From r-szoke at illinois.edu Mon Apr 1 02:07:02 2019 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 02:07:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Does Capitalism Kill Cooperation? Message-ID: Does Capitalism Kill Cooperation? Evidence that innovation and growth isn’t based on economic self-interest. By Peter Turchin One of the chief reasons I became an advocate of the Cultural Multilevel Selection (CMLS) theory is that it wonderfully clarifies the relationship between competition and cooperation. Competition between groups (up to whole societies) fosters within-group cooperation. Competition within groups (between their members) destroys cooperation. If you wanted a two-sentence summary of Ultrasociety this would be it. I’ve been applying these principles in my research on the evolution of complex societies (and a lot more is to come, now that the Seshat Databank have come of age and is generating a tremendous volume of empirical results—which you will see in a year or two, as academic publication mill-stones grind sooo slowly). But I have also felt that the CMLS theory tells us a lot not only about political organizations like the states, but also about economic organizations—firms competing in markets. This goes very much against the grain, especially as far as economists are concerned. Milton Friedman, of course, always argued that economic agents should strictly follow their material interests; there is no place for “extra-rational motives” in business. Most economists today feel the same way, although few are willing to state it as boldly as Friedman did. Thus, it was very refreshing to receive two years ago an email from Branko Milanovic, an economist whom I greatly admire, in which he was willing to go on record and state this position very forcefully (I published Branko’s letter as a guest blog on Cliodynamica). I also invited two economist friends to comment: Bob Frank and Herb Gintis, as well as writing a response myself. The whole exchange was recently re-published by Evonomics and generated a lot of discussion. More recently Branko wrote a review of Kate Raworth’s new book Doughnut Economics. A central question in the ensuing debate between him and Kate (see it here) is the same we debated two years ago (see also a good summary on Vulgar Economics). Here’s what Branko wrote about the “human nature under hyper-commercialized global capitalism”: Here I respectfully decline to be moved by the results of any of the “games” that Kate cites and that are supposed to reveal human nature. These games are indeed games; they are not the way people behave in real life. Games are good in generating publishable papers but they tell us nothing about how the same people would (or do) behave in real life. Two years ago I wouldn’t know how to respond to Branko on this point, but fortunately recently I finished reading a remarkable book, which provides me all the ammunition I need. Before discussing it, let’s define the question more explicitly. I agree that most people much of the time, and some people all of the time, are motivated by very “rational” calculations. When I decide which supermarket I am going to go for food, I try to minimize the amount of money I will pay and the amount of time I will spend, while maximizing produce quality and selection. It’s a very straightforward optimization problem. But capitalism is not just about buying and selling things—people have been doing commerce for millennia before capitalism. Surely the amazing capacity of capitalism to transform knowledge into innovation, and innovation into economic growth is one of the central of its attributes? So let’s talk about such successful innovation hotspots, as the Silicon Valley. What are the motivations driving successful entrepreneurs within such hotspots? If you want to find out the answers to these questions, read The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor Hwang and Greg Horowitt. Now, Hwang and Horowitt are not scientists, and their book is not a rigorous scientific study. But they spent decades bringing together venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, both in their native California and all over the globe—“Japan, Taiwan, Scandinavia, and New Zealand, … Mexico, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Territories.” Given their enormous experience, the empirical base, with which they operate in the book, transcends the dismissive academic characterization as “anecdotal.” A central theme that recurs throughout the book is that successful entrepreneurs, and the successful innovation systems in which they operate, such as the Silicon Valley or Route 128 in Massachusetts, are the antithesis of the rational businessperson postulated by Branko, one who is solely motivated by money. In fact, “Rainforests [their term for successful innovation systems] depend on people not behaving like rational actors.” “For Rainforests to be sustainable, greed must be restrained.” “Predatory venture capitalists might win a few in the short run, but they do not last long in the business and are unable to build lasting firms.” The evolutionary logic of entrepreneurship, according to Hwang and Horowitt, is precisely the opposite of that posited by Branko. Predatory, super-competitive individuals and firms are eliminated by natural selection, and only cooperative ones survive. They write: Extra-rational motivations—those that transcend the classical divide between rational and irrational—are not normally considered critical drivers of economic value-creation. … These motivations include the thrill of competition, human altruism, a thirst for adventure, a joy of discovery and creativity, a concern for future generations, and a desire for meaning in one’s life, among many others. Our work over the years has led us to conclude that these types of motivations are not just “nice to have.” They are, in fact, “must have” building blocks of the Rainforest. Many successful entrepreneurs (think Steve Jobs or Elon Musk) clearly were not motivated solely by money. Naturally, they did not give their billions away, and for some other very successful innovators, perhaps, all they wanted was to become filthy rich. But the point that Branko makes, that capitalism “is a system really built on the best use of our vices, including greed” is clearly wrong. This is why when governments and corporations try to incentivize innovation by focusing on financial mechanisms, the overall result is failure. By the end of the book, Hwang and Horowitt boil down their own recommendations as to what makes successful “Rainforests” thrive. They are four. First, diversity, which brings people with very different knowledge and skills together, such as a scientist, a venture capitalist, an engineer, a sales specialist, and an administrator (a CEO). Second, extra-rational motivations, because self-regarding rational actors are simply unable to cooperate to launch a successful innovation enterprise. Third, social trust, because successful cooperation is the only way to beat the terrible odds against a successful innovation startup, and cooperation requires trust. Fourth, a set of social norms that regulate the behavior of various cooperating agents, and willingness both to follow them and to enforce these rules by various sanctions. In other words, Hwang and Horowitt describe a system that uses precisely the same components to bring about cooperation that have been studied in other settings (a foraging group, a military troop, a religious sect, and a state), and in the abstract, by cultural evolutionists. The Rainforest, then, provides ample empirical material to reject the theory that economic growth, which is based on innovation, is moved by self-interested rational agents. But—and it was one of the real eye-openers for me—it also explains why this is so. Originally published at Peter Turchin’s Blog. 2019 March 26 Donating = Changing Economics. And Changing the World. Evonomics is free, it’s a labor of love, and it's an expense. We spend hundreds of hours and lots of dollars each month creating, curating, and promoting content that drives the next evolution of economics. If you're like us — if you think there’s a key leverage point here for making the world a better place — please consider donating. We’ll use your donation to deliver even more game-changing content, and to spread the word about that content to influential thinkers far and wide. MONTHLY DONATION $3 / month $7 / month $10 / month $25 / month ONE-TIME DONATION You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount. GIVE NOW If you liked this article, you'll also like these other Evonomics articles... Economic Myth: Private Sector Works Well and the Public Sector Just Gets in the Way Robert Reich on Enforcing Capitalism How Capitalism Actually Generates More Inequality When Wall Street Owns Main Street — Literally BE INVOLVED We welcome you to take part in the next evolution of economics. Sign up now to be kept in the loop! THE #MMT CASE FOR PROGRESSIVE TAXES PETER TURCHIN Peter Turchin Peter Turchin is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Connecticut and Vice President of the Evolution Institute. He is author of Ages of Discord. Web site: http://peterturchin.com/ Twitter: @Peter_Turchin SHARE THIS ARTICLE DONATING = CHANGING ECONOMICS. AND CHANGING THE WORLD. Evonomics is a labor of love, it's free, and it's ad-free. We spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars spreading the word about The Next Evolution of Economics. If you think that's a worthy mission, as we do—one with powerful leverage to make the world a better place—please consider offering your support. Change the World back to top From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Mon Apr 1 16:29:05 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 11:29:05 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Where can we show Nina's movie in C-U? Message-ID: So, my effort to rent the Art Theater to show Nina's movie has been blocked, apparently due to the blacklist of the movie being run by U of I student Allan Axelrod. If folks have ideas for other places where I could show Nina's movie in C-U, please let me know. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Apr 1 16:37:17 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 16:37:17 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Article of interest Message-ID: Agents provocateurs and the manipulation of the radical left [Print Friendly, PDF & Email]Print this post. [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DisgustingimperialistsBW.jpg][https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Orange-band.jpg] Another important dispatch from The Greanville Post. Be sure to share it widely. BY EMILE SCHEPERS • People’s World [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Screen-Shot-2016-07-28-at-11.13.33-AM.png] ________________________________ First published on September 18, 2017 [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/provocateurs-violence-960.jpg]A burning police car in Toronto’s financial district during the G20 Summit, June 26, 2010. Black bloc provocations played a major role in demonstrations at the summit. ________________________________ The far-right surge arising in the wake of the election of Donald Trump includes various shades of fascism. This is being abetted by the president and other major political leaders. It has led to a many-fronted crisis to which we need to prioritize effective resistance. To be effective such resistance must do two things. First, it must aim to protect the sections of our society which are being targeted by the right-wing surge. African Americans, other minorities, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people, the poor, and the natural environment are all in the crosshairs of the right. Total solidarity of all with all is essential. Second, effective resistance has to turn the politics of the situation around so that there is a truly massive, society-wide rejection of fascism and the right in the country, in the elections, in the legislative field, on the cultural front, and in every other possible arena. The 2017 and 2018 elections are thus tremendously important. Right now, there is considerable discussion going on about the best way to do all these things. Tactics that make us feel good because they are exhilarating are not necessarily the same as effective tactics. They can, in fact, be precisely the opposite. History teaches us is that the ruling class, the state and non-state institutions it controls, as well as the right have learned the political judo whereby the left’s actions may be turned around and used to strengthen the right and weaken the left. Specifically, we should learn from the history of the agent provocateur, a specialist in manipulating conflict so as to benefit our enemies. Agents provocateurs are not merely enemy spies within the people’s movement. The provocateur has an even more sinister mission, which sometimes has deadly results. What the provocateur frequently provokes is actions that either discredit the left or the people’s movement in the eyes of large numbers of people, or which entrap the unwary into acts that will allow police to pounce, accuse activists of plotting violent or other anti-social acts, and then lock them up. Agents provocateurs have been known for well over a century, in many countries; the breed was especially rife in tsarist Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the United States, agents provocateurs often targeted labor union organizing efforts. Since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, there are many accounts of the FBI, other police bodies, the military, and private right-wing vigilante groups sending agents provocateurs into people’s organizations with the purpose of dividing, disrupting, and discrediting them and then laying them open to arrest and prosecution, or worse. More radical than thou In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a great outpouring of grassroots rejection of the policies, domestic and international, of the Cold War. The Civil Rights Movement, plus the movement against the Vietnam War, brought millions into the streets protesting courageously against the many injustices of our society. The Cold Warriors and the ruling class did not like this, as they saw their interests threatened. So they developed open and covert strategies for undermining the new radicalism as well as the “old left” (communists and socialists). The idea was to make sure that the left did not continue to win over the support of the mass of the people of the United States to progressive and ultimately, revolutionary, socialist ideas. The “new left” tendencies that arose at this time included many positive features but had some dangerous flaws also. One flaw was that too often, a fetish was made of the absolute right of anybody involved in an organization to express his or her opinion no matter how divergent from the main goals of the organization, or to engage in any activity which was “radical” regardless of whether it helped or harmed the cause. This extreme liberalism laid many organizations open to manipulation of some of their weakest elements by agents provocateurs. There was also a tendency to compete to see who was most radical. The competition for revolutionary “cred” was a godsend for agents provocateurs, who actively encouraged such competition. The lack of connections, especially among campus-based white radicals, to the working class and its politics exacerbated this trend by eliminating an important reality check. Picking off leaders and undermining public support There also tended to be a cult of leadership within many radical organizations which put their leaders into a vulnerable position in which they could be targeted for neutralization so as to undermine the whole movement. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, for instance, put a huge amount of effort into neutralizing leaders. The agents provocateurs were deployed in such a way as to discredit the leaders and their organizations, to create splits in the movement, and in some cases to provoke violence which would lead to physical elimination of leaders plus a societal repudiation of the movement. The 1960s campus-based movement against the Vietnam War was a top target for agents provocateurs. There were several at work, but one, known as “Tommy the Traveler” was particularly memorable. He, too, concentrated on enticing impressionable young would-be “revolutionaries” to commit acts that would divide the movement while landing them in jail. Hoover, a crusading anti-communist and paranoid racist, paid particular attention to disrupting the highly-effective African American people’s movement, often employing agents provocateurs to create friction within and between liberation organizations. This led to several murders. In 1967, for example, agents provocateurs, especially a certain William O’Neal, described in a Nation article as “infatuated with weapons,” played a role in the police murder of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton had been suspicious of O’Neal because of his violent talk, but others did not see through him, with tragic results. O’Neal’s promotion of crackpot violent schemes should have been a giveaway. When O’Neal set up Hampton and Clark for a brutal murder by police acting under the orders of Cook County State’s Attorney Ed Hanrahan, the perpetrators were able to convince sectors of the public that the Panthers were prone to violence and shot first, which was untrue. Another example was the crime of Cerro Maravilla, in Puerto Rico, on July 25, 1978. An agent provocateur, Alejandro González Malavé, working undercover for the Puerto Rican police, enticed two idealistic young supporters of independence for Puerto Rico into a reckless act that cost them their lives. One was Carlos Enrique Soto Areví, the son of one of Puerto Rico’s most important literary figures, the novelist Pedro Juan Soto. The second was a self-taught worker, Arnaldo Dario Rosado. Both were on fire with indignation at the colonialist treatment that Puerto Rico received at the hands of the United States (treatment which continues today). They wanted to demonstrate this indignation in some dramatic way. Their lack of practical political experience made them easy prey for González Malavé. He persuaded them that a noble act for their homeland would be to destroy some communications towers on the top of a hill called “Cerro Maravilla.” This was supposed to express solidarity with some imprisoned Puerto Rican independence fighters. The three kidnapped a taxi driver and forced him to drive them up to Cerro Maravilla. But when they arrived, they found they had been led into a police ambush. As the armed police approached, González Malavé identified himself as an agent, but Soto and Rosado were killed, and the “official” story was put out that they had been shot in a firefight with the cops. The right-wing, pro-statehood governor at the time, Carlos Romero Barceló, hailed the police as heroes, and the FBI helpfully pitched in to support the Puerto Rican Justice Department with the cover-up. However, the police had left a “loose end,” namely the taxi driver, who spoke to the press and revealed that in fact González Malavé was a police agent and that the two young men were still alive when he left the place. The police had entrapped the two men, then murdered them after they surrendered. This became a big scandal, and eventually led to prosecutions and the defeat of Romero Barceló’s party in the next elections. But the use of agents provocateurs to divide and isolate the Puerto Rican left has been unrelenting, both before and after that incident. Disrupting today’s movements Such agent provocateur tactics surfaced again during the protests against the Iraq War, and in the “Occupy” movement. In each case, glib charismatic strangers wormed their way into protest organizations, and then entrapped inexperienced young radicals to get involved in plans, which were sometimes really just talk, to engage in violence. A typical case is that of the “Cleveland bomb plot” of 2012. Another is the San Francisco Mission District riot of May 2012, when a mysterious black-clad contingent hijacked part of a peaceful “Occupy” demonstration and turned it toward random violence. In both cases, the purpose of the provocateurs was to discredit the movement in the eyes of the public, which otherwise might have been receptive to Occupy’s “99 percent versus one percent” message. This kind of manipulation still continues by all accounts. As before, the purpose is to discredit the movement, divide it, deprive it of allies, and set up leaders and organizations for repressive action while making sure that this repression will not produce a wave of public indignation, as happened with the Cerro Maravilla case. The right and the ruling class always try to portray these people’s movements as violent, because this is the alchemy best suited to turn public opinion against them. This is the main lesson to be learned from the agent provocateur experiences of the past. In the conditions of our country today, injecting violent tactics into the mass movement of protest undermines that movement and plays the enemy’s game. Loose talk about violence can be just as dangerous. This danger is multiplied by the development of online communications and social media—there are no secrets now. Hijacking other people’s protest actions to “move them to a higher level,” meaning toward violent confrontations, is really a dirty kind of pseudo-left politics. What is needed now is to build the movement into a great wave of rejection against the reactionary policies of the ruling class, the right, and the Trump administration and its allies. Let us work on that basis and avoid tactics that undermine it. TAGS: * strategy and tactics * Violence ________________________________ ________________________________ ABOUT THE AUTHOR [Emile Schepers] Emile Schepers is a veteran civil and immigrant rights activist. Emile Schepers was born in South Africa and has a doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. He has worked as a researcher and activist in urban, working-class communities in Chicago since 1966. He is active in the struggle for immigrant rights, in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and a number of other issues. He now writes from Northern Virginia. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Apr 1 16:42:37 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 16:42:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Out of context but to be noted in the article I just forwarded related to "provocateurs, " of and within organizations. Message-ID: “The “new left” tendencies that arose at this time included many positive features but had some dangerous flaws also." “One flaw was that too often, a fetish was made of the "absolute right of anybody involved in an organization to express his or her opinion no matter how divergent from the main goals of the organization," or to engage in any activity which was “radical” regardless of whether it helped or harmed the cause. This extreme liberalism laid many organizations open to manipulation of some of their weakest elements by agents provocateurs.” It’s also a means of totally discrediting an organization. Not exactly brain surgery, but it’s amazing how effective it is. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stephenf1113 at yahoo.com Mon Apr 1 17:16:31 2019 From: stephenf1113 at yahoo.com (Stephen Francis) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 17:16:31 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Netanyahu truly represents the Israeli majority... References: <603612.14907800.1554138991240.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <603612.14907800.1554138991240@mail.yahoo.com> He's an extreme right-wing racist, apartheid-supporting, land-grabbing warmonger...enough said...oh...and kingpin in 9/11 attack...Netanyahu pulls ahead in recent polls as election day nears | | | | | | | | | | | Netanyahu pulls ahead in recent polls as election day nears A recent poll shows the Likud party led by Netanyahu beating its main rival, the Blue and White party. | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Tue Apr 2 05:22:36 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2019 00:22:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Can Amanda Taub say "Israel"? Message-ID: Amanda is a graduate of Uni High circa 1999 who now writes for the NYT, including as the "interpreter." At the end of this Vox article from 2016 she wrote: "In his speech in the Parque de la Memoria, Obama stood before a wall that bears the names of thousands of people murdered by the government we supported, and said that we cannot forget the past, but that by confronting it we will build a better future. And he's right, but it's a lesson that doesn't just apply to regimes and atrocities that are safely in the past. The United States has still not come to terms with the real lesson of its support for Argentina's military junta, which is that when the US sacrifices human rights in order to further other foreign policy objectives, it eventually ends up on the wrong side of history. Last year, Vox's Matt Yglesias asked Obama whether he was concerned about the human rights records of *US allies such as Egypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. *The president's answer was an unsatisfying dodge. Obama hedged, saying that the US has to press for human rights improvements while also pursuing other national security objectives — to "do both things." Doing "both things" sure sounds nice. But, as I wrote at the time, that doesn't answer the real question of when it is worthwhile for the US to pursue improvements in human rights at the expense of other objectives. It seems that it is easier to make speeches apologizing for our failures to live up to our values in the past than it is to make the hard choices to live up to them now, today." https://www.vox.com/2016/3/28/11317904/obama-argentina-dirty-war -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stephenf1113 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 2 09:47:34 2019 From: stephenf1113 at yahoo.com (Stephen Francis) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2019 09:47:34 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] The weaponization of mass immigration strikes again... References: <1083518560.15352902.1554198454110.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1083518560.15352902.1554198454110@mail.yahoo.com> All major Jewish and Liberal organizations promote open borders (schemes to win elections), which is a mainstay policy of New World Order (((globalists))).A new twist on the effects of this (not unlike the controversies surrounding new Muslim Congressional members) has erupted in the penal system. Supreme Court justices feuding openly over death penalty https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/politics/supreme-court-feuding-death-penalty-bucklew-alabama/index.html and  Ilhan Omar's AIPAC tweet sparks condemnation, including from Chelsea Clinton https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-aipac-tweet-condemnation-including-from-chelsea-clinton -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From salevy at illinois.edu Tue Apr 2 14:48:50 2019 From: salevy at illinois.edu (Levy, Stuart A) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2019 14:48:50 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?4/5_Friday_noon_in_YMCA_Friday_Forum=3A?= =?utf-8?q?_Kathy_Kelly=2C_Voices_for_Creative_Nonviolence=E2=80=80?= =?utf-8?b?4oCL?= In-Reply-To: <5ca370ab845ba_57926b5ae04208229@ip-10-0-0-28.mail> References: <5ca370ab845ba_57926b5ae04208229@ip-10-0-0-28.mail> Message-ID: The great peace activist Kathy Kelly speaks this Friday noon in the YMCA Friday Forum. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [Friday Forum] Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence ​     Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2019 14:26:05 +0000 From: University YMCA Reply-To: kasey at universityymca.org To: Stuart Levy peace activist, Kathy Kelly [https://d2zhgehghqjuwb.cloudfront.net/accounts/7994/original/1436127791866-5rl0vhqlx2m7k3xr-e41092cff6f5a628297f27ac8a1b9a34.jpg?1436127793] [https://d2zhgehghqjuwb.cloudfront.net/accounts/7994/original/SP19_FF_Facebook_Banner_-_kelly.png] Friday Forum with Kathy Kelly Voices for Creative Nonviolence Friday, April 5 at 12:00pm University YMCA | Latzer Hall About the speaker: Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Invite Friends on Facebook This lecture is part of the spring 2019 Friday Forum Lecture Series, "RESIST: building a culture of nonviolence" To learn more about the Spring 2019 Friday Forum Lecture series, visit: universityymca.org/friday-forum This series was made possible thanks to the generous support of our partners: Center for Global Studies, Channing-Murray Foundation, UIUC School of Social Work, First Mennonite Church of Urbana-Champaign, Wesley United Methodist Church and Foundation, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana Champaign, the Chapel of St. John the Divine, and Urbana Champaign Friends Meeting www.universityymca.org [https://d37xavbp7bctlg.cloudfront.net/assets/editor/icons/twitter_color-764861b1b1c04bc199e8a0e48822136a.png] [https://d37xavbp7bctlg.cloudfront.net/assets/editor/icons/facebook_color-55201d0747153804178499fe5f15c2cb.png] [https://d37xavbp7bctlg.cloudfront.net/assets/editor/icons/instagram_color-ecc198153291423b96f31caf2d8751fc.png] [https://d37xavbp7bctlg.cloudfront.net/assets/editor/icons/youtube_color-d40255e26e6dd8301bf80490ae8118e2.png] This email was sent to salevy at illinois.edu why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences University YMCA · 1001 S Wright St · Champaign · Illinois · 61820 www.universityymca.org/support_us [Robly Email Marketing] Click here to view the online version. [google analytics] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Wed Apr 3 00:29:28 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2019 19:29:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] let's end the "reign of terror" against Nina Paley Message-ID: I believe that there has been a deliberate campaign in Champaign-Urbana to create a reign of terror against Nina Paley. I believe that there is a group of people going around brainwashing people to make them believe that she is a lethal threat to them, when the reality is the opposite: the people who are claiming that she is a threat are the aggressors who are trying to make her suffer for having views that they don't like. Like, Reagan claiming that Nicaragua was a threat to the United States, in order to justify arming terrorists to attack Nicaraguan civilians. I think we should try to stop this reign of terror. I think we should hold the people responsible for the reign of terror accountable to the degree necessary that they stop this activity in Champaign-Urbana. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 03:54:13 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2019 22:54:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Joanna Hausmann is a comedian Message-ID: A recent video opinion piece published by *The New York Times* intended to drum up support for U.S. involvement in Venezuela failed to disclose the author's ties to the opposition government, leading to criticism from progressives of the paper's coverage. Joanna Hausmann, a comedian who posts highly viewed articles on Venezuela on YouTube, delivered a five minute, thirteen second opinion piece at the Times Monday in which she claims that the country's leader, President Nicolas Maduro, is a dictator and that the American left are his patsies. "This movement is dangerously glorifying a brutal dictator and promoting inaction," Hausmann says in the video as quirky music plays behind her. "That is the worst combination for ordinary Venezuelans." Hausmann also claims that the country's economic problems are the fault of decades of socialist rule and that the path forward is a future without Maduro—it's implied, though never outright stated, that the answer is for opposition leader Juan Guaidó to take power. What the video and the *Times* did not reveal is that Hausmann's father, Harvard University economics professor Ricardo Hausmann, currently serves as Guaidó's envoy to the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). It's a position that, if Guaidó became president, would wield immense political and economic power. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/02/weak-journalism-nyt-fails-disclose-op-ed-writers-close-family-ties-venezuelan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 17:56:55 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 12:56:55 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] "Hate" according to SPLC Message-ID: This whole SPLC set-up strikes me as fraudulent in the extreme. I don’t know how else to describe it. They have a team of people investigating these groups. They have to know that they’re inflating the danger. They know that when they report “over 1,000” hate groups in America, they’ve deliberately excluded membership numbers in order to sound as scary as possible. They’re perpetrating a deception, because they don’t want you to know that groups like the “Asatru Folk Assembly ” are no political threat. The SPLC has continuously sent out terrifying lies to make old people part with their money. They’ve become fantastically wealthy from telling people that individual kooks in Kennesaw are “hate groups” on the march. And they’ve done far less with the money they receive than any other comparable civil rights group will do. To me, this is a scam bordering on criminal mail fraud. If you tell people things that aren’t true so that you can take their money and then not use that money for the thing you said you would use it for, you’re a fraudster. I hestitate to say that because I know lots of great people who have worked at the SPLC, and good work is done there. But the Morris Dees model is a scam: It finds as much “hate” as possible in order to make as much money as possible. If you trawl through the Hate Map for a little while like I did, you may also feel uncomfortable for another reason. Most of the people they’re listing as threats seem as if they are poor and unschooled. I bet if you compared the average annual salary of the SPLC staff to the average salary of the people in these hate groups, you’d find a massive class divide. Whether it’s poor Black people joining weird sects like the United Nuwaupians, or poor white people getting together and calling themselves things like the “Folkgard of Holda & Odin,” these are people on society’s margins. A lot of this seems to be educated liberals having contempt for and fear of angry rednecks. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/the-southern-poverty-law-center-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-liberalism -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 21:17:36 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 16:17:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship References: Message-ID: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net > Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > Date: March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > Re: News from Neptune for March 29 > > 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 22:31:52 2019 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 17:31:52 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship In-Reply-To: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> References: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> Message-ID: <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> Oh - sorry, that should have gone through.   And while I was at it, realized that I was also holding up my *own* peace posting about Kathy Kelly's talk on Friday.   Both released now. On 4/3/19 4:17 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > >> Begin forwarded message: >> >> *From: *peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >> >> *Subject: **Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval* >> *Date: *March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT >> *To: *cgestabrook at gmail.com >> >> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >> >>    Re: News from Neptune for March 29 >> >> 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d >> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 3 22:34:12 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 17:34:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship In-Reply-To: <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> References: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> Message-ID: <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> You could stop censoring the email list… > On Apr 3, 2019, at 5:31 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Oh - sorry, that should have gone through. And while I was at it, realized that I was also holding up my *own* peace posting about Kathy Kelly's talk on Friday. Both released now. > > On 4/3/19 4:17 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >>> Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval >>> Date: March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT >>> To: cgestabrook at gmail.com >>> >>> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >>> >>> Re: News from Neptune for March 29 >>> >>> 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 22:34:12 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 17:34:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship In-Reply-To: <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> References: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> Message-ID: <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> You could stop censoring the email list… > On Apr 3, 2019, at 5:31 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Oh - sorry, that should have gone through. And while I was at it, realized that I was also holding up my *own* peace posting about Kathy Kelly's talk on Friday. Both released now. > > On 4/3/19 4:17 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >>> Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval >>> Date: March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT >>> To: cgestabrook at gmail.com >>> >>> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >>> >>> Re: News from Neptune for March 29 >>> >>> 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 23:56:28 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 18:56:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] News from Neptune for March 29 In-Reply-To: <174B33BC-F1BE-47A5-9E29-FA0C15A7A19E@gmail.com> References: <174B33BC-F1BE-47A5-9E29-FA0C15A7A19E@gmail.com> Message-ID: Thanks Karen. Yes, of course the Eichmann issue is complicated by so many things, including the complicity, for example of the leader of the Jewish community in Hungary, a Zionist, to save himself while telling his community to cooperate with the Germans; that is, to go to their deaths, resulting in another famous trial in Israel (Rudolph Kastner, who was ultimately assassinated). But beyond that, Arendt's criticism of the Eichmann trial and the price she had to pay for being honest and truthful to her best ability, regarding which I should probably brush up on myself, or just watch the movie again. But whatever Eichmann's just deserts, it was a political trial, easier to see in retrospect given Israel's emergence as an American ally and the subsequent exploitation of the genocide, and the Mossad mystique. In addition, the concurrent hypocrisy regarding the CIA ratline of Nazis out of Germany, Klaus Barbie, etc. This is why I get so annoyed by the focus on the Nazis' conscription of Eastern Europeans to do their dirty work, and the subsequent chest-thumping by the Nazi-hunters in this country (Simon Wiesenthal, and the Justice Dept. O.S.I.) when these minor functionaries are exposed (although never very clearly and specifically exposed), all of which contributes to the Israeli (Mossad) mystique that was so much a part of Israel endearing itself to Jewish-American (and Gentile-American) hearts in the 1960s. Eichmann was a horrible Nazi and killer; but the West German leadership through the 60s was also made up of Nazis. Justice was done, but in a manner that was politically convenient and useful. On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 1:06 PM C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Thanks for the comments. I appreciate how closely you listen to us. > > It might be interesting (as David suggested) to read Arendt’s “Eichmann in > Jerusalem" (1963) in the present context < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem>. > > > > On Mar 30, 2019, at 12:26 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > > > >> > >> I found yesterdays NFN, https://youtu.be/HON84MPaoVc, particularly > interesting and informative. > >> > >> Carl’s new strategy of being positive, in relation to a Democrat, then > allowing others to point out the flaws, is quite refreshing. > > > >> We need to thank Code Pink for providing the information and data > proving what I suspect in relation to Tulsi Gabbard, that of her being a > “sheepherder” for the Democrat Party, attempting to sway the anti-war > crowd, by “talking about war.” It’s about time someone “talks about it.” > However, candidates will talk about whatever they deem necessary to get > votes, and funding. The DNC would shut her down if they didn’t like what > she is doing. Poor woman, she does retain her cool, when taking so much > criticism from those who support war, whatever their political affiliation, > but that doesn’t make her Presidential material, nor is it proof she is > “anti-war” as Code Pink proves. > > > >> Perhaps I misinterpret David, in referring to the “kidnap, of Adolph > Eichmann?” are you implying, that is the beginning of the immoral behavior > of the Mossad, Shin Bet? > > > >> I realize many at the time felt Israel and the US should always take > the moral high ground and follow the law. Just as many think “Truth and > Reconciliation” to be justice. If they had kidnapped and tortured and/or > murdered Eichmann, I would agree. If they had done what the Mossad did in > the seventy’s in relation to Munich, by murdering the members of Black > September responsible for terrorism perpetrated against athletes in the > Olympics, I would agree. They didn’t, they brought a war criminal to trial, > he received “due process,” and the relatives and victims had justice, if > one can ever achieve justice for crimes against humanity. I would have, > preferred prison for life, solitary confinement as we do with political > prisoners in the US, like Chelsea Manning, as I don’t support the death > penalty. However, allowing a war criminal, Eichmann wasn’t “just a military > man following orders,” he was one of the architects of the “final > solution,” to live out their life in comfort is not only an injustice, but > an example of inhumanity, inequality, and racism. > > > > Imagine a future where US war criminals flee the US and take up > residence in Israel or KSA, I wouldn’t be concerned if the Iraqi’s or > Libyans then kidnapped and took them back to their nation for trial by the > victims. It would be more just than these people living in wealth and > splendor throughout the rest of their days as if heroes, as is current. > > > > > >> > > > > > > > >> On Mar 30, 2019, at 09:30, C G Estabrook wrote: > >> > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON84MPaoVc > >> > >> News from Neptune #415 > >> A "Boys of Summer” edition [Links and notes by J.B. Nicholson] > >> Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON84MPaoVc > >> > >> Links to items referenced on the show. > >> > >> Roger Kahn's "Boys of Summer" > >> ISBN-10: 0060883960 > >> ISBN-13: 978-0060883966 > >> > >> > >> > >> George Will on "Democratic candidates are channeling late-night > infomercials" > >> > https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/03/10/george-f-will-democratic/ > >> > >> > >> > >> Michael Roberts on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in a 3-part series on > his blog: > >> > >> Modern monetary theory – part 1: Chartalism and Marx > >> Part 1: > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/modern-monetary-theory-part-1-chartalism-and-marx/ > >> > >> MMT 2 – the tricks of circulation > >> Part 2: > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/mmt-3-a-backstop-to-capitalism/ > >> > >> MMT 3 – a backstop to capitalism > >> > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/mmt-3-a-backstop-to-capitalism/ > >> > >> > >> > >> Rob Urie on "Re: The Green New Deal: First, Shoot the Economists" > >> > https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/re-the-green-new-deal-first-shoot-the-economists/ > >> > >> > >> > >> Doug Henwood on MMT > >> https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/modern-monetary-theory-isnt-helping > >> > >> Randy Wray on "Response to Doug Henwood’s Trolling on MMT in Jacobin" > >> > https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/randy-wray-response-doug-henwoods-trolling-mmt-jacobin.html > >> > >> Originally published in > >> > http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/02/response-to-doug-henwoods-trolling-in-jacobin.html > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Jim Dey on "Polls say progressive tax is popular — or is it?" > >> > http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/2019-03-29/jim-dey-polls-say-progressive-tax-popular-%E2%80%94-or-it.html > >> > >> > >> > >> "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty > >> Complete book: > https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf > >> > >> > >> Tobin Tax > >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> CodePink on "War and Peace and the 2020 Presidential Candidates" > >> > https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/27/war-and-peace-and-2020-presidential-candidates > >> > >> > >> Sen. Sanders on NBC's "Meet the Press" > >> > https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-would-use-drones-to-fight-terror-542522435844 > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> UPI on "Rafi Eitan, spy who captured Nazi Adolf Eichmann, dies" > >> > https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/03/24/Rafi-Eitan-spy-who-captured-Nazi-Adolf-Eichmann-dies/5831553484489/ > >> > >> New York Times on "Rafi Eitan, 92, Israeli Spymaster Who Caught > Eichmann, Is Dead" > >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/obituaries/rafi-eitan-dead.html > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Associated Press on "New Zealand bans manifesto of accused Christchurch > killer, igniting debate about censorship and free speech" > >> > https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3003087/new-zealand-bans-manifesto-accused-christchurch-killer > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Jonathan Cook on "Trump’s Green Light to Israel: First the Golan, Then > the West Bank?" > >> > https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/28/trumps-green-light-to-israel-first-the-golan-then-the-west-bank/ > >> > >> Related: > >> > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT1v4fbljx4 -- Pres. Trump deems Golan > Heights to be part of Israel > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsoip2fsb1E -- RT: Russia, Turkey > blast move to recognize Golan Heights as Israeli > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3segzWTLsk -- Ruptly: UN Security > Council meeting on Syria & Golan Heights recognition > >> > >> > >> Map of Golan Heights > >> > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Golan_Heights_Map.PNG > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Russia Defies US Threats Over Venezuela > >> Transcript: > https://therealnews.com/stories/russia-defies-us-threats-over-venezuela > >> Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MX_LS_NqQA > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s > pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”." > >> > https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ > >> > >> January 2018 Rep. Tulsi Gabbard interview with Jeremy Scahill of The > Intercept > >> Transcript: > https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/ > >> Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/PPY1407171456.mp3 > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> Adeel Hassan, Karen Zraick and Alan Blinder on "Morris Dees, a > Co-Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Is Ousted" > >> > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/morris-dees-southern-poverty-law-center-fired.html > >> > >> > >> Alexander Cockburn on "King of the Hate Business" > >> https://www.thenation.com/article/king-hate-business/ > >> > >> > >> > >> Paul Craig Roberts on "Now We Will Find Out If Trump Is Really The > President Or Merely A Figurehead" > >> > https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/03/25/now-we-will-find-out-if-trump-is-really-the-president-or-merely-a-figurehead/ > >> > >> -J > >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 baldwinricky at yahoo.com Thu Apr 4 02:55:37 2019 From: baldwinricky at yahoo.com (Ricky Baldwin) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 02:55:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship In-Reply-To: <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> References: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> Message-ID: <252379225.16274764.1554346537668@mail.yahoo.com> You could be more considerate towards someone on your own side who just apologized for a minor mistake. But then you would be someone else. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 5:34 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: You could stop censoring the email list… > On Apr 3, 2019, at 5:31 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Oh - sorry, that should have gone through.  And while I was at it, realized that I was also holding up my *own* peace posting about Kathy Kelly's talk on Friday.  Both released now. > > On 4/3/19 4:17 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >>> Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval >>> Date: March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT >>> To: cgestabrook at gmail.com >>> >>> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >>> >>>    Re: News from Neptune for March 29 >>> >>> 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 baldwinricky at yahoo.com Thu Apr 4 02:55:37 2019 From: baldwinricky at yahoo.com (Ricky Baldwin) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 02:55:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship In-Reply-To: <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> References: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> Message-ID: <252379225.16274764.1554346537668@mail.yahoo.com> You could be more considerate towards someone on your own side who just apologized for a minor mistake. But then you would be someone else. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 5:34 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: You could stop censoring the email list… > On Apr 3, 2019, at 5:31 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > Oh - sorry, that should have gone through.  And while I was at it, realized that I was also holding up my *own* peace posting about Kathy Kelly's talk on Friday.  Both released now. > > On 4/3/19 4:17 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >>> Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval >>> Date: March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT >>> To: cgestabrook at gmail.com >>> >>> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >>> >>>    Re: News from Neptune for March 29 >>> >>> 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 Apr 4 03:07:13 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 03:07:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] News from Neptune for March 29 In-Reply-To: References: <174B33BC-F1BE-47A5-9E29-FA0C15A7A19E@gmail.com> Message-ID: Thank you David. I appreciate your detailed explanation. I personally find suggestions of Jewish collusion, or complicity, unnecessary and irrelevant, I’m not referring to your statement below, but rather to those who I see as “anti-semites” when they place blame on the victims. It does need to be understood that humans are flawed, and under such horrific conditions many will betray everyone and everything. I agree, the criticism of Hannah Arendt, for her coverage of the trial, trivial and unwarranted. I understand your irritation with the trial of Eichmann, being used as a political ploy, the whole “lay the blame on a few individuals.” It’s the old “bread and circuses” by providing a facade of justice, or placating their bloodlust. Still I’m glad they captured and tried him, by whatever means, as long as no innocents were injured during the kidnapping. I wish we could see more trials, with shaming, and incarceration of war criminals, rather than allowing them to live out their lives in peace. It’s my understanding the trials of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, were little better, sacrificing a few while protecting the many, to provide a false sense of justice. Discussions of this nature are important, as we need to focus on institutions, systems, and root causes, more today than ever. On Apr 3, 2019, at 16:56, David Green > wrote: Thanks Karen. Yes, of course the Eichmann issue is complicated by so many things, including the complicity, for example of the leader of the Jewish community in Hungary, a Zionist, to save himself while telling his community to cooperate with the Germans; that is, to go to their deaths, resulting in another famous trial in Israel (Rudolph Kastner, who was ultimately assassinated). But beyond that, Arendt's criticism of the Eichmann trial and the price she had to pay for being honest and truthful to her best ability, regarding which I should probably brush up on myself, or just watch the movie again. But whatever Eichmann's just deserts, it was a political trial, easier to see in retrospect given Israel's emergence as an American ally and the subsequent exploitation of the genocide, and the Mossad mystique. In addition, the concurrent hypocrisy regarding the CIA ratline of Nazis out of Germany, Klaus Barbie, etc. This is why I get so annoyed by the focus on the Nazis' conscription of Eastern Europeans to do their dirty work, and the subsequent chest-thumping by the Nazi-hunters in this country (Simon Wiesenthal, and the Justice Dept. O.S.I.) when these minor functionaries are exposed (although never very clearly and specifically exposed), all of which contributes to the Israeli (Mossad) mystique that was so much a part of Israel endearing itself to Jewish-American (and Gentile-American) hearts in the 1960s. Eichmann was a horrible Nazi and killer; but the West German leadership through the 60s was also made up of Nazis. Justice was done, but in a manner that was politically convenient and useful. On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 1:06 PM C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: Thanks for the comments. I appreciate how closely you listen to us. It might be interesting (as David suggested) to read Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1963) in the present context . > On Mar 30, 2019, at 12:26 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: > >> >> I found yesterdays NFN, https://youtu.be/HON84MPaoVc, particularly interesting and informative. >> >> Carl’s new strategy of being positive, in relation to a Democrat, then allowing others to point out the flaws, is quite refreshing. > >> We need to thank Code Pink for providing the information and data proving what I suspect in relation to Tulsi Gabbard, that of her being a “sheepherder” for the Democrat Party, attempting to sway the anti-war crowd, by “talking about war.” It’s about time someone “talks about it.” However, candidates will talk about whatever they deem necessary to get votes, and funding. The DNC would shut her down if they didn’t like what she is doing. Poor woman, she does retain her cool, when taking so much criticism from those who support war, whatever their political affiliation, but that doesn’t make her Presidential material, nor is it proof she is “anti-war” as Code Pink proves. > >> Perhaps I misinterpret David, in referring to the “kidnap, of Adolph Eichmann?” are you implying, that is the beginning of the immoral behavior of the Mossad, Shin Bet? > >> I realize many at the time felt Israel and the US should always take the moral high ground and follow the law. Just as many think “Truth and Reconciliation” to be justice. If they had kidnapped and tortured and/or murdered Eichmann, I would agree. If they had done what the Mossad did in the seventy’s in relation to Munich, by murdering the members of Black September responsible for terrorism perpetrated against athletes in the Olympics, I would agree. They didn’t, they brought a war criminal to trial, he received “due process,” and the relatives and victims had justice, if one can ever achieve justice for crimes against humanity. I would have, preferred prison for life, solitary confinement as we do with political prisoners in the US, like Chelsea Manning, as I don’t support the death penalty. However, allowing a war criminal, Eichmann wasn’t “just a military man following orders,” he was one of the architects of the “final solution,” to live out their life in comfort is not only an injustice, but an example of inhumanity, inequality, and racism. > > Imagine a future where US war criminals flee the US and take up residence in Israel or KSA, I wouldn’t be concerned if the Iraqi’s or Libyans then kidnapped and took them back to their nation for trial by the victims. It would be more just than these people living in wealth and splendor throughout the rest of their days as if heroes, as is current. > > >> > > > >> On Mar 30, 2019, at 09:30, C G Estabrook > wrote: >> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON84MPaoVc >> >> News from Neptune #415 >> A "Boys of Summer” edition [Links and notes by J.B. Nicholson] >> Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HON84MPaoVc >> >> Links to items referenced on the show. >> >> Roger Kahn's "Boys of Summer" >> ISBN-10: 0060883960 >> ISBN-13: 978-0060883966 >> >> >> >> George Will on "Democratic candidates are channeling late-night infomercials" >> https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2019/03/10/george-f-will-democratic/ >> >> >> >> Michael Roberts on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in a 3-part series on his blog: >> >> Modern monetary theory – part 1: Chartalism and Marx >> Part 1: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/modern-monetary-theory-part-1-chartalism-and-marx/ >> >> MMT 2 – the tricks of circulation >> Part 2: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/mmt-3-a-backstop-to-capitalism/ >> >> MMT 3 – a backstop to capitalism >> https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/mmt-3-a-backstop-to-capitalism/ >> >> >> >> Rob Urie on "Re: The Green New Deal: First, Shoot the Economists" >> https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/re-the-green-new-deal-first-shoot-the-economists/ >> >> >> >> Doug Henwood on MMT >> https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/modern-monetary-theory-isnt-helping >> >> Randy Wray on "Response to Doug Henwood’s Trolling on MMT in Jacobin" >> https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/randy-wray-response-doug-henwoods-trolling-mmt-jacobin.html >> >> Originally published in >> http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2019/02/response-to-doug-henwoods-trolling-in-jacobin.html >> >> >> >> >> Jim Dey on "Polls say progressive tax is popular — or is it?" >> http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/2019-03-29/jim-dey-polls-say-progressive-tax-popular-%E2%80%94-or-it.html >> >> >> >> "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty >> Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf >> >> >> Tobin Tax >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax >> >> >> >> >> CodePink on "War and Peace and the 2020 Presidential Candidates" >> https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/27/war-and-peace-and-2020-presidential-candidates >> >> >> Sen. Sanders on NBC's "Meet the Press" >> https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-would-use-drones-to-fight-terror-542522435844 >> >> >> >> >> >> UPI on "Rafi Eitan, spy who captured Nazi Adolf Eichmann, dies" >> https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/03/24/Rafi-Eitan-spy-who-captured-Nazi-Adolf-Eichmann-dies/5831553484489/ >> >> New York Times on "Rafi Eitan, 92, Israeli Spymaster Who Caught Eichmann, Is Dead" >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/obituaries/rafi-eitan-dead.html >> >> >> >> >> Associated Press on "New Zealand bans manifesto of accused Christchurch killer, igniting debate about censorship and free speech" >> https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3003087/new-zealand-bans-manifesto-accused-christchurch-killer >> >> >> >> >> Jonathan Cook on "Trump’s Green Light to Israel: First the Golan, Then the West Bank?" >> https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/28/trumps-green-light-to-israel-first-the-golan-then-the-west-bank/ >> >> Related: >> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT1v4fbljx4 -- Pres. Trump deems Golan Heights to be part of Israel >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsoip2fsb1E -- RT: Russia, Turkey blast move to recognize Golan Heights as Israeli >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3segzWTLsk -- Ruptly: UN Security Council meeting on Syria & Golan Heights recognition >> >> >> Map of Golan Heights >> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Golan_Heights_Map.PNG >> >> >> >> >> Russia Defies US Threats Over Venezuela >> Transcript: https://therealnews.com/stories/russia-defies-us-threats-over-venezuela >> Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MX_LS_NqQA >> >> >> >> >> J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”." >> https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ >> >> January 2018 Rep. Tulsi Gabbard interview with Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept >> Transcript: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/ >> Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/PPY1407171456.mp3 >> >> >> >> >> >> Adeel Hassan, Karen Zraick and Alan Blinder on "Morris Dees, a Co-Founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Is Ousted" >> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/morris-dees-southern-poverty-law-center-fired.html >> >> >> Alexander Cockburn on "King of the Hate Business" >> https://www.thenation.com/article/king-hate-business/ >> >> >> >> Paul Craig Roberts on "Now We Will Find Out If Trump Is Really The President Or Merely A Figurehead" >> https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/03/25/now-we-will-find-out-if-trump-is-really-the-president-or-merely-a-figurehead/ >> >> -J >> > _______________________________________________ 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 Apr 4 06:23:18 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C. G. Estabrook ) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 01:23:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AWARE censorship In-Reply-To: <252379225.16274764.1554346537668@mail.yahoo.com> References: <502024D9-2C65-4D4D-9A37-BA073B046D66@gmail.com> <9268289e-fbc4-7f23-a661-a605ebbb2d2b@gmail.com> <34B2CDAD-44C8-4629-B2F1-67AE88D08F26@gmail.com> <252379225.16274764.1554346537668@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7F890B5D-0099-4F1F-B556-BC4633EC2CA8@gmail.com> Stuart prevents all of my posts from going to the ‘peace’ list and has done so for a while. > On Apr 3, 2019, at 9:55 PM, Ricky Baldwin wrote: > > You could be more considerate towards someone on your own side who just apologized for a minor mistake. > > But then you would be someone else. > > Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android > > On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 5:34 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss > wrote: > You could stop censoring the email list… > > > > On Apr 3, 2019, at 5:31 PM, Stuart Levy wrote: > > > > Oh - sorry, that should have gone through. And while I was at it, realized that I was also holding up my *own* peace posting about Kathy Kelly's talk on Friday. Both released now. > > > > On 4/3/19 4:17 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > >> > >> > >>> Begin forwarded message: > >>> > >>> From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net > >>> Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > >>> Date: March 30, 2019 at 1:21:17 PM CDT > >>> To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > >>> > >>> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > >>> > >>> Re: News from Neptune for March 29 > >>> > >>> 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/5662e778316718747e8cab7ec10ed1ada141b05d > >>> > >> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> 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 kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 09:03:34 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:03:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 Message-ID: <5ca5c86c.1c69fb81.e7eab.33e9@mx.google.com> Why is there an emphasis on male / female at all in society? In some cultures, there is a binary of black and white.Either you are passing for white or you are considered black. But in reality, there are so many skin colors and they are beautiful. Plus the pigment in one's skin, that we are each born with,  is acted on by environmental conditions.  - Karen Medina - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 09:19:07 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:19:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 Message-ID: <5ca5cc0f.1c69fb81.bb934.60f8@mx.google.com> I am separating out the first amendment discussion in my comments.  Nina should have  the right to speak but we don't need to give Nina our megaphone.  Even Carl has been a part of demonstrations against speakers that have been invited to speak at the law school, for example.  We used a megaphone and video cameras and signs, the war-lords used the microphone that belongs to the law school.  - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 09:30:57 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:30:57 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Re: Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 Message-ID: <5ca5ced7.1c69fb81.bb934.617e@mx.google.com> Hermaphrodites, just one example of non- binary,  are quite natural. - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 09:24:39 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:24:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Re: Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 Message-ID: <5ca5cd5c.1c69fb81.bb934.613e@mx.google.com> Most plants are hermaphrodite. - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 09:34:52 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 04:34:52 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Re: Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 Message-ID: <5ca5cfc2.1c69fb81.3bea0.5c43@mx.google.com> sequential hermaphrodites -- changing gender from male to female It happens in several species.  - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 13:54:03 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 08:54:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 In-Reply-To: <5ca5c86c.1c69fb81.e7eab.33e9@mx.google.com> References: <5ca5c86c.1c69fb81.e7eab.33e9@mx.google.com> Message-ID: Karen, while the ascribed characteristics of gender identity need to be questioned, and certainly have been in recent decades, the binary nature of biological sexuality is I fear something we are stuck with as a species. I for one am grateful for that, personal and political issues notwithstanding. Issues of equality and justice need to be addressed at the levels of material production and social reproduction, neither of which has anything to do with the demands being made by the transgender community, which seem to me to only reinforce the neoliberal nightmare through which we are living. DG On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 4:04 AM kmedina67 via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Why is there an emphasis on male / female at all in society? > > In some cultures, there is a binary of black and white.Either you are > passing for white or you are considered black. But in reality, there are so > many skin colors and they are beautiful. Plus the pigment in one's skin, > that we are each born with, is acted on by environmental conditions. > > - Karen Medina > > > > - 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 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 14:38:12 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 09:38:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 In-Reply-To: References: <5ca5c86c.1c69fb81.e7eab.33e9@mx.google.com> Message-ID: deviations in complex biological processes produce a menagerie of exceptions -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 14:44:02 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 09:44:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 In-Reply-To: References: <5ca5c86c.1c69fb81.e7eab.33e9@mx.google.com> Message-ID: David Green wrote > Issues of equality and justice need to be addressed at the levels of material production and social reproduction Break that down for me. Perhaps with some examples: When the Civil Rights movement was in full swing, what were the levels of material production and social reproduction? The right to vote movements? The right to form labor unions? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 15:19:15 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 10:19:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 In-Reply-To: <5ca5cc0f.1c69fb81.bb934.60f8@mx.google.com> References: <5ca5cc0f.1c69fb81.bb934.60f8@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <778787C0-F565-469F-B762-1E5FBBB4B627@gmail.com> I demonstrated against what those speakers had to say, not against their being allowed to speak. I disagreed with Francis et al. on that point. > On Apr 4, 2019, at 4:19 AM, kmedina67 via Peace-discuss wrote: > > I am separating out the first amendment discussion in my comments. > > Nina should have the right to speak but we don't need to give Nina our megaphone. > > Even Carl has been a part of demonstrations against speakers that have been invited to speak at the law school, for example. We used a megaphone and video cameras and signs, the war-lords used the microphone that belongs to the law school. > > - 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 cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 15:22:12 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 10:22:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: News from CJ Hopkins and the Consent Factory -- April 2019 Edition References: <5e950e68615854335ad65654b.6627709691.20190404104529.1c51292bd6.20dd74f6@mail69.atl91.mcsv.net> Message-ID: <9BFA2F9D-1C7A-455C-A2F6-BDB4B9366F48@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: CJ Hopkins > Subject: News from CJ Hopkins and the Consent Factory -- April 2019 Edition > Date: April 4, 2019 at 5:45:37 AM CDT > To: > Reply-To: CJ Hopkins > > View this email in your browser. > Mueller-Dämmerung, Magic Socialists, Anti-Semitism Pandemic, and other news from the Consent Factory! > > So I went and did it again. I blew the March newsletter, so this April edition will cover March as well ... what can I say? It's been a rather eventful six weeks, or however long it's been. As most of you know, in addition to writing satire, and other things, I'm also a paid agent of the Kremlin, and it's been all-hands-on-deck lately as we worked around the clock to blackmail Special Counsel Mueller into denying that Donald Trump colluded with our secret master plan to destroy the USA, and Western democracy. It looks like we managed to pull that off, although today's big "March to Demand the Release of the Unabridged and Unredacted Mueller Post-it Notes" might change everything. I'll be monitoring that from my post here in Berlin ... > > But it hasn't been all useful-idiocy here at the Factory. I managed to publish a few essays, The Magic Socialist (which totally infuriated a lot of Bernie-loving readers), Anti-Semitism Pandemic (which a lot readers were so horrified by that they repressed all memory of having ever read it), Mueller-Dämmerung (which, yes, I spelled with the umlaut), and A Russiagate Requiem (which just ran on Tuesday, and is still making the rounds of all the disreputable sites that repost my stuff). So give those a read if you haven't already. > > Oh, yeah, and welcome to all the new subscribers to this newsletter! And thanks again to those who are supporting my work on Patreon or PayPal ! This Kremlin gig doesn't pay as well as you might think. > > That's pretty much it in terms of actual news. So I just need to plug my dystopian sci-fi novel, ZONE 23, which you can purchase from Amazon or these other fine online booksellers , or physically walk into a bookstore and order, weird as that might sound. Those juicy blurbs over there in the margin are all excerpts from Amazon reader reviews. If you've read it, and have time to post one of those, or just give it a quick rating, I'll be grateful. It has been selling very well (surprisingly well) for an independent publication without any corporate publicity behind it, but my long-term goal is to eventually reach enough readers to turn it into some kind of cult hit ... that, or get it banned by the US government, or some Internet corporation. > > OK, that's it for now. I'll be back next month with more news. Until then ... > > All best wishes from sunny Berlin, > CJ > > ... a darkly comic dystopian satire about being human, all-too-human, featuring two of the most endearing and emotionally messed-up Anti-Social anti-heroes that ever rebelled against the forces of Normality. > "A brilliant dystopian satire worthy of a place alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World." > > "A piercing satire that cuts right to the genetically modified heart of our corporate-controlled world ... the millennials' 1984." > > "Zone 23 skewers the world so incisively that it is almost hallucinatory. Everything you know deep down inside but don't want to see and certainly can't talk about. Thank god that it is funny." > > "I started this book, got sucked into a IMAX3D technicolor hyperdrive, felt every possible human emotion and didn't stop for three days ... don't start it if you want to do anything else." > > "CJ Hopkins masterly depicts the scary, crazy state of advanced capitalist fascism we live in now ... jacked up a good few notches." > > " ... quite frankly, unlike any other dystopian novel I have ever read ... the narrative voice of this novel is just wonderful ... this is an easy 5 stars!" > > " Thermonuclear ... laugh-out-loud real ... a head-on train crash between comedian/ linguist George Carlin and sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick." > > " ... a fascinating read. C.J. Hopkins is about the best deadly serious humorist around." > Share > Tweet > Forward > > > Copyright © 2019 CJ Hopkins, All rights reserved. > You are receiving this email because you know me or my work. > > Our mailing address is: > CJ Hopkins > Kreuzberg > Berlin 10967 > Germany > > Add us to your address book > > 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 karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Apr 4 16:49:10 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 16:49:10 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Interview with Gloria La Riva 2016 Message-ID: * HOME * AREAS OF STUDY * * * * * * * * * * * * VIDEOS * MISSION * PUBLICATIONS * * * * * COURSES & STUDY GUIDES * * * * * * * * * * * PRAXIS OUR PARTY INTERVIEW WITH GLORIA LA RIVA: ‘THE FOG OF ANTI-COMMUNISM IS LIFTING’ PETER GEMMA NOVEMBER 7, 2016 4177 [gloria-la-riva-at-environmental-justice-march] Republished from Independent Political Report [unknown]Gloria Estela La Riva, a labor, community, and anti-war activist based in San Francisco, is running for president under the Party for Socialism and Liberation banner. Peter B. Gemma: I appreciate your time for this interview. You have stated that, “By the end of my first year at Brandeis University, I decided I needed to become a socialist.” What happened? Gloria La Riva: I went to Brandeis in 1972 as a beneficiary of the affirmative action struggle waged by Brandeis students of color. The United States was involved in its imperialist war against Vietnam and there had been university protests in 1968 all around the country. Students were coming together to fight for equality, ethnic studies, against racism and for affirmative action. I learned from the students that they had fought to win the right for us, students of color and White students who were of lower-income, to enter Brandeis with scholarships. Through my political science classes and the radical student movement, I realized that the challenges that my family faced, poverty, evictions, racism, were endemic to capitalism and I quickly became radicalized in my first year. I have some basic questions about socialism and this election. I’ve interviewed one candidate who adheres to the socialist label who says he is a Trotskyite, and the PSL has been described as neo-Stalinist. Can you give me an overview of the American socialist movement? La Riva: We do not define ourselves as either Trotskyist or Stalinist, but rather as revolutionary Marxists. We believe that working-class people, employed, unemployed, and students – I think the great majority – need to take political power, to reorganize society on the basis of meeting the fundamental needs of the people in a long-term, sustainable fashion. Today, the capitalist economy is organized to reward the capitalists, the owners of the giant banks, oil companies, military-industrial and other corporations. I’m sure when you are campaigning or talking with the media, it takes something to break the ice after using the unfamiliar term socialism – is there an issue or two which address specific policy issues that can start a political discussion rather than an exploring philosophical terms? La Riva: I start out by pointing that one out of every two people in this country are either poor or near poverty, while we are seeing obscene, unimaginable wealth at the top. For example, just on the issue of the corporations and banks that use tax shelters abroad, if their holdings were taxed — even at the current minimal tax rate for the rich — that income to the society would amount to $717 billion dollars. But instead of just the basic idea of increasing taxes on the rich under this current system, the opposite is taking place. This is the capitalist system. People who understand this reality know that we need a new system. We have been campaigning across the country and we’re getting a lot of support from people who agree that this system cannot go on. We also recognize the positive aspect of Bernie Sanders’ campaign mentioning socialism, which greatly facilitated our identity as socialists. People are willing to listen and they ask what socialism is. This year we have seen the fog of anti-communism being lifted from the minds of many, after more than 70 years of exclusion. You support the nationalization of “all the economic resources in this country,” and you’ve said, “Nixon used the emergency action in the 1970s to create a wage freeze, but we want to use it to create a price freeze.” Nationalization is pretty much a foreign term to most Americans – how would that work on a practical basis? La Riva: If the people had political power we could for example set limits and control prices or inflation. Because of the skyrocketing of rents by landlords – really price gouging – we believe the rents should be rolled back to the 1990s. Of course, that would take a movement, but one greatly encouraged by a president who called on the people to organize collectively. The billionaire class owns all the fossil fuels under the ground. The pharmaceuticals that are effectively killing people by jacking up essential medicines to inaccessible prices, or pushing opioids on the population, are causing mass addiction and crisis, and more. Under socialism, the people would own these vital resources which working people have indeed created. That’s what we mean by nationalization, taking back all the wealth we produce which has been gobbled up by the “One Percent.” The capital of the banks was created by interest rates worse than loan sharks ever charged – the banks were bailed out and we are stilling paying for that bailout! By taking control of the banks, the wealth could be used to finance a vast overhaul of the infrastructure, whether water, sewage, electricity, fuel lines, communications, roads and bridges, homes, and so much more. The PSL advocates a working week of 30 hours via the introduction of an income guarantee. The PSL website states, “A job should be a constitutional right. The minimum wage should be raised to $20 per hour and a living income must be guaranteed for those who cannot work.” What steps would you have to take to accomplish this? [glr_chavez_mar_del_plata_2005] La Riva: The Pentagon receives almost one trillion dollars each year, whether through direct military weapon financing or by other federal departments such as Energy. When we say to people we meet that the people should have the say in what is produced, where our wealth should be employed, we get an overwhelmingly positive response. When people fight back and organize, they can win. Five years ago, the idea of having a $15 minimum wage was inconceivable to the majority. Thanks to the movement and workers coming together in the “Fight for $15,” cities across the country have been forced to raise their minimum wage, some over time. Hillary Clinton is still against the $15 minimum wage, and Trump’s answer is “they need to work harder.” When this is explained, people say, “Yes, that’s right.” They immediately recognize that it was a popular movement by the low-wage workers themselves along with the unions. The only thing that has ever changed this country for the better has been the movement – the masses of people organizing, educating and demanding. That’s how we plan to accomplish our goals. We plan to continue building the movement. Today, there is no rational reason that every person who is able to work couldn’t have a job and every person unable to work couldn’t have a living income. What stands between that and the present reality is the capitalist system itself, which, as Karl Marx pointed out 150 years ago, needs unemployment. There is a vast need to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, build and staff tens of thousands of new schools, clinics, childcare centers, to construct millions of new housing units and refurbish many others, to carry out a crash program to switch over to renewable energy, and more. These urgently needed programs would provide tens of millions of jobs. And the money to fund them is there, presently in the form of the Pentagon budget that must be liquidated. You are campaigning on a platform that promises to “shut down all U.S. military bases abroad and bring all the troops, planes, and ships home,” and you propose to, “immediately end all covert operations around the world, as well as those agencies responsible: the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.” What is the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s alternative to our current defense and national security structure? La Riva: Today the U.S. has some 800 bases in more than 100 countries, with Central Commands for every continent. It is the military of an empire, serving to protect the interests of corporate America around the world. The wars waged by the U.S. in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have all been wars of aggression. Just to mention a few examples – the Guantánamo prison and military base must be immediately shut down and the whole territory returned to Cuba. Puerto Rico is an outright colony and can never be free as long as it is riddled with U.S. bases. Korea remains divided, long after the end of World War II, because of U.S. occupation and its threat to all of Asia. Africa is the new target of a massive expansion of U.S. military presence. We the working people pay for and die in these wars, while the rich get ever richer. The danger of a new nuclear war remains very real, especially with the extremely hostile stance of the U.S. – which, by all indications, would only be intensified under a Hillary Clinton presidency – toward Russia, which is the second-ranking nuclear weapons power. The Obama administration has approved a new, one trillion dollar nuclear weapons program, even more dangerous than all the current existing nukes. Obama signed a $38 billion military package to Israel, giving them a complete green light to continue the occupation, settlements, bulldozing of Palestinian homes, and th bombings. A socialist government would take the initiative to dismantle all nuclear weapons. Its foreign policy would be based on friendship, self-determination, and solidarity with other countries rather than the current one of threats and aggression against many countries. I call for the dismantling of the military-industrial complex, stop the sales of weapons around the world, end U.S. aid to Israel and support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right of return. If you are successful in dismantling the nation’s national security apparatus and erasing America’s international military footprint, would we be vulnerable to cyber attacks, spying, and terrorism? If our security and defense positions are changed radically, will the world automatically follow? La Riva: For so many years during the existence of the Soviet Union and the larger socialist camp, the people were always told that those who live under socialism had no freedom, that they were under surveillance by their government, but all along the repressive state machinery of the United States was conducting a war against the popular movements. Now we are living under a regime of total surveillance and spying against all U.S. people and worldwide. Just recently, President Obama claimed – without any facts whatsoever – that Russia was hacking the Democratic Party’s e-mails and trying to effect the elections. That is the typical demonization of other countries that is intended to divert our attention from the greatest threat in the world, U.S. imperialism itself. [s-l225]We believe that we should be promoting peace and solidarity around the world. If we stopped intervening in other countries’ affairs and paid reparations to all the victims of our imperialist wars, then why would we have to worry about our security? The people of the world want to co-exist, but capitalism and imperialism stifles that possibility. I have traveled to many countries that were being actively bombed like Yugoslavia, some targeted by crippling sanctions like Iraq and Iran, or suffering blockade like Cuba. It always amazes me that in each of those countries, the people emphasize that they distinguish between the U.S. people and the government, and desperately want peace and good relations. Our people need to understand this essential point. You have pledged to “abolish the police force as we know it and create a whole new one to serve the people, not the rich and corporations.” What would that law enforcement system look like? La Riva: We call for a police force that doesn’t shoot and kill innocent Black, Latino, Native, and other people of color and working class Whites, one that doesn’t protect the corporations and banks over the well being of the people. For this we need a completely new system. Under socialism, community police would be unarmed – it is an outrage that we see in the United States, armies of Robo-cops with AR-15s deployed against protesters, and police who immediately shoot to kill. In researching the PSL, I was surprised by some news reports – for example, your party’s call for the withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations, and ending all foreign aid. How will that help American presence on the international stage? La Riva: The United Nations is dominated by the five states with veto power and particularly by the U.S. It was conceived in the last years of World War II as an instrument of U.S. global hegemony. A revolutionary government would propose with other countries and people that it be converted to a truly equal association of states and peoples. Another surprise for me was your position on guns – the PSL believes the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individual citizens to own guns, and oppose restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns. Will you explain that? La Riva: I support the position stated in the Peace and Freedom Party platform: “We support the right of working people to keep and bear arms.” That doesn’t mean that I think the overwhelming numbers of weapons in the U.S. population is healthy, especially with the proliferation of semi-automatic and automatic weapons that are pushed so heavily by arms manufacturers. Congress has exempted the corporations from any liability in the case of murders or the massacres that we see – that loophole allows the companies to take no responsibility. You said that you, “strongly support the Employee Free Choice Act.” What is that? La Riva: EFCA, which remains un-ratified, called for workers to be able to achieve labor union recognition when a simple majority of eligible workers signed a card indicating that they wish to be represented by a union. It also would prevent a company from stalling on negotiating for a contract, which often kills a union drive. It was a truly radical legislation and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, the whole labor movement, fought for its passage in 2008. But, the halls of Congress are filled with corporate lobbyists who made sure the politicians in their pockets buried it. The current long, drawn-out system of seeking union recognition provides employers with numerous ways to intimidate and often fire workers who advocate for union recognition. The PSL “demands that the Black community be compensated fully, with interest, for the historical racism and wrongs forced upon them by capitalism.” How would the government organize a reparations program? La Riva: The U.S. capitalist system was erected on a foundation of genocide against Native people and the theft of their land, and billions upon billions of hours of unpaid slave labor by Black people. Even after slavery was formally ended, the plantations were not broken up and the formerly enslaved people were not granted the right to property in the form of adequate land. There is not enough knowledge in our country about the legacy of slavery and how much of the terror, theft of wealth, and denial of opportunity that still exists today. That causes the Black community in many cities to remain poor. The Black population has far less personal wealth compared to White families or any other community. It has to do with racism – which is deeply embedded into our society – not always among the people, but there is White supremacy. The capitalists and politicians have done everything they can to foster that White supremacy in ways that are not necessarily so obvious – but are rooted in the denial of rights to Black people. Jim Crow laws were the legacy of the counter-revolution – the turning back of the reforms after the Civil War, the Black Codes that created peonage and re-enslaved people in another form with prisons. Prisons are filled with Black and Latino people. That’s a direct result of the extremely racist notion that Black people should be given a harsher sentence than a White person for the exact same crime, who are denied a proper defense, or racially profiled. As far as reparations goes, we would also start by honoring the broken treaties that the U.S. has refused to abide by with Native nations, and a program of reparations for the Black nation in the U.S. Let’s convene a committee of representatives from all the oppressed groups to calculate all that has been taken from them. It would be an important step for these groups to continue rebuilding their communities after centuries of suppression. Bernie Sanders’ campaign introduced the word socialism into the American politics and it may be a factor in many campaigns in the future. You have stated that, “I was hoping that Sanders would win the Democratic nomination,” and the PSL urged registered Democrats to vote for Sanders in New York and California. Is your platform much like the one Sanders ran on? La Riva: Bernie Sanders represented an era of a more liberal policy that has been totally suppressed in the last 35 years. We agreed with many issues he spoke on, like free quality education and healthcare. We also believe that every person should have housing and food to eat. Sanders did a great thing to help popularize socialism. Of course, we had key differences with him, especially on foreign policy. But for us, the question was how are we going to relate to the supporters of Sanders, millions who were energized by progressive ideas, who waged an admirable fight for their candidate. We had a positive attitude and constant engagement with Sanders’ supporters. Today, we are promoting our campaign to expand on what socialism is in its entirety. Socialism also stands in full solidarity with all oppressed people around the world like the Palestinians, or the Cubans, whose socialist government is constantly threatened by U.S. aggression and blockade. We are running to further explain that real socialism can only come about through a mass peoples revolution, not by the decree of any politician. One news item maintains, that the PSL “considers itself generally on the same side as the on many issues,” and quotes you as saying that the PSL and the Green Party are “not running against each other.” What sets you apart from Jill Stein’s candidacy? La Riva: We do have many points of agreement, and the existence of more than one progressive campaign is a very good thing. But our campaign is different than the Greens in that we are running an explicitly socialist campaign. Only a system where the people take real power, and own the means of production – the wealth that produces wealth – in a planned economy, can really transform society. We don’t believe that capitalism can be reformed. Look at every aspect of capitalism – the entrenched wars and global expansion, the vast production that is only motivated by profit and not people’s real needs and sustainability. Each time there is the mildest legislation to rein in the capitalists, they defeat it because they hold the real power in this system. [images]Gemma:Which states does the Party for Socialism and Liberation have ballot access in? La Riva: Let me first point out that I am also on the ballot in California as the candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party, and in Vermont as the candidate of the Liberty Union Party. The PSL is on the ballot in Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, with Dennis Banks as my running mate, and in Washington State, New Jersey and Louisiana with Eugene Puryear as my running mate. Why two different candidates for vice president? Tell me a little about each one. La Riva: It has been very helpful for us to have two candidates, allowing us to cover more of the country, and to have representation from two great fighters for justice. Dennis Banks is the legendary Native leader and co-founder of the American Indian Movement. He just finished a campaign tour in California, which had a phenomenal reception from the people. Dennis Banks has been continually at Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s encampment with thousands of people resisting to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Eugene Puryear is an incredible African American activist from Washington DC, the co-founder of DC Ferguson, a Black Lives Matter organization. He’s young but has done so much in the movement, including authoring the book, Shackled and Chained, a very important explanation of racist mass incarceration and its historical development under capitalism.[gloria-and-banks] Why was PSL taken off the Florida ballot? On what grounds are you challenging that decision? La Riva: It was a change in the middle of this election cycle, with an unconstitutional interpretation by the new general counsel of the Florida Secretary of State. Othr third parties were also thrown off even though we had complied with the same requirements that allowed us to be on in 2008 and 2012. We are challenging with a lawsuit, but it is doubtful we can be made whole this year, since we were notified at such a late date. If you were allowed into the debates, what is one question you would directly ask Hillary Clinton? And how about Donald Trump? La Riva: I would ask Clinton why she laughed when talking about the U.S.-backed lynching of Muammar Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, an African nation, or why, as Secretary of State, she sided with the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, or why she referred to Black youth as super predators. I would warn Trump that if he were to dare try to expel the undocumented workers and continue to attack Mexicans or try to ban Muslims, he would face a mass resistance in this country that will shake the system and show who really the power. But if I were in the debate, I would also use my time to explain that we the people have always been the engine of change for the better, and that it is vital to understand that the rich are rich because day in and day out they under pay, exploit, lay off for profits, do whatever they have to do to maximize their profits, and in the end, the people have not one guarantee in our lives, no matter how hard we work. I would say that the Mexicans who labor in the hot fields cultivating and harvesting so food is on our tables, are not the enemy, the billionaires like the Walton family that owns more than 62 million Americans because they pay pitiful wages is the real enemy. I would say that the U.S. wars are what have created so much instability and danger in the world, and it is time for real peace by withdrawing our troops and providing a life of dignity for all. These concepts are not alien to the working class – people who struggle to survive instinctively understand this. I could go on, but these socialist and progressive ideas are anathema to the rulers of the country. This is precisely why we are not allowed in the debates, or on the ballot on all 50 states by their draconian rules. And yet we have made great gains in the 2016 presidential elections. We have reached many thousands directly, person to person, and many people, especially the youth, are ready to fight for true justice. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Liberty Union Party have all worked together in a very positive way. We look forward to more collaboration. Thanks very much for this opportunity to share my thoughts. [Print Friendly, PDF & Email] SHARE THIS POST * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 17:36:27 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 12:36:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval References: Message-ID: <24C12F81-051F-4C40-B046-62DFAC374D1D@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net > Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > Date: April 4, 2019 at 10:22:46 AM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > Re: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", > controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 > > 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/3fc7e46a749bad6d15e4d90832114aadac5dc39f > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 17:37:12 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 12:37:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval References: Message-ID: <495B950D-417A-4EB8-B5C3-C0A00E581C40@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net > Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > Date: April 4, 2019 at 10:25:37 AM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > Fwd: News from CJ Hopkins and the Consent Factory -- April 2019 > Edition > > 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/5822c52326fb646093d24516c73c9d80f1542c47 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Thu Apr 4 18:14:03 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 13:14:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 In-Reply-To: References: <5ca5c86c.1c69fb81.e7eab.33e9@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I think the equation of the broad civil rights movement, including feminism, with transgender demands is a specious one; what opportunities are transgender folk being excluded from? Minorities and women have their lives and opportunities structured around the exploitation of labor, in conjunction with the working class. Unfortunately, the efforts of A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and MLK to conjoin the movement to a strong working class movement were unsuccessful, including because the former two were not willing to oppose the Vietnam War. It seems to me that the whole discourse around the selection of gender identity has (not accidentally I think) vacated any notion of structural transformation based on material production and social reproduction. It's almost as if it is a parody of civil rights movements. Given, the civil rights movement (broadly speaking) has fallen into customary ways of thinking about capitalism, equal opportunity, meritocracy, etc.; that is, within the framework of identity politics. But the transgender rights movement seems, in an ironic way, to glorify the capitalist status quo. And they affirm that partly by efforts to silence their critics, such as they have done with Nina Paley. Ironically once more, there is a fascist tone to their discourse, if you can call it that. DG On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 9:45 AM Karen Medina via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > David Green wrote > Issues of equality and justice need to be addressed at > the levels of material production and social reproduction > > Break that down for me. Perhaps with some examples: > When the Civil Rights movement was in full swing, what were the levels of > material production and social reproduction? > The right to vote movements? > The right to form labor unions? > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 4 18:21:27 2019 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 13:21:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <24C12F81-051F-4C40-B046-62DFAC374D1D@gmail.com> References: <24C12F81-051F-4C40-B046-62DFAC374D1D@gmail.com> Message-ID: <94f1b950-5805-8a79-901c-ea0d4532a9dc@gmail.com> The peace list is not intended for discussions.   It is not just a peace-discuss list with more people on it.   We've been through this before.   You haven't paid attention to that difference in the past, so I set the peace list so that your submissions to it get moderated.    When they're on-topic for the peace list, including things like the News from Neptune and AoTA weekly announcements, then I try to put them through. Carl, or anyone, if you want to post occasional (e.g. weekly) invitations for people on the peace list to come listen to what's happening on peace-discuss, I'm happy put those through.   On 4/4/19 12:36 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > >> Begin forwarded message: >> >> *From: *peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >> >> *Subject: **Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval* >> *Date: *April 4, 2019 at 10:22:46 AM CDT >> *To: *cgestabrook at gmail.com >> >> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >> >>    Re: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", >> controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 >> >> 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/3fc7e46a749bad6d15e4d90832114aadac5dc39f >> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 4 22:39:54 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 22:39:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Yemen Message-ID: Yes, this is good news, and while I understand the happiness of those who have been actively working to achieve this goal, I have to ask why this happened, why has it taken so long to halt. How many dead, how much destroyed, how many continuing to die of starvation or cholera? At least 80,000 children have already died, since March 2015, and thats likely a low figure. I doubt the relatives of the victims are jubilant, maybe relieved, but the horrors inflicted upon the people of Yemen is something that they will live with forever. [https://scontent-ort2-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-1/c274.216.180.180a/s32x32/12376821_10207973339760548_1113387025646562440_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_eui2=AeEM3yRpqI7U5n_X2DMVwzZ6m4Bzb699-t4sOAMRU2rqetGRQ1ykRX2u_UB21MGqpQM6Ylq5YQdVVcvG_8_nk54DHYq-GvCbJAxbt6lDm06vqQ&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-2.xx&oh=84172d2ac18ab07047aadc88b8ea0cdc&oe=5D3FC35B] Karen Aram MESSAGE FROM CODE PINK: "We are so happy to share this wonderful news with you. This afternoon, the House had their final vote on S.J.Res.7 to end U.S. support for the brutal Saudi-led war on Yemen. The outcome was 247 to 175 in favor!" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 02:38:45 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 21:38:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <94f1b950-5805-8a79-901c-ea0d4532a9dc@gmail.com> References: <24C12F81-051F-4C40-B046-62DFAC374D1D@gmail.com> <94f1b950-5805-8a79-901c-ea0d4532a9dc@gmail.com> Message-ID: Stuart-- The antiwar movement hardly suffers from such a surfeit of opportunities for communication and discussion, that we can afford to dismiss some. It may be reasonable for AWARE to have two email lists (with different subscriber lists) devoted to divergent if related purposes, but there’s little reason to de-platform people (like me) from these minuscule platforms for posts with the wrong emphasis. Nor has AWARE as a group commissioned anyone to censor the lists for deviations from their supposed purposes. Is it just a way for you to keep from subscribers to the list expressions of opinion that you don’t agree with? No (even minor) deplatforming. Orwell said long ago, it seems to me rightly, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they do not want to hear.” AWARE should encourage, not restrict, such liberty. —CGE > On Apr 4, 2019, at 1:21 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > The peace list is not intended for discussions. It is not just a peace-discuss list with more people on it. We've been through this before. You haven't paid attention to that difference in the past, so I set the peace list so that your submissions to it get moderated. When they're on-topic for the peace list, including things like the News from Neptune and AoTA weekly announcements, then I try to put them through. > > Carl, or anyone, if you want to post occasional (e.g. weekly) invitations for people on the peace list to come listen to what's happening on peace-discuss, I'm happy put those through. > > On 4/4/19 12:36 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net >>> Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval >>> Date: April 4, 2019 at 10:22:46 AM CDT >>> To: cgestabrook at gmail.com >>> >>> Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject >>> >>> Re: [Peace-discuss] Nina Paley's panel, "material reality", >>> controlling the debate .... was Re: [Peace] Panel at UFL today at 3 >>> >>> 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/3fc7e46a749bad6d15e4d90832114aadac5dc39f >>> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 04:30:52 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 23:30:52 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Message-ID: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Dear Carl,  If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list.  - Karen Medina null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 04:30:52 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2019 23:30:52 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Message-ID: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Dear Carl,  If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list.  - Karen Medina null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 04:52:18 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 23:52:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <1DCCB0E4-8A9A-48C9-9174-A45A2350CF45@gmail.com> Karen— As you know, ‘peace’ and 'peace-discuss' have different subscriber lists. Must some things be kept away from tender ears on the peace list? Ostensibly liberal censorship is as objectionable as any other kind. Or don’t you agree? Regards, Carl > On Apr 4, 2019, at 11:30 PM, kmedina67 via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Dear Carl, > > If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. > > - Karen Medina > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 04:52:18 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2019 23:52:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <1DCCB0E4-8A9A-48C9-9174-A45A2350CF45@gmail.com> Karen— As you know, ‘peace’ and 'peace-discuss' have different subscriber lists. Must some things be kept away from tender ears on the peace list? Ostensibly liberal censorship is as objectionable as any other kind. Or don’t you agree? Regards, Carl > On Apr 4, 2019, at 11:30 PM, kmedina67 via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Dear Carl, > > If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. > > - Karen Medina > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 05:02:50 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2019 00:02:50 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <1DCCB0E4-8A9A-48C9-9174-A45A2350CF45@gmail.com> Message-ID: <5ca6e17f.1c69fb81.b9aca.6c31@mx.google.com> These things i believe: * I believe that people should be able to opt out. * I believe that people who want to be on a discussion listserv do sign up for the discussion listserv. * I believe that people should be able to choose NOT to be on a discussion listserv.  - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain -------- Original message --------From: C G Estabrook Date: 4/4/19 23:52 (GMT-06:00) To: kmedina67 Cc: peace , Peace-discuss List , peace-discuss at anti-war.net Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Karen— As you know, ‘peace’ and 'peace-discuss' have different subscriber lists. Must some things be kept away from tender ears on the peace list? Ostensibly liberal censorship is as objectionable as any other kind. Or don’t you agree? Regards, Carl > On Apr 4, 2019, at 11:30 PM, kmedina67 via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Dear Carl, > > If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. > > - Karen Medina > > _______________________________________________ > 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 carl at newsfromneptune.com Fri Apr 5 05:42:06 2019 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 00:42:06 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <5ca6e17f.1c69fb81.b9aca.6c31@mx.google.com> References: <5ca6e17f.1c69fb81.b9aca.6c31@mx.google.com> Message-ID: No (even minor) deplatforming - 百花齐放，百家争鸣: "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend” > On Apr 5, 2019, at 12:02 AM, kmedina67 wrote: > > These things i believe: > * I believe that people should be able to opt out. > > * I believe that people who want to be on a discussion listserv do sign up for the discussion listserv. > > * I believe that people should be able to choose NOT to be on a discussion listserv. > > - Karen Medina > "The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: C G Estabrook > Date: 4/4/19 23:52 (GMT-06:00) > To: kmedina67 > Cc: peace , Peace-discuss List , peace-discuss at anti-war.net > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > > Karen— > > As you know, ‘peace’ and 'peace-discuss' have different subscriber lists. > > Must some things be kept away from tender ears on the peace list? > > Ostensibly liberal censorship is as objectionable as any other kind. > > Or don’t you agree? > > Regards, Carl > > > > On Apr 4, 2019, at 11:30 PM, kmedina67 via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > > Dear Carl, > > > > If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. > > > > - Karen Medina > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Peace-discuss mailing list > > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Apr 5 05:44:32 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 00:44:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] anti-neoliberalism notes Message-ID: <864c8f43-67ab-d3b1-5c57-fc95801852bf@forestfield.org> Here are some notes to spur discussion on News from Neptune. Have a good show guys. Candidates: Sen. Mike Gravel is running for POTUS too https://twitter.com/MikeGravel/status/1113213097513295872 -- Sen. Gravel's announcement, read by many courtesy of a pointer on WikiLeaks' Twitter feed. His official launch date is April 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHs-E2e2V4 -- 27m03s -- Abby Martin interviews NSA whistleblower and former NSA Technical Director, Bill Binney. The interview is good and gets into many issues including war and how the NSA's invasiveness doesn't keep us safe, doesn't protect our civil liberties, and costs us lots of money: - how the NSA takes in more data but couldn't properly analyze what they had. Binney's software ("ThinThread") did a better job of managing this and this gave him a keen understanding of what the NSA is really after. This means that the NSA has information on where future attacks come from (for example) but without proper analysis we're not more safe despite giving up so much privacy. - how much data they take in daily -- 90 billion emails/day, 12 billion phone calls/day (3 billion/day of which are in the US alone) and the phone calls are automatically transcribed. The new Utah data center is very useful for retaining copies of recordings of calls, emails, and whatever else they wish to retain. - that when the NSA claims they don't use the data they collect against American citizens that's a lie. Binney: "They're speaking for analysts and NSA. That's the only people they're speaking for. But they don't tell you that they left taps in the CIA and FBI and DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and they also didn't tell anybody that the 5 eyes (GCHQ in Britain, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealands) also had direct access to that database.". So all the data they spy on is available to many more parties, "without any oversight whatsoever" (as Binney points out). - Russiagate: the Vault 7 WikiLeaks release includes program documentation on how the CIA has software to disguise the true source of an attack to make it appear to come from other actors in other countries (including Russia). - Russiagate: explaining how the DNC emails were leaked (released from within the DNC) not "hacked" (obtained from outside the DNC). And how the connections to Russia weren't anywhere near fast enough to convey the DNC email data to Russia (we're talking about being off by more than half). - and more including some internal and political motivations within the NSA. - Bill Binney: > They [the NSA] traded the security of the people of the United States > and the free world for money. I mean, they still have the same problem, > they haven't changed a thing. So what it means to everybody in the world > is that people keep buying from these attacks that they could stop. I > mean look at every attack that's happened: every one is basically done > by people who are already known to be bad. Well, I mean the issue is why > aren't you focusing on them to reduce your problem and get rid of > [eliminate from suspicion] all the other people in the world? and more about falsehoods spread just after the 9/11 attacks. The only part of the interview I disagree with is at the end where Binney recommends people make their own encryption to preserve their privacy amongst their peers in small groups. Encryption is difficult to do well; it is very challenging to devise an encryption scheme that genuinely keeps attackers from decrypting the correct underlying message. Not letting the NSA have a copy of the source code will not necessarily prevent them from breaking encrypted messages. The only exception I know of to this is what's called a one-time pad but they require a secure channel to share a copy of the key, so they're not practically useful online where strangers talk to each other. Also, if one uses a proprietary operating system (such as those in common desktop use and virtually all phones/trackers) the message can be spied on in other ways bypassing the encryption entirely. So not only is encryption difficult, it's also difficult to get a setup that ordinary people can use with commonly used hardware and operating systems. Humanitarian crisis: Honduras -- brought on by the US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWyS4BY-TfA -- Greyzone Project interview on the 2009 Honduran coup against Manuel Zelaya. This, unlike Venezuela, is a real humanitarian crisis. This coup happened under Pres. Obama which might help to explain why it doesn't get much press today (today's so-called "resistance" tries to make G.W. Bush and Obama look good). Multinational/US-driven patent law pushes disasters around the world, suicides, monocrops, and more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1282XZ_8ofw is 27m39s -- Prof. Vandana Shiva talking about how patent power, organized power (World Bank, US government, and multinational corporations) working against the public interest in growing food helps big agricultural companies railroad major world countries (including the US and India) into monocultures, starvation, slavery, and farmers who lose so much control over their work that they commit suicide (Chris Hedges mentions that over 250,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide often by drinking the very pesticides that wrecked their farm). Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is a major problem here too: Shiva says the organizations and products they give money to are strategically chosen to help sustain or solidify monopolistic control in software and genetics (such as CRISPR, the gene-editing tool) which poses long-term threats against people being able to control their lives. In a way, there's far too much here to be covered in such a short program. We need more people to engage in 'seed saving' -- keeping seeds companies don't own so we can keep growing those crops and doing as farmers traditionally did (collecting the seeds from those crops for planting later). As a result of the corporate/governmental so-called "green revolution" which empowered corporate interests to push monocultures, seed diversity decreased and made our crops more vulnerable both to bugs (which had evolved resistance to the pesticides) and to losing control over what is grown where and how much will be charged when a crop is sold. I don't agree with Shiva's reference to Facebook meddling in the US elections because it's not clear precisely what was done and what effect sending Facebook user data to Cambridge Analytica had on elections. There are other economic and war-based explanations for the US 2016 election and Brexit support that don't require Facebook at all. Also, it's not clear to me that Facebook's choice violated Facebook's terms of service or if this was merely distasteful to Facebook users. (referencing Barbie's "Math is hard!") -- Censorship is hard! Twitter relents on its censorship against French government ads when faced with politicians outcry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sLrtHLWd0k -- France has a law to battle fake news and Twitter says it tried to comply by "banning all targeted advertising in France, including campaigns calling on people to vote". But this censorship had to be reconsidered when faced with outcries from politicians and user demands for republishing posts. It's not clear that there is a winning argument on either side here -- the French law aiming to stamp out misinformation is directly against free speech, and Twitter's bans are also not in keeping with free speech. And it's hard to clearly identify what speech some users want censored. Charlotte Dubenskij [pronounced "doo-BIN-skee"] reports for RT: > Ahead of EU elections, the French Government Information Service (GIS) > launched a campaign aimed at boosting voter registration. But Twitter > found that the "Oui, j'ai vote" campaign is in violation of France's own > anti-fake news law and ta-da through an accident. Twitter posted, > "Following the 'information manipulation' law, we have decided to ban > all targeted advertising in France, including campaigns calling on > people to vote.". The GIS responded, "Twitter does not know how to do > this at this time, and has therefore decided to have a completely > extreme policy, cutting any supposedly political campaign.". [...] After > a lot of pressure, Twitter quickly relented posting, "After a lot of > discussions, we have decided to allow ads encouraging electoral > participation.". It seems that Twitter bans accounts and posts discussing many things it's administrators don't care for, from talking about the recent movie "Unplanned" to ending users said to post conspiracies (but not corporate-friendly conspiracy theories like Russiagate, which always get a pass). Twitter's censorship is so widespread and impossible to predict that users are leaving Twitter. According to Dubenskij: > So enraged are users that many are leaving the platform altogether. The > problem's become so embarrassing for Twitter that it's now going to stop > announcing how many users it keeps losing. Venezuela: Coups are hard! The US-led Venezuelan coup is not going so well for the US but the US is planning for the day when the neocons successfully topple the Maduro government. Fk-KwLfTG1E -- RT reports "The US is developing a rescue plan for Venezuela's economy designed to pump cash into the country through banks, smartphones, and apps. But even though the Trump administration isn't rushing to reveal the details the plan has one key condition" Larry Kudlow, Director US National Economic Council: > The timeline is to get rid of Maduro. I have no idea when that's gonna > be. [...] It's a question of getting hold of, what I call, the machinery > of government. Stateside, the New York Times runs an anti-Maduro video starring Venezuelan-American comedian and writer Joanna Hausmann which fails to mention that her father is Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard economics professor and self-proclaimed Venezuelan president Juan Guaido's representative to Inter-American Development Bank, the biggest lender in Latin America. This is a clear violation of the New York Times' stated ethics policy (yes, they have one!). So even while the Times notes: > It should be noted that her [Joanna Hausmann's] father has a lot to gain > politically and professionally should regime change happen. They don't mention her father's relationship to Guaido or that there is a clear violation of the Times' supposed policy which states: > Staff members must be sensitive that perfectly proper political activity > by their spouses, family or companions may nevertheless create conflicts > of interest or the appearance of conflict. But they didn't care and presented Ms. Hausmann as just another independent voice: Adam Ellick, Executive Producer of Opinion Video for the Times: > We were aware of her father's biography before publication, but Ms. > Hausmann is an independent adult woman who has built a popular following > on her own, by producing a portfolio of argued videos about Venezuela > via her own YouTube channel. Buzzfeed, CNN, and the Four Freedoms Forum all committed the same lying-by-omission when they too carried Joanna Hausmann's views. It's reminiscent of the recent Bernie Sanders CNN "Town Hall" meeting which featured questions from Democratic Party elites (hardly representative of ordinary Democratic Party voters), or the run-up to the first Gulf War under Pres. George H.W. Bush where "Niyirah" (who cried while reeling off a sad story about babies being dumped out of incubators and leaving babies "on the cold floor" in 1990). She was never revealed to be Niyirah al-Sabah, daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and her tale was pure fiction never confirmed to be true. She had arranged to give testimony without taking an oath making it legal for her to lie. Elections: More evidence of anti-neoliberalism around the world -- comic Volodymyr Zelensky beat the US-backed Petro Poroshenko for president of Ukraine in the first round of elections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoVLpvO3q90 -- "CrossTalk" on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpV6tfZ_y7k -- "Going Underground" on this topic. This show also alleges CIA involvement in these elections. Russiagate: Russiagator Rachel Maddow sees ratings fall after Mueller report summary from Barr was published. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/maddow-other-msnbc-hosts-see-ratings-drop-fox-up/2019/03/27/eb59e6fe-50da-11e9-bdb7-44f948cc0605_story.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jRe0kAbLA -- Maddow spent 30 seconds reporting on the result of the Mueller Trump-Russia collusion investigation which Bill Barr published in his 4-page summary. Maddow fell from #1 to #6 on the Monday after the Barr summary was published, a drop of almost 500,000 viewers from the previous Monday. Associated Press' David Bauder: > Rachel Maddow isn’t backing away from her coverage of President Donald > Trump and any connection to Russia’s involvement in trying to influence > the 2016 presidential campaign. The question is how much her fans want > to listen. > > Maddow’s audience has dipped on her two days back on the air since > Attorney General William Barr reported that special counsel Robert > Mueller had found no collusion between Trump and Russia’s efforts. Her > audience of 2.5 million on Monday was 19 percent below her average this > year, and it went down further to 2.3 million on Tuesday, the Nielsen > company said. > > Meanwhile, her head-to-head competitor on Fox News Channel, Sean > Hannity, saw his audience soar on Monday to 4 million viewers, a 32 > percent increase from his average. It slipped to 3.57 million on > Tuesday. One of Trump’s most prominent media fans, Hannity was to > interview the president on Wednesday’s show. Fellow Russiagator, CNN's Brian Stelter, host of "Reliable Sources", told former "Nightline" host Ted Koppel at a panel discussion that CNN didn't care if CNN's ratings went down 40%. Everyone in the room, including many TV newsreaders, laughed at Stelter's claim. Russiagate: When do Russiagators lose their Facebook & Twitter accounts for pushing a fraudulent conspiracy theory? It's not in keeping with a principled view of free speech, but that was never the view social media outlets used to determine what to publish on behalf of their users. Given how some people and organizations have been censored (such as Alex Jones who seems to have been kicked off of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in a coordinated effort) when can we expect Russiagators to lose their accounts? Jimmy Dore asks pertinent questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5ZQYNScqh8 -- Should MSNBC lose their Facebook page for pushing Russiagate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNyfzQ3FdbU -- How about Think Progress? Economy: UBI -- Universal Basic Income -- is getting more press from Andrew Yang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S43Aluf1sz8 -- 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Jimmy Dore's show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZJiZC89HBc -- Keiser Report on UBI which also brings up the Andrew Yang piece below from realclearpolitics.com. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/13/andrew_yang_universal_basic_income_is_not_socialism_is_good_for_markets.html -- Alaskan oil wealth is shared in part with Alaskans. UBI is quite old, UBI is not socialism, UBI is "good for markets": Andrew Yang appeared on CBS' "Red and Blue" and said: > A universal basic income is a policy where every citizen in a country > gets a certain amount of money free and clear to do whatever they want. > So my plan, the Freedom Dividend, would give every American adult $1,000 > per month, $12,000 per year, starting at age 18. This would create > millions of jobs around the country and allow families and individuals > to help manage this historic transition that we're in, in terms of > technology transforming the labor force. > > This idea is new to many Americans, but it is actually as old as the > country itself. Thomas Paine was for it at the founding of the country, > he called it the "Citizens' Dividend." > > Martin Luther King was for it in the 1960s. Milton Freidman and 1,000 > economists signed a study saying this would be great for our society, > and one state has had a dividend for 37 years, where everyone in the > state of Alaska gets between $1-2,000 per year, no questions asked. > > And what they're doing in Alaska with oil money, we can do for the rest > of the country with technology money... [...] > I'm a CEO and businessperson, and I'll tell you, putting money into > peoples' hands is good for business, it is good for the economy, it is > good for markets. This is not socialism, this is capitalism where income > doesn't start at zero. If you think about where Americans are going to > spend this money, they're going to spend it at their local businesses, > their main street economy. And this is a great way to help supercharge > those businesses for the next number of years.[...] > You have to look at what has happened to our economic system over the > last number of years. Where all the relationships that we've taken for > granted with capitalism, where if your company grew rich and successful > you'd have to hire lots of people, you'd have to treat them well and pay > them well, you'd have to pay them at least as well so they can afford to > buy your services, the way Henry Ford said, how do my workers buy my > cars? > > In today's economy, you can create a very rich and successful business > that doesn't employ lots of people, if it does employ people it can > employ them as a gig or temporary or contract workers, and it doesn't > need to pay them well enough to buy the goods and services because you > can sell globally. And so, all of the things we've taken for granted > about capitalism are now changing, and we have to evolve with the times. Economy: Charles Hugh Smith on "Politics Has Failed, Now Central Banks Are Failing" > Are we in a pre-revolutionary era? Here's clue #1: politics has failed. > When the political process can no longer fix what's broken, politics has > failed. When entire classes of citizenry no longer feel represented, > politics has failed. When the system delivers a steadily declining > standard of living to the bottom 80% of households, politics has > failed. > > Clue #2: having failed, the political machinery passed the baton to the > central bank, which attempted to fix what's broken by creating money out > of thin air."Free" money and low-cost credit has always been viewed as > the go-to fix for whatever's broken, because it's, well, free to the > issuing central state and politically popular (everybody loves free > money, free bread and free circuses). > > This political expediency works for a time--hence it's popularity > throughout history-- but eventually the asymmetries, perverse incentives > and unintended consequences pile up and the entire financial system > capsizes. > > Clue #3: America's monetary substitute for political process has failed. > The failure isn't visible to those paid not to look at centralized > failure, but it's visible to objective observers. Glance at the chart > below: the Federal Reserve has announced it will end reducing its > "emergency response to save the world" balance sheet in September 2019, > leaving it roughly $3 trillion larger than it was a decade ago in the > pre-crisis definition of "normal." Economy: Wall St. Journal admits Marx was right, says Oakland Socialist blog https://oaklandsocialist.com/2019/04/03/wall-st-journal-admits-marx-was-right/ > It was clear from the headline alone: The Wall St. Journal was admitting > that Karl Marx was right. They wrote: "Investors Brace for Hit to Profits > as Costs Rise" -- "Increasing wage and energy costs threaten to hurt > companies’ margins just as the U.S. economy slows" > > Their article continued: “Investors are concerned that rising wages and > energy costs will eat into corporate profits, threatening the decade > long bull market in stocks. Economists expect to see a strong month of > wage growth when the Labor Department releases the March jobs report > Friday. Wages grew at their fastest pace in nearly a decade in February, > after starting to pick up speed just over a year ago…. These costs > threaten to push down corporate profitability, some investors say…” > > In his piece, Value, Price and Profit, Karl Marx argued that an increase > in wages does not cause price increases. Rather, it causes a cut in > profits. The piece is a debate with a man named Weston, who argued that > it makes no sense for workers to fight for higher wages, since that will > only result in higher prices. > > If that were true, Marx answered, then a cut in wages would mean a cut > in prices. He asked why wages are necessarily fixed as a set percentage > of the cost of production. If that percentage cannot increase, then it > can’t decrease either. So it makes no sense for the capitalist to push > for a cut in wages either. But that is exactly what they do! > > Marx explained that if wages in general rise, there would be an increase > in demand for the kinds of goods workers typically buy, allowing for > increased prices for those products. Meanwhile, there would have been no > increase in demand for the goods that the capitalists buy, meaning that > those prices could not increase. That means greater profits for the > producers of goods that workers buy than the profits for those that the > capitalists buy. The result would be that capital would tend to flow > into the more profitable sector – consumer goods for workers. That would > increase the competition in that sector, forcing the prices back down > again. > > The ultimate result is that the percentage of the total cost of > production that goes to wages increases. Where does this increase come > from? It must be taken out of the profits! Economy: "Social Security provides most of the income for about half of households age 65 and older" -- US Government Accountability Office https://finance.yahoo.com/news/almost-half-older-americans-zero-210656147.html -- Half of Older Americans Have Nothing in Retirement Savings > (Bloomberg) -- The bad news is that almost half of Americans > approaching retirement have nothing saved in a 401(k) or other > individual account. The good news is that the new estimate, from the > U.S. Government Accountability Office, is slightly better than a few > years earlier. > > Of those 55 and older, 48 percent had nothing put away in a > 401(k)-style defined contribution plan or an individual retirement > account, according to a GAO estimate for 2016 that was released Tuesday. > That’s an improvement from the 52 percent without retirement money in > 2013. > > Two in five of such households did have access to a traditional > pension, also known as a defined benefit plan. However, 29 percent of > older Americans had neither a pension nor any assets in a 401(k) or IRA > account. > > The estimate from the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, is a > brief update to a more comprehensive 2015 report on retirement savings > in the U.S. Both are based on the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer > Finances. > > The previous report found the median household of those age 65 to 74 > had about $148,000 saved, the equivalent of an inflation-protected > annuity of $649 a month. > > “Social Security provides most of the income for about half of > households age 65 and older,” the GAO said. > > The Employee Benefit Research Institute estimated earlier this month > that 41 percent of U.S. households headed by someone age 35 to 64 are > likely to run out of money in retirement. That’s down 1.7 percentage > points since 2014. -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Apr 5 12:04:08 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 12:04:08 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I don’t know what this discussion addressing Carl relates to, but most people have a delete button which they can use if they so desire. The fact that nasty personal attacks against members of AWARE have been allowed on the “Peace Discuss List” because of what is referred to as “freedom of speech, by those who have no interest in war or peace is offensive and one of the reasons I left the Peace Discuss List. When I signed people up, at the market, for the Peace List, during the four years of 2013 - 2016, I didn’t make a distinction between one list or the other, just suggested if people were interested in hearing more “in relation to politics” or “announcements” they sign our Peace List. The people I signed up were those who were interested in discussing political issues related to war or peace with whom I was conversing. We only have one sign up sheet, which does not distinguish between which list one wishes to be on. Preventing people from knowing what is happening is censorship. Of course many don’t want to know, as they prefer their cocoons of security, assuming that voting for the right Democrat every four years, will solve all, given the majority of people in Champaign/Urbana get their news from mainstream media, they have no idea that thousands marched in DC recently in opposition to US intervention in Venezuela, my postings announcing what had taken place were censored by the monitor. People have no idea that only last week hundreds marched in DC opposing Nato. If the good people of Champaign Urbana don’t want to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in Yemen began in 2015 under the Obama Administration, along with our drone wars, interventions in Venezuela with sanctions killing thousands by Obama, and that our interventions under the Trump administration are a continuation of US foreign policy and will do so no matter which of the two Party’s is in power, then we are all doomed. Given how few events AWARE does other than our monthly demos, there seems little reason to have a peace list if we can’t post information related to war or peace. What it should not be is a “community announcement board” for events unrelated to “war or politics.” On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace > wrote: Dear Carl, If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. - Karen Medina _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Apr 5 12:04:08 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 12:04:08 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I don’t know what this discussion addressing Carl relates to, but most people have a delete button which they can use if they so desire. The fact that nasty personal attacks against members of AWARE have been allowed on the “Peace Discuss List” because of what is referred to as “freedom of speech, by those who have no interest in war or peace is offensive and one of the reasons I left the Peace Discuss List. When I signed people up, at the market, for the Peace List, during the four years of 2013 - 2016, I didn’t make a distinction between one list or the other, just suggested if people were interested in hearing more “in relation to politics” or “announcements” they sign our Peace List. The people I signed up were those who were interested in discussing political issues related to war or peace with whom I was conversing. We only have one sign up sheet, which does not distinguish between which list one wishes to be on. Preventing people from knowing what is happening is censorship. Of course many don’t want to know, as they prefer their cocoons of security, assuming that voting for the right Democrat every four years, will solve all, given the majority of people in Champaign/Urbana get their news from mainstream media, they have no idea that thousands marched in DC recently in opposition to US intervention in Venezuela, my postings announcing what had taken place were censored by the monitor. People have no idea that only last week hundreds marched in DC opposing Nato. If the good people of Champaign Urbana don’t want to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in Yemen began in 2015 under the Obama Administration, along with our drone wars, interventions in Venezuela with sanctions killing thousands by Obama, and that our interventions under the Trump administration are a continuation of US foreign policy and will do so no matter which of the two Party’s is in power, then we are all doomed. Given how few events AWARE does other than our monthly demos, there seems little reason to have a peace list if we can’t post information related to war or peace. What it should not be is a “community announcement board” for events unrelated to “war or politics.” On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace > wrote: Dear Carl, If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. - Karen Medina _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 13:01:13 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2019 08:01:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Message-ID: <5ca7519d.1c69fb81.ac9d2.56db@mx.google.com> Whispering to Carl, May your booming invasive domineering tyrannical  voice be silent long enough for the still small voice of the downtrodden to be acknowledged. In Jesus' name, i pray.  In the case of the transgender community,  they are often downtrodden, called names, ostracized, chased down the street, threatened, and beaten up. I choose their side. Which side would the man from Nazareth choose? null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 13:29:10 2019 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2019 08:29:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval Message-ID: <5ca75829.1c69fb81.f304d.51f3@mx.google.com> Do i want to silence Carl?Absolutely not. Do i want to read him on peace- discuss, yes in small doses. ut not in a void where his is the only voice.  It would be a waste of time.  Do i want to silence Nina?Absolutely not. Do i want to go to any of Nina Paley's events? No, for the same reason. She can have hundreds of events, and i will not waste my time going.  - Karen Medina"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great" - Mark Twain null -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 5 14:49:27 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 09:49:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: <5ca7519d.1c69fb81.ac9d2.56db@mx.google.com> References: <5ca7519d.1c69fb81.ac9d2.56db@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <0AF94CCA-B03E-4263-BFB6-999C0EB69A05@gmail.com> Will your endorsement of my "booming invasive domineering tyrannical voice” help me get more theatre gigs? Perhaps, but I’d rather you’d stop censoring it from AWARE email lists ostensibly devoted to anti-war work. > On Apr 5, 2019, at 8:01 AM, kmedina67 via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Whispering to Carl, > May your booming invasive domineering tyrannical voice be silent long enough for the still small voice of the downtrodden to be acknowledged. In Jesus' name, i pray. > > In the case of the transgender community, they are often downtrodden, called names, ostracized, chased down the street, threatened, and beaten up. I choose their side. Which side would the man from Nazareth choose? > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From brussel at illinois.edu Fri Apr 5 16:39:54 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 16:39:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I'm puzzled: I wasn't aware that there were (how many?) nasty personal attacks on individuals against members of AWARE on the peace-discuss list. So I’m disappointed that Karen removed herself from that list. The “list" problems seem never to go away. Stuart has given his reasons for how the peace and peace-discusss lists have operated, and I thank him for his fair service managing those lists (if indeed he does). Evidently, many don’t know the reasons why there have been two lists, and some refuse to know. Stuart has enunciated the reasons many times, evidently to minor effect. I’ve found the peace-discuss list useful, valuable, despite its apparently limited(?) audience. …and the peace list for relevent announcements. On Apr 5, 2019, at 7:04 AM, Karen Aram via Peace > wrote: I don’t know what this discussion addressing Carl relates to, but most people have a delete button which they can use if they so desire. The fact that nasty personal attacks against members of AWARE have been allowed on the “Peace Discuss List” because of what is referred to as “freedom of speech, by those who have no interest in war or peace is offensive and one of the reasons I left the Peace Discuss List. When I signed people up, at the market, for the Peace List, during the four years of 2013 - 2016, I didn’t make a distinction between one list or the other, just suggested if people were interested in hearing more “in relation to politics” or “announcements” they sign our Peace List. The people I signed up were those who were interested in discussing political issues related to war or peace with whom I was conversing. We only have one sign up sheet, which does not distinguish between which list one wishes to be on. Preventing people from knowing what is happening is censorship. Of course many don’t want to know, as they prefer their cocoons of security, assuming that voting for the right Democrat every four years, will solve all, given the majority of people in Champaign/Urbana get their news from mainstream media, they have no idea that thousands marched in DC recently in opposition to US intervention in Venezuela, my postings announcing what had taken place were censored by the monitor. People have no idea that only last week hundreds marched in DC opposing Nato. If the good people of Champaign Urbana don’t want to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in Yemen began in 2015 under the Obama Administration, along with our drone wars, interventions in Venezuela with sanctions killing thousands by Obama, and that our interventions under the Trump administration are a continuation of US foreign policy and will do so no matter which of the two Party’s is in power, then we are all doomed. Given how few events AWARE does other than our monthly demos, there seems little reason to have a peace list if we can’t post information related to war or peace. What it should not be is a “community announcement board” for events unrelated to “war or politics.” On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace > wrote: Dear Carl, If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. - Karen Medina _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Fri Apr 5 16:39:54 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 16:39:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I'm puzzled: I wasn't aware that there were (how many?) nasty personal attacks on individuals against members of AWARE on the peace-discuss list. So I’m disappointed that Karen removed herself from that list. The “list" problems seem never to go away. Stuart has given his reasons for how the peace and peace-discusss lists have operated, and I thank him for his fair service managing those lists (if indeed he does). Evidently, many don’t know the reasons why there have been two lists, and some refuse to know. Stuart has enunciated the reasons many times, evidently to minor effect. I’ve found the peace-discuss list useful, valuable, despite its apparently limited(?) audience. …and the peace list for relevent announcements. On Apr 5, 2019, at 7:04 AM, Karen Aram via Peace > wrote: I don’t know what this discussion addressing Carl relates to, but most people have a delete button which they can use if they so desire. The fact that nasty personal attacks against members of AWARE have been allowed on the “Peace Discuss List” because of what is referred to as “freedom of speech, by those who have no interest in war or peace is offensive and one of the reasons I left the Peace Discuss List. When I signed people up, at the market, for the Peace List, during the four years of 2013 - 2016, I didn’t make a distinction between one list or the other, just suggested if people were interested in hearing more “in relation to politics” or “announcements” they sign our Peace List. The people I signed up were those who were interested in discussing political issues related to war or peace with whom I was conversing. We only have one sign up sheet, which does not distinguish between which list one wishes to be on. Preventing people from knowing what is happening is censorship. Of course many don’t want to know, as they prefer their cocoons of security, assuming that voting for the right Democrat every four years, will solve all, given the majority of people in Champaign/Urbana get their news from mainstream media, they have no idea that thousands marched in DC recently in opposition to US intervention in Venezuela, my postings announcing what had taken place were censored by the monitor. People have no idea that only last week hundreds marched in DC opposing Nato. If the good people of Champaign Urbana don’t want to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in Yemen began in 2015 under the Obama Administration, along with our drone wars, interventions in Venezuela with sanctions killing thousands by Obama, and that our interventions under the Trump administration are a continuation of US foreign policy and will do so no matter which of the two Party’s is in power, then we are all doomed. Given how few events AWARE does other than our monthly demos, there seems little reason to have a peace list if we can’t post information related to war or peace. What it should not be is a “community announcement board” for events unrelated to “war or politics.” On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace > wrote: Dear Carl, If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. - Karen Medina _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 6 01:48:38 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 20:48:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Flyer for tomorrow's AWARE demo Message-ID: <7A26C3A2-DE34-4F48-B15E-FC018931F5E7@gmail.com> [Flyer to be distributed at the monthly AWARE demonstration, 2-4pm Saturday 6 April 2019, Susan B. Anthony Memorial (Main and Neil) Champaign] WHILE WE ARE PREOCCUPIED WITH PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS, OUR GOVERNMENT IS KILLING PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ============================================== International polls show that it is the United States - not Russia, China, Iran, or Israel - that is by far the most feared government in the world. The wars the US is waging in eight countries, and its war provocations against Russia and China, risk a wider - even nuclear - war. ~ Although most Americans are not aware of it, the US government is today making war - killing people - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. They’re doing so principally to control the flow of oil out of the Mideast and North Africa, which the US uses as a weapon against its economic rivals from Germany to China. ~ The ongoing US drone assassination program - called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - has killed thousands of people (most of them not the presumed targets), including American citizens and hundreds of children. ~ More than a quarter of a million American troops are stationed in a thousand US bases on foreign soil, most of them surrounding Russia and China. ~ The 70,000 US troops in the ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in three-quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities have included kidnapping (the US government calls it ‘rendition’), torture, and murder. ~ The US is torturing the people of Venezuela - the country with the world’s largest reserve of oil - in order to overthrow their government, which isn’t following orders from Washington. Since 1945 the United States has killed between 20 and 30 million people in wars (in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, the Mideast, and elsewhere) designed to maintain the world-wide economic dominance that the US inherited at the end of World War II - for the American 1%. It is unfortunately the basis of US foreign policy to use war and the threats of war to retard the economic development of Russia and China as competitors to American control of the world economy - from US support for a fascist coup in Ukraine to US naval provocations in the South China Sea and huge NATO military exercises in eastern Europe. The rest of the world recognizes that the US government is what Martin Luther King called it long ago - “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” With other peace groups around the world, we call upon the president and our government to close all foreign military bases, bring all US troops (and weapons) home, and provide social supports - including free medical care, education, and a universal basic income - for Americans, who have been made poorer by generations of our government’s wars. ~~~ AWARE, the ANTI-WAR ANTI-RACISM EFFORT (on Facebook at ) Write our representatives in Congress and demand US troops and weapons out of the Mideast ~ universal basic income ~ free education thru college ~ Medicare for all Senator Dick Durbin: Senator Tammy Duckworth: Representative Rodney Davis: ### From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 6 02:06:15 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 21:06:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: And if people want to prevent (some) discussions, they censor the peace-discuss list. >>> On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace wrote: >>> >>> Dear Carl, >>> >>> If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. >>> >>> - Karen Medina >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace mailing list >>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 6 02:06:15 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 21:06:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval In-Reply-To: References: <5ca6d9ff.1c69fb81.18669.c198@mx.google.com> Message-ID: And if people want to prevent (some) discussions, they censor the peace-discuss list. >>> On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace wrote: >>> >>> Dear Carl, >>> >>> If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. >>> >>> - Karen Medina >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace mailing list >>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> From galliher at illinois.edu Sat Apr 6 09:55:00 2019 From: galliher at illinois.edu (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2019 04:55:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] CORRECTION Message-ID: <09580D50-9268-4862-B7CE-48E43B9EB2DF@illinois.edu> > On Apr 5, 2019, at 9:06 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > And if people want to prevent (some) discussions, they censor the ‘peace’ list. > > >>>> On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace wrote: >>>> >>>> Dear Carl, >>>> >>>> If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. >>>> >>>> - Karen Medina >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace mailing list >>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>> > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From galliher at illinois.edu Sat Apr 6 09:55:00 2019 From: galliher at illinois.edu (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2019 04:55:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] CORRECTION Message-ID: <09580D50-9268-4862-B7CE-48E43B9EB2DF@illinois.edu> > On Apr 5, 2019, at 9:06 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > And if people want to prevent (some) discussions, they censor the ‘peace’ list. > > >>>> On Apr 4, 2019, at 21:30, kmedina67 via Peace wrote: >>>> >>>> Dear Carl, >>>> >>>> If people want to get the discussions, they sign up for the peace-discuss list. >>>> >>>> - Karen Medina >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace mailing list >>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >>> > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Apr 6 12:17:35 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2019 12:17:35 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Flyer for tomorrow's AWARE demo In-Reply-To: <7A26C3A2-DE34-4F48-B15E-FC018931F5E7@gmail.com> References: <7A26C3A2-DE34-4F48-B15E-FC018931F5E7@gmail.com> Message-ID: Carl Two things bother me, in an otherwise excellent, comprehensive flyer: 1) Israel placed in the context of not being the greatest purveyor of violence along with China, Russia and Iran. China, Russia and Iran need to be mentioned because the USG and mainstream media would have us believe they are, when its us. but Israel? The USG supports Israel. Does the mainstream media as a result vilify them? Israel byway of AIPAC has bought off our government Representatives, they have Americans now obedient in respect to BDS. The American people, primarily the young, now recognize Israel as a US ally, along with the KSA, responsible for war crimes. Why have AWARE defend them? 2) UBI, included with that which should be provided to the American people, along with Single Payer Health Care, and Free College Education. Do all with AWARE support UBI? While it has many positives, I would love it personally, but most on the “left” do not support it for a reason. It’s a Trojan horse buying off mass movements and socialism, it will put many people out of work, all those government employees providing social services, plus its supported by the (right) Republican politicians, do we of AWARE really wish to identify with Milton Friedman, Nixon, or current politician/Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who is now promoting it as part of his platform? > On Apr 5, 2019, at 18:48, C G Estabrook via Peace wrote: > > [Flyer to be distributed at the monthly AWARE demonstration, 2-4pm Saturday 6 April 2019, Susan B. Anthony Memorial (Main and Neil) Champaign] > > WHILE WE ARE PREOCCUPIED WITH PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS, > OUR GOVERNMENT IS KILLING PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD > ============================================== > International polls show that it is the United States - not Russia, China, Iran, or Israel - that is by far the most feared government in the world. The wars the US is waging in eight countries, and its war provocations against Russia and China, risk a wider - even nuclear - war. > > ~ Although most Americans are not aware of it, the US government is today making war - killing people - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. They’re doing so principally to control the flow of oil out of the Mideast and North Africa, which the US uses as a weapon against its economic rivals from Germany to China. > ~ The ongoing US drone assassination program - called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - has killed thousands of people (most of them not the presumed targets), including American citizens and hundreds of children. > ~ More than a quarter of a million American troops are stationed in a thousand US bases on foreign soil, most of them surrounding Russia and China. > ~ The 70,000 US troops in the ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in three-quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities have included kidnapping (the US government calls it ‘rendition’), torture, and murder. > ~ The US is torturing the people of Venezuela - the country with the world’s largest reserve of oil - in order to overthrow their government, which isn’t following orders from Washington. > Since 1945 the United States has killed between 20 and 30 million people in wars (in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, the Mideast, and elsewhere) designed to maintain the world-wide economic dominance that the US inherited at the end of World War II - for the American 1%. > > It is unfortunately the basis of US foreign policy to use war and the threats of war to retard the economic development of Russia and China as competitors to American control of the world economy - from US support for a fascist coup in Ukraine to US naval provocations in the South China Sea and huge NATO military exercises in eastern Europe. > > The rest of the world recognizes that the US government is what Martin Luther King called it long ago - “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” > > With other peace groups around the world, we call upon the president and our government to close all foreign military bases, bring all US troops (and weapons) home, and provide social supports - including free medical care, education, and a universal basic income - for Americans, who have been made poorer by generations of our government’s wars. > ~~~ > AWARE, the ANTI-WAR ANTI-RACISM EFFORT > (on Facebook at ) > > Write our representatives in Congress and demand US troops and weapons out of the Mideast > ~ universal basic income ~ free education thru college ~ Medicare for all > > Senator Dick Durbin: > Senator Tammy Duckworth: > Representative Rodney Davis: > > ### > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 6 16:00:58 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2019 11:00:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Flyer for tomorrow's AWARE demo In-Reply-To: References: <7A26C3A2-DE34-4F48-B15E-FC018931F5E7@gmail.com> <8F03131A-E277-4782-9331-06959EDED252@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7343855A-D1C8-4DBB-92C5-0FD523F163A3@gmail.com> Thanks. There are those Marxist-Leninists who oppose improvement in the condition of the working class under capitalism on the notion that it retards revolutionary consciousness. “Worse is better,” they think, because it brings us closer to revolution. They’re opposed from the left (libertarian socialists et al.), who seem to me to have the better of the argument. —CGE > On Apr 6, 2019, at 10:37 AM, Karen Aram wrote: > > Carl, I agree, its a social service that is very necessary and one I would love, personally. That extra $1,000 in my pocket every month would clear out my credit card debt which is exploding. It would take people off the streets, and allow them to eat. > However, when looking at the broader picture, there are concerns such as those I mentioned. It does need to be considered, debated with a real critique of future consequences. I also note those promoting it now, are also those promoting AI, because they as we, know, its just a matter of time when so many people will be put out of work. > > Good NFN, I’m listening to it now. > > >> On Apr 6, 2019, at 08:27, C G Estabrook wrote: >> >> UBI is a reasonable and achievable demand, as social security and Medicare were in earlier generations. Steps toward it are being taken elsewhere. >> See . >> >> The Democrat party destroyed an earlier attempt to provide a guaranteed annual income: >> see "Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty” (1969) by Daniel P. Moynihan >> . >> >> The construction of Neoliberalism in the 1970s was an attempt to forestall such a thing. —CGE >> >> >>> On Apr 6, 2019, at 7:17 AM, Karen Aram wrote: >>> >>> Carl >>> >>> Two things bother me, in an otherwise excellent, comprehensive flyer: >>> >>> 1) Israel placed in the context of not being the greatest purveyor of violence along with China, Russia and Iran. >>> >>> China, Russia and Iran need to be mentioned because the USG and mainstream media would have us believe they are, when its us. but Israel? >>> >>> The USG supports Israel. Does the mainstream media as a result vilify them? Israel byway of AIPAC has bought off our government Representatives, they have Americans now obedient in respect to BDS. >>> >>> The American people, primarily the young, now recognize Israel as a US ally, along with the KSA, responsible for war crimes. Why have AWARE defend them? >>> >>> 2) UBI, included with that which should be provided to the American people, along with Single Payer Health Care, and Free College Education. Do all with AWARE support UBI? While it has many positives, I would love it personally, but most on the “left” do not support it for a reason. It’s a Trojan horse buying off mass movements and socialism, it will put many people out of work, all those government employees providing social services, plus its supported by the (right) Republican politicians, do we of AWARE really wish to identify with Milton Friedman, Nixon, or current politician/Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who is now promoting it as part of his platform? >>> >>> >>>> On Apr 5, 2019, at 18:48, C G Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>>> >>>> [Flyer to be distributed at the monthly AWARE demonstration, 2-4pm Saturday 6 April 2019, Susan B. Anthony Memorial (Main and Neil) Champaign] >>>> >>>> WHILE WE ARE PREOCCUPIED WITH PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS, >>>> OUR GOVERNMENT IS KILLING PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD >>>> ============================================== >>>> International polls show that it is the United States - not Russia, China, Iran, or Israel - that is by far the most feared government in the world. The wars the US is waging in eight countries, and its war provocations against Russia and China, risk a wider - even nuclear - war. >>>> >>>> ~ Although most Americans are not aware of it, the US government is today making war - killing people - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. They’re doing so principally to control the flow of oil out of the Mideast and North Africa, which the US uses as a weapon against its economic rivals from Germany to China. >>>> ~ The ongoing US drone assassination program - called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - has killed thousands of people (most of them not the presumed targets), including American citizens and hundreds of children. >>>> ~ More than a quarter of a million American troops are stationed in a thousand US bases on foreign soil, most of them surrounding Russia and China. >>>> ~ The 70,000 US troops in the ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in three-quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities have included kidnapping (the US government calls it ‘rendition’), torture, and murder. >>>> ~ The US is torturing the people of Venezuela - the country with the world’s largest reserve of oil - in order to overthrow their government, which isn’t following orders from Washington. >>>> Since 1945 the United States has killed between 20 and 30 million people in wars (in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, the Mideast, and elsewhere) designed to maintain the world-wide economic dominance that the US inherited at the end of World War II - for the American 1%. >>>> >>>> It is unfortunately the basis of US foreign policy to use war and the threats of war to retard the economic development of Russia and China as competitors to American control of the world economy - from US support for a fascist coup in Ukraine to US naval provocations in the South China Sea and huge NATO military exercises in eastern Europe. >>>> >>>> The rest of the world recognizes that the US government is what Martin Luther King called it long ago - “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” >>>> >>>> With other peace groups around the world, we call upon the president and our government to close all foreign military bases, bring all US troops (and weapons) home, and provide social supports - including free medical care, education, and a universal basic income - for Americans, who have been made poorer by generations of our government’s wars. >>>> ~~~ >>>> AWARE, the ANTI-WAR ANTI-RACISM EFFORT >>>> (on Facebook at ) >>>> >>>> Write our representatives in Congress and demand US troops and weapons out of the Mideast >>>> ~ universal basic income ~ free education thru college ~ Medicare for all >>>> >>>> Senator Dick Durbin: >>>> Senator Tammy Duckworth: >>>> Representative Rodney Davis: >>>> >>>> ### >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Peace mailing list >>>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> > From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 6 16:07:19 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2019 11:07:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Pro-abortion TX senators boycott born-alive protections, snub abortion survivors References: <1554563228030.c68b5edb-a60c-4b73-a67b-78404e4b818f@mail10.shared.hubspot.com> Message-ID: > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "Live Action News" > Subject: Pro-abortion TX senators boycott born-alive protections, snub abortion survivors > Date: April 6, 2019 at 10:19:35 AM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > Reply-To: info at liveaction.org > > > > > Pro-abortion TX senators boycott born-alive protections, snub abortion survivors > Action on the Texas Born-Alive Infant Protection Act was delayed as four female Democratic representatives and one Republican did not show up to a committee hearing, temporarily breaking the five of nine members needed to have a quorum and move forward on the measure. Three abortion survivors sat waiting to give their testimonies in favor of the Act. Read more > MORE PRO-LIFE NEWS > > > > The new face of Feminism: Pro-life. Pro-love. Pro-women. > So often the media paints pro-life women as being single-issued, uneducated, and incapable of independent thought on a variety of other important issues. But as this list of pro-life women demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. Read more > > > 'Your life mattered': Mother shares photos of son miscarried at 14 weeks > Joy Amadee Osborne and her husband Chris were excited to be welcoming a new baby to their family. Unfortunately, the baby boy they expected to meet face to face in August was lost to miscarriage just before 14 weeks gestation. Read more > > > Doctor: Planned Parenthood lied to patient about her twins' heartbeats > Without telling her about the twins, they gave her a medication abortion. Unfortunately for Planned Parenthood, and to the patient’s joy, the pills did not work. Read more > > > New Marist shock poll: 75% of New Yorkers reject late-term abortion > A new Marist Poll has found that the majority of New York State residents oppose late-term abortion, despite the fact that the state government recently ensured abortion will remain legal in the state through all nine months of pregnancy if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Read more > > > Pro-life medical clinics get Title X funds as Planned Parenthood sees cuts > The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that The Obria Group, a pro-life medical organization, has been awarded a $1.7 million grant per year for the next three years — a total of $5.1 million — in Title X federal family planning funding in California. Read more > > > Celebrities threaten Georgia: Don't pass pro-life heartbeat bill, or else > Led by Alyssa Milano, pro-abortion celebrities are threatening to take their film business out of Georgia should the state’s pro-life heartbeat bill become law. Believing their Hollywood status allows them a say in the laws of a state in which they do not vote, these celebrities feel their money is more valuable to the people of Georgia than the lives of innocent preborn Georgians. Read more > > > 'Unplanned' actress fires back at movie industry for threatening Georgia > Ashley Bratcher, star of the new pro-life film “Unplanned,” responded to actress Alyssa Milano’s attempt to threaten Georgia Governor Brian Kemp into not signing the state’s pro-life heartbeat bill. Read more > > > Dutch legislator: Let doctors deny surgeries to patients older than 70 > A Dutch environmentalist legislator has suggested restricting surgeries for patients older than age 70 by allowing hospital geriatricians to decide whether or not to operate and continue to provide treatment. Read more > > > > > Live Action News is the publishing arm of Live Action > > Live Action 2200 Wilson Blvd. Suite 102 PMB 111 Arlington VA 22201 > > You received this email because you are subscribed to Live Action News Weekly Updates from Live Action. > > Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. > > Unsubscribe from all future emails > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sat Apr 6 20:16:32 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2019 15:16:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NfN #416 notes Message-ID: News from Neptune #416 A "The Press is Free Except for US Crimes: A Manning and Assange" edition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsUBtO1IJaQ A list of links to references mentioned on the show. Assange expulsion from Ecuadorian Embassy From https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1113966150046683136 > BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told > @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within "hours to days" > using the #INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext--and that it already > has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.[1] [1] https://defend.wikileaks.org/2019/04/03/ecuador-twists-embarrassing-ina-papers-into-pretext-to-oust-assange/ was followed up later by WikiLeaks with: > BREAKING: WikiLeaks now has secondary confirmation from another high > level source within the Ecuadorian state. One of the few outlets doing good reporting on WikiLeaks is RT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gotxLc-Bpnc -- Summary of news on 2019-04-05 and interview with former Ecuadorian President Raphael Correa about Assange and Ecuadorian investigation into corruption allegations of current Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1p31ZnsPrE -- 10 hours of footage from outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London shot and run live during 2019-04-05 after news broke that Assange would be expelled in "hours or days" as posted by WikiLeaks on their Twitter feed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z7dyyCGI6c -- RT: How Ecuador-US ties changed post-asylum granting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Iw8MbPi_4 -- RT: Julian Assange expulsion delayed Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ejp6pKQ44 -- John Pilger: "The idea that Assange is a front for the Russians is absurd." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN9-1mSbO28 -- Ron Paul on NATO's 70th anniversary and Julian Assange Nick Johnson on Michael Hudson on rent-seeking https://peofdev.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/michael-hudson-on-rent-seeking/ Michael Hudson's "J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception" http://michael-hudson.com/2017/02/j-is-for-junk-economics-a-guide-to-reality-in-an-age-of-deception/ Peter Koenig on "J is for Junk Economics" review https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/12/review-michael-hudsons-j-is-for-junk-economics/ Michael Hudson on Junk Economics on "Democracy at Work" Transcript: https://ratical.org/ratville/MichaelHudson-JunkEcon.html Recording: https://ratical.org/ratville/MichaelHudson-JunkEconApr2017.mp3 "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf "Requiem for the American Dream" (2015) Film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC9FBy0-oJw -- Complete film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP5lL5E8H30 -- Film with German audio Noam Chomsky's "Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power" Audiobook audio (the video is one frame held across the entire video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFkSiWGnayQ Interview with Amy Goodman: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlzODoqipT4 Media & Transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/25/noam_chomsky_in_conversation_with_amy Patrick Kingsley on "Anti-Semitism Is Back, From the Left, Right and Islamist Extremes. Why?" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/world/europe/antisemitism-europe-united-states.html Lee Fang on "Lyft and Other Gig Economy Giants Cash In With IPOs Before Labor Laws Catch Up With Them" https://theintercept.com/2019/04/01/lyft-ipo-gig-economy-labor-law/ Andrew Yang on Universal Basic Income (UBI), foreign policy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S43Aluf1sz8 -- 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang on Jimmy Dore's show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZJiZC89HBc -- Keiser Report on UBI which also brings up the Andrew Yang piece below from realclearpolitics.com. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/03/13/andrew_yang_universal_basic_income_is_not_socialism_is_good_for_markets.html -- Alaskan oil wealth is shared in part with Alaskans. UBI is quite old, UBI is not socialism, UBI is "good for markets" Andrew Yang on foreign policy -- David's quote comes from this page https://www.yang2020.com/policies/foreign-policy-first-principles/ Greg Grandin's "The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America" ISBN-10: 1250179823 ISBN-13: 978-1250179821 Grandin's interview with Amy Goodman https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/6/greg_grandin_on_the_end_of Richard Ford's "Canada" ISBN-10: 0061692034 ISBN-13: 978-0061692031 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_(novel) Danny Haiphong on "Get Tulsi Gabbard on the Debate Stage" https://www.blackagendareport.com/get-tulsi-gabbard-debate-stage J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”." https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ Nashwa Bawab on "Beto O’Rourke: progressive except for Palestine" https://electronicintifada.net/content/beto-orourke-progressive-except-palestine/25746 Texas Observer on "Eminent Disaster - A cabal of politicians and profiteers targets an El Paso barrio" https://www.texasobserver.org/2483-eminent-disaster-a-cabal-of-politicians-and-profiteers-targets-an-el-paso-barrio/ Chris Helman and Lauren Debter on "Is Beto O’Rourke’s Wife Really A ‘Billionaire’ Heiress? Not Likely." providing some background on the players and the situation with an objection to calling O'Rourke's father-in-law a "billionaire" when they estimate he "is more likely to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $500 million" https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2018/11/04/is-beto-orourkes-wife-really-a-billionaire-heiress-not-likely/ Empire Notes (Abby Martin) interview with Bill Binney Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHs-E2e2V4 Nathan Thrall on "How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/magazine/battle-over-bds-israel-palestinians-antisemitism.html Paul Street on "Identity Rules: A Report from Reddening Chicago" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/05/identity-rules-a-report-from-reddening-chicago/ -J From r-szoke at illinois.edu Mon Apr 8 01:43:42 2019 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2019 01:43:42 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] More Hotwords Message-ID: Hotwords V040719 A review of some terms currently useful in political analysis & polemics snollygoster, triumphalism, sorehead snollygoster n. Slang
> : a shrewd, unprincipled person > One, especially a politician, who is guided by personal advantage rather than by consistent, respectable principles.
 Origin of snollygoster: Perhaps alteration of snallygaster a mythical beast said to prey on poultry and children perhaps from Pennsylvania Dutch schnelle geeschter Middle High German snēl quick ( from Old High German)Middle High German geist spirit ( from Old High German) tri·umph·al·ism  (trī-ŭm′fə-lĭz′əm) n. > Disproportionate or unreasonable celebration of the perceived successes and virtues of a given group, religion, or ideology relative to those of others. > excessive celebration of the defeat of one's enemies or opponents > 1. triumphant spirit or character. 2. a proud attitude or belief that one's church, political party, etc., is better or truer than all others. sore·head  (sôr′hĕd′) n. Slang > One who is easily offended, annoyed, or angered. — American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language > informal chiefly US and Canadian a peevish or disgruntled person -- Collins English Dictionary > a disgruntled or vindictive person, esp. an unsportsmanlike loser. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, => An appreciative note from one of my fans: “Of all of the neo-liberal propaganda garbage I have seen in the last several years, this statement has to be one of the worst !” ~ Ron # # # From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Apr 8 06:31:20 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2019 01:31:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Interesting new journal on the Left References: Message-ID: <5C1FC819-7D2C-448A-A625-12B35763BFD6@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Current Affairs > Subject: 🐣 The Current Affairs Aviary is now open 🐣 > Date: April 7, 2019 at 2:47:38 PM CDT > To: > Reply-To: Current Affairs > > View this email in your browser > > We Now Have a Facebook Discussion Group > > Good news, everyone: the Current Affairs Aviary is now open on Facebook . Come join the interactive discussion group people are calling “very nice” and “much saner than your average internet web-forum.” Mingle with real, live Current Affairs editors, mavens, and podcast stars, and enjoy thoughtful discussions of vital left issues like immigration, racial justice, and excellent birds. Disagree with something we said on the podcast? Have a question about an article? Want to know what color cravat Nathan J. Robinson is wearing today? The Current Affairs Aviary is the perfect place to do some of those things! > A Selection of Fine Idea-Steaks > > Food for thought from Current Affairs editors, contributors and other scoundrels. > Always well done. > > Joe Biden, Glenn Greenwald, and Our Dear Friend Matt Yglesias > > Here’s the thing: The fact that a person’s touch, in a wholly different context, did not make you personally uncomfortable says literally nothing whatsoever about whether this person has ever made another person uncomfortable. > ~Vanessa A. Bee > > Joe Biden’s “tactile politics” have sparked one of the more baffling debates in recent memory. “How Not to Talk About Uncomfortable Shoulder Rubs ” by Current Affairs social media editor Vanessa A. Bee clarifies what shouldn’t need to be clarified: there’s no defense for Biden’s long history of unwanted sexualized actions. > > Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept is one of the distinguished—and controversial—journalists alive today. In “Glenn Greenwald Talks About Animals ,” he joins Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson to talk about industrial farming, hidden atrocities, and opening your heart to animals. > > “Why Bother Trying to Persuade Anyone? .” asked the congealed lump of oatmeal that writes about politics for Vox under the name of Matt Yglesias, following the publication of Robinson’s exhaustive deconstruction of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Here, Robinson defends his controversial view that socialists should try to explain their ideas to people who don’t already share them. > The Editors Share Their Thoughts > > On the Topic of: > For the next mailbag, what question are you secretly hoping > a caller will ask? > > INTERNET HEARTTHROB OREN NIMNI (LEGAL EDITOR): I want people to ask cute personal questions about Nick > > LYTA GOLD (AMUSEMENTS EDITOR): I am secretly hoping a non-man will call in and ask literally anything! > > SPARKY ABRAHAM (FINANCE EDITOR): Yeah both of those combined please > > NICK SLATER (NEWSLETTER EDITOR): if any of our female fans would like to know the details of my cats’ napping habits, i would be happy to oblige > > AISLING MCCREA (CONTRIBUTING EDITOR):my dishonest answer would be: I hope someone will ask how they can make the world a better place. > > my honest answer would be: I hope someone will ask when the newer members of the crew will get a beautiful apocalizzy portrait to match the others > > BRIANNA RENNIX (SENIOR EDITOR): I am secretly hoping someone calls in to THREATEN US so that we can all make brave defiant speeches on the air, preferably in weird transatlantic accents > > SLATER: you don’t really think someone would want to steal the Current Affairs gold, do you? > > GOLD: we will DEFEND our jokes at the expense of men, whatever the cost may be > > RENNIX: We will fight on the beaches, in the swimwear that makes us feel most comfortable! Mine will cover every inch of my body! > > GOLD: we shall not flag or fail, we shall not cease being accused of alienating the left (which has been coded masculine for some reason) > > NATHAN J. ROBINSON (EDITOR-IN-CHIEF): Oren and I have been waiting years to be asked to explain the groundbreaking theories in our book "Blueprints For A Sparkling Tomorrow" but for some reason the phone never rings > The Current Affairs Cinematic Universe > > Editors Nathan J. Robinson and Brianna Rennix explain all the ways rightwing pundits like Carlson, Coulter, and Frum are wrong about immigration. > Hear Ye, Hear Ye! > > Organizing vs. Mobilizing and a Pleasant Chat With Virgil Texas  > > Legendary labor organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey has helped build successful grassroots labor movements around the world. Her conversation with Current Affairs podmaster general Pete Davis is a can’t-miss guide to left organizing (and a wildly entertaining look at the difference between performative activism and effective agitation). In other news, Chapo Trap House  co-host Virgil Texas swoops into the Bird Feed like a vengeful osprey of truth to talk with Davis about the origins of Chapo, the history of rightwing media, and the blurry lines betwen politics and comedy. > > “You want to read the news, you want to be informed, so OK, here’s the newspaper, here’s this fucking opinion columnist, and you don’t really get a choice in the matter… [but] when it becomes a matter of analytics, most of these people who are dogshit writers with bad opinions are not being read at all. Like, you don’t have to live in fear of these people, because they don’t matter.” > ~Virgil Texas > > A Friendly Reminder: Our Patreon subscribers get early bird access to all new episodes (plus a scrumptious feed of secret subscriber-only shows), but we can also be found on iTunes , Stitcher , and Simplecast . To listen on an Android device, search “Current Affairs podcast” on Google Podcasts. > Put the 'Socialist' > Back in 'Socialist Social Media' > > What Are The Good Things You’ll See When You Follow Us On Twitter? > > Many “news outlets” offer their social media followers nothing but sensational headlines, lazy thinkpieces, and never-ending FOMO. Current Affairs, on the other hand, can offer you sidesplitting reviews of fascist art , thoughtful musings on the topic of feminist utopias , and satirical CEO diaries so droll and uncannily accurate that you will weep for their nonexistent children. > The Loud and Irksome Hissings > of Our Beloved Readers > > > What Should the Left Do About the Federal Budget? > > We welcome all submissions at <>newsletter at currentaffairs.org . Please include “For the Newsletter” in your subject line. For especially urgent opinions, we encourage you to use 72-point all caps and multiple exclamation points, as our eyesight is rather poor. > > Dear Current Affairs, > > I wanted to get your thoughts on the federal budget. More specifically, what should the left say to those that call for a balanced budget? Should the left advocate for a balanced budget? Should the left be concerned about deficit spending or the national debt? Or are such concerns conservative boogeymen? In my experience, I have seen both parties lambast excessive government spending while in opposition only to conveniently forget such concerns while in government. I doubt that the national debt will be a large issue in the 2020 election; is this a good or bad thing? I'd love to see an article analyzing the impact and modern relevance of Heritage Foundation-esque budget hawks. > > Regards, > Jackson Burow > > Dear Jackson, > > These are all excellent questions, we think, and our resident civics expert Pete Davis is currently plotting some sort of accessible, comprehensive guide to the topic. Stay tuned and, if you like what you see, consider hectoring your friends and family into subscribing to our print magazine , where all our budget-related graphs and charts are up to 475% more readable than the leading competition. ~CA > > Min-terview of the Week: > Aisling McCrea, Contributing Editor > > Here are some facts about new Current Affairs contributing editor Aisling McCrea: her name is pronounced “ash-ling,” she speaks Japanese, and she has written eloquently about Starbucks , Dave Rubin , and the illusionary comforts of self-care .These are not the only facts about her, however — there are dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of more Aisling-related information units that haven’t been covered in this paragraph. While sadly we cannot include all of them in this min-terview, we hope the following insights into her worldview will temporarily satiate your curiosity. > > 1) Using five song titles or fewer, how would you describe your personal vision of socialism? > I'm really bad at remembering songs, films, stuff like that on the spot. If people ask me for favourites, recommendations etcetera, I always go blank, and it makes me look very boring. But I'd say... > > Ants Invasion, by Adam and the Ants, because ants are small but incredibly intelligent and powerful when they team up; also because Adam Ant called his band Adam and the Ants and then wrote a bunch of songs with 'Ant' in the title, which shows he doesn't give a crap about looking cool so long as he gets to talk about ants, and I think that's a good attitude to have in life. > > Let's Stay Together by Al Green, because solidarity. > > Big A Little A by Crass, because everyone should be at least a little bit anarchist. > > Toy Solider by Britney Spears, because militarism is silly. > > And Firetruck by the K-Pop band NCT127, because the cornerstone of a good society is well-funded and thought out infrastructure and services. I know nothing about infrastructure, but I love hearing socialists who care about transport and the small details of how services work and stuff like that. Put those guys in charge. > > 2) Did you grow up on the left? What was the first thing that made you think, “Hmm, perhaps capitalism is not good?” > My family weren't political, no-one around me really was. I spent maybe two months of my life thinking I supported the Conservative Party - I was aged about 9 and didn't know anything about the parties except that 'Conservatives' was the longer name, and therefore to my mind, more sophisticated. Age 10 I read a copy of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore that I randomly found somewhere, and decided that I was probably a 'liberal'. Age 11 the Iraq war happened, and although my analysis was not massively insightful, I noticed lots of clever people on TV and in newspapers were saying it was bad, and no-one seemed to have a good answer to them. Age 16 the financial crash happened and I was angry and panicky for my future, but still more a Paul Krugman-type liberal who thought things just needed more regulation. I don't think I had a single 'a-ha' moment, but somewhere in my late teens and early twenties I joined the dots that in every stage and aspect of my life, the people who I thought were supposed to be in charge were massively failing me and the people around me, and that drove me left. I didn't read theory or know much about all the different schools until a few years later, I just stuck with 'general left'. > > 3) Are there are particular tendencies on the left that you adore, despise, or feel vaguely conflicted about? > I'm not massively fussy about tendencies - if someone's good to people, doesn't alienate others, has good basic ideas and doesn't believe anything too obviously egregious, I'm not going to be like "I can't believe their stance on Bakunin!" Whatever works for ya. > > I've come around a lot in recent years to religious leftism. I'm not religious and I went through a snotty atheist phase in my teens, but I've met a fair few people inspired by liberation theology and I think I've got a bit more of a nuanced view on it now. Also, Quakers are extremely solid. Especially in the UK, they were a huge part of securing workers' rights and women's rights, abolition of slavery, anti-poverty initiatives. Still are to this day. Never heard of a bad Quaker. > > 4) If you could telepathically beam the contents of one book into the minds of everyone on Earth, what would it be? > Oh god, I told you I'm bad at this, erm... > > oh I've got it > > Matt's Million > > It was one of my favourite books as a kid, they made a TV series out of it too. it's about a kid who invents a video game and becomes rich. and at first he buys all the toys he wants and stuff, but then he realises it's alienating him from his friends and family and he's not happy, so instead he pays off his mum's mortgage so she can go to college and lives a comfortable but basically normal life. > > 5) You’re a vocal supporter of adult-humans-meowing-like-cats-in-public-for-no-apparent-reason. Has it been difficult to speak your truth? > I wouldn't say I'm a 'vocal supporter' of adults meowing in public. I simply think it's important that people know their rights. It's not illegal to meow at people. Look it up. No court in the land can convict you. > Share This Newsletter With a Friend > Who Hasn’t Given Us Money Yet > > Should you have any left-leaning friends with some disposable income and a habit of making impulse purchases, please forward this newsletter to them, along with a humble plea to subscribe to our print magazine (or just donate for no particular reason). > > > > Copyright © 2019 Current Affairs, All rights reserved. > You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. > > Our mailing address is: > Current Affairs > 631 St. Charles Aveneue > New Orleans, LA 70130 > > Add us to your address book > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Apr 8 07:13:10 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2019 02:13:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?Fwd=3A_The_Israeli_spring_won=E2=80=99t?= =?utf-8?q?_happen_this_week_=28and_that_should_cause_reflection=29?= References: <8d38ef747c2061bb9c6137961.3ee9067898.20190407195927.64e7905f3e.906b3dd1@mail207.suw101.mcdlv.net> Message-ID: <9FDF0313-02FE-4C6C-B7A4-4AEC103B38A5@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Scott Roth, Mondoweiss Publisher > Subject: The Israeli spring won’t happen this week (and that should cause reflection) > Date: April 7, 2019 at 2:59:35 PM CDT > To: cge ESTABROOK > Reply-To: Scott Roth, Mondoweiss Publisher > > > April 7, 2019 > > Dear cge, > > Israelis will go to the polls this Tuesday to elect their next parliament. While the race is one of the tightest in recent memory, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to receive campaign gifts from various world leaders. But the most important thing to keep in mind in the run up to Tuesday is that even if a new leadership emerges in Israel, there won’t be any substantive change in Israel’s policies towards the occupation or in how it relates to the Palestinians. The status quo will continue along with all the horror it entails. > In a refreshing change from the typical tiresome and disappointing pandering by our politicians when it comes to Israel, a New York City councilman was removed from a committee for making anti-Palestinian remarks. A move like this would have been unthinkable just a short time ago, and this is further evidence that the politics around this issue is changing. There will be serious pushback by Israel and its advocates to make sure that this change doesn’t come to fruition. This is why it’s a critical time, and we must stay on the offensive. > Thanks for reading, > > > > > > > > Scott Roth > Publisher, Mondoweiss > > > Advertising > > > Share > Tweet > Forward > Copyright © 2019 Mondoweiss, All rights reserved. > You are receiving this email because you signed up for it on our website Mondoweiss.net . > > Our mailing address is: > Mondoweiss > c/o The Center for Economic Research and Social Change > PO Box 180165 > Chicago, IL 60618 > > Add us to your address book > > If you were sent this newsletter you can sign up here . > > unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences > > We handle your data responsibly. Learn More. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Mon Apr 8 17:56:26 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2019 12:56:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists Message-ID: <008901d4ee34$636f5de0$2a4e19a0$@comcast.net> " In May 2014, after the violent U.S. backed coup in Ukraine that ousted the democratically elected President, Right Sector and an assortment of far-right forces banded together to massacre their opponents in Odessa, attacking a pro-separatist protest camp with iron pipes then burning the fleeing protesters alive after they took shelter in a local trade union building. Over 40 pro-separatist Ukrainian citizens were consumed in the flames. The U.S. and EU studiously looked the other way, legitimizing the violence and setting the stage for more. " Is it any wonder why Crimea voted to succeed from Ukraine and become part of Russia ? Of course the western corporate owned media tries to imply that it wasn't a free and fair referendum vote, but here are poll results conducted after the referendum by Gallup and Pew polling companies and there is also polling data going back to the early 2000's that shows that there was majority support for this even then....... >From Wikipedia ....." According to the Gallup's survey performed on April 21-27, 82.8% of Crimean people consider the referendum results reflecting most Crimeans' views, [154] and 73.9% of Crimeans say Crimea's becoming part of Russia will make life better for themselves and their families, while 5.5% disagree. [154] According to survey carried out by Pew Research Center in April 2014, majority of Crimean residents say the referendum was free and fair (91%) and that the government in Kyiv ought to recognize the results of the vote (88%). [155] " US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists November 17, 2018 * 100 Comments Save Short-sighted U.S. foreign policy that backs jihadists in the Middle East and neo-Nazis in Ukraine is once again blowing back on the United States, as Max Blumenthal explains. FBI: Azov Battalion Trained Rise Above Movement By Max Blumenthal https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Max-Headshot-130x130.j pgLast month, an unsealed FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia officially incorporated into the country's national guard. The training took place after the white supremacist gang participated in violent riots in Huntington Beach and Berkeley, California and Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The indictment stated that the Azov Battalion "is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations." After a wave of racist violence across America that culminated in the massacre of twelve Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the revelation that violent white supremacists have been traveling abroad for training and ideological indoctrination with a well-armed neo-Nazi militia should cause extreme alarm. Not only are white supremacists from across the West flocking to Ukraine to learn from the combat experience of their fascist brothers-in-arms, they are doing so openly - chronicling their experiences on social media before they bring their lessons back home. But U.S. law enforcement has done nothing so far to restrict the flow of right-wing American extremists to Azov's bases. There is one likely explanation for the U.S. government's hands-off approach to Azov recruitment: the extremist militia is fighting pro-Russian separatists as a front-line proxy of Washington. In fact, the United States has directly armed the Azov Battalion, forking over anti-tank rocket launchers and even sending a team of Army officers to meet in the field with Azov commanders in 2017. Though Congress passed legislation this year forbidding military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology, the Trump administration's authorization of $200 million in offensive weaponry and aid to the Ukrainian military makes it likely new stores of weapons will wind up the extremist regiment's hands. When queried by reporters about evidence of American military training of Azov personnel, multiple U.S. army spokespersons admitted there was no mechanism in place to prevent that from happening. https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/1599px-Soldiers_in_fro nt_of_building_with_swastika-700x467.jpg Two soldiers from the Azov Battalion in front of a building with Nazi symbol at the battalion's base in Urzuf. (Carl Ridderstråle-Wikimedia Commons) Today, Azov boasts combat experience, unlimited access to light weapons, and supporters honeycombed throughout the upper echelons of Ukraine's military and government. No longer just a militia, the organization has developed into a political juggernaut that can overpower Ukraine's government. Two years ago, the group flexed its muscle on the streets of Kiev, bringing out 10,000 supporters to demand that the government bend to their will or face a coup. "With its military experience and weapons, Azov has the ability to blackmail the government and defend themselves politically against any opposition. They openly say that if the government will not advance an ideology similar to theirs, they will overthrow it," Ivan Katchanovski, a professor of political science at the University of Ottawa and leading expert on Ukraine's far-right, commented to me. He continued, explaining: Currently the organizations that are fascist are stronger in Ukraine than in any other country in the world. But this fact is not reported by Western media because they see these organizations as supportive of the geopolitical agenda against Russia. So condemnations are limited to violence or human rights abuses." The revelations of collaboration between violent American white supremacists and a neo-Nazi militia armed by the Pentagon add another scandalous chapter to a long history of blowback that dates back to the 1950's, when the CIA rehabilitated several Ukrainian Nazi collaborators as anti-communist assets in the Cold War. The almost unbelievable story exposes an axis of fascism that stretches across the Atlantic, from the Ukrainian capital of Kiev to the sun-washed suburbs of Southern California, where some of the most rabid modern white supremacist gangs were born. White Nationalist Fight Club This October, four members of the RAM gang - Robert Rundo, Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Mirelis, and Aaron Eason - were arrested by FBI agents. They were accused of "using the internet to encourage, promote, participate in, and carry out riots" from Huntington Beach to Berkeley, California. Four other members had been arrested in connection with their participation in the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed in a vehicular homicide by a white supremacist. RAM first appeared in the national limelight during a celebration of Donald Trump's election victory in Huntington Beach in March 2017. As about one hundred far-right activists marched along the beach donned in red "Make America Great Again" caps and waving Trump flags, they were confronted by a small group of masked anti-racist counter-demonstrators. When a melee ensued, RAM members assaulted their outnumbered opponents, pummeling them into submission and even attacking a local reporter. Afterwards, Orange County police arrested several anti-racist demonstrators, but the RAM gang walked free. RAM markets itself as a self-defense organization that protects the free speech of white Americans against an onslaught of "Cultural Marxism," a classic anti-Semitic trope. Its founders emphasize a vaguely anti-consumerist Fight Club mentality along with a rigorous dedication to mixed martial arts. Its co-founder, Rundo, operates an online clothing and apparel company, Right Brand Clothing, that hawks slickly designed t-shirts promoting " European Brotherhood," stickers emphasizing a straight-edge " nationalist lifestyle," and ethically sourced designer " Demagogue pants" (yes, white supremacists apparently care about sweatshops). RAM members can be seen at the site modeling their gear with a clean-cut "fashy" look that contrasts sharply with the stereotypical image of skinheads in jackboots. https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20171019-ram-masks-bor der-new-inline-700x700.jpg RAM members from their now deleted Instagram account. (via ProPublica.) RAM's careful attention to its public image has not stopped its members from putting their crude neo-Nazi ideology on display at rallies, however. During the Huntington Beach riot, for example, RAM's Robert Boman was seen waving a sign reading "Da Goyim Know." This alt-right slogan refers to the white nationalist understanding of the supposed Jewish plot to dominate the world. "I'm a big supporter of the Fourteen, I'll say that," RAM's Rundo proclaimed into a camera in Huntington Beach. The gang leader was referring to the notorious 14-word slogan coined by convicted white supremacist terrorist David Lane, which has become a rallying cry for fascists across the globe: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." Two months after the violence in Huntington Beach, two RAM members were photographed in the same spot dousing literature they dubbed as "Cultural Marxist" with lighter fluid and setting it ablaze. Among the volumes they torched were "The Diary of Anne Frank," "The 9/11 Commission Report," and "Schindler's List." Besides evoking memories of the early days of Nazi Germany, the spectacle cast the group's purported devotion to free speech in an extremely ironic light. Following RAM's highly publicized street battles, the group became the subject of intense media scrutiny. In October 2017, the investigative outlet ProPublica produced a video that exposed the identities of RAM's core membership and wondered why they had not been investigated by law enforcement for their violent actions in Huntington Beach and elsewhere. But the media coverage of RAM glossed over the group's attraction to a burgeoning trans-Atlantic conglomeration of white supremacists that centered on U.S.-allied Ukraine as the base for a fascist reconquest of Europe. By the Spring of 2018, RAM leadership was barnstorming through Germany and Italy and heading east to meet fascist cohorts from across the West at a conference in Kiev. RAM's Ukrainian Hate-cation Buried in the FBI indictment of RAM members are details of their meetings with one of the key figures in Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion militia. In August, according to the indictment, RAM members published photos on Instagram showing themselves meeting with Olena Semanyaka, the leader of the international department of the Ukrainian National Corps, which functions as a civilian arm of the Azov Battalion: https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-14 -at-6.58.18-PM-700x535.png The indictment also referenced a video of RAM co-founder Benjamin Drake Daley performing a crossed-forearm salute to the Southern California-based white supremacist Hammerskin gang while in Ukraine: https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-14 -at-6.59.38-PM-700x202.png RAM's Gab account provides additional details of the group's foray through Ukraine this May. The trip centered around the Paneuropa conference, an event that brings together fascists from across the West to encourage international collaboration. It is hosted at the Reconquista Club in Kiev, and included an a mixed martial arts competition. "One of our guys has had the honor to be the first American to compete in the pan european organization Reconquista in Ukraine!" RAM declared on its Gab account. "This was a great experience meeting nationalist[s] that came [sic] as far as Portugal and Switzerland to take part." The visit, which followed on the heels of meetings with white supremacists in Germany and with Italy's fascist CasaPound party, highlighted the centrality of Ukraine to international fascist organizing. Further, the Paneuropa conference, where fascists build connections across national borders, revealed the Azov Battalion as much more than a militia fighting for control of a sliver of contested territory in eastern Ukraine. Semanyaka did not respond to an interview request delivered through Facebook messenger; however, she told Radio Free Europe's Christopher Miller that RAM "came to learn our ways" and showed interest in learning how to create youth forces in the way Azov has. Today, Azov leaders openly acknowledge that were it not for the U.S.-backed coup that unfolded in Kiev's Maidan Square in 2014, their organization would never have developed into the powerhouse it is. As Semanyaka said this year, according to a summary: The Ukrainian nationalist movement would have never reached such a level of development unless the war with Russia had begun. For the first time since the Second World War, nationalist formations have managed to create their own military wings, the brightest example being the Azov regime of the National Guard of Ukraine." Right-wing Maidan Revolution https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Pravyi_Sektor_Right_Se ctor_activists._Euromaidan_Kyiv_Ukraine._Events_of_February_22_2014-700x467. jpg Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector) extremists in Maidan, February 22, 2014. (Wikipedia) The 2013-14 Maidan revolt was the cataclysmic event that Ukraine's already potent ultra-nationalist camp had been waiting for. The protests erupted in Kiev's Maidan Square after the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an economic association agreement with the EU. Celebrated in the West as a pro-Western movement guided by tech-savvy middle-class youth, EuroMaidan depended heavily for its success on phalanxes of black-masked hardmen from Right Sector (see appendix at bottom), an ultra-nationalist party that did battle with the government's Berkut riot police. Along with Right Sector, the leadership of the far-right Svoboda Party assumed a prominent role at the Maidan, dubbing the protests a "Revolution of Dignity." Svoboda co-founder Oleh Tyahnybok - who had once demanded an investigation of the "Jewish-Muscovite mafia" that he saw controlling Ukraine - appeared on stage at the square beside U.S. Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy when they arrived to encourage the protesters. Another key figure in Ukraine's neo-Nazi scene was Andriy Biletsky. A university Ph.D. who stressed physical violence as a means to revolutionary change, Biletsky led the Patriot of Ukraine militia, an early forerunner of Azov that attacked migrant camps and menaced foreigners. In a manifesto published during the height of the Maidan clashes, Biletsky outlined his post-revolutionary agenda: "The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival," he wrote. "A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen." In May 2014, Right Sector and an assortment of far-right forces banded together to massacre their opponents in Odessa, attacking a pro-separatist protest camp with iron pipes then burning the fleeing protesters alive after they took shelter in a local trade union building. Over 40 pro-separatist Ukrainian citizens were consumed in the flames. The U.S. and EU studiously looked the other way, legitimizing the violence and setting the stage for more. Behind the scenes, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were carefully stage managing the opposition, positioning the pliable Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the future leader of a U.S. client-state. Meanwhile, billionaire-backed U.S. soft-power entities like the Omidyar Network and Open Society Foundation plowed money into the opposition, providing it with high-tech organizing capacity and establishing new media outlet Hromadske overnight. Given the amount of U.S. investment in regime change in Ukraine, it was necessary for American pundits who cheered on the operation to downplay or simply deny the central role neo-Nazi forces played in making it all possible. In perhaps the most absurd attempt at whitewashing the fascist presence, the neoconservative pundit James Kirchick described Right Sector in an article for Foreign Affairs as " Putin's imaginary Nazis." Meanwhile, groups like the Anti-Defamation League - which supposedly exist to battle anti-Semitism - refused to support a congressional effort to ban arms to groups affiliated with Right Sector, because "the focus should be on Russia." With all the cover he needed from Washington, Biletsky organized the "imaginary Nazis" of Patriot of Ukraine, Right Sector, and assorted football ultras into a real militia called the Azov Battalion. Together, they fought under the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel symbol, which also happens to be incorporated into the logo of the U.S.-based Aryan Nations. https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/azov-logo.jpg Azov logo. On the frontlines of eastern Ukrainian flashpoints, Azov did battle with Russian-speaking separatists and set up government-sponsored indoctrination camps for children and teens closer to the country's interior, instructing ten year olds on marksmanship and the evils of foreigners. Azan was subsequently absorbed into Ukraine's military as a national guard unit, and began appearing in the field with PSRL-1 rocket launchers supplied under the watch of the U.S. Department of Defense. In November 2017, Azov leadership received a team of U.S. Army officers for training and logistical discussions (see photo below and to the right). By the time Congress approved a ban on arms to Azov this year, the Trump administration had already authorized a new shipment of offensive weapons to the Ukrainian military, including advanced Javelin anti-tank missiles. As in Syria - where the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army functioned as a de facto "weapons farm" for jihadist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS - any new U.S. arms are likely to wind up in the possession of Azov, the congressional ban notwithstanding. https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/aryan_nations_3d_by_en esbe-d8kqpvj-400x380.png Arayan Nations logo. "It's very corrupt in Ukraine and money can be stolen - the same as in Syria where extremist fighters got guns from U.S.-backed units," said Katchanovski. "Azov can just establish new political fronts so they can circumvent the U.S. prohibitions." Foreign Fighters for Fascism The Azov Battalion has received not only U.S. weapons, but also volunteer American military veterans like Brian Boyenger. "It's not illegal," Boyenger told a Ukraine Today interviewer of his presence in an Azov camp. "From a U.S. perspective, as long as you're not fighting with a terrorist group or committing war crimes or things like that. It is legal - mostly I've been serving as kind of like an advisor." Azov has also welcomed Islamist fighters from Chechnya to continue their long war against Russia in a new theater. A sniper from Sweden with " typical neo-Nazi views," Mikael Skillt, has been assigned to oversee an entire Azov regiment. And neo-Nazis from as far away as Brazil have flocked to Ukraine to join the fascist crusade. One foreign fighter from France, a young anti-Semite named Gregoire Moutaux, returned from a Ukrainian militia camp in 2016 " armed to the teeth and ready to strike" synagogues, mosques and the 2016 soccer championships when he was arrested on the Ukrainian border by national police. To consolidate its political influence over the country, the Azov Battalion established a National Druzhina, or street patrol unit. A slickly produced recruitment video released in 2017 featured drone footage of National Druzhina members marching in formation into Kiev as Biletsky, their ideological guide, impelled them to "restore Ukrainian order" to a corrupted society. The street patrol was openly backed by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, a powerful patron of Azov who belongs to the ruling party of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. This year, the National Druzhina and state-funded neo-Nazi militias like C14 (the "14" represents the notorious "fourteen words" mantra) staged a series of lethal pogroms against the local Roma population, vandalized the offices of insufficiently pliant politicians, stormed city council meetings, and even sued the Hromadske station that was established with U.S. funding for describing their members as neo-Nazis. "Their connection to power is why they can commit any crime and they will never be punished," Katchanovski said of Azov and its various street-muscle brigades. "Because they have the police and senior police members like [Vadym] Troyan, they can intimidate people and intimidate politicians with impunity." (Once a member of Azov, Troyan now serves as Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Interior). https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/America-House-700x394. jpg Serhiy Bondar, a member of Ukraine's neo-Nazi C14 militia, is hosted by the U.S.-funded America House in Kiev. (YouTube) The U.S. has not only kept silent about the wave of ultra-nationalist violence sweeping across Ukraine, it has been complicit in legitimizing the perpetrators. This November, America House Kyiv - a U.S. government-funded cultural center - hosted a speech by a uniformed leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang, Serhiy Bondar. Months earlier, Republican House Majority Leader Paul Ryan and the NATO-funded Atlantic Council hosted Andriy Parubiy, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament and co-founder of the fascist Social-National party, for a friendly exchange on Capitol Hill.Given the free rein and open acceptance right-wing extremists enjoy in post-Maidan Ukraine, it is no wonder the country has become a haven for fascists from across the West. Grand Reconquista Strategy As the international secretary of Azov's National Corps, Olena Semanyaka has emerged as one of the most prolific publicists of Eastern European fascism. With jet black hair and a faintly gothic look, she brands herself as a "traditionalist," emulating her hero, Julius Evola, the late Italian occultist philosopher who espoused a "racism of the spirit." Though she has been photographed bearing a Nazi flag and throwing up a sieg heil salute, Semanyaka has also been a welcome guest on Ukrainian nationalist TV to promote her campaign for the release of Ukrainian nationalist activists held by Russia. In her role with Azov, Semanyaka organizes conferences aimed at popularizing the concept of "the great European Reconquista" - a pan-European fascist-nationalist takeover that begins in the former Soviet satellite states and ultimately sweeps through Western Europe on the strength of anti-foreigner resentment. Semanyaka laid out the fascist grand strategy in Kiev at a December 2016 gathering of Black Metal fans from across Europe called the " Pact of Steel:" For the first time [in] a long period, the success of the Right in Western Europe - the rise of the Right because of refugee influx and terror - gives the chance for the realization of our 'pact of steel' between East and West, between Western and Eastern European nationalists." She continued: Our main task today is to show to Western nationalists, to inform them that Putin's Russia is no alternative to the EU of the West and that the only ally for them is an alternative axis of European integration which is being formed now in Kiev, Central and Eastern Europe, as a springboard for the all-European reconquest, for the new Europe between the EU and neo-Soviet neo-Bolshevik Putin's Russia." Semanyaka and other Ukrainian fascist ideologues refer to the regional springboard for the European reconquest as the "Intermarium." This is a concept originally envisioned after World War One by Polish military leader Jozef Pilsudski, who imagined a confederation of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea as a counter-weight to German and Russian aggression. Though his idea never materialized, Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the failure of the EU and NATO to prevent it revived interest in the Intermarium. One of the biggest boosters of the alliance, the right-wing Polish President Andrzej Duda, saw it primarily through the prism of regional security. The extreme right in Ukraine, however, understood the Intermarium as an ethnically pure base for exporting their revolution to the rest of Europe. https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Semanya-700x394.jpg Semanya, upper left corner of Nazi flag, dispalys the Nazi salute. On the right, Semanyaka is shown during an appearance on Ukrainian state TV. The first Intermarium conference was held in Kiev in January 2016 under the banner of Azov's National Corps. Semanyaka headlined the event alongside Biletsky, the Azov founder, welcoming far-right activists from Poland and the Baltic States. Within a year, the concept was promoted at an officially sanctioned event at the Latvian embassy in Kiev. There, the Latvian ambassador welcomed a who's who of the Ukrainian fascist scene, from Svoboda to National Corps representatives like Semanyaka, for a ceremony honoring Peter Radzins, a Latvian general who advocated for the Intermarium. Organized by Latvia's far-right National Alliance party, a member of the country's governing coalition, the spectacle provided Azov leaders with the sheen of international legitimacy. As Matthew Kott, an academic expert on the European far-right, argued, Latvia's "membership in the EU and NATO allows it to act as a Trojan horse for increasing the clout of the far-right in the Euro-Atlantic community." While historical tensions between the Intermarium nations are still simmering, Semanyaka has pleaded with her international allies to heed the call of the late pro-Hitler British Blackshirt leader Oswald Mosley for a "great act of oblivion...of all our former struggles, conflicts, historical enmity. What we need," she argued, "is the revival of a sense of the new European aristocracy, a new European unity as a real basis for the union I am talking about." There are no historical grievances between American white supremacists and their cohorts in Ukraine. After all, the U.S. government has made itself the main guarantor of Ukraine's security, going as far as directly arming Azov in its bid to bleed Russia. And decades before the U.S. backed extremists in contemporary Ukraine, the CIA ran a program to rehabilitate former Nazi collaborators from the country as anti-communist intelligence assets. Backing Ukrainian fascists is a grand American tradition, indeed. This November, during the latest Paneuropa conference organized by Semanyaka as a safe space for fascists from across the West, she played host to one of the most prominent self-styled intellectuals of America's white nationalist movement, Greg Johnson. "I think that what's happening in Ukraine is a model and an inspiration for nationalists of all white nations and I wanted to learn as much as possible about what you're doing here and see as much as possible," Johnson told his rapt audience. "And I'm enormously impressed and I'm taking notes." Johnson is a highbrow racist who publishes a journal, Counter-Currents, that advances what he calls "white identity politics." Like the Rise Above Movement leaders before him, he was clearly inspired by his visit to Kiev. "I'm already planning to come back," Johnson exclaimed during a break-out session. "I'm very impressed with what I've seen here. I want to come back and learn more." __________________ Svoboda Party: Originally called the Social-National Party of Ukraine, a Ukrainian political party with long history of anti-Semitism. Led by Oleh Tyahnybok, Svoboda played a prominent role in the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising, where Tyahnybok shared the stage with U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chris Murphy (D-CT). Andriy Parubiy, who had co-founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine, is now Speaker of Parliament. Azov Battalion: 3,000-member neo-Nazi formation in Ukraine's National Guard. Azov began as a paramilitary, originally formed out of the Patriot of Ukraine neo-Nazi gang led by Andriy Biletsky, and is now a Ukrainian National Guard unit. The battalion's logo incorporates the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel and black sun symbols. Biletsky is now a member of Ukrainian Parliament. Vadim Troyan, another Azov veteran, is now Deputy Interior Minister. Ukrainian National Corps: Azov's civilian arm, responsible, among other things, for coordinating with and recruiting neo-Nazis and white supremacists from around the world. The international outreach is led by Olena Semanyka, who's been photographed with a swastika flag. National Druzhina: Azov's street patrol organization, established in January 2018 with the aim of "restoring Ukrainian order" to the streets. The National Druzhina - whose members pledge personal loyalty to Biletsky - has been involved in pogroms against the Roma, LGBT, and other activists. Right Sector: Loose formation of neo-Nazis and football ultras, which supplied street muscle to the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising. Later involved in lethal suppression of anti-Maidan movements in places like Odessa. C14: Ukrainian neo-Nazi gang that receives government funding and has been responsible for some of the lethal Roma pogroms as well as anti-LGBT violence. The 14 is a reference to the Fourteen Word slogan of white supremacy. Led by Serhiy Bondar, who spoke at America House, a cultural center funded by the U.S. government. This article was originally published on Mint Press News. Max Blumenthal is the founder and editor of GrayzoneProject.com, the co-host of the podcast Moderate Rebels, the author of several books, and producer of full-length documentaries including the recently released Killing Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: winmail.dat Type: application/ms-tnef Size: 708062 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Apr 10 00:07:45 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 00:07:45 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Film of Gloria LaRiva Event on Venezuela In-Reply-To: <1554851542457.12275@urbanaillinois.us> References: <499a8f8e63cf4c6dbce39db307a2f8e2@Zefram.city.urbana.il.us> <49D9A708-0717-41DA-AA7B-075E5A30332B@urbanaillinois.us> <1554851542457.12275@urbanaillinois.us> Message-ID: > > Here’s the link to the film - https://youtu.be/28Q7na2hfzI > >>> > From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Apr 10 02:24:36 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 02:24:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?windows-1252?q?Prof=2E_Francis_Boyle_on_=22Who_?= =?windows-1252?q?Trump_Referred_To_As_A_Foreign_Terrorist_Group_=96_KPFA?= =?windows-1252?q?=22?= Message-ID: This could have serious consequences: https://kpfa.org/episode/flashpoints-april-9-2019/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Wed Apr 10 18:56:59 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 13:56:59 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed Message-ID: POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. *Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.* In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including *Goliath *and *The 51 Day War, *charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Wed Apr 10 19:00:34 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 14:00:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's > National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald > Trump—at The Wharf > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. > > *Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author > Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the > event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience > and appreciate your patience and understanding.* > > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of > geo-political studies including *Goliath *and *The 51 Day War, *charts > the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan > administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined > strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western > ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the > mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the > flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists > than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how > the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger > against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more > extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled > society under Trump. > > > https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Apr 10 20:57:24 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 20:57:24 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <12C1DF02-3FC3-4F83-9FB5-FF19309B316D@illinois.edu> Is there significant protest at this blatant censorship…? Where’ s The Wharf? Who is its owners/sponsors? On Apr 10, 2019, at 1:56 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state _______________________________________________ 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 Apr 10 23:18:38 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 23:18:38 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: <12C1DF02-3FC3-4F83-9FB5-FF19309B316D@illinois.edu> References: <12C1DF02-3FC3-4F83-9FB5-FF19309B316D@illinois.edu> Message-ID: https://www.facebook.com/MintpressNewsMPN/videos/2268039386749747/?notif_id=1554938091548190¬if_t=live_video On Apr 10, 2019, at 13:57, Brussel, Morton K > wrote: Is there significant protest at this blatant censorship…? Where’ s The Wharf? Who is its owners/sponsors? On Apr 10, 2019, at 1:56 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state _______________________________________________ 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 Apr 10 22:51:52 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 17:51:52 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). It’s science fiction of course. > On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." > > When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf > > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. > Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. > > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. > > https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Apr 11 03:52:39 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 03:52:39 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Crosstalk Message-ID: <7D48B31E-D80D-4E10-8968-C4E16197121A@illinois.edu> Worth a listen because Max Blumenthal is one of the few journalistic bright lights who tells things straight, and documents his assertions. https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/456071-american-foreign-policy-blumenthal/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Thu Apr 11 04:48:44 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2019 23:48:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: <12C1DF02-3FC3-4F83-9FB5-FF19309B316D@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Politics and Prose, in case it's not clear to anyone, is the bookstore in Washington DC most known for author events, usually in the bookstore. The Wharf apparently refers to a recreational development on the SW waterfront. Another 35 minute interview with Blumenthal was done by Richard Eskow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3RseIFQ3_I&t=338s On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 6:18 PM Karen Aram wrote: > > https://www.facebook.com/MintpressNewsMPN/videos/2268039386749747/?notif_id=1554938091548190¬if_t=live_video > > > > > On Apr 10, 2019, at 13:57, Brussel, Morton K wrote: > > Is there significant protest at this blatant censorship…? Where’ s The > Wharf? Who is its owners/sponsors? > > On Apr 10, 2019, at 1:56 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's > National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald > Trump—at The Wharf > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. > > *Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author > Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the > event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience > and appreciate your patience and understanding.* > > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of > geo-political studies including *Goliath *and *The 51 Day War, *charts > the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan > administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined > strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western > ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the > mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the > flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists > than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how > the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger > against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more > extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled > society under Trump. > > > https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 11 12:08:34 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 07:08:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook wrote: > As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was > designed to bind only the federal government. > > There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. > Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to > those who own one.” > > For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, > see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous > Utopia” (1974). > > It’s science fiction of course. > > > > On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > > > And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." > > > > When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't > remember being invited to that meeting. > > > > === > > > > Robert Reuel Naiman > > Policy Director > > Just Foreign Policy > > www.justforeignpolicy.org > > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's > National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald > Trump—at The Wharf > > > > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. > > Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with > author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over > the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any > inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. > > > > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of > geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the > history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan > administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined > strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western > ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the > mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the > flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists > than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how > the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger > against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more > extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled > society under Trump. > > > > > https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 Apr 11 13:27:15 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 08:27:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... Message-ID: First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights. The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not Julian Assange. Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights. Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment rights. So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange... === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Apr 11 13:35:02 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 13:35:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman > wrote: "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook > wrote: As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). It’s science fiction of course. > On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." > > When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf > > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. > Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. > > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. > > https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 11 14:32:26 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 09:32:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> Well said Bob ! David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 8:27 AM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights. The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not Julian Assange. Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights. Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment rights. So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange... === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Apr 11 14:36:32 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 09:36:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Karen Aram now asserts: <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the *ILLINOIS* anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. A key reason, perhaps *THE* key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this *ILLINOIS* bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. So there you have it. *Quod erat demonstrandum.* If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies > only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, > I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. > > This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing > members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the > opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss > List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish > to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is > related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. > > It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the > credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said > under the guise of “freedom of speech.” > > > > On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman > wrote: > > "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if > the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be > cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is > possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it > would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it > is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. > It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who > struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like > Marianne Brun. > > The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's > free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were > removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with > Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. > > What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should > they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating > Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should > they cackle with joy? > > Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech > rights in the future? > > I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one > thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of > First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. > > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook > wrote: > >> As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was >> designed to bind only the federal government. >> >> There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. >> Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to >> those who own one.” >> >> For the consideration of a society where such a general right might >> exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An >> Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). >> >> It’s science fiction of course. >> >> >> > On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> > >> > And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." >> > >> > When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't >> remember being invited to that meeting. >> > >> > === >> > >> > Robert Reuel Naiman >> > Policy Director >> > Just Foreign Policy >> > www.justforeignpolicy.org >> > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >> > (202) 448-2898 x1 >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss < >> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: >> > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's >> National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald >> Trump—at The Wharf >> > >> > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. >> > Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with >> author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over >> the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any >> inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. >> > >> > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of >> geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the >> history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan >> administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined >> strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western >> ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the >> mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the >> flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists >> than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how >> the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger >> against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more >> extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled >> society under Trump. >> > >> > >> https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state >> >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > 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 Thu Apr 11 14:43:08 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 09:43:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Crosstalk In-Reply-To: <7D48B31E-D80D-4E10-8968-C4E16197121A@illinois.edu> References: <7D48B31E-D80D-4E10-8968-C4E16197121A@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <00b201d4f074$e16bfbd0$a443f370$@comcast.net> Indeed Mort ! I saw an interview with Max on YouTube yesterday evening talking about the cancelling of his scheduled appearance / talk at the D.C. bookstore. The excuse the book store gave was " concerns about his books " content " and security concerns. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2019 10:53 PM To: Peace-discuss Cc: Brussel, Morton K Subject: [Peace-discuss] Crosstalk Worth a listen because Max Blumenthal is one of the few journalistic bright lights who tells things straight, and documents his assertions. https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/456071-american-foreign-policy-blumenthal / -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Apr 11 15:17:35 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 15:17:35 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: As I said Bob, ask a lawyer, I have, and unfortunately many laws are counter intuitive. Such as this list, if one is put off the list or has their statements censored we can say they are curbing our (FOS) but is it really according to the 1st Amendment, and Bill of Rights, No it is not. “Firing” of Stephen Salaita by the U of I, was wrong, but illegal according to the First Amendment and Bill of Rights? Your statement below defaming me, is typical of provocateurs who can only use personal attacks when they aren’t able to win by sticking to the issues. It’s also precisely why I don’t care to remain on the Peace Discuss List, too many characters like you, using personal attacks on others. End of conversation on my part, continue to rant all you like, I will be deleting all other emails related to this conversation. On Apr 11, 2019, at 07:36, Robert Naiman > wrote: Karen Aram now asserts: <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the ILLINOIS anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. A key reason, perhaps THE key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this ILLINOIS bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum. If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss > wrote: Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman > wrote: "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook > wrote: As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). It’s science fiction of course. > On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: > > And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." > > When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: > POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf > > Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. > Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. > > In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. > > https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state > > _______________________________________________ > 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 divisek at yahoo.com Thu Apr 11 17:13:58 2019 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:13:58 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... In-Reply-To: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> References: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> The Libertarian Party does upport Assange, Snowden et al.  E.g.: Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party | | | | | | | | | | | Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party Happy birthday to the Bill of Rights! These 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified by the states o... | | | On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 9:32:50 AM CDT, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: #yiv8064085967 #yiv8064085967 -- _filtered #yiv8064085967 {panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv8064085967 {font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} _filtered #yiv8064085967 {font-family:Tahoma;panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4;}#yiv8064085967 #yiv8064085967 p.yiv8064085967MsoNormal, #yiv8064085967 li.yiv8064085967MsoNormal, #yiv8064085967 div.yiv8064085967MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:New;}#yiv8064085967 a:link, #yiv8064085967 span.yiv8064085967MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8064085967 a:visited, #yiv8064085967 span.yiv8064085967MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8064085967 span.yiv8064085967EmailStyle17 {color:#1F497D;}#yiv8064085967 .yiv8064085967MsoChpDefault {}#yiv8064085967 .yiv8064085967MsoPapDefault {text-align:justify;} _filtered #yiv8064085967 {margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}#yiv8064085967 div.yiv8064085967WordSection1 {}#yiv8064085967 Well said Bob !   David J.   From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 8:27 AM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights...   First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights.   The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not Julian Assange.    Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights.    Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment rights.    So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange...   === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1     _______________________________________________ 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 Apr 11 17:47:20 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:47:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... In-Reply-To: <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> References: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Let me make sure that I understand what you're saying. You're saying that the Libertarian Party believes in defending the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange, even though, in one narrow legalistic sense, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights, since he is not a citizen or resident of the United States? If that is the position of the Libertarian Party, I salute the Libertarian Party for having a principled position. Perhaps the Libertarian Party could give a workshop on being a principled defender of the First Amendment to the people who are persecuting Max Blumenthal and Nina Paley. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 12:14 PM Dianna Visek via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > The Libertarian Party does upport Assange, Snowden et al. E.g.: > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > > Happy birthday to the Bill of Rights! These 10 amendments to the U.S. > Constitution were ratified by the states o... > > > > > On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 9:32:50 AM CDT, David Johnson via > Peace-discuss wrote: > > > Well said Bob ! > > > > David J. > > > > *From:* Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] *On > Behalf Of *Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > *Sent:* Thursday, April 11, 2019 8:27 AM > *To:* Peace-discuss List > *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First > Amendment rights... > > > > First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights. > > > > The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not > Julian Assange. > > > > Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no > First Amendment rights. > > > > Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment > rights. > > > > So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First > Amendment rights of Julian Assange... > > > > === > > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 jbn at forestfield.org Thu Apr 11 17:52:26 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:52:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] anti-neoliberal notes Message-ID: Some news items to spark discussion on News from Neptune. Have a good show guys. Breaking news: Julian Assange arrested in London, apparently forcibly pulled out of Ecuadorian Embassy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stTMt1tLT4g -- Assange arrested and dragged out of Ecuadorian embassy, days after WikiLeaks warned of this based on their high-level source claiming this would happen within "hours or days" (all media was told this via WikiLeaks' twitter feed). Ruptly (RT) was there but other news outlets chose not to remain: Related: Glenn Greenwald on lazy news coverage in https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1116323855830855681 > The only news outlet that filmed Assange being taken out of the embassy > was @Ruptly - a subsidiary of RT - because all other news outlets left a > couple of days ago. News outlets wanting to use this exclusive footage > now have to pay @Ruptly for the license: This is consistent with the coverage we've been getting from RT versus plenty of corporate and corporate-friendly outlets who repeat long-debunked lies about Assange being a sexual predator, allegations that Assange "hacked" documents with Manning, and more. Yet when it came time to reprint the documents released by WikiLeaks, many outlets were happy to do that. The movie "The Post" is a sharply hypocritical piece of work as Hollywood stars push to get that movie to be interpreted as different than the fight WikiLeaks (a publisher) faces now (The Washington Post ought to be allowed to do what WikiLeaks can't be allowed to do). Glenn Greenwald in https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1116326922445905925 > Here's[1] the Trump DOJ announcement about its indictment of Assange. It > relates *only* to the 2010 classified docs about the Iraq & Afghanistan > War logs & diplomatic cables. It has nothing to do with the 2016 > election. This is huge attack on press freedom [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-computer-hacking-conspiracy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy5gZROlm7o -- "Think about what this means for you and your job." Related: Glenn Greenwald reflecting on ACLU's comment on Julian Assange's arrest which is sharply critical of that arrest. Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project in https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-comment-julian-assange-arrest > “Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks’ > publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and > would open the door to criminal investigations of other news > organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating > U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. > journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver > information vital to the public's interest. Glenn Greenwald points to the ACLU's document and adds his own commentary in https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1116317804716797952 > The @ACLU's point is vital: if the US can force the arrest and then > extradite foreigners like Assange on foreign soil for publishing docs, > what prevents China or Iran or, you know, Russia for doing the same to > US journalists who publish secrets about them? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0z1Dsmt3w8 -- A summary of WikiLeaks revelations. https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-at-the-ecuadorean-embassy-live-updates Scotland Yard has confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition. In a statement it said: > Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been > further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53hrs > after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an > extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act. He will > appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court as soon as > possible. From https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-at-the-ecuadorean-embassy-live-updates > Patricio Mary, the reporter, said he had wanted to ask ambassador Jaime > Martin about promises he had made to respect Assange’s asylum. > > “Ecuadorian police pushed me and tried to fight with me,” he said. “We > started shouting traitor and liar because when I interviewed him two > days ago he told me there was no change with the position of Julian > Assange and that the government of Lenin Moreno will respect > international law.” > > He said the Ecuadorians had breached their own sovereignty by inviting > British police into their embassy. It was symbolic of the way the > Ecuadorian government had treated journalists in their own country, > where president Lenin Moreno had shut down opposing newspapers and > betrayed an incipient socialist revolution, he said. > > Earlier an Assange supporter, a woman who declined to give her name, was > overheard saying that she thought the embassy was being watched last > night and that police had chosen to swoop when his supporters were not > around. > > She said she would not comment to the Guardian, which she accused of > vilifying Assange. Nevertheless, she added: “Do you think this means > just one man being arrested? This is your press freedom on the line. But > I guess you don’t care about that; you are already bought and paid for.” All sources agree -- Assange was arrested as a result of a US extradition warrant. Metropolitan Police, PM May, The Guardian ("Scotland Yard has confirmed that Assange was arrested on behalf of the US after receiving a request for his extradition." from https://www.theguardian.com/media/live/2019/apr/11/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-arrested-at-the-ecuadorean-embassy-live-updates), and more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9EM4FXD7F8 -- Prime Minister Theresa May on Assange's arrest: > I am sure that the whole House will welcome the news this morning that > the Metropolitan Police have arrested Julian Assange. Arrested for > breach of bail after nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy. He > has also been arrested in relation to an extradition request from the > United States authorities. This is now a legal matter before the courts. > The home secretary will make a statement on this later, but I would like > to thank the Metropolitan Police for carrying out their duties with > great professionalism and to welcome the cooperation of the Ecuadorian > government in bringing this matter to a resolution. This goes to show > that in the United Kingdom no one is above the law. Glenn Greenwald on the fraudulence of the Democratic Party's objection to Trump and their opposition to WikiLeaks and Assange in https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1116305585677459456 > The UK police also confirm that they've arrested Assange "in relation to > an extradition warrant on behalf of the United States authorities." Dems > cheering this are united with the Trump DOJ in an extremist action that > the Obama DOJ refused to take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2f-d8Vuyo -- Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno on revoking Assange's stay at the Ecuadorian embassy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JdqojPWYC8 -- Assange has long been a subject of US spying since 2012. Someone calling themselves "PM" is holding a copy of gigabytes of surveillance recordings of Assange from within the Embassy and threatening publication if this person is not paid 3 million pounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8b7PgTiwec -- WikiLeaks editor-in-chief press conference on new criminal case involving Julian Assange. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQNr0Yj07I -- Assange being pursued but not the New York Times is double-standards. And this double-standards is also a strong indication of who is in league with the US government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWxGWOzKzHI -- Former MI5 agent Annie Machon on Assange arrest. https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/11/julian_assange_of_wikileaks_arrested_in -- Democracy Now had interesting guests on the 2019-04-11 show Renata Ávila, a member of Julian Assange’s legal team: > Well, thank you for having me, Amy, and thank you for all the solidarity > that you’re showing as a journalist. Unlike you—I’m outraged, like on > top of all of this going on, I have seen the lack of class solidarity > from journalists all over the world, and that is making the situation > worse. > > First, the arrest, it breaches international law at so many levels. And > as a Latin American, I can say that I’m ashamed of this blatant > disregard for the most—one of the—which is a tradition of Latin America > of providing and defending the institution of asylum. What happened > next, it is what we suspected since Michael Ratner was leading the > defense of Julian Assange back in 2010, that this was what we predicted, > and it happened as we predicted it. > > The Swedish case was nothing else but an excuse to secure the arrest of > a journalist in a Western democracy—so-called democracy. So, it was > confirmed by Scotland Yard that his arrest is not connected with a bail > breach; it is connected with the extradition request. And Swedish > authorities had just now a press conference in Sweden, in Stockholm, and > they confirmed. It was not consulted with them. It is not related to the > Swedish case. It is an extradition requested by the U.S. Justice > Department. Later, Democracy Now also asked Glenn Greenwald about this breaking news: > Glenn Greenwald: I think the most important fact is that the arrest > warrant, according to Assange’s longtime lawyer Jennifer Robinson, is > based on allegations that Assange conspired or collaborated with Chelsea > Manning with regard to the 2010 leaks of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs > and diplomatic cables—a theory that the Obama Justice Department tried > for a long time to pursue, but found no evidence for, in order to be > able to justify prosecuting Assange and not face the accusation that > they were endangering press freedoms by prosecuting Assange for > something The New York Times and The Guardian and every other media > outlet in the world routinely does, which is publish classified > information. > > Even if it were true that Assange collaborated with Manning—and, again, > the Justice Department of President Obama looked everywhere and found no > evidence of that—it would still be a grave threat to press freedoms, > because journalists all the time work with their sources in order to > obtain classified information so that they can report on it. It’s the > criminalization of journalism by the Trump Justice Department and the > gravest threat to press freedom, by far, under the Trump presidency, > infinitely worse than having Donald Trump tweet mean things about > various reporters at CNN or NBC. And every journalist in the world > should be raising their voice as loudly as possible to protest and > denounce this. > > [...] > > Well, I think that is one of the remarkable aspects of this, is that > Julian Assange is not an American citizen. I think he visited the U.S. > once for about three days. WikiLeaks is a foreign-based media > organization. So, the idea that the U.S. government can just extend its > reach to any news outlet anywhere in the world and criminalize > publication of documents or working with sources is extremely chilling. > That would mean, for example, that China or North Korea or Iran could do > the same thing if a U.S. news outlet published its secrets, which > sometimes they do. It would mean that Iran would have the ability, or > China, to issue an international arrest warrant and demand that the > reporters who work for the U.S. news outlets be extradited to those > countries. Geoffrey Robertson, a British human rights attorney who’s represented Julian Assange in the past and has been an adviser to Julian Assange, had the sharpest criticism of the governments involved. > Amy Goodman: Your response to what has taken place and the assurances > that the Ecuadorean president has gotten that he will not be extradited > to a country that has the death penalty? > > Geoffrey Robertson: Those assurances are a confidence trick to mislead > ignorant journalists. In Britain, it’s law that you cannot extradite > anyone to a country to face the death penalty. So, having these > assurances are neither not to the point. What is sought by America in > this warrant that was signed 15 months ago—they’ve been plotting this > for quite a while—is that he be sent to America for trial on charges > carrying up to 45 years, which, for a man of Assange’s health and age, > is in effect a death penalty. So, forget all about the death penalty. > Britain will send Assange to America, if its extradition request is > upheld by the court. > > But I must say that after giving him asylum and giving him the promise > of asylum, to hand him over to the police, without giving him any > warning or opportunity to go elsewhere, is a cruel and astonishing > breach of faith by this rotten Ecuadorean government. It will go down in > the annals of human rights as a disgusting act. But, of course, it was > encouraged by Mr. Pence, who visited Ecuador, offered it and gave it > loans and so forth. So, there’s blood money in the background. > > But I think, for Americans who value, as everyone does, your First > Amendment, you have this problem, that your government is seeking to > imprison an Australian, a non-American—it doesn’t matter, he’s simply > not American—on a theory of the First Amendment which would deprive its > protection to all foreign journalists working, indeed, for American > papers. So, it would be a grave inroad in your own much-vaunted freedom > of speech if Assange were to be offered up and sacrificed for so many > years. Chelsea Manning got 35. Assange is accused of conspiring with > Chelsea Manning. They are the words on the warrant. So, he would get at > least 35 years. And he wouldn’t be pardoned by President Trump, as > Manning was pardoned by President Obama. So, that’s, I think, the > seriousness of this development today. > > It was probably inevitable that Ecuador, this crummy little state, would > be leant upon by America and yield up Mr. Assange in spite of its > promise of asylum. But he will now be imprisoned. He will be entitled to > ask for bail. America, no doubt, will object. And it will go through the > English courts, who will have to decide whether the treaty, extradition > treaty, we have with the United States allows an Englishman or an > Australian to be thrown to the wolves in America because of what they > have published. It makes a nonsense of freedom of speech. We have a > Human Rights Act with a qualified guarantee of free speech. We have the > European Convention. So, there is a chance that Mr. Assange would be > able to show what hypocrites you Americans are, or the Trump > administration is, in trying to put him in prison, where they couldn’t > put the editor of The New York Times, who published the same material, > in prison. > > [...] > > Nermeen Shaikh: Is there any likelihood at all, Geoffrey Robertson, that > he would be simply deported to Australia? He remains an Australian > citizen. > > Geoffrey Robertson: Yes. I think he would very much like that. And that > would be—if the Australian government had any gumption, that would > be—but the Australian government don’t have much gumption. They’re in > awe of the United States. The present government is rather a lickspittle > government. And there is an election next month, where the opposition > may be more vociferous on behalf of Mr. Assange. And, of course, the > British government doesn’t like him. But the opposition Labour Party may > be more supporting. > > So, at the end of the day, you come down to the question of free speech, > whether it’s right that a publisher who has received information from > sources who want it published, where that information is of public > interest, showing American death squads, showing the killing of Reuters > journalists by an American helicopter and so forth, should be jailed and > punished for the efforts he’s made on behalf of free speech. I mean, > WikiLeaks’ revelations are found in newspapers, in history books now. > But, of course, America is trying to make him suffer for taking that > initiative. War: Saudi-led, US-backed coalition bombs school in Yemen killing schoolgirls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYs79G6y0xs Free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) is needed: Both corporate parties agree to make it illegal for the IRS to make their own tax program. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/09/congress-about-ban-government-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax -- > Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar > the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. > > Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal, > D-Mass., passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making > several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. > John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa. > > In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to > create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the > maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS > from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, > which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it > would threaten the industry’s profits. > > “This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of > the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program,” said > Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer > Law Center. > > Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as > easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online > tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with > pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, > as ProPublica first reported on in 2013. Russiagate: The Skripal/Sturgess saga keeps Russiagate alive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z52lsEFVVPk -- Charlie Rowley, 45, a survivor of what is described as a Novichok attack in Amesbury, England in June 2018, said he is being kept in the dark by the UK government about the investigation into his attack. His partner, Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital a week after that same attack. Sturgess' death was initially described by authorities as a drug overdose but then was revised to become part of this alleged Novichok attack. RT once reported that either Charlie Rowley or Dawn Sturgess was a "registered heroin addict". Sturgess' family is also getting no information from the UK regarding the investigation into her murder. This echoes how the UK has treated Russia throughout this 1-year+ investigation: The UK government blames Russia for the attacks on Sergei & Yulia Skripal, Charlie Rowley, and for Dawn Sturgess' death but the UK government offers no evidence to back any of their claims. We only know the time, date, and location of the attacks but we don't know who the attacker(s) were, why the attacks occurred, or what substance(s) were used in the attacks. To note how long the UK government keeps the public away from the details of the case: We only recently learned of two additional people involved in the operation whose identity came to public knowledge a year later (and whose presence is highly coincidental and suspect). This makes the Skripal/Sturgess affair indistinguishable from any other chapter of what's come to be called "Russiagate" -- evidenceless accusations against Russia -- and thus comes into further question as Russiagate defenders were recently dealt a huge blow to their credibility from their chosen and trusted champion -- Robert Muller. Charlie Rowley felt that so many of his questions were unanswered, he asked the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, to talk with him. Yakovenko met with Rowley and his brother in person in London. Yakovenko is also trying to "fill in some blanks" as RT's report put it. > Yakovenko: Literally 80% of what I told him [Rowley] was quite a > revelation to Charlie and his brother. It's perfectly understandable; > they ordinary people reading British newspapers. What could they know? > Only what they're offered by the press. So it's good to have an > alternative point of view and understand Russia's line of reasoning > [...] Charlie Rowley and his brother had virtually no info on the > questions we directed at the British authorities over the Skripal case. > They don't understand why we're not allowed to meet the Skripals. I told > them that there was no mobile service connection with the Skripals 3 > hours prior to the poisoning. We had no chance to examine this nerve > agent. It was all news to Charlie and his brother. Most of the > information they had they had read in the newspapers. And I got the > impression that the family of Dawn Sturgess and that of Charlie Rowley > have not been adequately informed as to what happened to the pair in > Amesbury and what happened in Salisbury before. They never received any > official reports. Dawn Sturgess' son has received so little information from the UK government that he sent a letter to the Russian president: > Yakovenko: The family of the late Dawn Sturgess wants first and foremost > to see the investigations' conclusions. Russia wants the same thing. > It's been a year now and we still haven't seen any official results. > What led Charlie and his brother to contact us is precisely the fact > that they haven't been able to receive anything from the British > authorities. The British press also misrepresented the Rowley brothers as homeless, but Yakovenko said that's not true. London has rejected all attempts by the Russian government to review evidence or participate in the investigation despite no evidence produced to back any suspicion of the Russian government and that Yulia Skripal is a Russian national. Seymour Hersh has maintained on "Going Underground", the Russian mafia is more likely involved in the Skripal attack than the Russian government. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgTiP6WBss > Seymour Hersh: Those two [the two men interviewed on RT] were helping > the British intelligence services with information about the Russian > mafia. That's what they were doing here [in the UK]. In other words, the > people that were high on the list of people who would want to hurt him > [Sergey Skripal] would be the Russian mafia. Russians, but not the > Russian government. > > Afshin Rattansi, RT host: Do you mean the Skripals? > > Seymour Hersh: Yeah, I mean that was the understanding. There was also > some reporting out of Europe about that that's been pretty much > widespread. Economics: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure It turns out that when you give people a reliable source of money they feel more financially secure. Go figure. Makes you wonder if the same thing could be done with food -- what if we eliminated food deserts (places where only unhealthy food is available if any food is available at all, common amongst the places where poor people live) by offering a wide variety of good food to all, gratis? https://news.yahoo.com/finland-basic-income-experiment-shows-082142474.html > Unemployed people derive significant psychological benefits from > receiving a fixed amount of financial support from the state, according > to a landmark experiment into basic income in Finland that highlights > the disadvantages of the country’s existing means-tested system. > > Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 > participants were no more and no less likely to work than their > counterparts receiving traditional unemployment benefit. > > Thursday’s set of additional results from the social insurance > institution Kela showed that those getting a basic income described > their financial situation more positively than respondents in the > control group. They also experienced less stress and fewer financial > worries than the control group, Kela said in a statement. > > Erratic Bureaucracy > > The results illustrate how bureaucratic and erratic the existing system > can be. > > For instance, regular recipients of unemployment benefit complain that > it’s nearly impossible to know how taking on part-time work will impact > their financial situation at the end of the month. Under the current > system, declining job offers or training can result in financial > penalties. But some have discovered that indulging in a hobby can even > lead to benefits being denied altogether. > > The results published on Thursday are based on phone interviews > conducted during the final months of 2018. Further results of the > experiment are due next year. > > Finland is the first country in the world to trial a basic income at > national level. The government wanted to find out whether a basic income > could simplify the social security system, eliminate excessive > bureaucracy and remove incentive traps. Researchers at Kela also wanted > to measure its impact on the participants’ physical and psychological > well-being. https://www.axios.com/us-q1-layoffs-in-a-decade-6309b133-5212-4204-976b-347de6f4ad41.html -- The U.S. just had the most Q1 layoffs in a decade > The U.S. saw its highest level of layoffs in a first quarter since > 2009, data from staffing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas released > Thursday showed. > > By the numbers: Employers cut 190,410 jobs in the first 3 months of the > year — 10.3% higher than the number of layoffs announced in the fourth > quarter of 2018 and 35.6% higher than job cuts announced in the same > quarter of 2018. > > The impact: It's the highest number of job cuts in a quarter since > 2015. > > Details: The financial industry saw the third highest number of layoffs > and the year-to-date total was 239% higher than it was in 2018. > > * Retailers continue to lead all sectors in job cuts this year with > 46,061 in Q1. However, that number is 18.5% lower than retail cuts > announced in Q1 2018. > > * Retailers have announced plans to close 4,048 stores so far this > year. > > The bottom line: The report said worry about an economic slowdown was > the main driver of companies' layoff intentions. War: Drones targeting Americans means further assassinations, ignoring due process rights, and accepting the loss of civil liberties. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/02/us-governments-refusal-confirm-or-deny-it-put-american-journalist-drone-kill-list > Lawyers for an American journalist who believes he was placed on the > government's infamous "kill list" warned Tuesday that the rights of all > U.S. citizens are at stake if the country's drone assassination program > is allowed to continue. > > The organization's comments came as part of a response to the U.S. > government's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit regarding its use of the list. > Reprieve is representing Bilal Abdul Kareem, a journalist and U.S. > citizen who claims he was repeatedly targeted —and nearly killed on five > separate occasions—by drone and missile attacks in 2016 when he was > reporting on the ongoing conflict in Syria. > > Kareem joined an Al Jazeera journalist in 2017 in a lawsuit against the > government, demanding that the Trump administration remove their names > from the "kill list" of potential targets for the U.S. drone program. > > If the government manages to have the lawsuit dismissed, legal experts > warn it would allow the Trump administration and future presidents to > secretly place any American on a kill list without telling them why, > therefore stripping them of their constitutional right to due process. > > "The government's assertion that it has the right to mark its own > citizens for death, based on secret information, without affording them > the legal protections offered by the Constitution, is chilling." > —Jennifer Gibson, Reprieve > > "The right to due process has been a bedrock of the judicial system, and > one of the pillars that support a free society going back eight > centuries to the Magna Carta," wrote Tom Emswiler and Will Isenberg in > the Boston Globe last summer. "It is the birthright of every American. > Gaining a tactical advantage is not worth losing that heritage." Or maybe the lawyers at Reprieve should talk to Robert Naiman of "Just Foreign Policy" who recently assured readers of AWARE's peace-discuss mailing list: https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-March/050541.html > I see no prospect of prohibiting the U.S. from using drones as weapons > per se. There is no meaningful support for this idea anywhere in the > United States, neither in Washington, nor in public opinion. Partly > because it's fundamentally an irrational idea - there's nothing > intrinsically worse about using a drone as a weapon than a cruise > missile strike - in fact, the contrary is true, strike for strike, the > cruise missile is worse. We could ask who benefits from calling for ending drone attacks "irrational"? Certainly not the people targeted and assassinated by killer drones. Returning to the news article: > Kareem believes the Obama administration placed him on the kill list and > wants President Donald Trump to remove his name, asserting that his > inclusion "is the result of arbitrary and capricious agency action, > accomplished without due process, and in violation of the United States > Constitution and U.S. and international law." > > The government responded that if those included on the U.S. kill list > were to be informed and given a trial, national security could be > jeopardized during the court case. > > Such a claim suggests that the right of the U.S. to operate its drone > program trumps Kareem's—and all Americans'—Fifth and 14th Amendment > rights, Reprieve said. We should remember that drone assassination is a policy that continues across administrations and spans the major political parties: Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike on September 30, 2011 under Pres. Obama; Anwar's 16-year-old son Abdulrahman was killed in a separate drone strike two weeks later. Both Anwar and Abdulrahman were American citizens, assassinated in clear violation of their due process rights. Anwar's 8-year-old daughter Nawar was assassinated by a drone-led Navy SEAL raid on January 29, 2017 ordered by Pres. Trump. Noam Chomsky called the drone program "the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times" and added that it "target[s] people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby". Continuity of policy: Obama's still fighting for the elites just like he always has. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBVkol-EEsY -- Jimmy Dore show on the latest Obama speech where Obama calls anyone fighting for progressive values as "purists". Dore reminds us that - "Obama's cabinet came from an email [points to screenshot of https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8190 an email from a guy named Mike Froman fromanm at citi.com to john.podesta at gmail.com from 2008-10-06 at 11:34 with subject "Lists". You could call Mike at 212-793-1987 and ask him.] -- his entire cabinet came from an email from a guy at CitiGroup. And there it is, hey 'Here's a list of all the people I want'.". This email is also a great bit of evidence to point to when people raise 'diversity' as a reason to back someone for office because Mike from CitiGroup tells us his handpicked list of candidates is sufficiently diverse: A quote from Mike's email: > A list of African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken > down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level, plus > a list of Native American, Arab/Muslim American and Disabled American > candidates. We have much longer lists for most of the groups, and the > lists will continue to grow as we reach out further and more openly, but > these are the names to date that seem to be coming up as recommended by > various sources for senior level jobs. (I have tried to include member > of Barack's campaign and Senate policy staff, as well as participants in > the Transition project, as appropriate.) > > -- While you did not ask for this, I prepared and attached a similar > document on women. > > -- At the risk of being presumptuous, I also scoped out how the > Cabinet-level appointments might be put together, probability-weighting > the likelihood of appointing a diverse candidate for each position > (given one view of the short list) and coming up with a straw man > distribution. (Obviously, multiple permutations of this are possible. > This was just one example to show how it might pan out.) New Republic points out in https://newrepublic.com/article/137798/important-wikileaks-revelation-isnt-hillary-clinton in an article entitled "The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton": > This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an > executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of > the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial > crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month > before votes were counted. Returning to Jimmy Dore's points in the video: - "Obama is bought and paid for gaslighter which is why we got Donald Trump.": He didn't break up the banks, he didn't help the people save their houses, he didn't help the unions, he didn't end the wars he expanded them... Here's a bit of what Obama said to the Europeans in his recent talk: > I know from experience in passing the healthcare law that I had to work > on in the United States, that that was not the ideal that I wanted to > set up, it's what I could get at the time and if I could establish the > principal that everybody gets healthcare and get 20 million people more > healthcare, even if 10 million still hadn't gotten it, that's what I'm > gonna do now. Then I'll fight some more later for the other 20%. Dore points out: - it was 30 million people who still hadn't gotten healthcare after ObamaCare was signed into law, not 20 million. - Jimmy Dore: "And the rest of the poor people that you did give ObamaCare to was almost worthless to them because they had deductibles of $5,000 which means they couldn't go to the doctor when they had a symptom. So it didn't change poor people's lives almost at all." - Obama chose not to pursue the public option; people inside Citigroup told him what to do and he did it. - There was no "fight" coming later. Obama chose not to use the opportunity when the Democrats had majorities in both the House and Senate to ultimately pass something that kept the HMOs in charge of American healthcare delivery. Keep that in mind every time you hear a Democrat tell you how much they care about American healthcare and how universal healthcare should be a goal (in other words, not a reality but a promise that will never be kept). Obama later argues that anyone who objects should be viewed as a "purist": > One of the things I do worry about progressives in the United States, > maybe it's true here as well, is a certain kind of rigidity where we > say, 'Ah! I'm sorry, this is how it's gonna be.' and then we start > creating what's sometimes called a circular firing squad where you start > shooting at your allies because one of them is straying from purity on > the issues. This is an argument tactic aimed at getting people to stop debating the merits of an argument and instead buy into whatever is being proposed by the one calling someone else a purist. When American women's suffragists fought for the right to vote (including 19 trips to Congress), should they have bought into the "purity" of "compromise" which meant some women in some states could vote in some elections? Dore gets it right when he replies to Obama here saying "What he's [Obama's] telling you here is don't fight for things you believe in. Don't fight for Medicare for All, don't fight for a public option, don't fight for a living wage, don't fight to breakup the banks, don't fight to end the wars, just take whatever the establishment is willing to give you; because I'm going to tell you something about purity: when he's talking about, say, Medicare for All -- which the overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans are for, the country's for it -- you know who's not for it Barack? The health insurance companies and Wall St.". Related: https://twitter.com/SupergoofNZ/status/1114884005940187138 > It's mind-boggling that such essential, life-saving medicines aren't > accessible to so many people in a country like the USA. Here in New > Zealand, we have a $5 co-pay for a 3-month supply of most prescription > medicines. Exploitation: 1 in 4 diabetics skip lifesaving insulin doses because insulin is so expensive. https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expensive https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2717499 -- 1 in 4 people with diabetes are now skipping taking insulin doses to stretch their insulin supply because insulin costs are so high. Skyrocketing costs for something that many need and costs very little to produce (and therefore cost very little almost 50 years ago) is one of the fruits of ObamaCare (whether viewed from the perspective of something ObamaCare failed to address or purposefully allowed to continue). A quote from the article: > Dr. Lipska described how insulin has rapidly become more expensive in > recent years, which has even led to a class action lawsuit filed by > insulin users against major insulin manufacturers. She argued that she > and her fellow doctors have embraced new improvements in insulin without > fully considering the rising costs for patients. > > She shared a patient’s recollection that a vial of insulin cost $1.49 in > 1972, which would be $8.86 now when adjusted for inflation. In 2004, > that same vial would cost $60, and today it would go for roughly $300, > she said. Improvements in performance are no longer justifying those > spikes in prices, she said. > > “The latest generations (of insulin) are not light years different from > those we had about 10 years ago,” Dr. Lipska said. -J From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Thu Apr 11 18:59:17 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 13:59:17 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] A Crime Humanity Will Never Forget': Ecuador's Former President Rafael Correa Condemns Successor for Stripping Assange's Asylum Status Message-ID: <011901d4f098$aa084170$fe18c450$@comcast.net> A Crime Humanity Will Never Forget': Ecuador's Former President Rafael Correa Condemns Successor for Stripping Assange's Asylum Status "From now on and across the world," said former president, "scoundrel and betrayal can be summarized in two words: Lenin Moreno." by Jon Queally, staff writer 10 Comments https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/head lines/correa_assange_moreno.jpg?itok=azAhoRc6 Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange talking with then President of Ecuador Rafael Correa via video stream in 2012. (Photo: Wikileaks) The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, on Thursday morning slammed his right-wing successor, President Lenin Moreno, as a the nation's "greatest traitor" for stripping Julian Assange of his protected asylum status and invited U.K. police to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London to arrest the Wikileaks publisher. "The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno," Correa stated in a tweet, "allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget." While Moreno explained in a video posted online that his decision to withdraw Assange's diplomatic asylum was over repeated violations of "international conventions and protocols of coexistence," Correa responded with utter contempt. "This will never be forgotten by the whole of humanity," Correa declared. "One of the most heinous acts, the fruit of servility, vileness and vengeance." "From now on and across the world," Correa added in a subsequent tweet, "scoundrel and betrayal can be summarized in two words: Lenin Moreno." It was Correa in 2012 who first granted Assange political asylum over fears that the journalist was being targeted by some of the powerful enemies he had made—including the United States and the U.K.—by publishing highly sensitive documents and other materials, including evidence of war crimes. When announcing the decision at the time, Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, explained that the decision was made specifically because Assange could face "political persecution" or be extradited to the U.S. where he could potentially be put to death if tried and convicted under the arcane Espionage Act. "The government of Ecuador, faithful to its tradition of protecting those who seek refuge in its territory or in its diplomatic missions, has decided to grant diplomatic asylum to Julian Assange," Patiño declared in 2012. Since the news of Assange's arrest broke early Thursday morning, human rights defenders and press freedom advocates have condemned the joint move of the Ecuadorian and U.K. governments. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 81912 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 11 23:11:25 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 18:11:25 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... In-Reply-To: <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> References: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <849F1D00-33F5-4480-B86A-18A361F54002@gmail.com> Dianna-- It’s good to correct Bob Naiman’s misleading comment on libertarians. Bob has an unfortunate habit of circulating inaccurate accounts of parties that are not the Democrats. See notably . It’s not clear that it’s always an accident. —CGE > On Apr 11, 2019, at 12:13 PM, Dianna Visek via Peace-discuss wrote: > > The Libertarian Party does upport Assange, Snowden et al. E.g.: > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > Happy birthday to the Bill of Rights! These 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified by the states o... > > > > On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 9:32:50 AM CDT, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > Well said Bob ! > > > David J. > > > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 8:27 AM > To: Peace-discuss List > Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... > > > First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights. > > > The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not Julian Assange. > > > Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights. > > > Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment rights. > > > So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange... > > > === > > > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 divisek at yahoo.com Fri Apr 12 00:51:04 2019 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 00:51:04 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... In-Reply-To: <849F1D00-33F5-4480-B86A-18A361F54002@gmail.com> References: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> <849F1D00-33F5-4480-B86A-18A361F54002@gmail.com> Message-ID: <874429963.2443.1555030264121@mail.yahoo.com> Hi Carl, Thank you for sharing this.  I'll spend less time reading his posts. Dianna On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 6:11:28 PM CDT, C G Estabrook wrote: Dianna-- It’s good to correct Bob Naiman’s misleading comment on libertarians. Bob has an unfortunate habit of circulating inaccurate accounts of parties that are not the Democrats. See notably . It’s not clear that it’s always an accident. —CGE > On Apr 11, 2019, at 12:13 PM, Dianna Visek via Peace-discuss wrote: > > The Libertarian Party does upport Assange, Snowden et al.  E.g.: > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > Happy birthday to the Bill of Rights! These 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified by the states o... > > > > On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 9:32:50 AM CDT, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > Well said Bob ! > >  > David J. > >  > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 8:27 AM > To: Peace-discuss List > Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... > >  > First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights. > >  > The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not Julian Assange. > >  > Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights. > >  > Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment rights. > >  > So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange... > >  > === > > > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > >  >  > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Apr 12 01:02:38 2019 From: galliher at illinois.edu (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 20:02:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Bob gives us an interesting account of an 'anti-BDS bill,’ but he ignores the process by which the First Amendment - which as Karen correctly says, originally constrained only to the federal government - was extended to the states, not without serious opposition. See 'Incorporation of the Bill of Rights’ on Wikipedia . Free speech, free expression, freedom of the press, even academic freedom are principles that extend much further than American law, constitutional or otherwise. And their suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society. See e.g., the 1993 book by my late friend, Nat Hentoff, “Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” (An update, a generation later, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.) As Chomsky said in lapidary fashion, "If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.” —CGE > On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:36 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Karen Aram now asserts: > > <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> > > This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. > > A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. > > So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. > > Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. > > But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. > > The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the ILLINOIS anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. > > When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. > > A key reason, perhaps THE key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this ILLINOIS bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. > > So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum. If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. > > This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. > > It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” > > > >> On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman wrote: >> >> "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. >> >> The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. >> >> What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? >> >> Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? >> >> I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. >> >> >> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook wrote: >> As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. >> >> There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” >> >> For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). >> >> It’s science fiction of course. >> >> >>> On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." >>> >>> When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. >>> >>> === >>> >>> Robert Reuel Naiman >>> Policy Director >>> Just Foreign Policy >>> www.justforeignpolicy.org >>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >>> (202) 448-2898 x1 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf >>> >>> Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. >>> Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. >>> >>> In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. >>> >>> https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> 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 > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Apr 12 02:22:32 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 02:22:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Carl I was quoting you when I referred to the “Federal Government," I should have just said, “government.' Any lawyer can argue a case on the basis of “freedom of speech, whether he wins his case is often arbitrary, or based upon his ability to convince and persuade. You are right in that it is both “left and right,” playing with the first amendment, with students on the left, liberals usually, protesting Professors for saying that which they don’t like, and instead of countering with truth, they insist the University dismiss the Academic. I’m not referring to right wing, racist academics either. We’ve become a society of “I don’t like what you said, or I don’t like the words you use.” Having worked in the private sector, for two major corporations as well as the Asian Development Bank, I can attest to the fact that employees are often required to sign contracts upon their first day of work, that limits their freedom of speech. According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” My objection to allowing everyone and anyone say what they wish, is in respect to “ad hominems” which are straying from the issue, ignoring the substance of the issue, and distracting from the argument. You’re quite right when you say: “suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society.” Though I provide a Wikipedia note below, its always questionable, there is nothing like a current book on “Constitutional Law.” According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” On Apr 11, 2019, at 18:02, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: Bob gives us an interesting account of an 'anti-BDS bill,’ but he ignores the process by which the First Amendment - which as Karen correctly says, originally constrained only to the federal government - was extended to the states, not without serious opposition. See 'Incorporation of the Bill of Rights’ on Wikipedia . Free speech, free expression, freedom of the press, even academic freedom are principles that extend much further than American law, constitutional or otherwise. And their suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society. See e.g., the 1993 book by my late friend, Nat Hentoff, “Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” (An update, a generation later, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.) As Chomsky said in lapidary fashion, "If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.” —CGE On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:36 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: Karen Aram now asserts: <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the ILLINOIS anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. A key reason, perhaps THE key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this ILLINOIS bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum. If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman wrote: "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook wrote: As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). It’s science fiction of course. On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state _______________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________ 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 Apr 12 02:54:56 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 21:54:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... In-Reply-To: <874429963.2443.1555030264121@mail.yahoo.com> References: <009801d4f073$62d887d0$28899770$@comcast.net> <2145721000.1868972.1555002838294@mail.yahoo.com> <849F1D00-33F5-4480-B86A-18A361F54002@gmail.com> <874429963.2443.1555030264121@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <026E2FE2-D66B-41B5-B4E6-138ED97DE9D4@gmail.com> Bob can do better: e.g., . > On Apr 11, 2019, at 7:51 PM, Dianna Visek wrote: > > Hi Carl, > > Thank you for sharing this. I'll spend less time reading his posts. > > Dianna > > > On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 6:11:28 PM CDT, C G Estabrook wrote: > > > Dianna-- > > It’s good to correct Bob Naiman’s misleading comment on libertarians. > > Bob has an unfortunate habit of circulating inaccurate accounts of parties that are not the Democrats. > > See notably . > > It’s not clear that it’s always an accident. —CGE > > > > > On Apr 11, 2019, at 12:13 PM, Dianna Visek via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > > The Libertarian Party does upport Assange, Snowden et al. E.g.: > > > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > > > > Libertarians honor the Bill of Rights | Libertarian Party > > Happy birthday to the Bill of Rights! These 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified by the states o... > > > > > > > > On Thursday, April 11, 2019, 9:32:50 AM CDT, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > > > > Well said Bob ! > > > > > > David J. > > > > > > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > > Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 8:27 AM > > To: Peace-discuss List > > Subject: [Peace-discuss] First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights... > > > > > > First they came for Julian Assange's First Amendment rights. > > > > > > The liberals and the libertarians did not speak up, because they were not Julian Assange. > > > > > > Besides, the liberals and the libertarians argued, Julian Assange has no First Amendment rights. > > > > > > Julian Assange is an Australian. Only Americans have First Amendment rights. > > > > > > So argued the liberals and the libertarians, when they came for the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange... > > > > > > === > > > > > > > > Robert Reuel Naiman > > Policy Director > > Just Foreign Policy > > www.justforeignpolicy.org > > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 12 10:25:23 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 05:25:23 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <400F26A7-B8B3-4DAB-B62C-8D78105861BF@gmail.com> Karen— We all know that the adoption of the 1787 constitution, which established the federal government, was followed almost immediately by an important series of amendments (the Bill of Rights), by which local elites attempted to delimit the powers of the new federal government. They had reluctantly agreed to that government, specifically to protect themselves from the demands for more democracy from the working classes. (See Gore Vidal, “Homage to Daniel Shays.”) 'The primary responsibility of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," Madison declared. That has been the guiding principle of the democratic system from its origins until today.’ . The first ten amendments (1791) were attempts to constrain the new federal government. These limitations (notably the First Amendment's prohibiting the federal government’s interfering with freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and right to petition) were gradually extended to state and local government in the US (not without dispute), but it's important to note that were established particularly in opposition to the federal government. In spite of the First Amendment’s prohibitions, the federal government has regularly interfered with those rights, notably in the Espionage Act (1917), which had little to do with espionage and much to do with suppressing criticism of US war-making. (The Obama administration employed the Espionage Act more than all other US administrations combined; it seems to be at the base of the USG’s attempt to silence Wikileaks' revelation to a yet-unknowing world of US war crimes.) In regard to Mill’s asseveration, the principal question today in regard to freedom of speech, etc., is Who’s going to bell the cat? The NYTImes, Facebook, etc. seem to have been delegated and licensed "to prevent harm to others” (principally to the 1% and their minions) by suppressing those freedoms. Regards, CGE > On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram wrote: > > Carl > > I was quoting you when I referred to the “Federal Government," I should have just said, “government.' > > Any lawyer can argue a case on the basis of “freedom of speech, whether he wins his case is often arbitrary, or based upon his ability to convince and persuade. > > You are right in that it is both “left and right,” playing with the first amendment, with students on the left, liberals usually, protesting Professors for saying that which they don’t like, and instead of countering with truth, they insist the University dismiss the Academic. I’m not referring to right wing, racist academics either. We’ve become a society of “I don’t like what you said, or I don’t like the words you use.” > > Having worked in the private sector, for two major corporations as well as the Asian Development Bank, I can attest to the fact that employees are often required to sign contracts upon their first day of work, that limits their freedom of speech. > > According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” > > My objection to allowing everyone and anyone say what they wish, is in respect to “ad hominems” which are straying from the issue, ignoring the substance of the issue, and distracting from the argument. > > You’re quite right when you say: “suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society.” > > Though I provide a Wikipedia note below, its always questionable, there is nothing like a current book on “Constitutional Law.” > > According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” > > > >> On Apr 11, 2019, at 18:02, C. G. Estabrook wrote: >> >> Bob gives us an interesting account of an 'anti-BDS bill,’ but he ignores the process by which the First Amendment - which as Karen correctly says, originally constrained only the federal government - was extended to the states, not without serious opposition. >> >> See 'Incorporation of the Bill of Rights’ on Wikipedia . >> >> Free speech, free expression, freedom of the press, even academic freedom are principles that extend much further than American law, constitutional or otherwise. And their suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society. See e.g., the 1993 book by my late friend, Nat Hentoff, “Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” (An update, a generation later, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.) >> >> As Chomsky said in lapidary fashion, "If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.” >> >> —CGE >> >> >>> On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:36 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> >>> Karen Aram now asserts: >>> >>> <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> >>> >>> This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. >>> >>> A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. >>> >>> So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. >>> >>> Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. >>> >>> But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. >>> >>> The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the ILLINOIS anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. >>> >>> When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. >>> >>> A key reason, perhaps THE key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this ILLINOIS bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. >>> >>> So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum. If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. >>> >>> === >>> >>> Robert Reuel Naiman >>> Policy Director >>> Just Foreign Policy >>> www.justforeignpolicy.org >>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >>> (202) 448-2898 x1 >>> >>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >>> Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. >>> >>> This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. >>> >>> It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” >>> >>> >>> >>>> On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman wrote: >>>> >>>> "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. >>>> >>>> The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. >>>> >>>> What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? >>>> >>>> Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? >>>> >>>> I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook wrote: >>>> As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. >>>> >>>> There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” >>>> >>>> For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). >>>> >>>> It’s science fiction of course. >>>> >>>> >>>>> On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: >>>>> >>>>> And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." >>>>> >>>>> When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. >>>>> >>>>> === >>>>> >>>>> Robert Reuel Naiman >>>>> Policy Director >>>>> Just Foreign Policy >>>>> www.justforeignpolicy.org >>>>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org >>>>> (202) 448-2898 x1 >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: >>>>> POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf >>>>> >>>>> Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. >>>>> Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. >>>>> >>>>> In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. >>>>> >>>>> https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> 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 >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace-discuss mailing list >>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Apr 12 11:11:32 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 11:11:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: <400F26A7-B8B3-4DAB-B62C-8D78105861BF@gmail.com> References: <400F26A7-B8B3-4DAB-B62C-8D78105861BF@gmail.com> Message-ID: Carl Excellent points: "In spite of the First Amendment’s prohibitions, the federal government has regularly interfered with those rights, notably in the Espionage Act (1917), which had little to do with espionage and much to do with suppressing criticism of US war-making. (The Obama administration employed the Espionage Act more than all other US administrations combined; it seems to be at the base of the USG’s attempt to silence Wikileaks' revelation to a yet-unknowing world of US war crimes.) " "In regard to Mill’s asseveration, the principal question today in regard to freedom of speech, etc., is Who’s going to bell the cat? The NYTImes, Facebook, etc. seem to have been delegated and licensed “to prevent harm to others” (principally to the 1% and their minions) by suppressing those freedoms." On Apr 12, 2019, at 03:25, C G Estabrook > wrote: Karen— We all know that the adoption of the 1787 constitution, which established the federal government, was followed almost immediately by an important series of amendments (the Bill of Rights), by which local elites attempted to delimit the powers of the new federal government. They had reluctantly agreed to that government, specifically to protect themselves from the demands for more democracy from the working classes. (See Gore Vidal, “Homage to Daniel Shays.”) 'The primary responsibility of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," Madison declared. That has been the guiding principle of the democratic system from its origins until today.’ . The first ten amendments (1791) were attempts to constrain the new federal government. These limitations (notably the First Amendment's prohibiting the federal government’s interfering with freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and right to petition) were gradually extended to state and local government in the US (not without dispute), but it's important to note that were established particularly in opposition to the federal government. In spite of the First Amendment’s prohibitions, the federal government has regularly interfered with those rights, notably in the Espionage Act (1917), which had little to do with espionage and much to do with suppressing criticism of US war-making. (The Obama administration employed the Espionage Act more than all other US administrations combined; it seems to be at the base of the USG’s attempt to silence Wikileaks' revelation to a yet-unknowing world of US war crimes.) In regard to Mill’s asseveration, the principal question today in regard to freedom of speech, etc., is Who’s going to bell the cat? The NYTImes, Facebook, etc. seem to have been delegated and licensed "to prevent harm to others” (principally to the 1% and their minions) by suppressing those freedoms. Regards, CGE On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: Carl I was quoting you when I referred to the “Federal Government," I should have just said, “government.' Any lawyer can argue a case on the basis of “freedom of speech, whether he wins his case is often arbitrary, or based upon his ability to convince and persuade. You are right in that it is both “left and right,” playing with the first amendment, with students on the left, liberals usually, protesting Professors for saying that which they don’t like, and instead of countering with truth, they insist the University dismiss the Academic. I’m not referring to right wing, racist academics either. We’ve become a society of “I don’t like what you said, or I don’t like the words you use.” Having worked in the private sector, for two major corporations as well as the Asian Development Bank, I can attest to the fact that employees are often required to sign contracts upon their first day of work, that limits their freedom of speech. According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” My objection to allowing everyone and anyone say what they wish, is in respect to “ad hominems” which are straying from the issue, ignoring the substance of the issue, and distracting from the argument. You’re quite right when you say: “suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society.” Though I provide a Wikipedia note below, its always questionable, there is nothing like a current book on “Constitutional Law.” According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” On Apr 11, 2019, at 18:02, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: Bob gives us an interesting account of an 'anti-BDS bill,’ but he ignores the process by which the First Amendment - which as Karen correctly says, originally constrained only the federal government - was extended to the states, not without serious opposition. See 'Incorporation of the Bill of Rights’ on Wikipedia . Free speech, free expression, freedom of the press, even academic freedom are principles that extend much further than American law, constitutional or otherwise. And their suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society. See e.g., the 1993 book by my late friend, Nat Hentoff, “Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” (An update, a generation later, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.) As Chomsky said in lapidary fashion, "If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.” —CGE On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:36 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: Karen Aram now asserts: <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the ILLINOIS anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. A key reason, perhaps THE key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this ILLINOIS bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum. If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman wrote: "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook wrote: As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). It’s science fiction of course. On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state _______________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________ 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 Fri Apr 12 11:56:01 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 06:56:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Exposing the DNC dogs as First Amendment haters In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10158168532287656 The enemy dogs are trying to make the arrest of Julian about "hacking." We need to change the channel back to "First Amendment." The enemy dogs are going after Julian because they are haters of the First Amendment and they see Julian as an attractive target because he is Australian. We need to expose the fact that this is all about the lust of the DNC dogs to attack the protections of the First Amendment. When we so expose them, the DNC dogs will stand down. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Apr 12 13:25:27 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 13:25:27 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Postponed means no-platformed In-Reply-To: References: <400F26A7-B8B3-4DAB-B62C-8D78105861BF@gmail.com> Message-ID: To be noted: LIke the Green Party yesterday, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Socialist Equality Party, the Libertarian Party, has come out opposing the prosecution of Julian Assange. Has the Democrat Party opposed the extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange? We have Hillary Clinton and others applauding his arrest yesterday. On Apr 12, 2019, at 04:11, Karen Aram > wrote: Carl Excellent points: "In spite of the First Amendment’s prohibitions, the federal government has regularly interfered with those rights, notably in the Espionage Act (1917), which had little to do with espionage and much to do with suppressing criticism of US war-making. (The Obama administration employed the Espionage Act more than all other US administrations combined; it seems to be at the base of the USG’s attempt to silence Wikileaks' revelation to a yet-unknowing world of US war crimes.) " "In regard to Mill’s asseveration, the principal question today in regard to freedom of speech, etc., is Who’s going to bell the cat? The NYTImes, Facebook, etc. seem to have been delegated and licensed “to prevent harm to others” (principally to the 1% and their minions) by suppressing those freedoms." On Apr 12, 2019, at 03:25, C G Estabrook > wrote: Karen— We all know that the adoption of the 1787 constitution, which established the federal government, was followed almost immediately by an important series of amendments (the Bill of Rights), by which local elites attempted to delimit the powers of the new federal government. They had reluctantly agreed to that government, specifically to protect themselves from the demands for more democracy from the working classes. (See Gore Vidal, “Homage to Daniel Shays.”) 'The primary responsibility of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," Madison declared. That has been the guiding principle of the democratic system from its origins until today.’ . The first ten amendments (1791) were attempts to constrain the new federal government. These limitations (notably the First Amendment's prohibiting the federal government’s interfering with freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and right to petition) were gradually extended to state and local government in the US (not without dispute), but it's important to note that were established particularly in opposition to the federal government. In spite of the First Amendment’s prohibitions, the federal government has regularly interfered with those rights, notably in the Espionage Act (1917), which had little to do with espionage and much to do with suppressing criticism of US war-making. (The Obama administration employed the Espionage Act more than all other US administrations combined; it seems to be at the base of the USG’s attempt to silence Wikileaks' revelation to a yet-unknowing world of US war crimes.) In regard to Mill’s asseveration, the principal question today in regard to freedom of speech, etc., is Who’s going to bell the cat? The NYTImes, Facebook, etc. seem to have been delegated and licensed "to prevent harm to others” (principally to the 1% and their minions) by suppressing those freedoms. Regards, CGE On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:22 PM, Karen Aram > wrote: Carl I was quoting you when I referred to the “Federal Government," I should have just said, “government.' Any lawyer can argue a case on the basis of “freedom of speech, whether he wins his case is often arbitrary, or based upon his ability to convince and persuade. You are right in that it is both “left and right,” playing with the first amendment, with students on the left, liberals usually, protesting Professors for saying that which they don’t like, and instead of countering with truth, they insist the University dismiss the Academic. I’m not referring to right wing, racist academics either. We’ve become a society of “I don’t like what you said, or I don’t like the words you use.” Having worked in the private sector, for two major corporations as well as the Asian Development Bank, I can attest to the fact that employees are often required to sign contracts upon their first day of work, that limits their freedom of speech. According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” My objection to allowing everyone and anyone say what they wish, is in respect to “ad hominems” which are straying from the issue, ignoring the substance of the issue, and distracting from the argument. You’re quite right when you say: “suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society.” Though I provide a Wikipedia note below, its always questionable, there is nothing like a current book on “Constitutional Law.” According to Wikipedia: "Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that: "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."[3]” On Apr 11, 2019, at 18:02, C. G. Estabrook > wrote: Bob gives us an interesting account of an 'anti-BDS bill,’ but he ignores the process by which the First Amendment - which as Karen correctly says, originally constrained only the federal government - was extended to the states, not without serious opposition. See 'Incorporation of the Bill of Rights’ on Wikipedia . Free speech, free expression, freedom of the press, even academic freedom are principles that extend much further than American law, constitutional or otherwise. And their suppression in its own interest is a principal activity of capitalist society. See e.g., the 1993 book by my late friend, Nat Hentoff, “Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” (An update, a generation later, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.) As Chomsky said in lapidary fashion, "If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.” —CGE On Apr 11, 2019, at 9:36 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > wrote: Karen Aram now asserts: <<“free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government>> This ridiculous assertion is provably not true - if logic and evidence matter here any more, if they ever did. This is what happens when people who have no practical political experience of organizing in the First Amendment arena start pontificating. They are sure that they are right, because they are right in a bubble that extends six inches around their head, and they think that validation comes from the little cult they've joined, so they don't care about the real world anymore. A few years ago, we had a big fight in the Illinois legislature about a proposed "anti-BDS" bill. And when I say "we," in the context of this list, I really mean "me." As far as I recall, I'm the only person on this list who took meaningful action to organize opposition. I gathered signatures. You didn't. I went to Springfield for the committee meetings. You didn't. I lobbied Mike Frerichs, who was then chair of the Senate higher education committee, where the bill was sent first. You didn't. In a one-on-one meeting with Mike Frerichs, he looked me in the eye and basically said: I get this. I understand what these "anti-BDS" people are trying to do, and why they're trying to do it. And that's why I said to Ira Silverstein - now disgraced and gone on sexual misconduct allegations, but then the lead sponsor of the bill, championed by the Jewish Federation - that's why, Mike told me, he said to Ira, I don't believe that your bill belongs in my committee and your bill is not going anywhere in my committee, so if you want to move your bill at all, you're going to have to take it out of my committee and take it somewhere else. So that's what Ira did. He took it to another committee. Because Mike Frerichs was like a tree that's standing by the water. He was not going to be moved. So then Ira took his bill to Kwame Raoul's committee, I think it was the justice committee. I went to the committee hearing. And I saw with my own eyes how Kwame Raoul shut down the anti-BDS bill of Ira and the Jewish Federation by invoking the First Amendment,. It was a beautiful performance. I would not trade it for seeing Maria Callas at the Met. Like Mike Frerichs, Kwame Raoul was a tree standing by the water which was not going to be moved. That's why I supported Kwame Raoul for Attorney General, even though he was also supported by the Chicago Machine. Because with my own eyes I saw Kwame Raoul stand in the breach alone, wielding the First Amendment to defeat Ira Silverstein and the Jewish Federation and their anti-BDS bill. Kwame Raoul said: look, this is a First Amendment issue. Some people support BDS, some people oppose BDS. I'm not saying what I think is right or wrong about that. I'm saying that we have a First Amendment right to speak our minds in this country, and you have to respect that. You do your thing, you let the others do their thing. That's how the First Amendment works. And when Kwame Raoul, the chair of the committee, said those words, that was the end of the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill in the Illinois legislature. But there's something I haven't mentioned yet which decisively shaped the debate. The Illinois ACLU came out against the Jewish Federation's anti-BDS bill, saying that it was unconstitutional and violated that First Amendment. The position of the Illinois ACLU was: the legislature should not pass.unconstitutional laws. The ACLU issued a statement against the bill. The ACLU lobbied against the bill. Everybody who was lobbying against the bill was always carrying the ACLU statement, always citing and linking to the ACLU statement, always mentioning the ACLU's opposition to the bill on First Amendment grounds. The ACLU's opposition on First Amendment grounds shaped everything else that happened. The most important factor in defeating the bill wasn't my lobbying or JVP's lobbying or the number of signatures we had. The most important factor was the opposition of the Illinois ACLU, citing saying that the ILLINOIS anti-BDS bill violated the First Amendment. When I met with Mike Frerichs, the first thing I said was: "this bill is opposed by the Illinois ACLU." He said: I know it's opposed by the ACLU. Duh. The lobbyist for the Illinois ACLU already talked to him. He's the chair of the committee where the bill is sitting. Of course the ACLU already talked to him. A key reason, perhaps THE key reason, that Mike Frerichs and Kwame Raoul were like trees standing by the water that were not going to be moved is that the Illinois ACLU was like a tree standing by the water that was not going to be moved. And what the Illinois ACLU was saying was: this ILLINOIS bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment and that's why we oppose it. We have no position on BDS, the ACLU said. We're defending the First Amendment, because that's what we do. So there you have it. Quod erat demonstrandum. If logic and evidence matter on this list, we will never see it asserted here again that the First Amendment "only applies to the federal government." Even the stupidest, most arrogant, most stubborn morons here will never again dare to make that assertion on this list. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 8:35 AM Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: Carl is right, the “free speech amendment and bill of rights,” applies only to the federal government. Don’t take my word for it, ask a lawyer, I’m pleased to hear him finally admit it. This is one of the reasons I am often in conflict with Carl. Allowing members of the community who care nothing about war or peace, take the opportunity to make personal attacks against others, on the Peace Discuss List, serves no purpose. We sign up those we assume support peace and wish to acquire information in relation to war, and peace, and all that is related, and engage in discussions which should be based on the issues. It’s also one of the means of allowing provocateurs to destroy or kill the credibility of a movement or group, allowing anything, anywhere to be said under the guise of “freedom of speech.” On Apr 11, 2019, at 05:08, Robert Naiman wrote: "There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US." There is if the public insists there is. If people take the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with, then no. But taking the attitude that it would be cool to take away other people's free speech rights as much as it is possible to legally get away with would be wrong. It would be immoral. It would be unethical. It would be an insult to the memory of people who struggled in the past to expand the space of free speech rights, like Marianne Brun. The University of Illinois largely got away with taking away Salaita's free speech rights. They were sanctioned by the AAUP; those sanctions were removed shortly after the University reached a legal settlement with Salaita. He got a payout, but not the job that he had been promised. What attitude should righteous people take towards this situation? Should they celebrate the fact that UIUC largely got away with abrogating Salaita's free speech rights? Should they rub their hands with glee? Should they cackle with joy? Or should they try to figure out how to stop the abrogation of free speech rights in the future? I always knew you as a First Amendment hardliner, Carl. That was the one thing we always agreed on. Now that you have defected away from the camp of First Amendment hardliners, I guess we don't agree on anything. On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 5:51 PM C G Estabrook wrote: As Bob well knows, the Bill of Rights (including the 1st Amendment) was designed to bind only the federal government. There is no general right to freedom of speech in the US. And as A. J. Liebling pointed out long ago, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” For the consideration of a society where such a general right might exist, see Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia” (1974). It’s science fiction of course. On Apr 10, 2019, at 2:00 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss wrote: And "no-platformed" means "blacklisted." When was the meeting when the First Amendment was repealed? I don't remember being invited to that meeting. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 1:57 PM David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: POSTPONED: Max Blumenthal - The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Feuled the Rise of Al Queda, ISIS, and Donald Trump—at The Wharf Wednesday, April 3, 2019 - 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Politics and Prose is postponing tonight’s event at The Wharf with author Max Blumenthal as we work to address concerns that have arisen over the event’s format, substance, and security. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. In his new book, Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and author of geo-political studies including Goliath and The 51 Day War, charts the history of American involvement in the Middle East from the Reagan administration to today. His account follows two deeply intertwined strands: the simultaneous rise of international jihadism and Western ultra-nationalism. Starting with Washington’s secret funding of the mujahideen after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and moving to the flow of arms that today is more likely to end up with Syrian extremists than with the anti-Assad forces they’re meant for, Blumenthal charts how the same groups Washington has supported eventually turn their anger against us. Meanwhile, the nation’s domestic politics have become more extreme in their own way, leading to today’s deeply polarized and unsettled society under Trump. https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/postponed-max-blumenthal-management-of-savagery-how-americas-national-security-state _______________________________________________ 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 _______________________________________________ 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 jbn at forestfield.org Fri Apr 12 22:40:03 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 17:40:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NfN #417 notes Message-ID: News from Neptune #417 A "Martyrdom of Julian Assange and Press Freedom" edition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA38eP6Y9GM A list of links to references made on the show. Recent WikiLeaks activities relating to Ecuadorian Pres. Moreno https://defend.wikileaks.org/2019/04/03/ecuador-twists-embarrassing-ina-papers-into-pretext-to-oust-assange/ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/wikileaks-assange-repeatedly-violated-asylum-terms-moreno-190402183841403.html -- contains a claim of "hack[ing] private accounts or phones" which comes without evidence. Gore Vidal on his book "History of the National Security State" with Paul Jay (7-part interview, transcripts & links to videos within) https://therealnews.com/series/gore-vidal-history-of-the-national-security-state Daniel Ellsberg On Assange Arrest: The Beginning of the End For Press Freedom https://therealnews.com/stories/daniel-ellsberg-on-assange-arrest-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-press-freedom Jonathan Cook on "After 7 Years of Deceptions About Assange, the US Readies for Its First Media Rendition" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/12/after-7-years-of-deceptions-about-assange-the-us-readies-for-its-first-media-rendition/ Michelle Goldberg on "Is Assange’s Arrest a Threat to the Free Press?" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/opinion/julian-assange-wikileaks-first-amendment.html Related: RT: "Mainstream media celebrates Julian Assange's arrest" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6qC9j7zDZM National Public Radio, like Michelle Goldberg and unlike RT, also relayed comparable unproven allegations of Russian involvement in getting the DNC emails to WikiLeaks in its programming on 2019-04-11. John Pilger on "The Assange Arrest is a Warning From History" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/12/the-assange-arrest-is-a-warning-from-history/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xo8gcN6b_4 -- RT interview with Pilger Matt Taibbi's "Hate Inc." book (first 3 chapters can be read gratis on Taibbi's blog) https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-fairway-is-now-hate-inc List of Aaron Maté's work with The Real News https://therealnews.com/bios/aaron-mate Aaron Maté on New Knowledge's work https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1078299620281892864 Related: 'Moderate Rebels' on New Knowledge's work in Russiagate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud0ngMFq0rM Rania Khalek's site https://raniakhalek.com/ Khalek's "In the NOW" show https://www.youtube.com/user/InTheNowRT/videos Democracy Now/Amy Goodman interview with Noam Chomsky -- Goodman's part of this is edited out, only Chomsky's talk remains listed in the transcript. https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/12/chomsky_arrest_of_assange_is_scandalous https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/12/noam_chomsky_we_must_confront_the https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/12/chomsky_nuclear_weapons_climate_change_the Laura Poitras on Julian Assange https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/29/laura-poitras-wikileaks-film-risk-julian-assange https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/20/laura-poitras-on-her-new-julian-assange-film-few-people-could-stand-the-pressure-he-is-under- https://www.truthdig.com/articles/director-laura-poitras-julian-assange-is-an-equal-opportunity-leaker-audio-2/ -- includes audio & transcript of conversation between Robert Scheer & Poitras Laura Poitras' "Citizenfour" (2014) movie featuring Poitras, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, et al. Full movie: https://archive.org/download/Citizen.Four2014/citizen.four%282014%29.mp4 Laura Poitras and others on The Intercept shutting down the Snowden archive amidst layoffs, barring Poitras from attending an Intercept meeting https://www.rt.com/news/453842-snowden-archive-shut-intercept/ https://medium.com/@barrettbrown/why-the-intercept-really-closed-the-snowden-archive-e99f46bbfbbc https://www.thedailybeast.com/laura-poitras-co-founder-of-the-intercept-barred-from-company-meeting-after-snowden-archive-shutdown O Society on "The Martyrdom of Julian Assange" https://opensociet.org/2019/04/11/the-martyrdom-of-julian-assange/ Jeffrey St. Clair on "Roaming Charges: Tongue-Tied and Twisted" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/12/roaming-charges-tongue-tied-and-twisted/ Binoy Kampmark on "Shredding Asylum: the Arrest of Julian Assange" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/12/shredding-asylum-the-arrest-of-julian-assange/ Jaclyn Friedman and Naomi Wolf debate Julian Assange's alleged sex crimes Part 1 of 2: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/20/naomi_wolf_vs_jaclyn_friedman_a Part 2 of 2: https://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/21/part_iifeminists_debate_sexual_allegations_against Interesting in light of how any substance driving these sexual misconduct or rape allegations fell apart both from the ostensible victims of the allegations (those said to have been sexually abused), the deceptive practices of the Swedish government working at the behest of the US government (which aimed to prejudice people's view of Assange via character assassination), the lack of charges (charges were never made), and ultimately dropping the allegations. This puts the entire discussion in a whole new frame as does any rhetoric now years later when the US is eager to pitch Assange as some kind of rogue agent instead of a publisher deserving the same results as the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times (3 of many international news organizations that published WikiLeaks leaks and even worked with WikiLeaks on material when it was profitable for them to do so). It's also telling that no feminist organizations have made note of how these allegations were used, seemingly falsely, which only help make real sexual misconduct of various degrees come into greater suspicion (ala the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" story where repeated lying drives people to dismiss by default even when there's a real need for help). Patrick Lawrence on "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack" https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/ Related: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/08/14/former-nsa-tech-director-bill-binney-outlines-dnc-emails-were-a-leak-not-a-russian-hack/ https://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/seth-rich-leaked-the-dnc-emails-they-were-not-hacked/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHs-E2e2V4 -- a very recent episode of "Empire Files" featuring an interview with Bill Binney who explains that the DNC emails could not have been copied remotely by Russians as Democratic Party and corporate-friendly media maintain (without evidence) because Binney's group tested the international Internet connections involved and couldn't download data anywhere near the speed needed to have the same timestamps as shown in the DNC email data (the download speed was around a quarter of the speed needed to qualify for a network-based so-called "hack"). But the speed observed is perfectly consistent with a local copy to a portable drive such as a USB thumb drive which are readily available, easy to use, and inexpensive. Something Seth Rich (who had hardware access and enough know-how to use) could have done. Rich's alleged "robbery gone bad" is alleged to be the act which caused his death, and not a hit carried out by the DNC corporation as punishment for leaking the sensitive emails, despite that no robbery of Rich's dead body occurred. -J From brussel at illinois.edu Sat Apr 13 03:13:31 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 03:13:31 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Assange discussion Message-ID: <210F85B5-9CF6-43A9-A5EE-39D02C68F235@illinois.edu> There is a very long discussion about the Assange situation on Consortium News. It is interesting and informative to listen in to it here and there over its 6 hours. Various aspects of the case are illuminated, relative to the UK, the U.S., France, and Equador. One conclusion from the discussion is that Assange's case in the UK will probably extend for quite some time, during which Assange will be better treated than he was in the Equadorian embassy. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/11/emergency-meeting-for-assange-live/#comments From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sat Apr 13 07:13:13 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 02:13:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Assange discussion In-Reply-To: <210F85B5-9CF6-43A9-A5EE-39D02C68F235@illinois.edu> References: <210F85B5-9CF6-43A9-A5EE-39D02C68F235@illinois.edu> Message-ID: It's possible that the extradition case to the United States could be stopped, in which case they might have to set him free, presumably to return to his native Australia. Corbyn and the leadership of the Labour Party are against the extradition. Tulsi Gabbard and Ro Khanna have spoken out against the extradition. It's plausible that we could get Bernie to speak out against it. Ro Khanna is close to Bernie. He's national co-chair of Bernie's campaign. We got Bernie to improve what he was saying about Venezuela by organizing more people to speak out. Tulsi is going to be in the Democratic debates, having received the required number of individual contributions to qualify. This issue isn't going away, as long as Julian sits in a UK jail with a US extradition threat hanging over him. Journalists, activists, voters will continue to ask about it. Remember, this isn't just about the fate of Julian, although we should always care about someone who is unjustly imprisoned for a long time, especially if our government is responsible for it. This is about the U.S. government's attempts to chill national security journalism by curbing the protections of the First Amendment. Therefore, it concerns everyone who wants to end and prevent wars. Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First Amendment-Protected Journalism https://www.change.org/p/block-extradition-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-first-amendment-protected-journalism === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:14 PM Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > There is a very long discussion about the Assange situation on Consortium > News. It is interesting and informative to listen in to it here and there > over its 6 hours. Various aspects of the case are illuminated, relative to > the UK, the U.S., France, and Equador. One conclusion from the discussion > is that Assange's case in the UK will probably extend for quite some time, > during which Assange will be better treated than he was in the Equadorian > embassy. > > > https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/11/emergency-meeting-for-assange-live/#comments > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 13 16:40:33 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 11:40:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Chomsky on Democracy Now Message-ID: <8D049469-58B8-4E41-B34B-028CF098429E@gmail.com> ...the Assange arrest is scandalous in several respects. One of them is just the effort of governments—and it’s not just the U.S. government. The British are cooperating. Ecuador, of course, is now cooperating. Sweden, before, had cooperated. The efforts to silence a journalist who was producing materials that people in power didn’t want the rascal multitude to know about—that’s basically what happened. WikiLeaks was producing things that people ought to know about those in power. People in power don’t like that, so therefore we have to silence it. This is the kind of thing, the kind of scandal, that takes place, unfortunately, over and over. To take another example, right next door to Ecuador, in Brazil, where the developments that have gone on are extremely important. This is the most important country in Latin America, one of the most important in the world. Under the Lula government early in this millennium, Brazil was the most—maybe the most respected country in the world. It was the voice for the Global South under the leadership of Lula da Silva. Notice what happened. There was a coup, soft coup, to eliminate the nefarious effects of the labor party, the Workers’ Party. These are described by the World Bank—not me, the World Bank—as the “golden decade” in Brazil’s history, with radical reduction of poverty, a massive extension of inclusion of marginalized populations, large parts of the population—Afro-Brazilian, indigenous—who were brought into the society, a sense of dignity and hope for the population. That couldn’t be tolerated. After Lula left office, a kind of a “soft coup” takes place—I won’t go through the details, but the last move, last September, was to take Lula da Silva, the leading, the most popular figure in Brazil, who was almost certain to win the forthcoming election, put him in jail, solitary confinement, essentially a death sentence, 25 years in jail, banned from reading press or books, and, crucially, barred from making a public statement—unlike mass murderers on death row. This, in order to silence the person who was likely to win the election. He’s the most important political prisoner in the world. Do you hear anything about it? ...Assange is a similar case: We’ve got to silence this voice. You go back to history. Some of you may recall when Mussolini’s fascist government put Antonio Gramsci in jail. The prosecutor said, “We have to silence this voice for 20 years. Can’t let it speak.” That’s Assange. That’s Lula. There are other cases. That’s one scandal. The other scandal is just the extraterritorial reach of the United States, which is shocking. I mean, why should the United States—why should any—no other state could possibly do it. But why should the United States have the power to control what others are doing elsewhere in the world? I mean, it’s an outlandish situation. It goes on all the time. We never even notice it. At least there’s no comment on it. ...take the trade agreements with China. What are the trade agreements about? They’re an effort to prevent China’s economic development. It’s exactly what they are. Now, China has a development model. The Trump administration doesn’t like it. So, therefore, let’s undermine it. Ask yourself: What would happen if China did not observe the rules that the United States is trying to impose? China, for example, when Boeing or Microsoft, some other major company, invests in China, China wants to have some control over the nature of the investment. They want some degree of technology transfer. They should gain something from the technology. Is there something wrong with that? That’s how the United States developed, stealing—what we call stealing—technology from England. It’s how England developed, taking technology from more advanced countries—India, the Low Countries, even Ireland. That’s how every developed country has reached the stage of advanced development. If Boeing and Microsoft don’t like those arrangements, they don’t have to invest in China. Nobody has a gun to their heads. If anybody really believed in capitalism, they should be free to make any arrangement they want with China. If it involves technology transfer, OK. The United States wants to block that, so China can’t develop. Take what are called intellectual property rights, exorbitant patent rights for medicines, for Windows, for example. Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems, through the World Trade Organization. Suppose China didn’t observe these. Who would benefit, and who would lose? Well, the fact of the matter is that consumers in the United States would benefit. It would mean that you’d get cheaper medicines. It would mean that when you get a computer, that you wouldn’t be stuck with Windows. You could get a better operating system. Bill Gates would have a little less money. The pharmaceutical corporations wouldn’t be as super-rich as they are, a little less rich. But the consumers would benefit. Is there something wrong with that? Is there a problem with that? ...you might ask yourself: What lies behind all of these discussions and negotiations? This is true across the board. Almost any issue you pick, you can ask yourself: Why is this accepted? So, in this case, why is it acceptable for the United States to have the power to even begin to give even a proposal to extradite somebody whose crime is to expose to the public materials that people in power don’t want them to see? That’s basically what’s happening. ### From moboct1 at aim.com Sat Apr 13 17:26:06 2019 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 17:26:06 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Assange discussion References: <1936904328.201644.1555176366477.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1936904328.201644.1555176366477@mail.yahoo.com> Sp that's the way to get in the Democrat "debates"--buy in! mo'b -----Original Message----- From: Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss To: Brussel, Morton K Cc: Peace-discuss Sent: Sat, Apr 13, 2019 2:13 am Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Assange discussion It's possible that the extradition case to the United States could be stopped, in which case they might have to set him free, presumably to return to his native Australia.  Corbyn and the leadership of the Labour Party are against the extradition.  Tulsi Gabbard and Ro Khanna have spoken out against the extradition. It's plausible that we could get Bernie to speak out against it. Ro Khanna is close to Bernie. He's national co-chair of Bernie's campaign. We got Bernie to improve what he was saying about Venezuela by organizing more people to speak out. Tulsi is going to be in the Democratic debates, having received the required number of individual contributions to qualify.  This issue isn't going away, as long as Julian sits in a UK jail with a US extradition threat hanging over him. Journalists, activists, voters will continue to ask about it.  Remember, this isn't just about the fate of Julian, although we should always care about someone who is unjustly imprisoned for a long time, especially if our government is responsible for it. This is about the U.S. government's attempts to chill national security journalism by curbing the protections of the First Amendment. Therefore, it concerns everyone who wants to end and prevent wars.  Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First Amendment-Protected Journalism https://www.change.org/p/block-extradition-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-first-amendment-protected-journalism === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:14 PM Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss wrote: There is a very long discussion about the Assange situation on Consortium News. It is interesting and informative to listen in to it here and there over its 6 hours. Various aspects of the case are illuminated, relative to the UK, the U.S., France, and Equador. One conclusion from the discussion  is that Assange's case in the UK will probably extend for quite some time, during which Assange will be better treated than he was in the Equadorian embassy. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/11/emergency-meeting-for-assange-live/#comments _______________________________________________ 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 moboct1 at aim.com Sat Apr 13 17:30:09 2019 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 17:30:09 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Jonathan Turley: Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment References: <42593393.217667.1555176609460.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <42593393.217667.1555176609460@mail.yahoo.com> "Voting" to end the Saudi war in Yemen--is not the same as ending it.  And good luck getting Democrats to stand up for Assange. mob -----Original Message----- From: Robert Naiman via Peace To: peace Sent: Sat, Apr 13, 2019 2:37 am Subject: [Peace] Jonathan Turley: Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment Given who Jonathan Turley is, this is a devastating assault on the persecution of Julian Assange. One thing I disagree with Turley on: his pessimism. If we can get Congress to vote to end the Saudi war in Yemen - and we did, it only took four years - we can get Congress to vote against the extradition of Julian Assange to stand trial for publishing actions protected by the First Amendment. Who knows - in two years, we might have a different President of the U.S. A new President of the United States could quash this case with the stroke of a pen.  Jonathan Turley was the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit of Dennis Kucinich, Walter Jones, and eight other Members of Congress against the Obama Administration for the unconstitutional war in Libya.  Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First Amendment-Protected Journalismhttps://www.change.org/p/block-extradition-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-first-amendment-protected-journalism ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Portside Date: Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:45 PM Subject: Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment | | | | | | | | Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment     Jonathan Turley April 11, 2019 USA Today - - - - The key to the prosecution of Assange has always been to punish him without again embarrassing the powerful figures he made mockeries of | | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London on April 11, 2019, Stringer/epa-EFE | |   He is our property.” Those celebratory words of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., came on CNN soon after the news of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. It was a sentiment shared by virtually everyone in Washington from Congress to the intelligence services. Assange committed the unpardonable sins of embarrassing the establishment — from members of Congress to intelligence officials to the news media. And he will now be punished for our sins. Despite having significant constitutional arguments to be made, it is likely that he will be stripped of those defenses and even barred from raising the overall context of his actions in federal court. What could be the most important free speech and free press case in our history could well be reduced to the scope and substance of an unauthorized computer access case. For years, the public has debated what Assange is: journalist, whistleblower, foreign agent, dupe. The problem is that Assange is first and foremost a publisher. Moreover, he was doing something that is usually heralded in the news media. WikiLeaks disclosed disclosed controversial intelligence and military operations. It later published emails that showed that the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton lied in various statements to the public, including the rigging of the primary for her nomination. No one has argued that any of these emails were false. They were embarrassing. Of course, there is not crime of embarrassing the establishment, but that is merely a technicality. The criminal charge against Assange filed in a federal court was crafted to circumvent the obvious constitutional problems in prosecuting him. The charge is revealing. He is charged with a single count for his alleged involvement in the hacking operation of Chelsea Manning in 2010. By alleging that Assange actively played a role in the hacking operation, the government is seeking to portray him as part of the theft rather than the distribution of the information. The prosecutors say Assange helped Manning secure a password to gain access to additional information. If true, that would be a step that most news organizations would not take. It's likely there will be a superseding indictment once Assange is successfully extradited to the United States. Moreover, the Justice Department is likely to move aggressively to strip Assange of his core defenses. Through what is called a motion in limine, the government will ask the court to declare that the disclosure of intelligence controversies is immaterial. This would leave Assange with only the ability to challenge whether he helped with passwords and little or no opportunity to present evidence of his motivations or the threat to privacy. For the jurors, they could simply be faced with some Australian guy who helped with passwords in hacking national security information. It would be like trying a man for breaking and entering while barring evidence that the house was on fire and he thought he was rescuing people instead. They will punish Assange for their sins The key to prosecuting Assange has always been to punish him without again embarrassing the powerful figures made mockeries by his disclosures. That means to keep him from discussing how the U.S. government concealed attacks and huge civilian losses, the type of disclosures that were made in the famous Pentagon Papers case. He cannot discuss how Democratic and Republican members either were complicit or incompetent in their oversight. He cannot discuss how the public was lied to about the program. A glimpse of that artificial scope was seen within minutes of the arrest. CNN brought on its national security analyst, James Clapper, former director of national intelligence. CNN never mentioned that Clapper was accused of perjury in denying the existence of the National Security Agency surveillance program and was personally implicated in the scandal that WikiLeaks triggered. Clapper was asked directly before Congress, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly.” Later, Clapper said his testimony was “the least untruthful” statement he could make. That would still make it a lie, of course, but this is Washington and people like Clapper are untouchable. In the view of the establishment, Assange is the problem. Washington needs to silence Assange So on CNN, Clapper was allowed to explain (without any hint of self-awareness or contradiction) that Assange has “caused us all kinds of grief in the intelligence community.” Indeed, few people seriously believe that the government is aggrieved about password protection. The grief was the disclosure operations and controversies long unknown to the American people. Assange will be convicted of the felony of causing embarrassment in the first degree. Notably, no one went to jail or was fired for the surveillance programs. Those in charge of failed congressional oversight were reelected. Clapper was never charged with perjury. Even figures shown to have lied in the Clinton emails, like former CNN commentator Donna Brazile (who lied about giving Clinton’s campaign questions in advance of the presidential debates), are now back on television. Assange, however, could well do time. With Assange’s extradition, all will be well again in Washington. As Sen. Manchin declared, Assange is their “property” and will be punished for his sins. Once he is hoisted as a wretch, few will again entertain such hubris in the future. Jonathan Turley, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanTurley - - - -   | | | |   | |   | | Interpret the world and change it | |   | | | |   | | Submit via web Submit via email Frequently asked questions Manage subscription | Visit portside.org Twitter Facebook | |   | | | | _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sat Apr 13 19:19:54 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 14:19:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Jonathan Turley: Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment In-Reply-To: <42593393.217667.1555176609460@mail.yahoo.com> References: <42593393.217667.1555176609460.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <42593393.217667.1555176609460@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 12:30 PM Mildred O'brien wrote: > "Voting" to end the Saudi war in Yemen--is not the same as ending it. > That's certainly very true. Congress passed the Yemen War Powers Resolution. Now we need Trump to sign it or let it pass into law without his signature. The last I heard Trump was expected to get the bill on Tuesday. Then he has ten days to sign the bill, veto it, or let the bill pass into law without his signature. Some press reports have indicated that Trump is thinking about signing it or letting it pass into law without his signature. Just Foreign Policy and others are doing everything we can think of to lobby Trump to sign the bill or let it pass into law without his signature. If you think of anything we could do that we haven't done yet to lobby Trump to sign the bill, please let me know. > And good luck getting Democrats to stand up for Assange. > Thank you for your good wishes. I'm actually not trying to get Democrats to "stand up for Assange" - that might indeed be virtually impossible in the context of the current and past hysterical anti-Assange Reign of Terror. [And I use the word "hysterical" advisedly.] I'm trying to get Democrats to stand up robustly for the First Amendment, like the ACLU; if they do that, it will protect Assange from prosecution for alleged actions that would be protected by the First Amendment if they have been performed by a U.S. journalist, publisher, or editor on U.S. soil. I think that should be easier. Not easy, clearly, but easier. Because, you know, the First Amendment is part of the Constitution, and protects us all - not just our rights to speak and write, but our rights to hear and read and see and learn from others. That is the whole idea of our alert to Congress: Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First Amendment-Protected Journalism https://www.change.org/p/block-extradition-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-first-amendment-protected-journalism I liken the current juncture to August 2013, when Obama threatened to bomb Syria without Congressional authorization. Everybody who was anybody was sure that Obama was going to get his war, because Assad had been so thoroughly demonized in the United States, so who was going to dare to ask any questions or express any dissent? Surely it was a "slam dunk" that Obama was going to get his war, as the New York Times "reported" on its front page - it was a question of when, not if, the United States would start bombing Syria, the NYT "reported." But then some intrepid pioneers [clears throat] pointed out that under the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, the decision to use military force belonged to Congress, not Obama; and encouraged Americans to press their Members of Congress to speak up. And enough did, so that Obama backed down, and went for a diplomatic deal with Russia instead. We changed the channel from "Do you hate Assad, or are you Assad-lover?" - where the channel did not belong - to "Do you love the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, or are you a Constitution-hater?" - where the channel did belong. And this is what we need to do now. We need to change the channel from, "Do you hate Julian Assange, or are you an Assange-lover?" - where the channel does not belong - to "Do you love the First Amendment, or are you a a First Amendment - hater?" - where the channel does belong. If we can do that - if we can change the channel to where it does belong - we can win. So far we have Tulsi Gabbard and Ro Khanna. We didn't have more at the beginning, when we started to fight to end the Yemen war. Now we have a majority of Congress, including every Democrat. It only took four years. Hopefully, we can reclaim the First Amendment rights of Julian Assange - in order to protect not only Julian, but to protect us all - in less than four years. "It's the job that's last started that takes longest to finish." mob > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Naiman via Peace > To: peace > Sent: Sat, Apr 13, 2019 2:37 am > Subject: [Peace] Jonathan Turley: Julian Assange Will Be Punished for > Embarrassing the DC Establishment > > Given who Jonathan Turley is, this is a devastating assault on the > persecution of Julian Assange. One thing I disagree with Turley on: his > pessimism. If we can get Congress to vote to end the Saudi war in Yemen - > and we did, it only took four years - we can get Congress to vote against > the extradition of Julian Assange to stand trial for publishing actions > protected by the First Amendment. Who knows - in two years, we might have a > different President of the U.S. A new President of the United States could > quash this case with the stroke of a pen. > > Jonathan Turley was the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the > lawsuit of Dennis Kucinich, Walter Jones, and eight other Members of > Congress against the Obama Administration for the unconstitutional war in > Libya. > > Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First > Amendment-Protected Journalism > > https://www.change.org/p/block-extradition-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-first-amendment-protected-journalism > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: *Portside* > Date: Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:45 PM > Subject: Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC > Establishment > > [image: The key to the prosecution of Assange has always been to punish > him without again embarrassing the powerful figures he made mockeries of] > > > Julian Assange Will Be Punished for Embarrassing the DC Establishment > > > > Jonathan Turley > April 11, 2019 > USA Today > > > - > > - > > - > > - > > * The key to the prosecution of Assange has always been to punish him > without again embarrassing the powerful figures he made mockeries of * > > WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London on April 11, 2019, > Stringer/epa-EFE > > > > He is our property > .” > Those celebratory words of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., came on CNN soon > after the news of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the > Ecuadorian Embassy in London. > > It was a sentiment shared by virtually everyone in Washington from > Congress to the intelligence services. Assange committed the unpardonable > sins of embarrassing the establishment — from members of Congress to > intelligence officials to the news media. And he will now be punished for > our sins. Despite having significant constitutional arguments to be made, > it is likely that he will be stripped of those defenses and even barred > from raising the overall context of his actions in federal court. What > could be the most important free speech and free press case in our history > could well be reduced to the scope and substance of an unauthorized > computer access case > > . > > For years, the public has debated what Assange is: > journalist, whistleblower, foreign agent, dupe. The problem is that Assange > is first and foremost a publisher. > > Moreover, he was doing something that is usually heralded in the news > media. WikiLeaks disclosed disclosed controversial intelligence and > military operations. It later published emails that showed that the > Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton lied in > various statements to the public, including the rigging of the primary > for her nomination > . > No one has argued that any of these emails were false. They were > embarrassing. Of course, there is not crime of embarrassing the > establishment, but that is merely a technicality. > > The criminal charge against Assange filed in a federal court was crafted > to circumvent the obvious constitutional problems in prosecuting him. The > charge is revealing. He is charged with a single count for his alleged > involvement in the hacking operation of Chelsea Manning in 2010 > > . > > By alleging that Assange actively played a role in the hacking operation, > the government is seeking to portray him as part of the theft rather than > the distribution of the information. The prosecutors say Assange helped > Manning secure a password to gain access to additional information. If > true, that would be a step that most news organizations would not take. > > It's likely there will be a superseding indictment once Assange is > successfully extradited to the United States. Moreover, the Justice > Department is likely to move aggressively to strip Assange of his core > defenses. Through what is called a motion in limine > , the government > will ask the court to declare that the disclosure of intelligence > controversies is immaterial. > > This would leave Assange with only the ability to challenge whether he > helped with passwords and little or no opportunity to present evidence of > his motivations or the threat to privacy. For the jurors, they could simply > be faced with some Australian guy who helped with passwords in hacking > national security information. It would be like trying a man for breaking > and entering while barring evidence that the house was on fire and he > thought he was rescuing people instead. > > They will punish Assange for their sins > > The key to prosecuting Assange has always been to punish him without again > embarrassing the powerful figures made mockeries by his disclosures. That > means to keep him from discussing how the U.S. government concealed attacks > and huge civilian losses, the type of disclosures that were made in the > famous Pentagon Papers case. He cannot discuss how Democratic and > Republican members either were complicit or incompetent in their oversight. > He cannot discuss how the public was lied to about the program. > > A glimpse of that artificial scope was seen within minutes of the arrest. > CNN brought on its national security analyst, James Clapper, former > director of national intelligence. CNN never mentioned that Clapper was accused > of perjury > in > denying the existence of the National Security Agency surveillance program > and was personally implicated in the scandal that WikiLeaks triggered. > > Clapper was asked directly before Congress, “Does the NSA collect any type > of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” > > Clapper responded, “No, sir. … Not wittingly > .” > Later, Clapper said his testimony was “the least untruthful” statement he > could make. > > That would still make it a lie, of course, but this is Washington and > people like Clapper are untouchable. In the view of the establishment, > Assange is the problem. > > Washington needs to silence Assange > > So on CNN, Clapper was allowed to explain (without any hint of > self-awareness or contradiction) that Assange has “caused us all kinds of > grief in the intelligence community.” Indeed, few people seriously believe > that the government is aggrieved about password protection. The grief was > the disclosure operations and controversies long unknown to the American > people. Assange will be convicted of the felony of causing embarrassment in > the first degree. > > Notably, no one went to jail or was fired for the surveillance programs. > Those in charge of failed congressional oversight were reelected. Clapper > was never charged with perjury. Even figures shown to have lied in the > Clinton emails, like former CNN commentator Donna Brazile (who lied about > giving Clinton’s campaign questions in advance > of > the presidential debates), are now back on television. Assange, however, > could well do time. > > With Assange’s extradition, all will be well again in Washington. As > Sen. Manchin declared, Assange is their “property” and will be punished for > his sins. Once he is hoisted as a wretch, few will again entertain such > hubris in the future. > > *Jonathan Turley, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is the > Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. > Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanTurley > * > > - > > - > > - > > - > > > > > Interpret the world and change it > > > Submit via web > Submit via email > Frequently asked questions > Manage subscription > Visit portside.org > Twitter > Facebook > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sat Apr 13 19:24:18 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 14:24:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Assange discussion In-Reply-To: <1936904328.201644.1555176366477@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1936904328.201644.1555176366477.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1936904328.201644.1555176366477@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: That's one of the ways. 65,000 individual contributors, if I remember right, is one way to qualify. But donating a single dollar counts you towards the 65,000. That's why a bunch of Bernie supporters [like me] gave Tulsi $3 donations, even though they're supporting Bernie. They want to see Tulsi on the debate stage, bashing the wars, driving the conversation in that direction, raising the ante for the others, including Bernie. On Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 12:26 PM Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Sp that's the way to get in the Democrat "debates"--buy in! > > mo'b > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > To: Brussel, Morton K > Cc: Peace-discuss > Sent: Sat, Apr 13, 2019 2:13 am > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Assange discussion > > It's possible that the extradition case to the United States could be > stopped, in which case they might have to set him free, presumably to > return to his native Australia. > > Corbyn and the leadership of the Labour Party are against the extradition. > > Tulsi Gabbard and Ro Khanna have spoken out against the extradition. It's > plausible that we could get Bernie to speak out against it. Ro Khanna is > close to Bernie. He's national co-chair of Bernie's campaign. We got Bernie > to improve what he was saying about Venezuela by organizing more people to > speak out. > > Tulsi is going to be in the Democratic debates, having received the > required number of individual contributions to qualify. > > This issue isn't going away, as long as Julian sits in a UK jail with a US > extradition threat hanging over him. Journalists, activists, voters will > continue to ask about it. > > Remember, this isn't just about the fate of Julian, although we should > always care about someone who is unjustly imprisoned for a long time, > especially if our government is responsible for it. This is about the U.S. > government's attempts to chill national security journalism by curbing the > protections of the First Amendment. Therefore, it concerns everyone who > wants to end and prevent wars. > > Block Extradition & Prosecution of Julian Assange for First > Amendment-Protected Journalism > > https://www.change.org/p/block-extradition-prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-first-amendment-protected-journalism > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 10:14 PM Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > There is a very long discussion about the Assange situation on Consortium > News. It is interesting and informative to listen in to it here and there > over its 6 hours. Various aspects of the case are illuminated, relative to > the UK, the U.S., France, and Equador. One conclusion from the discussion > is that Assange's case in the UK will probably extend for quite some time, > during which Assange will be better treated than he was in the Equadorian > embassy. > > > https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/11/emergency-meeting-for-assange-live/#comments > _______________________________________________ > 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 brussel at illinois.edu Sat Apr 13 21:46:46 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 21:46:46 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] The deceits and corruption of mainstream media Message-ID: <75166306-E706-448F-94EE-FC8513BE8EF4@illinois.edu> A comprehensive review of this despicable, rotten persecution: After 7 Years of Deceptions About Assange, the US Readies for its First Media Rendition by Jonathan Cook Posted on April 13, 2019 For seven years, from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations. For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and “experts” telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a “mainstream” voice was raised in his defense in all that time. From the moment he sought asylum, Assange was cast as an outlaw. His work as the founder of WikiLeaks– a digital platform that for the first time in history gave ordinary people a glimpse into the darkest recesses of the most secure vaults in the deepest of Deep States – was erased from the record. Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books – to nothing more than a sex pest, and a scruffy bail-skipper. The political and media class crafted a narrative of half-truths about the sex charges Assange was under investigation for in Sweden. They overlooked the fact that Assange had been allowed to leave Sweden by the original investigator, who dropped the charges, only for them to be revived by another investigator with a well-documented political agenda. They failed to mention that Assange was always willing to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, as had occurred in dozens of other cases involving extradition proceedings to Sweden. It was almost as if Swedish officials did not want to test the evidence they claimed to have in their possession. The media and political courtiers endlessly emphasized Assange’s bail violation in the UK, ignoring the fact that asylum seekers fleeing legal and political persecution don’t usually honor bail conditions imposed by the very state authorities from which they are seeking asylum. The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed WikiLeaks’ concerns that the Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning. They belittled the 2016 verdict of a panel of United Nations legal scholars that the UK was “arbitrarily detaining” Assange. The media were more interested in the welfare of his cat. They ignored the fact that after Ecuador changed presidents – with the new one keen to win favor with Washington – Assange was placed under more and more severe forms of solitary confinement. He was denied access to visitors and basic means of communications, violating both his asylum status and his human rights, and threatening his mental and physical well-being. Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream” journalist or politician thought this significant either. They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK, Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept the decision under wraps for more than two years. It was a freedom of information request by an ally of Assange, not a media outlet, that unearthed documents showing that Swedish investigators had, in fact, wanted to drop the case against Assange back in 2013. The UK, however, insisted that they carry on with the charade so that Assange could remain locked up. A British official emailed the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!” Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been destroyed by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the political and media establishment cared, of course. Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden. They told us – apparently in all seriousness – that he had to be arrested for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine. And possibly most egregiously of all, most of the media refused to acknowledge that Assange was a journalist and publisher, even though by failing to do so they exposed themselves to the future use of the same draconian sanctions should they or their publications ever need to be silenced. They signed off on the right of the US authorities to seize any foreign journalist, anywhere in the world, and lock him or her out of sight. They opened the door to a new, special form of rendition for journalists. This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russiagate narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush WikiLeaks and make an example of its founder. It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder, the military video released by WikiLeaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations. Now the pretense is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador – invited in by Ecuador after it tore up Assange’s asylum status – to smuggle him off to jail. Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction. No, the British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US. And the charges the US authorities have concocted relate to WikiLeaks’ earliest work exposing the US military’s war crimes in Iraq – the stuff that we all once agreed was in the public interest, that British and US media clamored to publish themselves. Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom – the right to publish – being trashed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange’s defense? It’s not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive – even gently mocking – reporting of Assange’s fate. And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush WikiLeaks They knew that all along and they didn’t care. In fact, they happily conspired in paving the way for today’s kidnapping of Assange. They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don’t care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with money and influence. They don’t want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart. Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep us anaesthetized, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to prevent us from realizing that Assange’s rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall together. Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Sat Apr 13 21:53:36 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 21:53:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Preparing for war? Message-ID: <6905BC46-7476-4196-9528-24FC2140D511@illinois.edu> Clear thinking. April 13, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -Someone should speak to the Russian finance minister, Anton Siluanov, and put him in touch with reality. According to a RT news report, Siluanov has called for restoring economic and political ties between Moscow and Washington. Ties between the US and Russia were intentionally wrecked on purpose by the US military/security complex and its congressional and media vassals in order to provide the military/security complex with an enemy big enough to justify the $1,000 billion annual budget of the complex. What does Siluanov think Russiagate was about other than to prevent Trump from normalizing relations with Russia? The last president who tried to rein in the military/security complex was John F. Kennedy, and he was assassinated. On Trump they used Russiagate instead of bullets, and it proved almost as effective. If Russian government officials continue to be victims of their dreams to be America’s partner, they and their country are headed to destruction. The Putin government’s toleration of a Fifth Column financed by Washington that is operating within Russia against the Russian government and Russian sovereignty indicates that the Russian government can’t get its mind around the fact that the neoconservatives intend to reestablish a unipolar world. Perhaps Igor Korotchenko should speak to Siluanov. Korotchenko says that Russia needs to quit dawdling and prepare properly for war. In the digital/thermonuclear world of today, Russia will not have time, as Stalin had, to recover from an attack and go on to victory. Among the things Russia needs to do in order to be ready for war, says, Korotchenko, is “to multiply the strategic stocks of high precision missiles,” which requires building additional plant and equipment to manufacture them, protect Russia’s digital sovereignty, and increase the functionality of the FSB (the Russian Security Service) in order to prevent the externally funded Fifth Column from operating against Russia. https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=3136021&cid=4441 Russia’s weakness is the government’s toleration of the Western-financed media and politicians inside Russia that operate as Washington’s agents. The Russian government tolerates these agents of Washington, because the Russian government wants to show how democratic it is in the hopes that the West will accept Russia as one of its own. All the while the West is preparing Russia’s demise. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sat Apr 13 23:30:39 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 18:30:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] All computer users deserve software freedom In-Reply-To: <8D049469-58B8-4E41-B34B-028CF098429E@gmail.com> References: <8D049469-58B8-4E41-B34B-028CF098429E@gmail.com> Message-ID: <503ca23a-42f3-9c9d-995d-57ebb23d4967@forestfield.org> C G Estabrook quoted Noam Chomsky who said: > Take what are called intellectual property rights, exorbitant patent > rights for medicines, for Windows, for example. Microsoft has a monopoly > on operating systems, through the World Trade Organization. Suppose > China didn’t observe these. Who would benefit, and who would lose? Well, > the fact of the matter is that consumers in the United States would > benefit. It would mean that you’d get cheaper medicines. It would mean > that when you get a computer, that you wouldn’t be stuck with Windows. > You could get a better operating system. Bill Gates would have a little > less money. The pharmaceutical corporations wouldn’t be as super-rich as > they are, a little less rich. But the consumers would benefit. Is there > something wrong with that? Is there a problem with that? There's an even more important reason than money to have computers that don't ship with proprietary software (such as Microsoft Windows): users' freedom and community. The governments of the world (including the US) would do well to build their systems around free software and avoid proprietary software entirely. Free software is a matter of liberty or permission (think freedom, not price) -- software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason. Proprietary software is the opposite of software freedom -- software the user is not free to inspect, share, or modify, and often not even run under certain circumstances including time-bombed programs that won't run after a certain date, or programs that limit functionality such as reading some "eBooks". Proprietary software is often malware, see https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ for about 400 news stories (organized by injustice and product or company) to back up this claim. As that webpage says: > Proprietary software, also called nonfree software, means software that > doesn't respect users' freedom and community[1]. A proprietary program > puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users[2]. > This power is in itself an injustice. > > The point of this page is that the initial injustice of proprietary > software often leads to further injustices: malicious functionalities. > > Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to > design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning > mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually > does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' > expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate. > > Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it > is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to > be had. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html Hence all computer users (including those in the Chinese government) would be wise to build their systems around computers they control -- hardware they can trust running only free software. Computers follow one instruction after another (a program is merely a list of instructions for a computer to carry out), that's what computers do from the moment they are turned on. The question is whose instructions are they following: the computer owner's or someone else's? Free software is particularly important to teach computer users about building community and valuing social solidarity, principles we can't act on with our computers using proprietary software precisely because we're denied software freedom (regardless of technical skill or interest). https://www.fsf.org/ryf -- The Free Software Foundation's "Respects Your Freedom" campaign: computer hardware that respects a user's software freedom as much as is currently possible. While I think there's considerable agreement on how the power of patent, copyright, and other laws work out to favor the powerful, the term "intellectual property" is unfortunate because that term conflates the differences between these laws. These laws differ more than they share in common. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty has a brief explanation on why the term "intellectual property" should be avoided (except to criticize it) and a link to a fuller explanation: > Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual > property”—a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more > obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so > much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to > talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about > “trademarks.” > > The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the > way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy > with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property. > > When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference > between material objects and information: information can be copied and > shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be. > > To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a > firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual > property”.[3] > > The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the > World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.[4] [3] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html [4] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/wipo-PublicAwarenessOfCopyright-2002.html From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 13 23:52:17 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 18:52:17 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Chomsky talk in Boston Message-ID: https://truthout.org/video/chomsky-on-confronting-ultranationalist-reactionary-movements-across-globe/ [From a friend who attended Chomsky's talk] How can one not be impressed with a Chomsky talk! He needed assistance walking, but his voice is still very strong and his cadence is unmistakable - no sign of a 90 year old in that department. The event started at 7:30 and the church was all but full - they could have squeezed maybe 50 more people in. As I mentioned Amy Goodman spoke forever or 30 minutes which ever comes first. She did a nice job of positioning the arrest of Assange and that took 20 minutes. Then she talked about climate catastrophe (counterpunch term) for a few minutes and introduced a 30 minute video of Chomsky’s speech at Old South Church from 2016. Interesting, but don’t understand why they showed a 3 year old video of Chomsky speaking while he just sat in the second pew and watched himself. Then at 8:40pm, an hour and 10 minutes from the start of the program, he approached the lectern and dove into his remarks. The first part was about humanity’s propensity to eradicate itself with nuclear weapons. As usual he made a wonderful case about how we got here - the domesday clock is 2 minutes to midnight, closer than it has been since 1947 is what I think he said. And he isn’t too optimistic that we are going to resolve this political stalemate anytime soon. Then he went on to how humanity is determined to eradicate itself by polluting the planet until it becomes uninhabitable - of course blaming capitalism for getting us here and politicians unwilling to acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. He put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Republican party. He said something that absolutely stunned me: “The Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in (US?) history.” so unlike him to explicitly call out a US political party. He also went through the litany of Republican presidents and how their transgressions have, and are, contributing to the current expansion of the nuclear arms race, and the catastrophic damage being done to the environment. He passed up the opportunity to take a shot at Obama. And, as usual, he backed up his comments with source information. His mind and your mind are amazing - every piece of data is absorbed, gets filed, and is instantly retrievable. It seems to me that writers for counterpunch have to bash their favorite bogeyman in order to get their creds and article published - with not a word about the damaged done to humanity over the years by republicans. Each week I consider unsubscribing to, but then they publish a wonderfully written opinion. Wonderfully written opinions are of course opinions that I agree with. It was a privilege and pleasure to hear him speak as always. Who knows how much longer he will be able to lecture. --Stephen V Morgan From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Apr 14 03:45:16 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2019 22:45:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Pepe Escobar: USG vs. Wikileaks Message-ID: [Pepe Escobar] Essential background. Keep it for further reference. This was the scale of the US Grand Jury investigation of WikiLeaks already in 2012, Obama time - as revealed then by WikiLeaks itself: “The US Government has stood up and coordinated a joint interagency criminal investigation of Wikileaks comprised of a partnership between the Department of Defense (DOD) including: CENTCOM; SOUTHCOM; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA); Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA); US Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) for USFI (US Forces Iraq) and 1st Armored Division (AD); US Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit (CCIU); 2nd Army (US Army Cyber Command); Within that or in addition, three military intelligence investigations were conducted. Department of Justice (DOJ) Grand Jury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of State (DOS) and Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). In addition, Wikileaks has been investigated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Office of the National CounterIntelligence Executive (ONCIX), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the House Oversight Committee; the National Security Staff Interagency Committee, and the PIAB (President's Intelligence Advisory Board).” John Pilger adds inestimable background very few people are aware of - still under the Cheney regime, concerning the shady Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch. https://www.counterpunch.org/…/18/bring-julian-assange-home/ “In 2008, a plan to destroy both WikiLeaks and Assange was laid out in a top secret document dated 8 March, 2008. The authors were the Cyber Counter-intelligence Assessments Branch of the US Defence Department. They described in detail how important it was to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved, they wrote, with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution” and a unrelenting assault on reputation. The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its editor and publisher. It was as if they planned a war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech. Their main weapon would be personal smear. Their shock troops would be enlisted in the media — those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth.” That's all you need to know who you see how AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, BBC, Guardian and others are covering the arrest of Julian Assange. —CGE From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Apr 14 12:24:01 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2019 12:24:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: The coup in Sudan/"Joy at the removal of the Sudanese leader wanes as the military looks set to stay." RT References: Message-ID: > > "Who is behind the coup in Sudan? What’s in common between Bashir, Gaddafi and Salah? Al-Bashir who ruled for over 30 years was overthrown in a coup by the armed forces, which say a two-year period of military rule will be followed by elections.” > > “The military supporting the protestors, Defense Minister Ibn Auf said in a televised address that Bashir, 75, was under arrest in a “safe place” and a military countcil wasnow running the country.” RT > > Shades of Egypt? > > The US rejoicing at “regime change” maybe a clue. > > > > > > > > > > From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Apr 14 12:25:57 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2019 12:25:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: "Horrors in Haiti "from The Real News References: Message-ID: Story Transcript MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner, great to have you with us. While the world is not watching, Haiti is seething again. Massacres have occurred in La Saline in Haiti. Men women and children have been killed, raped, burned alive, and few are watching. But The Real News is watching. In a special report, Margaret Prescod, who hosts Sojourner Truth at KPFA in Los Angeles, went to Haiti at great risk to herself to document the violent repression that is taking place in Haiti at this moment. She’s now joining us to share what she has seen we will be seeing which she saw in a video that she brought home that they’re editing now. And let me warn everyone that some of what you are about to see and hear is quite gruesome. Margaret Prescod, welcome. Good to have you back here with us on The Real News. MARGARET PRESCOD: Thank you so much. And I’d like to say I’m very glad that The Real News is doing this and helping to get the word out. And part of why I went to Haiti was not only to get information for Pacifica Radio, for the national broadcast that I do, but also for The Real News Network. MARC STEINER: And I’m glad you did. Because this story–it’s amazing how little has been known about this story, that actually this particular episode began with some stories we heard in November about massacres taking place in La Saline. But let me play a short clip here of what you had to say about La Saline and why it’s the home of liberation. MARC STEINER: So Margaret, let’s talk a bit about that, what you were saying. Why is La Saline such a focal point, and why did these massacres occur in there November and they seem to be continuing? MARGARET PRESCOD: Well, historically, La Saline is right on the water. It’s right in the area where the slave ships came in, and the road leading up to La Saline actually is the where slaves were bought and sold. And they have had a long history of resistance that you likely heard or saw in the clip you played. However, what I didn’t know before going into La Saline, and I found out in La Saline and after I left, is that La Saline, given their history of resistance, the uprisings that we have seen somewhat covered in mainstream media last summer, but as well as earlier this year last fall, they generally begin in La Saline and then they spread across the capital Port au Prince, spread across the other parts of the country. So the targeting of La Saline, that was very, very pointed. It’s to send a political message to strike terror in the heart of people who would dare go on the streets and protest, not only against fuel prices, but asking where is the Petrocaribe dollars, the over two billion dollars stolen during the previous and present administrations, demanding that the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise–the U.S.-backed president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise–stepped down. These are some of the demands of the movement. So the attack on La Saline was really an attempt to dampen the uprising, to dampen those protests and to strike terror in the heart of those who dare to stand up. And I should also say that this massacre, the one that happened in November of 2018, the largest since the Duvalier years–for people who may know something about Haiti’s history, you always read about the brutal Duvalier years, where you had the Tonton Macoute, these government-backed paramilitary forces, going around killing and burning people. And the last one that we know that of we could compare with what happened in La Saline was a massacre, I think it was in 1987, of peasants where 127 peasants were killed. Well, the numbers are greater now in La Saline and the massacres are continuing. MARC STEINER: Do we know how many people were killed in La Saline? Do we have a record? MARGARET PRESCOD: We really don’t. There’s been an official report done by a human rights organization. And then they did the report which was December of last year, they said there were 77 victims. However, people on the ground and other opposition officials that I have spoken–we spoke to when we were on the ground in Haiti–say those numbers are insulting, that the numbers are far greater than that. And if you also consider that the massacres have continued beyond November, you just have a sense of those numbers. MARC STEINER: So let me talk about that a bit more. One of the things you said in this video, and very clearly all the time, was that you didn’t show a lot of people’s faces because of the fear of repression and retribution if they were seen. But then a number of people that came up kind of fearlessly and put themselves on camera to talk to you. And in one of those scenes, there was a man talking about a woman whose husband was killed, another one who lost her son who was burned alive. And we’re seeing some of this now and we’re going to listen to some of this and talk about who these people were. MARGARET PRESCOD: Sure. MARC STEINER: So Margaret, talk about these people you interviewed, the ones that did put their faces on camera. That horrendous picture of the woman whose body was scarred, the other one who saw her son burning alive and killed. And they were not afraid to come forth and talk. So talk a bit about that moment and what it was like for you, and what this really means to all of us. MARGARET PRESCOD: Yeah. It was really just amazing. Because we were very, very careful, as you said, because we don’t want to put anyone at risk and we knew the danger that was involved. But as we spent a bit more time in La Saline, and as that relationship of trust happened more–I’ll also say that we were some of the first media outlets to go in there with sound and camera actually talking to the people, and they really appreciated that. And I have to say that it was the women who first came forward and said, “I’m ready to go on camera.” Could you imagine the risks that they’re taking? But just the grief and the rage was such that we were all really stunned, not only by the courage of people to come forward to say what happened to them, but what they described, what they described. A pregnant woman talking about her husband being killed, being not only killed but cut up, his body being cut up with a machete. A woman whose son was similarly killed in front of her, they forced her to watch it. And she was so traumatized by the whole thing her entire body has now broken out. A man whose son was killed. Hearing about bodies that were burned alive, of pregnant women coming forward. It was just an incredible moment of courage. But you know what, given the history of La Saline, and given the Haitian people who remain so resilient in the face of everything–this is the most impoverished place in the Americas, La Saline along the Cite Soleil, the most impoverished in Haiti. So you could just imagine the conditions that people were living under in the first place. But nevertheless, they consistently take to the streets. They consistently say, “We want to complete our revolution,” that according to the history books was won in 1804, but people still feel that they are still struggling for that democracy, that they had a glimmer of that democracy with the election of the first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And as you may know, there were two U.S.-backed coups against President Aristide. And the party that he leads, the Lavalas, they did run a candidate, Dr. Maryse Narcisse, in this last election. And it seems as though the United States, France, Canada, and the one percenters in Haiti who do their bidding, would do anything rather than have Lavalas back in power again, because the base of Lavalas are the impoverished people in Haiti. But people have not forgotten that, and they’re still holding on to the fact that they are determined, being up against everything, to continue their struggle for democracy. It’s quite remarkable and it’s quite inspiring, I have to say. MARC STEINER: So we’re here talking to Margaret Prescod from KPFK, her show, Sojourner Truth. And she went to Haiti with The Real News to tell this very special story. And we are going to pick this story up with the body of a woman who was burned alive, and also the political consequences of this, and look at some more of the visuals that we brought back, and to talk more about that with Margaret. I want to thank Margaret for doing this for all of us. And stay with us for the next segment. I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Apr 15 15:18:28 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2019 15:18:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Calling Assange a Narcissist Misses the Point Message-ID: Calling Assange a Narcissist Misses the Point [Print Friendly, PDF & Email]Print this post. [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DisgustingimperialistsBW.jpg][https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Orange-band.jpg] Another important dispatch from The Greanville Post. Be sure to share it widely. ________________________________ by Patrick Cockburn Unless the truth is told about the real nature of these wars then people outside the war zones will never understand why they go on so long and are never won… ________________________________ [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/AssangeLawyers-defenders.jpg] ________________________________ “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” and “ha, ha, I hit them” say the pilots of a US Apache helicopter in jubilant conversation as they machine-gun Iraqi civilians on the ground in Baghdad on 12 July 2007. A wounded man, believed to be the Reuters photographer, 22-year-old Namir Noor-Eldeen, crawls towards a van. “Come on buddy, all you have to do is pick up a weapon,” says one of the helicopter crew, eager to resume the attack. A hellfire missile is fired and a pilot says: “Look at that bitch go!” The photographer and his driver are killed.Later the helicopter crew are told over the radio that they have killed 11 Iraqis and a small child has been injured. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into battle,” comments somebody about the carnage below. Except there was no “battle” and all those who died were civilians, though the Pentagon claimed they were gunmen. The trigger-happy pilots had apparently mistaken a camera for a rocket propelled grenade launcher. Journalists in Baghdad, including myself, were from the start sceptical about the official US story because insurgents with weapons in their hands were unlikely to be standing chatting to each other in the street with an American helicopter overhead. As on many similar occasions in Iraq, our doubts were strong but we could not prove that the civilians had not been carrying weapons in the face of categorical denials from the US Department of Defence. It was known that a video of the killings taken from the helicopter existed, but the Pentagon refused to release it under the Freedom of Information Act. Plenty of people were being killed all over Iraq at the time and the incident would soon have been forgotten, except by the families of the dead, if a US soldier called Chelsea Manning had not handed over a copy of the official video to WikiLeakswhich published it in 2010. The exposure of the Baghdad helicopter killings was the first of many revelations which explain why Julian Assange has been pursued for so long by the US and British governments. The claim by Theresa May echoed by other ministers that “in the United Kingdom, no one is above the law” is clearly an evasion of the real reasons why such efforts have been made to detain him on both sides of the Atlantic. Jeremy Corbyn is correct to say that the affair is all about “the extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.” But, within hours of Assange’s detention, it was clear that nobody much cared about innocent people dying in the streets of Baghdad or in the villages of Afghanistan and Assange has already become a political weapon in the poisonous political confrontation over Brexit with Corbyn’s support for Assange enabling Conservatives to claim that he is a security risk. Lost in this dog-fight is what Assange and WikiLeaks really achieved and why it was of great importance in establishing the truth about wars being fought on our behalf in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. This is what Daniel Ellsberg did when he released the Pentagon Papers about the US political and military involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967. Like Assange, he exposed official lies and was accused of putting American lives in danger though his accusers were typically elusive about how this was done. But unless the truth is told about the real nature of these wars then people outside the war zones will never understand why they go on so long and are never won. Governments routinely lie in wartime and it is essential to expose what they are really doing. I remember looking at pictures of craters as big as houses in an Afghan village where 147 people had died in 2009 and which the US defence secretary claimed had been caused by the Taliban throwing grenades. In one small area called Qayara outside Mosul in in 2016-17, the US air force admitted to killing one civilian but a meticulous examination of the facts by The New York Times showed that the real figure was 43 dead civilians including 19 men, eight women and 16 children aged 14 or under. These are the sort of facts that the US and UK governments try to conceal and which Assange and WikiLeaks have repeatedly revealed. Readers should keep this in mind when they are told that Assange has narcissistic personality or was not treating his cat properly. If his personal vices were a hundred times more serious than alleged, would they really counterbalance – and perhaps even discredit – the monstrosities he sought to unmask? Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent MindsThe US government documents published by WikiLeaks are about the real workings of power. Take the Hillary Clinton emails published in 2016: much of the media attention has plugged into conspiracy theories about Russian involvement or, until the recent publication of the Mueller Report, the possible complicity of the Trump election campaign with the Russians. Many Democrats and anti-Trump journalists managed to persuade themselves that Assange had helped lose Hillary Clinton the election, though a glance at a history of the campaign showed that she was quite capable of doing this all by herself by not campaigning in toss-up states. But look at what the emails tell us what the way the world really works. There is, for instance, a US State Department memo dated 17 August 2014 – just over a week after Isis had launched its offensive against the Kurds and Yazidis in Iraq that led to the butchery, rape and enslavement of so many. It was a time when the US was adamantly denying that Saudi Arabia and Qatar had any connection with Isis and similar jihadi movements like al-Qaeda. But the leaked memo, which is drawn from “western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region” tells us that they really knew different. It says: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.” This is important information about the level of priority the US gave to keeping in with its Saudi and Qatari allies while it was supposedly fighting the “war on terror”. This had been true since 9/11 and remains true today. But in much of the British media such issues are barely considered and the debate is focused firmly on the reasons why rape charges were not brought against Assange by Swedish courts and his culpability in taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Anybody who highlights the importance of the work which Assange and WikiLeaks has done is likely to be accused of being light-heartedly dismissive of the accusations of rape. Assange is likely to pay a higher price than Ellsberg for his exposure of government secrets. The Pentagon Papers were published when the media was becoming freer across the world while now it is on the retreat as authoritarian governments replace democratic ones and democratic governments become more authoritarian. The fate of Assange will be a good guide as to how far we are going down this road and the degree to which freedom of expression is threatened in Britain at a time of deepening political crisis. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff we publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for our website, which will get you an email notification for everything we publish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Tue Apr 16 02:42:58 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2019 21:42:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] anti-neoconservative notes Message-ID: <8c54d000-da64-3ec4-f8ac-6478b635b8e8@forestfield.org> It's getting more difficult to separate the notes into anti-neoconservative and anti-neoliberal because some issues span both. War is big business, spying is big business, people are rightly objecting to both because the poor fight in US wars and the US exploits the poor for their labor (in the American "all-volunteer" military). With that, here are some topics to spur discussion for AWARE on the Air. Assange's arrest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW146MI_b6k -- RT's "CrossTalk" on Assange. A good summary of where things stand and why Assange was arrested. It's quite clear that Manning was put back into prison to provide the US with a case against Assange -- if Manning could be forced to claim that Assange helped provide access to systems which held the sensitive material Manning leaked to WikiLeaks, Assange could more easily be portrayed as a leaker, not just a journalist, and jailed as was Manning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0_igpOiBQE -- How the corporate and corporate-friendly media turned on WikiLeaks and Assange: he went from celebrated leaker to "useful idiot". Interesting that these same news organizations, despite being given a warning that something was about to happen to Assange in "hours or days" (per WikiLeaks' tweet) couldn't be bothered to set a dead-rolling camera outside the Ecuadorian embassy. RT's Ruptly did. And that's why these news organizations are now forced to license Ruptly's footage of Assange being forced out of the embassy; all the other organizations left the scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ7gpuGQcAo -- Jeremy Corbyn on Assange's arrest: > I've made it very clear all along that if there are allegations which > Julian Assange needs to answer of sexual issues, sexual attacks that may > or may not have taken place in Sweden then it's a matter for the courts > to decide but I do think he should answer those questions. My objection > was to his extradition to the United States because I do believe that > WikiLeaks told us the truth about what was actually happening in > Afghanistan and in Iraq. Pamela Anderson on Julian Assange's arrest: https://twitter.com/pamfoundation/status/1116294393533796352 > I am in shock.. I couldn’t hear clearly what he said? He looks very bad. > How could you Equador ? (Because he exposed you). How could you UK. ? Of > course - you are America’s bitch and you need a diversion from your > idiotic Brexit bullshit. > > And the USA ? This toxic coward of a President He needs to rally his > base? - You are selfish and cruel. You have taken the entire world > backwards. You are devils and liars and thieves. And you will ROTT And > WE WILL RISE ✊ Free Assange protests are happening around the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK1PEaLCdPc -- New York https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miVBKLKYSbo -- Belmarsh Prison in London where Assange is being held https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkUf5qMhLxs -- UK: Vivienne Westwood and other protestors elsewhere in the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETBgZEvH2uQ -- Sydney, Australia and Washington, D.C. Rumors of (more) war Iran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4WWp-TaGn8 -- War hawks are increasing their interest in Iran Venezuela https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dav9ioL22ZQ -- "Military options in Venezuela" are discussed in secret meeting. Docs are obtained by Grayzone Project, Max Blumenthal is interviewed. -J From moboct1 at aim.com Tue Apr 16 14:13:05 2019 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 14:13:05 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notre Dam (sic) tragedy confounded by mispronunciation References: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115@mail.yahoo.com> BBC pseudo-achsent parrotted by US MSM: "Notre Dawm in flames."   (Correct pronunciation confirmed by French correspondents: Notre Dam; U.S. vernacular for the University football team of the same name: Noderdame.   What a tragedy.  Taken for granted most of its 800 years (like the English colony, Ireland was), a sudden violent event consumes the Western world in grief and mourning for a lost monument to God and man.  Talk of a second "restoration"?  It could never be the same.  There is no amount of money that can replace the genius, skill and dedication of 12th century labor with the most sophisticated technical engineering of the 21st century.  Au revoir, dear Lady. Midge O'Brien -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Apr 16 14:36:08 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:36:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notre Dam (sic) tragedy confounded by mispronunciation In-Reply-To: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004001d4f461$bba08010$32e18030$@comcast.net> Notre Dame can and will be fully restored renovated regardless the costs ( which will be HUGE ), because after the Eifel Tower, Notre Dame is not just a medieval historic church but a national French symbol. I have been to Notre Dame and it is incredible when you consider the lack in the 12th century of mechanized construction cranes, etc.. I used to joke with my fellow building trades work colleagues about the building of Notre Dame and other medieval churches. That it took over a hundred years for most to be built, and hence, talk about job security. A job that would last your lifetime and that could be passed on to a son and a grandson. David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 9:13 AM To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notre Dam (sic) tragedy confounded by mispronunciation BBC pseudo-achsent parrotted by US MSM: "Notre Dawm in flames." (Correct pronunciation confirmed by French correspondents: Notre Dam; U.S. vernacular for the University football team of the same name: Noderdame. What a tragedy. Taken for granted most of its 800 years (like the English colony, Ireland was), a sudden violent event consumes the Western world in grief and mourning for a lost monument to God and man. Talk of a second "restoration"? It could never be the same. There is no amount of money that can replace the genius, skill and dedication of 12th century labor with the most sophisticated technical engineering of the 21st century. Au revoir, dear Lady. Midge O'Brien -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Apr 16 14:43:30 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 09:43:30 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notre Dam (sic) tragedy confounded by mispronunciation In-Reply-To: <004001d4f461$bba08010$32e18030$@comcast.net> References: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115@mail.yahoo.com> <004001d4f461$bba08010$32e18030$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <7FDBD5C7-C194-40A8-8282-665494A52EB2@gmail.com> "Where it was, as it was” - as was said after the collapse of the Campanile in Venice. http://www.roderickconwaymorris.com/Articles/407.html?fbclid=IwAR3yFESjSrBGnvlP73n1Oc0VK93YzgjaHCRrzHMgtumknRA2tmG1AOyFyUI > On Apr 16, 2019, at 9:36 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Notre Dame can and will be fully restored renovated regardless the costs ( which will be HUGE ), because after the Eifel Tower, Notre Dame is not just a medieval historic church but a national French symbol. > > I have been to Notre Dame and it is incredible when you consider the lack in the 12th century of mechanized construction cranes, etc.. > I used to joke with my fellow building trades work colleagues about the building of Notre Dame and other medieval churches. That it took over a hundred years for most to be built, and hence, talk about job security. A job that would last your lifetime and that could be passed on to a son and a grandson. > > David J. > > > > From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss > Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 9:13 AM > To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notre Dam (sic) tragedy confounded by mispronunciation > > BBC pseudo-achsent parrotted by US MSM: "Notre Dawm in flames." (Correct pronunciation confirmed by French correspondents: Notre Dam; U.S. vernacular for the University football team of the same name: Noderdame. > > What a tragedy. Taken for granted most of its 800 years (like the English colony, Ireland was), a sudden violent event consumes the Western world in grief and mourning for a lost monument to God and man. Talk of a second "restoration"? It could never be the same. There is no amount of money that can replace the genius, skill and dedication of 12th century labor with the most sophisticated technical engineering of the 21st century. Au revoir, dear Lady. > > Midge O'Brien > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From galliher at illinois.edu Tue Apr 16 22:56:41 2019 From: galliher at illinois.edu (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 17:56:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notre Dam (sic) tragedy confounded by mispronunciation In-Reply-To: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1853014832.1420736.1555423985115@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <57F9B2F8-41ED-4D11-84B2-4F0F59A0BD04@illinois.edu> The poets often get there first. See William Golding’s 1964 novel, ’The Spire.’ “...it deals with the construction of the 404-foot high spire loosely based on Salisbury Cathedral; the vision of the fictional Dean Jocelin. In this novel, William Golding utilises stream of consciousness writing with an omniscient but increasingly fallible narrator.” —CGE > On Apr 16, 2019, at 9:13 AM, Mildred O'brien via Peace-discuss wrote: > > BBC pseudo-achsent parrotted by US MSM: "Notre Dawm in flames." (Correct pronunciation confirmed by French correspondents: Notre Dam; U.S. vernacular for the University football team of the same name: Noderdame. > > What a tragedy. Taken for granted most of its 800 years (like the English colony, Ireland was), a sudden violent event consumes the Western world in grief and mourning for a lost monument to God and man. Talk of a second "restoration"? It could never be the same. There is no amount of money that can replace the genius, skill and dedication of 12th century labor with the most sophisticated technical engineering of the 21st century. Au revoir, dear Lady. > > Midge O'Brien > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Apr 17 01:00:39 2019 From: galliher at illinois.edu (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 20:00:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP In-Reply-To: <4368942630.1262256750@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> References: <4368942630.1262256750@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> Message-ID: <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> It’s a good bit worse than that: . —CGE > On Apr 16, 2019, at 7:16 PM, Just Foreign Policy wrote: > > > > Urge Members of Congress to tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP. > > Sign the petition > > > Dear C. G., > > > The “Center for American Progress” in Washington wants Members of Congress, major U.S. media, and the American people to see them as the canonical “Democratic think tank.” But CAP President Neera Tanden hasn't represented the majority of Democrats on war and peace. On war and peace, she represents a particular special interest group: corporatist-militarist “Democrats” who mindlessly support the endless regime change wars of the Blob, corporatist-militarist “Democrats” who don’t believe in obeying the War Powers Clause of the Constitution or the War Powers Resolution of 1973, because that would be an obstacle to endless war. > > The New York Times reports: > “In 2008, Neera Tanden, then a top aide on Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign [i.e., against Barack Obama], accompanied Mrs. Clinton to what was expected to be an easy interview at the Center for American Progress, the influential group founded by top Clinton aides. But Faiz Shakir, the chief editor of the think tank’s ThinkProgress website, asked Mrs. Clinton a question about the Iraq war, an issue dogging her candidacy because she had supported it. Ms. Tanden responded by circling back to Mr. Shakir after the interview and, according to a person in the room, punching him in the chest.” > > The Times characterizes CAP as “a legacy Clinton organization,” noting that it was “founded in 2003 [the same year that the Bush Administration illegally invaded Iraq, with the vigorous and outspoken support of both Bill and Hillary Clinton] by top advisers to Bill and Hillary Clinton” and that “its donor rolls overlap substantially with those of the Clintons’ campaigns and foundation.” The Times also notes that CAP “has taken in millions from interests often criticized by liberals, including Wall Street financiers, big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense contractors and the health care industry.” > > In particular, the Times notes that “From 2016 through last year [during which time Saudi-UAE were starving tens of thousands of Yemeni children to death], the center accepted nearly $2.5 million from the United Arab Emirates to fund its National Security and International Policy initiative, according to previously unreported internal budget documents.” It’s actually the UAE, even more than its close ally the Saudi regime, that has starved 85,000 Yemeni children to death by blockading Yemeni civilians. > > The Times notes that in November 2015, Tanden invited Benjamin Netanyahu to CAP in order to cultivate Jonathan Lavine, a managing partner at Bain Capital, a pro-Netanyahu donor, who gave CAP $1 million. On the day of the Netanyahu visit, Tanden told CAP’s founder, John Podesta, that the “far left hates me” for hosting Netanyahu, but the invitation “may have sealed the deal with” Lavine. The next month, Tanden wrote a jubilant email to Podesta, telling him Lavine was joining the CAP board. “So Netanyahu was worth it,” Tanden said. Lavine’s foundation remains a big donor to CAP, the Times says. > > Something has to give here. It can’t be the case that CAP is allowed to speak for “Democrats” while its agenda is set by “Wall Street financiers, big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense contractors and the health care industry.” > Urge Members of Congress to tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP by signing our petition. > > > Thanks for all you do to help U.S. foreign policy become a bit more just, > Hassan El-Tayyab, Sarah Burns, and Robert Reuel Naiman > Just Foreign Policy > > If you think our work is important, please support us with a donation. > We hear that 18 is lucky. > http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate > > > > > > > > > > > > © 2019 Just Foreign Policy > > Click here to unsubscribe > > > > > From jbn at forestfield.org Wed Apr 17 01:37:32 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 20:37:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP In-Reply-To: <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> References: <4368942630.1262256750@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> Message-ID: C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > It’s a good bit worse than that: > > . Also consider watching Jimmy Dore's recent shows which rightly and sharply criticize Neera Tanden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kWVE2M2h8 around 7m24s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbWiPe--U3E around 4m11s. His comments about her are based in quoting what she says (such as one of her most recent tweets about Julian Assange) and interpreting her position. Dore also includes a Chomskyan explanation -- people like her wouldn't have the positions they do at these organizations unless they had already demonstrated fealty to corporate power. This is helpful to understand why the public has lost so much faith in mass media. From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Apr 17 01:49:19 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2019 20:49:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Peter Maurin on Cathedrals References: Message-ID: <64623D88-4EC1-450B-861E-D2F2B14555F2@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Catholic Worker > Subject: Fwd: Peter Maurin on Cathedrals > Date: April 16, 2019 at 5:18:04 PM CDT > To: National-CW-E-mail-List at googlegroups.com > Reply-To: National-CW-E-mail-List+owners at googlegroups.com > > > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Iowa City Catholic Worker > > Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 8:59 AM > Subject: Peter Maurin on Cathedrals > To: > > > > > Grieving the fire at Notre Dame during Holy Week, America Magazine - the Jesuit Review > > > Dear friends and workers, > > The Catholic Worker Movement was heavily influenced by the French Catholic philosopher, peasant-scholar-worker, and immigrant to America, Peter Maurin. One of his Easy Essays , written decades ago, captures perfectly the magnitude of what happened yesterday. > > We share it with you today hoping you enjoy it and are called to explore more of Peter Maurin's incredible body of work and writings. > > We will pray for the Cathedral of Notre Dame during Mass tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 8:30am at the Catholic Worker House, > > Emily, David, and the Catholic Worker team > > Building Churches > > Henry Adams tells us in his > autobiography > that he could not get an education > in America, > because education implies > unity of thought > and there is no unity of > thought in America. > So he went to England > and found that England > was too much like America. > So he went to France > and found that France > was too much like England and America. > But in France he found the > Cathedral of Chartres > and from the Cathedral of > Chartres he learned > that there was unity of thought > in thirteenth-century France. > > People who built the Cathedral > of Chartres > knew how to combine > cult, that is to say liturgy, > with culture, that is to say philosophy, > and cultivation, that is to say agriculture. > > The Cathedral of Chartres is > a real work of art > because it is the real expression > of the spirit of a united people. > Churches that are built today > do not express the spirit of the people. > “When a church is built,” > a Catholic editor said to me, > “the only thing that has news value is: > How much did it cost?” > The Cathedral of Chartres was not built > to increase the value of real estate. > The Cathedral of Chartres was not built > with money borrowed from money lenders. > > The Cathedral of Chartres was not built > by workers working for wages. > > Maurice Barres used to worry > about the preservation of > French Cathedrals, > but Charles Peguy thought > that the faith that builds Cathedrals > is after all the thing that matters. > Moscow had a thousand churches > and people lost the faith. > Churches ought to be built > with donated money, donated > material, donated labor. > > The motto of St. Benedict was > Laborare et Orare, Labor and Pray. > Labor and prayer ought to be combined; > labor ought to be a prayer. > The liturgy of the Church > is the prayer of the Church. > People ought to pray with the Church > and to work with the Church. > The religious life of the people > and the economic life of the people > ought to be one. > I heard that in Germany > a group of Benedictines > is trying to combine liturgy > with sociology. > We don’t need to wait for Germany > to point the way, > Architects, artists and artisans > ought to exchange ideas > on Catholic liturgy and Catholic sociology. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Iowa City Catholic Worker" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to iowa-city-catholic-worker+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com . > To post to this group, send email to iowa-city-catholic-worker at googlegroups.com . > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/iowa-city-catholic-worker/CABSgg_taOVjJ6xz0SrTJH%3DiZ-skAQmt_7fD1YYnc5fH3Lfe58A%40mail.gmail.com . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout . > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "A National Catholic Worker List:" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to National-CW-E-mail-List+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com . > To post to this group, send email to National-CW-E-mail-List at googlegroups.com . > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/National-CW-E-mail-List . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: nd.png Type: image/png Size: 422263 bytes Desc: not available URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Wed Apr 17 13:15:09 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 08:15:09 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP In-Reply-To: References: <4368942630.1262256750@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <005e01d4f51f$95433cf0$bfc9b6d0$@comcast.net> Indeed ! Her organization - " The Center for American Progress " or " CAP ", should be renamed " CAC " - " Center for American Corporatism ". David J. -----Original Message----- From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 8:38 PM To: Peace Discuss Cc: J.B. Nicholson Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > It’s a good bit worse than that: > > . Also consider watching Jimmy Dore's recent shows which rightly and sharply criticize Neera Tanden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4kWVE2M2h8 around 7m24s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbWiPe--U3E around 4m11s. His comments about her are based in quoting what she says (such as one of her most recent tweets about Julian Assange) and interpreting her position. Dore also includes a Chomskyan explanation -- people like her wouldn't have the positions they do at these organizations unless they had already demonstrated fealty to corporate power. This is helpful to understand why the public has lost so much faith in mass media. _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Wed Apr 17 18:36:07 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 13:36:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP In-Reply-To: <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> References: <4368942630.1262256750@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Actually, I think the stuff in our alert from the NYT article was even more damning than this Jewish Currents article, in the sense that the Jewish Currents article mostly portrays CAP as running with these right-wing forces on foreign policy [Netanyahu, Saudi, UAE] without addressing motivation, whereas the NYT article [also] tied this to CAP's funding - i.e., the NYT made the same assertion, and on top of that made a documented accusation about mercenary motivation. > In particular, the Times notes that “From 2016 through last year [during which time Saudi-UAE were starving tens of thousands of Yemeni children to death], the center accepted nearly *$2.5 million from the United Arab Emirates* to fund its National Security and International Policy initiative, according to previously unreported internal budget documents.” It’s actually the UAE, even more than its close ally the Saudi regime, that has starved 85,000 Yemeni children to death by blockading Yemeni civilians. > > The Times notes that in November 2015,* Tanden invited Benjamin Netanyahu to CAP in order to cultivate Jonathan Lavine, a managing partner at Bain Capital, a pro-Netanyahu donor, who gave CAP $1 million.* On the day of the Netanyahu visit, Tanden told CAP’s founder, John Podesta, that the “far left hates me” for hosting Netanyahu, but *the invitation “may have sealed the deal with” Lavine*. The next month, *Tanden wrote a jubilant email to Podesta, telling him Lavine was joining the CAP board. “So Netanyahu was worth it,” Tanden said. Lavine’s foundation remains a big donor to CAP, the Times says.* === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 8:01 PM C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > It’s a good bit worse than that: > > < > https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/center-for-american-progress-tanden-israel-omar > >. > > —CGE > > > > > On Apr 16, 2019, at 7:16 PM, Just Foreign Policy < > info at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote: > > > > > > > > Urge Members of Congress to tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk > money for CAP. > > > > Sign the petition > > > > > > Dear C. G., > > > > > > The “Center for American Progress” in Washington wants Members of > Congress, major U.S. media, and the American people to see them as the > canonical “Democratic think tank.” But CAP President Neera Tanden hasn't > represented the majority of Democrats on war and peace. On war and peace, > she represents a particular special interest group: corporatist-militarist > “Democrats” who mindlessly support the endless regime change wars of the > Blob, corporatist-militarist “Democrats” who don’t believe in obeying the > War Powers Clause of the Constitution or the War Powers Resolution of 1973, > because that would be an obstacle to endless war. > > > > The New York Times reports: > > “In 2008, Neera Tanden, then a top aide on Hillary Clinton’s first > presidential campaign [i.e., against Barack Obama], accompanied Mrs. > Clinton to what was expected to be an easy interview at the Center for > American Progress, the influential group founded by top Clinton aides. But > Faiz Shakir, the chief editor of the think tank’s ThinkProgress website, > asked Mrs. Clinton a question about the Iraq war, an issue dogging her > candidacy because she had supported it. Ms. Tanden responded by circling > back to Mr. Shakir after the interview and, according to a person in the > room, punching him in the chest.” > > > > The Times characterizes CAP as “a legacy Clinton organization,” noting > that it was “founded in 2003 [the same year that the Bush Administration > illegally invaded Iraq, with the vigorous and outspoken support of both > Bill and Hillary Clinton] by top advisers to Bill and Hillary Clinton” and > that “its donor rolls overlap substantially with those of the Clintons’ > campaigns and foundation.” The Times also notes that CAP “has taken in > millions from interests often criticized by liberals, including Wall Street > financiers, big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense > contractors and the health care industry.” > > > > In particular, the Times notes that “From 2016 through last year [during > which time Saudi-UAE were starving tens of thousands of Yemeni children to > death], the center accepted nearly $2.5 million from the United Arab > Emirates to fund its National Security and International Policy initiative, > according to previously unreported internal budget documents.” It’s > actually the UAE, even more than its close ally the Saudi regime, that has > starved 85,000 Yemeni children to death by blockading Yemeni civilians. > > > > The Times notes that in November 2015, Tanden invited Benjamin Netanyahu > to CAP in order to cultivate Jonathan Lavine, a managing partner at Bain > Capital, a pro-Netanyahu donor, who gave CAP $1 million. On the day of the > Netanyahu visit, Tanden told CAP’s founder, John Podesta, that the “far > left hates me” for hosting Netanyahu, but the invitation “may have sealed > the deal with” Lavine. The next month, Tanden wrote a jubilant email to > Podesta, telling him Lavine was joining the CAP board. “So Netanyahu was > worth it,” Tanden said. Lavine’s foundation remains a big donor to CAP, the > Times says. > > > > Something has to give here. It can’t be the case that CAP is allowed to > speak for “Democrats” while its agenda is set by “Wall Street financiers, > big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense contractors > and the health care industry.” > > Urge Members of Congress to tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk > money for CAP by signing our petition. > > > > > > Thanks for all you do to help U.S. foreign policy become a bit more just, > > Hassan El-Tayyab, Sarah Burns, and Robert Reuel Naiman > > Just Foreign Policy > > > > If you think our work is important, please support us with a donation. > > We hear that 18 is lucky. > > http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > © 2019 Just Foreign Policy > > > > Click here to unsubscribe > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Apr 17 18:38:31 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2019 13:38:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk money for CAP In-Reply-To: References: <4368942630.1262256750@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> <9E71E07E-0684-4E24-BFAB-D738485CEB56@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Correction: I should have said "pro-war forces" rather than "right-wing forces." The Jewish Currents article put "right wing" in my brain. But this isn't about "right" or "left." It's about war vs. peace. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 1:36 PM Robert Naiman wrote: > Actually, I think the stuff in our alert from the NYT article was even > more damning than this Jewish Currents article, in the sense that the > Jewish Currents article mostly portrays CAP as running with these > right-wing forces on foreign policy [Netanyahu, Saudi, UAE] without > addressing motivation, whereas the NYT article [also] tied this to CAP's > funding - i.e., the NYT made the same assertion, and on top of that made a > documented accusation about mercenary motivation. > > > In particular, the Times notes that “From 2016 through last year [during > which time Saudi-UAE were starving tens of thousands of Yemeni children to > death], the center accepted nearly *$2.5 million from the United Arab > Emirates* to fund its National Security and International Policy > initiative, according to previously unreported internal budget documents.” > It’s actually the UAE, even more than its close ally the Saudi regime, that > has starved 85,000 Yemeni children to death by blockading Yemeni civilians. > > > > The Times notes that in November 2015,* Tanden invited Benjamin > Netanyahu to CAP in order to cultivate Jonathan Lavine, a managing partner > at Bain Capital, a pro-Netanyahu donor, who gave CAP $1 million.* On the > day of the Netanyahu visit, Tanden told CAP’s founder, John Podesta, that > the “far left hates me” for hosting Netanyahu, but *the invitation “may > have sealed the deal with” Lavine*. The next month, *Tanden wrote a > jubilant email to Podesta, telling him Lavine was joining the CAP board. > “So Netanyahu was worth it,” Tanden said. Lavine’s foundation remains a big > donor to CAP, the Times says.* > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 8:01 PM C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss < > peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > >> It’s a good bit worse than that: >> >> < >> https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/center-for-american-progress-tanden-israel-omar >> >. >> >> —CGE >> >> >> >> > On Apr 16, 2019, at 7:16 PM, Just Foreign Policy < >> info at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote: >> > >> > >> > >> > Urge Members of Congress to tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk >> money for CAP. >> > >> > Sign the petition >> > >> > >> > Dear C. G., >> > >> > >> > The “Center for American Progress” in Washington wants Members of >> Congress, major U.S. media, and the American people to see them as the >> canonical “Democratic think tank.” But CAP President Neera Tanden hasn't >> represented the majority of Democrats on war and peace. On war and peace, >> she represents a particular special interest group: corporatist-militarist >> “Democrats” who mindlessly support the endless regime change wars of the >> Blob, corporatist-militarist “Democrats” who don’t believe in obeying the >> War Powers Clause of the Constitution or the War Powers Resolution of 1973, >> because that would be an obstacle to endless war. >> > >> > The New York Times reports: >> > “In 2008, Neera Tanden, then a top aide on Hillary Clinton’s first >> presidential campaign [i.e., against Barack Obama], accompanied Mrs. >> Clinton to what was expected to be an easy interview at the Center for >> American Progress, the influential group founded by top Clinton aides. But >> Faiz Shakir, the chief editor of the think tank’s ThinkProgress website, >> asked Mrs. Clinton a question about the Iraq war, an issue dogging her >> candidacy because she had supported it. Ms. Tanden responded by circling >> back to Mr. Shakir after the interview and, according to a person in the >> room, punching him in the chest.” >> > >> > The Times characterizes CAP as “a legacy Clinton organization,” noting >> that it was “founded in 2003 [the same year that the Bush Administration >> illegally invaded Iraq, with the vigorous and outspoken support of both >> Bill and Hillary Clinton] by top advisers to Bill and Hillary Clinton” and >> that “its donor rolls overlap substantially with those of the Clintons’ >> campaigns and foundation.” The Times also notes that CAP “has taken in >> millions from interests often criticized by liberals, including Wall Street >> financiers, big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense >> contractors and the health care industry.” >> > >> > In particular, the Times notes that “From 2016 through last year >> [during which time Saudi-UAE were starving tens of thousands of Yemeni >> children to death], the center accepted nearly $2.5 million from the United >> Arab Emirates to fund its National Security and International Policy >> initiative, according to previously unreported internal budget documents.” >> It’s actually the UAE, even more than its close ally the Saudi regime, that >> has starved 85,000 Yemeni children to death by blockading Yemeni civilians. >> > >> > The Times notes that in November 2015, Tanden invited Benjamin >> Netanyahu to CAP in order to cultivate Jonathan Lavine, a managing partner >> at Bain Capital, a pro-Netanyahu donor, who gave CAP $1 million. On the day >> of the Netanyahu visit, Tanden told CAP’s founder, John Podesta, that the >> “far left hates me” for hosting Netanyahu, but the invitation “may have >> sealed the deal with” Lavine. The next month, Tanden wrote a jubilant email >> to Podesta, telling him Lavine was joining the CAP board. “So Netanyahu was >> worth it,” Tanden said. Lavine’s foundation remains a big donor to CAP, the >> Times says. >> > >> > Something has to give here. It can’t be the case that CAP is allowed to >> speak for “Democrats” while its agenda is set by “Wall Street financiers, >> big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense contractors >> and the health care industry.” >> > Urge Members of Congress to tell Neera Tanden to stop taking warhawk >> money for CAP by signing our petition. >> > >> > >> > Thanks for all you do to help U.S. foreign policy become a bit more >> just, >> > Hassan El-Tayyab, Sarah Burns, and Robert Reuel Naiman >> > Just Foreign Policy >> > >> > If you think our work is important, please support us with a donation. >> > We hear that 18 is lucky. >> > http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > © 2019 Just Foreign Policy >> > >> > Click here to unsubscribe >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Thu Apr 18 13:57:35 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 08:57:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] certain issues that the corporate Democrats oppose, but that the majority of the American people support Message-ID: <009f01d4f5ee$b7f33d20$27d9b760$@comcast.net> I just posted this on Facebook - What is great about this segment of the JIMMY DORE SHOW is that he shows poll numbers for certain issues that the corporate Democrats oppose, but that the majority of the American people support. Like the following ; Medicare 4 All ( 70 % ), $ 15 per hour minimum wage ( 63 % ), Free college tuition ( 60 % ), Green New Deal ( 81 % ), 70 % top tax rate on the wealthy ( 59 % ), Expanding Social Security ( 72 % ), Legalization of Cannabis ( 62 % ), End racist mass incarceration ( 65 % ), Same sex marriage ( 63 % ), Keep Roe vs. Wade ( 69 % ), Immigration is good ( 75 % ), Net Neutrality ( 83 % ), Stop climate change ( 61 % ), Campaign finance reform ( 77 % ), Break-up big banks ( 57 % ), Guaranteed jobs program ( 64 % ), Tax the rich ( 76 % ), More taxes on corporations ( 67 % ), Use military only as a last resort ( 86 % ). This begs the question of course - WHY is it the corporate Democrats oppose most of these issues ? To quote Ihlan Omar ; " Its all about the benjamins baby ". This is why the DNC and other corporate Democrats will pull out all of the stops to defeat a REAL progressive working class populist in the Democratic primary and even sabotage the candidacy of such a candidate in the general election. They would rather a Republican win than a populist progressive because their prime directive is to keep the corporate donation gravy train rolling to themselves and the DNC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8MfWJEnpbQ &fbclid=IwAR3G43L5_ua1jZgFLRKXjv9f1X9fcASNHgWy2MvBvKXEQjHHP9rQuyyRQa4 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Thu Apr 18 19:18:08 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 19:18:08 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Putin/Trump? Message-ID: Good discussion between Paul Jay and Stephen Cohen , but important points about how Russia responds to U.S aggression against Iran and Putin's alliance() with Netanyahu was finessed. https://therealnews.com/stories/is-trump-for-detente-or-militarism-rai-with-stephen-cohen-2-5 Cohen got in most of the words, to the frustration of Jay. —mkb -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Apr 18 23:27:46 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 18:27:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Media Condemns Julian Assange For Reckless Exposure Of How They Could Be Spending Their Time" In-Reply-To: References: <40672566-7511-ec2e-133a-6bd4da1bd6da@gmail.com> Message-ID: ICYMI. https://www.theonion.com/media-condemns-julian-assange-for-reckless-exposure-of-1834010623 Media Condemns Julian Assange For Reckless Exposure Of How They Could Be Spending Their Time [image: Illustration for article titled Media Condemns Julian Assange For Reckless Exposure Of How They Could Be Spending Their Time] WASHINGTON—In the wake of the WikiLeaks founder’s arrest by British authorities on behalf of the U.S. for charges stemming from the publication of classified military documents in 2010, members of the American media condemned Julian Assange Friday for the reckless exposure of how they could be spending their time. “We denounce Julian Assange in the strongest possible terms for his negligence in publicly demonstrating the kinds of work journalists could actually be doing to investigate government malfeasance and hold the powerful accountable,” said *Washington Post* editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, speaking on behalf of many of the leading members of the media who castigated Assange for never once considering the harm that bringing rampant government criminality to light no matter the consequences could do to other news publications’ reputations. “It’s abundantly clear that Mr. Assange was focused on exposing documented evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan without so much as a thought for the journalists who faithfully parroted the U.S. military’s talking points when we could have been investigating information that ran contrary to that narrative—does he realize how that makes us look? The fact that he’d just publish information vital to the public interest from primary sources exactly as it was written instead of working with government officials to omit the most damaging parts in exchange for keeping access channels open is simply beyond the pale. The fact that the American public now knows what we’re actually doing day to day is incredibly harmful to this nation.” Media industry leaders did, however, admit that they could probably stand to go easier on Assange where the sexual assault allegations made against him were concerned. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 19 02:02:44 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C. G. Estabrook ) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 21:02:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Is Apartheid Israel "Reparations" for Jews?; Terri Sewell, Worst of the Black Caucus; "The Resistance" Silent on Assange: BA Report for Thursday April 18, 2019 References: Message-ID: Begin forwarded message: > From: "Black Agenda Report" > Date: April 18, 2019 at 5:28:14 PM CDT > To: "Cgestabrook" > Subject: Is Apartheid Israel "Reparations" for Jews?; Terri Sewell, Worst of the Black Caucus; "The Resistance" Silent on Assange: BA Report for Thursday April 18, 2019 > Reply-To: publisher at blackagendareport.com > > > > You received this email either because you are subscribed to Black Agenda Report's weekly email notification of new content at www.blackagendareport.com or because someone forwarded it to you. > We urge you to forward it to friends and colleagues, and to repost and share these items on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. > Google in particular is already suppressing content from Black Agenda Report in search results, so the only guarantee you get the all the newly printed content of BAR each week is subscribing to this, or free weekly email newsletter, or having a subscriber forward it to you. So please post, forward and share this newsletter as widely as you can. And visit wwwblackagendareport to subscribe if you haven't already. > Is the Apartheid Colonial Settler State of Israel “Reparations” For Jews? ADOS Thinks So. > - Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor > When ADOS leaders & followers make the ridiculous claim that the apartheid state of Israel is "reparations" for Jews they betray their own right wing and capitalist sponsorship and roots. > > Terri Sewell, the Worst of the Black Caucus, Subverts $15 Wage Bill > - Glen Ford , BAR executive editor > Selma, Alabama, has produced the most reactionary Black Congressperson in modern times, part of the Democratic Party’s increasing servitude to corporate interests. > > Freedom Rider: The “Resistance” is Silent on Julian Assange > - Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist > Liberals are just as much true believers in imperialism as the right wing they claim to oppose. > > Military Spending and the Never-ending Trump Diversion > - Ajamu Baraka , BAR editor and columnist > No sector has benefited more from the Trump presidency than the military/industrial complex -- with lots of help from the Democrats. > > for Ayat > Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence > Hey Ayat, we were an odd couple, haunting the library for magical books, deciding how and where we wanted to work… > > > Veterans Ask Barbara Lee to Speak Out for Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange > Ann Garrison , BAR contributor > Worried constituents in Oakland are wondering, “Does Barbara Lee still speak for me?” > > Celebrating the Release of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror > Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor > American Exceptionalism is bound to white supremacy and creates a broad national unity around the interests of the ruling class. > > Black Agenda Radio, Week of April 17, 2019 > Click the link above for the entire one hour show, or any of the next four links for the individual segement thereof. > The Role of Electoral Politics in Revolutionary Change > Participants in the Black Is Back Coalition’s 3rd Electoral Politics School agreed with chairman Omali Yeshitela that “massive political change is in the wind.” > Only the Green Party Can Deliver on the Green New Deal > “The problem for the Green New Deal” is that the Democratic leadership in Congress “won’t let it happen,” said Howie Hawkins, a possible candidate for the Green Party's 2020 presidential nomination. > Progressive “Bloc” Emerges in Chicago City Council > The 17 pro-community control of police candidates elected to the 50-member Chicago Board of Aldermen can also be expected to support “community control of the board of education” and “a progressive agenda around housing and jobs,” said Frank Chapman, of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. > South Carolina “Bears Responsibility” for Prison Deaths > The deaths of seven inmates during disturbances at the Lee County state prison, a year ago, “was the state’s responsibility, that has not been acknowledged, according to SC human rights attorney Efia Nwangaza. > > Letters from Our Readers > Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor > This week there was discussion of Tulsi Gabbard’s links to the right wing in India, reparations and the ADOS movement, and Al Sharpton’s role in the 2020 elections. > > BAR Book Forum: John Lowney’s”Jazz Internationalism” > Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor > Black writers have underscored the possibilities and challenges of black internationalism through their innovative adaptations of black music. > > BAR Book Forum: Brian Roberts’“Blackface Nation” > Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor > What made the ‘American’ different from the ‘Englishman’ was a celebration of vulgar thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors. > > We Must Have a Demand: Towards a Transformative, Black-Led Reparations Movement. > This Is Hell , Glen Ford , BAR executive editor > Glen Ford explores the possibilities of reparations, and the limits of the Democratic party's racial politics - as 2020 presidential hopefuls advance insufficient reparations schemes to court Black voters, only a radical, Black-driven demand to redress the crimes of slavery can be acceptable, and it must come from Black people seeking justice, not politicians seeking votes. > > Investigation Nation: Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics > Jim Kavanagh > Having finally imploded, Russiagate now morphs into its second life as a campaign issue for Donald Trump. > > Phoenix in Knightsbridge: the Daylight Seizure of Assange > T.P. Wilkinson > Unlike Edward Snowden, and more like Philip Agee, Assange rejected the premise that the State has any right to secrecy at all. > > Global NATO: A 70-Year Alliance of Oppressors in Crisis > Horace G. Campbell > NATO is the main prop for global capital’s predations, and must be opposed by all who seek peace and social justice. > > As Black Activists Protested Police Killings, Homeland Security Worried They Might Join ISIS > Alice Speri > Federal officials spread right-wing tales that Black protesters were susceptible to Islamic jihadist appeals. > > 190 Pemberton Ave, Plainfield, NJ 07060, United States > You may unsubscribe or change your contact details at any time. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Apr 19 06:34:09 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 01:34:09 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] comic relief Message-ID: [image: Russians pooped in the hallway.jpg] Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Russians pooped in the hallway.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 223905 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Apr 19 07:59:29 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 02:59:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] NfN notes Message-ID: <0f3c0521-467d-f12d-e8e0-f4596277137f@forestfield.org> It's late but here are some additional notes to spur discussion on News from Neptune. Have a good show, guys. Mueller's redacted report is out The report is almost 400 pages with some pages blacked out entirely. It will take time to go through all of the readable pages in this report but so far as I've read there's nothing that changes what we already knew and nothing that legitimately resurrects the Russiagate narrative -- that Donald Trump became US President as a result of Russian collusion in the 2016 US election. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt_ls3vYrvo -- RT's coverage (RT is still one of the few networks to give coverage of Russiagate based in published facts). https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/18/mueller-report-searchable.pdf Assange https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj6xzDeJcJs -- Assange won an EU journalism award (while he was in prison) Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire received his prize on his behalf and spoke at the awarding ceremony: > Julian Assange will be remembered long after many of us have faded > because people will tell the story of Assange, the whistleblower, the > publisher, who called and spoke out against killing and war and > government policies which were destroying children and families in their > home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7oRtfNxKLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ou4hOH4Fpw -- After Assange's arrest, the IMF gives Ecuador a $4.2 billion loan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEdyajZghgc -- Another hypocrisy in the Assange indictment: taking action to protect the identity of a source is illegal, according to the indictment? This piece is a good review of extant American law concerning freedom of speech. From the indictment: > It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to > conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to > WikiLeaks, including by removing user names from the disclosed > information and deleting chat logs between Manning and Assange. If protecting the identity of sources is illegal, why is only Assange being held to this? Cuba: new US sanctions against Cuba are on the way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdGI4iWuzJw -- John Bolton announced new anti-Cuban sanctions. Remember that sanctions are war against the populace, particularly the poor. Elites in the targeted country are generally not affected by sanctions. The wealthy prefer an investment in themselves to an investment in the poor? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NfxL6rpLYI -- Grenfell Towers, the UK residence for poor people which burned down on June 14, 2017 killing 72 and injuring over 70, gets no billionaire support. There are still former Grenfell residents not in proper housing today. But Notre Dame restoration is being privately funded immediately after its fire (over 700 million Euros so far) in which no one died. Could this be because Notre Dame held many valuable works and could generate money for investors whereas building a new Grenfell (this time with proper materials and building to code) would house more poor people? https://twitter.com/andyecono/status/1117890855447056385 @andyecono asked: > Imagine if Grenfell had some really important stained glass windows and > examples of gothic architecture, instead of just human beings. Coverage by the media: Fox News misstep with Sanders? Fox News may have miscalculated when it decided to host a "town hall" forum with Bernie Sanders. Sanders commanded the crowd for the entire event and the Fox News newsreaders were not able to break Sanders' stride. Here's an example from the event -- Fox News' Bret Baier said the audience had "a lot of Democrats in it, it has Republicans, Independents, Democratic Socialists, Conservatives" and Baier asked if the crowd got their healthcare from their job via private healthcare (most of the crowd raised their hands) and then Baier asked: > Of those [with their hands up], how many are willing to transition to > what the Senator says -- a government-run system? and the crowd kept their hands up and added approving "yeahs", hoots, and hollers. This is consistent with high support for Medicare for All nationwide. Medicare for All is a majoritarian issue. Jimmy Dore covered the event in 4 segments of his show: "Bernie's Glorious Victory Moment On Fox News" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVeXom6HzIQ "Bernie Addresses DNC Cheating In 2016 Primary" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN9HzjlGTXI -- interesting to note how docile Sanders is to the DLC that cheated him (and stands to cheat him again). "Bernie Explains Socialism To Fox News Viewers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzL9wCnoA8o "Bernie Explains How To Beat Trump" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNA0lZPYVqA Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxZIFHRFXAQ -- a DLC propaganda piece on "reforms" that party undertook to "rebuild trust" and "make 2020 the most transparent election ever". Yes, the DLC is transparent -- we can see right through you. They wouldn't have to "rebuild trust" if they hadn't cheated Sanders in 2016 and hadn't hidden the details of what they did in emails they hoped to keep secret from the public. The DLC's 3-point plan to accomplish this: Point 1: "Reduce the influence of the superdelegates" by letting superdelegates vote only in round 2. Point 2: "Encourage more states to hold primaries" Point 3: "Recommend that all states have same-day voter registration" (Quotes come from the DLC corporation piece shown.) Jimmy Dore rightly points out that of their 3 points, only point one is not merely a suggestion. And that point still keeps the superdelegates in power: in a 2-round voting scheme, the superdelegates vote in round 2. But there will almost certainly be a need for a 2nd round of voting because there will be multiple candidates who are more or less comparable -- such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- competing for the progressive vote (or what passes for progressivism among Democrats). Thus it's unlikely there will be a clear majority winner in round 1. This allows a DLC-preferred establishment candidate (like Joe Biden, Sen. Cory Booker, or Sen. Kamala Harris) to win after the superdelegates have their say in round 2. Exploitation: Alibaba Group founder and billionaire Jack Ma defends Alibaba's so-called "996" grueling work schedule (work 9AM-9PM 6 days a week). There is no overtime compensation for 996 workers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJFqSyz7DC8 -- a description of workers objecting to 996 including objecting to worker's deaths due to being overworked. https://github.com/996icu -- Alibaba programmers working 996 have shared their objections online on github.com in a project called "996icu" meaning "Work by '996', sick in ICU" (Intensive Care Unit). There is more press at https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/externals/news_EN.md https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbaFdwq_4M8 -- a slideshow with a few Jack Ma quotes including: > I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing. > > Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996. > > If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996? -J From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Apr 19 12:10:29 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 07:10:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?iso-8859-1?q?Ecuadorian_police_repress_mass_mar?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ch_demanding_Julian_Assange=27s_freedom?= Message-ID: <003b01d4f6a8$e1769290$a463b7b0$@comcast.net> Ecuadorian police repress mass march demanding Julian Assange’s freedom By Bill Van Auken 18 April 2019 Thousands of Ecuadorian workers and youth marched through Quito’s historic colonial center Wednesday demanding the downfall of the country’s President Lenin Moreno and freedom for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The demonstration, one of the largest since Moreno took office in 2017, was met with brutal repression. The security forces unleashed mounted police, attack dogs and tear gas against the marchers as they came within two blocks of the Plaza de la Independencia, the site of the Carondelet presidential palace, which was ringed by a heavy cordon of police and armed troops. https://www.wsws.org/asset/106d2657-b03b-4f0d-832a-48bfd4c26e2E/image.jpg?re ndition=image480 Several people were wounded in the police attack, including two news photographers, and at least six were arrested. Protesters carried signs demanding “Free Assange,” and many wore Assange masks. Others carried placards with photos and drawings depicting Assange’s cat, mocking the Moreno government, whose ambassador in London had absurdly accused the pet of “spying” on the embassy staff. The crowds chanted, “Moreno, hypocrite and traitor, the people reject you!” The trigger for the demonstration, called under the slogan “not one less right” [#niunderechomenos] was the Moreno government’s order to throw open the doors to the London embassy, where Assange had been granted asylum since 2012, to a police snatch squad which dragged him away to a British jail cell. As a result, he now faces the threat of rendition to the US to face trial for daring to publish documents exposing the war crimes and global conspiracies of the US government. Organizers of the march, which included prominently the party Revolución Ciudadana which supports the former president and Moreno opponent Rafael Correa, said that as many as 20,000 took part in the protest. Inscribed on the banners carried on the march were slogans denouncing Moreno as a “traitor” and “world disgrace” for his action against Assange. One prominent banner read, “Assange is an Ecuadorian,” a reference to the citizenship that was granted to the Australian-born journalist in 2017 and summarily and extra-legally stripped from him by the Moreno government in conjunction with handing him over to the British police. Another warned Moreno that “Assange will be your nightmare.” https://www.wsws.org/asset/62674b6f-d0a7-4f1c-a361-f6d714bf46cM/image.jpg?re ndition=image480 “Assange was the trigger” for the protest, said Edwin Jarrin, the former spokesman for Ecuador’s Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control, who participated in the march, which he said was also an expression of “collective indignation over the attack on basic rights” as well as “mass layoffs” and “neo-liberal policies” of the Moreno government. As part of a deal signed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for $4.5 billion in credits, the Moreno government is implementing a series of “structural adjustment” measures that have included the gutting of labor laws, the layoffs of over 10,000 public employees, attacks on pensions and sharp cuts to government services. Moreno served as vice-president under Correa and was his hand-picked successor. While Correa cast himself as part of the “Pink Tide” and “Bolivarian revolution” that saw bourgeois populist nationalist governments take office in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere, he himself had initiated moves toward rapprochement with Washington as the commodity boom ended. He also took the first measures to silence Assange, cutting off his internet access after the WikiLeaks release of emails exposing the Democratic Party leadership’s attempts to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders and the closed-door speeches given by Hillary Clinton pledging to defend the interests of Wall Street. Once in office, Moreno violently accelerated this turn to the right, with his betrayal of Assange to the British and US authorities culminating an ever closer embrace of Washington’s foreign policy and its military and intelligence apparatus, which has been invited back into Ecuador. https://www.wsws.org/en/media/photos/legacy/frontpage/manning-meetings.jpg This right-wing turn, combined with escalating attacks on the rights and social conditions of the Ecuadorian working class, has inevitably given rise to increasingly repressive measures by the Moreno government that are bound up with the case of Julian Assange. In advance of Tuesday’s march, the Moreno government had sought the arrest of two of its principal organizers, the country’s former foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, and Virgilio Hernández, a former legislator, on trumped-up charges. It has also jailed Ola Bini, a Swedish citizen residing in Ecuador, who was arrested on charges of hacking public and private phones and social media accounts on the sole evidence that he was a friend of Assange and had visited him on a number of occasions at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Bini, who has resided in Ecuador for five years, was working for a Quito-based center that specialized in internet security, encryption and the expansion of free software. His parents, who arrived in Quito on Monday, issued a public statement insisting that their son “is innocent of what they have accused him; our son has not attacked the safety of any system, private or public.” They told the media that friends of their son all over the world were concerned over his arrest in Ecuador, and that they had come to “bring him home.” The frame-up of Bini is bound up with the Moreno government’s retaliation against the exposure of the president’s and his family’s involvement in a massive corruption scandal involving the funneling of millions of dollars in bribe money from a Chinese construction contractor into an offshore shell company named after the president’s three daughters. The publication of the so-called INA papers exposing this corruption was widely reported and prompted the initiation of a congressional investigation in Ecuador before WikiLeaks called attention to the scandal on its Twitter account last month. The Moreno government seized on the tweet to accuse WikiLeaks and Julian Assange personally—despite the intense surveillance and conditions approaching that of solitary confinement in the London embassy—of having hacked the phones and social media accounts of Moreno and his family to secure the evidence of corruption. Moreno cast himself as a victim of an invasion of privacy, expressing his ire over the publication of personal photographs, including one of himself eating a lobster dinner in bed at the same time that his government was ordering massive layoffs and austerity measures. During his trip to Washington this week in the immediate aftermath of the handing over of Assange to the British police, Moreno participated in a public forum at the Inter-American Dialogue, a big-business-controlled Washington think tank, where he repeated his claim that he was justified in inviting the British police to drag Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy because he had turned the diplomatic facility into a “center of espionage.” This ridiculous claim, under conditions in which Assange was himself subjected to 24/7 surveillance, dovetails with the position of the Trump administration, put forward by former CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, that WikiLeaks constitutes a “non-state hostile intelligence service” and is designed to facilitate his prosecution in the US under the Espionage Act. While Moreno is claiming overwhelming popular support for his betrayal of Assange, the mass protest in Quito expressed broad sentiments of support for the courageous journalist and the anger of millions of Ecuadorians that their government has become a pawn of US imperialist interests, prepared to carry out the filthiest betrayal in return for potential debt relief and trade deals. https://www.wsws.org/asset/21b5c0be-f148-4452-93f4-e23132c097bO/image.jpg?re ndition=image480 The thousands who marched in Quito on Tuesday speak for millions of workers and youth all over the world who feel disgust and outrage over the jailing of Julian Assange in the UK and the threat that the Trump administration will illegally seize the WikiLeaks founder and subject him to detention, possible torture and even death for exposing the war crimes and diplomatic conspiracies of the US government. The resurgence of the struggles of the working class on a worldwide scale is the foundation for the mobilization of mass support for the defense of democratic rights and the freeing of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and others jailed for exposing and opposing the crimes of imperialism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 27666 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 30532 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 142736 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 44099 bytes Desc: not available URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Apr 19 13:45:08 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 08:45:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Philip Weiss: Mueller Report says 'multiple members' of Trump transition approached foreign officials to stop UN resolution against Israeli settlements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I bet you a dollar you won't hear anything about this on NPR today. Members of the Trump transition team, led by Jared Kushner, acting at the direction of the Israeli government, worked assiduously to undermine the Obama Administration's policy of allowing a UN Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank to pass. And they partially succeeded: Trump called Egyptian "President" Sisi [he took power in a military coup] and got Egypt to withdraw the resolution. Other countries then brought it forward, and the resolution passed. According to the people currently running America, there are foreign influence attempts we should be very concerned about and foreign influence attempts we should not be concerned about at all. Russian and Chinese foreign influence attempts should make us froth at the mouth. Saudi, UAE, and Israeli foreign influence attempts should not concern us at all, even though they have been far more consequential. 85,000 Yemeni children starved to death as a result of the successful Saudi-UAE foreign influence attempt in Washington. === Mueller Report says ‘multiple members’ of Trump transition approached foreign officials to stop UN resolution against Israeli settlements Philip Weiss on April 18, 2019 https://mondoweiss.net/2019/04/approached-resolution-settlements/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Apr 19 14:50:14 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 09:50:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Forward's opinion editor publishing settler who called for assassination of Rep Ilhan Omar In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1118949281375969280 *rafael shimunov*‏Verified account @rafaelshimunov FollowingFollowing @rafaelshimunov More The Forward's opinion editor @bungarsargon is publishing a settler who called for the assassination of Rep Ilhan Omar. 1:47 PM - 18 Apr 2019 - *228* Retweets - *482* Likes - [image: Hiba Hammami] [image: Party Thrash Dad] [image: Simone] [image: Susan Marsh] [image: Siren (of the water tribe 🌊)] [image: pluribus unum] [image: Jish] [image: GAZ_5682] [image: David Noland] The Forward === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Apr 19 23:17:14 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:17:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] News from Neptune #418 notes Message-ID: <7db96446-f1f2-b60b-935f-54d72565aa45@forestfield.org> News from Neptune episode #418 A "Impeachment for War" edition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEzxbMXESxM A list of links to references made on the show. United Nations Charter https://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdGI4iWuzJw -- John Bolton's remarks on new anti-Cuban sanctions and Cuban reaction. Good Friday & Passover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_friday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" poem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere%27s_Ride The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (painting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Midnight_Ride_of_Paul_Revere_(painting) US Constitution https://usconstitution.net/const.txt Impeachment reference from Article 2 section 4. Treason reference from Article 3 section 3. Related: See/hear the Glenn Greenwald/James Risen debate on treason in https://theintercept.com/2018/02/21/intercepted-podcast-russiamania-glenn-greenwald-vs-james-risen/ Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS0AlApiWLs -- Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate review Russiagate including what a disappointment The Intercept has become with specific mention of James Risen's misuse of the word 'treason': > Aaron Mate: [...] Listen, I can tell you that I tried to write this > stuff at The Intercept. It wasn't welcome there. I wrote one piece about > Rachel Maddow; you covered this on your show, I wrote that piece about > Rachel Maddow and talking about how she covered Russia more than all > other issues combined and going through and debunking a lot of her > conspiracy theories; basically, arguing that she was a propagandist. > That piece did very well but after that I was never welcome back at The > Intercept again. And I tried, you know. And I thought that of all > outlets, the outlet that calls itself fearless and adversarial would > want to put resources that challenging the claims of intelligence > officials like John Brennan and challenging this conspiracy theory that > was so widespread across the corporate media. But they weren't > interested, and instead they went and hired Jim Risen. > > [Jimmy Dore throws his head back and laughs.] > > Dore: Jim Risen, who famously misused the word 'treason': it was pointed > out to him on video that he was misusing it, he admitted he was misusing > it, and then he said I don't give a fuck I'm gonna keep misusing it > because words aren't that important to journalists like Jim Risen when > he's angry at someone like Donald Trump he reveals all the cracks in his > personality. A guy like Trump revealed every crack in Jim Risen's > personality. And it was shone a light on and that guy fell down harder > on the job than fucking anybody and I wish he would quit doing what he's > doing. War of Aggression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression > Reading the Tribunal's final judgment in court, British alternate judge > Norman Birkett said: > > The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged > aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. 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.[1][1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/judnazi.asp#common Mueller report (redacted, searchable) https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/18/mueller-report-searchable.pdf Glenn Greenwald and David Cay Johnston debate https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/19/the_mueller_report_glenn_greenwald_vs Rob Urie on "Why Russiagate Will Never Go Away" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/why-russiagate-will-never-go-away/ Belt and Road Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative Obama's request of bankers, post Obama administration: he tells bankers to thank him for his work on their behalf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjVFfX4BtvI -- from "Moderate Rebels" @andyecono asked in https://twitter.com/andyecono/status/1117890855447056385 > Imagine if Grenfell had some really important stained glass windows and > examples of gothic architecture, instead of just human beings. Russell Mokhiber no "Why Boeing and Its Executives Should be Prosecuted for Manslaughter" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/why-boeing-and-its-executives-should-be-prosecuted-for-manslaughter/ Joshua Frank on "Top 20 Mueller Report “Findings”" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/top-20-mueller-report-findings/ Andrew Levine on "What Will It Take For Trump to Get His Due?" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/19/what-will-it-take-for-trump-to-get-his-due/ Jeffrey St. Clair's "Bernie and the Sandernistas" https://store.counterpunch.org/product/bernie-the-sandernistas/ Jim Dey on "Facts behind tax campaign slogans tell different tale" http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/2019-04-18/jim-dey-facts-behind-tax-campaign-slogans-tell-different-tale.html "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf Financial transaction tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_transaction_tax Jessica Smith on "Lawmakers introduce bill to tax financial transactions" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-tax-wall-street-211353714.html Andrew Yang on "Financial Transaction Tax" from his campaign page https://www.yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/ Daniel Altman on "To Reduce Inequality, Tax Wealth, Not Income" which also endorses a "flat wealth tax" https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/opinion/to-reduce-inequality-tax-wealth-not-income.html > American household wealth totaled more than $58 trillion in 2010. A flat > wealth tax of just 1.5 percent on financial assets and other wealth like > housing, cars and business ownership would have been more than enough to > replace all the revenue of the income, estate and gift taxes, which > amounted to about $833 billion after refunds. Brackets of, say, zero > percent up to $500,000 in wealth, 1 percent for wealth between $500,000 > and $1 million, and 2 percent for wealth above $1 million would probably > have done the trick as well. -J From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 20 03:38:36 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2019 22:38:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Poster Message-ID: https://leecamp.com/wp-content/uploads/assange7png-2.png From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sat Apr 20 15:39:25 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2019 10:39:25 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?Fwd=3A_Nearly_100_abortion_workers_seek?= =?utf-8?q?_help_to_leave_jobs_after_seeing_=E2=80=98Unplanned=E2=80=99?= References: <1555772774912.3e01903f-4f15-476c-9012-2a6a2bd73b3b@bf10a.hubspotemail.net> Message-ID: > > > > Nearly 100 abortion workers seek help to leave jobs after seeing 'Unplanned' > Filmmakers for “Unplanned,” the new movie about the pro-life conversion of former Planned Parenthood facility director Abby Johnson, have announced that since the release of the movie, approximately 100 abortion workers have reached out, seeking to leave the abortion industry. Read more > MORE PRO-LIFE NEWS > > > > Elderly pro-life woman violently attacked outside abortion facility > An elderly pro-life activist was assaulted by a woman leaving an abortion facility this week, causing her a broken thighbone and a cut to her head, according to LifeSiteNews. Read more > > > Why did an OH lawmaker want preborn Black babies treated as disposable property? > In a shocking move, Rep. Janine Boyd (D) proposed an amendment that would have allowed the bill to protect all children older than six weeks from abortion except for African-American children. Read more > > > Abortion survivor missing limbs has 'to live with someone else's choice' > Nik Hoot first made headlines in 2013 as a high school wrestler who was missing parts of his legs and fingers. He lost them when an abortionist failed to kill him, but still managed to rip off parts of his body. Read more > > > As more women die from abortion pill, the FDA approves a generic version > The FDA has approved a generic version of the abortion pill Mifeprex, at a time when more deaths are being reported and the abortion industry is pushing for the dangerous abortion-inducing chemicals to be dispensed online or by mail. Read more > > > Michigan county board evicts Planned Parenthood for alleged failure to curb STD rates > The Muskegon County Board of Commissioners in Michigan has voted to end the lease of a Planned Parenthood facility after the abortion chain had previously enjoyed a shockingly cheap rent of just $1,500 a year inside the county’s Department of Public Health building. Read more > > > Since 'Unplanned' release, hotline has seen spike in calls for abortion pill reversal > The Abortion Pill Rescue Network, run by Heartbeat International’s Option Line, has seen an approximately 30% increase in calls since the premiere of the pro-life film “Unplanned,” which tells the story of former Planned Parenthood center director Abby Johnson’s conversion. Read more > > > Hemorrhaging woman rushed to hospital after abortion at D.C. Planned Parenthood > A woman suffering a hemorrhage was rushed from a Planned Parenthood facility in Washington, D.C., to a nearby hospital, reports Operation Rescue. Read more > > > Actress Alyssa Milano seeks pro-abortion stories, gets pro-life ones instead > Pro-abortion actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter on Friday to ask followers to send in their “personal abortion story” so she could share them on her podcast. Her goal, she said, was “to help shine a light on the importance” of abortion. In return, pro-lifers and regretful post-abortive women shared the reasons why they are against abortion. Read more > > > > > Live Action News is the publishing arm of Live Action > > Live Action 2200 Wilson Blvd. Suite 102 PMB 111 Arlington VA 22201 > > You received this email because you are subscribed to Live Action News Weekly Updates from Live Action. > > Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. > > Unsubscribe from all future emails > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sat Apr 20 17:29:45 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2019 12:29:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Sheri Daley article in Public i Message-ID: http://publici.ucimc.org/2019/04/open-rebuttal-to-sen-duckworth/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sat Apr 20 21:03:49 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2019 16:03:49 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: The Stop and Shop Strike: Grocery Store Workers Take on a Billion Dollar Multinational In-Reply-To: <432304574.1694876.1555624211568@mail.yahoo.com> References: <432304574.1694876.1555624211568.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <432304574.1694876.1555624211568@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Andy Piascik Date: Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 4:50 PM Subject: The Stop and Shop Strike: Grocery Store Workers Take on a Billion Dollar Multinational To: Andy Piascik Friends, This story about the ongoing strike at Stop and Shop was published recently at several websites. In Solidarity, Andy * Grocery Store Workers Take on a Billion Dollar Multinational* by Andy Piascik At precisely 1:00 Eastern time on the afternoon of April 11th, 31,000 workers at 253 Stop and Shop grocery stores throughout Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts walked off their jobs. The strike came after several months of failed negotiations in which Stop and Shop refused to retract an onerous set of demands for the elimination of premium pay for Sunday work, major cuts to pensions and dramatic increases in the amount workers would have to pay for health care. The strikers are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Truck drivers both union and non-union have honored the picket lines by refusing to make their deliveries, according to strikers at four picket lines in Bridgeport and Fairfield, Connecticut. The workers at those stores also report that no union members have crossed the picket line. Most stores are open as supervisors and a small number of replacement workers have been stocking shelves and working cash registers but business has taken a big hit. *Solid Public Support* Public support has been high and sympathetic supervisors have told strikers that the take for one 16-hour day at a store in Fairfield was a meager $2,000, a fraction of a normal day’s business. Some stores have cut their hours because business has been so bad. Officials and members of other unions have joined with strikers for rallies at stores in a number of locations, including Bridgeport and Fairfield. Virtually every elected official in the Bridgeport area as well as both US Senators are Democrats and many have visited a picket line and/or expressed their support for the strike, as have several Republicans from other parts of the state. An announcement was made at a picket line yesterday that community sympathizers and merchants have established a food bank where strikers can get free food. From conversations with dozens of strikers, morale of union members is high eight days in. Worker after worker expressed special gratitude for the overwhelming public support they’ve received. Shoppers who know many of the strikers by name from years of shopping have joined the picket lines and many have brought coffee, doughnuts, pizzas and other food and beverages to the strikers. Media coverage on local television stations and in the Hearst dailies that dominate the newspaper market in Connecticut has been mostly positive. *$2 Billion Profits in 2018* Amidst the strikers’ enthusiasm, however, is an undercurrent of fear and resentment. There has been no strike at Stop and Shop for 30 years, and that one was of very short duration, so the vast majority of the chain’s workers are confronting the unbridled greed of their employers in such an open way for the first time. The Stop and Shop stores are among many owned by the Dutch conglomerate Ahold which reported $2 billion in profits in 2018. Despite such profits and despite the fact that Stop and Shop is far and away the dominant grocery store chain in New England (and which also owns stores in New York and New Jersey that are covered by a different contract and thus not on strike), Ahold is demanding significant givebacks. The cuts in pensions and health coverage particularly rankle the strikers; the company’s current demands, for example, include a fourfold increase in the amount workers will have to pay in co-payments for doctor’s visits. *Minimum Wage Pay for New Workers * Picketers expressed a mix of astonishment and anger that a massive company that is doing so well would utterly refuse to share any portion of that wealth and instead demand significant givebacks. New hires, all of whom are part-time, start at $10.10 an hour. Stop and Shop has consciously cut the number of full-time positions, and stipulations that the company forced through in previous contracts make accepting a full-time promotion far less attractive than it could be. “It takes years before you can even think about getting a full-time position,” said Rafael Quiles at the picket line outside one of the stores in Fairfield. “And if you do go full-time, the company has the right to transfer you to any store in the state that it wants to.” He and others said the company does precisely that in order to discourage others from seeking full-time. “Many people who take full-time jobs go back to part-time a short while later because they don’t want to be moved to a store far away,” added Gin Palladino, a ten-year veteran who lives just a few blocks from the store where she works. “I’d rather work part-time here and get another part-time job close to home than have to travel a long distance to work full-time.” Kizzy Lewis is a full-timer who has worked in 12 stores in her 25 years at Stop and Shop. “They had me working as far away as Stamford and at other stores all over Fairfield County,” she said. “After all these years, I hope this is my last one.” Lewis also ridiculed the gas allotment the company pays for those it transfers, pointing out that the worker is responsible for the first 15 miles both to and from work. *Workers Struggling Amidst Fabulous Wealth* For many workers, hourly wages that are equal to or just a little above the federal minimum do not go far. Consider that Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest and most expensive areas in the country where the contrast between the Super Rich who live in places like New Canaan and Greenwich and workers at Stop and Shop couldn’t be starker. A number of strikers live in Bridgeport, the least expensive housing market in the area, but even rents in Bridgeport can be as high as $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. For people making $10.10 per hour, that is out of reach. People spoke of co-workers well into their 20s who live with their parents or other family members because they cannot afford to live on their own. As with so many workers in the United States today, some of the strikers have more than one job. One man on the picket line said he averages 65 hours a week between his two jobs and is still barely making ends meet. A woman striker said she’s negotiating with her boss at her other job about getting more hours if the strike lasts. It’s important that the Stop and Shop strikers win, just as it was important that the tens of thousands of teachers around the country won their strikes in the last year. It’s also important, though, that workers, their supporters and allies and union staffers who are so inclined take a long, harsh look at the state of things. The Stop and Shop workers’ strike is essentially defensive; they are resisting the company’s attempts at more takebacks and the union, according to workers, is putting forward few demands of their own. So no noteworthy wage increases or other improvements await them even if they score a complete victory. In the short term at minimum, their lives will continue to get harder Winning and Seeds of Greater Possibilities There are, however, seeds of greater possibilities and future victories in the strength and togetherness the workers are experiencing in their strike. By virtually every account including those by sources generally hostile to unions, workers and strikes, the Stop and Shop strike has been overwhelming successful. The company is losing money in a big way, for one, and the hard line it has drawn has raised the awareness of many strikers: about their relationship to their employers, about the power of collective action, about the power of an entire workforce withdrawing its labor, about how perilous life in the 21st century United States has become for the working class. Speaking about the experience of the strike thus far, one worker said the following: “Most of us like our jobs because we have so many regular customers who make it feel like a community and they far outnumber the customers who make our lives difficult. What really makes it hard to like your job is not the customers who give you a bad time but knowing that you’re getting a bad deal from the company. The pay is too low, the benefits aren’t enough, working on weekends is mandatory, all that stuff. And then to see that they want to cut our pensions even further, make us pay more if we go to the doctor, cut Sunday premium pay and give us nothing in return for all that … it’s too much. All these people you see on this picket line and all the other picket lines at all the other Stop and Shop stores, none of them is ever going to forget this.” Asked if he meant the togetherness of the strikers or the conduct of the company, he said simply, “Both.” Perhaps one big lesson that can reverberate far and wide beyond Stop and Shop is the power of the strike. After years and years where the number of strikes dwindled to a pitifully small number, accompanied by a barrage of negativity from media and political elites, workers are beginning to see that it is one of the most effective ways to fight back. That’s true of teachers, nurses and other healthcare workers, electrical workers at Wabtec in Erie, grocery store workers throughout southern New England. Equally large challenges will be to bring that fighting spirit and solidarity into the workplace and the union hall as well as for workers from a variety of workplaces both union and non-union to build organizations of mutual support where they can also strategize about how to build a different kind of society. *Bridgeport native Andy Piascik is a long-time activist and award-winning author whose most recent book is the novel *In Motion*. He can be reached at andypiascik at yahoo.com .* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Apr 21 17:20:22 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2019 12:20:22 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Happy Easter References: <5cbc9664.1c69fb81.dbf12.93a3.GMR@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <9F1D15CB-C5F2-491A-A695-CA88A8518443@gmail.com> > The Easter Vigil: the mystery of new life > Herbert McCabe OP (1987) > > ...because it is only Christian men > Guard even heathen things. > ―G. K. Chesterton > > “At the time of the full moon at the Spring Equinox the people of the Messiani extinguish all their hearth-fires and every lamp and lantern and source of light from amongst them. They gather then on the hillside at midnight and in the darkness a Holy Man strikes the new fire from the rock of flint and with this a great sacred fire is made to blaze. This new fire from darkness represents, for the Messiani, the rebirth of Messia, their dying god, and also the rebirth of the year and the coming of new life out of darkness and winter. > > “An image of the risen god in the form of a tall candle is then lighted from the fire to symbolise his return to life from the dead, and adorned with certain sacred signs by which past and future and all time is made to centre on this time and this place. Led by the flame of the image the whole throng then moves in procession from the fire to the place of assembly. As they go they take new flame from the image for their own torches and lanterns and they dance and shout the praises of Messia 'the new light of the world'. When the crowd is once more assembled Messia is erected amongst green boughs and flowers and other signs of fertility and a Holy Man addresses it in song, bringing this Holy Night to coincide with the mythic nights of creation and of the birth of the Messiani people, the daylight night of the death and rebirth of God which, for the Messiani, is also the death and rebirth of Man. This is followed by the solemn chanting of the creation myths and other legends of the sacred story of the Messiani, always with the theme of darkness and the conquest of darkness by light. > > “Then, while two Singing Men start an hypnotic chant naming the names of the holy ones of the Messianic past, a great bath of water is prepared which is to receive power from the Fire and the Light so that it will become the Waters of Life. Those who are to be initiated into the mysteries of the Messiani must pass through this water, and, moreover, all the people are splashed with it, for they believe that this will bring them fertility and renewed life during the coming year. > > “The climax is reached with the common sacred banquet of the Dying and Rising God/Man. Now from Fire and Light and Water we pass to Bread and Wine consecrated and made holy, for in consuming them together the Messiani believe that they are mystically devouring the very flesh and blood of the Dying God: their bodies are thus made one with his and share in his new risen life. When this mystery has been enacted the entire throng, men, women and children, make their way to another place for cocoa and buns.” > > * * * > > I think this could stand as a sample outsider's account of what goes on in the average suburban Roman Catholic church on Easter night. Let us consider what it means. > > It is quite natural to see the three great days of Holy Week as three acts in a kind of passion-play, following the story of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ as three successive events. There is no harm in looking at it this way, but if we look at the history of Holy Week, at how the liturgy developed, we may see more deeply into the mystery than that. > > In the first place, the Easter Vigil is not just Act 3 of a sequence. It is the oldest and was for quite along time the only celebration of Easter. From the very earliest days we know about, the night of the resurrection was celebrated quite apart from any commemoration of Thursday or Friday. The Easter Vigil is complete in itself: it is not just a happy ending tagged on to the mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross. > > The liturgical reformers associated with Vatican II, seeing the pivotal importance of the Vigil, the 'Mother of all Vigils' and t > ----- Message truncated ----- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sun Apr 21 20:48:36 2019 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2019 20:48:36 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Progressive capitalism? Like squaring the circle? Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Progressive Capitalism?.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 121782 bytes Desc: Progressive Capitalism?.pdf URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sun Apr 21 22:25:07 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2019 17:25:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Clinton => Biden backers and Identity Politics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10158195114557656 I have a slightly mean idea. Maybe someone at the Intercept would want to pursue it. The idea is, when Biden announces, look at who is supporting him. Go back four years and see which of these people were saying that we had to support Hillary because First Woman President. If First Woman President was important to these people then, why isn't it important to them now? They've got all these choices now of women they could support. Warren, Harris, Gillibrand, Klobuchar. Why back Biden, if First Woman President is important? Surely it's not the case that Identity Politics is something these people opportunistically deploy whenever they find it convenient to their self-perceived interests and drop like a hot potato when they find it inconvenient. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Mon Apr 22 14:45:06 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2019 09:45:06 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] LTE to CUN-G Message-ID: Patrick Buchanan points out that “...in 2016, Trump ran as a different kind of Republican, an opponent of the Iraq War and an anti-interventionist who wanted to get along with Russia's Vladimir Putin and get out of these Middle East wars...” In office, the president has reversed his position. “Trump has talked of pulling all U.S. troops out of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the troops are still there. Though Trump came into office promising to get along with the Russians, he sent Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine and announced a pullout from Ronald Reagan's 1987 INF treaty that outlawed all land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles... Now, remarkably enough, “the center of gravity of U.S. politics is shifting toward the Trump position of 2016. And the anti-interventionist wing of the GOP is growing. And when added to the anti-interventionist and anti-war wing of the Democratic Party on the Hill, together, they are able, as on the Yemen War Powers resolution, to produce a new bipartisan majority. By the primaries of 2020, foreign policy will be front and center, and the Democratic Party will have captured the ‘no-more-wars’ political high ground that Candidate Donald Trump occupied in 2016.” Perhaps. But at the moment, both the Republican and Democrat parties are committed to war, and only minor parties - Greens and Libertarians - and Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard are opposing US war crimes. Vote for them to salvage what little honor remains to America, if you have the chance. —CGE From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Tue Apr 23 13:20:55 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2019 08:20:55 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Ukraine: Why 'OU' Lost by a Landslide Message-ID: <002d01d4f9d7$6224c9d0$266e5d70$@comcast.net> " The prosecutor was leading a wide-ranging corruption investigation into the natural gas firm - while Biden's son, Hunter, sat on the board of directors. Corruption is a major problem in Ukraine, and Biden contributed to it, bringing U.S. corruption to Ukraine. " Ukraine: Why 'OU' Lost by a Landslide April 22, 2019 . 24 Comments Save The answer is clear if you read U.S. documents published by WikiLeaks in 2006, writes Kevin Zeese. Zelensky, in 2016 episode of Ukrainian TV comedy "Servant of the People." (YouTube) Ukraine's next president in 2016 trailer for the TV comedy "Servant of the People." (YouTube) By Kevin Zeese PopularResistance.org https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Kevin-Zeese--100x100.j pgWith his landslide victory, Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who won 73 percent of the vote, will become the president of Ukraine. Understanding how this occurred becomes easy when people review U.S. government documents published by WikiLeaks about outgoing President Petro Poroshenko. Who is "OU?" Our Ukraine. In a classified diplomatic cable from 2006 released by WikiLeaks, U.S. officials refer to Poroshenko as "Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko." Our Ukraine has been in the pocket of the U.S. for 13 years. The U.S. knew Poroshenko was corrupt. A separate cable released by WikiLeaks makes that clear. The May 2006 cable states: "Poroshenko was tainted by credible corruption allegations, but wielded significant influence within OU; Poroshenko's price had to be paid." Allowing his corruption was a price the U.S. was willing to pay to have Our Ukraine serving as president. 2018 billboard for Yulia Tymoshenko in Kiev. (Wikimedia Commons) 2018 billboard for Tymoshenko in Kiev. (Wikimedia Commons) The document also describes the "bad blood" between Poroshenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko. This bad blood continues to this day as Tymoshenko came in third in the first round of the elections, and it seemed to continue through the general election, as those who voted for her, voted for Zelensky - or against Poroshenko. Here is how the memo describes the Tymoshenko-Poroshenko relationship: "there is a thin line between love and hate" it says and describes how Tymoshenko and Poroshenko might appear in public, shake hands and agree to "do business" together, but that a coalition between them was unlikely to last. Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to announce a 2020 run for president, is emblematic of the corruption of the U.S. in Ukraine. As WikiLeaks reports, Biden pledged U.S. financial and technical assistance to Ukraine for "unconventional" gas resources (i.e. fracking). Biden's son Hunter was put on the board of the largest private gas company in Ukraine (along with a financier and long-time family friend of former Secretary of State John Kerry) and when that gas company was threatened with investigation, with video cameras rolling at the Council on Foreign Relations, [starts at 52.00] Biden described how he threatened Poroshenko in March 2016, saying that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion. Biden claimed he gave the country six hours to fire the prosecutor before he left Ukraine or he would bankrupt the country. OU fired him. Why did Biden want him fired? The prosecutor was leading a wide-ranging corruption investigation into the natural gas firm - while Biden's son, Hunter, sat on the board of directors. Corruption is a major problem in Ukraine, and Biden contributed to it, bringing U.S. corruption to Ukraine. After Poroshenko replaced the prosecutor with one to Biden's liking a WikiLeaks document shows he was prepared to move forward with the signing of the third $1 billion loan guarantee agreement. https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Poroshenko-e1555942672 197.jpg Poroshenko: Enriched as country lost. (Wikimedia Commons) Now the two pro-U.S. politicians, Tymoshenko and Poroshenko, have been replaced by a political unknown in Zelensky, or " Ze," as he's more popularly known. The incoming president has been vague on what policies he will pursue but says he wants to negotiate peace with Russia over eastern Ukraine, saying he was prepared to negotiate directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is sick of corruption. Adding to Poroshenko's corruption, the U.S. brought more corruption. Not surprisingly, corruption under Poroshenko worsened. The country is tired of the conflict between Kiev and East Ukraine and Zelensky said he would try to end the war. And, the country has become the poorest in Europe as the promise of close ties with the U.S. have not resulted in the benefits promised. While the country has gotten poorer, Poroshenko remains one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine. He has been surrounded by corruption scandals as various businessmen close to him have been caught up in scandals involving corruption. The common view is Ukraine has gotten poorer as Poroshenko has gotten richer. All this was predictable with what the U.S. knew about OU, and thanks to WikiLeaks should not be a surprise to anyone. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.png Type: image/png Size: 450134 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2721 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 75968 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 21708 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Tue Apr 23 23:58:33 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:58:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] AOTA #478 notes Message-ID: AWARE on the Air #478 notes Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fobm7BtngX4 Links to references mentioned on the show. Glen Ford on "Mass Manufacturers of Slander and Lies" https://blackagendareport.com/mass-manufacturers-slander-and-lies Patrick J. Buchanan on "Is Bernie Stealing Trump’s ‘No More Wars’ Issue?" https://buchanan.org/blog/is-bernie-stealing-trumps-no-more-wars-issue-136901 Julian Assange interview sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhWztU3Xcmw -- from November 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R-D1fvMtbk -- from December 2016 Jimmy Dore interviews Aaron Maté: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS0AlApiWLs The quoted segment starts around 27m07s. My article about corporate-friendly comedian sycophants from November 2016: https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/24/comedians-as-sycophants-samantha-bee-john-oliver-and-the-democrats/ "On Contact with Chris Hedges" -- Chris Hedges interviews Aaron Maté: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEnNBlOJdk -J From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 25 08:42:28 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 03:42:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female References: <1552a91a8a3126e772671645cf27134d@pr.judicialwatch.org> Message-ID: <65917DFF-C5A3-4915-AE57-8A9EBF70CEB3@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "JW Corruption Chronicles" > Subject: Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female > Date: April 24, 2019 at 12:31:38 PM CDT > To: carl at newsfromneptune.com > Reply-To: media at pr.judicialwatch.org > > > > > Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female > > House Democrats have reintroduced a bill that would make “gender identity” a protected class under federal civil rights law and force men who identify as women to be treated and accepted as female. If the measure, known as the Equality Act , becomes law, it would drastically impact numerous sectors. > > Hospitals and insurance companies will have to provide costly sex-reassignment therapies, employers and workers who don’t conform to new sexual norms will lose their businesses and jobs and women would lose female-only facilities and sports. The only requirement for protection under the bill is a self-declared “gender identity.” > > In a statement celebrating the Equality Act’s reintroduction last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this: “To dismantle the discrimination undermining our democracy, we must ensure that all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, are treated equally under the law — not just in the workplace, but in education, housing, credit, jury service and public accommodations as well.” > > The veteran California congresswoman claims the measure has strong bipartisan support even though two Republicans that supported it when it was first introduced in the last Congress are no longer in office. Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retired and Virginia’s Scott Tayler failed to win reelection. Fortunately, the bill is likely to encounter serious resistance in the Republican-majority Senate as well as the White House. > > Nevertheless, the transgender movement has become a dangerous war on women and girls and the law floating around in Congress will be detrimental to both. The Equality Act would be a setback to women’s rights in several areas. > > American women would be stripped of single-sex accommodations in public multi-stall bathrooms, domestic violence or rape crisis shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, jails, juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, locker rooms or group showers. Judicial Watch recently wrote about a separate law that aims to defund women’s shelters that don’t allow transgender men who self-identify as women. > > The Equality Act goes further by also stripping a woman’s right to have a person of the same sex conduct security searches on their body, supervise drug tests, handle intimate medical care and supervise children on overnight trips. This is because the language in the proposed law replaces sex with gender identity, open to the claimant’s interpretation, as a protected category. > > This would be especially harmful to females in areas such as competitive sports. A decades-old federal measure known as Title IX prohibits discrimination in all federally funded education programs, including sports. > > It ensures that boys and girls in elementary through high school and men and women in college have athletic opportunities. If the Equality Act passes males will have the right to compete against females, an atrocity that even the most liberal women and feminists reject. > > Among them is tennis legend Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam champion who encountered lots of discrimination for coming out as gay during the peak of her professional tennis career in the 1980s. “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women,” Navratilova said . “It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.” > > A recent public high school case in Georgia supports the tennis great’s assessment. At a track competition, a transgender athlete easily beat all the females. The mother of one of the demoralized athletes reached out to several women’s rights groups for help but her concerns fell on deaf ears. A conservative public policy women’s organization in Washington D.C. helped the mother express her concerns to Congress. > > In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee the mother writes this: “To say that my daughter, as well as the other female athletes, were humiliated and had a sense of defeatism is an understatement. In the words of my daughter, ‘What’s the point Mom, we can’t win.’ Hearing this broke my heart, for my daughter and for all the female athletes, who train so hard, but no matter how hard they work and train they will never be able to beat a biological male. … What are we doing to our girls by forcing them to race biological males?” > > Concerned Women for America , the group that assisted the Georgia mother, has conducted extensive research on the Equality Act and recently published a document outlining the measure’s dangerous consequences for women and girls. > > Shea Garrison, the organization’s vice president of international affairs, says the bill wrongfully “redefines civil rights law” and “elevates the interests of one group over another.” An esteemed academic, Garrison’s work and research focuses on women’s economic and social empowerment, religious freedom and human rights. > > Daywatch Updates > > > Judicial Watch, Inc. > 425 3rd St Sw Ste 800 > Washington, DC 20024 > 202.646.5172 > > ©2017-2019, All Rights Reserved > Manage Email Subscriptions | Unsubscribe > VIEW IN BROWSER -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Apr 25 10:02:18 2019 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 05:02:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] "We're doing it for the women"? Re: Fwd: Gender Identity Law ... In-Reply-To: <65917DFF-C5A3-4915-AE57-8A9EBF70CEB3@gmail.com> References: <1552a91a8a3126e772671645cf27134d@pr.judicialwatch.org> <65917DFF-C5A3-4915-AE57-8A9EBF70CEB3@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6def61d8-a5b2-0b56-5a4d-0757be79b027@gmail.com> Um, this story seems to be right out of Breitbart.   Except their disheartened competitors were from CT rather than GA.   Are we really to believe that Breitbart and Judicial Watch are pushing this story to support the women of the US, just like the proponents of more Afghanistan war say they just want to save the women of Afghanistan? On 4/25/19 3:42 AM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: > > >> Begin forwarded message: >> >> *From: *"JW Corruption Chronicles" > > >> *Subject: **Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans >> Men to be Accepted as Female* >> *Date: *April 24, 2019 at 12:31:38 PM CDT >> *To: *carl at newsfromneptune.com >> *Reply-To: *media at pr.judicialwatch.org >> >> >> open >> CORRUPTION CHRONICLES >> >> >> >> >> *Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be >> Accepted as Female* >> >> House Democrats have reintroduced a bill that would make “gender >> identity” a protected class under federal civil rights law and force >> men who identify as women to be treated and accepted as female. If >> the measure, known as the Equality Act >> , >> becomes law, it would drastically impact numerous sectors. >> >> Hospitals and insurance companies will have to provide costly >> sex-reassignment therapies, employers and workers who don’t conform >> to new sexual norms will lose their businesses and jobs and women >> would lose female-only facilities and sports. The only requirement >> for protection under the bill is a self-declared “gender identity.” >> >> In a statement >>  celebrating >> the Equality Act’s reintroduction last month, House Speaker Nancy >> Pelosi said this: “To dismantle the discrimination undermining our >> democracy, we must ensure that all Americans, regardless of sexual >> orientation or gender identity, are treated equally under the law — >> not just in the workplace, but in education, housing, credit, jury >> service and public accommodations as well.” >> >> The veteran California congresswoman claims the measure has strong >> bipartisan support even though two Republicans that supported it when >> it was first introduced in the last Congress are no longer in office. >> Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retired and Virginia’s Scott Tayler >> failed to win reelection. Fortunately, the bill is likely to >> encounter serious resistance in the Republican-majority Senate as >> well as the White House. >> >> Nevertheless, the transgender movement has become a dangerous war on >> women and girls and the law floating around in Congress will be >> detrimental to both. The Equality Act would be a setback to women’s >> rights in several areas. >> >> American women would be stripped of single-sex accommodations in >> public multi-stall bathrooms, domestic violence or rape crisis >> shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, jails, juvenile detention >> facilities, homeless shelters, locker rooms or group showers. >> Judicial Watch recently wrote about a separate law >>  that >> aims to defund women’s shelters that don’t allow transgender men who >> self-identify as women. >> >> The Equality Act goes further by also stripping a woman’s right to >> have a person of the same sex conduct security searches on their >> body, supervise drug tests, handle intimate medical care and >> supervise children on overnight trips. This is because the language >> in the proposed law replaces sex with gender identity, open to the >> claimant’s interpretation, as a protected category. >> >> This would be especially harmful to females in areas such as >> competitive sports. A decades-old federal measure known as Title >> IX prohibits discrimination in all federally funded education >> programs, including sports. >> >> It ensures that boys and girls in elementary through high school and >> men and women in college have athletic opportunities. If the Equality >> Act passes males will have the right to compete against females, an >> atrocity that even the most liberal women and feminists reject. >> >> Among them is tennis legend Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand >> Slam champion who encountered lots of discrimination for coming out >> as gay during the peak of her professional tennis career in the >> 1980s. “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to >> compete against women,” Navratilova said >> . >> “It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender >> woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to >> compete against her. It would not be fair.” >> >> A recent public high school case in Georgia supports the tennis >> great’s assessment. At a track competition, a transgender athlete >> easily beat all the females. The mother of one of the demoralized >> athletes reached out to several women’s rights groups for help but >> her concerns fell on deaf ears. A conservative public policy women’s >> organization in Washington D.C. helped the mother express her >> concerns >>  to >> Congress. >> >> In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee the mother writes this: >> “To say that my daughter, as well as the other female athletes, were >> humiliated and had a sense of defeatism is an understatement. In the >> words of my daughter, ‘What’s the point Mom, we can’t win.’ Hearing >> this broke my heart, for my daughter and for all the female athletes, >> who train so hard, but no matter how hard they work and train they >> will never be able to beat a biological male. … What are we doing to >> our girls by forcing them to race biological males?” >> >> Concerned Women for America >> , >> the group that assisted the Georgia mother, has conducted extensive >> research on the Equality Act and recently published a document >>  outlining >> the measure’s dangerous consequences for women and girls. >> >> Shea Garrison, the organization’s vice president of international >> affairs, says the bill wrongfully “redefines civil rights law” and >> “elevates the interests of one group over another.” An esteemed >> academic, Garrison’s work and research focuses on women’s economic >> and social empowerment, religious freedom and human rights. >>   >> >> >> >> Daywatch Updates >> >> >> >> >> 32x32x1 >> >>   32x32x2 >> >>   32x32x3 >> >>   32x32x3 >> >> >> >> >> Judicial Watch, Inc. >> 425 3rd St Sw Ste 800 >> Washington, DC 20024 >> >> 202.646.5172 >>   >> >> ©2017-2019, All Rights Reserved  >> Manage Email Subscriptions >>   |  Unsubscribe >> >> >> >> >> >> >> VIEW IN BROWSER >> >> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 25 11:35:54 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 11:35:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female In-Reply-To: <65917DFF-C5A3-4915-AE57-8A9EBF70CEB3@gmail.com> References: <1552a91a8a3126e772671645cf27134d@pr.judicialwatch.org> <65917DFF-C5A3-4915-AE57-8A9EBF70CEB3@gmail.com> Message-ID: Another, “keep Americans focused on nonsense,” so we don’t notice the perpetual wars we are conducting, the austerity being imposed upon the working class, political prisoners being incarcerated, and continuing mass incarceration, shootings, and global warming. Liberal Democrats were out demonstrating against the firing of Jeff Sessions, one of the worse racists in government, yet took little or no notice of the greatest transfer of wealth from the working class, upward to the 1%. On Apr 25, 2019, at 01:42, C G Estabrook > wrote: Begin forwarded message: From: "JW Corruption Chronicles" > Subject: Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female Date: April 24, 2019 at 12:31:38 PM CDT To: carl at newsfromneptune.com Reply-To: media at pr.judicialwatch.org [CORRUPTION CHRONICLES] Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female House Democrats have reintroduced a bill that would make “gender identity” a protected class under federal civil rights law and force men who identify as women to be treated and accepted as female. If the measure, known as the Equality Act, becomes law, it would drastically impact numerous sectors. Hospitals and insurance companies will have to provide costly sex-reassignment therapies, employers and workers who don’t conform to new sexual norms will lose their businesses and jobs and women would lose female-only facilities and sports. The only requirement for protection under the bill is a self-declared “gender identity.” In a statement celebrating the Equality Act’s reintroduction last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this: “To dismantle the discrimination undermining our democracy, we must ensure that all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, are treated equally under the law — not just in the workplace, but in education, housing, credit, jury service and public accommodations as well.” The veteran California congresswoman claims the measure has strong bipartisan support even though two Republicans that supported it when it was first introduced in the last Congress are no longer in office. Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retired and Virginia’s Scott Tayler failed to win reelection. Fortunately, the bill is likely to encounter serious resistance in the Republican-majority Senate as well as the White House. Nevertheless, the transgender movement has become a dangerous war on women and girls and the law floating around in Congress will be detrimental to both. The Equality Act would be a setback to women’s rights in several areas. American women would be stripped of single-sex accommodations in public multi-stall bathrooms, domestic violence or rape crisis shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, jails, juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, locker rooms or group showers. Judicial Watch recently wrote about a separate law that aims to defund women’s shelters that don’t allow transgender men who self-identify as women. The Equality Act goes further by also stripping a woman’s right to have a person of the same sex conduct security searches on their body, supervise drug tests, handle intimate medical care and supervise children on overnight trips. This is because the language in the proposed law replaces sex with gender identity, open to the claimant’s interpretation, as a protected category. This would be especially harmful to females in areas such as competitive sports. A decades-old federal measure known as Title IX prohibits discrimination in all federally funded education programs, including sports. It ensures that boys and girls in elementary through high school and men and women in college have athletic opportunities. If the Equality Act passes males will have the right to compete against females, an atrocity that even the most liberal women and feminists reject. Among them is tennis legend Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam champion who encountered lots of discrimination for coming out as gay during the peak of her professional tennis career in the 1980s. “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women,” Navratilova said. “It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.” A recent public high school case in Georgia supports the tennis great’s assessment. At a track competition, a transgender athlete easily beat all the females. The mother of one of the demoralized athletes reached out to several women’s rights groups for help but her concerns fell on deaf ears. A conservative public policy women’s organization in Washington D.C. helped the mother express her concerns to Congress. In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee the mother writes this: “To say that my daughter, as well as the other female athletes, were humiliated and had a sense of defeatism is an understatement. In the words of my daughter, ‘What’s the point Mom, we can’t win.’ Hearing this broke my heart, for my daughter and for all the female athletes, who train so hard, but no matter how hard they work and train they will never be able to beat a biological male. … What are we doing to our girls by forcing them to race biological males?” Concerned Women for America, the group that assisted the Georgia mother, has conducted extensive research on the Equality Act and recently published a document outlining the measure’s dangerous consequences for women and girls. Shea Garrison, the organization’s vice president of international affairs, says the bill wrongfully “redefines civil rights law” and “elevates the interests of one group over another.” An esteemed academic, Garrison’s work and research focuses on women’s economic and social empowerment, religious freedom and human rights. Daywatch Updates [32x32x1] [32x32x2] [32x32x3] [32x32x3] Judicial Watch, Inc. 425 3rd St Sw Ste 800 Washington, DC 20024 202.646.5172 ©2017-2019, All Rights Reserved Manage Email Subscriptions | Unsubscribe VIEW IN BROWSER -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Apr 25 14:42:58 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 09:42:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] "We're doing it for the women"? Re: Fwd: Gender Identity Law ... In-Reply-To: <6def61d8-a5b2-0b56-5a4d-0757be79b027@gmail.com> References: <1552a91a8a3126e772671645cf27134d@pr.judicialwatch.org> <65917DFF-C5A3-4915-AE57-8A9EBF70CEB3@gmail.com> <6def61d8-a5b2-0b56-5a4d-0757be79b027@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7053102D-6399-4ACA-8F04-CF0292930D1F@gmail.com> Can we really judge the strength of an argument from what we assume about the malign motives of those who circulate it? Thus if Breitbart says the sun is shining, it isn’t? But surely no one can be wrong all the time... The following is from an Australian Left blog: . —CGE > On Apr 25, 2019, at 5:02 AM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Um, this story seems to be right out of Breitbart. Except their disheartened competitors were from CT rather than GA. > > Are we really to believe that Breitbart and Judicial Watch are pushing this story to support the women of the US, just like the proponents of more Afghanistan war say they just want to save the women of Afghanistan? > > On 4/25/19 3:42 AM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> >>> Begin forwarded message: >>> >>> From: "JW Corruption Chronicles" >>> Subject: Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female >>> Date: April 24, 2019 at 12:31:38 PM CDT >>> To: carl at newsfromneptune.com >>> Reply-To: media at pr.judicialwatch.org >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Gender Identity Law Declares War on Women, Forces Trans Men to be Accepted as Female >>> >>> House Democrats have reintroduced a bill that would make “gender identity” a protected class under federal civil rights law and force men who identify as women to be treated and accepted as female. If the measure, known as the Equality Act, becomes law, it would drastically impact numerous sectors. >>> >>> Hospitals and insurance companies will have to provide costly sex-reassignment therapies, employers and workers who don’t conform to new sexual norms will lose their businesses and jobs and women would lose female-only facilities and sports. The only requirement for protection under the bill is a self-declared “gender identity.” >>> >>> In a statement celebrating the Equality Act’s reintroduction last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this: “To dismantle the discrimination undermining our democracy, we must ensure that all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, are treated equally under the law — not just in the workplace, but in education, housing, credit, jury service and public accommodations as well.” >>> >>> The veteran California congresswoman claims the measure has strong bipartisan support even though two Republicans that supported it when it was first introduced in the last Congress are no longer in office. Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retired and Virginia’s Scott Tayler failed to win reelection. Fortunately, the bill is likely to encounter serious resistance in the Republican-majority Senate as well as the White House. >>> >>> Nevertheless, the transgender movement has become a dangerous war on women and girls and the law floating around in Congress will be detrimental to both. The Equality Act would be a setback to women’s rights in several areas. >>> >>> American women would be stripped of single-sex accommodations in public multi-stall bathrooms, domestic violence or rape crisis shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, jails, juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, locker rooms or group showers. Judicial Watch recently wrote about a separate law that aims to defund women’s shelters that don’t allow transgender men who self-identify as women. >>> >>> The Equality Act goes further by also stripping a woman’s right to have a person of the same sex conduct security searches on their body, supervise drug tests, handle intimate medical care and supervise children on overnight trips. This is because the language in the proposed law replaces sex with gender identity, open to the claimant’s interpretation, as a protected category. >>> >>> This would be especially harmful to females in areas such as competitive sports. A decades-old federal measure known as Title IX prohibits discrimination in all federally funded education programs, including sports. >>> >>> It ensures that boys and girls in elementary through high school and men and women in college have athletic opportunities. If the Equality Act passes males will have the right to compete against females, an atrocity that even the most liberal women and feminists reject. >>> >>> Among them is tennis legend Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam champion who encountered lots of discrimination for coming out as gay during the peak of her professional tennis career in the 1980s. “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women,” Navratilova said. “It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.” >>> >>> A recent public high school case in Georgia supports the tennis great’s assessment. At a track competition, a transgender athlete easily beat all the females. The mother of one of the demoralized athletes reached out to several women’s rights groups for help but her concerns fell on deaf ears. A conservative public policy women’s organization in Washington D.C. helped the mother express her concerns to Congress. >>> >>> In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee the mother writes this: “To say that my daughter, as well as the other female athletes, were humiliated and had a sense of defeatism is an understatement. In the words of my daughter, ‘What’s the point Mom, we can’t win.’ Hearing this broke my heart, for my daughter and for all the female athletes, who train so hard, but no matter how hard they work and train they will never be able to beat a biological male. … What are we doing to our girls by forcing them to race biological males?” >>> >>> Concerned Women for America, the group that assisted the Georgia mother, has conducted extensive research on the Equality Act and recently published a document outlining the measure’s dangerous consequences for women and girls. >>> >>> Shea Garrison, the organization’s vice president of international affairs, says the bill wrongfully “redefines civil rights law” and “elevates the interests of one group over another.” An esteemed academic, Garrison’s work and research focuses on women’s economic and social empowerment, religious freedom and human rights. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Daywatch Updates >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Judicial Watch, Inc. >>> 425 3rd St Sw Ste 800 >>> Washington, DC 20024 >>> >>> 202.646.5172 >>> >>> >>> ©2017-2019, All Rights Reserved From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Apr 25 17:29:54 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 12:29:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo References: Message-ID: At the Democratic Central Committee meeting last night, it was reported that the Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. Could someone[s] please post the info about these things here so we can easily spread the news all around? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Thu Apr 25 17:42:26 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 12:42:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004001d4fb8e$4b1f3050$e15d90f0$@comcast.net> Will do Bob ! Where in Urbana will the hearing be held ? David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:30 PM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo At the Democratic Central Committee meeting last night, it was reported that the Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. Could someone[s] please post the info about these things here so we can easily spread the news all around? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Apr 25 19:15:31 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 14:15:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo In-Reply-To: <004001d4fb8e$4b1f3050$e15d90f0$@comcast.net> References: <004001d4fb8e$4b1f3050$e15d90f0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Here is a Facebook event for a rally prior to the hearing: https://www.facebook.com/events/260604121401930/ === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 12:43 PM David Johnson via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Will do Bob ! > > > > Where in Urbana will the hearing be held ? > > > > David J. > > > > *From:* Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] *On > Behalf Of *Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:30 PM > *To:* Peace-discuss List > *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on > cash bond; ACLU demo > > > > > > At the Democratic Central Committee meeting last night, it was reported > that the Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May > 6 on the issue of cash bond. > > > > It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue > before the hearing. > > > > Could someone[s] please post the info about these things here so we can > easily spread the news all around? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 25 20:37:34 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 15:37:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] =?utf-8?q?NYT=3A_Biden_Expresses_Regret_to_Anita_?= =?utf-8?b?SGlsbCwgYnV0IFNoZSBTYXlzIOKAmEnigJltIFNvcnJ54oCZIElzIE5v?= =?utf-8?q?t_Enough?= References: Message-ID: Well, if we can't hold him accountable on Iraq and Yemen, maybe he can be held accountable on this. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/politics/joe-biden-anita-hill.html By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jonathan Martin April 25, 2019 WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Anita Hill earlier this month to express his regret over “what she endured” testifying against Justice Clarence Thomas at the 1991 Supreme Court hearings that put a spotlight on sexual harassment of women, according to a spokeswoman for Mr. Biden. But Ms. Hill, in an interview Wednesday, said she left the conversation feeling *deeply unsatisfied* and *declined to characterize his words to her as an apology*. She said she is *not convinced* that Mr. Biden truly accepts the harm *he caused her and other women* who suffered sexual harassment and gender violence. “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying I’m sorry for what happened to you. *I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability* and real purpose,” she said. *She said she cannot support Mr. Biden*, who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 oversaw the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, *until he takes responsibility for what he did and is also troubled by the recent accusations of improper touching*. “The focus on apology to me is one thing,” she said. “But *he needs to give an apology to the other women and to the American public* because we know now how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw. And not just women. There are women and men now who have just really lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.” [...] Biden has long cast the hearings *in passive terms, as something that happened to Ms. Hill, not something he and others did to her*. Ms. Hill has said in the past that Mr. *Biden has never directly apologized for his actions*. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 26 02:29:17 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2019 21:29:17 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] More Marxist critiques of trans ideology Message-ID: <1D2580E6-CF97-4512-B3C2-18D8F8411CC0@gmail.com> https://rdln.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/more-marxist-critiques-of-trans-ideology/ "The fact that much of the left unquestioningly accepts and regurgitates an ideology in which the subjective feelings of the individual trump objectively observable conditions is a sign that we have abandoned the physical, material reality on which our politics is based, and replaced it with a subjective individualism that is alien to any class-based analysis.” ### From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Apr 26 12:54:16 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 07:54:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Has Biden apologized yet for his role in the Iraq war? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://www.facebook.com/robert.naiman/posts/10158207596682656 Has Biden apologized yet for his role in the Iraq war? Asking for a friend. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Apr 26 13:12:18 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 08:12:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo References: Message-ID: <005201d4fc31$acf1ecc0$06d5c640$@comcast.net> Since Robert Naiman didn’t respond to my request for more info, I contacted Attorney and Judicial candidate Ruth Wyman, who is on the board of the Champaign County ACLU. Here is the info she provided ; The Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. The rally is in Canaday park, on south Liermann Ave. just south of east Main St. next to the Satellite Jail beginning at 10 am. The hearing is from 11:30 am -1:00 pm in the ILEAS ( Illinois Law Enforcement Sys) building at 1701 East East Main St. in Urbana. David J. From: David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net] Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:42 PM To: 'Robert Naiman' Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo Will do Bob ! Where in Urbana will the hearing be held ? David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:30 PM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo At the Democratic Central Committee meeting last night, it was reported that the Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. Could someone[s] please post the info about these things here so we can easily spread the news all around? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Apr 26 13:18:27 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 08:18:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo References: Message-ID: <005f01d4fc32$89a8ea60$9cfabf20$@comcast.net> My apologies Bob, I didn’t see this response from you until now. Below is the Facebook event for the rally and hearing. David J. Here is a Facebook event for a rally prior to the hearing: https://www.facebook.com/events/260604121401930/ === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 From: David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net] Sent: Friday, April 26, 2019 8:12 AM To: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: FW: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo Since Robert Naiman didn’t respond to my request for more info, I contacted Attorney and Judicial candidate Ruth Wyman, who is on the board of the Champaign County ACLU. Here is the info she provided ; The Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. The rally is in Canaday park, on south Liermann Ave. just south of east Main St. next to the Satellite Jail beginning at 10 am. The hearing is from 11:30 am -1:00 pm in the ILEAS ( Illinois Law Enforcement Sys) building at 1701 East East Main St. in Urbana. David J. From: David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net] Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:42 PM To: 'Robert Naiman' Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo Will do Bob ! Where in Urbana will the hearing be held ? David J. From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:30 PM To: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo At the Democratic Central Committee meeting last night, it was reported that the Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. Could someone[s] please post the info about these things here so we can easily spread the news all around? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 26 16:16:35 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 11:16:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Denial is not just a river in Greater Israel Message-ID: <9C0EEF5D-6245-4794-9ABC-820B5E8A2653@gmail.com> https://mondoweiss.net/2019/04/bernie-sanders-government/ From cgestabrook at gmail.com Fri Apr 26 16:50:54 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 11:50:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Peace & Life: Sri Lanka & Yemen/Immigration & Eugenics References: <64987de875-cgestabrook=gmail.com@mail.vresp.com> Message-ID: > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "Consistent Life" > Subject: Peace & Life: Sri Lanka & Yemen/Immigration & Eugenics > Date: April 26, 2019 at 11:03:24 AM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > Reply-To: "Consistent Life" > > > > > Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Yemen > > We’re horrified by reports of massacres once again, this time by the Easter Sunday carnage in Sri Lanka. This country had a series of civil wars, 26 years and over 100,000 deaths. The hope that war ended in 2009 is dashed – as is common in the aftermath of wars. The model of using bombs continues to be followed. Even individual criminal homicides tend to go up as a result of wars. > Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.N Assistance Mission documented 581 civilians killed in the first quarter of 2019 by U.S. & Afghan forces. The Taliban added many more - but not quite as many. Several news outlets reported this. > Yet in Yemen, while massacres are happening every day, we don’t hear much about them because they’re not reported. This is what war causes: the bloodshed becomes so common that, unlike individual incidents, it isn’t reported much anymore. > > > > Left: Sri Lanka off coast of India; Middle: Afghanistan; > Right: Yemen on southern tip of Arabian Peninsula > > > But there’s some good news and a chance for action: The U.S. Congress passed a bill to stop the U.S. from providing fuel (literally) for the war inflicted on Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition. Trump vetoed the bill. The original yes vote was 57 in the U.S. Senate, not enough to override the veto. For our U.S. readers, it’s time to write and call your Senators! > > ^^^^^^^ > > Roots of Anti-Immigrant Hostility > > There has been some discussion in the news that the abhorrent family separation policy might again rear its ugly head, and other discussion that this isn’t in the works. The situation was never actually resolved acceptably, as many children are still separated. > It’s worth a quick review of history to see how this appalling practice could ever have arisen at all. > Throughout the first part of U.S. history, immigrants simply came. Limits started in the 1880s, but the heaviest impact came with The Immigration Restriction Act of 1924. The most persuasive lobbyist? Prominent eugenics advocate Harry Laughlin (pictured). He testified that new immigrants had “all types of social inadequacy” – the “feeblemindedness, “insanity,” and criminality commonly mentioned in eugenic attacks. > For more, see a short explanation or a more documented set of links . > While both abortion expansion and immigration restriction also had other causes, they do share this as one of their root causes: promotion of eugenics. Eugenics is the judging of people as genetically superior or inferior, and using these judgments to justify taking actions to reduce the “inferior.” > We have several good blog posts on eugenics, its history, and its connection to racism, classism, bigotry against those with disabilities, abortion and euthanasia. > > ^^^^^^^ > > Latest CLN Blog Post > > This week we have Part 2 of "When Linking Abortion with Other Violence Comes Naturally to Pro-lifers." While Part 1 focused on quotations making the case that opposing abortion is important to stopping other kinds of violence, Part 2 focuses on the reverse: why opposing other forms of violence helps strengthen the case against abortion. > > > > > ^^^^^^^ > > Quotation of the Week > Jim Kelly, Professor Emeritus, Fordham University > The Liberal Origins of the Pro-life Movement > > Immediately following Roe the first anti-abortion college group, The National Youth Pro-Life Coalition, linked oppositions to the Vietnam War and to abortion: “The coalition is deeply concerned that our contemporary society is not consistent in its respect for human life” and challenged those who were “antiabortion, pro-war and pro-capital punishment to moral consistency because true conservatism should involve a willingness to “conserve” all human life. > > > > issue #458 04.26.19 > Consistent Life Web Page > Consistent Life Blog > List of All Blog Posts > Join or Donate > Previous Issues > Subjects Index > Quotations Topic Index > Flyers & Brochures to Download and Print > Buttons, Stickers, T-shirts, and Other Products > Recommended Books > > Click to view this email in a browser > > If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line or simply click on the following link: Unsubscribe > Click here to forward this email to a friend > > Consistent Life > P.O. Box 9295 > Silver Spring, MD 20916-9295 > US > Read the VerticalResponse marketing policy. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Apr 26 17:23:33 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 12:23:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] FW: May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on cash bond; ACLU demo In-Reply-To: <005f01d4fc32$89a8ea60$9cfabf20$@comcast.net> References: <005f01d4fc32$89a8ea60$9cfabf20$@comcast.net> Message-ID: No problem, David. You did exactly what I wanted someone to do - find the information and post it. All best, RN === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 8:18 AM David Johnson via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > My apologies Bob, > > > > I didn’t see this response from you until now. > > Below is the Facebook event for the rally and hearing. > > > > David J. > > > > > > Here is a Facebook event for a rally prior to the hearing: > > > > https://www.facebook.com/events/260604121401930/ > > > > === > > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > > > > *From:* David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net] > *Sent:* Friday, April 26, 2019 8:12 AM > *To:* peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > *Subject:* FW: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on > cash bond; ACLU demo > > > > Since Robert Naiman didn’t respond to my request for more info, I > contacted Attorney and Judicial candidate Ruth Wyman, who is on the board > of the Champaign County ACLU. > > > > Here is the info she provided ; > > > > The Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May 6 > on the issue of cash bond. It was also reported that the ACLU would be > hosting a demo on the issue before the hearing. The rally is in Canaday > park, on south Liermann Ave. just south of east Main St. next to the > Satellite Jail beginning at 10 am. The hearing is from 11:30 am -1:00 pm in > the ILEAS ( Illinois Law Enforcement Sys) building at 1701 East East Main > St. in Urbana. > > > > David J. > > > > > > *From:* David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net] > *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:42 PM > *To:* 'Robert Naiman' > *Cc:* peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > *Subject:* RE: [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on > cash bond; ACLU demo > > > > Will do Bob ! > > > > Where in Urbana will the hearing be held ? > > > > David J. > > > > *From:* Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] *On > Behalf Of *Robert Naiman via Peace-discuss > *Sent:* Thursday, April 25, 2019 12:30 PM > *To:* Peace-discuss List > *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] May 6, Urbana: IL Supreme Court hearing on > cash bond; ACLU demo > > > > > > At the Democratic Central Committee meeting last night, it was reported > that the Illinois Supreme Court would be holding a hearing in Urbana on May > 6 on the issue of cash bond. > > > > It was also reported that the ACLU would be hosting a demo on the issue > before the hearing. > > > > Could someone[s] please post the info about these things here so we can > easily spread the news all around? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 27 13:50:28 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2019 13:50:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Anti-War Activists occupying the Venezuelan Embassy in DC, preventing an attempted USG takeover. In-Reply-To: <1960440817.1261234.1556371411989@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1960440817.1261234.1556371411989.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1960440817.1261234.1556371411989@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Sorry, my subject heading yesterday was misleading. Please see below: Popular Resistance, Code Pink, ANSWER, The Greens, and other political activists, are there and have been there. Heroes all, facing arrest, though they have permission of the nation of Venezuela. https://therealnews.com/stories/defense-of-venezuelas-us-embassy-activists-versus-us-government NEWS2Share, also has a VDO covering the demonstrations. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sat Apr 27 21:39:53 2019 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2019 21:39:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Keywords V042719 Message-ID: Keywords V042719 An occasional review of some terms that may be useful in political analysis & polemics scurrilous, sophistry, captious, specious scur·ri·lous  (skûr′ə-ləs, skŭr′-) adj. 1. Given to the use of vulgar, coarse, or abusive language. 2. Expressed in vulgar, coarse, or abusive language. 3. Of a malicious or slanderous nature; defamatory: "The law affords them wide First Amendment protection ... even when they write scurrilous lies" (Richard Curtis). 1. grossly or obscenely abusive or defamatory 2. characterized by gross or obscene humour [C16: from Latin scurrīlis derisive, from scurra buffoon] 1. grossly or obscenely abusive. 2. coarsely jocular or derisive. [1570–80; < Latin scurrīlis jeering, derivative of scurra buffoon] sophistry noun : subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation Sophistry Has Roots in Greek Philosophy The original Sophists were ancient Greek teachers of rhetoric and philosophy prominent in the 5th century B.C. In their heyday, these philosophers were considered adroit in their reasoning, but later philosophers (particularly Plato) described them as sham philosophers, out for money and willing to say anything to win an argument. Thus sophist (which comes from Greek sophistēs, meaning "wise man" or "expert") earned a negative connotation as "a captious or fallacious reasoner." Sophistry is reasoning that seems plausible on a superficial level but is actually unsound, or reasoning that is used to deceive. Sophism: an argument apparently correct in form but actually invalid especially : such an argument used to deceive — M-W online Sophist: 1. (Philosophy) (often capital) one of the pre-Socratic philosophers who were itinerant professional teachers of oratory and argument and who were prepared to enter into debate on any matter however specious 2. a person who uses clever or quibbling arguments that are fundamentally unsound cap·tious  (kăp′shəs) adj. 1. Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults: a captious scholar. 2. Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question. > Compare: nit-picking, pedantry — RSz. spe·cious  (spē′shəs) adj. 1. Having the ring of truth or plausibility but actually fallacious: a specious argument. 2. Deceptively appealing: "It is easy enough to give the old idea [of programmatic music] a specious air of modernity" (Aaron Copland). 1. apparently correct or true, but actually wrong or false 2. deceptively attractive in appearance 1. apparently true or right though lacking real merit; not genuine. 2. deceptively attractive. 3. Obs. pleasing to the eye. > Compare: plausibility, truthiness (sounding like it ought to be true) — RSz. From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Apr 28 02:15:15 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2019 21:15:15 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: People love power: Mozilla's censorship References: <60cbf0b1-6420-46d6-e4a4-c2169fbc866e@forestfield.org> Message-ID: <3D8A7AFD-ADFA-442D-92F7-C24A7FA941C6@gmail.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: "J.B. Nicholson" > Subject: People love power: Mozilla's censorship > Date: April 27, 2019 at 8:59:21 PM CDT > To: "C. G. Estabrook" , Leigh Estabrook > > I recommend that everyone use a free software web browser (such as Mozilla Firefox or a Firefox derivative like TorBrowser which makes it easy to use the tor network). Free software (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) gives us the freedom we need to individually and collectively make sure our programs do what we want them to do, so we remain in control of our computers. This increases the odds that we'll get the privacy and liberation from unjust power over our computers which we need and deserve. > > But sometimes free software developers make choices that put prioritize power over other people. One example is Mozilla's recent announcement to discontinue using IRC (Internet Relay Chat). > > IRC is a decentralized real-time textual chatting protocol that has been around since 1988. I started using it in 1989 at the University, back when UIUC was the 2nd most IRCing place in the world (#1 place was the University of Oulu in Finland where IRC was written). IRC has no power to stop its users from writing text and being read: a user can say what they want and form ad-hoc groups of other users (called an "IRC channel"). If one IRC server doesn't let a user on, there are thousands of other IRC servers to pick from. There are free software IRC servers and clients and many IRC networks (servers that all share a common set of users; joining any server in an IRC network lets one chat with other users on the same network). > > Mozilla's Michael Hoye, the fellow who runs Mozilla's IRC server at irc.mozilla.org said that Mozilla wants something else: > > From Hoye's blog at http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2019/04/26/synchronous-text/ >> While we [Mozilla] still use it heavily, IRC is an ongoing source of >> abuse and harassment for many of our colleagues and getting connected to >> this now-obscure forum is an unnecessary technical barrier for anyone >> finding their way to Mozilla via the web. Available interfaces really >> haven’t kept up with modern expectations, spambots and harassment are >> endemic to the platform, and in light of that it’s no coincidence that >> people trying to get in touch with us from inside schools, colleges or corporate networks are finding that often as not IRC traffic isn’t allowed past institutional firewalls at all. >> All of that adds up to a set of real hazards and unnecessary barriers >> to participation in the Mozilla project; we definitely still need a globally-available, synchronous and text-first communication tool; our commitment to working in the open as an organization hasn’t changed. >> But we’re setting a higher bar for ourselves and our communities now and >> IRC can’t meet that bar. We’ve come to the conclusion that for all >> IRC’s utility, it’s irresponsible of us to ask our people – employees, volunteers, partners or anyone else – to work in an environment that we can’t make sure is healthy, safe and productive. > > IRC is less used than web forums but it's not clear why Hove calls IRC "obscure". There are no agreed-upon terms for such a label, so the assertion comes off as a feeble attempt to justify Mozilla's decision to discontinue their IRC server on the grounds of popularity. Mozilla could have chosen to defend continued use of a decentralized service that by its design encourages freedom of speech by prohibiting the controls that allow for censorship. But that would conflict with the control Mozilla wants to impose on its users. > > People have long preferred to set up centralized forums for discussion and debate. This usually takes the form of centralizing a service. When all requests of a service go through one point (such as an email server or a web server), that chokepoint is a convenient place to implement censorship. When Hoye claims "spambots and harassment are endemic to the platform" and that Mozilla seeks "an environment that we [can] make sure is healthy, safe, and productive" he's calling for Mozilla to more effectively censor users than what IRC allows. Elsewhere in the article he states that Mozilla's to-be-determined IRC replacement system "will require authentication, because The Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines will apply, and they’ll be enforced.". This could also include a policy that users provide some means of identifying who they are via a trusted identification scheme (such as information from a state-issued ID). > > These Community Participation Guidelines (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/) include controlling one's speech -- it is "not acceptable [to] deliberately [refer] to someone by a gender that they do not identify with", for example, and to obey arbitrary restrictions brought up by others: "This also includes repeated subtle and/or indirect discrimination; when asked to stop, stop the behavior in question.". > > Mozilla continues to develop and release free software that helps us all. The saving grace of Firefox is that it is free software; this makes Firefox recommendable even when I don't agree with some of their technical choices because I can either make the software do what I want, ask someone to make those edits on my behalf, or hire someone to edit the software for me. We're all free to do these things without obeying their Community Participation Guidelines that go well beyond what is constitutional. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sun Apr 28 16:35:18 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2019 11:35:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Time for Trump to Talk to Putin Message-ID: *- CounterPunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org -*Time for Trump to Talk to PutinPosted By Gary Leupp On April 26, 2019 @ 1:46 am In articles 2015 | Comments Disabled Recall the stunned faces of all the cable news anchors on the eve of the 2016 election. How could Trump have won, when all the polls placed him so far behind? Hillary Clinton quickly faulted James Comey, claiming his announcement about more of her missing emails a week before the vote cost her the race. And people suddenly discovered the “working class” (reviving a term long avoided due to its Marxist associations, and the propogation of the American myth of a vast middle class hovering over the “poor”)—specifically the white working class portrayed as angry about economic stagnation, immigration, and minority advances and receptive to Trump’s buffoonery. But as stories leaked about “Russian interference” and the lame-duck president commissioned a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from U.S. intelligence agencies to examine that phenomenon, this interference became the main explanation for Hillary’s loss. Not Comey. Not ideologically backwards white workers. Russia. Putin. Oligarchs.”Pro-Russian” Ukrainians. Just as the Birthers had sought to de-legitimize Barack Obama (as foreign born), many of Trump’s foes have sought to de-legitimize Trump (as a foreign agent or stooge). No amount of redacted or unredacted material will convince them that the president is innocent of collusion. They know he loves Russia. Why, for godssakes, does he never condemn Vladimir Putin like normal people are supposed to do? The NIE document, released January 6, 2017, was actually a shoddy piece of work, largely detailing the positive coverage of Trump in the Russian press, and pointing to “fake news” posted by Russians in U.S. social media. It was however seized upon as conclusive proof, supposedly presented by all the U.S. intelligence agencies, of Russian electoral interference. Thus Congress asked the Attorney General, Jeffrey Sessions, to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. But Sessions recused himself from oversight of the investigation due to his admitted (innocent) meetings with Russians during the campaign. Trump was of course outraged by this recusal, considering it a personal betrayal. But the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, a generally respected figure, as Special Counsel and he worked quietly for two years. Trump growling about the investigation itself seldom impugned Mueller’s integrity, and he was generally praised by the press as methodical, competent, apolitical. *The Mueller Report: the Russophobes’ Chagrin* During this period, a steady stream of indictments having little if any to do with election interference kept hope alive—hope that really damning facts would eventually come out! The cable anchors waited with bated breath for the release of the Mueller Report, although days in advance one heard warnings that it might be a “letdown.” And then high hopes were dashed as Attorney General William Barr published his four-page summary stating that there was no conclusive evidence about Russian collusion. Oh the dismay! The sorrow, sadness, regret, distress, chagrin! For Rachel Maddow, experiencing her abyssmal ratings drop: O! the humiliation! Up until this point the drive to remove Trump (probably by impeachment) has drawn upon and exploited primitive Cold War-type Russophobia. (How many times have we been told that Trump staffers succeeded in removing a reference in the Republican platform to U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and that this obviously shows slavish loyalty to Russia? This is a central talking-point used by those arguing for collusion. We are supposed to assume that giving lethal weapons to the neofascist-ridden Kiev government was the natural, proper course for Washington, but it was thwarted by Putin’s agents like Paul Manafort.) As it happens, Trump has since supported military aid to Ukraine, and he has taken many unfriendly actions towards Russia, producing the worst period in Russo-U.S. relations in many decades. Having once (rationally) questioned the continuing relevance of NATO, he has, as the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg notes, strengthened it and supported its expansion. Whether this is because he is mercurial and indecisive, or unusually susceptible to the blandishments of men in uniform, it doesn’t inspire trust in the world. Too often Trump tweets something almost immediately countered by the brass or the evil councilors Pompeo and Bolton. *Now Trump Can Talk with Russia* But now that Trump can claim the report has cleared him of Russian collusion, he may have the political capital and freedom to reach out to the other great nuclear power. He is capable of thinking outside of the box. He has in the past (June 2018) even entertained the possibility of recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. (I doubt he will do that, but I didn’t expect him to recognize the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in defiance of international law.) He could at least offer Putin a freeze on NATO expansion, which would be a very good thing for the world. But Stoltenberg recently (March 25) reiterated NATO’s intention, first announced in 2008 to include Georgia and Ukraine. 2008 was the year the U.S. recognized Kosovo—wrenched from Serbia 1999 and now hosting a huge NATO base—as an independent nation. This infuriated Russia, as Serbia’s traditional ally. In response, Russia recognized the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after a brief war on Georgia. (This followed the death of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia in a Georgian attack, and was presented by Moscow to the world as a case of self-defense.) Similarly Russia’s annexation of Crimea and assistance to separatists in Ukraine followed the U.S.-backed coup in February 2011. The addition of these countries to NATO would nearly complete the encirclement of European Russia. Russia’s actions were designed in part to discourage this. Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister and hawk who supported the U.S. war on Iraq, declared in Tblisi during joint Georgia-NATO drills that Georgia would eventually join NATO and “Russia can’t do anything about it.” He wants the world to believe it inevitable that the anti-Russian military alliance will border southern Russia as it already borders it to the north (in Estonia and Latvia). Just add Belarus and Ukraine and Russia will face a nearly united European continent military bloc. One seldom hears it explained why this would be helpful to anyone. Among the religiously held premises of virtually all TV anchors are that Russia is our adversary, challenging our interests around the world; NATO is a good thing, guaranteeing stability and peace; capitalism is good; and socialism is bad. And while once socialist Russia has thoroughly restored capitalism, and NATO is no longer driven by anticommunism but mere Russophobia, the lingering Cold War mentality is evident when, for example, commentators refer to contemporary Russians as “Soviets.” *Russophobia and the Attack on Socialism* Meanwhile MSNBC’s Willie Geist asks guests: “Do you agree that capitalism has been a progressive historical force?” and, “What is your view of your party’s drift towards socialism?” He wants to instill pro-capitalist orthodoxy, which means support for capitalist imperialism. (Notice how outraged the Morning Joe hosts were when Trump announced a withdrawal of troops from Syria, where they operate illegally, uninvited, on the grounds that this would mean “betraying our allies.” Or how they respond to Trump’s stated hope to withdraw from Afghanistan sooner rather than later. Russophobia is part of a continuum of delusions, including the notion that capitalism is the best of all possible systems, the idea that “regime change” wars produce democracies, that U.S. troops fight and die “for our freedoms,” and that the U.S. needs to station 200,000 troops in 150 countries to maintain world peace. It is a part of the virtual state religion. Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has provoked amazement and outrage for stating, ‘There’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians” in a CNN interview, “It depends on where it came from.” Giuliani is a reactionary swine, but he’s spot-on here. For too long the assumption has prevailed that contacts with Russians are more problematic than contacts with (say) Germans, Uruguayans, Omanis, Fijiians or Canadians, constituting threats that ought to automatically be reported to the FBI. If Giuliani is demystifying (and de-vilifying) Russophobia, in order to defend his client, well and good. Trump should be ousted, yes; but not in such a way as to strengthen the Russophobes’ position in this imperialist country. As Marx declared, the working people of the world have no country. We all live in countries governed by ruling classes that try to unite their peoples using patriotic nonsense, positing foreign threats to “us.” The idea that NATO protects the North Atlantic and beyond from (a supposedly expansive) Russia is one of those religious articles of faith that any CNN talking head will aver. It doesn’t really make any sense. A recent article by Ted Galen Carpenter in The National Interest (a journal of the “realist” school of foreign policy) notes, “NATO was an institution to deal with the Cold War; it is obsolete for the conditions of the twenty-first century, and it has become a dangerous albatross around the neck of the American republic.” Article V of the NATO charter requires all member states to come to the aid of any attacked. Suppose that Stoltenberg’s wish comes true and Georgia or Ukraine become NATO members, and as such attack Russian forces to regain control of South Ossetia or the Donbas region. Article V is invoked like the clauses in the secret treaties were invoked as Europe descended into the First World War. This would be the third such. *Russia in the World* Russia has sustained the secular regime of Syria, which is surely far preferable to Daesh or al-Qaeda which would be blowing up the churches of Damascus right now, and any Shiite mosques or synagogues, and crucifying children had those thugs and their “moderate” U.S.-back allies swept to power (as Hillary Clinton had hoped). It appears that many Syrians are grateful to Russia, a longtime ally, for preventing a Libya-type disaster, and that the Russians have shown a remarkable ability to coordinate with dissimilar forces such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hizbollah militiamen, Iraqi Shiite militias, Kurdish peshmergas, and even Turkey in insuring the survival of the modern Syrian state. The U.S. was meanwhile unable to recruit more than a handful of Syrian soldiers for its proxy war intended to effect regime change. Trump has on occasion indicated his preference that the Syrian matter be handled by Russia (and even Iran). For him, Syria is no doubt one of those “shithole countries” unworthy of much attention. (Good, may he leave it alone, or at least coordinate with Russia in mopping up the last Daesh militants.) Russia has established intelligence cooperation with Iraq and Iran, in connection with Syria. It was a partner with the U.S. in negotiating the Iran Deal (which Trump of course has shamefully abandoned). It has a constructive relationship with North Korea and could assist in a nuclear deal with the DPRK, were the U.S. serious. I dare say Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is more respected in the world than bible toting Mike Pompeo. *The Arrogance of Secondary Sanctions* The U.S. is about to arrogantly provoke great countries like China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey by commanding them to end all trade with Iran. Trump in his determination to fulfill a campaign promise has sabotaged the most well-negotiated and positive international agreement in many years, in essence demanding the Iranian mullahs capitulate to all U.S. demands as the price of selling petroleum. This is explained to the masses as the U.S.” lifting sanctions waivers” on countries hitherto enjoying such grace from the U.S. as to be allowed to buy oil from a country that all countries of the world (except for the U.S., Israel and UAE) want to treat normally, not destroy. Russia cannot presently and probably never would engage in such egregious, insulting intimidation. This is a feature of “American Exceptionalism” that the world increasingly mocks. The world is tired of it. When the Europeans actively strategize to evade U.S. secondary sanctions, and warn that they threaten the Atlantic Alliance, you know they (the Europeans) are getting serious about defying this boorish Trump figure. On its current course, Trump’s USA is headed towards more NATO expansion, deadlock with North Korea, showdown with Iran, further deployments (some secret) in Libya, Niger, Mali, Somalia, anywhere. It’s not much different from Obama’s USA. It’s headed towards trouble in its relations with Europe, in part because its imperialist wars are perceived as the main source of the immigrant problem and in part because its insistence on anti-Russian sanctions harm European business. In Latin America, despite recent neofascist advances, peoples are sick and tired of Yanqui interventions and will not tolerate one in Venezuela. Russia and China have both offered help to Nicholas Maduro in resisting U.S. designs. *Trump and Putin* Vladimir Putin is perhaps a cruel, corrupt, hypocritical, filthy-rich, former KGB colonel. It may be he has ordered the murder of journalists and critics. He is also very sharp, articulate, cautious, and diplomatic, reaching out to both Iran and Saudi Arabia (which the U.S. refuses to do). He may well develop a rapport with the new Ukrainian prime minister, Volodymir Zelensky, maybe arrange for real implementation of the Minsk Accords (brokered by Russia and the OSCE, no thanks to the U.S.). He probably has friendlier and more respectful relationships with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron than Trump does. He is not the obstacle to improved U.S.-western relations. Trump lacks Putin’s polish, trim figure, steely gaze, ability to speak addressing complex topics while thinking on his feet. Pine though he might for a Nobel Prize, he doesn’t cut the figure for it. He is a pathetic buffoon, rather comparable to Boris Yeltsin (just without the alcohol), the Russian leader loved by the U.S. in the 1990s as he presided over the establishment of the oligarchic capitalist system that now prevails, whom as you know was aided by U.S. interference in the 1996 Russian election. But the Mueller Report establishes that Trump is not a Russian agent, and “the Russians” did not determine the outcome of the U.S. election. The accusations themselves fuel irrational international animosities in the context of ongoing plans for NATO expansion, which are hardly subject to debate in this fine free country. If the Democrats, demanding strenuous investigations following up on the Mueller Report—and his implied invitation to Congress to determine whether Trump is guilty of “obstruction” of his investigation (which, again, found no evidence for the main charge of collusion) may continue to hammer away at Russia, and Trump’s alleged ties with Russia—they may simply become the New Cold War Party, versus the party of potential rapprochement. It would be tragic if this rare era—in which we’ve actually started to see some debate about capitalism and socialism in the mainstream media, fueled by the victories of “Democratic Socialists”—produces a party that while advocating free college education, debt relief and universal health care, and even perhaps loath to engage in more imperialist wars, views the world through simplistic Russophobic lenses. Even now a single incident on the Estonian border could lead to World War III as NATO members fulfill their Charter obligations to collectively combat Russia. “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians,” says Giuliani. Well, there’s nothing wrong with talking with them either. Top topic on the agenda should be dissolving NATO. Thirty-eight years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, it’s high time. Article printed from CounterPunch.org: *https://www.counterpunch.org * URL to article: *https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/time-for-trump-to-talk-to-putin/ * Click here to print. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Sun Apr 28 18:12:57 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2019 18:12:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Time for Trump to Talk to Putin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9ED3B546-D32A-4F35-9E5F-ECCA488DA633@illinois.edu> ’Tis better to listen to, or read, Stephen Cohen on Russia, Putin, and Trump, especialy in view of the continuing demeaning of Putin, (using the word “perhaps”) in this article. On Apr 28, 2019, at 11:35 AM, David Green via Peace-discuss > wrote: - CounterPunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org - Time for Trump to Talk to Putin Posted By Gary Leupp On April 26, 2019 @ 1:46 am In articles 2015 | Comments Disabled Recall the stunned faces of all the cable news anchors on the eve of the 2016 election. How could Trump have won, when all the polls placed him so far behind? Hillary Clinton quickly faulted James Comey, claiming his announcement about more of her missing emails a week before the vote cost her the race. And people suddenly discovered the “working class” (reviving a term long avoided due to its Marxist associations, and the propogation of the American myth of a vast middle class hovering over the “poor”)—specifically the white working class portrayed as angry about economic stagnation, immigration, and minority advances and receptive to Trump’s buffoonery. But as stories leaked about “Russian interference” and the lame-duck president commissioned a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from U.S. intelligence agencies to examine that phenomenon, this interference became the main explanation for Hillary’s loss. Not Comey. Not ideologically backwards white workers. Russia. Putin. Oligarchs.”Pro-Russian” Ukrainians. Just as the Birthers had sought to de-legitimize Barack Obama (as foreign born), many of Trump’s foes have sought to de-legitimize Trump (as a foreign agent or stooge). No amount of redacted or unredacted material will convince them that the president is innocent of collusion. They know he loves Russia. Why, for godssakes, does he never condemn Vladimir Putin like normal people are supposed to do? The NIE document, released January 6, 2017, was actually a shoddy piece of work, largely detailing the positive coverage of Trump in the Russian press, and pointing to “fake news” posted by Russians in U.S. social media. It was however seized upon as conclusive proof, supposedly presented by all the U.S. intelligence agencies, of Russian electoral interference. Thus Congress asked the Attorney General, Jeffrey Sessions, to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. But Sessions recused himself from oversight of the investigation due to his admitted (innocent) meetings with Russians during the campaign. Trump was of course outraged by this recusal, considering it a personal betrayal. But the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, a generally respected figure, as Special Counsel and he worked quietly for two years. Trump growling about the investigation itself seldom impugned Mueller’s integrity, and he was generally praised by the press as methodical, competent, apolitical. The Mueller Report: the Russophobes’ Chagrin During this period, a steady stream of indictments having little if any to do with election interference kept hope alive—hope that really damning facts would eventually come out! The cable anchors waited with bated breath for the release of the Mueller Report, although days in advance one heard warnings that it might be a “letdown.” And then high hopes were dashed as Attorney General William Barr published his four-page summary stating that there was no conclusive evidence about Russian collusion. Oh the dismay! The sorrow, sadness, regret, distress, chagrin! For Rachel Maddow, experiencing her abyssmal ratings drop: O! the humiliation! Up until this point the drive to remove Trump (probably by impeachment) has drawn upon and exploited primitive Cold War-type Russophobia. (How many times have we been told that Trump staffers succeeded in removing a reference in the Republican platform to U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and that this obviously shows slavish loyalty to Russia? This is a central talking-point used by those arguing for collusion. We are supposed to assume that giving lethal weapons to the neofascist-ridden Kiev government was the natural, proper course for Washington, but it was thwarted by Putin’s agents like Paul Manafort.) As it happens, Trump has since supported military aid to Ukraine, and he has taken many unfriendly actions towards Russia, producing the worst period in Russo-U.S. relations in many decades. Having once (rationally) questioned the continuing relevance of NATO, he has, as the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg notes, strengthened it and supported its expansion. Whether this is because he is mercurial and indecisive, or unusually susceptible to the blandishments of men in uniform, it doesn’t inspire trust in the world. Too often Trump tweets something almost immediately countered by the brass or the evil councilors Pompeo and Bolton. Now Trump Can Talk with Russia But now that Trump can claim the report has cleared him of Russian collusion, he may have the political capital and freedom to reach out to the other great nuclear power. He is capable of thinking outside of the box. He has in the past (June 2018) even entertained the possibility of recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. (I doubt he will do that, but I didn’t expect him to recognize the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in defiance of international law.) He could at least offer Putin a freeze on NATO expansion, which would be a very good thing for the world. But Stoltenberg recently (March 25) reiterated NATO’s intention, first announced in 2008 to include Georgia and Ukraine. 2008 was the year the U.S. recognized Kosovo—wrenched from Serbia 1999 and now hosting a huge NATO base—as an independent nation. This infuriated Russia, as Serbia’s traditional ally. In response, Russia recognized the breakaway Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after a brief war on Georgia. (This followed the death of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia in a Georgian attack, and was presented by Moscow to the world as a case of self-defense.) Similarly Russia’s annexation of Crimea and assistance to separatists in Ukraine followed the U.S.-backed coup in February 2011. The addition of these countries to NATO would nearly complete the encirclement of European Russia. Russia’s actions were designed in part to discourage this. Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister and hawk who supported the U.S. war on Iraq, declared in Tblisi during joint Georgia-NATO drills that Georgia would eventually join NATO and “Russia can’t do anything about it.” He wants the world to believe it inevitable that the anti-Russian military alliance will border southern Russia as it already borders it to the north (in Estonia and Latvia). Just add Belarus and Ukraine and Russia will face a nearly united European continent military bloc. One seldom hears it explained why this would be helpful to anyone. Among the religiously held premises of virtually all TV anchors are that Russia is our adversary, challenging our interests around the world; NATO is a good thing, guaranteeing stability and peace; capitalism is good; and socialism is bad. And while once socialist Russia has thoroughly restored capitalism, and NATO is no longer driven by anticommunism but mere Russophobia, the lingering Cold War mentality is evident when, for example, commentators refer to contemporary Russians as “Soviets.” Russophobia and the Attack on Socialism Meanwhile MSNBC’s Willie Geist asks guests: “Do you agree that capitalism has been a progressive historical force?” and, “What is your view of your party’s drift towards socialism?” He wants to instill pro-capitalist orthodoxy, which means support for capitalist imperialism. (Notice how outraged the Morning Joe hosts were when Trump announced a withdrawal of troops from Syria, where they operate illegally, uninvited, on the grounds that this would mean “betraying our allies.” Or how they respond to Trump’s stated hope to withdraw from Afghanistan sooner rather than later. Russophobia is part of a continuum of delusions, including the notion that capitalism is the best of all possible systems, the idea that “regime change” wars produce democracies, that U.S. troops fight and die “for our freedoms,” and that the U.S. needs to station 200,000 troops in 150 countries to maintain world peace. It is a part of the virtual state religion. Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has provoked amazement and outrage for stating, ‘There’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians” in a CNN interview, “It depends on where it came from.” Giuliani is a reactionary swine, but he’s spot-on here. For too long the assumption has prevailed that contacts with Russians are more problematic than contacts with (say) Germans, Uruguayans, Omanis, Fijiians or Canadians, constituting threats that ought to automatically be reported to the FBI. If Giuliani is demystifying (and de-vilifying) Russophobia, in order to defend his client, well and good. Trump should be ousted, yes; but not in such a way as to strengthen the Russophobes’ position in this imperialist country. As Marx declared, the working people of the world have no country. We all live in countries governed by ruling classes that try to unite their peoples using patriotic nonsense, positing foreign threats to “us.” The idea that NATO protects the North Atlantic and beyond from (a supposedly expansive) Russia is one of those religious articles of faith that any CNN talking head will aver. It doesn’t really make any sense. A recent article by Ted Galen Carpenter in The National Interest (a journal of the “realist” school of foreign policy) notes, “NATO was an institution to deal with the Cold War; it is obsolete for the conditions of the twenty-first century, and it has become a dangerous albatross around the neck of the American republic.” Article V of the NATO charter requires all member states to come to the aid of any attacked. Suppose that Stoltenberg’s wish comes true and Georgia or Ukraine become NATO members, and as such attack Russian forces to regain control of South Ossetia or the Donbas region. Article V is invoked like the clauses in the secret treaties were invoked as Europe descended into the First World War. This would be the third such. Russia in the World Russia has sustained the secular regime of Syria, which is surely far preferable to Daesh or al-Qaeda which would be blowing up the churches of Damascus right now, and any Shiite mosques or synagogues, and crucifying children had those thugs and their “moderate” U.S.-back allies swept to power (as Hillary Clinton had hoped). It appears that many Syrians are grateful to Russia, a longtime ally, for preventing a Libya-type disaster, and that the Russians have shown a remarkable ability to coordinate with dissimilar forces such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hizbollah militiamen, Iraqi Shiite militias, Kurdish peshmergas, and even Turkey in insuring the survival of the modern Syrian state. The U.S. was meanwhile unable to recruit more than a handful of Syrian soldiers for its proxy war intended to effect regime change. Trump has on occasion indicated his preference that the Syrian matter be handled by Russia (and even Iran). For him, Syria is no doubt one of those “shithole countries” unworthy of much attention. (Good, may he leave it alone, or at least coordinate with Russia in mopping up the last Daesh militants.) Russia has established intelligence cooperation with Iraq and Iran, in connection with Syria. It was a partner with the U.S. in negotiating the Iran Deal (which Trump of course has shamefully abandoned). It has a constructive relationship with North Korea and could assist in a nuclear deal with the DPRK, were the U.S. serious. I dare say Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is more respected in the world than bible toting Mike Pompeo. The Arrogance of Secondary Sanctions The U.S. is about to arrogantly provoke great countries like China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey by commanding them to end all trade with Iran. Trump in his determination to fulfill a campaign promise has sabotaged the most well-negotiated and positive international agreement in many years, in essence demanding the Iranian mullahs capitulate to all U.S. demands as the price of selling petroleum. This is explained to the masses as the U.S.” lifting sanctions waivers” on countries hitherto enjoying such grace from the U.S. as to be allowed to buy oil from a country that all countries of the world (except for the U.S., Israel and UAE) want to treat normally, not destroy. Russia cannot presently and probably never would engage in such egregious, insulting intimidation. This is a feature of “American Exceptionalism” that the world increasingly mocks. The world is tired of it. When the Europeans actively strategize to evade U.S. secondary sanctions, and warn that they threaten the Atlantic Alliance, you know they (the Europeans) are getting serious about defying this boorish Trump figure. On its current course, Trump’s USA is headed towards more NATO expansion, deadlock with North Korea, showdown with Iran, further deployments (some secret) in Libya, Niger, Mali, Somalia, anywhere. It’s not much different from Obama’s USA. It’s headed towards trouble in its relations with Europe, in part because its imperialist wars are perceived as the main source of the immigrant problem and in part because its insistence on anti-Russian sanctions harm European business. In Latin America, despite recent neofascist advances, peoples are sick and tired of Yanqui interventions and will not tolerate one in Venezuela. Russia and China have both offered help to Nicholas Maduro in resisting U.S. designs. Trump and Putin Vladimir Putin is perhaps a cruel, corrupt, hypocritical, filthy-rich, former KGB colonel. It may be he has ordered the murder of journalists and critics. He is also very sharp, articulate, cautious, and diplomatic, reaching out to both Iran and Saudi Arabia (which the U.S. refuses to do). He may well develop a rapport with the new Ukrainian prime minister, Volodymir Zelensky, maybe arrange for real implementation of the Minsk Accords (brokered by Russia and the OSCE, no thanks to the U.S.). He probably has friendlier and more respectful relationships with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron than Trump does. He is not the obstacle to improved U.S.-western relations. Trump lacks Putin’s polish, trim figure, steely gaze, ability to speak addressing complex topics while thinking on his feet. Pine though he might for a Nobel Prize, he doesn’t cut the figure for it. He is a pathetic buffoon, rather comparable to Boris Yeltsin (just without the alcohol), the Russian leader loved by the U.S. in the 1990s as he presided over the establishment of the oligarchic capitalist system that now prevails, whom as you know was aided by U.S. interference in the 1996 Russian election. But the Mueller Report establishes that Trump is not a Russian agent, and “the Russians” did not determine the outcome of the U.S. election. The accusations themselves fuel irrational international animosities in the context of ongoing plans for NATO expansion, which are hardly subject to debate in this fine free country. If the Democrats, demanding strenuous investigations following up on the Mueller Report—and his implied invitation to Congress to determine whether Trump is guilty of “obstruction” of his investigation (which, again, found no evidence for the main charge of collusion) may continue to hammer away at Russia, and Trump’s alleged ties with Russia—they may simply become the New Cold War Party, versus the party of potential rapprochement. It would be tragic if this rare era—in which we’ve actually started to see some debate about capitalism and socialism in the mainstream media, fueled by the victories of “Democratic Socialists”—produces a party that while advocating free college education, debt relief and universal health care, and even perhaps loath to engage in more imperialist wars, views the world through simplistic Russophobic lenses. Even now a single incident on the Estonian border could lead to World War III as NATO members fulfill their Charter obligations to collectively combat Russia. “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from the Russians,” says Giuliani. Well, there’s nothing wrong with talking with them either. Top topic on the agenda should be dissolving NATO. Thirty-eight years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, it’s high time. Article printed from CounterPunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/time-for-trump-to-talk-to-putin/ 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 Sun Apr 28 20:21:28 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2019 20:21:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: "The fall of the US empire and its consequences, " by Dr. Johan Galling References: Message-ID: Transcript of an interesting podcast, in 2017: We are speaking with the renowned founder of Peace and Conflict Studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, author of countless publications, conflict mediator, founder of Transcend International, and the Galtung Institute, consultant to governments, the UN, and so much more. I’d like to cover two central themes today. First, the fall of the US empire and its consequences, either a blossoming republic or a catastrophe as you say, and second, what global issues you consider the most pressing today and what suggestions you have to resolve these conflicts. In 1980, you successfully predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, which you said would happen in 1990. You used six indicators to do this, and then in recent years, you doubled those indicators to twelve and applied them in analyzing the fall of the other superpower, the USA. You brought up the subject in an article recently on Transcend Media, citing an essay by Nafeez Ahmed and a new Pentagon study which seemed to further confirm your findings that Empire America is approaching its final death throes. Even renowned researcher Alfred McCoy has published a book that will be out soon on the same theme. He has set 2030 as the Empire’s time marker for passing. You recently revised your prediction for the collapse, from 2025 to 2020. Is this the most important event of our time, and can you unpack the key points and implications of the empires and for us and help us understand what is about to happen? hide Johan Galtung: Well, let us first be very clear about the terms here. You see, the other person you quoted, I think he gets it wrong. An “empire” means that you have a client state that does the job for you, and when I predicted the decline and fall of the US empire, I did not predict the decline and fall of US violence. I did not predict the decline and fall of the United States of America. I predicted that we would do the killing for the United States, because the empire would collapse. Now, the situation is the following. You may have noticed that in Bratislava, November 6th last year, they had a big discussion about this in the European Union countries. What they said, again and again and again, was, “We are no longer going to fight the wars of the United States.” That was a very clear statement, and that is the kind of thing I’m looking for. However, there are some countries that are still, and still have been fighting wars of the United States, more particularly three countries. United Kingdom, Denmark, and Norway. Denmark and Norway were rewarded by the United States for fighting in Libya by being appointed Secretary General of NATO one after the other. The present one is a former Norwegian Prime Minister. Why United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway? Well you see here you have to look into history. I could say immediately, because they’re Evangelical Protestant countries like the United States, but I’m not saying that these are religious wars. I’m just saying that being Evangelical Protestants, the United States, England, with the famous Anglican Church from which very many people came to United States, Norway and Denmark, being that they have something in common, some kind of loyalty, solidarity, and the countries that refuse to fight US wars, the Catholic countries, and Orthodox countries. You see, we are not saying that this is religious. I’m only saying that old ties of solidarity play an enormous role. If I then predicted a decline and fall of the United States Empire by 2020, one might say, “We are today 2017 and we are into the month of September, so Johan Galtung, about your prediction. You said before 2020.” Yes, I stand by that one, but I think the three countries I mentioned, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Norway, will distance themselves from United States killing, and that it’s already happening, and of course it’s particularly easy to distance oneself when the president of the United States is a clinically insane person, Donald Trump. Clinically insane, suffering from throughout his autism, living in his own little bubble and deriding this so-called foreign policy from his bubble. In other words, I stand by my prediction, but it’s a little bit more complicated than the person you quoted. I think he got almost everything wrong, and I prefer to forget about it. Interviewer: In your research, you say you were inspired by analyzing the fall of the Roman Empire. Could we say that Trump is not a cause, but a symptom of the end, a degenerating face of the empirical cycle? Johan Galtung: He’s a part of it. He’s a part of it, but what is collapsing now is more than the United States empire. What is collapsing right now is the United States of America itself. But that was not my prediction. I did not predict that they would elect a clinically unsane person as president. There’s an American term for it. They call it “unleveled,” one whose mind is unleveled. Well, it’s a very polite term for it. I say “clinically insane,” autism, suffering from advanced autism, that means lack of reciprocity. Living in your own bubble and not being sensitive to what happens around you. Of course he is sensitive. He is paranoid, so he is sensitive to negative noises, and he lashes out against them. At the same time, he is very clearly narcissistic, with much too high thoughts about himself. Narcissism plus paranoia is the precise nature of the psychosis, but he’s a part of the package, and as you very well put it, he’s not a cause. He’s a symptom. Interviewer: Where do you see the US going in the next few years? Could you give us some indicators of how things might unfold or what might occur with the economy or the society? Johan Galtung: Well you see, history is a good guide. In 1898, the Spanish Empire collapsed, and the United States moved into the gaps left by the Spanish Empires. Now the US empire is collapsing and moving into the gaps left by the United States influence, particularly China, India, economically speaking. Chindia, they are often called, and there are other countries too. Islamic countries play an increasing role in very many regards. But, you can then ask the question, “What happened to Spain?” Well Spain became fascist. The fall was in 1898, [inaudible] immediately, as a dictatorship, and it lasted 70 years. Franco was the last one. He died in November ’75, and there was a short interlude of so-called Second Republic, which [inaudible] in Spanish history, so if I now should say, “Maybe this is going to happen to United States too,” in other words, we will get a dictatorship, to establish “law and order” as dictators always say, and many will argue it is already there. But it is not [inaudible] course. It is the dictator. It is more run by a combination of Pentagon and Wall Street. In other words, by top generals and top billionaires. Top actors in the Wall Street conglomerate, and how they are organized among themselves, I think would be interesting to know. I don’t know. I think very few people know it, [inaudible]. Interviewer: Looking at say Afghanistan, you said earlier that the US obviously should and perhaps would withdraw from Afghanistan. It seems they are reinforcing their commitment to stay, and attempting a classical imperial military overstretch. What can you say of the recent Afghan policy statements? Johan Galtung: Overstretch. That’s not a good analysis. How about simply understanding what Afghanistan is about? You see, in my profession as a mediator, I take direct contact with the parties concerned. I sit with generals, two-star generals from Pentagon. I sit with people high up in State Department. I sit with people in a place in Afghanistan, and in front of me are three leading Taliban. What does a mediator say? What is my question? I have a very simple question. It’s the same question all the time. What does the Afghanistan look like that you would like to live in? What does the Middle East look like? What does a marriage look like that you would like to be a party to? And so on. In other words, I just ask them to spell out their wishes, their goals, their possible future. Now it would be interesting, if anybody is listening to this in Washington are able to guess what the Taliban said. The Taliban said the following. “Eliminate the Durand Line.” Durand, D-U-R-A-N-D. “Why?” “Eliminate it immediately.” Now since I’m into history, and since this is my profession, I of course knew what that was. It was the line drawn by a British imperialist in 1893 to make a border between what was then the British Empire, today it’s called Pakistan, but part of it, and Afghanistan. That guy decided to draw a line 4,000 kilometers, 2,500 miles long, and he drew it according to some principle he was very proud of. The line cut the biggest nation in the world without a state, the Pashtun, in two parts. Now today there are 50 million, and they live, many of them I Afghanistan, many of them in Pakistan, and to them Pakistan, and to them that line is a complete crime. It cuts them in two. That line was drawn in 1893, and it is quite obvious that when I asked them “What does the Afghanistan look like that you would like to live in,” they said immediately, “Eliminate the Durand Line. Open border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Let us move back and forth in what was our old “stan” or old where we used to live. It’s not a question for also seeking refuge in Pakistan. Pakistan, we live partly there, we live partly in Afghanistan. Let us continue with that.” And out of today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan, you might make some kind of, shall we say communicate, and if I should spin more on that, I would say “Yes. A Central Asian community, and maybe not only Pakistan and Afghanistan, maybe you would like to add Iran too, and maybe you would like to add the five other stans, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and so on. Maybe you would like to add all of that. Suddenly you have a Central Asian community of about 12 million … Excuse me. Let me be careful. 12 million people and enormous area. Excuse me, 12,000 square kilometers and I think 20 million people. Now, this is a big one, and interesting. I’m not quite sure that India or China that are neighbors would be very happy about it, but that’s their right to establish a community and to do away with the borders that were drawn by others. Many of these borders, [inaudible], are drawn by the former Soviet Union. The 1893 Durand one is what we have to eliminate. Instead of that, the United States is now building palisades high, high up in the sky and deep, deep down to prevent tunnels from being digged, and will make the situation even worse. Interviewer: Another term perhaps for what you just described could be the new Silk Road, and on the news we keep hearing about this new Cold War with the US targeting Russia and China, do you think there’s a chance for real escalation towards thermonuclear war? Is the Pentagon preparing a genuine offensive on the Eurasian heartland and the maritime rimlands of China? Do you see this escalating? Johan Galtung: Personally, I don’t think we will get that far. I don’t think it … It’s too risky for all the parties. They are in a certain sense deterring each other. The North Korean has, it seems, been able to dig 19,000 caves insides their mountains. That’s where they are hiding all their weaponry. Very many of these caves and also others, although not necessarily in the mountains, will serve as a refuge for the people. It’s not that they are not aware that they are in a dangerous position, mind you, when other states have been bombing Pyongyang to pieces before. They did that and they could do it again. It’s only that this time, North Korea is much, much better prepared. With all this highly credible, it so-calls the artillery aimed at Seoul. That artillery is also inside the mountains, and it seems that it can, if really launched, kill eight million people very quickly. Seoul knows that this is not going to happen. But Seoul is also at the same time, South Korea, really worried about United States provocations, and those provocations are partly the weapons shield that they are building to catch possible Chinese missiles, and partly the so-called Twin Spirit exercises, right off North Korea’s coast, practicing invasion of North Korea. Just right outside. That has been going on every year. It’s going on right now. And it’s an enormous provocation to North Korea. Russia and China have asked them to dampen it, to abolish it, to postpone it. But US doesn’t listen to anything. US is a unilateralist country, and the horrible thing about it is that they don’t want negotiation, because negotiation has something to do with equals, and it indicates that you respect the other or third party, so they’re taken seriously. United States is unilateralist. Exception. United States tells others what to do, and if you don’t do it you will suffer the consequences. And now they’re up against China doesn’t obey that. Russia doesn’t do it. And what must be even more vexing for them, a small country called North Korea doesn’t do it. We’re dealing with you could say 19 million inhabitants with a small country, and that country is now at the level of United States when it comes to the verbal escalation and de facto escalation, with different types of weaponry and so on. All that story we know, it’s out in the open. But I don’t think we will get a war. Sooner or later, one of them has to make some kind of move, and I don’t think it will be United States. If you want my prediction, it will be South Korea. It may also be South Korea and Japan. It may be Japan’s prime minister is ambivalent about it. On the other hand there is an alliance shoulder to shoulder as I call it with the United States of America fighting. On the other hand we know it perfectly well, where in the world Japan is located? It’s in East Asia. It is not off California. Interviewer: Ultimately, after all is said and done, would you say the way things will go is that these new Silk Road countries that you mentioned, that in a few decades that will be the center of global economy and culture and politics which may include South Korea and Japan? Johan Galtung: China will be important, but also be aware of China’s weaknesses. It’s an aging population. That’s one problem they have. Another problem is that they have a very complicated way of doing those things. I call it the both-and approach. You know, they do so many both-ands. They are both doing growth and distribution, where you will see that the West is trying to focus on both, which now it does badly, and very bad at distribution, with rising inequality. We have rising inequality in China, but you also have lifting the bottom up. Both inequality and lifting the bottom up. Now I have a long list of these both-ands for China, and may be too complicated even for the Chinese. It may also be that they’re incurring debt, because they’re focusing less on export problems and more on internal changes, very much on lifting lagging villages up. The president, Xi Jinping is very much insisting on that, and at the same time turning into a Buddhist religious position. It has escaped the rest to a large extent, but Xi is a very believing Buddhist, and that’s also escaped Western attention, by putting, however much they see him as a politician they don’t approach, is at the same time are deeply believers in Orthodox Christianity. So we have this interesting thing. Or a kind of secular pagan leadership, very much by money and by arms in Washington, where you sense nothing religious, no kind of Christian “Love your neighbor alike yourself,” and things of that kind. Nothing of that. You have nothing to waste. That works as it’s own failure often as spiritual and Christian, and at the same time you have two deeply religious leaders in the most competitive countries, China and Russia. It’s a new world, [inaudible]. A very different one. You see, when I say the US empire is going down, I have emphasized, I’m not saying that they’re stopping killing, but they have to do the killing themselves. The first who started doing that, who understood that “I had to do the killing myself,” was Obama. But Obama didn’t talk about it. He killed, and the way he killed was little bit by drones, and the Western media focused on that. Much more important was snipers. Sending shooters who could kill a person at a range of one kilometer, wearing long, long rifles, and they travel by ordinary airplanes, and the rifles are of course called “for hunting.” Well, they were hunting people that the local CIA had designated as anti-American. And they killed a lot, a lot, a lot. “We travel a lot these days,” the lieutenant general in charge of it said in a famous interview. Obama did all of that, but he didn’t talk much about it. If I then should say about Trump, he talks an enormous amount, but he hasn’t done much killing. He has done some, and we sense it in Yemen and Somalia. In the Sudan, we sense it. And there could be more, but not so much as Iran. Obama is reputed to have done the type of killing that I mentioned in 134 countries without asking any permission from the governments concerned, just sending the snipers who had long “hunting” rifles. Interviewer: We just have a minute or two left, and can you leave us with any final thoughts or any other prognostication or prediction you might have for the future world order, and any other final thought? Johan Galtung: You see, out of all of this, and you may be surprised to hear me say it, I think the world as a whole is actually moving in a quite good direction. We have, practically speaking, no wars between states. That’s already something. Wars between states were outlawed in 1928. They came up with their own treaty, but that is not maybe the major reason. I think the major reason that the states are afraid of each other, and the military don’t like to fight in other states when they can do something else. They can kill civilians. They can sit up in a plane at 14,000 feet, or as they say 4,000 meters, and they can just push a button. And they can send a rain of bombs on innocent civilians where there may be a couple of militias among them. They can do what we read about all the time, killing wedding parties. You know in the old days, if you go back in history, the condition for taking somebody’s life in a war was that you put yourself at risk. You put your own life at risk. In other words, you risk. You had courage. You entered warfare with courage, putting your own life at risk. These people sitting up at 14,000 feet are cowards. Just simply cowards. They’re killing people without the slightest chance of retaliating. They don’t have anti-aircraft missiles. They don’t have anything of that, and they’re just killing killing killing, these cowards. And they should be known as such. They shouldn’t be called even military, they should just be called cowards. Should be the technical term for it. I have contempt, disgust, for these people. How can I then nevertheless say that things are moving where it’s one country, the United States of America, and I think it’s coming to an end? I think Trump is making a caricature of the United States of America that the US itself will reject, but I don’t think the future inside the US is good. I predict a fascist dictatorship, but I don’t think we will be killing. Like the fascist dictatorship that came out of the Spanish fallen empire, we can kill anybody that we want. We can just, well, we can say there was the element of Guernica, but that was [inaudible] Spain, but by and large it was a civil war that took place by its civilians, which is a staunch oppression, and internal war. So it’s that kind of future I see for the US, and I see gradually, slowly, US democratizing again. Coming back to democracy and coming back to finding a reasonable place in the world as a part of Anglo-America in the northern part of the Americas, in dialogue with Latin America. Anglo-America versus Latin America, and Latin America reasonably united. First of all rejecting US imperialism was done by Fidel Castro when he started [inaudible]. Secondly, coming together. And that was done by Hugo Chavez, also when they started [inaudible]. US has done their very best, or worst, to try to negate what Castro and Chavez were doing. They won’t succeed, and it will be in Anglo-America’s interest simply to sit down somewhere and have a balanced, nice dialogue about the best relations between Anglo-America and Latin America. Latin America will cross into the Caribbean, which is a very complex part of the world, but it is possible, and I think one should remember that Latin America/Caribbean has 35 countries all together, 35 states. There is only one of them that can be said to be very much tied to Anglo-America, and not to US but to Canada, and that is Trinidad, Tobago. Between Trinidad and Canada there is a very close relationship. But otherwise, the relationship could be improved, and it would improve greatly if Anglo-America is willing to face Latin America together. ELAC as they call it, Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribe. Well, we are not yet quite there, but that is an optimistic vision of the future, and the United States finds its place as one state among others, a big one, an important one, a fantastically innovative one, and it plays one of its best cards, and the best card from the United States is not military, not economic, not political. It’s cultural. The United States is THE cultural power shaping the world more than any other culture. Not even the British Council has been able to spread English with an English accent. United States America does that by its pop culture, its popular culture, it’s basic English, the English of a 10 to 12 years old, according to the British English, but it has become the world dominant culture. The world dominant culture is US. And US has reason to be proud of it and say, “If you are dominating the world culture, isn’t that already quite a lot? And it might be that you yourself would benefit from trying to understand the Hindu message, the Buddhist message, the Japanese message, the Chinese messages,” and so on and so forth. Well, I think we are heading for the multipolar world, and I think we are doing it to a large extent, but United States has to be tamed or tame itself. And Israel has to be tamed or tame itself, and it looks like that is what’s happening right now, to be [inaudible]. Interviewer: Dr. Galtung, we thank you so much for your time, and we wish you the best in your continued work and your efforts at Transcend Media and at your Galtung Institute. Johan Galtung: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sun Apr 28 23:45:46 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2019 18:45:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] JFP alert: SenateGOP: Override "Veto" of "JASTA for Children of Yemen" In-Reply-To: References: <4373479976.-1660401938@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> Message-ID: Swing for the Fence. --------- Forwarded message --------- From: Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy Date: Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 4:40 PM Subject: SenateGOP: Override "Veto" of "JASTA for Children of Yemen" To: [image: Just Foreign Policy] *Tell Senate Republicans to "override" the "veto."* * Sign the petition * Dear Robert, In mid-April, President Trump “vetoed” [*sic*] the bipartisan *Mike Lee - Bernie Sanders - Chris Murphy* Yemen War Powers Act Congress passed to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the despotic Saudi regime’s war and blockade on children in Yemen. The Saudi regime’s war on Yemeni children, which began in March 2015 under the *Obama-Biden* Administration, has *strengthened the most dangerous branch of the Al Qaeda terrorists* who attacked our homeland on 9/11/2001, *killing three thousand innocent American civilians* - the Yemeni branch, *which the Saudi regime has actively supported*. The Saudi regime’s war in Yemen has also *deliberately created* the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. A recent UN report says the death toll from the Saudi regime’s war will pass 230,000 by end of this year. *Aid groups say 85,000 children have been starved to death* so far by the Saudi regime’s war and blockade. As *Iraq war veteran* and senior writer *David French* pointed out at the William F. Buckley-founded *National Review*, not only is U.S. participation in the Saudi regime’s war in Yemen unconstitutional, but *Trump’s so-called “veto” is also unconstitutional*. Under the War Powers Clause of Article I of the Constitution, re-affirmed by Section 2c of the War Powers Resolution in 1973, *the Congress of the United States* - not this President, nor the last one, nor the next one - *decides when the U.S. uses military force*. As David French correctly noted [my bold, his italics]: “Moreover, *even Trump’s veto is an unconstitutional act*. A declaration of war requires an *affirmative* act of Congress. A bipartisan majority’s rejection of American participation in the Yemeni conflict is anything but an affirmation. And when the Constitution requires congressional affirmation, then congressional *rejection* can’t be vetoed by the president.” This week, the Senate is expected to vote on “overriding” Trump’s so-called “veto” of the *Mike Lee – Bernie Sanders – Chris Murphy* Yemen War Powers Act. A two-thirds vote is needed to “override.” *That means it’s all up to Senate Republicans now.* There is a key historical precedent for what Senate Republicans are now being asked to do: when the Senate overrode President Obama’s veto of the *Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act [JASTA]*, the law which enabled family members of victims of the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on our homeland on 9/11/2001 to *sue the despotic Saudi regime in U.S. courts for the Saudi regime’s complicity in the 9/11 attacks*. The Senate vote on the override of the *Obama-Biden* attempt to *prevent the 9/11 families from getting their day in court against the Saudi regime* was *97-1*. Only Democrat Harry Reid voted no. *Every Senate Republican voted to override the Obama-Biden attempt to protect the despotic Saudi regime from U.S. justice.* *Urge Senate Republicans to do the right thing now by signing our petition. Remember 9/11. Bring the Saudi regime to justice. Override the “veto” of "JASTA for the children of Yemen." * Thanks for all you do to help U.S. foreign policy become more just, Robert Reuel Naiman Just Foreign Policy *If you think our work is important, please make a donation to support it. *I've been told that $18 is lucky. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate [image: Please support our work. Donate for a Just Foreign Policy] © 2019 Just Foreign Policy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Mon Apr 29 17:22:54 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 12:22:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] JFP alert: ProPublica: USG knew Saudi regime helped criminal suspects flee US, did nothing In-Reply-To: References: <4373780901.-113442407@org.orgDB.reply.salsalabs.com> Message-ID: *Que se vayan todos.* ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy Date: Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 11:57 AM Subject: ProPublica: USG knew Saudi regime helped criminal suspects flee US, did nothing To: [image: Just Foreign Policy] *Read/share ProPublica article : Saudi regime helped criminal suspects flee the U.S., while USG did nothing.* * Sign the petition for the "veto" override , so children in Yemen may live. * Dear Robert, >From 1945 until this week, every U.S. presidential Administration, whether “Democratic” or “Republican,” has sheltered the intimate relationship of the Saudi regime to the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment from democratic transparency and accountability to the U.S. public. Whether it was *Saudi regime liability for the 9/11 attacks that killed three thousand innocent American civilians*, or the *Saudi regime's deliberate imposition of famine on children in Yemen*, there's been a huge asterisk next to the Constitution, democracy and the rule of law in the United States: ”**Not applicable if it might interfere with the intimate relationship between the Saudi regime and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment*.” Until this week, it hasn't made a meaningful difference if it was "Trump-Pence" or "Obama-Biden" or "Bush-Cheney" or “Clinton-Gore.” Tweedledum or Tweedledee, *the intimate relationship between the Saudi regime and U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment has remained the same*. It’s not that all Democrats and Republicans have agreed that the U.S. must always back the Saudi regime to the hilt. Plenty of Democrats and Republicans have dissented from that. It’s that *those dissenters haven’t been allowed to change the course of U.S. policy*. *But maybe that could change this week.* There's a first time for everything. You never know which straw will be the one that takes down the camel. *This week, Senate Republicans have an opportunity to do the right thing* and *override Trump’s “veto” of the Bernie Sanders-Mike Lee-Chris Murphy bill* to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the Saudi regime’s war in Yemen. And *Senate Republicans did the right thing on the U.S.-Saudi relationship once before* – when they *voted to override Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act*, thereby enabling 9/11 families to sue the Saudi regime for complicity in the 9/11 attacks. *Urge Senate Republicans to do the right thing now, overriding the “veto” so that children in Yemen may live.* News reports that *the intimate relationship between the Saudi regime and the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment isn’t in the interests of the majority of Americans* keep piling up. On Friday, *ProPublica* reported [“*Saudi Fugitives Accused of Serious Crimes Get Help to Flee While U.S. Officials Look the Other Way* ”]: “The government of Saudi Arabia has *repeatedly* helped Saudi citizens *evade prosecutors and the police in the United States and flee* back to their homeland after being *accused of serious crimes* here, *current and former U.S. officials* said. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have been aware of the Saudi actions for *at least a decade, officials said*. But *successive American administrations* have avoided confronting the government in Riyadh...”It’s not that the issue of Saudi fugitives from the U.S. wasn’t important,” said retired FBI agent Jeffrey Danik, who served as the agency’s assistant legal attache in Riyadh from 2010 to 2012. *“It’s that the security relationship was so much more important.*” “American officials said *Saudi diplomats, intelligence officers and other operatives* have assisted in the *illegal flight of Saudi fugitives*, most of them university students, after they were charged with *crimes including rape and manslaughter*. The Saudis have bailed the suspects out of jail ... *arranged their travel home and covered their forfeited bonds*, the officials said.” “Since late December, *Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat*, has pressed the departments of *State, Justice* and *Homeland Security* for information on the Saudi government’s actions in helping to repatriate Saudi students who faced criminal charges here... ‘Are you as disturbed as I am that *Saudi nationals have a get-out-of-jail-free card* that allows them to *commit abuses against children, manslaughter, rape* and have no accountability?’ Oregon’s other U.S. senator, *Jeff Merkley, also a Democrat*, asked.” *Read the ProPublica article in full.* *Sign the petition to the Senate, pressing for override of the "veto," so children in Yemen may live.* Thanks for all you do to help U.S. foreign policy become more just, Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy *If you think our work is important, please make a donation to support it. * http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate [image: Please support our work. Donate for a Just Foreign Policy] © 2019 Just Foreign Policy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Mon Apr 29 23:27:56 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 18:27:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] check out Mike Gravel's launch ad Message-ID: I promise you won't be disappointed. === Robert Reuel Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Apr 30 01:29:02 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 20:29:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Flyer for regular anti-war demonstration, 2-4pm Saturday 4 May (Main & Neil in Champaign) Message-ID: <9134C1F1-EB31-4247-9B28-222AF7ECBF69@gmail.com> RESIST OUR GOVERNMENT’S WAR-MAKING Demand all U.S. troops (and weapons) be brought home, U.S. military bases in foreign countries be closed, and social supports - including Medicare for all, free education, and a universal basic income - be provided for Americans made poorer by generations of our government’s wars. ~~~ Although most Americans are not aware of it, the US government is today making war - killing people - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. They’re doing so principally to control the flow of oil out of the Mideast and North Africa, which the US uses as a weapon against its economic rivals from Germany to China. ~ The ongoing US drone assassination program - called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - is killing thousands of people (most of them not the presumed targets), including American citizens and hundreds of children. ~ More than a quarter of a million American troops are stationed in a thousand US bases on foreign soil, most of them surrounding Russia and China. ~ The 70,000 US troops in the ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in three-quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities have included kidnapping (the US government calls it ‘rendition’), torture, and murder. ~ The U.S. is forbidding countries around the world - including China - from importing oil from Iran. A similar attempt to prevent Japan from importing oil from southeast Asia led to World War II in the Pacific. U.S. sanctions today threaten an even wider - even nuclear - war. ~ The US is torturing the people of Venezuela - the country with the world’s largest reserve of oil - in order to overthrow their government, which isn’t following orders from Washington. ~~~ Since 1945 the United States has killed between 20 and 30 million people in wars (in Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, the Mideast, and elsewhere) designed to maintain the world-wide economic dominance that the US inherited at the end of World War II - for the American 1%. It is unfortunately the basis of US foreign policy to use war and the threats of war to retard the economic development of Russia and China as competitors to American control of the world economy - from US support for a fascist coup in Ukraine to US naval provocations in the South China Sea and huge NATO military exercises in eastern Europe. The rest of the world recognizes that the US government is what Martin Luther King called it long ago - “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” ~~~ Write your representatives in Congress-- ~ Senator Dick Durbin: ~ Sen. Tammy Duckworth: ~ Representative Rodney Davis: AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois ### From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Apr 30 01:42:04 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 20:42:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Fwd: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval References: Message-ID: <0115F693-8ECA-484C-B434-55E2916D9D49@gmail.com> Since my posts to the AWARE 'peace' email list continue to be blocked, if you’re a member of both the ‘peace’ and 'peace-discuss' lists, you might want to forward the 'Flyer for regular anti-war demonstration, 2-4pm Saturday 4 May’ to the 'peace' list. --CGE > Begin forwarded message: > > From: peace-owner at lists.chambana.net > Subject: Your message to Peace awaits moderator approval > Date: April 29, 2019 at 8:33:08 PM CDT > To: cgestabrook at gmail.com > > Your mail to 'Peace' with the subject > > Flyer for regular anti-war demonstration, 2-4pm Saturday 4 May > (Main & Neil in Champaign) > > 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/8ec09d2fd417bcab77042dba3ffe749d56b1f562 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Tue Apr 30 03:16:32 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2019 22:16:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Notes Message-ID: I've given up on splitting the notes into anti-neoliberal/anti-neoconservative because there were too many overlaps to do this effectively in a way that made sense in the long run. Issues that come up a lot for AWARE on the Air and News from Neptune happen to cross over. Here are some notes on things to consider discussing. Have a good show, guys. Why you can't trust the Democrats: Cheating in California primary -- Californians on the Jimmy Dore show explaining how CA Democrats cheated progressives out of delegate seats. Democrats did this to the point where it was widely noticed and cause for a new election to be called. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQkOzl0aQv0 -- interview with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWi6HS9Wfgw -- interviews with Mindy Pfeiffer and Jeanine Rohn. There are around 780 total ballots involved in this election where each voter can vote for up to 14 people resulting in a max of around 10,920 votes. Pfeiffer initially won her election to become a California Democratic Party delegate with 366 votes. Three and a half weeks passed and someone (we don't know who) verbally called for a challenge without following the party bylaws which require a written challenge to be filed within 7 days. The CA Democratic Party concluded that they had gotten the math wrong in Pfeiffer's election (three times!) and their recounts meant that Pfeiffer lost 80 votes dropping her to 7th place, but keeping her as a delegate. After a couple more people (we don't know who) flew to Sacramento and looked at "tally sheets" (which are ostensibly records of ballot counts, but are separate from and not necessarily in sync with ballot counts). An unknown person who requested anonymity is said to have called the so-called "Compliance Review Commission" and asked for a ballot recount. The Compliance Review Commission claims to have counted the ballots 6 more times and determined that Pfeiffer lost 2 more votes putting her at too low of a vote count to make her a delegate. Thus Pfeiffer went from being a delegate to not being a delegate. Rohn was already a delegate from District 51 (Northeast and East Los Angeles) and was recently running as an incumbent. Rohn's election was so thoroughly mishandled that there will be a re-election: Why We Fight: NPR: "In Korean DMZ, Wildlife Thrives. Some Conservationists Worry Peace Could Disrupt It" https://www.npr.org/2019/04/20/710054899/in-korean-dmz-wildlife-thrives-some-conservationists-worry-peace-could-disrupt-i NPR found someone willing to echo their neoconservative line stumping for more militarism: > The DMZ is fortified with tall, barbed-wire fences, riddled with land > mines and heavily guarded by the respective countries' militaries, > keeping all human disturbances to a minimum. After people left the area, > plants and wildlife were able to grow unrestrained. But with increasing > goodwill between North and South Korea, environmentalists like Kim fear > that the protected nature of the area is changing and may lead to > detrimental effects on the wildlife. > > "I can't help but worry that this area will face a serious threat. If we > had preserved the region because we had agreed it's environmentally > valuable, then it can be kept intact regardless of political > circumstances. But this region was preserved because of the presence of > military forces," says Kim. "Once the military tension disappears, it > may naturally follow that people feel a strong urge to transform the > area." New candidate: Sen. Mike Gravel is running for POTUS on the Democratic ticket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG4q_GjsyYw -- Interview with Jimmy Dore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0770rsZIaFc -- campaign promotion video "Rock 2.0" Sri Lankan blasts results in higher death toll (310 so far), ISIS claims responsibility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoW_2A1ZJnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acGP535jrLo -- Colombo officials say there's an international network involved in the bombings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aessRX1Des -- history of war in Sri Lanka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ibE6Ql0xA -- hotel suicide bomber on CCTV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TtX2QM2eEM -- footage of church bomber moments before explosion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyjiRuwoNyY -- Probe claims Sri Lankan attacks are retaliation for New Zealand mosque shootings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXCZNZ8ti5o -- RT's Mike Maloof rightly predicted and is now confirmed: ISIS claims responsibility for Sri Lankan Easter bombings; Sri Lankan officials were tipped off to these attacks weeks before they happened but did nothing about it due to underestimating effectiveness of group said to be responsible; more bombings are said to be planned; Maloof says "I think, ultimately, we [the US] could be acting ourselves through Special Forces" meaning US Special Forces on the ground in Sri Lanka. Related: - "Emergency law" (marshal law) is now in effect in Sri Lanka which means that government can detain suspects without warrants. Sanctions: US threatens more anti-Iran sanctions -- war against the poor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r41T-Z0AWXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0KTa2uSRro -- The Real News on these sanctions Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfrhATD4nM0 -- Mike Pompeo: "I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses." Labor: France's Yellow Vests protests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80EY1vNOwdA -- Are recent journalist arrests a form of intimidation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMMHy9ICXd0 -- Yellow Vests protestors question Notre Dame aid https://www.wsj.com/articles/notre-dame-pledges-from-frances-wealthy-re-energize-yellow-vest-protesters-11555776387 > Protesters taking to the streets Saturday for the 23rd consecutive > weekend of yellow-vest marches, however, decried the hypocrisy of elites > who they said were willing to mobilize large sums [almost $1 billion] to > rebuild the cathedral while allowing France's working class to > languish. > > The sight of billionaires and luxury goods companies opening their > checkbooks for a cause that didn't directly benefit French workers > rankled unions in particular. The head of the CGT, France's largest > union, said the efforts on behalf of Notre Dame revealed a deep-seated > hypocrisy at the top of French society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DrDp-0acMI -- Trump is giving US money to Notre Dame and not Black American churches Economy: Most Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, can't afford a $1,000 emergency, and find it hard to save a recommended 3 months of pay. American workers are producing more and making less money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SQgpXIij84 -- Most Americans live poorly and can't save. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuGqWdBEpO8 -- US workers producing more, earning less money. Russiagate: Media coverage is mostly repeating long-debunked lies and distortions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElAfzUl3oRQ -- Chris Hedges: Worst moment for US media since the 2003 Iraq invasion Russiagate: Hedges' RT show "On Contact" interview with Aaron Maté on Russiagate gets WaPO/Maddow baseless criticism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEnNBlOJdk -- "On Contact": Chris Hedges interviews Aaron Maté on Russiagate. This is the show that the Washington Post and Rachel Maddow recently got upset and lied about. This episode got about 55k views, according to YouTube. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/26/youtube-recommended-russian-media-site-above-all-others-analysis-mueller-report-watchdog-group-says/ -- the Washington Post article in question. The claims in this article include: > AlgoTransparency, founded by former YouTube engineer Guillaume Chaslot, > analyzed the recommendations made by the 1,000 YouTube channels it > tracks daily. The group found that 236 of those collectively > recommended RT’s “On Contact: Russiagate & Mueller Report w/ Aaron Mate” > more than 400,000 times. But it's not said how a third party would obtain figures on how many times YouTube recommends a video. > Formerly known as Russia Today, RT is one of the most popular media > channels on YouTube, claiming more than 2 billion views. The video > interview it recommended, posted by RT’s U.S.-focused division RT > America, is sharply critical of American press coverage of the Mueller > report and calls journalists “Russiagate conspiracy theorists” and > “gossiping courtiers to the elite.” RT was so popular that YouTube once offered them an ad package that would better capitalize on RT's apparently widely-viewed news segments. The full details of what was on offer aren't known, but RT has discussed the existence of this offer. RT rejected the package but it stands to reason that YouTube would not have offered this if it were not lucrative for YouTube. This happened before Russiagate Congressional hearings began and YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook representatives were repeatedly called to testify before members of the American and UK governments who were all looking for excuses to justify electoral losses (an excuse for Mrs. Clinton's embarrassing and widely unexpected 2016 loss, and Brexit). RT's popularity online is a big reason to reconsider calling corporate media "mainstream" -- it's not clear that, say, CNN's ratings justify calling it 'mainstream' but not RT. As time passes more people "cut the cord" and cancel cable TV while getting all of their media from the Internet. YouTube videos are a significant part of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-WN8L_m2rg -- feedback from Chris Hedges. Rachel Maddow wrote "Death by algorithm" in a tweet she posted on April 27, 2019 in https://mobile.twitter.com/maddow/status/1122222811249086465 which also pointed to the aforementioned Washington Post article. Her statement isn't clear but any critical view of RT would be consistent her show's running theme for years: evidenceless allegations that unnamed Russians are somehow gaming systems to achieve other ends: Russiagate putting Trump in office, or artificially increasing RT video counts on YouTube. Consider a few responses to her tweet: Max Blumenthal replied in https://mobile.twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1122360295761092609 > “Death?” No one’s lives were threatened by a conversation between two > award winning journalists about the massive disinformation campaign > you’[v]e waged on the minds of suggestible Democrats. But they are > endangered by the Cold War you’ve helped to stir up. Patricia Dowling in https://mobile.twitter.com/ketchmeifucan/status/1122241823521558528 > Chris Hedges won a Pulitzer prize, Aaron Maté just won an Izzy. This > YouTube is so much better than the war mongering conspiracy lunacy that > comes from you. You should be ashamed to smear good people & good > content in such a base & McCarthyite way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPVWEhHVmrw -- feedback from journalist Ben Swann. Swann mispronounced Maté's last name (which is properly pronounced [ma-TAY] like the beverage; Swann said "mate" like a friend or partner) but in Swann's defense, Maté's last name appears in on-screen credits without the acute accent over the "e" hence Swann's pronunciation is consistent with that misspelling. Swann pointed out that Stephen Colbert's show got millions more views than Hedges' Maté interview. Colbert is nowhere near as critical as he was on his Comedy Central show (and I mean that in both senses of 'critical': Colbert's CBS show is neither important nor challenging the establishment). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr6mewFNJGA -- feedback from Lionel. War: Fighting for AI ethics from within Google https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-theyre-facing-retaliation/ > Two employee activists at Google say they have been retaliated against > for helping to organize a walkout among thousands of Google employees in > November, and are planning a “town hall” meeting on Friday for others to > discuss alleged instances of retaliation. > > In a message posted to many internal Google mailing lists Monday, > Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after > Google disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told > that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was > told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” > her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research > center she cofounded at New York University. > > Claire Stapleton, another walkout organizer and a 12-year veteran of the > company, said in the email that two months after the protest she was > told she would be demoted from her role as marketing manager at YouTube > and lose half her reports. After escalating the issue to human > resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started > ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on > medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she > hired a lawyer; the company conducted an investigation and seemed to > reverse her demotion. “While my work has been restored, the environment > remains hostile and I consider quitting nearly every day,” she wrote. The AI ethics board might have had the ability to get Google to say 'no' to certain projects including automating killer drones. Labor/Health: Meatpacking gets worse Pork industry will soon be inspecting itself. https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/04/trump-is-about-to-make-the-pork-industry-responsible-for-inspecting-itself/ > Next time you tuck into a pork chop or a carnitas-filled burrito, spare > a thought for the people who work the kill line at hog slaughterhouses. > Meatpacking workers incur injury and illness at 2.5 times the national > average[1]; and repetitive-motion conditions at a rate nearly seven > times as high[2] as that of other private industries. Much has to do > with the speed at which they work: Hog carcasses weighing as much as 270 > pounds[3] come at workers at an average rate of 977 per hour[4], or > about 16 per minute. > > President Donald Trump’s US Department of Agriculture is close to > finalizing a plan that would allow those lines to move even faster, > reports[5] the Washington Post’s Kimberly Kindy. The USDA’s Food Safety > and Inspection Service is currently responsible for overseeing the kill > line, making sure that tainted meat doesn’t enter the food supply. The > plan would partially privatize federal oversight of pork facilities, > cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and > replacing them with plant employees, Kindy adds. In other words, the > task of ensuring the safety of the meat supply will largely shift from > people paid by the public to people being paid by the meat industry. [1] https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/meatpacking/index.html [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/11/489468205/working-the-chain-slaughterhouse-workers-face-lifelong-injuries [3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/hogs-pork/sector-at-a-glance/ [4] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/f7be3e74-552f-4239-ac4c-59a024fd0ec2/Evaluation-HIMP-Market-Hogs.pdf?MOD=AJPERES [5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pork-industry-soon-will-have-more-power-over-meat-inspections/2019/04/03/12921fea-4f30-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?utm_term=.33b79b746acc This was tried before and did not go well, the report explains: > What does this deregulation mean for the safety of our meat? We already > have a sneak preview. For years, a USDA pilot program[1] has allowed > five large hog slaughterhouses to operate at higher line speeds with > fewer inspectors. A 2013 audit[2] by the USDA’s Office of Inspector > General found that the USDA “did not provide adequate oversight” of the > pilot facilities over its first 15 years, and as a result, the plants > “may have a higher potential for food safety risks.” > > According to the OIG report, there are 616 USDA inspected hog plants in > the United States, meaning that just 0.8 percent of them are in the > pilot program. Yet of the top 10 US hog plants earning the most food > safety and animal welfare citations in the period of fiscal years 2008 > to 2011, three were enrolled in the pilot program. By far the most-cited > slaughterhouse in the United States over that period was a pilot > plant—it drew “nearly 50 percent more [citations] than the plant with > the next highest number.” > > And in 2015, the Government Accountability Project released affidavits > from four USDA federal inspectors working in the pilot hog plants. Their > reports from the sped-up line, which I wrote about here[3], don’t make > for appetizing reading. Here’s an excerpt. > > • “Not only are plant supervisors not trained, the employees taking > over USDA’s inspection duties have no idea what they are doing. Most of > them come into the plant with no knowledge of pathology or the industry > in general.” > > • “Food safety has gone down the drain under HIMP [the acronym for the > pilot program]. Even though fecal contamination has increased under the > program (though the company does a good job of hiding it), USDA > inspectors are encouraged not to stop the line for fecal > contamination.” [1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/f7be3e74-552f-4239-ac4c-59a024fd0ec2/Evaluation-HIMP-Market-Hogs.pdf?MOD=AJPERES [2] https://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/24601-0001-41.pdf [3] https://www.motherjones.com/food/2015/02/usda-whistleblowers-report-gross-condition-hog-slaughterhouses/ We've recently seen the result of another self-regulated industry: Boeing's crashes that recently killed 346 people were the result of Boeing's self-regulation. From http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/report-the-regulatory-failures-of-the-boeing-737-max.html > According to the Seattle Times, the FAA has made a habit of delegating > parts of the regulation process to Boeing due to cuts in funding. For > the 737 MAX, FAA managers reportedly pressured the agency’s safety > engineers to hand over safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to > green-light the company’s findings. Remarkably, the paper was working on > the report prior to the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, which > killed all 157 occupants onboard: “Both Boeing and the FAA were informed > of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, > before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/the-national-737-max-boeing-1.5107529 -- CBC has buried the lede: the self-regulation aspect of the story (which is critical to understanding how the 737 Max passed regulation) is in the article about 75% of the way in. Related: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29Rs_6ZkcB4 -- report of this on Redacted Tonight (in keeping with being sponsored by meat brokers, this story doesn't get much coverage elsewhere) - https://www.theguardian.com/animals-farmed/2018/feb/21/dirty-meat-shocking-hygiene-failings-discovered-in-us-pig-and-chicken-plants -- (Article from 21 Feb 2018) Horrible working conditions at US pig & chicken plants is not new. - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/19/christmas-crisis-kill-dinner-work-abattoir-industry-psychological-physical-damage -- "People don’t want to work in abattoirs any more. The industry is linked to psychological and physical damage" > A report in the trade magazine Farmers Weekly has revealed that staff > shortages at slaughterhouses are threatening Christmas sales. Some > 10,000 positions are unfilled at major abattoirs, meaning supermarkets > will “seriously struggle” to fulfil their seasonal orders. Of course > some of that shortfall is because of Brexit; crucially, however, the > report explains that for most potential applicants, the industry’s low > pay is not the problem but that “people simply do not want to do this > work any more”. Torture: New York Times defends CIA-head 'Bloody' Gina Haspel The NYT article referred to is https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/us/politics/gina-haspel-trump.html and Melvin Goodman's followup is quoted below: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/22/the-nyts-tries-to-rehabilitate-bloody-gina-haspel/ > [T]he Times appears to have decided to rehabilitate CIA director Gina > Haspel. Haspel drew more negative votes in her Senate confirmation > hearing than any previous director in the 72-year history of the > CIA—and for good reason. Haspel was actively involved in the CIA’s > torture and abuse program conducted in secret prisons in East Europe and > Southeast Asia. > > Last week’s article in the Times, written by Julian Barnes and Adam > Goldman, failed to mention that Haspel was the author of the cable that > ordered the destruction of the 92 tapes of interrogation and that it > was disingenuous of her to explain that she was simply trying to > “protect CIA officers.” Like most operatives who administer torture and > abuse, the CIA officers were hooded and in no need of protection. In > drafting the cable ordering the destruction of the tapes, Haspel ignored > the views of then CIA director Porter Goss, the director of national > intelligence James Clapper, and two White House counsels who were > opposed to the destruction. > > Instead, Haspel followed the instructions of her boss, Jose Rodriguez, > the CIA’s notorious former deputy director for operations and former > director of the Counterterrorism Center. If the torture program had a > godfather, it was Rodriguez; Haspel was a devoted acolyte. The > Department of Justice investigated the entire episode, but no one was > charged with obstruction of justice even though the White House and a > federal judge had ordered that the tapes be protected. A CIA > disciplinary review ignored the Nuremberg principles and “found no > fault with the performance of Ms. Haspel” because she drafted the cable > “on the direct orders” of her superior. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUaDV-BmIoU -- Torture, abuses, and farcical courts in Bahrain: why does NATO do nothing about this? Ukraine: Another clear rejection of neoliberalism -- landslide election for comic with no electoral political history https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i18b8eoQCHk -- According to the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48007487), Volodymyr Zelensky is a comedian who is trained as a lawyer and, "a political novice, [...] best known for starring in a satirical television series Servant of the People, in which his character accidentally becomes Ukrainian president.". "He plays a teacher who is elected after his expletive-laden rant about corruption goes viral on social media." I'm not sure why the BBC considers the character to have been "accidentally" elected; after Donald Trump (who also had no electoral political experience, also hosted a popular TV show, and pledged to "drain the swamp" of Washington corruption) was duly elected, it should be clear that one need not rise up through political ranks to become president. In the Ukrainian election Zelensky won in the first round (over 30%) and has now won the second round (73.5%) making him President-elect. https://www.thenation.com/article/ukraine-presidential-elections-poroshenko-zelensky/ > Indeed, it’s hard to consider this election as anything other than a > referendum on not only Poroshenko’s presidency, but the entire US-backed > Maidan project. > > Calling Zelenskiy inexperienced is an understatement. The man’s never > held political office; more importantly, he doesn’t appear to have much > of a platform. His defining characteristic is not being Poroshenko. This > makes his campaign, and the fact that he’s the clear front-runner, an > unequivocal rejection of Poroshenko, the post-Maidan president. > Specifically, it’s a rejection of the two defining features of > Poroshenko’s presidency: corruption and ultranationalism. > > Battling corruption was a central demand of Maidan. Unfortunately, > Poroshenko failed to heed the call, enabling corruption to flourish to > the point where even the New York Times editorial board—which has been > extraordinarily supportive of Maidan—described Poroshenko’s Ukraine as a > “corrupt swamp.” > > But the clearest verdict on the matter comes from Ukrainian voters. Time > and again, corruption is the major issue brought up in the land. A > recent poll showed over two-thirds believe the country is headed in the > wrong direction, while Gallup reported that Ukraine now has the world’s > lowest trust in the government: 9 percent. > > Over the past five years, as Western politicians and think tankers > churned out bromides about Kiev’s being on the front lines of freedom > and democracy, ordinary Ukrainians were plunged into an economic > nightmare in a nation that, under Poroshenko, became the poorest > country in Europe. > > [...] > > The US and the EU sank billions into Poroshenko’s Kiev in the hope he’d > tackle corruption. Of course, the notion was ludicrous. Putting one of > the richest men in Ukraine—whose assets had soared the year after > Maidan—in charge of defeating corruption is a bit like putting the drug > baron El Chapo in charge of drug enforcement. The outcome wasn’t hard > to predict. > > The West’s faith in Poroshenko further cemented hatred against him. One > would imagine the only thing worse than being unable to afford food is > doing so while listening to “let them eat spreadsheets” platitudes from > Western analysts as the country’s billionaire president adds to his > piggy bank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ySuGLyT22Y -- Jimmy Dore on this issue and referring to above Nation and BBC articles. You can imagine his reaction to learning that Zelensky's character on "Servant of the People" was "elected after his expletive-laden rant about corruption goes viral on social media". https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/22/ukraine-why-ou-lost-by-a-landslide/ -- Kevin Zeese on why Petro Poroshenko lost to outsider Volodymyr Zelensky including evidence of Poroshenko's corruption via WikiLeaks: > In a classified diplomatic cable from 2006 released by WikiLeaks[1], > U.S. officials refer to Poroshenko as “Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro > Poroshenko[2].” Our Ukraine has been in the pocket of the U.S. for 13 > years. > > The U.S. knew Poroshenko was corrupt. A separate cable released by > WikiLeaks[3] makes that clear. The May 2006 cable states: “Poroshenko > was tainted by credible corruption allegations, but wielded significant > influence within OU; Poroshenko’s price had to be paid.” > > Allowing his corruption was a price the U.S. was willing to pay to have > Our Ukraine serving as president. [1] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06KIEV1706_a.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Poroshenko [3] http://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06KIEV2038_a.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOSPnceX6W8 -- CrossTalk on Ukraine's president-elect Vietnam https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/08/10/jury-orders-monsanto-pay-289-million-cancer-patient-roundup-lawsuit/962297002/ -- > [A California Superior Court] jury deliberated for two and a half days > before finding that Dewayne Johnson's non-Hodgkin lymphoma was at least > partly due to using glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Roundup. > Johnson regularly used glyphosate to spray fields while working as a > groundskeeper. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuits/bayers-monsanto-sued-by-8000-plaintiffs-on-glyphosate-idUSKCN1L81J0 -- Bayer paid $63 billion for Monsanto in June 2018 and Bayer disclosed 5,200 lawsuits against Monsanto but Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann told analysts in a conference call that "The number of plaintiffs in both state and federal litigation is approximately 8,000 as of end-July [2018].". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppc9B4JzyvI -- After Dewayne Johnson won a $289 million judgment from Monsanto (see USA Today story above) and Bayer (which bought Monsanto) faces about 8,000 more lawsuits on glyphosate (see Reuters article above), Vietnam wants justice from Monsanto for Agent Orange victims. Venezuela https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZsVXEhQiQk -- Russia blames the US for the power cuts in Venezuela War: Yemen coverage is virtually nil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWUfMmPS2Iw -- Peace activists tell MSNBC: Stop ignoring devastating US-Saudi war in Yemen So many issues are solved with software freedom Economy: Libertarian notion of 'letting the market decide' doesn't address monopoly power or the effect on computer users https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ -- "Google has sabotaged Firefox for years" -- an article about claims by Johnathan Nightingale, a former General Manager and Vice President of the Firefox group at Mozilla, who described these issues as "oopses.": > "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome, and most > folks we spoke with inside [Google] were Firefox fans," Nightingale > recollected in a Twitter thread on Saturday. > > "When Chrome launched things got complicated, but not in the way you > might expect. They had a competing product now, but they didn't cut > ties, break our search deal - nothing like that. In fact, the story we > kept hearing was, 'We're on the same side. We want the same things'," > the former Mozilla exec said. > > "I think our friends inside Google genuinely believed that. At the > individual level, their engineers cared about most of the same things we > did. Their product and design folks made many decisions very similarly, > and we learned from watching each other. > > "But Google as a whole is very different than individual googlers," > Nightingale said. > > "Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. Gmail > & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and > bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as > 'incompatible'," he said. > > "All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we > were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every > time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next > push in 2 weeks.' > > "Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the > same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. > Hundreds maybe?" > > "I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by > incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. I think > they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we > spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of > improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we > started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done," > Nightingale said. Nightingale is not the only one to notice these choices: > In July 2018, Mozilla Program Manager Chris Peterson accused Google of > intentionally slowing down YouTube performance on Firefox. > > He revealed that both Firefox and Edge were superior when loading > YouTube content when compared to Chrome, and in order to counteract this > performance issue, Google switched to using a JavaScript library for > YouTube that they knew wasn't supported by Firefox. https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185 > YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome > because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM > v0 API only implemented in Chrome. You can restore YouTube's faster > pre-Polymer design with this Firefox extension: https://t.co/F5uEn3iMLR > — Chris Peterson (@cpeterso) July 24, 2018 In other words, Chrome relies on old instructions which Google knows Firefox doesn't support but Chrome does. So any webpage that uses those instructions runs faster in Chrome than in Firefox. There's a Firefox extension to alleviate this problem, but there's no good reason to implement a website in this way in the first place. The better approach for users is to use modern, standards-compliant code that will run fast on all modern browsers. Google could make YouTube operate this way but Google chooses not to in order to give Chrome a competitive advantage thus encouraging users to run Chrome instead of any other browser, including Firefox. This is very much like the abuse of monopoly Microsoft was doubly found to have committed by two separate antitrust cases (in the EU and US), the two largest antitrust cases in the world. ZDNet's Catalin Cimpanu concludes: > At this point, it's very hard not to believe or take Nightingale's > comments seriously. Slowly but surely, Google is becoming the new > Microsoft, and Chrome is slowly turning into the new IE, an opinion that > more and more users are starting to share[1] [1] https://medium.com/@bdc/chrome-is-the-new-ie-1a21c1efc133 https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8n1daj/google_chrome_is_the_new_ie_6/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366272 are referenced. https://archive.fo/x9vXQ is an archived copy of the last URL since news.ycombinator.com articles go away after a time. The real problem here has to do with monopoly and proprietary software is another example of this (an example that corporate publisher Ziff-Davis (ZDNet) won't bring up). Proprietary software is software that denies a user their software freedom -- the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify a published computer program. Mozilla Firefox is free software, Firefox respects a user's software freedom. Google Chrome is proprietary software. This is why so many important browsers are modifications of Firefox -- TOR browser (which makes it easy for novices to get increased privacy using the TOR network), GNUzilla (a browser with a number of built-in add-ons that block spying, make the browser prefer encrypted connections to a web server, code to foil uniquely identifying a browser called 'browser fingerprinting', and more). Google Chrome, on the other hand, is based on free software but is not itself free software. Google Chrome shares some code with the similarly-named but different "Chromium" browser. Google adds proprietary code to Chromium and releases the combined result as Google Chrome. We know that Google puts code in Chrome that does nasty things to the user including censorship (disabling extensions not listed in Google Chrome Web Store, making it easy for Chrome extensions to spy on the user and many extensions do just this including a module that activates microphones on the computer and transmits audio to Google's servers, spies on the user's browser history, affiliations, and other installed programs, and logs a user's keystrokes). See https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-google.html for links to all of these things and more. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-23/u-s-farmers-need-a-better-way-to-fix-their-tractors -- John Deere tractors are controlled via proprietary software and farmers are learning that proprietary software makes a monopolist of the proprietor (nobody but John Deere may inspect, share, or alter the software which forces the farmer to go to John Deere for all repairs). > The unpredictable weather in southern Minnesota means that spring > planting season is brief and often frantic, sometimes requiring 24-hour > shifts if the weather requires it. Farmers who want to get their crops > in the ground can’t afford to waste an hour. > > So when John Nauerth III, a farmer in remote Jackson, had trouble with > his tractor last spring, he was worried. In years past, he told me over > the phone, he might’ve diagnosed and fixed the problem with a > screwdriver, or called a local mechanic. > > But as tractors become as complex as Teslas, agricultural equipment > manufacturers and their authorized dealerships are using technology as > an excuse to force farmers to use the authorized service center — and > only the authorized service center — for repairs. That’s costing > farmers — and independent repair shops — dearly. > > Nauerth, under pressure to plant, waited a costly “two or three hours” > for an authorized dealer to show up at his farm to plug in a computer > and diagnose the problem. Worse, the dealer didn’t have the repair part > — and independent repair shops, excluded from the repair monopoly, > didn’t either. So when the tractor breaks and the software needs to be changed, John Deere's software license prevents the farmer from repairing their own tractor. If the tractor's software needs to be debugged or improved, the farmer is prevented from doing the work or hiring someone they trust to do it for them no matter how technically-minded and willing the farmer is. The fix for this is free software -- software freedom for all published software. Let John Deere earn their business by offering a repair service that users want to use, not one they're railroaded to use. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/looping-created-insulin-pump-underground-market/588091/ -- certain Medtronic brand insulin pumps could be exploited to allow users to control their own pump and this gave rise to one programmer to better help Type 1 diabetics: > By 2014, the hardware components of a DIY artificial pancreas -- a small > insulin pump that attaches via thin disposable tubing to the body and a > continuous sensor for glucose, or sugar, that slips just under the skin > -- were available, but it was impossible to connect the two. That's > where the security flaw came in. The hackers realized they could use it > to override old Medtronic pumps with their own algorithm that > automatically calculates insulin doses based on real-time glucose data. > It closed the feedback loop. This code is shared today as free software called "OpenAPS" (https://openaps.org/) > Instead of micromanaging their blood sugar, people with diabetes could > offload that work to an algorithm. In addition to OpenAPS, another > system called Loop is now available. Dozens, then hundreds, and now > thousands of people are experimenting with DIY artificial-pancreas > systems -- none of which the Food and Drug Administration has officially > approved. And they've had to track down discontinued Medtronic pumps. It > can sometimes take months to find one. Obviously, you can't just call up > Medtronic to order a discontinued pump with a security flaw. "It's eBay, > Craigslist, Facebook. It's like this underground market for these > pumps," says Aaron Kowalski, a DIY looper and also CEO of JDRF, a > nonprofit that funds type 1 diabetes research. This is not exactly how a > market for lifesaving medical devices is supposed to work. And yet, this > is the only way it can work -- for now. If computers were fully under the control of their owners, these users could get any pump, documentation on how it works, and not have to rely on exploiting bugs in software to gain said control. [There's no single URL I could put here] -- literally every story about devices that don't get updates (typically this set includes devices which are part of the so-called "Internet of things", also known as the Internet). Proprietors find that it's not profitable to invest in updating older software and it is profitable to release new software that will only run on newer gadgets. Proprietors even go to the extent of making sure the newer software won't run on the older devices (some variants of proprietary operating systems won't run on older computers by design, not because there's a valid technical reason). Apple devices lock users into Apple's services (https://gizmodo.com/homepod-is-the-ultimate-apple-product-in-a-bad-way-1822883347) by designing those services to be incompatible with all other options, ethical or unethical. Apple's office software called "iWork" uses secret file formats that change with various releases of the programs in the suite. This prevents free software from being fully compatible and helps lock users in. If an Apple user wants security or feature updates, they have to give into whatever terms come with the latest iWork programs -- additional payment, switching to a newer OS, buying newer hardware even when one's older computer could run the program, and being denied software freedom. Apple also arbitrarily blocks users from installing old versions of iOS, and Apple participates in working to thwart right-to-repair laws that would help users repair their own Apple devices. I strongly recommend https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ for an active list of organized links on how proprietary software is often malware. This list is around 400 instances as of April 2019. All cards on the table: I've contributed to this list. Law/Torture: "DC Circuit says Guantanamo judge created 'intolerable cloud of partiality' and tosses his rulings" http://www.abajournal.com/web/article/dc-circuit-says-guantanamo-judge-created-intolerable-cloud-of-partiality-and-tosses-his-rulings > On Tuesday, a federal appeals court tossed every pretrial ruling issued > in the last 3½ years by a Guantanamo judge in the case of an accused > terrorist. > > The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Air > Force Col. Vance Spath created “an intolerable cloud of partiality” when > he pursued a job as an immigration judge at the same time that he was > issuing rulings, Politico[1] reports. Just Security also has coverage[2]. > > The D.C. Circuit voided Spath’s orders in the case of Saudi national Abd > al-Rahim Hussein Muhammad al-Nashiri, who was accused of orchestrating > the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole. > > Any orders entered after November 2015, the date that Spath applied to > be an immigration judge, will be voided “to scrub the case of judicial > bias,” the appeals court said. > > The D.C. Circuit also voided decisions in appeals of Spath’s orders by > the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review. > > The government is seeking the death penalty for al-Nashiri. “We do not > take lightly the crimes that al-Nashiri stands accused of committing,” > the appeals court said. “To the contrary, the seriousness of those > alleged offenses and the gravity of the penalty they may carry make the > need for an unimpeachable adjudicator all the more important.” [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/16/guantanamo-military-tribunal-1277790 [2] https://www.justsecurity.org/63663/al-nashiri-iii-a-no-good-very-bad-day-for-u-s-military-commissions/ Israel: IDF demolishes house of Palestinian who killed 2 Israelis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLYlFchjlbs -- RT: Is this collective punishment? WikiLeaks/Assange: US is eager to get people to be silent about WikiLeaks and Assange. We should not support them in their efforts. But French media outlets are taking a radically different reaction to 3 journalists who published leaked information about France's involvement in the war in Yemen going on now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW3jKKHJL_8 -- Merely being connected to WikiLeaks is dangerous. Both Chelsea Manning and now Ola Bini are being held (separately) for WikiLeaks-related reasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZSiPm4qmTE -- 37 French media companies back 3 journalists summoned by the French state (summoned to appear before the French Directorate of Internal Security or DGSI) on allegations of breaching national state secrecy after they published leaked documents which revealed that the French government sold weapons to Saudi Arabia & United Arab Emirates listing the "French weapons used in the war in Yemen". The French government repeatedly denied being so involved. This means the French government is also culpable in what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian disaster in which over 60,000 were killed since 2016. The UN has said that coalition strikes are the "main cause" of civilian casualties. Cholera, polio, and measles threaten millions of lives according to the World Health Organization which reported that there were over 2,000 cholera-related deaths in 2017 alone. And over 14 million Yemeni face what is described as "imminent famine". What weaponry did France sell SA & the UAE? - Caesar truck-mounted Howitzers capable of firing 6 shells per minute, up to a 42km range (putting 436,370 people in its firing range) and are responsible for up to 35 civilian deaths. These were "deployed at the Saudi-Yemeni border on the Saudi side" according to the DRM (French Intelligence Agency). - Leclerc tanks with an 'auto-loader' system. The DRM said "As of 25 September 2018, about 40 UAE Leclerc tanks are observed in a fixed defensive position and advanced positions in the west..." The French Ministry for the Armed Forces told RT: > To our knowledge, the French weapons available to the members of the > coalition are mostly in a defensive position, outside Yemeni territory > or on coalition rights-of-way, but not on the frontline, and we are not > aware of any civilian casualties resulting from their use in the Yemeni > theatre. France is not among the leading arms suppliers of countries > engaged in Yemen. The pressure is on the journalists to reveal their sources. A joint media statement from those standing by the journalists reads: > We express our full solidarity with our colleagues, who have done only > their job: to bring to the attention of citizens information of public > interest on the consequences of the sale of French arms. Since these > revelations, the government has remained silent on the facts. This is remarkably different from how media react to Assange and WikiLeaks publications of Afghan & Iraq war logs. Assange is facing an American indictment, and the threat of being extradited to the US where he will likely face torture and imprisonment or assassination. Many media outlets republished WikiLeaks publications at the time of their release but now distance their organization from WikiLeaks and Assange. Some outlets cite allegations of sexual misconduct against two Swedish women which the Swedish government dropped long ago. These allegations were never charges and never had any basis in fact as far as we know but appear to have been used as character assassination against Assange while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy. The US tried to use the Swedish government to lure Assange out of the embassy -- in 2010 the Swedish Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny claimed that it was against the law for Assange to respond to the investigator's questions about allegations of sexual molestation, unlawful coercion, and "lesser-degree rape" from inside the embassy, he would have to travel to Sweden to answer the questions there. Assange denied the allegations and replied that he'd need a guarantee that he wouldn't be extradited to the US, the Swedes wouldn't provide that guarantee. By March 2015 (under public criticism from other Swedish lawyers) the special prosecutor admitted that she could interview Assange in the embassy and she began the interviews on November 14, 2016. Per Wikipedia in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange#Swedish_sexual_assault_allegations > By this time, the statute of limitations had expired on all three of the > less serious allegations. Since the Swedish prosecutor had not > interviewed Assange by 18 August 2015, the questioning pertained only to > the open investigation of "lesser degree rape", whose statute of > limitations is due to expire in 2020. Manning refused a summons to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. On March 8, 2019 Manning was re-imprisoned for this refusal. Manning is likely under pressure to make a statement that Assange provided material support for breaking into government computers to obtain Afghan & Iraqi war log data -- over 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables, and battle records -- the very data WikiLeaks published in 2010. If the US government could extract such a statement from Manning, the government could use that statement against Assange as the basis for finding Assange guilty of helping Manning break into a computer system. But the US has made it clear that they don't have any new evidence to bring to bear. The judge ordered Manning to remain in jail until Manning testifies or the grand jury concludes its work. This jailing was appealed and Manning lost that appeal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic8MI-9PTC4 -- Ecuador apparently got an IMF loan (all IMF loans are run past the US, so the US was in on this) in exchange for the US gaining custody of Assange. -J From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Apr 30 16:04:46 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2019 11:04:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] May the Fourth be with you - and you with us Message-ID: <9CC6AE30-6B6A-47B7-A46F-CB49C66736DE@gmail.com> AWARE's regular monthly anti-war demonstration will be held 2-4pm Saturday 4 May, at the Susan B. Anthony Memorial intersection (Main & Neil) in downtown Champaign. ### From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Tue Apr 30 16:50:09 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2019 11:50:09 -0500 Subject: [Peace-discuss] Rep. Ro Khanna: "The Vice President has no place inciting violence in Venezuela" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Twitter: https://twitter.com/RepRoKhanna/status/1123236965908996101 *Rep. Ro Khanna*‏Verified account @RepRoKhanna FollowingFollowing @RepRoKhanna More The Vice President has no place inciting violence in Venezuela. We cannot allow ourselves to contribute toward a civil war abroad. Instead, this is the moment for diplomacy and restraint. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RepRoKhanna/videos/286643928910036/ > > "The Vice President has no place inciting violence in Venezuela. We cannot > allow ourselves to contribute toward a civil war abroad. Instead, this is > the moment for diplomacy and restraint." > > === > > Robert Reuel Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: