[Peace-discuss] News from Neptune & AOTA discussion suggestions/notes

[David Green]

Thank you Jeff!

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 11:57 PM J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Hi peace-discuss,
>
> I thought you might want to read the notes I prepared for News from
> Neptune
> and AWARE on the Air discussion. I understand Carl posts them around but
> has been having some trouble with the URLs so hopefully the URLs should
> work for you from this copy.
>
>
>
>
>
> Recommended 2-part video series: "On Contact" with Chris Hedges -- Hedges
> interviews Distinguished Professor of Anthropology David Harvey who wrote
> many books including "A Brief History of Neoliberalism". The 2-part
> interview is called "A critic of Neoliberalism".
>
> A Brief History of Neoliberalism book:
>
>
> http://www.cmecc.com/uploads/%E8%AF%BE%E6%9C%AC%E5%92%8C%E8%AE%BA%E6%96%87/%5B9%5D%5B%E5%A4%A7%E5%8D%AB%E5%93%88%E7%BB%B4%5D.David.Harvey.(2005).A.Brief.History.of.Neoliberalism.pdf
>
> Interview:
>
> Part 1 of 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YO5EROH-I
>
> Part 2 of 2: due out on YouTube on 2018-11-18 check
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLagVUKF7CUTRiG64CklL1AN0mbmNaETfp
> for the URL to that episode.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Protesters have no time for objecting to war?
>
> Protest time to keep Jeff Sessions, no protest time to challenge US
> imperialism? Who benefits from those priorities?
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOK-2c68pYo -- a very worthwhile segment
> critically placing the Democrats into context: pro-FBI, pro-Jeff Sessions
> (even when not that long ago they objected to him), pro-CIA,
> pro-Russiagate, and pro-war through their silence -- there are no protests
> against the many wars the US is in.
>
> The segment interview with Walter Smolarek of ANSWER Coalition is worth
> considering -- who benefits from these protests and the noticeable silence
> regarding US imperialism?
>
> I think this is reflective of my concerns about the Trump Derangement
> Syndrome driving corporate TV these days: it's curious that there's so
> much
> room for such a narrow band of critique against Pres. Trump which never
> brings up his war criminality or compares what he said on the campaign
> trail about war (such as rightly pointing out how badly the invasion and
> occupation of Iraq went for the US and the Iraqis) versus what he does in
> office (continue that occupation).
>
> The complaints against Trump still focus on his weight, his hairdo, his
> skin tone, the fit of his suits, and his namecalling. His policies have
> been a big miss recently as those who railed against US immigration policy
> used pictures of children in cages taken during Obama's administration
> (and
> these complainers can't bear to bring up the continuity of policy because
> that would interfere with making a personal example out of Trump and
> reinforcing the lie that if we could oust Trump from the presidency we'd
> somehow be better off).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> War: Defense contractors still see a boom time under Democratic Party House
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlveZE_kr80 -- The Washington Post
> reports
> that weapons contractors will still make lots of money.
>
>  From
>
> https://www.postguam.com/business/defense-contractors-unfazed-by-democratic-gains/article_77b30764-e3f0-11e8-8607-cf9c7b51c0bc.html
> which is a copy of
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/08/defense-contractors-unfazed-by-democratic-gains-republican-deficit-hawks-lose-influence/
>
> > The companies that make jets, bombs and aircraft carriers for the U.S.
> > military are telling investors that the defense business still will be
> > booming under a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, even as a
> > split Congress threatens a return to partisan gridlock.
> >
> > The reason, one defense executive said, is that the Democratic takeover
> > of the House could weaken Republican deficit hawks in Congress at a
> > time when their influence is already diminished.
> >
> > "One concern that we did have was relative to deficit hawks," Raytheon
> > chief executive Thomas Kennedy said at the Robert W. Baird Industrial
> > Conference in Chicago. "And it turns out that ... most of the deficit
> > hawks were in the House and on the Republican side."
> >
> > He went on to say the Democratic takeover "changes the equation"
> > relative to conversations around the national debt.
> >
> > "The environment is actually nice now because it's settled. We know
> > exactly what it is," Kennedy said. "The uncertainty has been taken out,
> > and we know that we don't have this issue with the deficit hawks moving
> > forward. So we're actually very very optimistic."
> >
> > House Republicans lost a number of deficit-minded representatives.
> > Virginia Rep. Dave Brat and Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, who both pushed a
> > constitutional amendment requiring Congress to pass a balanced budget
> > every year, narrowly lost to their Democratic opponents. Deficit hawks
> > already had been marginalized in the Republican Party, with just a
> > single Republican representative opposing the GOP tax bill over budget
> > issues.
> >
> > Investment analysts studying the defense industry appear to largely
> > agree with Kennedy. >
> > In a Wednesday morning note to investors entitled "It's always a party,
> > regardless of party," Jefferies investment analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu
> > noted the 2006 midterm election, in which Democrats seized the House at
> > the height of the U.S. war in Iraq. Defense companies' share prices
> > climbed an average of 18 percent during that year.
>
> Max Keiser comments on this article:
>
> > Raytheon [quoted in the Washington Post article] is the middle man
> > between the outright Pentagon-run media outlet MSNBC. The second point
> > there is a good one: the Democrats are really the war party because they
> > believe in infinite deficits, right? Whereas the Republicans at least
> > make a nodding reference to the fact that you need to balance the books
> > and maybe it's a waste of money; they have a concept of hard money,
> > occasionally which serves them well. Whereas the Democrats are all
> > about 'there is no such thing as a limit to the amount of money we can
> > print' and that extends to the war machine and that's why Hillary
> > Clinton is a warmonger and the Democrats are easily conned into spending
> > trillions of dollars and the defense industry and why [when] they
> > control the House defense stocks went up! I mean is there any clearer
> > indication that the Democrats are the party of war?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> War: Inadvertently published Pentagon documents expose US hand in Yemen
> exposé
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA5RkNOAU0U -- the US pledged support for
> Saudi Arabia (SA) even as news arrived that Yemen was experiencing the
> worst humanitarian crisis.
>
> A document describing an operation called "YOUKON JOURNEY" was
> unintentionally published online and confirmed that this was occuring in
> Yemen and thus continuing US support for SA. This document puts into
> context US claims of no longer fueling SA-led attacks in Yemen.
>
> With one exception for mid-air refueling, the US won't stop backing SA and
> never had any real intent to, despite public relations to the contrary.
> Mid-air refueling from the US might stop but only because SA says it can
> do
> this without the US. That's not an anti-war or even anti-war-in-Yemen
> measure.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> War: Israel ceasefire?
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar310zyBXKs -- Israel bombed Gaza TV
> station Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas-run TV) just before Al-Aqsa was due to broadcast
> footage of a bus bombing where an Israeli soldier was on board, and Israel
> reaches a ceasefire in Gaza as Hamas agrees to stop demonstrating. Over
> the
> last 6 months IDF has killed over 150 Palestinians there.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Monsanto influenced the Canadian government to approve glyphosate a couple
> of years ago with studies written by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer)
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMH-dphxV3g -- Health Canada learned that
> Monsanto used misrepresented studies indicating glyphosate is safe.
> Canadian authorities are now reviewing Monsanto's glyphosate application.
>
> It's a bit like VP Cheney pushing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq by feeding
> propaganda to the New York Times to be published without sources then
> going
> on the Sunday morning chat shows and making fraudulent claims backed by
> saying something akin to 'if you don't believe me, just read the Times'.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Russiagate: House Democrats will launch 85 investigations of Pres. Trump
> and (including Russian "collusion") demand his tax returns. None of which
> will address why he was duly elected, the accelerating economic
> inequality,
> or end US wars.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efrdTnJOkKI -- Democrats continue to show
> that they have no serious message the public can get behind (such as fully
> supporting Medicare for All, a national jobs program, ending wars, etc.).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Identity politics alive and well in media including self-identified
> "alternative" news media
>
> Identity politics continues and claims support from another formerly
> reliable commentator: Laura Flanders is down with identity politics too.
>
> https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/10/wtf-white-women -- Laura
> Flanders asks "WTF White Women?" -- why did so many white women not vote
> for a black Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
>
> Laura Flanders wrote:
>
> > 2016 was bad. 2018 was worse. While fifty-two percent of white women
> > voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2016, in 2018, seventy-six
> > percent of white women voted for Brian Kemp.
> >
> > This Tuesday, seventy-six percent of white female voters in Georgia cast
> > their ballots against Stacey Abrams becoming this nation’s first black
> > female governor. Fifty-nine percent in Texas voted for Republican Ted
> > Cruz against Latino Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Fifty-one percent opposed
> > Andrew Gillum becoming the first African American governor of the
> > Sunshine State.
> >
> > White women rained all over that new day dawning. Did they vote on the
> > issues? Statistically, there aren’t enough anti-choice, anti-healthcare,
> > anti-minimum wage, gun-mad voters out there to blame just conservative
> > women.
> >
> > So white women are either stupid or spoiled. I say spoiled.
> >
> > We reap plenty of spoils from white supremacy. To name a few: we get to
> > be race-less, sexy, vulnerable and at least relatively safe.
>
> The rest of the article is a list of the advantages white women have over
> non-white women and ends with:
>
> > So what the hell, white women? Talk. Not too loudly, or everywhere, all
> > the time, or remorsefully to your one girlfriend-of-color, but to me, or
> > a white woman like me.
> >
> > We don’t want 2020 to roll around and wish that one hundred years ago
> > we’d never given white women the vote.
>
> Perhaps Flanders missed
>
> https://www.blackagendareport.com/how-stupid-do-stacey-abrams-lucy-mcbath-and-most-progressive-democrat-congressional-candidates
> where the vague 'vote for her because she will somehow make things better
> for non-white women' is put into context:
>
> Bruce A. Dixon wrote:
>
> > Stacey Abrams wants to be president, and Georgia governor is one of the
> > checkmarks on the way there, and election to governor will immediately
> > put her on the short list of contenders. She lays that out quite clearly
> > in her latest book Minority Leader How to Lead From the Outside and Make
> > Real Change. It’s a memoir-centered self-help book, an
> > I-did-it-you-can-do-it-too kind of thing with checklists at the end of
> > every chapter. The “it” she talks about in the book is achieving power,
> > but for all her deep understanding of how to maneuver to obtain this
> > power Stacey offers very few if any clues about what great things she
> > wants to do with that power.
> >
> > We’ve seen that movie before though haven’t we? Didn’t we just finish
> > eight years of an unaccountable black president presiding over the
> > greatest loss of black family wealth since we started keeping statistics
> > on it? Didn’t we just see three million American families lose their
> > homes? Didn’t we hear Eric Holder, the first black attorney general tell
> > us the banks to were too big to jail and too important to investigate,
> > and didn’t we see Loretta Lynch the second black attorney general
> > literally write the fine print on get out of jail free cards for
> > CitiGroup and other criminal investors who walked away with billions.
> > We’ve lived to see a black president break his word on raising the
> > minimum wage and delivering single payer health care? The first black
> > president blockaded and bombed all the countries the white presidents
> > before him [had] blockaded and bombed and added a few new ones, including
> > the actual overthrow of a prosperous African country, where black
> > Libyans and other Africans are being traded as slaves right now. Didn’t
> > we see the first black president expand fracking around the world,
> > privatize big chunks of public education, and let all the torturers and
> > kidnappers on the US payroll off the hook?
>
> It's not clear what Abrams offered Georgia residents as governor other
> than
> 'vote for her because she's black and a woman'.
>
> By this reasoning, if Condoleeza Rice ran for US President she'd be a
> shoo-in despite her political record (just like Hillary Clinton was
> supposed to have been a shoo-in, right?). We were supposed to choose
> between voting for Mrs. Clinton or being a misogynist, after all. A vote
> for Jill Stein also somehow qualified as misogyny in the insane identity
> politics false dichotomy.
>
>
>
>
> Democracy Now reaffirms commitment to Trump Derangement Syndrome and
> impeaching Trump with no analysis of what that means should this be a step
> on the road toward getting Trump out of office before the end of his term.
>
>  From
>
> https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/9/rashida_tlaib_on_impeaching_trump_occupied
> -- an interview with Rashida Tlaib, newly-elected Congressional
> representative from Minnesota:
>
> > AMY GOODMAN: Will you try to impeach President Trump?
> >
> > REP.-ELECT RASHIDA TLAIB: Yes. I truly believe that he’s obstructing
> > justice. It is very clear that something is wrong within our own
> > government. You can like the man, but I could tell you, I know you like
> > the rule of law more. And in America, there is laws that we all follow,
> > that we all should equally be held accountable to. And I can tell you
> > very strongly that this is not political for me. I mean, he could be a
> > Democratic president, and I would still say the same thing: obstruction
> > of justice.
> >
> > And as an attorney myself, I can tell you, when we start kind of turning
> > our heads and letting little bit of things slip by, like what we’ve seen
> > the last few days, we are jeopardizing our own democracy. We are
> > jeopardizing that accountability and that balance of government that’s
> > there, that is so critical for us to live in a free country. We cannot
> > allow him to taint this process, that’s there for a reason. And I’m very
> > much willing to start investigating and leaning towards that, if he has
> > anything to do with obstructing justice. And it pretty much sounds like
> > he is trying to sway this investigation and trying to make sure that he
> > protects himself instead of protecting our own country.
>
> It's not clear how this is meant to benefit the country in any practical
> sense such as alleviating crushing debt, reallocating federal
> discretionary
> spending toward programs of social value that would create living wage
> jobs, ending homelessness, stopping the drug war, or passing Medicare for
> All into law.
>
> It strikes me as a step toward getting Trump out of office earlier than
> the
> end of a term and pushing VP Pence into office. But there's no analysis of
> the practical consequences of this. No challenge to the Democrats'
> pro-war,
> pro-big bank, pro-corporate policies that good-cop/bad-cop the US into
> another round of discouraging voters (most voters identify as independent
> now, not siding with a party). The Democrats appear to me to continue to
> push the message "we're not with Trump" which is not a policy. The
> accusations leading up to this (such as Russiagate) have had years and
> gone
> nowhere. Meanwhile Americans are no better off economically but we've got
> trillions for killing people.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> What does that Jim Acosta kerfuffle really mean? And why are we hearing
> about the hypocritical reaction to this kerfuffle from RT & Fox News but
> not from Democracy Now?
>
> Comparison between RT and DemocracyNow.org's coverage of the kerfuffle
> between Pres. Trump and Jim Acosta. DN does not come out looking good.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUW0qywCy0 -- RT's coverage, part of "In
> Question" a new news program from RT's Anya Parampil. She and RT's Afshin
> Rattansi and former UK MP George Galloway cover this issue well, putting
> things in perspective including quickly dismissing the distractive alleged
> 'touching a woman's hand' non-event, and hypocritical reaction from
> establishment journalism getting all worked up about pulling Acosta's
> White
> House credentials. Other CNN people are apparently free to visit the White
> House to replace him but RT's entire staff lost their credentials and were
> selected to be forced to register under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration
> Act), including RT US staff. This stands in sharp contrast to other
> state-funded foreign news organizations including the BBC (British) and
> CBC
> (Canadian) who have not been so compelled. Many RT programs now carry a
> notice saying that a transcript of that program is on file with the US
> Government (see any recent episode of "On Contact with Chris Hedges" or
> "Redacted Tonight" for examples). Virtually everybody in the establishment
> media (and Democracy Now) were silent about about RT's mistreatment.
>
> If DN is going to give the same perspective as the establishment media
> outlets and the same silence to important civil liberties issues as
> establishment media outlets, how alternative can DN be?
>
>
>
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TSwjgG0Shs -- There's very selective
> support for who is allowed to report among news organizations. Few want to
> talk about RT's Capitol credentials being pulled in the same context as
> they want to talk about CNN's Jim Acosta's kerfuffle. They want to frame
> Acosta's denial of access as a 1st Amendment issue or at the very least
> very troubling for all journalists. But silence about RT (this includes
> Democracy Now which reported that RT's access was revoked but offered no
> analysis and no explanation of how troubling this should be for all
> journalists).
>
> Tucker Carlson was one of the few exceptions to this; he mentioned the
> hypocrisy on his Fox News program:
>
> > Now CNN is claiming to defend free speech. Only when it's their speech.
> > You'll notice, by the way, that CNN did not object when the government
> > threatened to imprison employees of the cable channel RT if they didn't
> > register as foreign agents. Yes, RT is owned by a foreign government.
> > So is the BBC. Until last year much of the New York Times was owned by
> > a foreign national. This is true of other news organizations, none of
> > which has ever registered as a foreign agent.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Good voting policy isn't designed to and won't change social, economic
> policies
>
> Ranked voting, same-day registration, and other election changes are nice
> and worth defending in order to increase the chances we'll hear from
> political candidates other than those from the major corporate parties.
> But
> we should be clear about what you expect to gain from such electoral
> changes. These changes won't clearly address corporate control over
> government nor will these changes give the electorate candidates one can
> justify voting for.
>
>
> https://theintercept.com/2018/11/07/the-remarkable-participation-and-efficiency-of-brazils-elections-proves-how-shameful-and-deliberate-is-the-chaos-and-suppression-in-the-u-s/
> -- Glenn Greenwald's latest on the Brazilian election which is probably
> better in any quantifiable way to the US election system (a run-off
> election, a clear "none of the candidates" voting choice, requiring voting
> but accepting a blank ballot as a valid ballot, same-day results based on
> counting as one goes, no stories like being "turned away from voting
> booths, rampant technological malfunctions, and vote counts that linger
> for
> weeks with no certain outcome" which recur every 2 years in the US with no
> substantive improvement to the system).
>
> But they didn't stop Bolsonaro who so pleased the capitalist class that
> the
> Wall St. Journal endorsed him[1] and investments shot up on the news he
> had
> been duly elected.
>
> [1] See Redacted Tonight's take on this in
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQwZt8ZQTXI and a snippet from "The
> Corporation" on the history of businesses working with "official enemies
> [...], terrorists, tyrants, and despotic regimes" in
>
> https://files.digitalcitizen.info/corporations-prop-up-fascists/the-corporation-nazi-germany.webm
>
> As Greenwald points out, Brazil's election system is not capable of fixing
> economic problems such as an enormous gap between the wealthy and the poor
> that apparently spur people to vote for a candidate such as Jair Bolsonaro
> despite being designed to grant voters a chance to get to the polls and
> vote:
>
> > Then, there’s the issue of voter participation. Voting is legally
> > mandatory in Brazil: Every citizen over the age of 16 is automatically
> > eligible to vote, and those over 18 are required to do so, facing a
> > trivial fine for failing to do so (absent a valid justification). They
> > are free to vote for “none of the candidates” or leave their ballot
> > blank, but it is a legal duty. Still, in the last election, roughly 20
> > percent of voters violated that law and abstained from voting. But that
> > means that 80 percent of the adult population voted — a far higher
> > participation rate than any election in the U.S.
> >
> > That’s because everything about the structure of Brazil’s election
> > system, set forth in the 1989 constitution it enacted after it exited
> > its military dictatorship, is designed to maximize, not suppress, voter
> > participation. All citizens are automatically registered. Voting is
> > mandatory. The elections are held on Sunday, ensuring that working
> > people have the fewest barriers to voting, instead of in the middle of
> > the week. Machine voting is uniform throughout the country’s 27 states.
> >
> > Brazil generally, and its politics specifically, is plagued with
> > countless grave problems, as I’ve reported on over the last several
> > years. It’s a country beset by a convergence of hideous political,
> > social, and economic crises caused by a broken ruling class, all
> > exacerbated by severe wealth inequality.
> >
> > But that’s the point. If Brazil — an extremely young democracy with far
> > less wealth than the U.S. and intense political, economic, and social
> > pathologies — can hold basically efficient, seamless, fast, vibrantly
> > participatory, and smooth national elections on a massive scale, as it
> > did twice last month, then so, obviously, could the U.S.
>
> Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c15Mp_5CfE0 -- Does the US have
> the worst voting system in the world? Possibly but it's that bad by
> design,
> not by accident.
>
>
>
>
>
> War funding
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogsC-SDJLyQ -- Millions of US taxpayer
> money in Syria is being funneled to Al-Qaeda, claims Joint Inspector
> General Report on "Operation Inherent Resolve":
>
>
> https://media.defense.gov/2018/Nov/05/2002059226/-1/-1/1/FY2019_LIG_OCO_OIR_Q4_SEP2018.PDF
>
> > Since late 2017, USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] OIG
> > investigations have uncovered numerous instances of possible or
> > confirmed diversions to armed groups in Idlib Governorate in
> > northwestern Syria, including Ha’yat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a designated
> > Foreign Terrorist Organization.
> >
> > One investigation found that an NGO’s employees knowingly diverted
> > thousands of USAID- funded food kits worth millions of dollars to
> > ineligible beneficiaries (including HTS fighters) and submitted
> > falsified beneficiary lists. The investigation resulted in USAID
> > suspending the program and the NGO terminating the employment of dozens
> > of individuals from March to May 2018.
>
> Vanessa Beeley, independent journalist to RT
>
> > What is very interesting in this report is that the USAID watchdog does
> > not name the NGOs. Now, of course, one of those primary NGOs will be
> > the White Helmets probably one of the most promoted, supported, and
> > iconized NGO entities working on the ground in Syria basically providing
> > the propaganda and corroboration of the regime change foreign policy.
> > Surely the US should, first of all, be lifting its economic sanctions
> > and it should then be, if it's necessary, be collaborating with the
> > Syrian government to provide aid to where it's most needed. Of course I
> > don't expect this to happen.
>
> Breitbart's report pointed out:
>
> > Several analysts have determined that the al-Qaeda branch in Syria is
> > the terrorist group’s most robust[1] wing.
>
> [1]
>
> https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/07/13/house-witnesses-al-qaeda-is-strongest-in-syria-where-it-could-incorporate-failing-islamic-state/
>
> This means, as RT's report pointed out, US taxpayers have spent trillions
> of dollars in the post-9/11 so-called "war on terror" in order to stop
> Al-Qaeda. But it appears that US taxpayers have been funding Al-Qaeda too.
> Who benefits from this? War profiteers, chiefly: weapons manufacturers,
> and
> pro-war US Congressmembers (pro-war on both sides of the aisle; Democrats
> offer no opposition on this the largest of state matters).
>
> Breitbart reported on this in
>
> https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/11/08/pentagon-report-ngos-knowingly-diverted-millions-u-s-aid-al-qaeda-group-syria/
> and so did RT. What about Democracy Now? DN has 4 stories in 2018
> featuring
> the word "USAID" according to their website's search engine results, the
> latest of which is from August 6, well before this report was
> published[1].
> So I think it's safe to say no, DN offers no coverage of this.
>
> [1] Reload https://www.democracynow.org/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=usaid
> to see if this has changed.
>
>
>
>
>
> Democratic Republic of Congo Ebola Outbreak
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvAkxi-aheE -- Ebola outbreak claims 198
> victims so far in 2 months in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
>
> The Congo is one of the world's major sources of metals needed for jewelry
> and computers. Those metals are worth $24 trillion. Historically this land
> has also provided slave labor to fuel the rubber trade.
>
> In the 1960s the British, US, and Belgian governments wanted the first
> elected Prime Minister of an independent Democratic Republic of the Congo,
> Patrice Émery Lumumba, a pan-Africanist, killed because he was going to
> get
> aid from Russia (then the Soviet Union). Lumumba asked the US and UN for
> help to suppress Katangan secessionists backed by Belgium, neither helped.
> US President Eisenhower ordered Lumumba's murder and it appears there was
> considerable effort put into this: the CIA had a plot to poison Lumumba
> with his toothpaste, another CIA plot to shoot Lumumba (revealed in the
> 1975 Church Committee), and CIA Chief Allen Dulles (the man for whom
> Dulles
> airport is named) ordered Lumumba's assassination and allocated $100,000
> for the effort. CIA documents released later would reveal that Lumumba's
> Congolese enemies who would kill him (including Mobutu Sese Seko, once
> Lumumba's personal aide, and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, once President of the
> Republic of the Congo) received money and weapons from the CIA. In January
> 1961 Lumumba was killed.
>
> See Ludo de Witte's book "The Assassination of Lumumba" for the definitive
> work on this matter.
>
>
>
>
>
> Another interesting note on Democracy Now's reluctance to critically
> examine the Democratic Party: Newly elected Rep. Ocasio-Cortez backed some
> young climate activists conducting a sit-in in Rep. Pelosi's DC office
> demanding that "the Democrats back a 'Green New Deal'".
>
>
> https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/pelosi-and-dem-leadership-we-won-you-the-house-now-we-demand-a-real-climate-plan?nowrapper=true&referrer=&source=
> has a copy of their petition:
>
> > 1. Champion a Green New Deal that would create millions of good jobs to
> > transform society over the next decade to stop climate change. This
> > means creating a committee tasked specifically to write policy on
> > creating jobs and moving our country off fossil fuels over the
> > designated 12 years that the IPCC has given us. Let’s protect the lives
> > of all working people -- black, brown, and white -- from the ravages of
> > disaster and pollution.
> >
> > 2. Mandate that any Democrat in leadership must take the No Fossil Fuel
> > Money pledge and reject campaign contributions from fossil fuel
> > executives and lobbyists and prioritize the health of people and planet
> > over industry profits. Oil and gas executives profit off a business
> > model that's incompatible with the future of human civilization. It's
> > time for the Democratic Party to reject their influence wholesale.
> >
> > A rising generation of young people of all backgrounds just helped flip
> > the House with a record turnout. We will no longer tolerate empty
> > promises and words without action. We’re not expecting miracles -- we
> > understand that the GOP is corrupted by dirty oil money and will stall
> > us at every turn. We know that sweeping change isn’t possible until
> > Trump is gone -- but we need to start laying the groundwork and put
> > forward our vision for America now.
>
> We'll see where this goes but any real examination of this has to focus on
> where the House Democrats get their campaign money.
>
> RT's coverage about this -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfYJZ1-LBLE
> --
> is differently shameful. The host and guests all seem to side with
> corporate power. None challenge the idea that finding the money for
> Medicare for All is not an issue. We're already paying HMOs more than
> Medicare for All would cost and we can't keep up with HMO greed. We're
> apparently okay with the euphemistically-named Defense Department losing
> track of trillions of dollars (covered in a previous notes filing). That's
> enough money to buy out the HMOs at market value ($300-$800B according to
> estimates I heard on Ralph Nader's radio show) thus eliminating the only
> organized opposition to Medicare for All. There's also cutting the
> military
> budget in half and spending money on programs the US needs. The issue
> facing Democratic Party supporters is their allegiance to their corporate
> funding base. Democrats have not gone along with Medicare for All. We've
> seen what the Democrats did when they have a Democratic Party president
> and
> control of Congress -- they did not bring HR676 (Medicare for All) and up
> for a vote. We got the ACA ("ObamaCare" nee RomneyCare) which keeps the
> HMOs in charge. But they kept the wars going, escalating invasions and
> killing just like their Republican counterparts do. Funny how there's
> never
> any question of money for that.
>
> Democracy Now mentioned this protest but there's no analysis examining how
> this puts Democrats in a pickle: should one recognize that Democrats
> aren't
> supporting these policy choices or continue to support that party despite
> their corporatism?
>
> DN does not report closely on stories that make the Democratic Party look
> bad. DN had nothing to say about the DNC lawsuit filed by Bernie Sanders
> supporters. This was a major break for the Democratic Party in which that
> party lost people who apparently cost Hillary Clinton the presidency (a
> major decline in Democratic Party voting came from those who had
> previously
> voted for Obama). The DNC Corporation's lawyer Bruce Spiva told us that
> the
> Democratic Party owes nobody a fair primary process:
>
> http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf page 25:
>
> > [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.
>
> This wasn't news to anyone but it puts a fine point on how party primaries
> actually work.
>
> As Boss Tweed told us, "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I
> get to do the nominating.".
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Exploitation: Richard Wolff: New York and Virginia are paying more than
> half the cost to have Amazon add about 2,500 jobs to New York.
>
> http://www.fox5ny.com/news/48k-per-amazon-hq-job -- New York taxpayers to
> pay $48,000 per Amazon HQ job...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TATrsC8mX_k
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 -- ...and this will also
> include a helipad. Part of the deal contract:
>
> > The Public Parties recognize that the Company [Amazon] needs access
> > to the Development Sites and agree to assist in securing access to a
> > helipad on the Development Sites, as part of the Development Plan and
> > subject to FAA approval.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TATrsC8mX_k is part 1 of the story
> including the odd offers governors offered if Amazon set up their HQ in
> their state, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 is part 2
> where Richard Wolff pointed out how little this benefits New York:
>
> > This is a shocking display. What they are calling a government-private
> > partnership is nothing of the sort. It's a public subsidy to Amazon.
> > The New York Times reported $5 billion in this project will be invested
> > by Amazon. $5.5 billion dollars will be invested by New York and
> > Virginia. That is a subsidy of over 50% of the cost of this project. We
> > the taxpayers will be either paying higher taxes to fund this private
> > company, among the richest in the world, or, if we don't get our taxes
> > raised, the government will deliver fewer services to us because it has
> > given this enormous subsidy to a company. $5 billion from Virginia and
> > New York where Mr. Bezos, the owner of Amazon, is himself the owner of
> > $160 billion. He didn't need it, the company doesn't need it. We are
> > being asked to subsidize. All of the profits will go to the private
> > companies and their shareholders. We, the public, will be funding more
> > than half of this project. Shame is what Mr. DeBlasio ought to feel
> > rather than posing in the PR as if he has delivered something. [...]
> >
> > The projected number of jobs in the New York area from this is 2,500.
> > That's a very small number and will have no effect on the unemployment
> > problem of this city [New York City] it's just too small and that's not
> > a surprise [...] because the kind of work Amazon does is highly
> > automated; it uses machines for 90% of what it does. And half of the
> > people it's likely to have working in New York will be brought in from
> > other parts of the Amazon empire.
>
> I realize that Wolff's figures don't all agree with what's been publicized
> elsewhere but it's hard for me to criticize Wolff's figures too much. I've
> seen 25,000 new Amazon jobs spoken of as an estimate by Amazon:
>
>  From
>
> https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-selects-new-york-city-and-northern-virginia-for-new-headquarters
>
> > Amazon will invest $5 billion and create more than 50,000 jobs across
> > the two new headquarters locations, with more than 25,000 employees each
> > in New York City and Arlington.
>
> which is 10X as many jobs as Wolff mentioned, but since none of the jobs
> have materialized I'm not willing to give credit to Amazon for having met
> that 10X higher estimate (which is what really counts) or critique the
> estimate all that much. Perhaps we should ask Wisconsin residents how they
> like those 3,000 to 13,000 Foxconn jobs.
>
> Sometimes big companies take advantage of the towns in which they locate,
> so it's reasonable to be skeptical. Walmart famously moved one of their
> stores a short distance from its previous location to avoid paying full
> taxes to the town in which they originally built a store. In 1992 Walmart
> received a $1.8 million infrastructure tax subsidy to place a store in
> Cathedral City, California. Walmart built the store and ran it until the
> tax subsidy ran out. When the city was about to receive all of the tax
> revenue Walmart would have had to pay Walmart moved from E. Ramon Road
> (near Route 111) to just outside city limits to the corner of McCallum Way
> & Date Palm Drive--just outside city limits but not far enough to
> discourage customers from going to the new location 2.2 miles from where
> the store used to be.
>
> Walmart has a history of receiving tax subsidies for its stores.
> https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/sites/default/files/docs/pdf/wmtstudy.pdf
> has
> a list of many of them.
>
> According to the New York Times
> (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/opinion/new-yorks-amazon-deal.html)
> Amazon will lease office space in the Citigroup building and "develop a
> four-million-square-foot campus by the East River". I don't know if Amazon
> will leave when benefits run out (perhaps not because New York City offers
> access to nationally powerful people with whom Amazon might want in-person
> meetings) but I take the Walmart in Cathedral City story to be more
> broadly
> applicable than leaving town--taxpayer-funded subsidies can and will be
> taken advantage of when cities and states are as craven as New York's
> governor Andrew Cuomo was claiming he'd change his name to "Amazon" if it
> would help bring the company there. The New York deal doesn't appear to
> have any expectation of performance margins (Amazon gets so much money if
> they hire so many people, or hire so many New York state residents).
>
> The second new headquarters for Amazon will be in Crystal City, Virginia
> in
> Arlington county. That deal reportedly includes language that will allow
> Amazon to be forewarned by at least 2 business days written notice about
> any pending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and, "seek a
> protective order or other appropriate remedy" when a FOIA request compels
> Amazon to produce information.
>
> What's so special about this Virginia location? It's near to powerful
> regulators so corruption is easier to carry out --
> https://twitter.com/PaulBlu/status/1062404457407877121
>
> > Making friends in high places
> >
> > Given Amazon's prominence as a technological powerhouse, access to key
> > stakeholders - including regulators, federal government clients, and
> > think tanks - in Washington, D.C. will drive significant value for the
> > company.
> >
> > As Amazon is poised to drive its business in a number of areas that will
> > require complex federal regulatory oversight, proximity to key
> > stakeholders, including the Federal Aviation Administration, the
> > Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the
> > Food and Drug Administration, and congressional committee leadership,
> > will prove vital.
>
> See https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dr5rLQ8XgAACDZD.jpg for the screengrab.
>
>
>
>
>
> https://www.geekwire.com/2018/new-yorkers-protest-amazon-hq2-investing-housing-not-helicopters/
> -- protests against Amazon.
>
> Shawn Dixon, small business owner near where Amazon's new New York
> facility
> will be built:
>
> > We’re worried about our ability to stay in the neighborhood. I’m not
> > against growth and I’m not against Amazon but what I’m against is giving
> > away all this money to one of the richest companies in the world when
> > our schools are underfunded, we don’t have schools in this neighborhood,
> > the trains don’t run here, and small business owners have no
> > protections.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Irony alert: Apple wins anti-slavery award
>
> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/14/apple-stop-slavery-award/ -- I'm not
> making this up:
>
> > Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts today accepted the Thomson Reuters
> > Foundation's Stop Slavery Award on behalf of Apple at the Trust
> > Conference, an annual human rights gathering.
>
> Let's remember that Apple is one of the reasons Foxconn set up what are
> known as "suicide nets" mounted outside its sweatshop labor factories. So
> many workers were committing suicide by jumping to their death from their
> workspace in Foxconn's buildings that Foxconn and Apple took bad press for
> the deaths. Their response? Substantially improving working conditions and
> pay? No. Install nets outside the factory building in order to reduce the
> velocity of the falling workers before they become corpses and possibly
> prevent them from dying.
>
>  From
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/13/cost-iphone-5-foxconn-factory
> where an undercover reporter joined the workforce making iThings:
>
> > Dormitories smell of rubbish, sweat and foam, and the reporter wrote of
> > cockroaches in the wardrobes and dirty bedsheets. chinalaborwatch.org
> > reports at least 18 suicides at Foxconn plants in two years, and as a
> > result dorm windows have been barred, which gives the impression of a
> > prison. The various facilities include a gym, canteen, hospital, library
> > and playground, which Wang claims are under-resourced or rundown.
>
>
> More on worker conditions:
>
>
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/95395223/Sweatshops-Are-Good-for-Apple-and-Foxconn-But-Not-for-Workers
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/13/cost-iphone-5-foxconn-factory
>
> http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/09/12/838341/foxconn-student-workers/
>
> Apple's sweatshops at Pegatron are even worse than at Foxconn according to
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/29/apple-investugates-claims-china-factory
>
> As Richard Stallman pointed out:
>
> > Just because you're not pregnant, should that make it ok to require you
> > to work 11 hours a day, 6 days a week? Apple is culpable if its products
> > are made by people working a longer workweek than is allowed in the US.
>
> Apple was rightfully criticized for continuing their worker abuse
> according
> to
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/19/apple-under-fire-again-for-working-conditions-at-chinese-factories
>
> I don't know of any reports which indicate significant improvement for
> Foxconn or Pegatron's workforce. As far as I know things are more or less
> as they were.
>
> Related: https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry -- The
> poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)
>
> 《我就那样站着入睡》
> "I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That"
>
> 眼前的纸张微微发黄
> The paper before my eyes fades yellow
>
> 我用钢笔在上面凿下深浅不一的黑
> With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black
>
> 里面盛满打工的词汇
> Full of working words
>
> 车间，流水线，机台，上岗证，加班，薪水……
> Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages...
>
> 我被它们治得服服贴贴
> They've trained me to become docile
>
> 我不会呐喊，不会反抗
> Don't know how to shout or rebel
>
> 不会控诉，不会埋怨
> How to complain or denounce
>
> 只默默地承受着疲惫
> Only how to silently suffer exhaustion
>
> 驻足时光之初
> When I first set foot in this place
>
> 我只盼望每月十号那张灰色的薪资单
> I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month
>
> 赐我以迟到的安慰
> To grant me some belated solace
>
> 为此我必须磨去棱角，磨去语言
> For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words
>
> 拒绝旷工，拒绝病假，拒绝事假
> Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons
>
> 拒绝迟到，拒绝早退
> Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early
>
> 流水线旁我站立如铁，双手如飞
> By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,
>
> 多少白天，多少黑夜
> How many days, how many nights
>
> 我就那样，站着入睡
> Did I - just like that - standing fall asleep?
>
> -- 20 August 2011
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Assange/WikiLeaks
>
>
> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/us-reportedly-looking-to-prosecute-julian-assange.html
> -- (appears to be a copy of the same text also published in the Wall St.
> Journal article "U.S. Is Optimistic It Will Prosecute Assange")
>
> > The Justice Department is preparing to prosecute WikiLeaks founder
> > Julian Assange and is increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him
> > into a U.S. courtroom, according to people in Washington familiar with
> > the matter.
>
> The big change? Ecuadorian support for handing Julian Assange over to the
> US. In other words, the US couldn't do this without Ecuador's support.
>
> > Ecuador granted Assange political asylum in 2012. He has since been
> > living in the country's embassy in London.
> >
> > But last month, Ecuador's foreign minister said the country no longer
> > plans to intervene on Assange's behalf in discussions with the British
> > government about his asylum status.
> >
> > The Journal reported that U.S. prosecutors have weighed charges against
> > Assange as the prospect of getting Ecuadorean officials to turn him over
> > seem more likely.
>
> What remains true is he's a publisher who published information powerful
> people didn't like and want to scapegoat him with costing Hillary Clinton
> the 2016 US election (in truth she was a horrible candidate who had
> already
> firmly established support for neoliberalism and neoconservatism as well
> as
> losing to a candidate with a lot less political experience than her).
>
> The spineless so-called journalists don't defend him but were fine with
> publishing material from WikiLeaks (including the New York Times). Ironic
> that the recently-released movie "The Post" (Meryl Streep as Katharine
> Graham and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee) relies on the defense of the public
> interest and spinefulness you won't find amongst those who are heard from
> the most in the Assange case and in a related case with CNN and RT.
>
>
>
>
> -J
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
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