wire service, said suspect. But let me continue my point. Under these circumstances, where we have 5,000 Americans dead and we could have many more Americans killed in a conflict, we have to be very careful, Congress and the American people and the president, in not to over-escalate the rhetoric, here. We have to look at this very rationally. This is a democracy. We have a right to see what the evidence is and proceed in a very slow and deliberate manner. O'REILLY: No, we don't. We do not, as a republic, we don't have the right to see what the evidence is if the evidence is of a national security situation, as you know. Now, I'm trusting my government to do the right thing, here. I am trusting. But I think it's beyond a doubt right now, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is, as you know, a court of law standard, that there are at least five, North Korea you could put in to, six states in the world that have harboured continually these terrorists. Now, we know that this was a well-coordinated effort. Our initial intelligence shows that some of the people that have been arrested have ties to Osama bin Laden. We know, as you just heard the FBI agent say, that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was tied in to a guy who knew bin Laden. So, bin Laden -- I agree with you, that you don't want to be a hothead. You don't want to overreact. You don't want to lob a missile at the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, which was terrible, and that was the one good point, or fair point, that Mr. Husseini made, you don't want to do that. But, on the other hand, professor, I think Americans are rightful, are right, to demand action against states that we know in the past have harboured these individuals and there's a warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest. So, if he is in Afghanistan, I would give that government a couple of days to hand him over, and if they did not, I'd go in. BOYLE: Well, again. The American people are right. We need to see the evidence. I remember people saying a generation ago, during the Vietnam war, I trusted my government. And I think people of my generation found out that that was wrong. We needed more evidence. O'REILLY: All right. Professor, let me stop you there, though. This is another point that Mr. Husseini tried to make. Just because the United States of America has made mistakes in the past, does not mean that we cannot defend ourselves now. This is a unique situation in history. We have now been attacked by forces without borders, OK? We've been attacked. And it hasn't been a military attack, it's been an attack on civilians. The reason, the sole reason a federal government exists is to protect the people of the United States. And as I said in my "Talking Points" memo, they haven't really done the job, for political reasons. But now's the time to correct those things. So, there's going to be a reckoning, Professor. You know it's going to happen. I know it's going to happen. And it's going to come down on Osama bin Laden first and maybe some of these rouge states later. Will you support that action? BOYLE: Before I support a war that will jeopardize the lives of tens of thousands of our servicemen and women, I want to see the evidence that we are relying on to justify this. So far, I do not see it. I see allegations. I see innuendo. I see winks and I see nods, but I do not see the evidence that you need under international law and the United States constitution so far to go to war. Maybe that evidence will be there, but it is not there now. My recommendation to Congress is to slow down, let's see what develops and let's see what this evidence is before we knowingly go out and not only kill large numbers of people, perhaps in Afghanistan and other countries, but undoubtedly in our own armed forces. 58,000 men of my generation will killed in Vietnam because of irresponsible behavior by the Johnson administration rushing that Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress, exactly what we're seeing now. And we need to pull back and stop and think and ask the hard questions and demand to see the evidence first, before we march off to war. O'REILLY: All right, so it's not enough that people arrested in the bombings of the embassies in Africa testified in court that Osama bin Laden was behind and financed and coordinated those bombings. That evidence is not enough for you? BOYLE: Well, Africa is a very is a very different story than what happened in the World Trade Center. O'REILLY: No, it's not. He's wanted, he's wanted in the United States for the bombings of those two embassies. Is that evidence enough for you, professor, for the United States to go in and get this man? Is it enough? BOYLE: That, that matter was treated and handled as an act of international terrorism in accordance with the normal laws and procedures of the United States of America as a question of domestic and international law enforcement. And I am suggesting that is the way we need to proceed here... O'REILLY: Well, wait. You're dodging the question professor. BOYLE: ... unless we have evidence that... O'REILLY: Wait, professor. Professor. This is a no spin zone. Hold it. Hold it. Even out in Urbana Champagne, the no spin zone rules. You're dodging the question. There is an absolutely rock solid arrest warrant out for this man. Evidence in court, testimony by people who did the bombings that this man was behind it. Is that enough evidence for you to have the United States go in and get him now? Is it enough? BOYLE: The United States has been attempting to secure his extradition from Afghanistan. I support... O'REILLY: Yeah, that's long enough. BOYLE: I support that approach as international... O'REILLY: Come on already, I mean, eight years, we've been attempting to extradite this guy. Now's the time to tell the Afghans you've got 48 hours or 72 hours to turn him over. You don't turn him over, we're coming in and getting him. You try to stop us, and you're toast. Enough is enough, professor. BOYLE: That's vigilantism. It is not what the United States of America is supposed to stand for. We are supposed to stand... O'REILLY: No, what that is is protecting the country from terrorists who kill civilians. BOYLE: ... for rule of law. O'REILLY: It's not vigilantism. BOYLE: We are supposed to stand for rule of law, and that is clearly vigilantism. There is a Security Council, there is Congress, there are procedures and there are laws, and they are there to protect all of us here in the United States as well as... O'REILLY: So, you're telling me... BOYLE: ... as well as our servicemen and women. Look, Bill, if we allegedly, as you put it, go in, you are not going in, I am not going in. It's going to be young men and women serving in our armed forces... O'REILLY: And that's their job. To protect us. But, professor, let me, you know, what you're saying is, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. B0YLE: ... with the constitution and the laws of the United States. O'REILLY: We're not violating any laws here, professor. No one is going to violate the law. There is going to be a state of war induced against states, states, terroristic states, who have attacked us. And what you're saying is, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying that even though there is a legitimate warrant out for Osama bin Laden's arrest, and even though most civilized nations would honor that warrant and turn him over to us, extradite him to us, the vast majority of nations on earth would do that, you still are opposed for the United States to demand that the Taliban government arrest this man and turn him over? You are opposed to that? BOYLE: During the Gulf War, President Bush father, who has far more experience that the current president Bush, got a Security Council resolution authorizing the United States of America to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait. Second, President Bush father got a War Powers Authorization Resolution from Congress that gave him the constitutional authority to use military force to enforce that Security Council resolution. What I'm calling for here is the same adherence to international law and the United States constitution that the first President Bush adhered to in dealing with Iraq. O'REILLY: Well, you'll get that, professor. That's just a formality. There -- nobody on Capitol Hill right now, they're not going to -- there's no profile of courages up there anyway, usually. They're going to give President Bush what he wants. If he wants a War Powers Act, they're going to give it to him. He wants a declaration, they're going to give it to him. BOYLE: Actually, they're arguing about it right now... O'REILLY: They're going to give it to him. But I'm not interested in that, because it's going to happen. It's going to happen. BOYLE: The reports -- no, the reports I read was that this President Bush initially asked for a blank check, and Congress balked because they had been suckered once before... O'REILLY: All right, I'm not -- speculation is not what I'm in -- all right, professor. I don't want to speculate. I'm just going to say in my opinion he's going to have the authority to go in and get Osama bin Laden and his pals, wherever they are. He will get that authority, whether it takes a day or a week, he'll get it. And once he gets it, now, that's what I want to talk about here. Once he gets it, are you and others like you going to say, oh, no, we shouldn't do this, even though we have proof of the man's -- masterminded the bombings in Africa and the Cole,testimony in Yemen, are you going to still say, even after the authority is granted by Congress, which it will be, no, don't do it, let Afghanistan handle him? Are you going to still do that, professor? BOYLE: Second, like his father, his father also got authorization from the United States, the United Nations Security Council under chapter seven of the United Nations charter... O'REILLY: Oh, you want to go to U.N. now? You want the U.N. involved now. BOYLE: Is exactly what his father did... O'REILLY: So what? BOYLE: And that's exactly right. O'REILLY: His father made a huge mistake by not taking out Sadam Hussein when he could of. BOYLE: His father adhered to the required procedures under the United States constitution and the United Nations charter that is a treaty and the supreme law of our land. I expect the current President Bush to do exactly what his father did before he starts engaging in a massive military campaign in Iraq or against other countries... O'REILLY: All right, I don't know whether he's going to go -- I know he's not going to let the U.N. dictate. He might go for a consensus. He's already got it with Putin and all of our NATO allies, he's already go that. Whether he goes -- I think it would be a mistake to let -- empowering the U.N. in this situation. BOYLE: Then why did his father do this? O'REILLY: I'm going -- we're going to wrap this up with this. I'm going to give my last summation and then you can give yours, I'll give you the last word on it. This is a fugitive we're dealing with here. He has now been tied in by U.S. intelligence agencies, according to Attorney General Ashcroft and the secretary of state, tied into this horrendous bombing here in New York. The United States must make a response to this, and I am agreeing with you in a sense, it can't be a knee-jerk. It's got to be done in a methodical way. Congress will go along, they may debate it or whatever, but they will go along in either a War Powers, special War Powers Act or a declaration of war against forces hostile to the United States. Then they will go in and they will take him. This man you're looking at on the TV screen is a dead man. He should be a dead man. You don't do what he did and be allowed to walk around this earth. Now, I'm distressed, professor, by your reliance, reliance on the strict letter of propriety, when we've got 10,000 people laying in the street about 22 miles from me right now. I want deliberation. I want methodical discipline, but I also want action. We know who this guy is. We know the governments that are protecting him. We know the other rouge states that have terrorist camps there. They all have to be dealt with, in my opinion. I'll give you the last word. BOYLE: Sure, I agree with you, Bill. He is a fugitive from justice and this should be handled as a matter as other fugitives from justice of international law enforcement. If indeed there is evidence that a foreign state orchestrated and ordered an attack against the United States then clearly that is an act of war that should be dealt with as such... O'REILLY: What about harbouring? BOYLE: Right now... O'REILLY: Is harbouring an act of war? BOYLE: In my opinion, no. And under the current circumstances, I don't see it. O'REILLY: All right, professor. BOYLE: I think there is a distinction here. O'REILLY: OK, all right, wrap it up, if you would. BOYLE: I agree -- I agree that the -- if we go to war in a hasty manner here, we could see thousands of U.S. military personnel being killed without proper authorization by Congress or by the United Nations Security Council. O'REILLY: OK. BOYLE: Our founding fathers decided that the most awesome decision we would ever make would be to go to war, and we have to be very careful in making that decision. O'REILLY: All right, professor, I appreciate it very much. Thank you for your point of view. BOYLE: Thank you, Bill. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) _______________________________________________ vvawnet mailing list vvawnet at vvaw.org http://lists.shout.net/mailman/listinfo/vvawnet ************************************************************* Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. (773) 569-3520 vvaw at vvaw.org www.vvaw.org Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967 From davidcnswanson at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 04:19:17 2017 From: davidcnswanson at gmail.com (David Swanson) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 00:19:17 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: UVA’s Miller Center Plans Three Days of Russophobia Where the New York Times Fails to Understand War -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidcnswanson at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 04:19:17 2017 From: davidcnswanson at gmail.com (David Swanson) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 00:19:17 -0400 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: UVA’s Miller Center Plans Three Days of Russophobia Where the New York Times Fails to Understand War -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 09:16:15 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 04:16:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?America=E2=80=99s_Forever_Wars?= In-Reply-To: <9D0010E9-BF2C-4075-B3AE-EB0963056478@illinois.edu> References: <59ED57F5.00000050@pmta04.ewr1.nytimes.com> <9D0010E9-BF2C-4075-B3AE-EB0963056478@illinois.edu> Message-ID: > 'Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it’s rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial. On Monday, the New York Times (10/22/17 ) lamented the expansion of America’s “forever wars” overseas, without once noting that every war mentioned is one the editorial board has itself endorsed, while failing to oppose any of the “engagements” touched on in the editorial.’ > On Oct 22, 2017, at 10:09 PM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > Subject: NYTimes.com : America’s Forever Wars > Date: October 22, 2017 > Reply-To: > > > > Sent by r-szoke at illinois.edu : > > EDITORIAL > America’s Forever Wars > BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD > > How many foreign entanglements will the public tolerate, and why is Congress AWOL from this debate? > Or, copy and paste this URL into your browser: https://nyti.ms/2gZjWCv > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 24 12:12:00 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:12:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Anti-War Teach-In on UPTV References: <495d9b3a763d4e6085b8ef1efe97f0a6@Zefram.city.urbana.il.us> Message-ID: AWARE’S ANTI-WAR TEACH IN Will be aired this coming Thursday night on UPTV channel 6. It is also available currently on Utube. October 26th, beginning at 7:00PM. All four hours of the event will be shown. From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 12:21:43 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:21:43 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Anti-War Teach-In on UPTV In-Reply-To: References: <495d9b3a763d4e6085b8ef1efe97f0a6@Zefram.city.urbana.il.us> Message-ID: Our thanks to Karen for getting all this organized. And to everyone involved in the project. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 7:12 AM To: Peace-discuss List ; peace Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Anti-War Teach-In on UPTV AWARE’S ANTI-WAR TEACH IN Will be aired this coming Thursday night on UPTV channel 6. It is also available currently on Utube. October 26th, beginning at 7:00PM. All four hours of the event will be shown. _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 12:21:43 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:21:43 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Anti-War Teach-In on UPTV In-Reply-To: References: <495d9b3a763d4e6085b8ef1efe97f0a6@Zefram.city.urbana.il.us> Message-ID: Our thanks to Karen for getting all this organized. And to everyone involved in the project. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 7:12 AM To: Peace-discuss List ; peace Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Anti-War Teach-In on UPTV AWARE’S ANTI-WAR TEACH IN Will be aired this coming Thursday night on UPTV channel 6. It is also available currently on Utube. October 26th, beginning at 7:00PM. All four hours of the event will be shown. _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:02:36 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:02:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yeah it’s pretty bad everywhere, including here. When I circulated an interview I gave that this was a NeoNazi CIA coup in Ukraine against a democratically elected government to members of our Russian Center here—where I have been Affiliated since shortly after I arrived, I was told by the Director that he never wanted to receive another email from me again. As for Harvard, they are hopeless. in 7 years studying everything Russian/Soviet there, including offering Russian History and Soviet Politics on my PHD Oral/General Exams, I only had 2 professors who were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia/Soviet Union. The University of Chicago, where I studied Russia/Soviet Union as an undergrad had none. Ten years at 2 of the most “elite” Soviet/Russian Centers in the country, two professors. But you really need to read Chomsky’s The Cold War and the University. There is an essay in there on how the CIA/DOD set up all these Russian/Soviet Research Centers after World War II to be used in order to create academic Cold Warriors against the Soviet Union/Russia. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: David Swanson [mailto:davidcnswanson at gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 11:19 PM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: Re: Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle UVA’s Miller Center Plans Three Days of Russophobia Where the New York Times Fails to Understand War -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:02:36 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:02:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yeah it’s pretty bad everywhere, including here. When I circulated an interview I gave that this was a NeoNazi CIA coup in Ukraine against a democratically elected government to members of our Russian Center here—where I have been Affiliated since shortly after I arrived, I was told by the Director that he never wanted to receive another email from me again. As for Harvard, they are hopeless. in 7 years studying everything Russian/Soviet there, including offering Russian History and Soviet Politics on my PHD Oral/General Exams, I only had 2 professors who were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia/Soviet Union. The University of Chicago, where I studied Russia/Soviet Union as an undergrad had none. Ten years at 2 of the most “elite” Soviet/Russian Centers in the country, two professors. But you really need to read Chomsky’s The Cold War and the University. There is an essay in there on how the CIA/DOD set up all these Russian/Soviet Research Centers after World War II to be used in order to create academic Cold Warriors against the Soviet Union/Russia. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: David Swanson [mailto:davidcnswanson at gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017 11:19 PM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: Re: Killer Koh:: Sexual Predator/ Warmonger O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle UVA’s Miller Center Plans Three Days of Russophobia Where the New York Times Fails to Understand War -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:19:20 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:19:20 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia - Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you've recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I'd like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn't say that is "necessarily" the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn't really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia's boundaries. Robles: Well, we've seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev - the first and last President of the Soviet Union - those were also ignored. And regarding ... Boyle: The problem was - he never got them in writing. Robles: That's exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying "you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing." You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said... Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said... I have the citation in my book "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence", where Wolfowitz said: "We are going to get into the business of destroying states". And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that's really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called "Destroying Libya and World Order" where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine - fine! - they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that's not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I've been to Ukraine and I've been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You've been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats... Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah... Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that's what it was. Boyle: It's more dangerous than that! In that Obama's mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama's campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul - the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I'm sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski's protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama's mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don't think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that's I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master's degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan's top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don't really have ... you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that's why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn't necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that's not what we are seeing now. That's for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he's shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group · New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] * Privacy * Unsubscribe * Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:19:20 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:19:20 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia - Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you've recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I'd like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn't say that is "necessarily" the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn't really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia's boundaries. Robles: Well, we've seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev - the first and last President of the Soviet Union - those were also ignored. And regarding ... Boyle: The problem was - he never got them in writing. Robles: That's exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying "you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing." You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said... Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said... I have the citation in my book "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence", where Wolfowitz said: "We are going to get into the business of destroying states". And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that's really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called "Destroying Libya and World Order" where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine - fine! - they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that's not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I've been to Ukraine and I've been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You've been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats... Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah... Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that's what it was. Boyle: It's more dangerous than that! In that Obama's mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama's campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul - the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I'm sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski's protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama's mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don't think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that's I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master's degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan's top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don't really have ... you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that's why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn't necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that's not what we are seeing now. That's for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he's shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group · New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] * Privacy * Unsubscribe * Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:21:51 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:21:51 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution References: Message-ID: And of course it goes without saying that the blackballing of me around this campus and in this community because of my support for the Palestinians is even worse. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia - Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you've recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I'd like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn't say that is "necessarily" the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn't really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia's boundaries. Robles: Well, we've seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev - the first and last President of the Soviet Union - those were also ignored. And regarding ... Boyle: The problem was - he never got them in writing. Robles: That's exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying "you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing." You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said... Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said... I have the citation in my book "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence", where Wolfowitz said: "We are going to get into the business of destroying states". And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that's really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called "Destroying Libya and World Order" where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine - fine! - they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that's not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I've been to Ukraine and I've been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You've been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats... Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah... Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that's what it was. Boyle: It's more dangerous than that! In that Obama's mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama's campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul - the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I'm sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski's protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama's mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don't think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that's I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master's degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan's top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don't really have ... you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that's why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn't necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that's not what we are seeing now. That's for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he's shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group · New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] * Privacy * Unsubscribe * Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:21:51 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:21:51 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution References: Message-ID: And of course it goes without saying that the blackballing of me around this campus and in this community because of my support for the Palestinians is even worse. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia - Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you've recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I'd like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn't say that is "necessarily" the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn't really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia's boundaries. Robles: Well, we've seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev - the first and last President of the Soviet Union - those were also ignored. And regarding ... Boyle: The problem was - he never got them in writing. Robles: That's exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying "you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing." You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said... Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said... I have the citation in my book "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence", where Wolfowitz said: "We are going to get into the business of destroying states". And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that's really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called "Destroying Libya and World Order" where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine - fine! - they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that's not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I've been to Ukraine and I've been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You've been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats... Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah... Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that's what it was. Boyle: It's more dangerous than that! In that Obama's mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama's campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul - the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I'm sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski's protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama's mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don't think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that's I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master's degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan's top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don't really have ... you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that's why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn't necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that's not what we are seeing now. That's for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he's shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group · New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] * Privacy * Unsubscribe * Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:40:53 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:40:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution References: Message-ID: The last time I read Trump had a Dick Pipes Protégé as his Russian "expert" on the National Security Council at the White House. And Trump is also being advised by the die-hard NeoCon Yale Law Mafia John Bolton. God help us all! Fab. Fab Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia - Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you've recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I'd like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn't say that is "necessarily" the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn't really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia's boundaries. Robles: Well, we've seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev - the first and last President of the Soviet Union - those were also ignored. And regarding ... Boyle: The problem was - he never got them in writing. Robles: That's exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying "you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing." You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said... Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said... I have the citation in my book "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence", where Wolfowitz said: "We are going to get into the business of destroying states". And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that's really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called "Destroying Libya and World Order" where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine - fine! - they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that's not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I've been to Ukraine and I've been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You've been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats... Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah... Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that's what it was. Boyle: It's more dangerous than that! In that Obama's mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama's campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul - the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I'm sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski's protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama's mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don't think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that's I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master's degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan's top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don't really have ... you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that's why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn't necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that's not what we are seeing now. That's for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he's shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group · New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] * Privacy * Unsubscribe * Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 13:40:53 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:40:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution References: Message-ID: The last time I read Trump had a Dick Pipes Protégé as his Russian "expert" on the National Security Council at the White House. And Trump is also being advised by the die-hard NeoCon Yale Law Mafia John Bolton. God help us all! Fab. Fab Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'David Swanson' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia - Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you've recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I'd like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn't say that is "necessarily" the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn't really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia's boundaries. Robles: Well, we've seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev - the first and last President of the Soviet Union - those were also ignored. And regarding ... Boyle: The problem was - he never got them in writing. Robles: That's exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying "you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing." You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said... Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said... I have the citation in my book "The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence", where Wolfowitz said: "We are going to get into the business of destroying states". And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that's really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called "Destroying Libya and World Order" where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine - fine! - they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that's not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I've been to Ukraine and I've been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You've been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats... Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah... Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that's what it was. Boyle: It's more dangerous than that! In that Obama's mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama's campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul - the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I'm sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski's protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama's mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don't think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that's I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master's degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan's top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don't really have ... you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that's why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn't necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that's not what we are seeing now. That's for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he's shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) Visit Your Group · New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] * Privacy * Unsubscribe * Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 24 14:04:02 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 14:04:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Documented proof of US involvement in the genocide of half a million Indonesians 1965. Message-ID: Scholar Brad Simpson provides documents proving US instigation and involvement, as well as complicity of the NYT’s, in the genocide of half a million Indonesians in 1965. See: The Real News. http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20282:US-Didn%27t-%27Stand-By%27-Indonesia-Bloodbath---It-Helped -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 24 14:54:10 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 14:54:10 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The “blackballing” by these people, wear with pride. On Oct 24, 2017, at 06:21, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: And of course it goes without saying that the blackballing of me around this campus and in this community because of my support for the Palestinians is even worse. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' >; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' >; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' >; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' >; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' >; Hoffman, Valerie J >; 'Joe Lauria' >; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' >; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' >; Miller, Joseph Thomas >; Szoke, Ron >; 'Arlene Hickory' >; 'David Swanson' >; 'Karen Aram' >; 'abass10 at gmail.com' >; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' >; 'Lina Thorne' >; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' >; 'Jay' >; 'David Johnson' >; 'Mildred O'brien' >; Estabrook, Carl G > Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia – Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you’ve recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I’d like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn’t say that is “necessarily” the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn’t really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia’s boundaries. Robles: Well, we’ve seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev – the first and last President of the Soviet Union – those were also ignored. And regarding … Boyle: The problem was – he never got them in writing. Robles: That’s exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying “you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing.” You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said… Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said… I have the citation in my book “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence”, where Wolfowitz said: “We are going to get into the business of destroying states”. And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that’s really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called “Destroying Libya and World Order” where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine – fine! – they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that’s not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You’ve been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats… Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah… Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that’s what it was. Boyle: It’s more dangerous than that! In that Obama’s mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama’s campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul – the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I’m sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski’s protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama’s mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don’t think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that’s I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master’s degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan’s top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don’t really have … you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that’s why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn’t necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that’s not what we are seeing now. That’s for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he’s shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) VISIT YOUR GROUP • New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] • Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C3c1c6b2f46264ce4808608d51ae24f67%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636444481649866518&sdata=vNsSIBxTAejzDtapokGZ7wiJDH4l4fSZN4hAVC8gw9w%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 24 14:54:10 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 14:54:10 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The “blackballing” by these people, wear with pride. On Oct 24, 2017, at 06:21, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: And of course it goes without saying that the blackballing of me around this campus and in this community because of my support for the Palestinians is even worse. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' >; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' >; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' >; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' >; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' >; Hoffman, Valerie J >; 'Joe Lauria' >; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' >; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' >; Miller, Joseph Thomas >; Szoke, Ron >; 'Arlene Hickory' >; 'David Swanson' >; 'Karen Aram' >; 'abass10 at gmail.com' >; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' >; 'Lina Thorne' >; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' >; 'Jay' >; 'David Johnson' >; 'Mildred O'brien' >; Estabrook, Carl G > Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia – Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you’ve recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I’d like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn’t say that is “necessarily” the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn’t really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia’s boundaries. Robles: Well, we’ve seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev – the first and last President of the Soviet Union – those were also ignored. And regarding … Boyle: The problem was – he never got them in writing. Robles: That’s exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying “you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing.” You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said… Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said… I have the citation in my book “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence”, where Wolfowitz said: “We are going to get into the business of destroying states”. And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that’s really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called “Destroying Libya and World Order” where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine – fine! – they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that’s not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You’ve been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats… Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah… Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that’s what it was. Boyle: It’s more dangerous than that! In that Obama’s mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama’s campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul – the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I’m sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski’s protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama’s mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don’t think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that’s I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master’s degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan’s top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don’t really have … you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that’s why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn’t necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that’s not what we are seeing now. That’s for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he’s shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) VISIT YOUR GROUP • New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] • Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C3c1c6b2f46264ce4808608d51ae24f67%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636444481649866518&sdata=vNsSIBxTAejzDtapokGZ7wiJDH4l4fSZN4hAVC8gw9w%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 15:07:25 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 15:07:25 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Message-ID: For sure I do. Especially here at the College of Law--A Gang of Die-hard Bigots and Racists and Warmongers against Muslims/Arabs/Palestinians/Africans/Asians of Color. Killer Koh--QED. Fab Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 9:54 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; David Swanson ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution The “blackballing” by these people, wear with pride. On Oct 24, 2017, at 06:21, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: And of course it goes without saying that the blackballing of me around this campus and in this community because of my support for the Palestinians is even worse. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' >; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' >; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' >; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' >; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' >; Hoffman, Valerie J >; 'Joe Lauria' >; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' >; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' >; Miller, Joseph Thomas >; Szoke, Ron >; 'Arlene Hickory' >; 'David Swanson' >; 'Karen Aram' >; 'abass10 at gmail.com' >; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' >; 'Lina Thorne' >; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' >; 'Jay' >; 'David Johnson' >; 'Mildred O'brien' >; Estabrook, Carl G > Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia – Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you’ve recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I’d like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn’t say that is “necessarily” the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn’t really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia’s boundaries. Robles: Well, we’ve seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev – the first and last President of the Soviet Union – those were also ignored. And regarding … Boyle: The problem was – he never got them in writing. Robles: That’s exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying “you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing.” You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said… Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said… I have the citation in my book “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence”, where Wolfowitz said: “We are going to get into the business of destroying states”. And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that’s really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called “Destroying Libya and World Order” where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine – fine! – they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that’s not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You’ve been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats… Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah… Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that’s what it was. Boyle: It’s more dangerous than that! In that Obama’s mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama’s campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul – the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I’m sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski’s protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama’s mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don’t think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that’s I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master’s degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan’s top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don’t really have … you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that’s why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn’t necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that’s not what we are seeing now. That’s for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he’s shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) VISIT YOUR GROUP • New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] • Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C3c1c6b2f46264ce4808608d51ae24f67%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636444481649866518&sdata=vNsSIBxTAejzDtapokGZ7wiJDH4l4fSZN4hAVC8gw9w%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 15:07:25 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 15:07:25 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Killer Koh: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Message-ID: For sure I do. Especially here at the College of Law--A Gang of Die-hard Bigots and Racists and Warmongers against Muslims/Arabs/Palestinians/Africans/Asians of Color. Killer Koh--QED. Fab Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 9:54 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; David Swanson ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution The “blackballing” by these people, wear with pride. On Oct 24, 2017, at 06:21, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: And of course it goes without saying that the blackballing of me around this campus and in this community because of my support for the Palestinians is even worse. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 8:19 AM To: 'David Green' >; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' >; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' >; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' >; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' >; Hoffman, Valerie J >; 'Joe Lauria' >; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' >; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' >; Miller, Joseph Thomas >; Szoke, Ron >; 'Arlene Hickory' >; 'David Swanson' >; 'Karen Aram' >; 'abass10 at gmail.com' >; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' >; 'Lina Thorne' >; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' >; 'Jay' >; 'David Johnson' >; 'Mildred O'brien' >; Estabrook, Carl G > Subject: FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution I think it was an interview along these lines that led our Russian Research Center Director around here to say he never wanted to receive another email from me again despite the fact that I have been Associated with the Center long before he arrived. So it goes in the Academic World. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: stopnato at yahoogroups.com [mailto:stopnato at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:20 AM To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Subject: [stopnato] FW: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2014 9:18 AM To: Killeacle Subject: Voice of Russia on Ukraine:The Brown (Shirt) Revolution LEAD It is a fact that since 9-11-2001, the US Government has been in the business of destroying countries and using NATO as it principle instrument. That was stated more than a decade ago by then US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and later by General Wesley Clark. The Pentagon drew up a list of 7 states that were to be destroyed: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria and they have systematically proceeded to destroy all of the Countries on the list. The strategy in Ukraine is the same, US/NATO/EU are promoting the destabilization and the breakup of Ukraine in order to achieve the NATO goal of moving into Ukrainian territory closer to Russia. Harvard Professor Francis Boyle, a US based Russian expert who was invited to the Soviet Union to lecture spoke on these issues and more in an interview with the Voice of Russia. While Russia was distracted into believing that the US wanted a reset US foreign policy was being planned and dictated by rabid Russia haters like Zbignew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes. Brzezinski wants to breakup Russia into approximately 68 parts and has placed his protégés in key US foreign policy posts. According to Mr. Boyle Brezezinski has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégées, including the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, a specialist in color revolutions. At the end of the day the US plan is to see the breakup of the Russian Federation, that is the goal. HEADLINE Ukraine part of US/NATO/EU plan to break up Russia – Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, Illinois. This is part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Robles: Hello Sir! How are you this evening? Boyle: Very fine. Thanks for having me on, John, and my best to your listening audience. Robles: Thank you Sir! And thanks for agreeing to speak with us. News of the day is Ukraine. Now you’ve recently made some statements and done some work regarding Syria. I’d like to ask for your correlations between what is going on right now in Syria and what is going on right now in Ukraine. Do you see a connection? Some people are saying that Ukraine, the push there was because the US was not allowed to carry out military operations against Syria. Do you see a relationship between them? Boyle: Well I wouldn’t say that is “necessarily” the reason. As we know, Ukraine has for a long time been a strategic objective of the United States and trying to get Ukraine into NATO. And this EU plan was simply a first step in that direction. The EU wasn’t really offering anything to Ukraine. But it was very clear, if they could move Ukraine closer to the EU, that would be a step closer to NATO. In fact, I regret to say over the years, even though I have EU citizenship and carry an EU passport, the EU now has become nothing but an anteroom to NATO. So, I think this really has to be understood in terms of the gradual movement of NATO further to the east in violation of the pledge that George Bush Senior and Jim Baker gave to then President Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, towards Russia’s boundaries. Robles: Well, we’ve seen those promises, similar promises were made to President Gorbachev – the first and last President of the Soviet Union – those were also ignored. And regarding … Boyle: The problem was – he never got them in writing. Robles: That’s exactly what I was going to say. Boyle: That is incredibly naive on his part not to get them in writing. And I would point out, right now the United States is trying to do the exact same thing on the deployment of BMDs (ballistic missile defense) into Europe and around the borders of Russia saying “you have to accept our assurances, but we are not going to give you anything in writing.” You know, it is preposterous. In fact, we had something in writing and that was the Anti-ballistic Missile System Treaty of 1972 that prevented all of this. And then Bush Junior pulled out of that treaty. So, as it stands now, really anything goes, these verbal assurances mean nothing. Robles: Getting away a little bit from the ABM system now, you mentioned NATO and Ukraine; there is a military objective, if you could tell us about that? And is there a similar military objective for Syria? Or what is the objective of the US Government in Syria? Boyle: Since 9/11 2001, as publicly admitted by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the United States Government would be getting into the business of destroying states. And that was later confirmed by General Wesley Clark, as you know in his memoirs, his meeting there at the Pentagon where they had the list of seven states they were going to proceed to take over. Afghanistan was first, Iraq was second, Sudan was on the list, Libya was on the list and Syria was on the list, Iran was on the list. So, they are proceeding systematically down that list of destroying states. Syria is now near the top, Iran might be next. And it also appears now the same strategy is being applied to Ukraine to promote the crackup of Ukraine between east and west and, I would hate to say it, the dissolution of Ukraine as a state. Robles: Can you repeat that quote again? He said… Boyle: Yes Wolfowitz said… I have the citation in my book “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence”, where Wolfowitz said: “We are going to get into the business of destroying states”. And then, soon thereafter General Wesley Clark (head of NATO) was in the Pentagon and can confirm they drew up a list of seven states that they were systematically going to go after. So, that’s really, the objective here of Syria, against Syria, is as they did to Libya: to crackup Syria as a state into its constituent, religious and ethnic units not only for the United States but also for the benefit of Israel. As you know, Israel has been a long time opponent to Syria. They headed a plan there, the Yi Nolan Plan to crackup surrounding states in order to better manage them and keep them under control. So, here you see a congruence of interests certainly between the United States and Israel. And I regret to say it, but pretty much they have cracked up Syria in its constituent units, as they had done to Iraq. We now have basically three mini states in Iraq. The same has been done to Afghanistan and also Libya, where you have, you know it is hard to say there is a meaningful state there anymore. I have a new book out called “Destroying Libya and World Order” where I have all these citations in there and an analysis. And then, I tried to extend this to Syria near the end of the book. And it does appear we are seeing a similar pattern of behavior here on Ukraine: to destabilize Ukraine, promote a crack up, some type of civil war or who knows what. And I guess the theory is, well if NATO-EU can get western Ukraine – fine! – they can extend the borders of NATO, the EU that far. So, it is a very dangerous situation, because, as you know, Ukraine is of utmost strategic significance to Russia. And second, Russia believes that Ukraine is the cradle of its civilization. Robles: Well it is, that’s not a belief. Ukraine is the mother of Rus. Boyle: I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve been to where Nestor wrote his chronicles, and I have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, sure, at Harvard. And I went through the same PhD program at Harvard that produced Zbigniew Brzezinski before me and Richard Pipes, both of whom were, are ardent Russia haters, there is no question at all about it. And that is really part of the problem here in the United States, when it comes to Russian studies, that so much of it is biased against Russia inherently. Robles: Why is that, please, if you could? You’ve been through the system, you know the system. Why does the US hate Russia so much? Why? Boyle: Well I spent ten years at the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School studying Russian history, Russian literature, Soviet politics, Russian politics. Indeed I even offered Soviet politics and Russian history on my PhD General Exams at Harvard, which qualified me to teach both those subjects to undergraduates at Harvard. But I never learned the language because that was not what I was intending to do. And all those years, ten years of studying, I only had two professors who I thought were fair, reasonable and balanced when it came to Russia and the Soviet Union. And understand Harvard and Chicago are two of the leading centers in the United States for training Russian experts. They train professors and experts, government officials and things of that nature. Robles: Diplomats… Boyle: So, and again, you had Brzezinski, I went through the same PhD program that produced Brzezinski and Kissinger. You know Brzezinski is an expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with a passion. Robles: Oh God yes, yeah… Boyle: Indeed Brzezinski wants to crackup Russia into its constituent units. Robles: Right, I think it was 68 autonomous regions, if that’s what it was. Boyle: It’s more dangerous than that! In that Obama’s mentor at Columbia was Brzezinski. And Brzezinski ran the foreign affairs apparatus for Obama’s campaign and he has staffed the Obama administration with his acolytes and protégés, like McFaul – the recently resigning ambassador. Robles: I’m sorry, can you expand a little bit on McFaul? You said he is one of Brzezinski’s protégé. Boyle: Yes, he is from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which is a neo-conservative operation out there, and Brzezinski is one of these people. Robles: Was McFaul chosen by Brzezinski? Boyle: I think all the high-level appointments in the Obama administration in foreign affairs have been run by Brzezinski. That is my personal feeling looking at it. Yes, Brzezinski decided not to take a position himself, but all these people that have surrounded Obama, not just on Russia, but other areas, are Brzezinski protégés and indeed that goes back in the Democratic Party I think since Carter came to power and Brzezinski was his National Security Advisor. You know, he was the one who started the Afghan Mujahidin war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and bragged about it. So, within the Democratic Party Brzezinski is considered to be their foreign affairs guru and he was Obama’s mentor at Columbia, and it is a matter of public record that Brzezinski was running the foreign affairs apparatus for the Obama campaign. Robles: Wow! Boyle: So, I certainly believe he helped staff this administration on foreign affairs matters. Robles: People are thinking about a reset and trying to improve relations. And I don’t think anyone knew that it was all Brzezinski, because people knew who Brzezinski was a long time ago. Boyle: Right. Well, this I think is part of their plan to see the crackup of the Russian Federation, at the end of the day. Sure, that’s I think what his objective is. You know, if you want to get credentialed as an expert on Russia, you have to go to somewhere like Columbia or Harvard, or Chicago and get your Master’s degree or PhD from people like that. At Harvard they also had Richard Pipes, he was the Reagan’s top guru on the Soviet Union, The Committee on the Present Danger. I had Pipes for imperial Russian history, again, another expatriate Pole who hates the Russians with passion. Pipes was so bad in his course on Imperial Russian history, he used to break into sweat when he was lecturing on Peter the Great or Catherine the Great and had to take a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. So, he is another fanatic against the Russians, only prominent in the Republican Party. So, we don’t really have … you know Professor Cohen at NYU I think is fair, balanced and reasonable when it comes to Russia. He just wrote something in The Nation on Ukraine. And I think he wrote a very good book on Russia. But you know, he is really the exception to a pretty abysmal rule here in the United States when it comes to training and credentialing what were Soviet and now Russian experts. Robles: So, why are you fair-minded Sir? Boyle: I try to come at Russia and the Soviet Union with an open mind. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and I concluded that probably the most important issue of my time would be to learn to understand Russia across the board and the Soviet Union. So, that’s why I spent the ten years studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard and getting formally credentialed in these areas. And I have to say I was pretty appalled. I did have Professor Edward Keenan at Harvard who was my teacher, mentor and friend. And he was Director of the Russian Research Center. And he is very fair, balanced and reasonable, and Professor Harold Berman at Harvard Law School, again, very fair, balanced and reasonable. But that was pretty much about it. I was invited over twice by the Soviet Government to lecture, once around the country in 1986 and then in 1989. And I guess they just figured I was a reasonable American to talk to. And I was open, I met with people and lectured and I seemed to get along with everyone. We didn’t necessarily agree about everything, but at least we could try to talk it out. But that’s not what we are seeing now. That’s for sure! As we know from the Nuland tape here with the Ambassador in Kiev, she admits they had spent at least $5 million right away now trying to promote opposition to the democratically elected government in Ukraine. Whatever you think of Yanukovych, he is democratically elected and so far I think he’s shown a remarkable restraint. You were listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. That was part 1 of a longer interview. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at voiceofrussia.com Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) __._,_.___ Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1) VISIT YOUR GROUP • New Members 1 [Yahoo! Groups] • Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C3c1c6b2f46264ce4808608d51ae24f67%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636444481649866518&sdata=vNsSIBxTAejzDtapokGZ7wiJDH4l4fSZN4hAVC8gw9w%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 15:48:47 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 15:48:47 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?FW=3A_Ukraine=3A_US=2C_NATO=2C_EU_want_?= =?utf-8?q?Nuland=27s_neo-nazi_thugs_in_power_=E2=80=93_Prof_Francis_Boyle?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - Bing News Posted on: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 4:05 PM Author: "Francis Boyle" - Bing News Subject: Ukraine: US, NATO, EU want Nuland's neo-nazi thugs in power – Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign in Illinois. Robles: Hello, Professor Boyle, it is a pleasure to be ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 24 15:48:47 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 15:48:47 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?FW=3A_Ukraine=3A_US=2C_NATO=2C_EU_want_?= =?utf-8?q?Nuland=27s_neo-nazi_thugs_in_power_=E2=80=93_Prof_Francis_Boyle?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) Feed: "Francis Boyle" - Bing News Posted on: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 4:05 PM Author: "Francis Boyle" - Bing News Subject: Ukraine: US, NATO, EU want Nuland's neo-nazi thugs in power – Prof Francis Boyle This is John Robles, you are listening to an interview with Professor Francis Boyle. He is a Professor in International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign in Illinois. Robles: Hello, Professor Boyle, it is a pleasure to be ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Wed Oct 25 01:46:36 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 01:46:36 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] CP excerpt on Catalonia References: <1908973663.2868637.1508895996556.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1908973663.2868637.1508895996556@mail.yahoo.com> Catalan Independence and the Crisis of Democracy | | | | | | | | | | | Catalan Independence and the Crisis of Democracy In the escalating crisis surrounding Catalunya's October 1st independence referendum, both sides are legitimizin... | | | One has to ask: what were the anti-capitalists of the CUP thinking? By adopting the tired old strategy of seeking change through the institutions, taking politics seriously as an instrument for the betterment of humankind, they were making themselves dependent on one of two forces. After provoking a political crisis through the unilateral drive for independence, they would only be able to overcome Spanish repression by relying on the international community, namely mediation by other powers in the European Union, or by relying on a popular uprising. The first option, rescue by the European Union, would obviously mean saying goodbye to any anti-capitalist element in their program. The activist organizations making up the CUP have long campaigned against inclusion in the EU, which all told was a bad deal for working people in Spain. But the closer they’ve gotten to power, the more they have held their tongue on that score. In other words, victory in this scenario would look the same as defeat: politics as usual, and neoliberalism to boot, but this time brought to you by a municipalist, directly democratic party. The historical model for this scenario, that of Slovenia in 1990-1991, is clearly flawed. European powers had an interest in breaking up Yugoslavia and recognizing Slovenia because they wanted access to new markets. In fact, anarchists in ex-Yugoslavia largely feel that the civil war was orchestrated to allow the destruction of the country’s extensive social infrastructure—austerity through warfare—and to allow Russia and the EU to absorb the fragmented remains. But Catalunya is already fully within the EU market. Why would European bankers give a damn about Catalan independence? They have a soft spot for minority languages? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 25 16:28:56 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 11:28:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE ON THE AIR, October 24 Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mly0J_S6_oA From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 25 17:49:08 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 17:49:08 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Worthwhile analysis related to Africa, from The Real News Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20292:US-Military-Breeds-Violence-in-Africa -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gwoodiii3 at gmail.com Wed Oct 25 18:40:02 2017 From: gwoodiii3 at gmail.com (Gus Wood) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:40:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?Fwd=3A_=5Bgeo-comm=5D_PRESS_RELEASE=3A_?= =?utf-8?q?GRADUATE_EMPLOYEES=E2=80=99_ORGANIZATION_=28GEO=29_SIT-I?= =?utf-8?q?N_AND_RALLY_AT_SWANLUND_ADMIN_BUILDING_TO_DEMAND_FAIR_CO?= =?utf-8?q?NTRACT?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: The GEO Date: Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 10:13 AM Subject: [geo-comm] PRESS RELEASE: GRADUATE EMPLOYEES’ ORGANIZATION (GEO) SIT-IN AND RALLY AT SWANLUND ADMIN BUILDING TO DEMAND FAIR CONTRACT To: The GEO FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: GRADUATE EMPLOYEES’ ORGANIZATION (GEO) SIT-IN AND RALLY AT SWANLUND ADMIN BUILDING TO DEMAND FAIR CONTRACT Urbana-Champaign (October 25, 2017): Members of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are peacefully sitting in at the Swanlund Administration Building on October 26th to protest the Administration’s refusal to provide a fair contract during the bargaining process. The sit-in will be accompanied by a rally and mediation update from 11:30am-12:30pm with speakers from across the campus and community. All supporters and media are invited to attend. October 26th will mark the 72nd day that Teaching Assistants and Graduate Assistants have worked without a new contract since the old contract expired. The GEO has been negotiating with the Administration since March, coming to the first bargaining session with a full, comprehensive contract proposal, with data and narratives justifying the need for such proposals. In return, the Administration has repeatedly stalled bargaining and put forth regressive proposals which would negatively impact graduate employees, particularly by reducing tuition waiver protections, increasing healthcare costs, and refusing to offer wage increases. Many members’ testimonials and the data the GEO’s bargaining team presented in negotiation sessions have demonstrated repeatedly that these are not only reasonable components for a fair contract, but that they are crucial to the livelihood, health, and productivity of graduate employees on this campus, many of whom make thousands of dollars less than the University’s own published cost of living. In September, the parties requested a federal mediator to be brought in to help expedite the bargaining process. After two mediation sessions, in which the the GEO made substantial movements on its proposals, but saw little movement from the Administration, GEO told the Administration that if they did not come to the session on October 24th ready to work with them and make substantial movement towards their proposals, they would have no choice but to escalate their actions outside the room. At the session, they gave GEO a disappointing economic proposal that fails to seriously address the working conditions and financial reality that graduate employees face: it does not guarantee tuition waiver protections, offers only a 1% raise in the first year of the five year contract and no guaranteed raises after, and leaves graduate employees paying more for their health care. It offers no stipend for parents, no fee waiver or guarantee that the cost of fees won’t go up, and allows the Administration to get away with not even trying to send appointment letters on time. In response, the GEO will hold a strike vote beginning this week. GEO invites all supporters to sign its petition to the Board of Trustees and the Administration to sign GEO’s proposals: https://actionnetwork.org/ petitions/fair-contract-now-for-the-graduate-employees- organization-geo-at-the-university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign?source= direct_link& The Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, AFT/IFT Local 6300, celebrated its 20th birthday on May 1, 2017. After several years of collective organizing, UIUC graduate employees voted to establish GEO as their official union representative in the spring of 1997. The University of Illinois refused to recognize the results of the election, but years of organizing and civil disobedience, alongside a legal battle, culminated in an occupation of Swanlund Administration Building in 2002 and subsequent negotiations with University officials. The first contract was signed in 2003. Since then, GEO has successfully bargained three additional contracts, secured tuition waiver protections, won improved wages and more affordable healthcare, established a grievance procedure to protect graduate employee rights, and much more. In GEO’s official twenty-year history, it has become famous among labor organizations nationwide for its strength and commitment to democratic principles, and a November 2009 strike that brought more than 1,000 people to campus picket lines to secure a fair contract. The Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT/IFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, represents approximately 2,700 Teaching and Graduate Assistants on the UIUC Campus. With an active presence in the community, the GEO continues to work for high-quality and accessible public education in Illinois. For more information, please contact GEO’s Communications Officer at commcomm at uigeo.org. Website: uigeo.org Twitter: @geo_uiuc Facebook: @uigeo @geosolcomm Instagram: @geo_uiuc ### -- Communications Committee List Graduate Employees’ Organization 809 S. 5th St ., Geneva Room Champaign, IL 61820 Phone: 217-344-8283 <(217)%20344-8283> Email: geo at uigeo.org Website: https://www.uigeo.org Twitter: @geo_uiuc Facebook: @uigeo @geosolcomm Instagram: @geo_uiuc --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Communications Committee List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to commcommlist+unsubscribe at uigeo.org. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/a/ uigeo.org/group/commcommlist/. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/a/uigeo.org/d/optout. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 26 12:57:04 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 12:57:04 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Causes and 1st. step solution to the "Harvey Weinstein" issue..... Message-ID: * MY BOOKS * TOURS * INTERVIEWS * PHOTOS * CONTACT Harvey Weinstein and the politics of Hollywood 18 October 2017 UPDATED BELOW There is something truly exasperating about digesting the steady flow of horror stories relating to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. In part, of course, it is because the reports that Weinstein allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women over decades are deeply disturbing. In part, it is because one can be certain that there are still young aspiring actresses desperate for a big break who are being exploited by the Hollywood system – both in “casting” sessions and in the movies they must make to get noticed. But most of all, these stories are exasperating because the women who are speaking out – and one senses they are still just the tip of the iceberg – and the journalists who are feeding off their revelations are drawing precisely no political conclusions from these incidents. In fact, the Weinstein story perfectly illustrates how politicallydisempowering identity politics can be. Certainly, there can be no doubt that Weinstein, who has admitted that he abused his position with many women, while denying many of the actual reports of sexual misconduct, exploited his power. It should hardly surprise us that a rich man who had the ability to give desperate young women a shot at stardom preyed on them. The Hollywood employment system is capitalism in microcosm, at its rawest and most naked. The Weinstein revelations tell us much less about relations between men and women than they do about the nature of power and the ability of the strong to exploit the weak. Under capitalism, the weak – the working class – eventually gained the consciousness and discovered the tools to assert their own form of power. As individuals they were vulnerable and exploitable. As a collective, they gained the power to bargain. That led to the trade union movements, and the gradual improvement in wages and conditions. The capitalist class has been trying to reverse those gains ever since. The new turbo-charged form we call neoliberalism has been atomising western societies since the 1970s to return us to new forms of economic dependency, culminating in zero-hours contracts and an Uber culture. What does this have to do with Weinstein? This week Reese Witherspoon spoke out about her own sexual assault by a movie director when she was 16. She has joined a list of famous actors like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow who have cited their own experiences. One suspects that most of Hollywood’s A-list could tell similar horror stories from their early years in search of stardom. So what is the lesson that none of them is drawing? Precisely the one that workers learnt more than a century ago. You must get organised. One can understand why teenage actresses, as Witherspoon was at the time, are fearful of speaking out in a system dominated by predatory men who can destroy their careers. One can also understand that, at the very bottom of the Hollywood food chain, they are in no position to organise against the Hollywood mogul class. But none of that is true for the now fabulously rich and well-connected Witherspoon, Jolie, Paltrow, Lawrence, and all the others who have yet to speak out – or for the A-list men who would surely want to be seen publicly supporting them. Why are they not organising? There are many things they can do. Here is one simple idea. They could set up a union, a sort of women’s Equity, that would allow actresses, in private, to register incidents of exploitation and sexual abuse with the union, naming those who committed the abuse and their modus operandi. By creating such a database, the union and its lawyers would be able to identify serial abusers and discover patterns of behaviour. The victims could then be encouraged to come forward in a group action, knowing that they would not be facing the Hollwood elite on their own. The union would redress, at least in part, the power of these male producers and directors. They, in turn, would grow more fearful of exposure. That would be a political act of organised resistance to the power of Hollywood moguls. It would have much more impact than the trickle of stories from immensely successful actresses bewailing their past abuse. Creating such a union would be loose change for Jolie, Witherspoon, Lawrence, Paltrow and the other A-listers. And yet in the degraded political culture we live in, they prefer to remain disempowered individuals rather than become part of a much stronger collectivity. They prefer their confessionals in the corporate media that exploited and abused them to independent, organised action to curb the corporate system’s excesses. As long as these household names nurse their individual pain rather than seek to bring about change through organised action, the next generation of young actresses will face the same exploitation and the same abuse they had to endure in their younger days. UPDATE: I expected the “mansplaining” stuff. That’s part of the degraded political culture I referred to in the article. But I was not quite ready for the small but significant proportion of readers (men and women) who asserted variations of the following comment I received on Facebook: Women are not responsible in managing this garbage, nor are we responsible in fixing the problem. I appreciate your idea, Jonathan, but we don’t need to be mansplained on how to fix it. This is not another “dreadful women’s issue”. This is in fact a men’s issue, since the beginning of time and all over the world. Own it and fix it! All of you! That may sound empowering, but it’s about as meaningless as the idea of “girl power”. In fact, I would politely suggest it is the adult equivalent of such hollow ideas, long promoted by a male-dominated corporate media. Feel free to pin your hopes on men volunteering to fix their behaviour, individually or collectively, but also be ready to accept you might have a long wait. History suggests human behaviour tends not to work that way. To bring us back to my original article, here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine we had blogs and social media in Victorian times. Like some well-off revolutionary Marxist, I posted about the oppression of the working class, about children being sent up chimneys, factory workers forced to work 16-hour days for pennies, women in effective slavery in wealthy homes. And I argued that the working-class could only change their circumstances through solidarity and collective action, and offered one idea about how it might be achieved. Now, I might be ready for the accusation of “richsplaining” for my presumption but what would we make of exploited workers who responded by saying it wasn’t their fault, and that it was for the bosses and the rich to “fix their garbage”? Well, I for one might conclude that the chances of bringing about change through organised, collective action were still some way off. Also, please note: I am not against identity politics per se, any more than I am against Reece Witherspoon telling of her sexual assault as a teenager. Her confessional at the very least makes it a little easier for young women to speak out, and opens the eyes of some men to the extent of the problem. What I argued was that it was nowhere near enough. What I am against is identity politics used like a bludgeon, as it too often is. It just reinforces a tribal politics that neoliberalism can richly exploit as the modern equivalent of divide and rule. Men versus women, blacks against whites, rural areas against the cities, and so on. It is the very opposite of solidarity. Which is why, unlike class analysis, it has been promoted for the past two decades in the media and in our universities. That was the reason my call for organised action against the Weinsteins was directed not at women, as some readers have suggested, but at the most privileged actors (men and women) in Hollywood. Those who, because of their stardom, no longer risk being groped or worse by Hollywood producers could show solidarity with the younger versions of themselves who are still in danger. As I said in the original piece, that would be an act of organised resistance that might bring about real change. capitalism, corporations -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 26 13:54:50 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 13:54:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Causes and 1st. step solution to the "Harvey Weinstein" issue..... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <920958219.3858405.1509026090181@mail.yahoo.com> This is Jonathan Cook's sensible article on Counterpunch, which I referred to on News from Neptune last week, along with a follow-up in response to the "mansplaining" accusations that the article provoked. Again, he is correct, this time in a more general critique of identity politics. The same sort of IP thinking causes some to assert, bizarrely, that women should not be encouraged to protect themselves by avoiding high-risk behaviors, like getting drunk at a party. No, they say, it's men who are doing the sexual assaulting, they have to deal with that so that women can engage in such behavior risk-free. When women make efforts to protect themselves, that does not imply that they are blaming themselves, or that anyone else is blaming them, for their victimization when such atrocities occur. But this is the ludicrousness of IP when only dogma is left of it. Again, Cook, who writes mostly about Israel/Palestine from his home in Nazareth, a Palestinian city in Israel proper, cuts to the bone of the problem. DG On Thursday, October 26, 2017, 7:57:32 AM CDT, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: - MY BOOKS - TOURS - INTERVIEWS - PHOTOS - CONTACT Harvey Weinstein and the politics of Hollywood 18 October 2017 UPDATED BELOW There is something truly exasperating about digesting the steady flow of horror stories relating to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. In part, of course, it is because the reports that Weinstein allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women over decades are deeply disturbing. In part, it is because one can be certain that there are still young aspiring actresses desperate for a big break who are being exploited by the Hollywood system – both in “casting” sessions and in the movies they must make to get noticed. But most of all, these stories are exasperating because the women who are speaking out – and one senses they are still just the tip of the iceberg – and the journalists who are feeding off their revelations are drawing precisely no political conclusions from these incidents. In fact, the Weinstein story perfectly illustrates how politicallydisempowering identity politics can be. Certainly, there can be no doubt that Weinstein, who has admitted that he abused his position with many women, while denying many of the actual reports of sexual misconduct, exploited his power. It should hardly surprise us that a rich man who had the ability to give desperate young women a shot at stardom preyed on them. The Hollywood employment system is capitalism in microcosm, at its rawest and most naked. The Weinstein revelations tell us much less about relations between men and women than they do about the nature of power and the ability of the strong to exploit the weak. Under capitalism, the weak – the working class – eventually gained the consciousness and discovered the tools to assert their own form of power. As individuals they were vulnerable and exploitable. As a collective, they gained the power to bargain. That led to the trade union movements, and the gradual improvement in wages and conditions. The capitalist class has been trying to reverse those gains ever since. The new turbo-charged form we call neoliberalism has been atomising western societies since the 1970s to return us to new forms of economic dependency, culminating in zero-hours contracts and an Uber culture. What does this have to do with Weinstein? This week Reese Witherspoon spoke out about her own sexual assault by a movie director when she was 16. She has joined a list of famous actors like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow who have cited their own experiences. One suspects that most of Hollywood’s A-list could tell similar horror stories from their early years in search of stardom. So what is the lesson that none of them is drawing? Precisely the one that workers learnt more than a century ago. You must get organised. One can understand why teenage actresses, as Witherspoon was at the time, are fearful of speaking out in a system dominated by predatory men who can destroy their careers. One can also understand that, at the very bottom of the Hollywood food chain, they are in no position to organise against the Hollywood mogul class. But none of that is true for the now fabulously rich and well-connected Witherspoon, Jolie, Paltrow, Lawrence, and all the others who have yet to speak out – or for the A-list men who would surely want to be seen publicly supporting them. Why are they not organising? There are many things they can do. Here is one simple idea. They could set up a union, a sort of women’s Equity, that would allow actresses, in private, to register incidents of exploitation and sexual abuse with the union, naming those who committed the abuse and their modus operandi. By creating such a database, the union and its lawyers would be able to identify serial abusers and discover patterns of behaviour. The victims could then be encouraged to come forward in a group action, knowing that they would not be facing the Hollwood elite on their own. The union would redress, at least in part, the power of these male producers and directors. They, in turn, would grow more fearful of exposure. That would be a political act of organised resistance to the power of Hollywood moguls. It would have much more impact than the trickle of stories from immensely successful actresses bewailing their past abuse. Creating such a union would be loose change for Jolie, Witherspoon, Lawrence, Paltrow and the other A-listers. And yet in the degraded political culture we live in, they prefer to remain disempowered individuals rather than become part of a much stronger collectivity. They prefer their confessionals in the corporate media that exploited and abused them to independent, organised action to curb the corporate system’s excesses. As long as these household names nurse their individual pain rather than seek to bring about change through organised action, the next generation of young actresses will face the same exploitation and the same abuse they had to endure in their younger days. UPDATE: I expected the “mansplaining” stuff. That’s part of the degraded political culture I referred to in the article. But I was not quite ready for the small but significant proportion of readers (men and women) who asserted variations of the following comment I received on Facebook: Women are not responsible in managing this garbage, nor are we responsible in fixing the problem. I appreciate your idea, Jonathan, but we don’t need to be mansplained on how to fix it. This is not another “dreadful women’s issue”. This is in fact a men’s issue, since the beginning of time and all over the world. Own it and fix it! All of you! That may sound empowering, but it’s about as meaningless as the idea of “girl power”. In fact, I would politely suggest it is the adult equivalent of such hollow ideas, long promoted by a male-dominated corporate media. Feel free to pin your hopes on men volunteering to fix their behaviour, individually or collectively, but also be ready to accept you might have a long wait. History suggests human behaviour tends not to work that way. To bring us back to my original article, here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine we had blogs and social media in Victorian times. Like some well-off revolutionary Marxist, I posted about the oppression of the working class, about children being sent up chimneys, factory workers forced to work 16-hour days for pennies, women in effective slavery in wealthy homes. And I argued that the working-class could only change their circumstances through solidarity and collective action, and offered one idea about how it might be achieved. Now, I might be ready for the accusation of “richsplaining” for my presumption but what would we make of exploited workers who responded by saying it wasn’t their fault, and that it was for the bosses and the rich to “fix their garbage”? Well, I for one might conclude that the chances of bringing about change through organised, collective action were still some way off. Also, please note: I am not against identity politics per se, any more than I am against Reece Witherspoon telling of her sexual assault as a teenager. Her confessional at the very least makes it a little easier for young women to speak out, and opens the eyes of some men to the extent of the problem. What I argued was that it was nowhere near enough. What I am against is identity politics used like a bludgeon, as it too often is. It just reinforces a tribal politics that neoliberalism can richly exploit as the modern equivalent of divide and rule. Men versus women, blacks against whites, rural areas against the cities, and so on. It is the very opposite of solidarity. Which is why, unlike class analysis, it has been promoted for the past two decades in the media and in our universities. That was the reason my call for organised action against the Weinsteins was directed not at women, as some readers have suggested, but at the most privileged actors (men and women) in Hollywood. Those who, because of their stardom, no longer risk being groped or worse by Hollywood producers could show solidarity with the younger versions of themselves who are still in danger. As I said in the original piece, that would be an act of organised resistance that might bring about real change.  capitalism, corporations _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 26 14:02:03 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 09:02:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Causes and 1st. step solution to the "Harvey Weinstein" issue..... In-Reply-To: <920958219.3858405.1509026090181@mail.yahoo.com> References: <920958219.3858405.1509026090181@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: My daughter recommends the following: https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/543618/ "...The real danger inside the present moment, then, would be for us all to separate the alleged deeds of Cosby, Ailes, O’Reilly, or Weinstein from a culture that continues to allow for dramatic imbalances of power. It’s not these bad men. Or that dirty industry. It’s this inhumane economic system of which we are all a part. As producers and as consumers. As storytellers and as listeners. As human beings. That’s a very uncomfortable truth to sit inside. But perhaps discomfort is what’s required to move in the direction of a humane world to which we would all freely give our consent." > On Oct 26, 2017, at 8:54 AM, David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: > > This is Jonathan Cook's sensible article on Counterpunch, which I referred to on News from Neptune last week, along with a follow-up in response to the "mansplaining" accusations that the article provoked. Again, he is correct, this time in a more general critique of identity politics. > > The same sort of IP thinking causes some to assert, bizarrely, that women should not be encouraged to protect themselves by avoiding high-risk behaviors, like getting drunk at a party. No, they say, it's men who are doing the sexual assaulting, they have to deal with that so that women can engage in such behavior risk-free. > > When women make efforts to protect themselves, that does not imply that they are blaming themselves, or that anyone else is blaming them, for their victimization when such atrocities occur. But this is the ludicrousness of IP when only dogma is left of it. > > Again, Cook, who writes mostly about Israel/Palestine from his home in Nazareth, a Palestinian city in Israel proper, cuts to the bone of the problem. > > DG > > > On Thursday, October 26, 2017, 7:57:32 AM CDT, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > MY BOOKS > TOURS > INTERVIEWS > PHOTOS > CONTACT > > Harvey Weinstein and the politics of Hollywood > 18 October 2017 > UPDATED BELOW > > There is something truly exasperating about digesting the steady flow of horror stories relating to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. In part, of course, it is because the reports that Weinstein allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women over decades are deeply disturbing. In part, it is because one can be certain that there are still young aspiring actresses desperate for a big break who are being exploited by the Hollywood system – both in “casting” sessions and in the movies they must make to get noticed. > > But most of all, these stories are exasperating because the women who are speaking out – and one senses they are still just the tip of the iceberg – and the journalists who are feeding off their revelations are drawing precisely no political conclusions from these incidents. > > In fact, the Weinstein story perfectly illustrates how politicallydisempowering identity politics can be. Certainly, there can be no doubt that Weinstein, who has admitted that he abused his position with many women, while denying many of the actual reports of sexual misconduct, exploited his power. It should hardly surprise us that a rich man who had the ability to give desperate young women a shot at stardom preyed on them. The Hollywood employment system is capitalism in microcosm, at its rawest and most naked. > > The Weinstein revelations tell us much less about relations between men and women than they do about the nature of power and the ability of the strong to exploit the weak. > > Under capitalism, the weak – the working class – eventually gained the consciousness and discovered the tools to assert their own form of power. As individuals they were vulnerable and exploitable. As a collective, they gained the power to bargain. That led to the trade union movements, and the gradual improvement in wages and conditions. > > The capitalist class has been trying to reverse those gains ever since. The new turbo-charged form we call neoliberalism has been atomising western societies since the 1970s to return us to new forms of economic dependency, culminating in zero-hours contracts and an Uber culture. > > What does this have to do with Weinstein? This week Reese Witherspoon spoke out about her own sexual assault by a movie director when she was 16. She has joined a list of famous actors like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow who have cited their own experiences. One suspects that most of Hollywood’s A-list could tell similar horror stories from their early years in search of stardom. > > So what is the lesson that none of them is drawing? Precisely the one that workers learnt more than a century ago. You must get organised. > > One can understand why teenage actresses, as Witherspoon was at the time, are fearful of speaking out in a system dominated by predatory men who can destroy their careers. One can also understand that, at the very bottom of the Hollywood food chain, they are in no position to organise against the Hollywood mogul class. But none of that is true for the now fabulously rich and well-connected Witherspoon, Jolie, Paltrow, Lawrence, and all the others who have yet to speak out – or for the A-list men who would surely want to be seen publicly supporting them. > > Why are they not organising? There are many things they can do. Here is one simple idea. They could set up a union, a sort of women’s Equity, that would allow actresses, in private, to register incidents of exploitation and sexual abuse with the union, naming those who committed the abuse and their modus operandi. By creating such a database, the union and its lawyers would be able to identify serial abusers and discover patterns of behaviour. The victims could then be encouraged to come forward in a group action, knowing that they would not be facing the Hollwood elite on their own. The union would redress, at least in part, the power of these male producers and directors. They, in turn, would grow more fearful of exposure. > > That would be a political act of organised resistance to the power of Hollywood moguls. It would have much more impact than the trickle of stories from immensely successful actresses bewailing their past abuse. Creating such a union would be loose change for Jolie, Witherspoon, Lawrence, Paltrow and the other A-listers. > > And yet in the degraded political culture we live in, they prefer to remain disempowered individuals rather than become part of a much stronger collectivity. They prefer their confessionals in the corporate media that exploited and abused them to independent, organised action to curb the corporate system’s excesses. > > As long as these household names nurse their individual pain rather than seek to bring about change through organised action, the next generation of young actresses will face the same exploitation and the same abuse they had to endure in their younger days. > > UPDATE: > I expected the “mansplaining” stuff. That’s part of the degraded political culture I referred to in the article. But I was not quite ready for the small but significant proportion of readers (men and women) who asserted variations of the following comment I received on Facebook: > > Women are not responsible in managing this garbage, nor are we responsible in fixing the problem. I appreciate your idea, Jonathan, but we don’t need to be mansplained on how to fix it. This is not another “dreadful women’s issue”. This is in fact a men’s issue, since the beginning of time and all over the world. Own it and fix it! All of you! > That may sound empowering, but it’s about as meaningless as the idea of “girl power”. In fact, I would politely suggest it is the adult equivalent of such hollow ideas, long promoted by a male-dominated corporate media. > > Feel free to pin your hopes on men volunteering to fix their behaviour, individually or collectively, but also be ready to accept you might have a long wait. History suggests human behaviour tends not to work that way. > > To bring us back to my original article, here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine we had blogs and social media in Victorian times. Like some well-off revolutionary Marxist, I posted about the oppression of the working class, about children being sent up chimneys, factory workers forced to work 16-hour days for pennies, women in effective slavery in wealthy homes. And I argued that the working-class could only change their circumstances through solidarity and collective action, and offered one idea about how it might be achieved. > > Now, I might be ready for the accusation of “richsplaining” for my presumption but what would we make of exploited workers who responded by saying it wasn’t their fault, and that it was for the bosses and the rich to “fix their garbage”? Well, I for one might conclude that the chances of bringing about change through organised, collective action were still some way off. > > Also, please note: I am not against identity politics per se, any more than I am against Reece Witherspoon telling of her sexual assault as a teenager. Her confessional at the very least makes it a little easier for young women to speak out, and opens the eyes of some men to the extent of the problem. What I argued was that it was nowhere near enough. > > What I am against is identity politics used like a bludgeon, as it too often is. It just reinforces a tribal politics that neoliberalism can richly exploit as the modern equivalent of divide and rule. Men versus women, blacks against whites, rural areas against the cities, and so on. It is the very opposite of solidarity. Which is why, unlike class analysis, it has been promoted for the past two decades in the media and in our universities. > > That was the reason my call for organised action against the Weinsteins was directed not at women, as some readers have suggested, but at the most privileged actors (men and women) in Hollywood. Those who, because of their stardom, no longer risk being groped or worse by Hollywood producers could show solidarity with the younger versions of themselves who are still in danger. As I said in the original piece, that would be an act of organised resistance that might bring about real change. > capitalism , corporations _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 26 14:40:28 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 14:40:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Causes and 1st. step solution to the "Harvey Weinstein" issue..... In-Reply-To: References: <920958219.3858405.1509026090181@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Both good articles, both relate the issue of sexual predation to “economics." The problem is not one of women vs. men, as not all men are predators. Women in power, those few that exist, are as capable of abuse as men, though not necessarily sexual predation. This is a problem that men, as well as women need to address. Neither men nor women should ever support the bullies within their respective industries. I especially like Jonathan Cooks article because he not only addresses the problem, but offers a solution. That of organizing and solving the problem collectively, just as workers once did when forming unions against capitalist exploitation. On Oct 26, 2017, at 07:02, C G Estabrook > wrote: My daughter recommends the following: https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/543618/ "...The real danger inside the present moment, then, would be for us all to separate the alleged deeds of Cosby, Ailes, O’Reilly, or Weinstein from a culture that continues to allow for dramatic imbalances of power. It’s not these bad men. Or that dirty industry. It’s this inhumane economic system of which we are all a part. As producers and as consumers. As storytellers and as listeners. As human beings. That’s a very uncomfortable truth to sit inside. But perhaps discomfort is what’s required to move in the direction of a humane world to which we would all freely give our consent." On Oct 26, 2017, at 8:54 AM, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: This is Jonathan Cook's sensible article on Counterpunch, which I referred to on News from Neptune last week, along with a follow-up in response to the "mansplaining" accusations that the article provoked. Again, he is correct, this time in a more general critique of identity politics. The same sort of IP thinking causes some to assert, bizarrely, that women should not be encouraged to protect themselves by avoiding high-risk behaviors, like getting drunk at a party. No, they say, it's men who are doing the sexual assaulting, they have to deal with that so that women can engage in such behavior risk-free. When women make efforts to protect themselves, that does not imply that they are blaming themselves, or that anyone else is blaming them, for their victimization when such atrocities occur. But this is the ludicrousness of IP when only dogma is left of it. Again, Cook, who writes mostly about Israel/Palestine from his home in Nazareth, a Palestinian city in Israel proper, cuts to the bone of the problem. DG On Thursday, October 26, 2017, 7:57:32 AM CDT, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: * MY BOOKS * TOURS * INTERVIEWS * PHOTOS * CONTACT Harvey Weinstein and the politics of Hollywood 18 October 2017 UPDATED BELOW There is something truly exasperating about digesting the steady flow of horror stories relating to Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. In part, of course, it is because the reports that Weinstein allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women over decades are deeply disturbing. In part, it is because one can be certain that there are still young aspiring actresses desperate for a big break who are being exploited by the Hollywood system – both in “casting” sessions and in the movies they must make to get noticed. But most of all, these stories are exasperating because the women who are speaking out – and one senses they are still just the tip of the iceberg – and the journalists who are feeding off their revelations are drawing precisely no political conclusions from these incidents. In fact, the Weinstein story perfectly illustrates how politicallydisempowering identity politics can be. Certainly, there can be no doubt that Weinstein, who has admitted that he abused his position with many women, while denying many of the actual reports of sexual misconduct, exploited his power. It should hardly surprise us that a rich man who had the ability to give desperate young women a shot at stardom preyed on them. The Hollywood employment system is capitalism in microcosm, at its rawest and most naked. The Weinstein revelations tell us much less about relations between men and women than they do about the nature of power and the ability of the strong to exploit the weak. Under capitalism, the weak – the working class – eventually gained the consciousness and discovered the tools to assert their own form of power. As individuals they were vulnerable and exploitable. As a collective, they gained the power to bargain. That led to the trade union movements, and the gradual improvement in wages and conditions. The capitalist class has been trying to reverse those gains ever since. The new turbo-charged form we call neoliberalism has been atomising western societies since the 1970s to return us to new forms of economic dependency, culminating in zero-hours contracts and an Uber culture. What does this have to do with Weinstein? This week Reese Witherspoon spoke out about her own sexual assault by a movie director when she was 16. She has joined a list of famous actors like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence and Gwyneth Paltrow who have cited their own experiences. One suspects that most of Hollywood’s A-list could tell similar horror stories from their early years in search of stardom. So what is the lesson that none of them is drawing? Precisely the one that workers learnt more than a century ago. You must get organised. One can understand why teenage actresses, as Witherspoon was at the time, are fearful of speaking out in a system dominated by predatory men who can destroy their careers. One can also understand that, at the very bottom of the Hollywood food chain, they are in no position to organise against the Hollywood mogul class. But none of that is true for the now fabulously rich and well-connected Witherspoon, Jolie, Paltrow, Lawrence, and all the others who have yet to speak out – or for the A-list men who would surely want to be seen publicly supporting them. Why are they not organising? There are many things they can do. Here is one simple idea. They could set up a union, a sort of women’s Equity, that would allow actresses, in private, to register incidents of exploitation and sexual abuse with the union, naming those who committed the abuse and their modus operandi. By creating such a database, the union and its lawyers would be able to identify serial abusers and discover patterns of behaviour. The victims could then be encouraged to come forward in a group action, knowing that they would not be facing the Hollwood elite on their own. The union would redress, at least in part, the power of these male producers and directors. They, in turn, would grow more fearful of exposure. That would be a political act of organised resistance to the power of Hollywood moguls. It would have much more impact than the trickle of stories from immensely successful actresses bewailing their past abuse. Creating such a union would be loose change for Jolie, Witherspoon, Lawrence, Paltrow and the other A-listers. And yet in the degraded political culture we live in, they prefer to remain disempowered individuals rather than become part of a much stronger collectivity. They prefer their confessionals in the corporate media that exploited and abused them to independent, organised action to curb the corporate system’s excesses. As long as these household names nurse their individual pain rather than seek to bring about change through organised action, the next generation of young actresses will face the same exploitation and the same abuse they had to endure in their younger days. UPDATE: I expected the “mansplaining” stuff. That’s part of the degraded political culture I referred to in the article. But I was not quite ready for the small but significant proportion of readers (men and women) who asserted variations of the following comment I received on Facebook: Women are not responsible in managing this garbage, nor are we responsible in fixing the problem. I appreciate your idea, Jonathan, but we don’t need to be mansplained on how to fix it. This is not another “dreadful women’s issue”. This is in fact a men’s issue, since the beginning of time and all over the world. Own it and fix it! All of you! That may sound empowering, but it’s about as meaningless as the idea of “girl power”. In fact, I would politely suggest it is the adult equivalent of such hollow ideas, long promoted by a male-dominated corporate media. Feel free to pin your hopes on men volunteering to fix their behaviour, individually or collectively, but also be ready to accept you might have a long wait. History suggests human behaviour tends not to work that way. To bring us back to my original article, here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine we had blogs and social media in Victorian times. Like some well-off revolutionary Marxist, I posted about the oppression of the working class, about children being sent up chimneys, factory workers forced to work 16-hour days for pennies, women in effective slavery in wealthy homes. And I argued that the working-class could only change their circumstances through solidarity and collective action, and offered one idea about how it might be achieved. Now, I might be ready for the accusation of “richsplaining” for my presumption but what would we make of exploited workers who responded by saying it wasn’t their fault, and that it was for the bosses and the rich to “fix their garbage”? Well, I for one might conclude that the chances of bringing about change through organised, collective action were still some way off. Also, please note: I am not against identity politics per se, any more than I am against Reece Witherspoon telling of her sexual assault as a teenager. Her confessional at the very least makes it a little easier for young women to speak out, and opens the eyes of some men to the extent of the problem. What I argued was that it was nowhere near enough. What I am against is identity politics used like a bludgeon, as it too often is. It just reinforces a tribal politics that neoliberalism can richly exploit as the modern equivalent of divide and rule. Men versus women, blacks against whites, rural areas against the cities, and so on. It is the very opposite of solidarity. Which is why, unlike class analysis, it has been promoted for the past two decades in the media and in our universities. That was the reason my call for organised action against the Weinsteins was directed not at women, as some readers have suggested, but at the most privileged actors (men and women) in Hollywood. Those who, because of their stardom, no longer risk being groped or worse by Hollywood producers could show solidarity with the younger versions of themselves who are still in danger. As I said in the original piece, that would be an act of organised resistance that might bring about real change. capitalism, corporations _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 26 15:55:44 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:55:44 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Rochelle Gutierrez References: <505804242.3958846.1509033344078.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <505804242.3958846.1509033344078@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-10-26/ui-defends-professor-after-book-chapter-draws-attention.html I posted this comment on the N-G website: I am no advocate for post-modernism, identity politics, or related issues. But Gutierrez is absolutely correct in her analysis, and should not be dismissed as some sort of IP crackpot. You can look up Andrew Hacker's book on how Algebra and higher math is used to sort people out, with no relevance whatsoever to their achievement and potential in the vast majority of educational and vocational endeavors. Higher math, that is, beyond arithmetic (which is now confusingly called mathematics), absolutely functions as a class/race marker. Meanwhile, if you read the mainstream media including this newspaper about basic economic, budgetary, etc. issues, you will find the gross abuse by "well-educated" people of basic arithmetic in understanding money, inflation, debt, taxes, deficits, trade, etc. That is to say, the News-Gazette editors who likely condescend to Prof. Gutierrez are consistently lacking in the basic skills, going well beyond arithmetic and to basic sociological reasoning, giving a jaundiced and often racist substance and tone to their editorial policies. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 26 17:58:44 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:58:44 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] News from WSWS.Org Message-ID: Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Click here for advanced search » Chinese leader calls for “strong nation” and “strong military” 21 October 2017 In his lengthy address this week to the 19th Chinese Communist Party congress, President Xi Jinping repeatedly declared that in the next period China would become a “great power” and a “strong power.” This will be, he said, “an era that sees China moving closer to center stage.” Xi made ritual reference to “the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” In reality, he was elaborating the aspirations of the new bourgeoisie, who have accumulated vast wealth through four decades of capitalist restoration and whose further advancement requires Beijing to play a more assertive role on the world stage. Xi’s “China Dream” of a strong, rejuvenated China inevitably comes into collision with the interests of the existing imperialist powers, above all the United States, which is desperately seeking to shore up its dominant position in the world through military force. The “new era” of which Xi speaks will not be one of peace and stability, but rather of war and revolution. Xi made no reference in his speech to the looming danger of a catastrophic US war with North Korea that could quickly drag in China, Russia and other major nuclear-armed powers. US President Trump has flatly rejected Beijing and Moscow’s proposal for new talks, and has primed the American military for the “total destruction” of China’s only formal military ally. The reckless US war drive is not simply the product of the fascistic individual Trump, but rather of the historic blind alley in which American imperialism finds itself. China’s economic rise over the past four decades, on the basis of a flood of foreign investment to exploit its cheap labour, has been accompanied by greater Chinese economic and political influence around the world, as it seeks raw materials and markets. Increasingly unable to match China’s economic assistance, or “soft power,” the US is resorting to its hard power, or military, to challenge Beijing. The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” was a comprehensive strategy aimed at undermining Beijing diplomatically and economically throughout the Indo-Pacific, and encircling China militarily. Obama deliberately exacerbated dangerous flashpoints, such as the Korean Peninsula, and created new ones, including by militarily challenging Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea. Trump is pursuing the same objectives more aggressively, greatly heightening the danger of war. Having dismantled Obama’s plan for a trade and investment bloc against China, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump threatens Beijing with trade war. The military build-up for conflict with North Korea is also preparation for war with China. The calculation being made in American strategic circles is that, given the continuing decline of the US, the confrontation with China is preferable sooner rather than later. On Wednesday, just hours after Xi’s speech, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson implicitly challenged Chinese ambitions. “China, while rising alongside India, has done so less responsibly, at times undermining the international, rules-based order,” he declared, homing in on “China’s provocative actions in the South China Sea.” The “international rules-based order” is, of course, the world order established in the aftermath of World War II, in which Washington dominated and set the rules to suit itself. Xi’s speech signals that China’s economic and strategic interests cannot be accommodated within the current world order. He warned other countries not to underestimate China’s willingness to stand up for itself. “No one should expect China to swallow anything that undermines its interests,” Xi told congress delegates. Far from backing down on Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, Xi declared, near the start of his report, that the consolidation of Chinese control of islets in the disputed waters was a highlight of his first five years in office. He also boasted of his “One Belt, One Road” initiative, a massive infrastructure plan to integrate the Eurasian landmass via road, rail and sea, thus linking China with Europe and directly undermining US encirclement. In response to the US military build-up and threats in Asia, Xi foreshadowed a further acceleration of the arms race, setting specific targets to culminate in a “world class” Chinese military by 2050. “A military is prepared for war. All military works must adhere to the standards of being able to fight a war and win a war,” Xi bluntly declared. Xi’s speech reeked of the stench of nationalism from start to finish. “The Chinese nation is a great nation; it has been through hardships and adversity but remains indomitable. The Chinese people are a great people; they are industrious and brave and they never pause in pursuit of progress,” he said. Like Trump in the United States, Xi whips up patriotism not only to aggressively promote the interests of the Chinese ruling class, but also to subordinate the multi-millioned working class to those same interests. Xi is acutely aware of the social tensions that have been produced by capitalist restoration and the deep gulf between a tiny layer of the ultra-wealthy and the vast majority of the population. The social divide will only further widen, leading to rising social unrest, as the drive to war accelerates, which is why Xi also calls for a strengthening of the repressive state apparatus. Without the intervention of the working class, conflict is inevitable, whether over North Korea, the South China Sea or the myriad other flashpoints in Asia and internationally. US imperialism regards China as the chief challenge to its world hegemony, and Chinese capitalism strains against the restrictions of the current world order established and dominated by Washington. Workers and youth in China and the United States, throughout Asia and the world, have no interest in being used as cannon fodder in a war to defend the interests of the ultra-rich. It is only by uniting in an international movement based on genuine socialism—that is, the reconstruction of society to meet the pressing needs of the majority, not the massive profits of the few—that the drive to war can be halted. That is the perspective fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections around the world. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 12:47:16 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 12:47:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Max Blumenthal interviewed on The Real News, related to press freedoms Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20309:Twitter-Bans-RT-and-Sputnik-Ads%2C-Who%27s-Next%3F -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 14:15:58 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:15:58 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Brilliant and enlightening book review on "Empathy" Message-ID: LOGIN * HOME * / * MAGAZINE * / * SUBSCRIBE * / * ABOUT * / * SHOP * / * DONATE OCTOBER 20, 2017 EMPATHY: PROBABLY A GOOD THING [https://images.currentaffairs.org/2017/10/07BOOKBLOOM-1-facebookJumbo-v3-1-1024x646.jpg] Empathy, if understood the way ordinary people define it, is anything but overrated… by NATHAN J. ROBINSON The difficulty with publishing a nonfiction book is that you need a novel angle. It would be tough to get a contract to write something that simply expresses some basic and obvious truth, like Hooray for Love or Democracy: Isn’t It Nifty? Instead, you need the “counterintuitive” perspective, the contrarian #SlatePitch that demonstrates why that thing you thought was good was actually bad, or vice versa. Thus we get books like Against Democracy, Against Love, and even Against Everything. The market pressure for constant novelty, which operates similarly in academia and in publishing, creates a dangerous incentive toward trying to say things that are eye-catching rather than things that are true. Paul Bloom isn’t, despite what the title of Against Empathy might imply, against empathy. In fact, towards the end of the book, he even says that he “worr[ies] that I have given the impression that I’m against empathy.” The title is meant more for the purpose of making people angry and selling books than for clearly communicating the book’s central point. Instead, Against Empathy is simply a book about why moral decisions should be based on reason rather than emotion. This is a far less controversial position than “empathy is bad,” but “we should try to be reasonable” is not a thesis that will land you on the bestsellers list, so Agaisnt Empathy it is. (Plus, as Bloom recounts, this allowed him to have tremendous fun by being a dick at parties, telling people he was working on a book about empathy, and then following up with “I’m against it” and watching them gasp.) Bloom has said he is “not against empathy in general, just empathy as a moral guide.” This is not, of course, the same as being against empathy. But even here, Bloom is misleading: the thing he calls “empathy” throughout the book has little to do with our ordinary use of the term. Bloom says “empathy” is not the same thing as “compassion,” even though many people understand the word that way. In fact, Bloom’s definition of empathy is downright peculiar: he makes clear that what he is condemning is “emotional empathy,” by which he means “feeling what other people are feeling.” He distinguishes this from “cognitive empathy,” which he defines as trying to understand other people’s perspectives. To those of us, like myself, who argue that people should generally have “more empathy” for one another, Bloom’s version of “empathy” is unrecognizable. I have always understood empathy to mean “trying to imagine what it is like to be other people” so that we can compassionately understand where they are coming from. But Bloom defines it as literally feeling other people’s emotions, suffering when they suffer, being distressed when they are distressed, etc. It’s possible to frame these two definitions so that they seem similar: both can be described using the expression “put yourself in another person’s shoes.” But the version in which we literally feel as if we are other people takes us far afield from the term’s everyday usage. Because Bloom defines empathy as “experiencing what other people experience” rather than “imagining other people’s experiences for the purposes of better understanding and caring about them,” he is able to offer absurd caricatures of the pro-empathy position. He suggests that an “empathetic doctor” would be a bad doctor, because an empathetic doctor would be in pain while their patients were in pain, and this would inhibit their ability to offer good treatment. But does anyone who advocates having empathetic doctors believe they should literally feel as if they have whatever ailment the patient has? The point is not that you should literally experience what another person does (partly because, in the absence of swapping bodies, it’s not actually possible to experience someone else’s experiences), but that you may be better at caring for someone if you have gone through the exercise of imagining what it might be like to be them. Similarly, Bloom points out that we can “be concerned about starving people without having a vicarious experience of starving,” and that if we comfort a child who is afraid of a thunderstorm or a barking dog, we don’t literally need to be afraid of thunderstorms and barking dogs. For Bloom, the fact that we are not experiencing starvation or fear when we think about people who are hungry or afraid means that “there’s no empathy there.” That’s only true, though, if we adopt his bizarre definition of empathy. Of course, it’s true that if I comfort my child during a thunderstorm, I don’t need to be afraid of thunderstorms myself, and if I worry about starvation, I don’t need to feel hungry. But in order to understand why I should care about fear and hunger, it might help if I thought about what it feels like for a person who is experiencing those things. Pro-empathy people like myself do not advocate actually trying to become afraid of thunderstorms in order to understand how small children feel about them, but rather spending time remembering what it is like to be a small, scared child, in order to appreciate whythunderstorms might frighten them. The distinction can be illustrated by thinking about how literature works. When people say that reading novels allows us to empathize with different perspectives, they do not mean empathy in Bloom’s sense of actually feeling the person’s feelings. When I am reading about the protagonists in The Stranger or Crime and Punishment, I do not literally feel as if I have murdered someone. But I do get a better understanding of what it might feel like to be someone like Raskolnikov or Mersault. Empathy, in the sense in which people advocate it, is not a plea for people to weep when they see others weeping, but to better appreciate what it is like to weep. It is not, as Bloom says, that when somebody else’s child is killed I literally feel as if my own child has been killed. It is that I do my best to imagine what the experience is like for the person experiencing it, so that I am able to deal sensitively and humanely with the person who is going through it. Even though I think “empathy as an exercise in imagining other people’s perspectives” is both a workable and natural definition of the term, Bloom firmly rejects it. He sticks to his belief that an empathetic psychotherapist would be a psychotherapist who actually has depression, rather than a psychotherapist who has previously had depression or who seems to appreciate what it is like to be depressed. The latter, he says, has “nothing to do with” empathy, even though it’s the only version of the idea of the “empathetic psychotherapist” that even makes any sense. Bloom says that when we talk about empathy as simply “understanding other minds,” we are talking about something called “cognitive empathy,” which is different from the “emotional empathy” he is against. “Cognitive” empathy, he says, is morally neutral: it’s what psychopaths, con men, and seducers do, since they “understand” the workings of other people’s minds very well indeed. But since people who advocate that kind of empathy also advocate being a compassionate person, it’s hard to see how this matters. Frankly, I think that because Paul Bloom defines empathy in such an idiosyncratic way, Against Empathy is the classic case of arguing against a “straw man” position that few people actually hold, and avoiding the much stronger case that people actually do make. Bloom says he “hates” terminological disputes, and that we should examine the concept being described rather than the word used to describe it, but this is like writing a book called Against Science and then revealing in the introduction that you are actually only against giving scientists dictatorial powers to run all human affairs, a position held by very few people. It is very easy to make a persuasive argument that doctors shouldn’t be crying all the time, but the only way such an argument would be useful is if anyone actually believed doctors should be crying all the time. Furthermore, since I think that the whole reason Bloom has to adopt a useless definition of empathy is because it’s the only way the Against Empathyframing can even work, this book is an intellectually dishonest exercise from the start, born from a desire to provoke rather than to reach clarity. [https://images.currentaffairs.org/2017/01/anatomyad2-1024x646.jpg] But for a moment, let’s set aside the fact that the entire premise of the book is both sneaky and useless, and examine the substance of Bloom’s anti-“empathy” argument. It runs roughly as follows: “empathy,” defined as feeling other people’s emotions, is neither useful or necessary in grounding human morality. It’s not necessary, because plenty of people do good things without ever feeling the pain of the people they are helping. And it’s not useful, because it creates dangerous biases that can result in worse moral decisions. When we hear about the victim of a crime, and we empathize with their suffering, we may rush to support punitive criminal justice policies that have deleterious social consequences. Or when we see a starving child on a charity’s leaflet, we may rush to donate, even if this particular charity isn’t the most effective at helping children. The more we know about someone who is suffering, the more we are likely to want them to receive special treatment, even at the expense of those who are more deserving but whose names we do not know. Empathy, Bloom says, is selective: it causes us to sympathize with particular victims and make rash choices on the basis of our feelings about those victims, rather than stepping back and making a cool-headed decision as to what the most moral course of action actually is. Bloom says that a concern with the well-being of our fellow humans is best acted on through dispassionate cost-benefit analysis. All of this is essentially just a restatement of classic utilitarian ethics, and indeed, Bloom closes by praising Peter Singer and the Effective Altruism movement. Bloom makes plenty of accurate points here, though again, they are a critique of “allowing your gut feelings to determine your morals” rather than “empathy.” It’s absolutely true, as Bloom points out, that people can be whipped up into a warlike frenzy by tales about individual victims, and that compelling narratives about one or two people can blind us to larger, less tangible harms. Bloom gives the example of climate change, saying that because its harms are diffuse, “empathy favors doing nothing.” But that’s false. Actually, if we truly appreciated what life will be like for the inhabitants of a boiling planet, if the power of empathy could finally let us see them as people just like ourselves rather than a mere abstract potential, we might finally appreciate just why the issue is so urgent. In fact, Bloom’s advocacy of rationality over empathy misses something crucial: empathy offers data to aid rational decision-making. When I am trying to understand how other people feel, either just by using my imagination or literally trying to feel that thing, I am learning something about the world. If you want to make “cost-benefit” calculuses about the lives of other people, it helps to understand what their pains and pleasures are actually like. Sam Harris, in supporting Bloom’s argument, suggested that if we considered the pain of mothers who lose their children when we set laws designed to prevent traffic accidents, we would make everyone drive 15 miles an hour, because the pain is so great that any inconvenience would be justified in preventing it. But what Harris is advocating is excluding a certain kind of data (the feeling of a mother’s pain) from our cost-benefit calculus, because we don’t like the effects it has on the calculus. But that’s not rational; if understanding a mother’s pain made us feel that we needed to take greater precautions against allowing people’s sons to die, that would be because we had a better understanding of the world having more fully appreciated people’s subjective experiences. Bloom and Harris are right that emotion shouldn’t be a trump card that overrides rational thinking, and “a mother’s pain” is just one consideration to enter a cost-benefit calculus. But, fundamentally, empathy produces data on what it is like to be other people, and without it we will make worse decisions that simply impose our own conception of a person’s good upon them rather than understanding their good from their perspective. People like Bloom and Harris are often oblivious to the pitfalls of cost-benefit analyses, which can give them the dangerous belief that their subjective ideas of the social good are somehow objective and mathematically correct. Bloom praises economists for their cool-headed refusal to put emotion above facts, and their willingness to support policies like free trade, even though these policies hurt some people, because they serve the greater social good. Bloom’s praise of economists is telling: it’s precisely the problem with economists that because they see things in the statistical aggregate, they fail to appreciate what the actual individual experiences of economic policies can be. They think it is “irrational” not to support free trade, without appreciating what it is actually like to live in a town whose industry been hollowed out by globalization and technological change. Their inability to empathize prevents them from realizing why many individuals have perfectly rational reasons for despising economists. Pure cost-benefit analyses, untempered by empathy, can be just as dangerous as emotion-based policymaking. The classic example is the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From a cost-benefit perspective, the bombings were “rational”; they ended the war. But from a humane perspective, they were madness, an unspeakable form of cruelty. Now, it’s often argued that this shows precisely why you need to use “rational” rather than “emotional” decision-making: the rational person doesn’t allow feelings to keep them from making the tough but correct choice. But it’s also true that when one gets rid of feelings, one fails to appreciate just how horrific the ultimate consequences of the decision are. A person who sees the atom bomb in purely statistical terms doesn’t actually understand what it means for the people on whom it is being dropped. As a result, such a person won’t have the necessary moral horror needed to make them urgently want to ensure that no such bomb is ever dropped again. Empathy helps us understand what matters, even if our decisions should ultimately be grounded in reason. We can see in Bloom’s book what happens when one willfully abandons this: in one chapter, Bloom rejects the idea that “violence is wrong,” saying that violence will always be with us and is “right” in some circumstances. But those who truly understand the reality of violence will have a hard time ever saying that violence is “right.” It may be “necessary,” but it is always a necessary evil, and empathy helps us appreciate why violence is inherently evil even when it is morally compelled. The pure embrace of cost-benefit analysis creates moral blind spots. (We can also see this in Bloom’s praise of Peter Singer. Singer is a classic example of someone whose commitment to “rational” morality over empathy has actually made him a morally oblivious person; even though he strongly advocates helping alleviate suffering, he constantly makes appalling and insensitive remarksabout disabled people, then wonders why they are upset, something that would cease to be mysterious to him if he learned to exercise a modicum of empathy.) Examining moral matters carefully and rationally, and treating human beings equally rather than singling out particular emotionally touching cases, is manifestly a good thing. But nobody needs to be against empathy in order to be in favor of that. Paul Bloom could have written a very good book on why we needed to empathize fairly with all human beings, and examine our biases. It could have been a beautiful manifesto for loving and understanding each other. But instead, he simply concluded that it’s “impossible” to empathize with more than a few people (unless I am failing to empathize correctly, I have never found this to be the case), so we shouldn’t try to do it. And instead of exhorting us to understand other minds, he wrote a book that will help people justify telling others what’s good for them without having to actually listen to them. I have dwelled too long on Bloom’s terrible piece of work. He is not an intellectually serious person; if he was, he would have dealt with the strong pro-empathy case (the one that says it’s a useful exercise to compassionately imagine other lives) rather than the ludicrous one (the one that says every time a child dies in the world I should burst into tears). But it’s worth pointing out just where Bloom goes wrong, because the book’s reception has been positive (Jesse Singal of New York magazine said Bloom’s “great” case is “tough to crack” and “absolutely succeeds”) and he is a tenured professor at Yale, an institution whose affiliates are granted a level of public credibility completely out of proportion to the actual social worth of their ideas. Against Empathy does, however, offer a useful opportunity to reaffirm what empathy is and why it matters. Empathy is probably best thought of as something you do regularly, rather than all the time. It means making sure that you frequently think about the lives of those who are different from yourself, especially those who are very different. It’s an exercise to help connect you with your fellow human beings. Our imaginations are poor things with limited capacities, but listening to strangers and reading memoirs and stories can assist us. The aim is to get a real sense of the diversity of human perspectives, and to remind ourselves that other people experience consciousness just like we do. Empathy isn’t a moral philosophy in and of itself, it’s a technique for acquiring a better sense of the world as it really is. The reason why empathy is so important is that it’s so easy to lapse into solipsism, to forget just how human our fellow humans are. (And, by the way, how human other animals are. One reason I think people are unmoved by the industrial killing of animals, even though we all know in the abstract that causes extraordinary amounts of harm to conscious creatures, is that we have failed to sufficiently empathize with cows and pigs. The moment we understand what it is like to be them, it becomes far harder to turn away from their pain.) It’s so easy to see others as statistics, or not even to see them at all. But the more I realize that others truly are just slightly different versions of myself, that they have dreams, itches, and fears just like I do, that they have eyeballs, teeth, and an anus just like I do, that they must fumble their way through the bewildering process called life just as I must, the more I begin to feel a powerful and moving sense of community, one that I believe is essential for creating a peaceful and mutually supportive world. Bloom quotes George Orwell, who found himself unable to shoot a fascist during the Spanish Civil War because the man was trying to hold his trousers up, and “a man who is holding up his trousers isn’t a ‘Fascist’, he is visibly a fellow-creature, similar to yourself, and you don’t feel like shooting at him.” For the cost-benefit analyst, that only demonstrates the case against empathy: a soldier who empathizes with the enemy won’t be able to shoot, and lives will be lost. And that may be right. But if we’re ever to actually eliminate war, to create a world based on mutual understanding, it’s vital for everyone to realize that the planet is filled with nothing but fellow creatures, that we’re all just holding our trousers up. Not only is empathy a “good thing,” but until we learn to empathize, we will never truly know who we are. Books like Against Empathy make me viscerally angry. First, there’s the contrarianism; I believe that bad things should be criticized, but Bloom is just trying to wind people up, and a true intellectual would frame their argument in the most helpful manner rather than the most attention-getting manner. Second, though, this just seems to me like the last thing we need right now. In a time where nobody understands each other, where there is so much isolation, when there are so few attempts to break down communications barriers and genuinely connect with other people, do we really need someone to come along and encourage us to feel other people’s feelings less? Surely Bloom can’t really believe what he’s saying, that humankind suffers from a surfeit of empathy. It’s already so difficult to make oneself understood, so difficult to get people to appreciate that those different from themselves are real and conscious, that I can’t imagine anyone choosing to write this book of all the possible ones they could write. And I can’t help but feel a seething hatred for Paul Bloom, more concerned with trolling people at parties than with seriously helping humankind. But then again, I can empathize with him. After all, it can be tough to sell a book these days. Nathan J. Robinson is the editor of Current Affairs. If you liked this article, you'll love our print edition. Subscribe today to Current Affairs magazine. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 14:25:31 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:25:31 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Do not doubt it for a moment: Washington plans to escalate Africa intervention Message-ID: Washington exploiting Green Beret deaths to escalate Africa intervention 27 October 2017 More than three weeks after four special operations troops died in a firefight in Niger, the Pentagon has yet to provide a coherent account of what led to this military debacle. Combined with President Donald Trump’s initial silence on the deaths, followed by his repugnant public debate with the widow of one of the slain soldiers, the incident has cast a spotlight on a rapidly expanding US military buildup in Africa that has been carried out behind the backs of the American people and with no public debate, much less authorization, by the US Congress. The Trump administration has made no real effort to sell this burgeoning American military operation—conducted under the badly frayed banner of the “war on terrorism”—to the American public. Meanwhile, leading figures in the US Senate, including Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have claimed, however implausibly, that they knew nothing about the approximately 1,000 US special operations troops deployed in Niger and on its borders. Trump himself provided an entirely credible claim of his own ignorance as to what is happening in Africa. Asked by reporters on the White House lawn whether he had authorized the mission in Niger, he said he had not, declaring idiotically: “I have generals that are great generals. These are great fighters; these are warriors. I gave them authority to do what’s right so that we win.” Even as top politicians say they do not know what is going on and the public has been kept completely in the dark about US troops fighting in Africa—not to mention why they are there—the Pentagon is setting US policy. It is orchestrating a steady drumbeat to exploit the October 4 incident in Niger to push for a qualitative escalation of the US intervention. This was reflected in a USA Today story Thursday that was evidently planted by its principal sources, unnamed Pentagon officials, who argued that “US counterterrorism efforts are likely to focus more on Africa now that the so-called Islamic State has been ousted from its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria.” This same message was echoed by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday following a closed-door briefing by the US military brass. Both Republican and Democratic senators emerged from the meeting talking about the “rising terrorist threat” in Africa and the need to provide the US military there with “more resources.” Specifically, the US military is seeking the rapid deployment of armed Reaper drones in Niger for a campaign of assassinations and massacres throughout the Sahel region of central West Africa. US imperialism is preparing to inflict upon the African continent the levels of carnage that it has already wrought upon the Middle East, where the dead and wounded number in the millions and those driven from their homes in the tens of millions, while entire societies have been shattered. This new stage in the global eruption of American militarism has been prepared through the extraordinary and largely secretive buildup of AFRICOM, the US regional military command set up under the Bush administration in 2007 and rapidly expanded under Obama. Today, some 6,000 US troops are spread across 24 African nations, carrying out some 3,500 exercises and operations a year, according to AFRICOM’s own figures AFRICOM drew its first real blood in the US-NATO intervention to bring down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, claiming the lives of some 80,000 Libyans and leaving the entire society, over six years later, still in shambles. The regime-change war in Libya destabilized the entire region, igniting longstanding conflicts between the Tuareg people and the governments in Mali and Niger, and strengthening various Islamist movements, which were armed and supported by the US and its allies as proxy ground forces against Gaddafi. As is in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, the so-called terrorists that the US military is purportedly being deployed to fight represent the direct instruments or products of US imperialism’s own wars of aggression and regime-change, providing the pretexts for new and even bloodier interventions. Behind these pretexts, however, lie the unmistakable geostrategic interests of US imperialism. These interests were spelled out fairly bluntly in a statement to Congress earlier this year by AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser: “Just as the US pursues strategic interests in Africa, international competitors, including China and Russia, are doing the same. Whether with trade, natural resource exploitation, or weapons sales, we continue to see international competitors engage with African partners in a manner contrary to the international norms of transparency and good governance. These competitors weaken our African partners’ ability to govern and will ultimately hinder Africa’s long-term stability and economic growth, and they will also undermine and diminish US influence—a message we must continue to share with our partners.” The invocation of “international norms of transparency and good governance” by a senior military official of a military-dominated regime in Washington that wages wars behind the backs of the American people and conspires to topple any government getting in its way is, of course, pretty rich. But the thrust of the general’s remarks is clear. AFRICOM’s rapid expansion and the shift of the “war on terror” to Africa are directed first and foremost at countering the rise of Chinese influence on the continent. It is among the sharpest expressions of the global drive by US imperialism to counter its declining economic influence by means of armed force. China surpassed the US as the continent’s largest trading partner in 2009 and has continued to widen its lead. China-Africa trade has soared more than 20-fold from just $10 billion in 2000 to $220 billion in 2014. In 2015, Xi Jinping, China’s president, pledged $60 billion for African infrastructure projects in three years. Unable to compete with China economically and desperate for new sources of profits, US imperialism is resorting to military might. Twice in the 20th century, Africa was the arena for savage armed conflicts between major imperialist powers for the control of colonies, markets and sources of raw materials and labor. In advance of World War I, Germany, demanding its “place in the sun” as a world power, sought to expand its dominance at the expense of the British, French and Belgian colonialists. It is estimated that one million people died in East Africa as a direct result of the war. In the Second World War, Allied and Axis troops suffered over 400,000 casualties in the battles that raged over North Africa, while more than one million African troops were dragooned into military service on behalf of their European colonial oppressors. It is not only the United States that is launching its military into a new scramble for Africa, but also the old European colonialists. France has deployed some 4,000 troops across its former Sahel colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of a century after the defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Germany has some 1,000 troops deployed in Mali, a major component in the resurgence of German militarism. The crisis of world imperialism, and above all that of the US capitalist system, threatens to turn Africa once again into an arena of bloody global struggles. Bill Van Auken [http://www.wsws.org/en/media/photos/legacy/frontpage/lectures1917-bottom.jpg] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 14:33:24 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:33:24 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Lee Camp on NPR Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Bk-8ZBKq4 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 14:38:43 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:38:43 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Don't doubt it for a moment: Washington plans to escalate Africa intervention Message-ID: Washington exploiting Green Beret deaths to escalate Africa intervention 27 October 2017 More than three weeks after four special operations troops died in a firefight in Niger, the Pentagon has yet to provide a coherent account of what led to this military debacle. Combined with President Donald Trump’s initial silence on the deaths, followed by his repugnant public debate with the widow of one of the slain soldiers, the incident has cast a spotlight on a rapidly expanding US military buildup in Africa that has been carried out behind the backs of the American people and with no public debate, much less authorization, by the US Congress. The Trump administration has made no real effort to sell this burgeoning American military operation—conducted under the badly frayed banner of the “war on terrorism”—to the American public. Meanwhile, leading figures in the US Senate, including Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have claimed, however implausibly, that they knew nothing about the approximately 1,000 US special operations troops deployed in Niger and on its borders. Trump himself provided an entirely credible claim of his own ignorance as to what is happening in Africa. Asked by reporters on the White House lawn whether he had authorized the mission in Niger, he said he had not, declaring idiotically: “I have generals that are great generals. These are great fighters; these are warriors. I gave them authority to do what’s right so that we win.” Even as top politicians say they do not know what is going on and the public has been kept completely in the dark about US troops fighting in Africa—not to mention why they are there—the Pentagon is setting US policy. It is orchestrating a steady drumbeat to exploit the October 4 incident in Niger to push for a qualitative escalation of the US intervention. This was reflected in a USA Today story Thursday that was evidently planted by its principal sources, unnamed Pentagon officials, who argued that “US counterterrorism efforts are likely to focus more on Africa now that the so-called Islamic State has been ousted from its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria.” This same message was echoed by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday following a closed-door briefing by the US military brass. Both Republican and Democratic senators emerged from the meeting talking about the “rising terrorist threat” in Africa and the need to provide the US military there with “more resources.” Specifically, the US military is seeking the rapid deployment of armed Reaper drones in Niger for a campaign of assassinations and massacres throughout the Sahel region of central West Africa. US imperialism is preparing to inflict upon the African continent the levels of carnage that it has already wrought upon the Middle East, where the dead and wounded number in the millions and those driven from their homes in the tens of millions, while entire societies have been shattered. This new stage in the global eruption of American militarism has been prepared through the extraordinary and largely secretive buildup of AFRICOM, the US regional military command set up under the Bush administration in 2007 and rapidly expanded under Obama. Today, some 6,000 US troops are spread across 24 African nations, carrying out some 3,500 exercises and operations a year, according to AFRICOM’s own figures AFRICOM drew its first real blood in the US-NATO intervention to bring down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, claiming the lives of some 80,000 Libyans and leaving the entire society, over six years later, still in shambles. The regime-change war in Libya destabilized the entire region, igniting longstanding conflicts between the Tuareg people and the governments in Mali and Niger, and strengthening various Islamist movements, which were armed and supported by the US and its allies as proxy ground forces against Gaddafi. As is in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, the so-called terrorists that the US military is purportedly being deployed to fight represent the direct instruments or products of US imperialism’s own wars of aggression and regime-change, providing the pretexts for new and even bloodier interventions. Behind these pretexts, however, lie the unmistakable geostrategic interests of US imperialism. These interests were spelled out fairly bluntly in a statement to Congress earlier this year by AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser: “Just as the US pursues strategic interests in Africa, international competitors, including China and Russia, are doing the same. Whether with trade, natural resource exploitation, or weapons sales, we continue to see international competitors engage with African partners in a manner contrary to the international norms of transparency and good governance. These competitors weaken our African partners’ ability to govern and will ultimately hinder Africa’s long-term stability and economic growth, and they will also undermine and diminish US influence—a message we must continue to share with our partners.” The invocation of “international norms of transparency and good governance” by a senior military official of a military-dominated regime in Washington that wages wars behind the backs of the American people and conspires to topple any government getting in its way is, of course, pretty rich. But the thrust of the general’s remarks is clear. AFRICOM’s rapid expansion and the shift of the “war on terror” to Africa are directed first and foremost at countering the rise of Chinese influence on the continent. It is among the sharpest expressions of the global drive by US imperialism to counter its declining economic influence by means of armed force. China surpassed the US as the continent’s largest trading partner in 2009 and has continued to widen its lead. China-Africa trade has soared more than 20-fold from just $10 billion in 2000 to $220 billion in 2014. In 2015, Xi Jinping, China’s president, pledged $60 billion for African infrastructure projects in three years. Unable to compete with China economically and desperate for new sources of profits, US imperialism is resorting to military might. Twice in the 20th century, Africa was the arena for savage armed conflicts between major imperialist powers for the control of colonies, markets and sources of raw materials and labor. In advance of World War I, Germany, demanding its “place in the sun” as a world power, sought to expand its dominance at the expense of the British, French and Belgian colonialists. It is estimated that one million people died in East Africa as a direct result of the war. In the Second World War, Allied and Axis troops suffered over 400,000 casualties in the battles that raged over North Africa, while more than one million African troops were dragooned into military service on behalf of their European colonial oppressors. It is not only the United States that is launching its military into a new scramble for Africa, but also the old European colonialists. France has deployed some 4,000 troops across its former Sahel colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of a century after the defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Germany has some 1,000 troops deployed in Mali, a major component in the resurgence of German militarism. The crisis of world imperialism, and above all that of the US capitalist system, threatens to turn Africa once again into an arena of bloody global struggles. Bill Van Auken WSWS.ORG [http://www.wsws.org/en/media/photos/legacy/frontpage/lectures1917-bottom.jpg] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 14:38:43 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 14:38:43 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Don't doubt it for a moment: Washington plans to escalate Africa intervention Message-ID: Washington exploiting Green Beret deaths to escalate Africa intervention 27 October 2017 More than three weeks after four special operations troops died in a firefight in Niger, the Pentagon has yet to provide a coherent account of what led to this military debacle. Combined with President Donald Trump’s initial silence on the deaths, followed by his repugnant public debate with the widow of one of the slain soldiers, the incident has cast a spotlight on a rapidly expanding US military buildup in Africa that has been carried out behind the backs of the American people and with no public debate, much less authorization, by the US Congress. The Trump administration has made no real effort to sell this burgeoning American military operation—conducted under the badly frayed banner of the “war on terrorism”—to the American public. Meanwhile, leading figures in the US Senate, including Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have claimed, however implausibly, that they knew nothing about the approximately 1,000 US special operations troops deployed in Niger and on its borders. Trump himself provided an entirely credible claim of his own ignorance as to what is happening in Africa. Asked by reporters on the White House lawn whether he had authorized the mission in Niger, he said he had not, declaring idiotically: “I have generals that are great generals. These are great fighters; these are warriors. I gave them authority to do what’s right so that we win.” Even as top politicians say they do not know what is going on and the public has been kept completely in the dark about US troops fighting in Africa—not to mention why they are there—the Pentagon is setting US policy. It is orchestrating a steady drumbeat to exploit the October 4 incident in Niger to push for a qualitative escalation of the US intervention. This was reflected in a USA Today story Thursday that was evidently planted by its principal sources, unnamed Pentagon officials, who argued that “US counterterrorism efforts are likely to focus more on Africa now that the so-called Islamic State has been ousted from its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria.” This same message was echoed by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday following a closed-door briefing by the US military brass. Both Republican and Democratic senators emerged from the meeting talking about the “rising terrorist threat” in Africa and the need to provide the US military there with “more resources.” Specifically, the US military is seeking the rapid deployment of armed Reaper drones in Niger for a campaign of assassinations and massacres throughout the Sahel region of central West Africa. US imperialism is preparing to inflict upon the African continent the levels of carnage that it has already wrought upon the Middle East, where the dead and wounded number in the millions and those driven from their homes in the tens of millions, while entire societies have been shattered. This new stage in the global eruption of American militarism has been prepared through the extraordinary and largely secretive buildup of AFRICOM, the US regional military command set up under the Bush administration in 2007 and rapidly expanded under Obama. Today, some 6,000 US troops are spread across 24 African nations, carrying out some 3,500 exercises and operations a year, according to AFRICOM’s own figures AFRICOM drew its first real blood in the US-NATO intervention to bring down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, claiming the lives of some 80,000 Libyans and leaving the entire society, over six years later, still in shambles. The regime-change war in Libya destabilized the entire region, igniting longstanding conflicts between the Tuareg people and the governments in Mali and Niger, and strengthening various Islamist movements, which were armed and supported by the US and its allies as proxy ground forces against Gaddafi. As is in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, the so-called terrorists that the US military is purportedly being deployed to fight represent the direct instruments or products of US imperialism’s own wars of aggression and regime-change, providing the pretexts for new and even bloodier interventions. Behind these pretexts, however, lie the unmistakable geostrategic interests of US imperialism. These interests were spelled out fairly bluntly in a statement to Congress earlier this year by AFRICOM commander Gen. Thomas Waldhauser: “Just as the US pursues strategic interests in Africa, international competitors, including China and Russia, are doing the same. Whether with trade, natural resource exploitation, or weapons sales, we continue to see international competitors engage with African partners in a manner contrary to the international norms of transparency and good governance. These competitors weaken our African partners’ ability to govern and will ultimately hinder Africa’s long-term stability and economic growth, and they will also undermine and diminish US influence—a message we must continue to share with our partners.” The invocation of “international norms of transparency and good governance” by a senior military official of a military-dominated regime in Washington that wages wars behind the backs of the American people and conspires to topple any government getting in its way is, of course, pretty rich. But the thrust of the general’s remarks is clear. AFRICOM’s rapid expansion and the shift of the “war on terror” to Africa are directed first and foremost at countering the rise of Chinese influence on the continent. It is among the sharpest expressions of the global drive by US imperialism to counter its declining economic influence by means of armed force. China surpassed the US as the continent’s largest trading partner in 2009 and has continued to widen its lead. China-Africa trade has soared more than 20-fold from just $10 billion in 2000 to $220 billion in 2014. In 2015, Xi Jinping, China’s president, pledged $60 billion for African infrastructure projects in three years. Unable to compete with China economically and desperate for new sources of profits, US imperialism is resorting to military might. Twice in the 20th century, Africa was the arena for savage armed conflicts between major imperialist powers for the control of colonies, markets and sources of raw materials and labor. In advance of World War I, Germany, demanding its “place in the sun” as a world power, sought to expand its dominance at the expense of the British, French and Belgian colonialists. It is estimated that one million people died in East Africa as a direct result of the war. In the Second World War, Allied and Axis troops suffered over 400,000 casualties in the battles that raged over North Africa, while more than one million African troops were dragooned into military service on behalf of their European colonial oppressors. It is not only the United States that is launching its military into a new scramble for Africa, but also the old European colonialists. France has deployed some 4,000 troops across its former Sahel colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of a century after the defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Germany has some 1,000 troops deployed in Mali, a major component in the resurgence of German militarism. The crisis of world imperialism, and above all that of the US capitalist system, threatens to turn Africa once again into an arena of bloody global struggles. Bill Van Auken WSWS.ORG [http://www.wsws.org/en/media/photos/legacy/frontpage/lectures1917-bottom.jpg] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Fri Oct 27 16:20:16 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 16:20:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Lee Camp on NPR In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8459A203-23AF-4CB7-9105-091495ED9DBC@illinois.edu> Someone should do a similar (but calmer) job on PBS — NPR’s TV counterpart — & esp. its “Frontline” series. Their recent demonization smears of N. Korea’s Kim & V. Putin (“Putin’s Revenge,” Wed. 10/25, WILL-TV, 9–10 pm) were the most blatant political propaganda I’ve seen in years. Does make me wonder who is paying for this stuff & how it gets planted on PBS. ~~ Ron Szoke From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Oct 27 17:32:54 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 12:32:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Lee Camp on NPR In-Reply-To: <8459A203-23AF-4CB7-9105-091495ED9DBC@illinois.edu> References: <8459A203-23AF-4CB7-9105-091495ED9DBC@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <006a01d34f49$9f632c40$de2984c0$@comcast.net> Both NPR and PBS are corporate funded. The decent of " public " radio and TV began in the 1980's when Rep. of South Carolina Jesse Helms led an assault on PBS and NPR saying they were " biased " and " Left-wing ". He and other members of congress were able over time to have their taxpayer subsidies cut significantly and both had to go begging to corporate donors / underwriters. By the late 1990' s they had become another corporate mouth piece, which is about the time I stopped watching PBS ( I use to love Frontline )and listening to NPR. David J. -----Original Message----- From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 11:20 AM To: Karen Aram Cc: peace-discuss Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Lee Camp on NPR Someone should do a similar (but calmer) job on PBS — NPR’s TV counterpart — & esp. its “Frontline” series. Their recent demonization smears of N. Korea’s Kim & V. Putin (“Putin’s Revenge,” Wed. 10/25, WILL-TV, 9–10 pm) were the most blatant political propaganda I’ve seen in years. Does make me wonder who is paying for this stuff & how it gets planted on PBS. ~~ Ron Szoke _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Oct 27 22:46:44 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 22:46:44 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Lee Camp on NPR In-Reply-To: <006a01d34f49$9f632c40$de2984c0$@comcast.net> References: <8459A203-23AF-4CB7-9105-091495ED9DBC@illinois.edu> <006a01d34f49$9f632c40$de2984c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Yes, and Lee Camp is to “Millennials” what George Carlin was to “Baby Boomers”. Generally speaking “Millennials” don’t watch tv, but they do listen to radio. That’s why this is an important message. > On Oct 27, 2017, at 10:32, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Both NPR and PBS are corporate funded. > > The decent of " public " radio and TV began in the 1980's when Rep. of South Carolina Jesse Helms led an assault on PBS and NPR saying they were " biased " and " Left-wing ". He and other members of congress were able over time to have their taxpayer subsidies cut significantly and both had to go begging to corporate donors / underwriters. > By the late 1990' s they had become another corporate mouth piece, which is about the time I stopped watching PBS ( I use to love Frontline )and listening to NPR. > > David J. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss > Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 11:20 AM > To: Karen Aram > Cc: peace-discuss > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Lee Camp on NPR > > Someone should do a similar (but calmer) job on PBS — NPR’s TV counterpart — & esp. its “Frontline” series. Their recent demonization smears of N. Korea’s Kim & V. Putin (“Putin’s Revenge,” Wed. 10/25, WILL-TV, 9–10 pm) were the most blatant political propaganda I’ve seen in years. > > Does make me wonder who is paying for this stuff & how it gets planted on PBS. > > ~~ Ron Szoke > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C341628f8972e4249359408d51d60c7db%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636447223855906769&sdata=OEQSuIw%2FqB%2FzT1lLUmpJpoxkzrqL%2B2fBMR9DRt9fnUM%3D&reserved=0 > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C341628f8972e4249359408d51d60c7db%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636447223855906769&sdata=OEQSuIw%2FqB%2FzT1lLUmpJpoxkzrqL%2B2fBMR9DRt9fnUM%3D&reserved=0 From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 28 13:01:24 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:01:24 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:59 AM To: eFreePalestine at yahoogroups.com Subject: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Yeah, the Criminal Apartheid Regime in South Africa hired two law firms to represent them here in the United States. At Harvard Law School, we students organized a Boycott against them and refused to interview with them and spread the Boycott around the country to other law schools. The same needs to be done to Sidley & Austin. FAB D in BDS. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Google Alerts [mailto:googlealerts-noreply at google.com] Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:47 AM Subject: Google Alert - Stephen Lendman [Google] Stephen Lendman As-it-happens update ⋅ October 28, 2017 WEB Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS Stephen Lendman Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS. by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman). BDS activism is vital. [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant Twitter Solicited RT Ad Money, Then Banned Its Advertising Stephen Lendman by Stephen Lendman. Like Facebook, Google, and other online service companies, Twitter sold out to Washington's war on Russia – by banning RT's ... [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant See more results You have received this email because you have subscribed to Google Alerts. [RSS]Receive this alert as RSS feed Send Feedback -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 28 13:01:24 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:01:24 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Message-ID: Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:59 AM To: eFreePalestine at yahoogroups.com Subject: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Yeah, the Criminal Apartheid Regime in South Africa hired two law firms to represent them here in the United States. At Harvard Law School, we students organized a Boycott against them and refused to interview with them and spread the Boycott around the country to other law schools. The same needs to be done to Sidley & Austin. FAB D in BDS. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Google Alerts [mailto:googlealerts-noreply at google.com] Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:47 AM Subject: Google Alert - Stephen Lendman [Google] Stephen Lendman As-it-happens update ⋅ October 28, 2017 WEB Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS Stephen Lendman Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS. by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman). BDS activism is vital. [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant Twitter Solicited RT Ad Money, Then Banned Its Advertising Stephen Lendman by Stephen Lendman. Like Facebook, Google, and other online service companies, Twitter sold out to Washington's war on Russia – by banning RT's ... [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant See more results You have received this email because you have subscribed to Google Alerts. [RSS]Receive this alert as RSS feed Send Feedback -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 28 13:29:29 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:29:29 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Boycott Sidley & Austin! Message-ID: I call upon all Muslims around the world to refuse to do any business whatsoever with Sidley and Austin. Fab. D in BDS. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 8:01 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G ; 'David Swanson' Subject: FW: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:59 AM To: eFreePalestine at yahoogroups.com Subject: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Yeah, the Criminal Apartheid Regime in South Africa hired two law firms to represent them here in the United States. At Harvard Law School, we students organized a Boycott against them and refused to interview with them and spread the Boycott around the country to other law schools. The same needs to be done to Sidley & Austin. FAB D in BDS. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Google Alerts [mailto:googlealerts-noreply at google.com] Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:47 AM Subject: Google Alert - Stephen Lendman [Google] Stephen Lendman As-it-happens update ⋅ October 28, 2017 WEB Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS Stephen Lendman Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS. by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman). BDS activism is vital. [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant Twitter Solicited RT Ad Money, Then Banned Its Advertising Stephen Lendman by Stephen Lendman. Like Facebook, Google, and other online service companies, Twitter sold out to Washington's war on Russia – by banning RT's ... [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant See more results You have received this email because you have subscribed to Google Alerts. [RSS]Receive this alert as RSS feed Send Feedback -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Sat Oct 28 13:29:29 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:29:29 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Boycott Sidley & Austin! Message-ID: I call upon all Muslims around the world to refuse to do any business whatsoever with Sidley and Austin. Fab. D in BDS. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 8:01 AM To: 'David Green' ; 'sherwoodross10 at gmail.com' ; 'peace-discuss at anti-war.net' ; 'C. G. ESTABROOK' ; 'a-fields at uiuc.edu' ; Hoffman, Valerie J ; 'Joe Lauria' ; 'Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net' ; 'peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net' ; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; 'Arlene Hickory' ; 'Karen Aram' ; 'abass10 at gmail.com' ; 'mickalideh at gmail.com' ; 'Lina Thorne' ; 'chicago at worldcantwait.net' ; 'Jay' ; 'David Johnson' ; 'Mildred O'brien' ; Estabrook, Carl G ; 'David Swanson' Subject: FW: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:59 AM To: eFreePalestine at yahoogroups.com Subject: Boycott Sidley & Austin! Yeah, the Criminal Apartheid Regime in South Africa hired two law firms to represent them here in the United States. At Harvard Law School, we students organized a Boycott against them and refused to interview with them and spread the Boycott around the country to other law schools. The same needs to be done to Sidley & Austin. FAB D in BDS. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Google Alerts [mailto:googlealerts-noreply at google.com] Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2017 7:47 AM Subject: Google Alert - Stephen Lendman [Google] Stephen Lendman As-it-happens update ⋅ October 28, 2017 WEB Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS Stephen Lendman Israel Using Chicago Law Firm to Combat BDS. by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman). BDS activism is vital. [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant Twitter Solicited RT Ad Money, Then Banned Its Advertising Stephen Lendman by Stephen Lendman. Like Facebook, Google, and other online service companies, Twitter sold out to Washington's war on Russia – by banning RT's ... [Google Plus] [Facebook] [Twitter] Flag as irrelevant See more results You have received this email because you have subscribed to Google Alerts. [RSS]Receive this alert as RSS feed Send Feedback -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 29 18:36:15 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 18:36:15 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] it doesn't get any better than Yanis, Zizek and Julian.... Message-ID: Entertaining as well as informative https://youtu.be/yjxAArOkoA0 From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 01:10:49 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 01:10:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm Message-ID: According to today's News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor's Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can't make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! "Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!" The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees >From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 01:10:49 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 01:10:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm Message-ID: According to today's News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor's Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can't make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! "Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!" The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees >From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 01:22:03 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 01:22:03 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] And Chief Illiniwak!: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm Message-ID: And since as Governor Kennedy would become an ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees and also be able to appoint it's members thereof, people need to ask Kennedy and all the other candidates at the Forum their positions on getting rid of Chief Illiniwak for good. Illiniwak recently paraded at the UI Homecoming with the tolerance of the UI Administration. Fab. The Racist Mascot: Why You Should Still Boo Illinois The self-styled "Fighting Illini" of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are on their way to the Jan. 1, 2008 Rose Bowl with their racist and genocidal mascot and symbol Chief Illiniwak still in tow. Although the NCAA forced the University of Illiniwaks to prevent this Little Red Sambo from desecrating at half-times everything American Indians hold dear and treasure, nevertheless Chief Illiniwak still remains the officially designated "honored symbol" of the University of Illiniwaks at Urbana-Champaign. Just recently the University of Illiniwaks resurrected Chief Illiniwak for their Fall 2007 Homecoming in order to better milk their Alumni/ae as part of their newly launched Capital Campaign, thus definitively proving their craven racism. In his Year 501: The Conquest Continues (1993) Noam Chomsky suggests an apt metaphor for such American Indian sports mascots and symbols that I will elaborate upon here in order to conform to our local and most peculiar rites on this campus: Suppose the Nazis had won the Second World War. Sixty years later, a prestigious German state university has a mascot for all of its sports teams and sports fans by the name of "The Rabbi." Basically what happens is that a student from the Hitler Youth League dresses up in an authentic costume for an Hasidic Rabbi, complete with the curl-locks and a beard. The University itself collectively call themselves "The Fighting Jews," and the school's band is called "The Marching Jews." The student newspaper is called "The Daily Jew." All the sports fans in town wear jackets and t-shirts with pictures of The Rabbi prominently displayed on them. And most cars have Rabbi stickers planted all over them. Three years ago the University's Board of Trustees ran out of town on a rail a courageous and principled Chancellor who had the temerity to publicly suggest that the time had now come to "retire" the Rabbi. So of course there was a heated campaign on among the students and alumni to "Save the Rabbi!" This German state university plays its soccer matches over at the Nuremberg Stadium in front of an audience of about 75,000 White Aryans, almost all of whom are wearing pro-Rabbi images and clothes. At half-time the Marching Jews take to the stadium floor and begin playing what they purport to be Jewish sounding music along the lines of Fiddler-on-the-Roof. Then all 75,000 White Aryans rise as one and shout in unison: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" gesticulating wildly and working themselves up into a feeding frenzy. One lone faculty member sits there in protest shouting "Racist Rabbi!" and everyone in the vicinity proceeds to throw garbage at him.1 Finally, the moment these ardent White Aryans have all waited for has arrived. The Rabbi runs out onto the arena floor from among the Marching Jews, proceeds to the center of the Nuremberg Stadium, and dances the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews play on and march into an intricately choreographed maneuver that they all brag about and take special pride in that culminates with the band being organized into a Swastika. So the Rabbi continues to dance the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews march themselves into a Swastika. By now all 75,000 White Aryans are hysterical, shouting, screaming, and yelling: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" This semi-religious spectacle that the Nazis are well known for staging, especially at the Nuremberg stadium, goes on for a good twenty minutes. It all concludes with everyone joining hands to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles," with the Rabbi leading all 75,000 White Aryans in the song. Then the Rabbi proceeds to dance the Hava Nagila out of the stadium followed by the Marching Jews. Everyone goes wild, clapping and cheering. This Rabbi ceremony brings tears to the eyes of many drunken alumni and students who had started several hours beforehand getting inebriated on schnapps and good German beer at pre-game tailgate parties. When it is all over, a visiting law professor from another country asks his host at the soccer match what this spectacle was all about. Without missing a beat Dean Mengele of the Law School turns to his guest and says: "We are honoring the Jews." Whom the Nazis had just exterminated 60 years ago, so of course the memory of the Jews needs to be honored by this spectacle. The Illiniwek Indians were ethnically cleansed out of Illinois about a century before that. These are the real "Little Eichmans." Be sure to "Boo!" and root against the Illiniwaks. [cid:image002.jpg at 01D350F3.9480A450] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:11 PM To: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G ; David Swanson Cc: Wise, Phyllis M Subject: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm According to today's News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor's Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can't make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! "Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!" The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees >From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) ________________________________ 1 Guess who? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 53185 bytes Desc: image002.jpg URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 01:22:03 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 01:22:03 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] And Chief Illiniwak!: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm Message-ID: And since as Governor Kennedy would become an ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees and also be able to appoint it's members thereof, people need to ask Kennedy and all the other candidates at the Forum their positions on getting rid of Chief Illiniwak for good. Illiniwak recently paraded at the UI Homecoming with the tolerance of the UI Administration. Fab. The Racist Mascot: Why You Should Still Boo Illinois The self-styled "Fighting Illini" of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are on their way to the Jan. 1, 2008 Rose Bowl with their racist and genocidal mascot and symbol Chief Illiniwak still in tow. Although the NCAA forced the University of Illiniwaks to prevent this Little Red Sambo from desecrating at half-times everything American Indians hold dear and treasure, nevertheless Chief Illiniwak still remains the officially designated "honored symbol" of the University of Illiniwaks at Urbana-Champaign. Just recently the University of Illiniwaks resurrected Chief Illiniwak for their Fall 2007 Homecoming in order to better milk their Alumni/ae as part of their newly launched Capital Campaign, thus definitively proving their craven racism. In his Year 501: The Conquest Continues (1993) Noam Chomsky suggests an apt metaphor for such American Indian sports mascots and symbols that I will elaborate upon here in order to conform to our local and most peculiar rites on this campus: Suppose the Nazis had won the Second World War. Sixty years later, a prestigious German state university has a mascot for all of its sports teams and sports fans by the name of "The Rabbi." Basically what happens is that a student from the Hitler Youth League dresses up in an authentic costume for an Hasidic Rabbi, complete with the curl-locks and a beard. The University itself collectively call themselves "The Fighting Jews," and the school's band is called "The Marching Jews." The student newspaper is called "The Daily Jew." All the sports fans in town wear jackets and t-shirts with pictures of The Rabbi prominently displayed on them. And most cars have Rabbi stickers planted all over them. Three years ago the University's Board of Trustees ran out of town on a rail a courageous and principled Chancellor who had the temerity to publicly suggest that the time had now come to "retire" the Rabbi. So of course there was a heated campaign on among the students and alumni to "Save the Rabbi!" This German state university plays its soccer matches over at the Nuremberg Stadium in front of an audience of about 75,000 White Aryans, almost all of whom are wearing pro-Rabbi images and clothes. At half-time the Marching Jews take to the stadium floor and begin playing what they purport to be Jewish sounding music along the lines of Fiddler-on-the-Roof. Then all 75,000 White Aryans rise as one and shout in unison: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" gesticulating wildly and working themselves up into a feeding frenzy. One lone faculty member sits there in protest shouting "Racist Rabbi!" and everyone in the vicinity proceeds to throw garbage at him.1 Finally, the moment these ardent White Aryans have all waited for has arrived. The Rabbi runs out onto the arena floor from among the Marching Jews, proceeds to the center of the Nuremberg Stadium, and dances the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews play on and march into an intricately choreographed maneuver that they all brag about and take special pride in that culminates with the band being organized into a Swastika. So the Rabbi continues to dance the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews march themselves into a Swastika. By now all 75,000 White Aryans are hysterical, shouting, screaming, and yelling: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" This semi-religious spectacle that the Nazis are well known for staging, especially at the Nuremberg stadium, goes on for a good twenty minutes. It all concludes with everyone joining hands to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles," with the Rabbi leading all 75,000 White Aryans in the song. Then the Rabbi proceeds to dance the Hava Nagila out of the stadium followed by the Marching Jews. Everyone goes wild, clapping and cheering. This Rabbi ceremony brings tears to the eyes of many drunken alumni and students who had started several hours beforehand getting inebriated on schnapps and good German beer at pre-game tailgate parties. When it is all over, a visiting law professor from another country asks his host at the soccer match what this spectacle was all about. Without missing a beat Dean Mengele of the Law School turns to his guest and says: "We are honoring the Jews." Whom the Nazis had just exterminated 60 years ago, so of course the memory of the Jews needs to be honored by this spectacle. The Illiniwek Indians were ethnically cleansed out of Illinois about a century before that. These are the real "Little Eichmans." Be sure to "Boo!" and root against the Illiniwaks. [cid:image002.jpg at 01D350F3.9480A450] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:11 PM To: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G ; David Swanson Cc: Wise, Phyllis M Subject: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm According to today's News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor's Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can't make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! "Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!" The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees >From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) ________________________________ 1 Guess who? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 53185 bytes Desc: image002.jpg URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 30 12:42:50 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:42:50 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea Message-ID: [http://www.wsws.org/img/title.png] [http://www.wsws.org/img/logo.png] Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Click here for advanced search » * Home * Perspectives * World News * World Economy * Arts Review * History * Science * Philosophy * Workers Struggles * ICFI/Marxist Library * Chronology * Full Archive * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea 30 October 2017 US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the region and the world on the brink of a catastrophic war. “I cannot imagine a condition under which the US would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he told reporters in Seoul on Saturday. “Make no mistake any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.” US war plans are offensive, not defensive, in character. Asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea to prevent a hypothetical attack on Seoul, Mattis confirmed, “yes, we do have those options”. Under OPLAN 5015, US and South Korean forces are primed for massive offensive strikes against North Korean nuclear, military and industrial facilities as well as “decapitation raids” by special forces to kill its top leaders. While Mattis insisted that “our goal is not war”, US President Trump has effectively ruled out any other option, short of North Korea’s total capitulation to Washington’s demands. Trump publically rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month for “wasting his time” in putting out diplomatic feelers for talks with North Korea. Trump is about to begin his first official trip to Asia this week, including to Japan, South Korea and China. Having threatened in the UN to “totally destroy” North Korea, he will undoubtedly use this incendiary threat not only to menace the Pyongyang regime but the entire region, particularly China which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony. Trump’s trip will take place amid a massive show of US military force near the Korean Peninsula, including: * Three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers—the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt—which are in the region and preparing for joint exercises along with their associated strike groups. Each carrier is accompanied by between six to 10 warships, including cruisers, destroyers and nuclear submarines, and has an air wing of dozens of fighter jets and other military aircraft. * The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with more than 150 Tomahawk missiles, which docked in South Korea on October 17 ahead of joint exercises with the USS Ronald Reagan. The submarine also carries Navy SEALs, which in an earlier port call in April reportedly included the notorious SEAL Team Six that murdered Osama bin Laden. * All US military bases throughout the region, particularly in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia are without doubt on a high state of alert. The Pentagon has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, around 54,000 in Japan and about 4,000 in Guam, along with a large number of naval vessels and warplanes. Australia acts as a de facto rear base for US Marines, warships and aircraft as well as housing key spy and communications bases. Two Australian frigates are due to arrive this week in South Korea for joint drills. * The Pentagon is set to deploy, for the first time, a squadron of F-35A Joint Strike Fighter jets and 300 personnel to the US base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters could well be used as part of a first wave to destroy North Korean air defences, opening the way for a massive air assault. * The US Air Force has carried out one military provocation after another—flying B-52 and B1-B strategic bombers close to North Korea. Yesterday, US Strategic Command, in charge of the nuclear arsenal, reported that it had flown a B-2 stealth bomber from the US to the Pacific to “familiarise aircrew” and to ensure “a high state of readiness and proficiency.” Unlike the B1-B, the state-of-the-art B-2 is nuclear capable. The flight underscores the ominous comments of US Vice President Mike Pence during a visit last Friday to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, which houses 26 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 150 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. Referring to North Korea, Pence declared: “Now more than ever your commander in chief [Trump] is depending on you to be ready. Stay sharp, mind your mission.” The Trump administration is preparing a war not just with conventional weapons, but with nuclear bombs—directed against North Korea and any other powers such as China and Russia that join the conflict. Last week, the Air Force announced that it was preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert. At the same time, as reported by the Guardian yesterday, the Trump administration is drawing up a new Nuclear Posture Review, which will open the door for a range of new nuclear weapons and change the rules governing their use. The only conclusion that the North Korean regime can reach is that the country confronts the imminent threat of a US military onslaught, using conventional and/or nuclear weapons. The South Korean-based NKNews reported over the weekend that North Korea has been carrying out mass evacuation drills in cities and towns along the east coast. The world may be closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time in history. During the extremely tense stand-off between the United States and Russia during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, both the American and Russian leaders worked to prevent a nuclear exchange that would have devastated the world. Trump, however, driven by the irresolvable contradictions of American and global capitalism, is proceeding with an unprecedented degree of recklessness to deliberately inflame flash points in Asia, as well as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Embroiled in one political crisis after another at home, and facing mounting public hostility to his agenda of austerity and war, Trump is being propelled towards launching war as a means of diverting acute social tensions outwards against a foreign enemy. These same tensions are driving workers and youth in the United States and around the world into struggle to defend their living conditions, basic democratic rights and to prevent a conflict that would plunge the world into barbarism. That movement must find conscious expression in the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system that engenders war and social misery. Peter Symonds WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rwhelbig at gmail.com Mon Oct 30 13:50:08 2017 From: rwhelbig at gmail.com (Roger Helbig) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 06:50:08 -0700 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This "news" source is about as reliable as Fox or one of the other far right sources - it makes good propaganda! Roger On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 5:42 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Published by the > International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) > Click here for advanced search » > > - Home > - Perspectives > > - World News > - World Economy > > - Arts Review > - History > - Science > - Philosophy > > - Workers Struggles > > - ICFI/Marxist Library > - Chronology > - Full Archive > > > > - Print > > - Leaflet > > - Feedback > > - Share » > > US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea 30 October 2017 > > US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the > United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 > million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed > by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the > region and the world on the brink of a catastrophic war. > > “I cannot imagine a condition under which the US would accept North Korea > as a nuclear power,” he told reporters in Seoul on Saturday. “Make no > mistake any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and > any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military > response that is effective and overwhelming.” > > US war plans are offensive, not defensive, in character. Asked about the > possibility of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea to prevent a > hypothetical attack on Seoul, Mattis confirmed, “yes, we do have those > options”. Under OPLAN 5015, US and South Korean forces are primed for > massive offensive strikes against North Korean nuclear, military and > industrial facilities as well as “decapitation raids” by special forces to > kill its top leaders. > > While Mattis insisted that “our goal is not war”, US President Trump has > effectively ruled out any other option, short of North Korea’s total > capitulation to Washington’s demands. Trump publically rebuked Secretary of > State Rex Tillerson earlier this month for “wasting his time” in putting > out diplomatic feelers for talks with North Korea. > > Trump is about to begin his first official trip to Asia this week, > including to Japan, South Korea and China. Having threatened in the UN to > “totally destroy” North Korea, he will undoubtedly use this incendiary > threat not only to menace the Pyongyang regime but the entire region, > particularly China which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global > hegemony. > > Trump’s trip will take place amid a massive show of US military force near > the Korean Peninsula, including: > > * Three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers—the USS Ronald Reagan, the > USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt—which are in the region and preparing > for joint exercises along with their associated strike groups. Each carrier > is accompanied by between six to 10 warships, including cruisers, > destroyers and nuclear submarines, and has an air wing of dozens of fighter > jets and other military aircraft. > > * The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with more than 150 > Tomahawk missiles, which docked in South Korea on October 17 ahead of joint > exercises with the USS Ronald Reagan. The submarine also carries Navy > SEALs, which in an earlier port call in April reportedly included the > notorious SEAL Team Six that murdered Osama bin Laden. > > * All US military bases throughout the region, particularly in South > Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia are without doubt on a high state of > alert. The Pentagon has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, around > 54,000 in Japan and about 4,000 in Guam, along with a large number of naval > vessels and warplanes. Australia acts as a de facto rear base for US > Marines, warships and aircraft as well as housing key spy and > communications bases. Two Australian frigates are due to arrive this week > in South Korea for joint drills. > > * The Pentagon is set to deploy, for the first time, a squadron of F-35A > Joint Strike Fighter jets and 300 personnel to the US base on the Japanese > island of Okinawa. The advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters could > well be used as part of a first wave to destroy North Korean air defences, > opening the way for a massive air assault. > > * The US Air Force has carried out one military provocation after > another—flying B-52 and B1-B strategic bombers close to North Korea. > Yesterday, US Strategic Command, in charge of the nuclear arsenal, reported > that it had flown a B-2 stealth bomber from the US to the Pacific to > “familiarise aircrew” and to ensure “a high state of readiness and > proficiency.” Unlike the B1-B, the state-of-the-art B-2 is nuclear capable. > > The flight underscores the ominous comments of US Vice President Mike > Pence during a visit last Friday to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, > which houses 26 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 150 nuclear > intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. Referring to North Korea, > Pence declared: “Now more than ever your commander in chief [Trump] is > depending on you to be ready. Stay sharp, mind your mission.” > > The Trump administration is preparing a war not just with conventional > weapons, but with nuclear bombs—directed against North Korea and any other > powers such as China and Russia that join the conflict. Last week, the Air > Force announced that it was preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers back > on 24-hour alert. At the same time, as reported by the *Guardian* yesterday, > the Trump administration is drawing up a new Nuclear Posture Review, which > will open the door for a range of new nuclear weapons and change the rules > governing their use. > > The only conclusion that the North Korean regime can reach is that the > country confronts the imminent threat of a US military onslaught, using > conventional and/or nuclear weapons. The South Korean-based NKNews reported > over the weekend that North Korea has been carrying out mass evacuation > drills in cities and towns along the east coast. > > The world may be closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time in > history. During the extremely tense stand-off between the United States and > Russia during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, both the American and Russian > leaders worked to prevent a nuclear exchange that would have devastated the > world. > > Trump, however, driven by the irresolvable contradictions of American and > global capitalism, is proceeding with an unprecedented degree of > recklessness to deliberately inflame flash points in Asia, as well as the > Middle East and Eastern Europe. Embroiled in one political crisis after > another at home, and facing mounting public hostility to his agenda of > austerity and war, Trump is being propelled towards launching war as a > means of diverting acute social tensions outwards against a foreign enemy. > > These same tensions are driving workers and youth in the United States and > around the world into struggle to defend their living conditions, basic > democratic rights and to prevent a conflict that would plunge the world > into barbarism. That movement must find conscious expression in the program > of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of > the Fourth International to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system > that engenders war and social misery. > > Peter Symonds > WSWS.ORG > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Oct 30 14:51:59 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 09:51:59 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <168D63AC-7F9C-4C25-8B4E-BF7563281EFA@gmail.com> And, as Henry Kissinger is supposed to have said in a related matter, "This has the added benefit of being true." —CGE > On Oct 30, 2017, at 8:50 AM, Roger Helbig via Peace-discuss wrote: > > This "news" source is about as reliable as Fox or one of the other far right sources - it makes good propaganda! > > Roger > > On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 5:42 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea > 30 October 2017 > US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the region and the world on the brink of a catastrophic war. > “I cannot imagine a condition under which the US would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he told reporters in Seoul on Saturday. “Make no mistake any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.” > US war plans are offensive, not defensive, in character. Asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea to prevent a hypothetical attack on Seoul, Mattis confirmed, “yes, we do have those options”. Under OPLAN 5015, US and South Korean forces are primed for massive offensive strikes against North Korean nuclear, military and industrial facilities as well as “decapitation raids” by special forces to kill its top leaders. > While Mattis insisted that “our goal is not war”, US President Trump has effectively ruled out any other option, short of North Korea’s total capitulation to Washington’s demands. Trump publically rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month for “wasting his time” in putting out diplomatic feelers for talks with North Korea. > Trump is about to begin his first official trip to Asia this week, including to Japan, South Korea and China. Having threatened in the UN to “totally destroy” North Korea, he will undoubtedly use this incendiary threat not only to menace the Pyongyang regime but the entire region, particularly China which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony. > Trump’s trip will take place amid a massive show of US military force near the Korean Peninsula, including: > * Three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers—the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt—which are in the region and preparing for joint exercises along with their associated strike groups. Each carrier is accompanied by between six to 10 warships, including cruisers, destroyers and nuclear submarines, and has an air wing of dozens of fighter jets and other military aircraft. > * The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with more than 150 Tomahawk missiles, which docked in South Korea on October 17 ahead of joint exercises with the USS Ronald Reagan. The submarine also carries Navy SEALs, which in an earlier port call in April reportedly included the notorious SEAL Team Six that murdered Osama bin Laden. > * All US military bases throughout the region, particularly in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia are without doubt on a high state of alert. The Pentagon has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, around 54,000 in Japan and about 4,000 in Guam, along with a large number of naval vessels and warplanes. Australia acts as a de facto rear base for US Marines, warships and aircraft as well as housing key spy and communications bases. Two Australian frigates are due to arrive this week in South Korea for joint drills. > * The Pentagon is set to deploy, for the first time, a squadron of F-35A Joint Strike Fighter jets and 300 personnel to the US base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters could well be used as part of a first wave to destroy North Korean air defences, opening the way for a massive air assault. > * The US Air Force has carried out one military provocation after another—flying B-52 and B1-B strategic bombers close to North Korea. Yesterday, US Strategic Command, in charge of the nuclear arsenal, reported that it had flown a B-2 stealth bomber from the US to the Pacific to “familiarise aircrew” and to ensure “a high state of readiness and proficiency.” Unlike the B1-B, the state-of-the-art B-2 is nuclear capable. > The flight underscores the ominous comments of US Vice President Mike Pence during a visit last Friday to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, which houses 26 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 150 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. Referring to North Korea, Pence declared: “Now more than ever your commander in chief [Trump] is depending on you to be ready. Stay sharp, mind your mission.” > The Trump administration is preparing a war not just with conventional weapons, but with nuclear bombs—directed against North Korea and any other powers such as China and Russia that join the conflict. Last week, the Air Force announced that it was preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert. At the same time, as reported by the Guardian yesterday, the Trump administration is drawing up a new Nuclear Posture Review, which will open the door for a range of new nuclear weapons and change the rules governing their use. > The only conclusion that the North Korean regime can reach is that the country confronts the imminent threat of a US military onslaught, using conventional and/or nuclear weapons. The South Korean-based NKNews reported over the weekend that North Korea has been carrying out mass evacuation drills in cities and towns along the east coast. > The world may be closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time in history. During the extremely tense stand-off between the United States and Russia during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, both the American and Russian leaders worked to prevent a nuclear exchange that would have devastated the world. > Trump, however, driven by the irresolvable contradictions of American and global capitalism, is proceeding with an unprecedented degree of recklessness to deliberately inflame flash points in Asia, as well as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Embroiled in one political crisis after another at home, and facing mounting public hostility to his agenda of austerity and war, Trump is being propelled towards launching war as a means of diverting acute social tensions outwards against a foreign enemy. > These same tensions are driving workers and youth in the United States and around the world into struggle to defend their living conditions, basic democratic rights and to prevent a conflict that would plunge the world into barbarism. That movement must find conscious expression in the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system that engenders war and social misery. > Peter Symonds > WSWS.ORG From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 15:08:44 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 10:08:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6D54ABB9-6600-494A-9C60-9AD6049A9808@illinois.edu> Perhaps AWARE should organize letters on this matter to one of the few open fora on politics in C-U, the letters column of the News-Gazette. A hook might be Jim Dey’s Oct. 26 reflection in the N-G on university presidents. —CGE > On Oct 29, 2017, at 8:10 PM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss wrote: > > According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 17:21:48 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:21:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <848D4F5B-5FE3-4BD4-9458-697BEE33D263@illinois.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 15:08:44 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 10:08:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6D54ABB9-6600-494A-9C60-9AD6049A9808@illinois.edu> Perhaps AWARE should organize letters on this matter to one of the few open fora on politics in C-U, the letters column of the News-Gazette. A hook might be Jim Dey’s Oct. 26 reflection in the N-G on university presidents. —CGE > On Oct 29, 2017, at 8:10 PM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss wrote: > > According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 17:21:48 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:21:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <848D4F5B-5FE3-4BD4-9458-697BEE33D263@illinois.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From futureup2us at gmail.com Mon Oct 30 17:50:44 2017 From: futureup2us at gmail.com (Jay Becker) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:50:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5B9227DC-E17A-4DB5-B0F8-DDC551790F9D@gmail.com> We should share this reminder as a comment on FB, where there’s a lot of promotion of the Governors Forum. Chris Kennedy was also the driving force behind the denial of emeritus status to Bill Ayers (a first for UI, I believe) based on spurious claims about a completely non-existent link to Sirhan Sirhan and the assassination of RFK. Jay > On Oct 29, 2017, at 20:10, Boyle, Francis A wrote: > > According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. > The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois > > The Principles on Which We Stand > At the University of Illinois: > The Cult of Chief Illiniwak > Long Live Chief Illiniwak! > Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol > For the University of Illiniwaks > And Illiniwaks all over the world! > > Illiniwak Pride! > Illiniwak Fever! > The Daily Illiniwak > Illiniwaks Yearbooks > > Illiniwaks Homecoming > Our Redskin Tradition > Eagle Feathers too > > Illiniwak Stadium > Our Illiniwakettes > Our Fighting Illiniwaks > Illiniwak Cheerleaders > > Our Marching Illiniwaks Band > Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle > Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! > Oskee! Bow! Wow! > > “Just Honoring American Indians > Not demeaning anyone > Nor meaning them too > All very civil > How White of us all!” > > The University of Illiniwaks > Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! > Racists to boot > Genocidaires too > > So very educational > Anthro 101 > The Cult of Chief Illiniwak > A required course > To get our degrees > From the University of Illiniwaks > Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! > > > > > > Francis A. Boyle > Law Building > 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. > Champaign IL 61820 USA > 217-333-7954 (phone) > 217-244-1478 (fax) > (personal comments only) > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From futureup2us at gmail.com Mon Oct 30 17:50:44 2017 From: futureup2us at gmail.com (Jay Becker) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 12:50:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5B9227DC-E17A-4DB5-B0F8-DDC551790F9D@gmail.com> We should share this reminder as a comment on FB, where there’s a lot of promotion of the Governors Forum. Chris Kennedy was also the driving force behind the denial of emeritus status to Bill Ayers (a first for UI, I believe) based on spurious claims about a completely non-existent link to Sirhan Sirhan and the assassination of RFK. Jay > On Oct 29, 2017, at 20:10, Boyle, Francis A wrote: > > According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. > The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois > > The Principles on Which We Stand > At the University of Illinois: > The Cult of Chief Illiniwak > Long Live Chief Illiniwak! > Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol > For the University of Illiniwaks > And Illiniwaks all over the world! > > Illiniwak Pride! > Illiniwak Fever! > The Daily Illiniwak > Illiniwaks Yearbooks > > Illiniwaks Homecoming > Our Redskin Tradition > Eagle Feathers too > > Illiniwak Stadium > Our Illiniwakettes > Our Fighting Illiniwaks > Illiniwak Cheerleaders > > Our Marching Illiniwaks Band > Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle > Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! > Oskee! Bow! Wow! > > “Just Honoring American Indians > Not demeaning anyone > Nor meaning them too > All very civil > How White of us all!” > > The University of Illiniwaks > Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! > Racists to boot > Genocidaires too > > So very educational > Anthro 101 > The Cult of Chief Illiniwak > A required course > To get our degrees > From the University of Illiniwaks > Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! > > > > > > Francis A. Boyle > Law Building > 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. > Champaign IL 61820 USA > 217-333-7954 (phone) > 217-244-1478 (fax) > (personal comments only) > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 17:50:51 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 17:50:51 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: <6D54ABB9-6600-494A-9C60-9AD6049A9808@illinois.edu> References: <6D54ABB9-6600-494A-9C60-9AD6049A9808@illinois.edu> Message-ID: For sure. Thanks. fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 10:09 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; David Swanson ; Wise, Phyllis M Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm Perhaps AWARE should organize letters on this matter to one of the few open fora on politics in C-U, the letters column of the News-Gazette. A hook might be Jim Dey’s Oct. 26 reflection in the N-G on university presidents. —CGE > On Oct 29, 2017, at 8:10 PM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss wrote: > > According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 17:50:51 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 17:50:51 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: <6D54ABB9-6600-494A-9C60-9AD6049A9808@illinois.edu> References: <6D54ABB9-6600-494A-9C60-9AD6049A9808@illinois.edu> Message-ID: For sure. Thanks. fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -----Original Message----- From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 10:09 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; David Swanson ; Wise, Phyllis M Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm Perhaps AWARE should organize letters on this matter to one of the few open fora on politics in C-U, the letters column of the News-Gazette. A hook might be Jim Dey’s Oct. 26 reflection in the N-G on university presidents. —CGE > On Oct 29, 2017, at 8:10 PM, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss wrote: > > According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 17:56:49 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 17:56:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: <5B9227DC-E17A-4DB5-B0F8-DDC551790F9D@gmail.com> References: <5B9227DC-E17A-4DB5-B0F8-DDC551790F9D@gmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Jay: you have my permission to do as you like with my comment. Francis. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Jay Becker [mailto:futureup2us at gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 12:51 PM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G ; David Swanson ; Wise, Phyllis M Subject: Re: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm We should share this reminder as a comment on FB, where there’s a lot of promotion of the Governors Forum. Chris Kennedy was also the driving force behind the denial of emeritus status to Bill Ayers (a first for UI, I believe) based on spurious claims about a completely non-existent link to Sirhan Sirhan and the assassination of RFK. Jay On Oct 29, 2017, at 20:10, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! “Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!” The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 17:56:49 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 17:56:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm In-Reply-To: <5B9227DC-E17A-4DB5-B0F8-DDC551790F9D@gmail.com> References: <5B9227DC-E17A-4DB5-B0F8-DDC551790F9D@gmail.com> Message-ID: Dear Jay: you have my permission to do as you like with my comment. Francis. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Jay Becker [mailto:futureup2us at gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 12:51 PM To: Boyle, Francis A Cc: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G ; David Swanson ; Wise, Phyllis M Subject: Re: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm We should share this reminder as a comment on FB, where there’s a lot of promotion of the Governors Forum. Chris Kennedy was also the driving force behind the denial of emeritus status to Bill Ayers (a first for UI, I believe) based on spurious claims about a completely non-existent link to Sirhan Sirhan and the assassination of RFK. Jay On Oct 29, 2017, at 20:10, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: According to today’s News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor’s Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can’t make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! “Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!” The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Oct 30 19:00:48 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 14:00:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <005e01d351b1$66593560$330ba020$@comcast.net> But is it true or not ? That is the question. This source is probably a better source than not just FOX but also the rest of the corporate media propaganda organs in the service of the empire ; CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, PBS, NYT, WaPO, et al. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Roger Helbig via Peace-discuss Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 8:50 AM To: Karen Aram; Peace-discuss Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea This "news" source is about as reliable as Fox or one of the other far right sources - it makes good propaganda! Roger On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 5:42 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: Description: Image removed by sender. Description: Image removed by sender. Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Search the WSWS [Search] Click here for advanced search » · Home · Perspectives · World News · World Economy · Arts Review · History · Science · Philosophy · Workers Struggles · ICFI/Marxist Library · Chronology · Full Archive · Print · Leaflet · Feedback · Share » US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea 30 October 2017 US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the region and the world on the brink of a catastrophic war. “I cannot imagine a condition under which the US would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he told reporters in Seoul on Saturday. “Make no mistake any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.” US war plans are offensive, not defensive, in character. Asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea to prevent a hypothetical attack on Seoul, Mattis confirmed, “yes, we do have those options”. Under OPLAN 5015, US and South Korean forces are primed for massive offensive strikes against North Korean nuclear, military and industrial facilities as well as “decapitation raids” by special forces to kill its top leaders. While Mattis insisted that “our goal is not war”, US President Trump has effectively ruled out any other option, short of North Korea’s total capitulation to Washington’s demands. Trump publically rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month for “wasting his time” in putting out diplomatic feelers for talks with North Korea. Trump is about to begin his first official trip to Asia this week, including to Japan, South Korea and China. Having threatened in the UN to “totally destroy” North Korea, he will undoubtedly use this incendiary threat not only to menace the Pyongyang regime but the entire region, particularly China which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony. Trump’s trip will take place amid a massive show of US military force near the Korean Peninsula, including: * Three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers—the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt—which are in the region and preparing for joint exercises along with their associated strike groups. Each carrier is accompanied by between six to 10 warships, including cruisers, destroyers and nuclear submarines, and has an air wing of dozens of fighter jets and other military aircraft. * The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with more than 150 Tomahawk missiles, which docked in South Korea on October 17 ahead of joint exercises with the USS Ronald Reagan. The submarine also carries Navy SEALs, which in an earlier port call in April reportedly included the notorious SEAL Team Six that murdered Osama bin Laden. * All US military bases throughout the region, particularly in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia are without doubt on a high state of alert. The Pentagon has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, around 54,000 in Japan and about 4,000 in Guam, along with a large number of naval vessels and warplanes. Australia acts as a de facto rear base for US Marines, warships and aircraft as well as housing key spy and communications bases. Two Australian frigates are due to arrive this week in South Korea for joint drills. * The Pentagon is set to deploy, for the first time, a squadron of F-35A Joint Strike Fighter jets and 300 personnel to the US base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters could well be used as part of a first wave to destroy North Korean air defences, opening the way for a massive air assault. * The US Air Force has carried out one military provocation after another—flying B-52 and B1-B strategic bombers close to North Korea. Yesterday, US Strategic Command, in charge of the nuclear arsenal, reported that it had flown a B-2 stealth bomber from the US to the Pacific to “familiarise aircrew” and to ensure “a high state of readiness and proficiency.” Unlike the B1-B, the state-of-the-art B-2 is nuclear capable. The flight underscores the ominous comments of US Vice President Mike Pence during a visit last Friday to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, which houses 26 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 150 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. Referring to North Korea, Pence declared: “Now more than ever your commander in chief [Trump] is depending on you to be ready. Stay sharp, mind your mission.” The Trump administration is preparing a war not just with conventional weapons, but with nuclear bombs—directed against North Korea and any other powers such as China and Russia that join the conflict. Last week, the Air Force announced that it was preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert. At the same time, as reported by the Guardian yesterday, the Trump administration is drawing up a new Nuclear Posture Review, which will open the door for a range of new nuclear weapons and change the rules governing their use. The only conclusion that the North Korean regime can reach is that the country confronts the imminent threat of a US military onslaught, using conventional and/or nuclear weapons. The South Korean-based NKNews reported over the weekend that North Korea has been carrying out mass evacuation drills in cities and towns along the east coast. The world may be closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time in history. During the extremely tense stand-off between the United States and Russia during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, both the American and Russian leaders worked to prevent a nuclear exchange that would have devastated the world. Trump, however, driven by the irresolvable contradictions of American and global capitalism, is proceeding with an unprecedented degree of recklessness to deliberately inflame flash points in Asia, as well as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Embroiled in one political crisis after another at home, and facing mounting public hostility to his agenda of austerity and war, Trump is being propelled towards launching war as a means of diverting acute social tensions outwards against a foreign enemy. These same tensions are driving workers and youth in the United States and around the world into struggle to defend their living conditions, basic democratic rights and to prevent a conflict that would plunge the world into barbarism. That movement must find conscious expression in the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system that engenders war and social misery. Peter Symonds WSWS.ORG _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 545 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 422 bytes Desc: not available URL: From salevy at illinois.edu Mon Oct 30 20:10:25 2017 From: salevy at illinois.edu (Levy, Stuart A) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 20:10:25 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Message-ID: <99DE363A90C73C4FB5E937E75D95C08FE313E4F6@chimbx2.ad.uillinois.edu> Direct action against a panel speaking in support of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions of "trade" treaties. ISDS gives companies the right to sue local/state/national governments, for example to demand payment for profits they might have made if laws restricting corporate actions weren't there. Judgments are made by unaccountable pro-corporate lawyers, and penalties can be in the $billions. In effect, they give companies the right to squash democratic control over labor, environmental, or other regulations. Happy Hallowe'en. ________________________________ From: Aware [aware-bounces at lists.chambana.net] on behalf of Popular Resistance via Aware [aware at lists.chambana.net] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 14:29 To: aware at anti-war.net Subject: [Aware] Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Check the video out! Great direct action! View this email in your browser Trade For People and Planet Popular Resistance [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413/images/f007fc44-cec8-4fbe-9989-7b7a25729e38.png] [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/27aac8a65e64c994c4416d6b8/images/bstl.png] ACTIVISTS CRASH PRO-ISDS HERITAGE FOUNDATION NAFTA LOVEFEST DC trade justice activists crashed a corporate lovefest put on at the Heritage Foundation today. While Dr. Gary Hufbauer lauded the special corporate rights included in NAFTA, several “Boo’s” came from a loud speaker in the audience. Dr. Hufbauer and the panelists tried to ignore the sound… until they couldn’t. Minutes after Hufbauer attempted to debunk the the improbable consensus across the political spectrum – from GOP members of Congress and state attorneys general to small business organizations and hundreds of the nation’s leading legal and economics professors against Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – activists set off a loud Halloween chant and set the record straight: “Trick or treat, ISDS deceit, Screwing workers a corporate cheat, Heritage is having a pout, Cuz ISDS Is on its way out! Happy Halloween!” The corporate fat cats were in for another tricky treat during Q&A, when a second speaker went off. Between evil cackles, a voice of reason spoke, “Corporate lobbyists desperately want to keep their special corporate powers in NAFTA! That’s no surprise! But they’re scared, and they should be!! Because working people are onto them and we are fighting back!” James Roberts, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow For Economic Freedom and Growth, appeared humiliated from the stage. James ran up to another Heritage Foundation staffer after the event, and told them that there were “multiple bags” blasting anti-ISDS propaganda in the audience. The corporate lobby is on notice. They’re losing the battle over ISDS: The U.S. Trade Representative put forth a proposal to roll back these NAFTA special corporate rights. And whenever they try to get out the word in their favor, activists will be there. Business as usual will no longer go uninterrupted. The consensus against ISDS is being heard everywhere: From Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute to U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer, and now the Heritage foundation itself is hearing it within their own walls. Happy Halloween! Share video on Facebook! [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/27aac8a65e64c994c4416d6b8/images/bstr.png] [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/27aac8a65e64c994c4416d6b8/images/bsbl.png] [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/27aac8a65e64c994c4416d6b8/images/bsbr.png] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Website] DONATE This email was sent to aware at anti-war.net why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences PopularResistance.org · 402 E Lake Ave, Baltimore, MD · Baltimore, MD 21212 · USA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Oct 30 23:02:31 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 18:02:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel In-Reply-To: <99DE363A90C73C4FB5E937E75D95C08FE313E4F6@chimbx2.ad.uillinois.edu> References: <99DE363A90C73C4FB5E937E75D95C08FE313E4F6@chimbx2.ad.uillinois.edu> Message-ID: <00c201d351d3$2b1b6000$81522000$@comcast.net> Excellent post Stuart, I posted it on Facebook. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Levy, Stuart A via Peace-discuss Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 3:10 PM To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Direct action against a panel speaking in support of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions of "trade" treaties. ISDS gives companies the right to sue local/state/national governments, for example to demand payment for profits they might have made if laws restricting corporate actions weren't there. Judgments are made by unaccountable pro-corporate lawyers, and penalties can be in the $billions. In effect, they give companies the right to squash democratic control over labor, environmental, or other regulations. Happy Hallowe'en. _____ From: Aware [aware-bounces at lists.chambana.net] on behalf of Popular Resistance via Aware [aware at lists.chambana.net] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 14:29 To: aware at anti-war.net Subject: [Aware] Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Check the video out! Great direct action! View this email in your browser Trade For People and Planet Popular Resistance Description: Image removed by sender. Description: Image removed by sender. ACTIVISTS CRASH PRO-ISDS HERITAGE FOUNDATION NAFTA LOVEFEST DC trade justice activists crashed a corporate lovefest put on at the Heritage Foundation today. While Dr. Gary Hufbauer lauded the special corporate rights included in NAFTA, several "Boo's" came from a loud speaker in the audience. Dr. Hufbauer and the panelists tried to ignore the sound. until they couldn't. Minutes after Hufbauer attempted to debunk the the improbable consensus across the political spectrum - from GOP members of Congress and state attorneys general to small business organizations and hundreds of the nation 's leading legal and economics professors against Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) - activists set off a loud Halloween chant and set the record straight: "Trick or treat, ISDS deceit, Screwing workers a corporate cheat, Heritage is having a pout, Cuz ISDS Is on its way out! Happy Halloween!" The corporate fat cats were in for another tricky treat during Q&A, when a second speaker went off. Between evil cackles, a voice of reason spoke, "Corporate lobbyists desperately want to keep their special corporate powers in NAFTA! That's no surprise! But they're scared, and they should be!! Because working people are onto them and we are fighting back!" James Roberts, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow For Economic Freedom and Growth, appeared humiliated from the stage. James ran up to another Heritage Foundation staffer after the event, and told them that there were "multiple bags" blasting anti-ISDS propaganda in the audience. The corporate lobby is on notice. They're losing the battle over ISDS: The U.S. Trade Representative put forth a proposal to roll back these NAFTA special corporate rights. And whenever they try to get out the word in their favor, activists will be there. Business as usual will no longer go uninterrupted. The consensus against ISDS is being heard everywhere: From Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute to U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer, and now the Heritage foundation itself is hearing it within their own walls. Happy Halloween! Share video on Facebook! Description: Image removed by sender. Description: Image removed by sender. Description: Image removed by sender. Description: Image removed by sender. Facebook Description: Image removed by sender. Twitter Description: Image removed by sender. Website DONATE This email was sent to aware at anti-war.net why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences PopularResistance.org . 402 E Lake Ave, Baltimore, MD . Baltimore, MD 21212 . USA Description: Image removed by sender. Web Bug from https://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/open.php?u=33602bebba8fb 7dd6e71fb413&id=26f1b90de2&e=dac11ea256 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 332 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bjornsona at ameritech.net Tue Oct 31 00:11:40 2017 From: bjornsona at ameritech.net (bjornsona at ameritech.net) Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2017 19:11:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Message-ID: <06hktlqcgiv3uhjvtkf9ottn.1509408686544@email.lge.com> Glad to hear it Sent from my LG Phoenix 2, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone ------ Original message------From: David Johnson via Peace-discussDate: Mon, Oct 30, 2017 6:02 PMTo: 'Levy, Stuart A';Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net;Subject:Re: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Excellent post Stuart, I posted it on Facebook. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Levy, Stuart A via Peace-discuss Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 3:10 PM To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Direct action against a panel speaking in support of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions of "trade" treaties.   ISDS gives companies the right to sue local/state/national governments, for example to demand payment for profits they might have made if laws restricting corporate actions weren't there.  Judgments are made by unaccountable pro-corporate lawyers, and penalties can be in the $billions.  In effect, they give companies the right to squash democratic control over labor, environmental, or other regulations. Happy Hallowe'en. From: Aware [aware-bounces at lists.chambana.net] on behalf of Popular Resistance via Aware [aware at lists.chambana.net] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 14:29 To: aware at anti-war.net Subject: [Aware] Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation PanelCheck the video out! Great direct action!  View this email in your browser Trade For People and PlanetPopular ResistanceACTIVISTS CRASH PRO-ISDS HERITAGE FOUNDATION NAFTA LOVEFEST DC trade justice activists crashed a corporate lovefest put on at the Heritage Foundation today. While Dr. Gary Hufbauer lauded the special corporate rights included in NAFTA, several “Boo’s” came from a loud speaker in the audience. Dr. Hufbauer and the panelists tried to ignore the sound… until they couldn’t. Minutes after Hufbauer attempted to debunk the the improbable consensus across the political spectrum – from GOP members of Congress and state attorneys general to small business organizations and hundreds of the nation’s leading legal and economics professors against Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – activists set off a loud Halloween chant and set the record straight: “Trick or treat,ISDS deceit,Screwing workersa corporate cheat,Heritage ishaving a pout,Cuz ISDSIs on its way out!Happy Halloween!” The corporate fat cats were in for another tricky treat during Q&A, when a second speaker went off. Between evil cackles, a voice of reason spoke, “Corporate lobbyists desperately want to keep their special corporate powers in NAFTA!  That’s no surprise!  But they’re scared, and they should be!! Because working people are onto them and we are fighting back!”  James Roberts, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow For Economic Freedom and Growth, appeared humiliated from the stage. James ran up to another Heritage Foundation staffer after the event, and told them that there were “multiple bags” blasting anti-ISDS propaganda in the audience.The corporate lobby is on notice. They’re losing the battle over ISDS: The U.S. Trade Representative put forth a proposal to roll back these NAFTA special corporate rights. And whenever they try to get out the word in their favor, activists will be there. Business as usual will no longer go uninterrupted.The consensus against ISDS is being heard everywhere: From Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute to U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer, and now the Heritage foundation itself is hearing it within their own walls.Happy Halloween! Share video on Facebook!    DONATE   This email was sent to aware at anti-war.net why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences PopularResistance.org · 402 E Lake Ave, Baltimore, MD · Baltimore, MD 21212 · USA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 31 00:16:09 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:16:09 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel In-Reply-To: <00c201d351d3$2b1b6000$81522000$@comcast.net> References: <99DE363A90C73C4FB5E937E75D95C08FE313E4F6@chimbx2.ad.uillinois.edu> <00c201d351d3$2b1b6000$81522000$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Yes, “Popular Resistance” has the right idea, their focus is on confronting the corporations and their advisors. The list of members of this organization is very impressive in that many have been active opposing war, and corporate power, for a very long time. On Oct 30, 2017, at 16:02, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: Excellent post Stuart, I posted it on Facebook. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Levy, Stuart A via Peace-discuss Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 3:10 PM To: peace-discuss at anti-war.net Subject: [Peace-discuss] PopularResistance: Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Direct action against a panel speaking in support of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions of "trade" treaties. ISDS gives companies the right to sue local/state/national governments, for example to demand payment for profits they might have made if laws restricting corporate actions weren't there. Judgments are made by unaccountable pro-corporate lawyers, and penalties can be in the $billions. In effect, they give companies the right to squash democratic control over labor, environmental, or other regulations. Happy Hallowe'en. ________________________________ From: Aware [aware-bounces at lists.chambana.net] on behalf of Popular Resistance via Aware [aware at lists.chambana.net] Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 14:29 To: aware at anti-war.net Subject: [Aware] Activists Crash Pro-ISDS Heritage Foundation Panel Check the video out! Great direct action! View this email in your browser Trade For People and Planet Popular Resistance ACTIVISTS CRASH PRO-ISDS HERITAGE FOUNDATION NAFTA LOVEFEST DC trade justice activists crashed a corporate lovefest put on at the Heritage Foundation today. While Dr. Gary Hufbauer lauded the special corporate rights included in NAFTA, several “Boo’s” came from a loud speaker in the audience. Dr. Hufbauer and the panelists tried to ignore the sound… until they couldn’t. Minutes after Hufbauer attempted to debunk the the improbable consensus across the political spectrum – from GOP members of Congress and state attorneys general to small business organizations and hundreds of the nation’s leading legal and economics professors against Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – activists set off a loud Halloween chant and set the record straight: “Trick or treat, ISDS deceit, Screwing workers a corporate cheat, Heritage is having a pout, Cuz ISDS Is on its way out! Happy Halloween!” The corporate fat cats were in for another tricky treat during Q&A, when a second speaker went off. Between evil cackles, a voice of reason spoke, “Corporate lobbyists desperately want to keep their special corporate powers in NAFTA! That’s no surprise! But they’re scared, and they should be!! Because working people are onto them and we are fighting back!” James Roberts, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow For Economic Freedom and Growth, appeared humiliated from the stage. James ran up to another Heritage Foundation staffer after the event, and told them that there were “multiple bags” blasting anti-ISDS propaganda in the audience. The corporate lobby is on notice. They’re losing the battle over ISDS: The U.S. Trade Representative put forth a proposal to roll back these NAFTA special corporate rights. And whenever they try to get out the word in their favor, activists will be there. Business as usual will no longer go uninterrupted. The consensus against ISDS is being heard everywhere: From Dan Ikenson of the Cato Institute to U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer, and now the Heritage foundation itself is hearing it within their own walls. Happy Halloween! Share video on Facebook! DONATE This email was sent to aware at anti-war.net why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences PopularResistance.org · 402 E Lake Ave, Baltimore, MD · Baltimore, MD 21212 · USA _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C32b5bd3f8bf54524643108d51fea5e6b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636450013823575392&sdata=M%2BopQhjIckIXRLOy9Z4z1NiyGNVugFy5UvCoZJL9GMg%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 31 00:34:26 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:34:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The Silencing of the Left Message-ID: Chris Hedges interviews Robert Sheer, on the silencing of the Left. https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/408152-silence-left-wing-press/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 31 03:50:26 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 03:50:26 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Hilarious NYT editorial References: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266@mail.yahoo.com> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/opinion/manafort-indictment-mueller-trump.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region "He (Trump) must have known what he was getting in hiring Mr. Manafort (who) has a long history of enriching himself working with some of the world's most unscrupulous and dictatorial leaders ... (references to Marcos, Savimbi, Mobutu) ... not a list most American presidential candidates would want to be on." Below: Wikipedia excerpt regarding Jonas Savimbi (Angola): United States support[edit] In 1985, with the backing of the Reagan administration, Jack Abramoff and other U.S. conservatives organized the Democratic International in Savimbi's base in Jamba, in Cuando Cubango Province in southeastern Angola.[10] Savimbi was strongly supported by the influential, conservative Heritage Foundation. Heritage foreign policy analyst Michael Johns and other conservatives visited regularly with Savimbi in his clandestine camps in Jamba and provided the rebel leader with ongoing political and military guidance in his war against the Angolan government.[11][12] Savimbi's U.S.-based supporters ultimately proved successful in convincing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to channel covert weapons and recruit guerrillas for Savimbi's war against Angola's Marxist government, which greatly intensified and prolonged the conflict. During a visit to Washington, D.C. in 1986, Reagan invited Savimbi to meet with him at the White House. Following the meeting, Reagan spoke of UNITA winning "a victory that electrifies the world."[13] Two years later, with the Angolan Civil War intensifying, Savimbi returned to Washington, where he was filled with gratitude and praise for the Heritage Foundation's work on UNITA's behalf. "When we come to the Heritage Foundation", Savimbi said during a June 30, 1988 speech at the foundation, "it is like coming back home. We know that our success here in Washington in repealing the Clark Amendment and obtaining American assistance for our cause is very much associated with your efforts. This foundation has been a source of great support. The UNITA leadership knows this, and it is also known in Angola."[13] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 05:06:36 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 05:06:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Hilarious NYT editorial In-Reply-To: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266@mail.yahoo.com> References: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <792311310.6447148.1509421826266@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I’m mystified. What’s so hilarious about it? Your comment looks to me a lot like a bizarre attempt to nit-pick a reasonable statement. Also like another attempt to criticize a statement for not saying what you would have said. We have repeatedly been assured that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to “Russiagate” & that is all a hoax perpetrated by hysterical & vicious Deep State sore losers whose sole motive is to delegitimize the Trump administration. This has frequently been announced by your Leader, so it must be correct — right, David? ~~ Ron [cid:503804F2-CE55-4740-9C25-0CA548D71895 at hsd1.il.comcast.net][cid:C71F8677-9440-401C-8A6C-40140379A47E at hsd1.il.comcast.net] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Don't worry .....jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 85926 bytes Desc: Don't worry .....jpeg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Victim of oppression.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 63436 bytes Desc: Victim of oppression.jpeg URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 09:23:44 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 04:23:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Hilarious NYT editorial In-Reply-To: References: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <792311310.6447148.1509421826266@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <35DB334E-C12B-4C16-B4AD-EB4DCE235BCE@illinois.edu> ‘Russiagate' was the recapitulation of Cold War McCarthyism for the new Cold War, born out of the US political establishment’s fear that Trump would abandon the neoconservatism and neoliberalism of the Bush and Obama administrations - and particularly the war provocations against Russia and China that characterized the Obama-Clinton administration. There were farcical (and hence hilarious - if perhaps gallows humor) aspects to it, as John Pilger pointed out before the election: "The CIA has demanded Trump is not elected. Pentagon generals have demanded he is not elected. The pro-war New York Times - taking a breather from its relentless low-rent Putin smears - demands that he is not elected. Something is up. These tribunes of 'perpetual war' are terrified that the multi-billion-dollar business of war by which the United States maintains its dominance will be undermined if Trump does a deal with Putin, then with China’s Xi Jinping. Their panic at the possibility of the world’s great power talking peace – however unlikely – would be the blackest farce were the issues not so dire." But the establishment propaganda offensive was successful, and the Trump administration has has been dragged back into orthodoxy, making war and risking much wider war, like its predecessors. —CGE > On Oct 31, 2017, at 12:06 AM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > I’m mystified. What’s so hilarious about it? Your comment looks to me a lot like a bizarre attempt to nit-pick a reasonable statement. Also like another attempt to criticize a statement for not saying what you would have said. > > We have repeatedly been assured that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to “Russiagate” & that is all a hoax perpetrated by hysterical & vicious Deep State sore losers whose sole motive is to delegitimize the Trump administration. This has frequently been announced by your Leader, so it must be correct — right, David? > > ~~ Ron > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 31 09:46:41 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 04:46:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Hilarious NYT editorial In-Reply-To: References: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <792311310.6447148.1509421826266@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: What I woke up to - Ron & David: >. > On Oct 31, 2017, at 12:06 AM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: > > I’m mystified. What’s so hilarious about it? Your comment looks to me a lot like a bizarre attempt to nit-pick a reasonable statement. Also like another attempt to criticize a statement for not saying what you would have said. > > We have repeatedly been assured that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to “Russiagate” & that is all a hoax perpetrated by hysterical & vicious Deep State sore losers whose sole motive is to delegitimize the Trump administration. This has frequently been announced by your Leader, so it must be correct — right, David? > > ~~ Ron > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 10:09:19 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 05:09:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea In-Reply-To: <005e01d351b1$66593560$330ba020$@comcast.net> References: <005e01d351b1$66593560$330ba020$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <92DF926D-C869-41CF-B95F-4902FC4BBFC8@illinois.edu> I think this is the heart of the matter: the US means “...to menace ... the entire region, particularly China, which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony." > On Oct 30, 2017, at 2:00 PM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > But is it true or not ? > > That is the question. > > This source is probably a better source than not just FOX but also the rest of the corporate media propaganda organs in the service of the empire ; CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, PBS, NYT, WaPO, et al. > > David J. > > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Roger Helbig via Peace-discuss > Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 8:50 AM > To: Karen Aram; Peace-discuss > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea > > This "news" source is about as reliable as Fox or one of the other far right sources - it makes good propaganda! > > Roger > > On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 5:42 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) > Search the WSWS [Search]Click here for advanced search » > · Home > · Perspectives > · World News > · World Economy > · Arts Review > · History > · Science > · Philosophy > · Workers Struggles > · ICFI/Marxist Library > · Chronology > · Full Archive > > · Print > · Leaflet > · Feedback > · Share » > US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea > 30 October 2017 > US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the region and the world on the brink of a catastrophic war. > “I cannot imagine a condition under which the US would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he told reporters in Seoul on Saturday. “Make no mistake any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.” > US war plans are offensive, not defensive, in character. Asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea to prevent a hypothetical attack on Seoul, Mattis confirmed, “yes, we do have those options”. Under OPLAN 5015, US and South Korean forces are primed for massive offensive strikes against North Korean nuclear, military and industrial facilities as well as “decapitation raids” by special forces to kill its top leaders. > While Mattis insisted that “our goal is not war”, US President Trump has effectively ruled out any other option, short of North Korea’s total capitulation to Washington’s demands. Trump publically rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month for “wasting his time” in putting out diplomatic feelers for talks with North Korea. > Trump is about to begin his first official trip to Asia this week, including to Japan, South Korea and China. Having threatened in the UN to “totally destroy” North Korea, he will undoubtedly use this incendiary threat not only to menace the Pyongyang regime but the entire region, particularly China which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony. > Trump’s trip will take place amid a massive show of US military force near the Korean Peninsula, including: > * Three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers—the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt—which are in the region and preparing for joint exercises along with their associated strike groups. Each carrier is accompanied by between six to 10 warships, including cruisers, destroyers and nuclear submarines, and has an air wing of dozens of fighter jets and other military aircraft. > * The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with more than 150 Tomahawk missiles, which docked in South Korea on October 17 ahead of joint exercises with the USS Ronald Reagan. The submarine also carries Navy SEALs, which in an earlier port call in April reportedly included the notorious SEAL Team Six that murdered Osama bin Laden. > * All US military bases throughout the region, particularly in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia are without doubt on a high state of alert. The Pentagon has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, around 54,000 in Japan and about 4,000 in Guam, along with a large number of naval vessels and warplanes. Australia acts as a de facto rear base for US Marines, warships and aircraft as well as housing key spy and communications bases. Two Australian frigates are due to arrive this week in South Korea for joint drills. > * The Pentagon is set to deploy, for the first time, a squadron of F-35A Joint Strike Fighter jets and 300 personnel to the US base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters could well be used as part of a first wave to destroy North Korean air defences, opening the way for a massive air assault. > * The US Air Force has carried out one military provocation after another—flying B-52 and B1-B strategic bombers close to North Korea. Yesterday, US Strategic Command, in charge of the nuclear arsenal, reported that it had flown a B-2 stealth bomber from the US to the Pacific to “familiarise aircrew” and to ensure “a high state of readiness and proficiency.” Unlike the B1-B, the state-of-the-art B-2 is nuclear capable. > The flight underscores the ominous comments of US Vice President Mike Pence during a visit last Friday to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, which houses 26 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 150 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. Referring to North Korea, Pence declared: “Now more than ever your commander in chief [Trump] is depending on you to be ready. Stay sharp, mind your mission.” > The Trump administration is preparing a war not just with conventional weapons, but with nuclear bombs—directed against North Korea and any other powers such as China and Russia that join the conflict. Last week, the Air Force announced that it was preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert. At the same time, as reported by the Guardian yesterday, the Trump administration is drawing up a new Nuclear Posture Review, which will open the door for a range of new nuclear weapons and change the rules governing their use. > The only conclusion that the North Korean regime can reach is that the country confronts the imminent threat of a US military onslaught, using conventional and/or nuclear weapons. The South Korean-based NKNews reported over the weekend that North Korea has been carrying out mass evacuation drills in cities and towns along the east coast. > The world may be closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time in history. During the extremely tense stand-off between the United States and Russia during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, both the American and Russian leaders worked to prevent a nuclear exchange that would have devastated the world. > Trump, however, driven by the irresolvable contradictions of American and global capitalism, is proceeding with an unprecedented degree of recklessness to deliberately inflame flash points in Asia, as well as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Embroiled in one political crisis after another at home, and facing mounting public hostility to his agenda of austerity and war, Trump is being propelled towards launching war as a means of diverting acute social tensions outwards against a foreign enemy. > These same tensions are driving workers and youth in the United States and around the world into struggle to defend their living conditions, basic democratic rights and to prevent a conflict that would plunge the world into barbarism. That movement must find conscious expression in the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system that engenders war and social misery. > Peter Symonds > WSWS.ORG > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 31 12:44:54 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:44:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea In-Reply-To: <92DF926D-C869-41CF-B95F-4902FC4BBFC8@illinois.edu> References: <005e01d351b1$66593560$330ba020$@comcast.net> <92DF926D-C869-41CF-B95F-4902FC4BBFC8@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Recognition by western powers, that the Eurasian continent possessed the most important geo strategic position to exploit, for its resources, human and otherwise, not to mention it's markets, took place during the 19th century. Today, the competition from China, with the BRI has propelled the US time frame rapidly forward. It is now, as it always has been about China, with whom we can no longer compete economically. Containment of China is the goal, and that means destruction if necessary of all those smaller, vulnerable nations within ins sphere of influence. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, were all about China. In the meantime, focus is also on the African continent, where China has invested heavily in business and development, while the US has invested heavily in military bases, weapons, and troop deployment. The question is now which will we destroy first, and what actions can we expect from China, as the US with our capitalist economy continues its descent into oblivion? On Oct 31, 2017, at 03:09, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: I think this is the heart of the matter: the US means “...to menace ... the entire region, particularly China, which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony." On Oct 30, 2017, at 2:00 PM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss > wrote: But is it true or not ? That is the question. This source is probably a better source than not just FOX but also the rest of the corporate media propaganda organs in the service of the empire ; CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, PBS, NYT, WaPO, et al. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Roger Helbig via Peace-discuss Sent: Monday, October 30, 2017 8:50 AM To: Karen Aram; Peace-discuss Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea This "news" source is about as reliable as Fox or one of the other far right sources - it makes good propaganda! Roger On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 5:42 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) Search the WSWS [Search]Click here for advanced search » · Home · Perspectives · World News · World Economy · Arts Review · History · Science · Philosophy · Workers Struggles · ICFI/Marxist Library · Chronology · Full Archive · Print · Leaflet · Feedback · Share » US masses ships and aircraft outside North Korea 30 October 2017 US Defence Secretary James Mattis has again warned North Korea that the United States military is ready and able to obliterate the country of 25 million people unless it abandons its nuclear arsenal. The threat, backed by an unprecedented US military build-up in North East Asia, places the region and the world on the brink of a catastrophic war. “I cannot imagine a condition under which the US would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he told reporters in Seoul on Saturday. “Make no mistake any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.” US war plans are offensive, not defensive, in character. Asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive US attack on North Korea to prevent a hypothetical attack on Seoul, Mattis confirmed, “yes, we do have those options”. Under OPLAN 5015, US and South Korean forces are primed for massive offensive strikes against North Korean nuclear, military and industrial facilities as well as “decapitation raids” by special forces to kill its top leaders. While Mattis insisted that “our goal is not war”, US President Trump has effectively ruled out any other option, short of North Korea’s total capitulation to Washington’s demands. Trump publically rebuked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month for “wasting his time” in putting out diplomatic feelers for talks with North Korea. Trump is about to begin his first official trip to Asia this week, including to Japan, South Korea and China. Having threatened in the UN to “totally destroy” North Korea, he will undoubtedly use this incendiary threat not only to menace the Pyongyang regime but the entire region, particularly China which the US regards as its chief obstacle to global hegemony. Trump’s trip will take place amid a massive show of US military force near the Korean Peninsula, including: * Three US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers—the USS Ronald Reagan, the USS Nimitz and USS Theodore Roosevelt—which are in the region and preparing for joint exercises along with their associated strike groups. Each carrier is accompanied by between six to 10 warships, including cruisers, destroyers and nuclear submarines, and has an air wing of dozens of fighter jets and other military aircraft. * The USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered submarine armed with more than 150 Tomahawk missiles, which docked in South Korea on October 17 ahead of joint exercises with the USS Ronald Reagan. The submarine also carries Navy SEALs, which in an earlier port call in April reportedly included the notorious SEAL Team Six that murdered Osama bin Laden. * All US military bases throughout the region, particularly in South Korea, Japan, Guam and Australia are without doubt on a high state of alert. The Pentagon has 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, around 54,000 in Japan and about 4,000 in Guam, along with a large number of naval vessels and warplanes. Australia acts as a de facto rear base for US Marines, warships and aircraft as well as housing key spy and communications bases. Two Australian frigates are due to arrive this week in South Korea for joint drills. * The Pentagon is set to deploy, for the first time, a squadron of F-35A Joint Strike Fighter jets and 300 personnel to the US base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. The advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters could well be used as part of a first wave to destroy North Korean air defences, opening the way for a massive air assault. * The US Air Force has carried out one military provocation after another—flying B-52 and B1-B strategic bombers close to North Korea. Yesterday, US Strategic Command, in charge of the nuclear arsenal, reported that it had flown a B-2 stealth bomber from the US to the Pacific to “familiarise aircrew” and to ensure “a high state of readiness and proficiency.” Unlike the B1-B, the state-of-the-art B-2 is nuclear capable. The flight underscores the ominous comments of US Vice President Mike Pence during a visit last Friday to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, which houses 26 nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and 150 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites. Referring to North Korea, Pence declared: “Now more than ever your commander in chief [Trump] is depending on you to be ready. Stay sharp, mind your mission.” The Trump administration is preparing a war not just with conventional weapons, but with nuclear bombs—directed against North Korea and any other powers such as China and Russia that join the conflict. Last week, the Air Force announced that it was preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert. At the same time, as reported by the Guardian yesterday, the Trump administration is drawing up a new Nuclear Posture Review, which will open the door for a range of new nuclear weapons and change the rules governing their use. The only conclusion that the North Korean regime can reach is that the country confronts the imminent threat of a US military onslaught, using conventional and/or nuclear weapons. The South Korean-based NKNews reported over the weekend that North Korea has been carrying out mass evacuation drills in cities and towns along the east coast. The world may be closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time in history. During the extremely tense stand-off between the United States and Russia during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, both the American and Russian leaders worked to prevent a nuclear exchange that would have devastated the world. Trump, however, driven by the irresolvable contradictions of American and global capitalism, is proceeding with an unprecedented degree of recklessness to deliberately inflame flash points in Asia, as well as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Embroiled in one political crisis after another at home, and facing mounting public hostility to his agenda of austerity and war, Trump is being propelled towards launching war as a means of diverting acute social tensions outwards against a foreign enemy. These same tensions are driving workers and youth in the United States and around the world into struggle to defend their living conditions, basic democratic rights and to prevent a conflict that would plunge the world into barbarism. That movement must find conscious expression in the program of socialist internationalism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International to put an end to the bankrupt capitalist system that engenders war and social misery. Peter Symonds WSWS.ORG _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C5fa0814bd8f447764ae508d520477fb9%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636450413824886600&sdata=CZ8xU6gIo2h2PNyifJfvKt6aArDvVqOtFT71JV%2BxNOc%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C5fa0814bd8f447764ae508d520477fb9%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636450413824886600&sdata=CZ8xU6gIo2h2PNyifJfvKt6aArDvVqOtFT71JV%2BxNOc%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.chambana.net%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fpeace-discuss&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C5fa0814bd8f447764ae508d520477fb9%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636450413824886600&sdata=CZ8xU6gIo2h2PNyifJfvKt6aArDvVqOtFT71JV%2BxNOc%3D&reserved=0 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davegreen84 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 31 13:13:51 2017 From: davegreen84 at yahoo.com (David Green) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:13:51 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Hilarious NYT editorial In-Reply-To: References: <792311310.6447148.1509421826266.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <792311310.6447148.1509421826266@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1352833479.6623451.1509455631295@mail.yahoo.com> Ron, I thought I made it clear, regardless of the Russiagate nonsense, that the NYT is laughably hypocritical in criticizing associations with people like Jonas Savimbi, who Reagan lauded (as well as Marcos and Mobutu). On Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 4:46:44 AM CDT, C G Estabrook wrote: What I woke up to - Ron & David: . On Oct 31, 2017, at 12:06 AM, Szoke, Ron via Peace-discuss wrote: I’m mystified.  What’s so hilarious about it?  Your comment looks to me a lot like a bizarre attempt to nit-pick a reasonable statement.  Also like another attempt to criticize a statement for not saying what you would have said.   We have repeatedly been assured that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to “Russiagate” & that is all a hoax perpetrated by hysterical & vicious Deep State sore losers whose sole motive is to delegitimize the Trump administration.  This has frequently been announced by your Leader, so it must be correct — right, David?   ~~ Ron _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 13:12:23 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:12:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Todays News Gazoo on Chief Illiniwak: The Chancellors Sleep Tonight Message-ID: The Chief Illiniwak Spectacle! So here we are at Memorial Stadium on a beautiful Fall Saturday afternoon during the Michigan-Illiniwak Football Game. There are 77,000 drunken fans here and the game is covered nationwide and live by CBS TV. For the drunken fans on the radio, Jim Turpin of the News-Gazoo/ WDWS Illiniwak Media Empire attempts and fumbles the play-by-play calls. It is half-time. Time for the Chief Illiniwak Spectacle. So here goes: 1. The Marching Illiniwak Drum/Dumb Corps take the field at Memorial stadium and proceed to strike up the special Illiniwak drumbeat that I had previously composed for them, all saying in unison over the gigantic stadium sound speaker system: Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! This special dumb-beat continues ad nauseam throughout the performance. 2. Now, out comes the rest of the University of Illiniwak's "Marching Illiniwak" band and strikes up the music for the famous pop song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens. 3. Then, out comes the University of Illiniwak's Glee Club and sings my song "The Chancellor Sleeps Tonight" over a special microphone/amplification system fed through the gigantic stadium speakers so that everyone can hear the magnificent lyrics: The Chancellor Sleeps Tonight Hush my Illiniwaks, my little Illiniwaks, the Chancellor Sleeps Tonight! Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Hush my Illiniwaks, my quiet Illiniwaks, the Chancellor Sleeps Tonight! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak. Illiniwak, Illiniwak Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak. Illiniwak, Oh! Bee Wah do do do do ayy! Oh! Bee Wah doo doo doo doo ayy! The Mighty Chancellor Sleeps Tonight! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! The Glee Club repeats these lyrics ad nauseam throughout the Chief Illiniwak Spectacle! 4. Next the Marching Illiniwaks execute their famous "Three-in-One" Illiniwak March. 5. Now the most electrifying moment in sports history: Little Red Sambo Himself, Chief Illiniwak, runs through the band, pops out, and does his little Hollywood jig at mid-field. 6. Finally, all 77,000 drunken fans in the stadium begin to chant in unison and in time with the band and the Glee Club, adding in for emphasis, support, and of course dignity: Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak, Illiniwak Repeated ad nauseam. This magnificent "Chief Illiniwak Spectacle" will of course be shown nation-wide to an audience of tens of millions of football fans and admirers of our "flagship" State University in the Great State of Illiniwaks. The University of Illiniwaks at Urbana-Champaign! Home of the Marching Illiniwaks Band and their Official Mascot, Chief Illiniwak, Little Red Sambo Himself. Certainly the type of University you want to send your children to--unless they are Native American, African American, Asian American, or Latino/a. [http://www.uihistorytraditions.org/sites/default/files/styles/square219/public/imagelinks/Dialog.jpg?itok=cnbyEp56] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:22 PM To: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G ; David Swanson Cc: Wise, Phyllis M Subject: And Chief Illiniwak!: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm And since as Governor Kennedy would become an ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees and also be able to appoint it's members thereof, people need to ask Kennedy and all the other candidates at the Forum their positions on getting rid of Chief Illiniwak for good. Illiniwak recently paraded at the UI Homecoming with the tolerance of the UI Administration. Fab. The Racist Mascot: Why You Should Still Boo Illinois The self-styled "Fighting Illini" of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are on their way to the Jan. 1, 2008 Rose Bowl with their racist and genocidal mascot and symbol Chief Illiniwak still in tow. Although the NCAA forced the University of Illiniwaks to prevent this Little Red Sambo from desecrating at half-times everything American Indians hold dear and treasure, nevertheless Chief Illiniwak still remains the officially designated "honored symbol" of the University of Illiniwaks at Urbana-Champaign. Just recently the University of Illiniwaks resurrected Chief Illiniwak for their Fall 2007 Homecoming in order to better milk their Alumni/ae as part of their newly launched Capital Campaign, thus definitively proving their craven racism. In his Year 501: The Conquest Continues (1993) Noam Chomsky suggests an apt metaphor for such American Indian sports mascots and symbols that I will elaborate upon here in order to conform to our local and most peculiar rites on this campus: Suppose the Nazis had won the Second World War. Sixty years later, a prestigious German state university has a mascot for all of its sports teams and sports fans by the name of "The Rabbi." Basically what happens is that a student from the Hitler Youth League dresses up in an authentic costume for an Hasidic Rabbi, complete with the curl-locks and a beard. The University itself collectively call themselves "The Fighting Jews," and the school's band is called "The Marching Jews." The student newspaper is called "The Daily Jew." All the sports fans in town wear jackets and t-shirts with pictures of The Rabbi prominently displayed on them. And most cars have Rabbi stickers planted all over them. Three years ago the University's Board of Trustees ran out of town on a rail a courageous and principled Chancellor who had the temerity to publicly suggest that the time had now come to "retire" the Rabbi. So of course there was a heated campaign on among the students and alumni to "Save the Rabbi!" This German state university plays its soccer matches over at the Nuremberg Stadium in front of an audience of about 75,000 White Aryans, almost all of whom are wearing pro-Rabbi images and clothes. At half-time the Marching Jews take to the stadium floor and begin playing what they purport to be Jewish sounding music along the lines of Fiddler-on-the-Roof. Then all 75,000 White Aryans rise as one and shout in unison: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" gesticulating wildly and working themselves up into a feeding frenzy. One lone faculty member sits there in protest shouting "Racist Rabbi!" and everyone in the vicinity proceeds to throw garbage at him.1 Finally, the moment these ardent White Aryans have all waited for has arrived. The Rabbi runs out onto the arena floor from among the Marching Jews, proceeds to the center of the Nuremberg Stadium, and dances the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews play on and march into an intricately choreographed maneuver that they all brag about and take special pride in that culminates with the band being organized into a Swastika. So the Rabbi continues to dance the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews march themselves into a Swastika. By now all 75,000 White Aryans are hysterical, shouting, screaming, and yelling: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" This semi-religious spectacle that the Nazis are well known for staging, especially at the Nuremberg stadium, goes on for a good twenty minutes. It all concludes with everyone joining hands to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles," with the Rabbi leading all 75,000 White Aryans in the song. Then the Rabbi proceeds to dance the Hava Nagila out of the stadium followed by the Marching Jews. Everyone goes wild, clapping and cheering. This Rabbi ceremony brings tears to the eyes of many drunken alumni and students who had started several hours beforehand getting inebriated on schnapps and good German beer at pre-game tailgate parties. When it is all over, a visiting law professor from another country asks his host at the soccer match what this spectacle was all about. Without missing a beat Dean Mengele of the Law School turns to his guest and says: "We are honoring the Jews." Whom the Nazis had just exterminated 60 years ago, so of course the memory of the Jews needs to be honored by this spectacle. The Illiniwek Indians were ethnically cleansed out of Illinois about a century before that. These are the real "Little Eichmans." Be sure to "Boo!" and root against the Illiniwaks. [cid:image006.jpg at 01D3521F.FA45D260] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:11 PM To: David Green >; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK >; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J >; Joe Lauria >; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas >; Szoke, Ron >; Arlene Hickory >; Karen Aram >; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne >; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay >; David Johnson >; Mildred O'brien >; Estabrook, Carl G >; David Swanson > Cc: Wise, Phyllis M > Subject: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm According to today's News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor's Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can't make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! "Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!" The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees >From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) ________________________________ ________________________________ 1 Guess who? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20928 bytes Desc: image002.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image006.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 53161 bytes Desc: image006.jpg URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 13:12:23 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 13:12:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Todays News Gazoo on Chief Illiniwak: The Chancellors Sleep Tonight Message-ID: The Chief Illiniwak Spectacle! So here we are at Memorial Stadium on a beautiful Fall Saturday afternoon during the Michigan-Illiniwak Football Game. There are 77,000 drunken fans here and the game is covered nationwide and live by CBS TV. For the drunken fans on the radio, Jim Turpin of the News-Gazoo/ WDWS Illiniwak Media Empire attempts and fumbles the play-by-play calls. It is half-time. Time for the Chief Illiniwak Spectacle. So here goes: 1. The Marching Illiniwak Drum/Dumb Corps take the field at Memorial stadium and proceed to strike up the special Illiniwak drumbeat that I had previously composed for them, all saying in unison over the gigantic stadium sound speaker system: Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! This special dumb-beat continues ad nauseam throughout the performance. 2. Now, out comes the rest of the University of Illiniwak's "Marching Illiniwak" band and strikes up the music for the famous pop song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens. 3. Then, out comes the University of Illiniwak's Glee Club and sings my song "The Chancellor Sleeps Tonight" over a special microphone/amplification system fed through the gigantic stadium speakers so that everyone can hear the magnificent lyrics: The Chancellor Sleeps Tonight Hush my Illiniwaks, my little Illiniwaks, the Chancellor Sleeps Tonight! Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Hush my Illiniwaks, my quiet Illiniwaks, the Chancellor Sleeps Tonight! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak. Illiniwak, Illiniwak Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak. Illiniwak, Oh! Bee Wah do do do do ayy! Oh! Bee Wah doo doo doo doo ayy! The Mighty Chancellor Sleeps Tonight! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! The Glee Club repeats these lyrics ad nauseam throughout the Chief Illiniwak Spectacle! 4. Next the Marching Illiniwaks execute their famous "Three-in-One" Illiniwak March. 5. Now the most electrifying moment in sports history: Little Red Sambo Himself, Chief Illiniwak, runs through the band, pops out, and does his little Hollywood jig at mid-field. 6. Finally, all 77,000 drunken fans in the stadium begin to chant in unison and in time with the band and the Glee Club, adding in for emphasis, support, and of course dignity: Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak, Illiniwak,Illiniwak,Illiniwak, Illiniwak Repeated ad nauseam. This magnificent "Chief Illiniwak Spectacle" will of course be shown nation-wide to an audience of tens of millions of football fans and admirers of our "flagship" State University in the Great State of Illiniwaks. The University of Illiniwaks at Urbana-Champaign! Home of the Marching Illiniwaks Band and their Official Mascot, Chief Illiniwak, Little Red Sambo Himself. Certainly the type of University you want to send your children to--unless they are Native American, African American, Asian American, or Latino/a. [http://www.uihistorytraditions.org/sites/default/files/styles/square219/public/imagelinks/Dialog.jpg?itok=cnbyEp56] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:22 PM To: David Green ; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK ; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J ; Joe Lauria ; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas ; Szoke, Ron ; Arlene Hickory ; Karen Aram ; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne ; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay ; David Johnson ; Mildred O'brien ; Estabrook, Carl G ; David Swanson Cc: Wise, Phyllis M Subject: And Chief Illiniwak!: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm And since as Governor Kennedy would become an ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees and also be able to appoint it's members thereof, people need to ask Kennedy and all the other candidates at the Forum their positions on getting rid of Chief Illiniwak for good. Illiniwak recently paraded at the UI Homecoming with the tolerance of the UI Administration. Fab. The Racist Mascot: Why You Should Still Boo Illinois The self-styled "Fighting Illini" of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are on their way to the Jan. 1, 2008 Rose Bowl with their racist and genocidal mascot and symbol Chief Illiniwak still in tow. Although the NCAA forced the University of Illiniwaks to prevent this Little Red Sambo from desecrating at half-times everything American Indians hold dear and treasure, nevertheless Chief Illiniwak still remains the officially designated "honored symbol" of the University of Illiniwaks at Urbana-Champaign. Just recently the University of Illiniwaks resurrected Chief Illiniwak for their Fall 2007 Homecoming in order to better milk their Alumni/ae as part of their newly launched Capital Campaign, thus definitively proving their craven racism. In his Year 501: The Conquest Continues (1993) Noam Chomsky suggests an apt metaphor for such American Indian sports mascots and symbols that I will elaborate upon here in order to conform to our local and most peculiar rites on this campus: Suppose the Nazis had won the Second World War. Sixty years later, a prestigious German state university has a mascot for all of its sports teams and sports fans by the name of "The Rabbi." Basically what happens is that a student from the Hitler Youth League dresses up in an authentic costume for an Hasidic Rabbi, complete with the curl-locks and a beard. The University itself collectively call themselves "The Fighting Jews," and the school's band is called "The Marching Jews." The student newspaper is called "The Daily Jew." All the sports fans in town wear jackets and t-shirts with pictures of The Rabbi prominently displayed on them. And most cars have Rabbi stickers planted all over them. Three years ago the University's Board of Trustees ran out of town on a rail a courageous and principled Chancellor who had the temerity to publicly suggest that the time had now come to "retire" the Rabbi. So of course there was a heated campaign on among the students and alumni to "Save the Rabbi!" This German state university plays its soccer matches over at the Nuremberg Stadium in front of an audience of about 75,000 White Aryans, almost all of whom are wearing pro-Rabbi images and clothes. At half-time the Marching Jews take to the stadium floor and begin playing what they purport to be Jewish sounding music along the lines of Fiddler-on-the-Roof. Then all 75,000 White Aryans rise as one and shout in unison: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" gesticulating wildly and working themselves up into a feeding frenzy. One lone faculty member sits there in protest shouting "Racist Rabbi!" and everyone in the vicinity proceeds to throw garbage at him.1 Finally, the moment these ardent White Aryans have all waited for has arrived. The Rabbi runs out onto the arena floor from among the Marching Jews, proceeds to the center of the Nuremberg Stadium, and dances the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews play on and march into an intricately choreographed maneuver that they all brag about and take special pride in that culminates with the band being organized into a Swastika. So the Rabbi continues to dance the Hava Nagila while the Marching Jews march themselves into a Swastika. By now all 75,000 White Aryans are hysterical, shouting, screaming, and yelling: "Rabbi! Rabbi! Rabbi!" This semi-religious spectacle that the Nazis are well known for staging, especially at the Nuremberg stadium, goes on for a good twenty minutes. It all concludes with everyone joining hands to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles," with the Rabbi leading all 75,000 White Aryans in the song. Then the Rabbi proceeds to dance the Hava Nagila out of the stadium followed by the Marching Jews. Everyone goes wild, clapping and cheering. This Rabbi ceremony brings tears to the eyes of many drunken alumni and students who had started several hours beforehand getting inebriated on schnapps and good German beer at pre-game tailgate parties. When it is all over, a visiting law professor from another country asks his host at the soccer match what this spectacle was all about. Without missing a beat Dean Mengele of the Law School turns to his guest and says: "We are honoring the Jews." Whom the Nazis had just exterminated 60 years ago, so of course the memory of the Jews needs to be honored by this spectacle. The Illiniwek Indians were ethnically cleansed out of Illinois about a century before that. These are the real "Little Eichmans." Be sure to "Boo!" and root against the Illiniwaks. [cid:image006.jpg at 01D3521F.FA45D260] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:11 PM To: David Green >; sherwoodross10 at gmail.com; peace-discuss at anti-war.net; C. G. ESTABROOK >; a-fields at uiuc.edu; Hoffman, Valerie J >; Joe Lauria >; Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net; peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net; Miller, Joseph Thomas >; Szoke, Ron >; Arlene Hickory >; Karen Aram >; abass10 at gmail.com; mickalideh at gmail.com; Lina Thorne >; chicago at worldcantwait.net; Jay >; David Johnson >; Mildred O'brien >; Estabrook, Carl G >; David Swanson > Cc: Wise, Phyllis M > Subject: NG:Chris Kennedy vs. Steven Salaita at Greg Hall 112 Nov. 6 , 6pm According to today's News Gazette Chris Kennedy will be appearing at a Governor's Forum on Monday November 6 at 6 pm in Greg Hall Room 112. I can't make it. People need to ask Kennedy about the publicly reported role he played while on the Board of Trustees in the illegal firing of Steven Salaita at the behest of the Zionist Lobby. How can we possibly trust him as Governor who becomes an ex officio Member of the UI Board of Trustees? After Kennedy illegally threw Salaita, his Wife and their Baby out into the street with no visible means of support, how could we possibly elect him as governor and ex officio member of the UI Board of Trustees? Fab. The Principles on Which We Stand at the University of Illinois The Principles on Which We Stand At the University of Illinois: The Cult of Chief Illiniwak Long Live Chief Illiniwak! Our Official Honored and Revered Symbol For the University of Illiniwaks And Illiniwaks all over the world! Illiniwak Pride! Illiniwak Fever! The Daily Illiniwak Illiniwaks Yearbooks Illiniwaks Homecoming Our Redskin Tradition Eagle Feathers too Illiniwak Stadium Our Illiniwakettes Our Fighting Illiniwaks Illiniwak Cheerleaders Our Marching Illiniwaks Band Our Famous 3 in 1 Illiniwak Spectacle Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Oskee! Bow! Wow! "Just Honoring American Indians Not demeaning anyone Nor meaning them too All very civil How White of us all!" The University of Illiniwaks Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Racists to boot Genocidaires too So very educational Anthro 101 The Cult of Chief Illiniwak A required course To get our degrees >From the University of Illiniwaks Oskee! Bow! Wow! Forever! Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) ________________________________ ________________________________ 1 Guess who? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20928 bytes Desc: image002.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image006.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 53161 bytes Desc: image006.jpg URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 15:18:02 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:18:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] University of Illiniwaks on Chief Illiniwak Message-ID: Here is a 1990 internal university document that proves that the highest level officials of the University of Illiniwaks know full well that everything about Chief Illiniwak is bogus and fake and an insult to everything American Indians hold sacred. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, November 1, 2015 7:49 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Subject: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Chief_Illiniwek_Band_Mascot.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 288875 bytes Desc: Chief_Illiniwek_Band_Mascot.pdf URL: From fboyle at illinois.edu Tue Oct 31 15:18:02 2017 From: fboyle at illinois.edu (Boyle, Francis A) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:18:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] University of Illiniwaks on Chief Illiniwak Message-ID: Here is a 1990 internal university document that proves that the highest level officials of the University of Illiniwaks know full well that everything about Chief Illiniwak is bogus and fake and an insult to everything American Indians hold sacred. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Sunday, November 1, 2015 7:49 AM To: Boyle, Francis A Subject: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Chief_Illiniwek_Band_Mascot.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 288875 bytes Desc: Chief_Illiniwek_Band_Mascot.pdf URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 31 16:19:50 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:19:50 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Latest released documents on JFK reveal's Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20337:Homegrown-Terror%3A-JFK-Docs-Show-US-Considered-Attacks-at-Home-to-Blame-on-Cuba -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Oct 31 17:09:22 2017 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 12:09:22 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Homegrown Terror: JFK Docs Show US Considered Attacks at Home to Blame on Cuba Message-ID: <008201d3526a$ffdef850$ff9ce8f0$@comcast.net> Thanks for posting the link to this story Karen, I thought I would copy and paste the article. Back in the early 2000’s when “ Operation Northwoods “ was being circulated on the internet, many screamed the usual “ conspiracy theory “ that they had been programed by the corporate media to say whenever any evidence of government or corrupt misdeeds or collusion was revealed. David J. October 31, 2017 Homegrown Terror: JFK Docs Show US Considered Attacks at Home to Blame on Cuba The new round of documents on the Kennedy assassination shed light on the long-running U.S. government effort to overthrow Fidel Castro -- including discussions to stage attacks on U.S. soil and blame Cuba _____ biography Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington D.C. and is co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. _____ transcript Description: Homegrown Terror: JFK Docs Show US Considered Attacks at Home to Blame on CubaAARON MATÉ: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. A new round of documents on the Kennedy assassination has been released. The docs don't shed new light on how Kennedy was killed, but they do shed light on the long-running US effort to overthrow the Castro government in Cuba. Joining me now is Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. He is co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Welcome, Peter. What to you is significant about these now JFK documents and what they contain about Cuba? PETER KORNBLUH: What's significant is that almost none of them are new. There's only actually 52 new documents that we haven't seen before that have been released out of these 2,800 documents. All the other ones have been released as part of the JFK Act before and now are being released with less or no redactions. Many of the documents that you've looked at are actually ones that have been out and around for a while. Many of them do address the issue of US covert interventions, efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro and roll back the Cuban revolution. That's because the original JFK commission that was in charge of identifying relevant documents made a very appropriate and broad definition of what a JFK-related document was. Because of the whole issue of Kennedy trying to kill Castro, and rumors that Castro might have retaliated by killing Kennedy, because this became a conspiracy theory in the folklore of the Kennedy assassination, all the documents related to US covert operations, assassination plots, and the violent terrorist activities of Cuban exiles who once worked for the CIA, all of those documents have been released over the years. There's still some more to be released, but in this last release of documents, we did find those Cuba documents. AARON MATÉ: Let me read one excerpt, and you can tell me both if it's new, and also just comment on its significance, because it's gotten some attention. This is an internal planning document where US officials are discussing plans for covert operations related to Cuba. It's dated April 12th, 1962, and it says, "We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities, and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the US We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida, real or simulated. We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the US, even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized." Peter, is this something that we're learning for the first time or is this old knowledge, and your thoughts on what this means here? Because here we have US officials talking about launching an attack inside the US. PETER KORNBLUH: Yes, this was a series of proposals not by the CIA but by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs wanted to invade Cuba again after the Bay of Pigs, and handle it themselves. They were angry that the CIA had bungled the paramilitary invasion of Cuba, but for the Joint Chiefs, they needed a date to actually attack Cuba. The issue for them became how to create a pretext or a justification for attacking Cuba. Their underlings came up with this whole set of proposals, some of them extremely Machiavellian and sinister, like the one you just read about the terrorism campaign in Miami and Washington. There was another idea that called for pretending to blow up a plane, and claim that a bunch of people who weren't real people were killed on it, and blame Castro for it. This was part of a series of proposals called Operation Northwoods. Those documents did come out because of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Record Act in the 1990s. They caused a lot of discussion, but it was also clear that these were creative and horrible, sinister proposals but that the president of the United States never really looked at them and certainly never accepted them, and they were obviously never implemented. What we're seeing here are other documents that are drawing on those Operation Northwoods proposals and presenting them again, in this case in a meeting context here. This document is a document about an Operation Mongoose meeting where they're deciding what they're going to do for Operation Mongoose. Part of the suggestion is this campaign, but of course this campaign was never implemented. This campaign was never accepted. AARON MATÉ: Let me read one more idea that was discussed. It was spitballed, but it wasn't implemented. It says, "Specifically, the possibility of producing crop failures by the introduction of biological agents which would appear to be of natural origin. Mr. Bundy said he had no worries about any such sabotage, which could clearly be made to appear as the result of local Cuban disaffection or of a natural disaster, but that we most avoid external activities such as the release of chemicals, etc., unless they could be completely covered up." Essentially, biological sabotage. PETER KORNBLUH: The Cubans have always argued that the CIA and other agencies of the United States did over the years use some kind of chemical and biological poisoning of the crops. When there would be a swine flu epidemic, or an actual epidemic of livestock in Cuba over the years, the Cubans often blamed it on the CIA. It's very hard to know. Obviously, the US intelligence agents, and the US intelligence community, and the covert operatives in our government back then considered this part of their bag of dirty tricks against Cuba, but we don't know for sure that these operations were actually implemented. That's not to say that a whole set of very sinister and illegal and criminal operations weren't implemented over the years. We tried to kill Fidel Castro in every conceivable way. We trained exiles who became major-league international terrorists. We had them on the payroll, taught them how to use explosives. We invaded Cuba. We've had an embargo. We launched Operation Mongoose. Because of Operation Mongoose, Fidel Castro accepted the Soviets' offer of having nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, because he feared another US attack, another US invasion. The history of Cuba and the United States is replete with very sinister operations. Whether these that are mentioned in the documents were ever implemented seems unlikely, and I can't say for sure that we didn't use biological or chemical warfare on Cuba in a limited way over the years, but it's never come out that we have. It's never come out that that particular idea that you just mentioned that's in the document, that was discussed at that Operation Mongoose meeting, was actually ever implemented. AARON MATÉ: That background that you outlined to Cuba's decision to allow Soviet nuclear missiles on its territory, it's striking how missing, absent that is from the history so many of us get about the Cuban missile crisis. It's important context that you've outlined there. Finally, Peter- PETER KORNBLUH: Right. Today is October 30th, and two days ago, on the 28th of October, was the 55th anniversary of the official end of the Cuban missile crisis, when Khrushchev 55 years ago decided to pull out those missiles from Cuba. Of course, secretly he had come to a deal with John Kennedy. Khrushchev would pull out those missiles, and Kennedy would eventually secretly order the withdrawal of US missiles that were parked in Turkey alongside the Soviet border. There was a secret deal made to end the crisis, but it's a real thing. It's a real issue. AARON MATÉ: Kennedy, I take it, didn't agree to stop terrorizing Cuba, because that continued well after him, right? PETER KORNBLUH: Covert operations continued. If you read our book, Back Channel to Cuba, and if your listeners do, you'll see that Kennedy after the Cuban missile crisis had very different thinking about US policy towards Cuba. He actually started down the road towards significant secret diplomacy with Fidel Castro that was culminating right at the moment that he was killed. There's some conspiracy theorists that think he was killed because of his secret outreach and communications with Fidel Castro. I don't know if your listeners know, but on the very day, the very moment that Kennedy was killed, he had an emissary, a French journalist, meeting with Fidel Castro in Varadero Beach. They were talking about Kennedy's message that this journalist carried to Fidel, which was basically, "We have some concerns. You need to do this and you need to do that, but perhaps coexistence is possible." News came in while they were talking that Kenney had been shot. Fidel turned towards this French journalist, Jean Daniel, and said, "There goes your mission of peace." Then the next thing he said is, "They're going to say we did it," which is exactly what happened. Cuba has been thrust into this whole conspiracy folklore as either a reason for the assassination or the actual perpetrator of the assassination. That's why you're seeing so many documents in the JFK assassination release that deal with Cuba. AARON MATÉ: Given Kennedy's record not just in Cuba but also especially in Vietnam, I'm skeptical of claims that try to cast him as an enlightened diplomat towards the end of his life, but I didn't know that, what you just said. That's really important information. PETER KORNBLUH: You have to read the book, and I think you'll find the effort that Kennedy was making somewhat compelling. AARON MATÉ: Fair enough. Finally, Peter, given all these plots that the US has discussed and in some cases enacted against Cuba, has Cuba ever tried any legal channels to get compensation from the US or some sort of legal decision to get it at least to stop or even apologize? PETER KORNBLUH: The Cubans have certainly demanded again and again and again that the embargo be lifted. They have taken a resolution to the United Nations every year in October for the last almost 30 years. Almost every single year, the overwhelming vote, 130, 132 countries to two, the United States and Palau or the United States and Israel. The United States is on the receiving end of world condemnation of its overall policy towards Cuba. That is part of what actually compelled President Barack Obama to go ahead and make a breakthrough in the entrenched policy towards Cuba, was the world opinion, and particularly opinion in Latin America. The Cubans don't really like the idea of going to the World Court, because they don't really like, they think that the court could someday be used against them. Of course, US law has been used against them. They've had their assets frozen here. We're in a debate over Cuba policy. These whole documents are still relevant today. The Cubans are very concerned about what Donald Trump might do, aggressively, towards the island of Cuba. Cuba's in a big political transition, with Raul Castro stepping down in just a few months as president of Cuba. For the first time, there will be a president of Cuba that doesn't have the name Castro since the Cuban revolution. It's a very dynamic time. We should use these documents, even if they're not brand new to us, to remind ourselves what the history of US policy towards Cuba has been, and really push for a much better, non-aggressive, and civil policy towards the island of Cuba. AARON MATÉ: Peter, for many years, you've been helping us understand that history, so we thank you for that. Thank you for joining us today. Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington, coauthor of the book which I have to read now, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Peter, thank you. PETER KORNBLUH: Thank you. Call me back when you're done reading it. AARON MATÉ: Will do. Thank you for joining us on The Real News. This is OLD news to those of us who grew up in this era and have studied all the evidence through the years. False Flags have been used for years to stir up the masses. · 1 · • · Reply · • · Share › * * · · * · * * Description: Avatar scottwmackey Seer • an hour ago Except these document explicitly say that these false flags were never used. * * • * Reply * • * Share › * * · · o * * * * · Description: Avatar Jibaro • 4 hours ago Interesting, to say the least. I have though, for a while now, that the hoolaballo about world terrorism is staged. That it's something that is done to keep the people under the bed so that those who control the US can do as they please and elections are mere reality shows and here is evidence that people in the government have considered terrorists attack within the US to generate public support for their dirty deeds. The evidence exists but few see it for what it is. Conspiracy theorist is what they call people who claim this might be true, well here is evidence that it is. I guest Lincoln was wrong, you can fool all of the people, all of the time. · · • · Reply · • · Share › * * · · * · * * Description: Avatar Jesse_Fell Jibaro • 39 minutes ago BTW: Lincoln never said "You can fool all of the people some of the time... etc." See the web site of the Abraham Lincoln Association, which has all of his works online, in searchable format. * * • * Reply * • * Share › * * · · · * · * · Description: Avatar scottwmackey Jibaro • an hour ago It takes a special kind of mind to take evidence that terrorism was not staged as proof that terrorism is staged. Apparently you can be fooled all the time. · · • · Reply · • · Share › * * · · * · * * Description: Avatar gustave courbet scottwmackey • 43 minutes ago Hi Scott, that you don't find the proposal of false-flag terror attacks within the United States by the highest military officers in government striking says volumes about your credulity and misplaced deference to authority. That responsible authorities would even contemplate and propose such a program denotes a ruthless frame of mind. A study of the technique of "false flag terrorism" will reveal that various countries, from Japan, to Russia, to Turkey, to Israel to the US have used or facilitated deception methods in warfare. These techniques are not new nor esoteric to the student of historical conflict. From the apocryphal Trojan horse to the "Art of War," such dirty tricks are some of the tools used in geopolitical conflicts and have been since antiquity. I suggest you study the paramilitary terror attacks committed during the cold war in Europe lumped together under the title Operation Gladio for an example of modern false flag terror operations. While there are many in the alternative media that reactively yell "false flag" after virtually every terror attack, such bad journalism shouldn't distract from the real historical legacy of such tactics. * * • * Reply * • * Share › * * · · o § * * * * · Description: Avatar Geoffrey de Galles • 6 hours ago In case of potential academic interest:- I have good reason (viz., general knowledge of the vicinity) to locate those US missiles in Turkey aimed at the USSR not "alongside the Soviet border" but, rather, on the so-called Long Island (Uzun Ada) in the Aegean Bay of Izmir -- since the early 1950s, a hive of NATO activity. See Google Earth to obtain satellite imagery of the south side of that island, which is still to this day accessible only by the military, and there see a dozen or so underground silos, visibly betrayed by their by now rather overgrown circular lids. By the way, back then in the late 1950s or early 1960s, a family from East Germany who acquired and restored or had built from scratch some kinda residence on a closely neighboring island -- an otherwise uninhabited one, but perhaps for a bunch of goats -- were arrested and deported as being Soviet spies, which is why that island is now referred to locally (albeit with no real memory or knowledge as to why) as "the German island". · · • · Reply · • · Share › * * · · · * · * · Description: Avatar Vern La Vernon • 12 hours ago not the point not the point get to the point we already know that dulles, hoover, and lbj were the perpetrators of the killing of the prez. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 33779 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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