[Peace-discuss] Notes

Thu Jan 9 06:45:29 UTC 2020

I think you have some other topics from previous notes you could still bring up if you need more 
fodder for conversation. Here are some other items to consider for News from Neptune or AOTA. Have a 
good show guys!

Coverage by the media: Congressional members need to be kept in line with permanent government (deep 
state) interests even if that means reusing old smears. Most media won't cover how this went down.

RT: "Ms. Ocasio-Cortez Goes to Washington: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) shamed into un-liking 
antiwar journalist’s tweet, apologizing for wrongthink"

https://on.rt.com/a8kb -- RT's report:

AOC posted https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1213184923626070017

> Last night the President engaged in what is widely being recognized as an act of war against
> Iran, one that now risks the lives of millions of innocent people.Now is the moment to prevent
> war & protect innocent people - the question for many is how, publicly & Congressionally:

Two days later Rania Khalek posted https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1213862390774845441

> A friend flying into the US says he hasn’t seen so much security since 9/11. The US is terrified
> of how Iran will retaliate. Iran won’t attack civilians, that’s what al Qaeda does. But it shows
> this assassination did the opposite of making Americans safer and our leaders know it.

AOC 'liked' Khalek's post. RT noted that:

> Khalek’s tweet was largely in the same vein, making the point that “this assassination did the
> opposite of making Americans safer and our leaders know it.”
> 
> But it wasn’t the content of the tweet that infuriated these social media hall monitors, who have
> been gently prodding AOC toward an anodyne centrism since she arrived in Washington; it was the
> account doing the tweeting. Khalek is an outspoken opponent of US foreign policy, particularly
> the draconian sanctions and endless regime-change wars that have all but destroyed large swathes
> of the Middle East over the past two decades. She has made a lot of enemies in standing up for
> the US’s bogeymen, and they came out in force to concern-troll AOC.
> 
> “I’m a big fan, but did you know you’ve committed a thoughtcrime?” seemed to be the general
> message.

Miriam Elder replied https://twitter.com/MiriamElder/status/1214184743295733761

> AOC liking a tweet by a Syrian war crimes denier who says Iran doesn’t target civilians is one
> way to start the week. It’s possible to be critical of this situation without being ahistorical.

S. Rifai replied https://twitter.com/THE_47th/status/1214152869236092929

> Hi @AOC, I am 1 of those ppl who disagrees w/ you, yet respects you and your work a lot. I wanted
> to let you know that you have been following/liking tweets of someone who spent the last 5yrs
> whitewashing mass murder in the Mid East. Rania is a full time Assad whitewasher.

AOC removed her 'like' and RT noted:

> Some, like ‘professional troll’ Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, who has made no secret of her loathing for
> Iran’s current government, deleted their tweets after AOC was badgered into un-liking Khalek’s
> message and - supposedly - apologizing via Direct Message for her ‘crime’.

Dan Cohen (who works with Rania Khalek) posted 
https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1214354319811719170

> The pressure campaign from pro-war trolls worked. @AOC unliked @RaniaKhalek’s tweet and thanked
> them for alerting her that she committed a thought crime. Disturbing that she allows herself to
> be pressured by such bullying. What happens when it’s over something more meaningful?

So there's another target for the Assad whitewasher smear: AOC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeSSQZMqov4 -- Tulsi Gabbard (who opposes the assassination of 
Iranian Gen. Soleimani) explained to "Fox & Friends" (including sycophant Brian Kilmeade) why she 
objects to this assassination. Kilmeade is for whatever he thinks will agree with the leading 
Republican: he was against war in Iraq when candidate Trump objected to that war, but now he told 
Geraldo Rivera that he supports that same war after Geraldo Rivera pointed out that we were lied 
into that war by the US Government and this means we should not trust what they say when they claim 
Iran poses an imminent threat to us now.

War: Sanctions are war

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04BZ7_eaDB0 -- Rania Khalek's informative new video explaining what 
sanctions are, showing that sanctions have never caused a population to work against their 
government (thus allowing the US to take over that government), and this means that sanctions don't 
work as the US claims they do. If the goal is to kill people sanctions are quite effective. 
Sanctions are war. Liberals need to understand this reality.

Related: https://sanctionskill.org/ -- This site points out that:

> Sanctions are imposed by the United States and its junior partners against countries that resist
> their agendas. They are a weapon of Economic War, resulting in chronic shortages of basic
> necessities, economic dislocation, chaotic hyperinflation, artificial famines, disease, and
> poverty.

And a call to Action for International Days of Action Against Sanctions and Economic War from March 
13 through March 15, 2020

Related: Caitlin Johnstone on "Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare"
https://archive.md/wip/Cx3mn
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/06/23/starvation-sanctions-are-worse-than-overt-warfare/ --

> Iran’s economy is already floundering due to the steadily mounting sanctions that the Trump
> administration has been heaping upon it since its withdrawal from the JCPOA last year. Crucial
> goods are four times the price they used to be, sick Iranians are having difficulty obtaining
> life-saving medicine, and life in general has been getting much more difficult for the poorest
> and frailest Iranian civilians.
> 
> For this reason, it is a very safe bet that there have been Iranians who have died because of the
> sanctions. Being unable to obtain enough life-saving medicine will inevitably increase mortality
> rates, as will inadequate nutrition and care for those whose health is at risk. There’s not
> really any way around that, and it’s only going to get worse.
> 
> And that’s exactly what was supposed to happen. As far as their intended purpose is concerned,
> the sanctions are working. They’re doing exactly what they were intended to do: hurt Iranian
> civilians.
> 
> How do I know this? Well for one thing America’s Secretary of State has said it openly. The New
> York Times reports the following:
> 
> [begin NYT quote] > Last week, Mr. Pompeo acknowledged to Michael J. Morrell, a former acting director of the C.I.A.,
> that the administration’s strategy would not persuade Iranian leaders to change their behavior.
> 
> “I think what can change is the people can change the government,” he said on a podcast hosted by
> Mr. Morrell, in what appeared to be an endorsement of regime change.
> [end NYT quote]
 >
> The Trump administration isn’t leveling these sanctions because it believes they’ll cause Tehran
> to capitulate to Washington’s impossible list of demands; they know full well that that will
> never happen. What they claim, based on no evidence or historical precedent whatsoever, is that
> by making life so painful for the hungry and malnourished Iranian people they’ll be forced to
> rise up against their government to effect regime change themselves.
> 
> Can you think of anything more sociopathic than this? Off the top of my head, I personally
> cannot.

[...]

War: The U.S., consistent with having built the largest occupation bases in the world, is not 
leaving Iraq anytime soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDphjFljGJk -- Despite the unaddressed leaked letter to the 
contrary, the US is not leaving Iraq.

Protests: "No War On Iran" protests went national and more protests are planned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFz68h0OgwI -- Jimmy Dore spoke at one in Los Angeles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGuga15EliM -- Mike Prysner (Empire Files, works with Abby Martin) 
spoke at the same Los Angeles protest.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/08/we-need-everyone-streets-more-180-events-planned-across-us-protest-trumps-march-war 
-- more protests are planned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtnvZuPVxzs -- Code Pink's Medea Benjamin on how the US is less safe 
after US assassinated Soleimani; upcoming protests against war with Iran.

"Iranians hit the obvious targets" in an effort to respond but avoid "a kind of escalating spiral 
that could lead to war" -- Chris Hedges

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK2LUaHs8DI -- interview with Hedges.

> Chris Hedges: The Iranians hit the obvious targets, and you have to go back to the period of time
> between the election of Barack Obama and his inauguration. There was a huge effort on the part of
> Israel and many of the hawks within the Bush administration to strike Iran. At that point the
> footprint of the U.S. within Iraq, in terms of its military, was much larger, of course. And the
> Iranians made it clear that if that happened the Green Zone and several of those bases would not
> exist. So I would imagine that as soon as that assassination was carried out there was an
> assumption which proved to be correct -- that these would be the Iranian targets and they
> therefore prepared: whether that was dispersing US troops or making sure there was protective
> cover. This is probably, at this moment, the best scenario: because if there had been significant
> numbers of U.S. dead or U.S. losses, that may have pushed the Trump administration to respond in
> a kind of escalating spiral that could lead to war.
-J