[Peace-discuss] News from Neptune for 6/29: A Homelessness Edition

Sat Jun 30 02:11:06 UTC 2018

NfN notes 
Show recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XshhoiRxCVI <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XshhoiRxCVI>

- Homelessness:

With the money the US military has wasted or lost track of (dozens of trillions) we could easily afford a national jobs program which would build people a home anywhere in the country. We could also simply give the homeless a home -- no charge, gratis -- on the basis that it's an ethical way to treat the disenfranchised, and cheaper than maintaining homelessness.

The TruTV show "Adam Ruins Everything" where comic Adam Conover goes over the history and his own views on some topic, offered an episode on home ownership and homelessness (season 1 episode 19 -- "Adam Ruins Housing"). Conover also continues the discussions from the show on his show:

RSS feed: http://maximumfun.org/feeds/are.xml <http://maximumfun.org/feeds/are.xml>

Here's the extended discussion on homelessness:

Audio with a still image (because YouTube only hosts "videos"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n8zivBVpWs <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n8zivBVpWs>

Audio track alone: http://media.adknit.com/a/f/90/adam-ruins-everything/tyuvag.1-1.mp3 <http://media.adknit.com/a/f/90/adam-ruins-everything/tyuvag.1-1.mp3>

- "Evicted" by Matthew Desmond

http://oceanofpdf.com/pdf-epub-evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city-download/ <http://oceanofpdf.com/pdf-epub-evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city-download/> has copies in PDF and ePUB formats available for download gratis.

- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does not give the anti-war message I wanted to see from the Berniecrat DSA wing of the Democratic Party:

That's because Bernie Sanders was never opposed to war and didn't pose any threat to continuing Obama's (and thus G.W. Bush's) wars. Sanders told Meet the Press (see https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-would-use-drones-to-fight-terror-542522435844 <https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-would-use-drones-to-fight-terror-542522435844> ) he's down with the drone war. When host Chuck Todd asked Sanders if drones or "special forces" would play a role in his "counter-terror plans", Sanders replied "All of that and more. Look, a drone is a weapon. When it works badly, it is terrible and it is counterproductive. When you blow up a facility or a building which kills women and children, you know what? [...] It’s terrible." and Todd asked, "But you’re comfortable with the idea of using drones if you think you’ve isolated an important terrorist?", and Sanders replied, "Yes.". See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/11/bernie-sanders-drones-counter-terror <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/11/bernie-sanders-drones-counter-terror>

Sanders also said he was down with prosecuting someone recognized as a truth-teller by NfN, Edward Snowden in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sih4pGLU6Y <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sih4pGLU6Y> (October 21, 2015 interview with Mike Malloy based on https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/15/sand-m15.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/15/sand-m15.html> ):

Malloy rightly points out that while Sanders supports prosecuting Snowden, Sanders has not mentioned supporting prosecuting the companies and government officials who spied and spy on us.

A quote from https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/15/sand-m15.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/15/sand-m15.html> :
> On the massive NSA spying first revealed by Edward Snowden, Sanders has
> staked out a position virtually indistinguishable from the public
> position of Barack Obama, “welcoming” the opportunity to “discuss”
> government spying while demanding that Snowden be punished for revealing
> it. “The information disclosed by Edward Snowden has been extremely
> important,” Sanders said in early 2014. "On the other hand, there is no
> debate that Mr. Snowden violated an oath and committed a crime,” for
> which he called only for a “lenient” sentence. Last July, Sanders
> co-sponsored the Obama-supported USA FREEDOM Act in the Senate, which
> would regularize NSA spying under the guise of regulating it.

So when someone brings us intelligence information used in prosecuting the "war on terror" (recall that cell phone geolocation data is collected and used for targeting drone bombs) and exposes the sham privacy protection we get from media corporations and the US government (who work with each other, so there's no real point in distinguishing between the two as if one is better for our interests than the other), Sanders is fine with stopping the means by which we come to know what our government is doing to us and in our name.

- CounterPunch article "Challenging Barbara Lee From the Left"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/29/challenging-barbara-lee-from-the-left/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/29/challenging-barbara-lee-from-the-left/>

- How Paul Findley lost to Dick Durbin in 1982:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Findley <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Findley>

According to the New York Times, in 1982 Findley narrowly lost his bid for re-election for a number of reasons: "a competent opponent, redistricting, the economic recession, and pro-Israel groups support to his challenger," which allowed Findley's challenger to match him in spending.[2] During the campaign, "a former AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] president called him 'a dangerous enemy of Israel.'"[3] Findley confirmed that his 1982 campaign raised "almost exactly the same sum" as that of his opponent.[4]

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/14/books/in-short-nonfiction-111845.html <https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/14/books/in-short-nonfiction-111845.html>
[3] http://www.amconmag.com/article/2007/dec/03/00006/ <http://www.amconmag.com/article/2007/dec/03/00006/>
[4] They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, Paul Findley, Lawrence Hill Books, 1989, p. 22
Download the full text at https://archive.org/details/They-Dare-To-Speak-Out-Paul-Findley <https://archive.org/details/They-Dare-To-Speak-Out-Paul-Findley> here's the excerpt from page 22, Findley wrote:

> This time re-election was not to be. I lost by 1,407 votes, less than
> one percent of the total cast. In a vote that close, almost any negative
> development could account for the difference. The attack by pro-Israel
> activists was only one of several factors. Nevertheless, the American
> Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's principal
> pro-Israel lobby, claimed credit for my defeat. In a report to a Jewish
> gathering in Austin, Texas, a few days after election day, Thomas A.
> Dine, the organization's executive director, said his forces brought 150
> students from the University of Illinois to "pound the pavements and
> knock on doors" and concluded, ''This is a case where the Jewish lobby
> made a difference. We beat the odds and defeated Findley." He later
> estimated that $685,000 of the $750,000 raised by Durbin came from Jews.
> With my supporters raising almost exactly the same sum, the contest once
> again set a new state record for total spending.

- June 28, 2018 letter from Rep. Durbin et al to VP Pence

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/download/rm-letter-to-pence-northern-triangle&download=1 <https://www.foreign.senate.gov/download/rm-letter-to-pence-northern-triangle&download=1>

- How Trump got into office: an anti-war vote from swing state residents say researchers Kriner and Shen

Study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2989040 <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2989040>

Coverage: https://www.thenation.com/article/new-study-communities-most-affected-by-war-turned-to-trump-in-2016/ <https://www.thenation.com/article/new-study-communities-most-affected-by-war-turned-to-trump-in-2016/>

Coverage: https://theintercept.com/2017/07/10/study-finds-relationship-between-high-military-casualties-and-votes-for-trump-over-clinton/ <https://theintercept.com/2017/07/10/study-finds-relationship-between-high-military-casualties-and-votes-for-trump-over-clinton/>

- "The Death of a Once Great City: The fall of New York and the urban crisis of affluence" by Kevin Baker

https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/the-death-of-new-york-city-gentrification/ <https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/the-death-of-new-york-city-gentrification/>

- DemocracyNow.org <http://democracynow.org/> interview with Tom Perez about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/29/dnc_chair_tom_perez_on_alexandria <https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/29/dnc_chair_tom_perez_on_alexandria>

Please note how Goodman accepts whatever half-truth or lie Perez gives her:

> AMY GOODMAN: Your response to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her victory
> over—
> TOM PEREZ: Well, she ran a spectacular campaign. My two daughters texted
> me that night their excitement. I left a message for her about my
> excitement. She’s inspiring a lot of—
> AMY GOODMAN: DNC didn’t support her, though, supported Joe Crowley.
> TOM PEREZ: There was a—we didn’t get involved. No, we didn’t support—we
> didn’t support either candidate. We were not involved in that race.
How does the DNC support Crowley without "getting involved"? Without "supporting either candidate"?

One might hope Goodman would invite Perez in for a proper long-form interview where she can challenge his words. Clearly Perez is not telling us the truth.

I suspect DN just isn't interested in challenging the Democrats which makes them look bad. Hence DN's unquestioned anti-Republican coverage of immigration policy separating children from parents (even though some DN interviewed people about this policy during Obama's presidency!), DN's ongoing and unquestioned acceptance of Russiagate (the only challenge there comes from guests who bring it up unprompted by Goodman and co., like Glenn Greenwald does), and DN's lack of coverage of the DNC lawsuit from the Bernie Sanders supporters.

That DNC lawsuit features DNC corporation lawyer Bruce Spiva saying, quite bluntly, that the DNC corporation could dictate the party representatives. So, presumably, we are supposed to feel privileged that we get any meager say in their candidates by way of primary party elections:

DNC corporation attorney Bruce Spiva from http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf <http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf> :

> [I]f you had a charity where somebody said, Hey, I'm gonna take this
> money and use it for a specific purpose, X, and they pocketed it and
> stole the money, of course that's different. But here, where you have a
> party that's saying, We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer,
> and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are
> voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily
> decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and
> smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That's not the way it was
> done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right,
> and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party
> politics to answer those questions.

- Media Coverage of Trump Immigration Policies Ignores Democrats’ Complicity by Roberto Lovato

Video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/yU7uv_BY7Xg <https://www.youtube.com/embed/yU7uv_BY7Xg>

Transcript might appear later at: https://therealnews.com/stories/media-coverage-of-trump-immigration-policies-ignores-democrats-complicity <https://therealnews.com/stories/media-coverage-of-trump-immigration-policies-ignores-democrats-complicity>

- Unauthorized Disclosure interview with Matthew Hoh, former Marine and diplomat from the State Department, who resigned in protest in 2009 over the Afghanistan War:

Audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/unauthorizeddisclosure/S5E20edit.mp3 <https://traffic.libsyn.com/unauthorizeddisclosure/S5E20edit.mp3>

Description and more info: https://shadowproof.com/2018/06/24/interview-matthew-hoh-trump-military-industrial-complex/ <https://shadowproof.com/2018/06/24/interview-matthew-hoh-trump-military-industrial-complex/>

Show: https://unauthorizeddisclosure.libsyn.com/ <https://unauthorizeddisclosure.libsyn.com/>

RSS feed: https://unauthorizeddisclosure.libsyn.com/rss <https://unauthorizeddisclosure.libsyn.com/rss>

-JBNicholson
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