From cge at shout.net Thu Jun 1 15:28:39 2017 From: cge at shout.net (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2017 10:28:39 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Demonstrate this Saturday, June 3, in downtown Champaign 2-4pm In-Reply-To: <03888a7961195446e7dd985988e8dfe9@shout.net> References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> <67ddb84dcd90b85ed6339a05eaf437a4@shout.net> <03888a7961195446e7dd985988e8dfe9@shout.net> Message-ID: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/5/30/1667323/--Resist-March-for-Truth-will-be-held-in-100-cities-this-Saturday BUT AGAINST WAR, NOT FOR THE DEMOCRATS & NEOCONS This 'March for Truth' [sic] is nefarious 'Russiagate' nonsense. It supports Obama-Clinton/neocon war-making and hostility toward Russia and China. Instead, come demonstrate against war with AWARE this Saturday at the corner of Main and Neil in downtown Champaign, 2-4pm. We'll provide signs and flyers. ==================================================== [This is the text of the the flyer to be distributed] President Trump: End war in the Mideast! Get U.S. troops, weapons, mercenaries, and ‘coalition partners’ (NATO) out of the Mideast. Stop supporting human rights violators - notably the allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel. No war with Iran, with whom the U.S. has a treaty. In the 1930s and 1940s, the countries most responsible for war in the world were Germany and Japan. Today the country most responsible for war is the one for which we are responsible, the United States. Since World War II ended in 1945, US presidents have killed more than 20 million people in 37 nations. The U.S. is - as Martin Luther King said - “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” At this moment our government is making war and killing people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Thousands of U.S. troops are fighting in these wars, although most Americans are not aware of it. In addition, the 70,000-members of the U.S. ‘Special Operations Command’ are active in three-quarters of the countries of the world. Their activities include kidnapping (‘rendition’), torture, and murder. As the rest of the world recognizes - but Americans don’t - they are nothing less than American death squads - out to get ‘bad guys’ as they say, who might be thought of as affecting ‘American interests’ - usually financial. We rightly deplore “radical Islamic terrorism,” in spite of the fact that the US government set it up 40 years ago to use against Russia, and cooperates with it in various places today. But we are by far the greatest terrorist regime in the world. Why is our government terrorizing the world to the point that international polls show the US is by far the most feared country in the world - not Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran? The answer is simple and horrible. The US is killing people to protect the profits of the 1%, the American economic elite. The U.S. doesn’t need oil from the Mideast, but Mideast gas and oil are needed by America’s economic competitors in Europe and Asia, and so control over them gives the U.S. a major advantage over China, Germany, and other countries - a chokehold which benefits only that American economic elite, the one percent. In 2003 the US illegally invaded Iraq - and killed perhaps a million people for that purpose - and now has thousands of troops and mercenaries throughout the Mideast. The U.S. government says that we’re fighting terrorism, but we are in fact creating terrorists - in response particularly to our drone assassinations, “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” - which have killed more than 5,000 people, including U.S. citizens and hundreds of children. Anti-war groups in the United States and around the world call upon President Trump to ~ (1) establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and respect for the sovereignty of other nations; ~ (2) end the wars (in the Mideast and elsewhere) and stop the drone attacks; ~ (3) cut military spending by at least 50% and close the more than 700 US military bases around the world (Russia has 15; China has one); bring US troops (and weapons) home; and withdraw US ‘special forces,’ who’ve been sent into 3/4 of the world’s countries; ~ (4) stop US support for human rights abusers, notably Israel and Saudi Arabia; and ~ (5) lead on global nuclear disarmament. {AWARE of Champaign Urbana Illinois} ### From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Jun 2 13:36:05 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2017 08:36:05 -0500 Subject: [Peace] today 1pm: pressing Rodney Davis to back Amash bill against Trump's Saudi arms deal Message-ID: Today Rodney Davis is having "office hours" at his office in Champaign from 1-3 pm. My understanding of their claimed rules is: they take people four at a time on a "first come first served" basis, and then that group of four people gets ten minutes to talk about whatever they want. So, if you don't prepare a group of four to talk about what you want, then you might wind up in a group of people who want to talk about four different things, which means that you might get 2.5 minutes to talk about what you want. So, here's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for three people who will meet me at 1pm at Rodney Davis' office to talk about ending U.S. support for the Saudi-UAE war and blockade in Yemen, which is deliberately pushing Yemen into famine; specifically, about co-sponsoring and voting for the bipartisan Amash-Pocan resolution to block part of Trump's Saudi arms deal. So that we get the full ten minutes for this topic. I'll present the IL-13 signers on this petition [not too late to sign and share, I haven't printed it out yet]: Congress: Vote NO on Trump's Saudi Arms Deal https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-vote-no-on-trumps?r_by=1135580 Who would like to participate in a group of four to talk to Rodney Davis about this? Reply to me directly. === Robert 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 stuartnlevy at gmail.com Sat Jun 3 12:59:40 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2017 07:59:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Mon 7pm- Peace Action call on Yemen war and Saudi arms sale Message-ID: Conference call - this Monday at 7pm - on the war and famine in Yemen, and the prospect of blocking an upcoming arms sale to Saudi Arabia which is promoting that war. With Peace Action, and a bunch of other groups including Just Foreign Policy.  -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: "Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action" Date: 6/3/17 07:00 (GMT-06:00) To: stuartnlevy at gmail.com Subject: Invitation: Join the call Monday 6/5 to end the war in Yemen Urgent Yemen Briefing and Action Steps: Stop the Saudi Arabia Arms Sales  Dear Stuart, Please join this important conference call to help prevent a further humanitarian disaster and mass famine from happening in Yemen and stop the U.S. from selling arms to Saudi Arabia. Next Monday, June 5th from 5:00 - 6:00 PM Pacific, 6:00 - 7:00 PM Mountain, 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central, 8:00 - 9:00 PM Eastern Dial-in Number:  (605) 472-5575 Access Code:  944808 iPhone: (605) 472-5575,,944808# And/or http://login.meetcheap.com/conference,25472621 RSVPs are extremely helpful but not required: https://goo.gl/forms/VCj0VUn2mO1Y2mW02 Agenda (Eastern Times) 8:00 - 8:20 PM (20 mins) What you need to know about the Yemen crisis and Saudi Arabia arms sales - Kate Kizer, Director of Policy & Advocacy, The Yemen Peace Project (Bio Below) 8:20 - 8:30 PM (10 mins) Q & A 8:30 - 8:40 PM (10 mins) What you can do to end the war in Yemen?  How can you stop the Saudi Arms sale? - Kate Gould, Legislative Representative for Middle East Policy, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)  (Bio Below) 8:40 - 8:55 PM (15 mins) Q & A 8:55 - 9:00 PM (5 mins) Next Steps Briefing Call Cosponsors: Center for International Policy CODEPINK Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) Global Progressive Hub Just Foreign Policy National Priorities Project Peace Action People Demanding Action STAND: The Student-Led Movement to End Mass Atrocities The Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM The Yemen Peace Project United for Peace & Justice United Methodist General Board of Church and Society US Labor Against the War Win Without War About the Expert Briefers: Kate Kizer Director of Policy & Advocacy, The Yemen Peace Project Kate has worked on human rights and democratization in the Middle East for nearly ten years. Kate received her B.A. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from UCLA, studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo, and is currently an M.A. candidate at Georgetown University’s Democracy and Governance program. Kate has also traveled extensively in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Syria. Her writing and commentary have been featured in numerous news outlets, including Reuters, Al Jazeera America, Middle East Eye, OpenDemocracy, and the Huffington Post. Kate directs YPP’s policy and advocacy program to ensure US foreign policy in Yemen reflects the needs and interests of Yemenis and Yemeni Americans. Kate Gould Legislative Representative, Middle East Policy, FCNL Kate Gould serves as the Legislative Representative for Middle East Policy. Kate directs FCNL's lobbying on Middle East policy, and is one of only a handful of registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C. working to support diplomatic solutions to disputes between the U.S. and Iran and the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Israel/Palestine. Gould was profiled in 2015 as the “Quaker Lobbyist Behind the Iran Deal Fight,” by Congressional Quarterly, an outlet with readership that includes 95% of members of Congress. Kate's analysis on Middle East policy has been published in The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, CNN, Reuters, AFP and other national outlets. Kate has appeared as an on-air analyst for various TV and radio programs, including the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, The Thom Hartmann Show, The Real News Network and CCTV. She is a Political Partner at the Truman National Security Project, and serves as a board member of the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship and Churches for Middle East Peace. Before coming to FCNL, Kate taught Palestinian school teachers for AMIDEAST while coordinating a radio program on peace building efforts at a joint Israeli-Palestinian think tank in Jerusalem. Kate also interned for Senator Jeff Merkley both in her hometown of Medford, Oregon and in his Washington, DC office. Kate is inspired every day by people she met in the Middle East who practice nonviolence in the face of so much violence: the Palestinian shepherds, Israeli rabbis, Palestinian women’s cooperative owners, therapists in Gaza treating children who have lived through three wars, and Syrian and Iraqi refugees who have started over to make a new life. Kate is a member of the Friends Meeting of Washington. Cheers, Paul Kawika Martin Senior Director, Policy and Political Affairs Peace Action P.S. Please forward this invitation to your friends, family and colleagues. Click here to support Peace Action's campaigns today. Click here to unsubscribe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sat Jun 3 19:56:04 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2017 14:56:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Tomorrow I'll ask Carol Ammons to oppose the Saudi arms deal Message-ID: Tomorrow afternoon this event is happening in Champaign: IL - 13 Listening Session: Champaign-Urbana Public · Hosted by Carol Ammons https://www.facebook.com/events/1855909114660297/ Yesterday I asked Rodney Davis to oppose Trump's Saudi arms deal. I presented the IL-13 signers on our petition , and asked him to cosponsor the bipartisan Amash-Pocan resolution against the Saudi arms deal. Rodney Davis said he would speak with Amash and the other Republican sponsors and get back to me. Now Carol is asking: "What do you want your Representative in Congress to do?" I figure that's an easy question for me to answer. I want my Representative in Congress to oppose the Saudi arms deal. So, I figure, why not take Carol the same petition I took Rodney, and make the same ask? I figure: if Carol opposes the Saudi arms deal and challenges Rodney to do the same, it's win-win. Either Rodney agrees, in which case I win, or Rodney doesn't agree, in which case it's a public issue and the News-Gazette has to report on it and Rodney gets in trouble, in which case I also win. Is it plausible that Rodney, feeling a little heat, would agree to co-sponsor the Amash resolution? Last September, then-Illinois Senator Mark Kirk was one of only four Senate Republicans to vote against the Saudi tank deal. The other 23 no votes were Democrats. Mark Kirk had not previously been known as a critic of Saudi Arabia or its "particularly aggressive" war in Yemen, as the Vatican puts it. What made Mark Kirk flip? Tammy Duckworth was breathing down his neck, putting out a press release every time he didn't say "excuse me" after burping. Could we do that to Rodney Davis? Could we flip him with some pressure? If not, why not? I'll print out the petitions again around noon tomorrow. So there's still time to sign. Sign the petition: Congress: Vote NO on Trump's Saudi Arms Deal https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-vote-no-on-trumps?r_by=1135580 === Robert 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 cge at shout.net Sat Jun 3 22:45:53 2017 From: cge at shout.net (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2017 17:45:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Demonstrate this Saturday, June 3, in downtown Champaign 2-4pm In-Reply-To: References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> <67ddb84dcd90b85ed6339a05eaf437a4@shout.net> <03888a7961195446e7dd985988e8dfe9@shout.net> Message-ID: <898529f7a5749a1b7e288cc696cdd7ee@shout.net> I haven't much respect for MoveOn.org, but I signed their petition to US representatives and senators that says, "Cosponsor & vote for the resolution of disapproval against the president's Saudi arms deal." Would you like to you sign this anti-war petition? Click here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-vote-no-on-trumps?source=s.em.mt&r_by=2656067 ### From galliher at illinois.edu Sat Jun 3 23:18:13 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2017 18:18:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Tomorrow I'll ask Carol Ammons to oppose the Saudi arms deal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5CB8941D-7259-4DD5-9542-7442892DC00F@illinois.edu> She was unwilling to oppose Illinois’ support for Israeli apartheid. > On Jun 3, 2017, at 2:56 PM, Robert Naiman via Peace wrote: > > > Tomorrow afternoon this event is happening in Champaign: > > IL - 13 Listening Session: Champaign-Urbana > Public · Hosted by Carol Ammons > https://www.facebook.com/events/1855909114660297/ > > Yesterday I asked Rodney Davis to oppose Trump's Saudi arms deal. I presented the IL-13 signers on our petition , and asked him to cosponsor the bipartisan Amash-Pocan resolution against the Saudi arms deal. Rodney Davis said he would speak with Amash and the other Republican sponsors and get back to me. > > Now Carol is asking: "What do you want your Representative in Congress to do?" I figure that's an easy question for me to answer. I want my Representative in Congress to oppose the Saudi arms deal. > > So, I figure, why not take Carol the same petition I took Rodney, and make the same ask? > > I figure: if Carol opposes the Saudi arms deal and challenges Rodney to do the same, it's win-win. Either Rodney agrees, in which case I win, or Rodney doesn't agree, in which case it's a public issue and the News-Gazette has to report on it and Rodney gets in trouble, in which case I also win. > > Is it plausible that Rodney, feeling a little heat, would agree to co-sponsor the Amash resolution? > > Last September, then-Illinois Senator Mark Kirk was one of only four Senate Republicans to vote against the Saudi tank deal. The other 23 no votes were Democrats. Mark Kirk had not previously been known as a critic of Saudi Arabia or its "particularly aggressive" war in Yemen, as the Vatican puts it. > > What made Mark Kirk flip? Tammy Duckworth was breathing down his neck, putting out a press release every time he didn't say "excuse me" after burping. > > Could we do that to Rodney Davis? Could we flip him with some pressure? If not, why not? > > I'll print out the petitions again around noon tomorrow. So there's still time to sign. > > Sign the petition: Congress: Vote NO on Trump's Saudi Arms Deal > https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-vote-no-on-trumps?r_by=1135580 > > === > > Robert Naiman > Policy Director > Just Foreign Policy > www.justforeignpolicy.org > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org > (202) 448-2898 x1 > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Jun 4 14:03:23 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2017 14:03:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Climate change and all that entails. Message-ID: Organizing Notes Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire.... About Me [My Photo] NAME: BRUCE K. GAGNON LOCATION: BATH, MAINE, UNITED STATES View my complete profile [Recent Posts] * Tragedy of the Niger Delta * My Mistake * Moving Words from a Vietnam Vet * Speaking at the White House * Terror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Kno... * Photos from Two Days of Protest in Washington DC * VFP Brings Letters to the Vietnam Wall * U.S. Pushing Regime Change in Venezuela * Pentagon Pulls a Fast One on South Korea * Heading to Washington for Veterans Protest Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue" [http://www.space4peace.org/images/button_tv.jpg] Please like us on facebook [http://www.space4peace.org/images/facebook_logo11.jpg] Please help us by making an online donation [DonateNow] Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue" [http://www.space4peace.org/images/button_tv.jpg] Please like us on facebook [http://www.space4peace.org/images/facebook_logo11.jpg] Please help us by making an online donation [DonateNow] [Powered by Blogger] SATURDAY, JUNE 03, 2017 The Corporate Mega-Death Machine is Killing Everything [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4CNm28zImoo/WTL6FSDYtII/AAAAAAAAWhg/Bqu5VsxIPxACVI-g5tYwJWxNgJBqtV7jQCLcB/s640/bird.jpg] This morning Mary Beth came running down the stairs telling us all to go look at our crab apple tree in the front yard which was full of Cedar Waxwings. I can't ever recall hearing of a Cedar Waxwing - I've likely seen them but don't have any memory of it. But this morning dozens of the beautiful birds were flitting around the crab apple and picking off caterpillars that are presently feasting on the tree leaves. They must have worked that tree for at least an hour before taking off. Later on I went out and looked for evidence of caterpillars on the tree but only saw one. So hopefully the birds will come back in the days ahead and help save the tree from being totally denuded by the insects. The tree blossoms in late May - right around MB's birthday. The smell of the flowers on the tree is heavenly. I bought the tree for her birthday soon after we moved into this house. Following that hour of joy, we had both sat by the window and watched the beautiful show, MB and I went out to work in the garden. We planted 17 tomato plants, cucumbers, and squash and did a bunch of weeding. I had to move some lettuce that is growing in clumps due to my shaking hands when I was planting the seeds - the plants grow where the seeds fall and in my case I dumped a load of them in one spot. The garden ground is wet from almost non-stop rain during recent weeks. A farmer friend here in Maine says that more rain than usual is in our future due to climate change. All of this magnificent nature is now in peril as we see the US refusing to deal with the reality of global warming. Some people can argue all they want against climate change but I am a true believer that our weather is now totally fucked up. I was talking to someone in Texas yesterday who told me they've had rain for two weeks and she was coughing like mad. I was coughing as well and so was the Global Network's layout design person who I had spoken to earlier in the day. I caught the crud from MB. As the weather changes day-to-day our bodies are having a very hard time adjusting. Last month we had a 93 degree day (the hottest recorded temperature for that day in Maine's history). Then just days later we had to light a fire again to heat the kitchen. Add also to this reality the atmosphere regularly being filled with chemtrails that lace the sky from horizon to horizon. The aluminum (and god knows what other toxic elements are being sprayed from these planes) gets into our lungs, the soil, the water, and ultimately our food chain. That has to be lowering our immune system dramatically thus these hard bouts with the crud that never seems to go away. Don't you begin to wonder if someone is trying to thin the population? I was talking with a friend the other day about all this and I asked the question, "Why would they (the ruling oligarchies) want to thin us out?" The person's response was on the mark - "Because there are not going to be enough jobs." Nothing like an unemployed superfluous person who figures out what is really going on - they become radicalized and a danger to the capitalist system. But the ruling 1% also knows that the planet is over populated. So they know that their 'rule' on Earth is conditioned on reducing the global population and in doing so their mad hatter scientists come up with all kinds of insane programs for weather modification and geo-engineering. So in the back of my mind this morning, while having this spiritual experience watching the birds feast on our tree, was global warming and chemtrails and how these phenomenon are currently impacting the birds, other wildlife, plants, and trees. Instead of surrendering to helplessness, which can be like a drug addiction, I feel even more compelled to push for conversion of the military industrial complex toward a sustainable society. There is far too much beauty in life for me to walk away from working to stop this corporate industrial mega-polluting model of society. (I often feel like I am living in the middle of the collapse of the Aztec civilization. I figure their rulers ignored the hell out of critics at that time too.) We don't have much time left and so I will keep pushing to convert places like the General Dynamics Corp. Navy shipyard here in Bath, Maine. The US military has the largest carbon bootprint on the entire planet. Official Washington 'insisted' that the Pentagon be exempted from monitoring by the Kyoto and Paris climate change protocols. Why in hell do most mainstream environmental groups refuse to mention the Pentagon link to global warming? So while everyone is now yelling at Trump because he wants to withdraw from the Paris accords, hardly anyone is noticing the military footprint connection. It burns my britches. This is a collapsing industrial culture. I want to stand with the birds. Bruce posted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 1:56 PM [https://img2.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif] 1 Comments: [Blogger] Lisa Savage said... Home run blog post, Bruce. I'm with you, MB and the birds. 6/4/17, 4:12 AM Post a Comment Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Links to this post: Create a Link << Home -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Sun Jun 4 15:56:50 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2017 10:56:50 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Climate change and all that entails. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <176031D0-3DFB-4533-9617-50FC72D41919@gmail.com> I hope our panelists will mention the Pentagon's huge carbon footprint at our event "hidden Costs of War" panel discussion at Champaign Pub Lib June 18 1:30-3 pm free and open to the public BTW cedar waxwings are plentiful around C-U right now, especially Crystal Lake Park and Busey Woods. Deb Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 4, 2017, at 9:03 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: > > > Organizing Notes > Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire.... > About Me > NAME: BRUCE K. GAGNON LOCATION: BATH, MAINE, UNITED STATES > View my complete profile > > Tragedy of the Niger Delta > My Mistake > Moving Words from a Vietnam Vet > Speaking at the White House > Terror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Kno... > Photos from Two Days of Protest in Washington DC > VFP Brings Letters to the Vietnam Wall > U.S. Pushing Regime Change in Venezuela > Pentagon Pulls a Fast One on South Korea > Heading to Washington for Veterans Protest > Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue" > > Please like us on facebook > > Please help us by making an online donation > > > Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue" > > Please like us on facebook > > Please help us by making an online donation > > > > > SATURDAY, JUNE 03, 2017 > The Corporate Mega-Death Machine is Killing Everything > > > This morning Mary Beth came running down the stairs telling us all to go look at our crab apple tree in the front yard which was full of Cedar Waxwings. > > I can't ever recall hearing of a Cedar Waxwing - I've likely seen them but don't have any memory of it. > > But this morning dozens of the beautiful birds were flitting around the crab apple and picking off caterpillars that are presently feasting on the tree leaves. They must have worked that tree for at least an hour before taking off. Later on I went out and looked for evidence of caterpillars on the tree but only saw one. So hopefully the birds will come back in the days ahead and help save the tree from being totally denuded by the insects. > > The tree blossoms in late May - right around MB's birthday. The smell of the flowers on the tree is heavenly. I bought the tree for her birthday soon after we moved into this house. > > Following that hour of joy, we had both sat by the window and watched the beautiful show, MB and I went out to work in the garden. We planted 17 tomato plants, cucumbers, and squash and did a bunch of weeding. I had to move some lettuce that is growing in clumps due to my shaking hands when I was planting the seeds - the plants grow where the seeds fall and in my case I dumped a load of them in one spot. The garden ground is wet from almost non-stop rain during recent weeks. A farmer friend here in Maine says that more rain than usual is in our future due to climate change. > > All of this magnificent nature is now in peril as we see the US refusing to deal with the reality of global warming. Some people can argue all they want against climate change but I am a true believer that our weather is now totally fucked up. I was talking to someone in Texas yesterday who told me they've had rain for two weeks and she was coughing like mad. I was coughing as well and so was the Global Network's layout design person who I had spoken to earlier in the day. I caught the crud from MB. > > As the weather changes day-to-day our bodies are having a very hard time adjusting. Last month we had a 93 degree day (the hottest recorded temperature for that day in Maine's history). Then just days later we had to light a fire again to heat the kitchen. > > Add also to this reality the atmosphere regularly being filled with chemtrails that lace the sky from horizon to horizon. The aluminum (and god knows what other toxic elements are being sprayed from these planes) gets into our lungs, the soil, the water, and ultimately our food chain. That has to be lowering our immune system dramatically thus these hard bouts with the crud that never seems to go away. > > Don't you begin to wonder if someone is trying to thin the population? I was talking with a friend the other day about all this and I asked the question, "Why would they (the ruling oligarchies) want to thin us out?" The person's response was on the mark - "Because there are not going to be enough jobs." Nothing like an unemployed superfluous person who figures out what is really going on - they become radicalized and a danger to the capitalist system. > > But the ruling 1% also knows that the planet is over populated. So they know that their 'rule' on Earth is conditioned on reducing the global population and in doing so their mad hatter scientists come up with all kinds of insane programs for weather modification and geo-engineering. > > So in the back of my mind this morning, while having this spiritual experience watching the birds feast on our tree, was global warming and chemtrails and how these phenomenon are currently impacting the birds, other wildlife, plants, and trees. > > Instead of surrendering to helplessness, which can be like a drug addiction, I feel even more compelled to push for conversion of the military industrial complex toward a sustainable society. > > There is far too much beauty in life for me to walk away from working to stop this corporate industrial mega-polluting model of society. (I often feel like I am living in the middle of the collapse of the Aztec civilization. I figure their rulers ignored the hell out of critics at that time too.) We don't have much time left and so I will keep pushing to convert places like the General Dynamics Corp. Navy shipyard here in Bath, Maine. > > The US military has the largest carbon bootprint on the entire planet. Official Washington 'insisted' that the Pentagon be exempted from monitoring by the Kyoto and Paris climate change protocols. Why in hell do most mainstream environmental groups refuse to mention the Pentagon link to global warming? So while everyone is now yelling at Trump because he wants to withdraw from the Paris accords, hardly anyone is noticing the military footprint connection. It burns my britches. > > This is a collapsing industrial culture. I want to stand with the birds. > > Bruce > posted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 1:56 PM > 1 Comments: > Lisa Savage said... > Home run blog post, Bruce. I'm with you, MB and the birds. > 6/4/17, 4:12 AM > Post a Comment > > Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] > Links to this post: > Create a Link > > << Home > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Sun Jun 4 16:34:49 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2017 16:34:49 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Climate change and all that entails. In-Reply-To: <176031D0-3DFB-4533-9617-50FC72D41919@gmail.com> References: <176031D0-3DFB-4533-9617-50FC72D41919@gmail.com> Message-ID: <361721413.1954085.1496594089728@mail.yahoo.com> The Champaign library doesn't show this event on its online calendar. Dianna Events | | | | | | | | | | | Events | | | | On Sunday, June 4, 2017 10:57 AM, Debra Schrishuhn via Peace-discuss wrote: I hope our panelists will mention the Pentagon's huge carbon footprint at our event "hidden Costs of War" panel discussion at Champaign Pub Lib June 18 1:30-3 pm free and open to the public BTW cedar waxwings are plentiful around C-U right now, especially Crystal Lake Park and Busey Woods.  Deb Sent from my iPhone On Jun 4, 2017, at 9:03 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: Organizing Notes Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire.... About Me - - NAME: BRUCE K. GAGNON  - LOCATION: BATH, MAINE, UNITED STATES View my complete profile - Tragedy of the Niger Delta - My Mistake - Moving Words from a Vietnam Vet - Speaking at the White House - Terror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Kno... - Photos from Two Days of Protest in Washington DC - VFP Brings Letters to the Vietnam Wall - U.S. Pushing Regime Change in Venezuela - Pentagon Pulls a Fast One on South Korea - Heading to Washington for Veterans Protest Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue"    Please like us on facebook   Please help us by making an online donation   Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue"    Please like us on facebook   Please help us by making an online donation   SATURDAY, JUNE 03, 2017 The Corporate Mega-Death Machine is Killing Everything This morning Mary Beth came running down the stairs telling us all to go look at our crab apple tree in the front yard which was full of Cedar Waxwings. I can't ever recall hearing of a Cedar Waxwing - I've likely seen them but don't have any memory of it. But this morning dozens of the beautiful birds were flitting around the crab apple and picking off caterpillars that are presently feasting on the tree leaves.  They must have worked that tree for at least an hour before taking off.  Later on I went out and looked for evidence of caterpillars on the tree but only saw one.  So hopefully the birds will come back in the days ahead and help save the tree from being totally denuded by the insects. The tree blossoms in late May - right around MB's birthday.  The smell of the flowers on the tree is heavenly.  I bought the tree for her birthday soon after we moved into this house. Following that hour of joy, we had both sat by the window and watched the beautiful show, MB and I went out to work in the garden. We planted 17 tomato plants, cucumbers, and squash and did a bunch of weeding.  I had to move some lettuce that is growing in clumps due to my shaking hands when I was planting the seeds - the plants grow where the seeds fall and in my case I dumped a load of them in one spot. The garden ground is wet from almost non-stop rain during recent weeks.  A farmer friend here in Maine says that more rain than usual is in our future due to climate change. All of this magnificent nature is now in peril as we see the US refusing to deal with the reality of global warming.  Some people can argue all they want against climate change but I am a true believer that our weather is now totally fucked up.  I was talking to someone in Texas yesterday who told me they've had rain for two weeks and she was coughing like mad.  I was coughing as well and so was the Global Network's layout design person who I had spoken to earlier in the day.  I caught the crud from MB. As the weather changes day-to-day our bodies are having a very hard time adjusting.  Last month we had a 93 degree day (the hottest recorded temperature for that day in Maine's history).  Then just days later we had to light a fire again to heat the kitchen. Add also to this reality the atmosphere regularly being filled with chemtrails that lace the sky from horizon to horizon.  The aluminum (and god knows what other toxic elements are being sprayed from these planes) gets into our lungs, the soil, the water, and ultimately our food chain.  That has to be lowering our immune system dramatically thus these hard bouts with the crud that never seems to go away. Don't you begin to wonder if someone is trying to thin the population?  I was talking with a friend the other day about all this and I asked the question, "Why would they (the ruling oligarchies) want to thin us out?"  The person's response was on the mark - "Because there are not going to be enough jobs."  Nothing like an unemployed superfluous person who figures out what is really going on - they become radicalized and a danger to the capitalist system. But the ruling 1% also knows that the planet is over populated.  So they know that their 'rule' on Earth is conditioned on reducing the global population and in doing so their mad hatter scientists come up with all kinds of insane programs for weather modification and geo-engineering.    So in the back of my mind this morning, while having this spiritual experience watching the birds feast on our tree, was global warming and chemtrails and how these phenomenon are currently impacting the birds, other wildlife, plants, and trees. Instead of surrendering to helplessness, which can be like a drug addiction, I feel even more compelled to push for conversion of the military industrial complex toward a sustainable society. There is far too much beauty in life for me to walk away from working to stop this corporate industrial mega-polluting model of society.  (I often feel like I am living in the middle of the collapse of the Aztec civilization.  I figure their rulers ignored the hell out of critics at that time too.)  We don't have much time left and so I will keep pushing to convert places like the General Dynamics Corp. Navy shipyard here in Bath, Maine. The US military has the largest carbon bootprint on the entire planet.  Official Washington 'insisted' that the Pentagon be exempted from monitoring by the Kyoto and Paris climate change protocols.  Why in hell do most mainstream environmental groups refuse to mention the Pentagon link to global warming?  So while everyone is now yelling at Trump because he wants to withdraw from the Paris accords, hardly anyone is noticing the military footprint connection.  It burns my britches. This is a collapsing industrial culture.  I want to stand with the birds.  Bruceposted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 1:56 PM  1 Comments: -  Lisa Savage said... - Home run blog post, Bruce. I'm with you, MB and the birds. - 6/4/17, 4:12 AM Post a CommentSubscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Links to this post: Create a Link<< Home _______________________________________________ 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Sun Jun 4 16:48:13 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2017 11:48:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Climate change and all that entails. In-Reply-To: <361721413.1954085.1496594089728@mail.yahoo.com> References: <176031D0-3DFB-4533-9617-50FC72D41919@gmail.com> <361721413.1954085.1496594089728@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Thanks. I will call them tomorrow Deb Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 4, 2017, at 11:34 AM, Dianna Visek wrote: > > The Champaign library doesn't show this event on its online calendar. > > Dianna > > Events > > Events > > > > On Sunday, June 4, 2017 10:57 AM, Debra Schrishuhn via Peace-discuss wrote: > > > I hope our panelists will mention the Pentagon's huge carbon footprint at our event "hidden Costs of War" panel discussion at Champaign Pub Lib June 18 1:30-3 pm free and open to the public > > BTW cedar waxwings are plentiful around C-U right now, especially Crystal Lake Park and Busey Woods. > > Deb > > Sent from my iPhone > >> On Jun 4, 2017, at 9:03 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: >> > > > Organizing Notes > Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire.... > About Me > NAME: BRUCE K. GAGNON LOCATION: BATH, MAINE, UNITED STATES > View my complete profile > > Tragedy of the Niger Delta > My Mistake > Moving Words from a Vietnam Vet > Speaking at the White House > Terror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Kno... > Photos from Two Days of Protest in Washington DC > VFP Brings Letters to the Vietnam Wall > U.S. Pushing Regime Change in Venezuela > Pentagon Pulls a Fast One on South Korea > Heading to Washington for Veterans Protest > Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue" > > Please like us on facebook > > Please help us by making an online donation > > > Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue" > > Please like us on facebook > > Please help us by making an online donation > > > > SATURDAY, JUNE 03, 2017 > The Corporate Mega-Death Machine is Killing Everything > > > This morning Mary Beth came running down the stairs telling us all to go look at our crab apple tree in the front yard which was full of Cedar Waxwings. > > I can't ever recall hearing of a Cedar Waxwing - I've likely seen them but don't have any memory of it. > > But this morning dozens of the beautiful birds were flitting around the crab apple and picking off caterpillars that are presently feasting on the tree leaves. They must have worked that tree for at least an hour before taking off. Later on I went out and looked for evidence of caterpillars on the tree but only saw one. So hopefully the birds will come back in the days ahead and help save the tree from being totally denuded by the insects. > > The tree blossoms in late May - right around MB's birthday. The smell of the flowers on the tree is heavenly. I bought the tree for her birthday soon after we moved into this house. > > Following that hour of joy, we had both sat by the window and watched the beautiful show, MB and I went out to work in the garden. We planted 17 tomato plants, cucumbers, and squash and did a bunch of weeding. I had to move some lettuce that is growing in clumps due to my shaking hands when I was planting the seeds - the plants grow where the seeds fall and in my case I dumped a load of them in one spot. The garden ground is wet from almost non-stop rain during recent weeks. A farmer friend here in Maine says that more rain than usual is in our future due to climate change. > > All of this magnificent nature is now in peril as we see the US refusing to deal with the reality of global warming. Some people can argue all they want against climate change but I am a true believer that our weather is now totally fucked up. I was talking to someone in Texas yesterday who told me they've had rain for two weeks and she was coughing like mad. I was coughing as well and so was the Global Network's layout design person who I had spoken to earlier in the day. I caught the crud from MB. > > As the weather changes day-to-day our bodies are having a very hard time adjusting. Last month we had a 93 degree day (the hottest recorded temperature for that day in Maine's history). Then just days later we had to light a fire again to heat the kitchen. > > Add also to this reality the atmosphere regularly being filled with chemtrails that lace the sky from horizon to horizon. The aluminum (and god knows what other toxic elements are being sprayed from these planes) gets into our lungs, the soil, the water, and ultimately our food chain. That has to be lowering our immune system dramatically thus these hard bouts with the crud that never seems to go away. > > Don't you begin to wonder if someone is trying to thin the population? I was talking with a friend the other day about all this and I asked the question, "Why would they (the ruling oligarchies) want to thin us out?" The person's response was on the mark - "Because there are not going to be enough jobs." Nothing like an unemployed superfluous person who figures out what is really going on - they become radicalized and a danger to the capitalist system. > > But the ruling 1% also knows that the planet is over populated. So they know that their 'rule' on Earth is conditioned on reducing the global population and in doing so their mad hatter scientists come up with all kinds of insane programs for weather modification and geo-engineering. > > So in the back of my mind this morning, while having this spiritual experience watching the birds feast on our tree, was global warming and chemtrails and how these phenomenon are currently impacting the birds, other wildlife, plants, and trees. > > Instead of surrendering to helplessness, which can be like a drug addiction, I feel even more compelled to push for conversion of the military industrial complex toward a sustainable society. > > There is far too much beauty in life for me to walk away from working to stop this corporate industrial mega-polluting model of society. (I often feel like I am living in the middle of the collapse of the Aztec civilization. I figure their rulers ignored the hell out of critics at that time too.) We don't have much time left and so I will keep pushing to convert places like the General Dynamics Corp. Navy shipyard here in Bath, Maine. > > The US military has the largest carbon bootprint on the entire planet. Official Washington 'insisted' that the Pentagon be exempted from monitoring by the Kyoto and Paris climate change protocols. Why in hell do most mainstream environmental groups refuse to mention the Pentagon link to global warming? So while everyone is now yelling at Trump because he wants to withdraw from the Paris accords, hardly anyone is noticing the military footprint connection. It burns my britches. > > This is a collapsing industrial culture. I want to stand with the birds. > > Bruce > posted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 1:56 PM > 1 Comments: > Lisa Savage said... > Home run blog post, Bruce. I'm with you, MB and the birds. > 6/4/17, 4:12 AM > Post a Comment > Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] > Links to this post: > Create a Link > << Home >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Sun Jun 4 17:01:56 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2017 12:01:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Climate change and all that entails. Message-ID: Diana,fyi The library events tab only displays library sponsored events. Events by the community are not advertised by the library.  -Karen Medina -------- Original message --------From: Dianna Visek via Peace Date: 6/4/17 11:34 (GMT-06:00) To: Debra Schrishuhn , Karen Aram Cc: peace , peace-discuss Subject: Re: [Peace] [Peace-discuss]  Climate change and all that entails. The Champaign library doesn't show this event on its online calendar. Dianna Events Events On Sunday, June 4, 2017 10:57 AM, Debra Schrishuhn via Peace-discuss wrote: I hope our panelists will mention the Pentagon's huge carbon footprint at our event "hidden Costs of War" panel discussion at Champaign Pub Lib June 18 1:30-3 pm free and open to the public BTW cedar waxwings are plentiful around C-U right now, especially Crystal Lake Park and Busey Woods.  Deb Sent from my iPhone On Jun 4, 2017, at 9:03 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: Organizing Notes Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire.... About Me NAME: BRUCE K. GAGNON  LOCATION: BATH, MAINE, UNITED STATES View my complete profile Tragedy of the Niger DeltaMy MistakeMoving Words from a Vietnam VetSpeaking at the White HouseTerror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Kno...Photos from Two Days of Protest in Washington DCVFP Brings Letters to the Vietnam WallU.S. Pushing Regime Change in VenezuelaPentagon Pulls a Fast One on South KoreaHeading to Washington for Veterans Protest Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue"    Please like us on facebook   Please help us by making an online donation   Watch Bruce's Cable TV Show:"This Issue"    Please like us on facebook   Please help us by making an online donation   SATURDAY, JUNE 03, 2017 The Corporate Mega-Death Machine is Killing Everything This morning Mary Beth came running down the stairs telling us all to go look at our crab apple tree in the front yard which was full of Cedar Waxwings. I can't ever recall hearing of a Cedar Waxwing - I've likely seen them but don't have any memory of it. But this morning dozens of the beautiful birds were flitting around the crab apple and picking off caterpillars that are presently feasting on the tree leaves.  They must have worked that tree for at least an hour before taking off.  Later on I went out and looked for evidence of caterpillars on the tree but only saw one.  So hopefully the birds will come back in the days ahead and help save the tree from being totally denuded by the insects. The tree blossoms in late May - right around MB's birthday.  The smell of the flowers on the tree is heavenly.  I bought the tree for her birthday soon after we moved into this house. Following that hour of joy, we had both sat by the window and watched the beautiful show, MB and I went out to work in the garden. We planted 17 tomato plants, cucumbers, and squash and did a bunch of weeding.  I had to move some lettuce that is growing in clumps due to my shaking hands when I was planting the seeds - the plants grow where the seeds fall and in my case I dumped a load of them in one spot. The garden ground is wet from almost non-stop rain during recent weeks.  A farmer friend here in Maine says that more rain than usual is in our future due to climate change. All of this magnificent nature is now in peril as we see the US refusing to deal with the reality of global warming.  Some people can argue all they want against climate change but I am a true believer that our weather is now totally fucked up.  I was talking to someone in Texas yesterday who told me they've had rain for two weeks and she was coughing like mad.  I was coughing as well and so was the Global Network's layout design person who I had spoken to earlier in the day.  I caught the crud from MB. As the weather changes day-to-day our bodies are having a very hard time adjusting.  Last month we had a 93 degree day (the hottest recorded temperature for that day in Maine's history).  Then just days later we had to light a fire again to heat the kitchen. Add also to this reality the atmosphere regularly being filled with chemtrails that lace the sky from horizon to horizon.  The aluminum (and god knows what other toxic elements are being sprayed from these planes) gets into our lungs, the soil, the water, and ultimately our food chain.  That has to be lowering our immune system dramatically thus these hard bouts with the crud that never seems to go away. Don't you begin to wonder if someone is trying to thin the population?  I was talking with a friend the other day about all this and I asked the question, "Why would they (the ruling oligarchies) want to thin us out?"  The person's response was on the mark - "Because there are not going to be enough jobs."  Nothing like an unemployed superfluous person who figures out what is really going on - they become radicalized and a danger to the capitalist system. But the ruling 1% also knows that the planet is over populated.  So they know that their 'rule' on Earth is conditioned on reducing the global population and in doing so their mad hatter scientists come up with all kinds of insane programs for weather modification and geo-engineering.    So in the back of my mind this morning, while having this spiritual experience watching the birds feast on our tree, was global warming and chemtrails and how these phenomenon are currently impacting the birds, other wildlife, plants, and trees. Instead of surrendering to helplessness, which can be like a drug addiction, I feel even more compelled to push for conversion of the military industrial complex toward a sustainable society. There is far too much beauty in life for me to walk away from working to stop this corporate industrial mega-polluting model of society.  (I often feel like I am living in the middle of the collapse of the Aztec civilization.  I figure their rulers ignored the hell out of critics at that time too.)  We don't have much time left and so I will keep pushing to convert places like the General Dynamics Corp. Navy shipyard here in Bath, Maine. The US military has the largest carbon bootprint on the entire planet.  Official Washington 'insisted' that the Pentagon be exempted from monitoring by the Kyoto and Paris climate change protocols.  Why in hell do most mainstream environmental groups refuse to mention the Pentagon link to global warming?  So while everyone is now yelling at Trump because he wants to withdraw from the Paris accords, hardly anyone is noticing the military footprint connection.  It burns my britches. This is a collapsing industrial culture.  I want to stand with the birds.  Bruce posted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 1:56 PM  1 Comments:  Lisa Savage said... Home run blog post, Bruce. I'm with you, MB and the birds. 6/4/17, 4:12 AM Post a Comment Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] Links to this post: Create a Link << Home _______________________________________________ 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Sun Jun 4 21:25:32 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2017 16:25:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace] I will not be at AWARE mtg today because Channing-Murray annual meeting Message-ID: Dear AWARE, I will not be at AWARE mtg today because I need to be at the Channing-Murray annual meeting Channing-Murray Annual Membership Meeting Sunday, Jun 4, 2017; 5:30pm 1209 W Oregon, Urbana Il Potluck 5:30.Please bring an entrée, side dish, or dessert to share Annual Meeting 6:30 Agenda: * Minutes * Highlights of Year * Treasurer’s Report (fiscal year 2016 and the budget for 2017) * UU Declaration of Conscience * Report of Nominating Committee * Election of Board Members for 2017-2018 -- karen medina "The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jun 5 16:14:44 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2017 16:14:44 +0000 Subject: [Peace] The Philippines, is it our next Iraq, Libya, Syria, Panama? Message-ID: This article is almost a year old, but prescient…… https://theduran.com/philippines-pivot-action-can-punisher-withstand-americas-punishment/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Tue Jun 6 16:43:05 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2017 11:43:05 -0500 Subject: [Peace] "Daily Action": Call Rodney Davis against backing Saudi war crimes in Yemen Message-ID: Thanks to outreach by Kate Gould of FCNL, "Daily Action" has a call alert to the House today in support of HJR 102, the Amash-Pocan resolution against the Saudi arms deal. https://www.facebook.com/YourDailyAction/posts/443009356064384 The phone number they give to call is *844-241-1141*. If you use that number it's a double benefit. It connects you to Davis' office to give your pitch for them to co-sponsor the bill, but it also records that X number of people took action in response to the Daily Action alert, so the more people use that number, the more the people leading Daily Action will hopefully think, "OK, lots of people care about this, let's do more alerts on this in the future." === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Sign the petition: Congress: Vote NO on Trump's Saudi Arms Deal https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-vote-no-on-trumps?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Jun 8 15:04:01 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2017 10:04:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace] There's still time to call Durbin and Duckworth against the Saudi arms deal Message-ID: I don't have much doubt that when it comes to a vote, Durbin and Duckworth will vote for the Paul-Murphy-Franken resolution against the Saudi arms deal. Durbin was one of 27 Senators who voted against the Saudi tank deal in September. And Mark Kirk was another one of the 27. If Duckworth wasn't at least as good as Mark Kirk on this, that would be pretty remarkable. And you can bet we'd tell the whole world about it. But they could do more than vote the right way. They could lead. They could put out statements ahead of the vote, like Cardin did yesterday. That would help line up all Senate Democrats to support the resolution of disapproval. And if we get all or almost all Senate Democrats, we can win. All Senate Dems plus Paul, Lee, Young, Heller equals 52. The vote is expected today. Please call Durbin and Duckworth now. *1-855-68-NO-WAR. * ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Just Foreign Policy Date: Thu, Jun 8, 2017 at 8:49 AM Subject: Cardin, Merkley, NYT back vote against Saudi deal. THERE'S STILL TIME TO CALL To: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org [image: Just Foreign Policy] Dear Robert, *Today* a Senate vote is expected on Trump's Saudi arms deal. *There's still time to call your Senators. 1-855-68-NO-WAR. Talking points here .* Yesterday, Maryland Senator *Ben Cardin* said he would vote for the Paul-Murphy-Franken resolution against the Saudi arms deal. Cardin is the top Democrat on Senate Foreign Relations. Cardin voted against us on the Saudi tank deal last September. Yesterday, Oregon Senator *Jeff Merkley* co-sponsored the Paul-Murphy-Franken resolution against the deal. Like Cardin, Merkley voted against us last September. *Momentum is growing against Trump's Saudi arms deal.* Trump's over-the-top pro-Saudi intervention against Qatar has bolstered the case that Congressional pushback is needed against Trump's extreme pro-Saudi line. The *New York Times* concluded its editorial slamming Trump's pro-Saudi intervention against Qatar by urging Congress to support the resolution against the Saudi arms deal. [1] But several Senators - including key Democrats like Rhode Island's Jack Reed [top Dem on Armed Services] and New York's Chuck Schumer [top Senate Dem] are reportedly still on the fence on Trump's Saudi arms deal. [2] *There's still time to call your Senators. 1-855-68-NO-WAR. Talking points here .* Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just, Robert Naiman, Avram Reisman, and Sarah Burns Just Foreign Policy *If you think our work is important, support us with a $17 donation.* http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate References: 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/opinion/trump-qatar-saudi -arabia-iran.html 2. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/trump-senate-saudi- arabia-arms-239259 [image: Please support our work. Donate for a Just Foreign Policy] © 2016 Just Foreign Policy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Fri Jun 9 00:05:18 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2017 19:05:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace] the cost of coal / film: From The Ashes - Public Showing / June 18 (same time as the cost of war event) Message-ID: This is the same date as the "Cost of War" panel at the Champaign Public Library.... but if you are more inclined to see the cost of coal then you can do this instead... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Join us for a free public screening of the National Geographic film "From The Ashes" on Sunday, June 18 at 6 pm at the First Presbyterian Church. The movie discusses the true cost of coal with a panel discussion following the film. Sponsored by the First Presbyterian Church in cooperation with Interfaith Power and Light, Prairie Rivers Network, Prairie Group of the Sierra Club, Eco-Justice and Faith in Place. See the attached flyer for details. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: From the ashes flier (1).pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 3231174 bytes Desc: not available URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Fri Jun 9 07:35:04 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2017 02:35:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace] the cost of coal / film: From The Ashes - Public Showing / June 18 (same time as the cost of war event) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Or just make June 18 a day of activism! Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 8, 2017, at 7:05 PM, Karen Medina via Peace wrote: > > This is the same date as the "Cost of War" panel at the Champaign Public Library.... but if you are more inclined to see the cost of coal then you can do this instead... > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > Join us for a free public screening of the National Geographic film "From The Ashes" on Sunday, June 18 at 6 pm at the First Presbyterian Church. The movie discusses the true cost of coal with a panel discussion following the film. Sponsored by the First Presbyterian Church in cooperation with Interfaith Power and Light, Prairie Rivers Network, Prairie Group of the Sierra Club, Eco-Justice and Faith in Place. See the attached flyer for details. > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Fri Jun 9 14:27:29 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2017 09:27:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace] the cost of coal / film: From The Ashes - Public Showing / June 18 (same time as the cost of war event) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0c1bbcf0-da1a-529c-43ea-850aeb050ce2@gmail.com> Yes - the two events are at different times: 6/18 1:30-3pm Hidden Cost of War, Champaign Public Library rooms A+B 6/18 6pm "From the Ashes" film and panel, First Presbyterian Church, Urbana On 6/9/17 2:35 AM, Debra Schrishuhn via Peace wrote: > Or just make June 18 a day of activism! > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Jun 8, 2017, at 7:05 PM, Karen Medina via Peace > > wrote: > >> This is the same date as the "Cost of War" panel at the Champaign >> Public Library.... but if you are more inclined to see the cost of >> coal then you can do this instead... >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> >> Join us for a free public screening of the National Geographic film >> "From The Ashes" on Sunday, June 18 at 6 pm at the First Presbyterian >> Church. The movie discusses the true cost of coal with a panel >> discussion following the film. Sponsored by the First Presbyterian >> Church in cooperation with Interfaith Power and Light, Prairie Rivers >> Network, Prairie Group of the Sierra Club, Eco-Justice and Faith in >> Place. See the attached flyer for details. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 a-fields at illinois.edu Sun Jun 11 17:25:26 2017 From: a-fields at illinois.edu (Fields, A Belden) Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2017 17:25:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace] FW: Someone has sent you a message from News-Gazette.com In-Reply-To: <20170611172327.4300426933@web-2.prod.news-gazette.com> References: <20170611172327.4300426933@web-2.prod.news-gazette.com> Message-ID: <4BEF5039AB283245B9B22D29042452EB7434AB1B@CITESMBX4.ad.uillinois.edu> ________________________________ From: noreply at news-gazette.com [noreply at news-gazette.com] on behalf of Belden Fields [belden.fields at gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2017 12:23 PM To: Fields, A Belden Subject: Someone has sent you a message from News-Gazette.com Message from sender: No need to county loan for nursing home to meet payroll despite earlier articles in News-Gazette. Please help us spread the real facts out. Send to all lists you can. We are still fighting to keep this home out of privaate hands. Belden [News-Gazette.com] Published on News-Gazette.com (http://www.news-gazette.com) Home > State payment good news for county nursing home ________________________________ State payment good news for county nursing home Won't have to tap into $250,000 loan to meet payroll this week URBANA — The Champaign County Nursing Home will not need to tap into a $250,000 loan to meet its payroll this week, county board Chair C. Pius Weibel said Wednesday. The $250,000 fund was set up earlier this year by the county board to help with the nursing home's cash flow problems. ________________________________ Source URL: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-06-07/state-payment-good-news-county-nursing-home.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r-szoke at illinois.edu Sun Jun 11 17:35:39 2017 From: r-szoke at illinois.edu (Szoke, Ron) Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2017 17:35:39 +0000 Subject: [Peace] [sf-core] FW: Someone has sent you a message from News-Gazette.com In-Reply-To: <4BEF5039AB283245B9B22D29042452EB7434AB1B@CITESMBX4.ad.uillinois.edu> References: <20170611172327.4300426933@web-2.prod.news-gazette.com> <4BEF5039AB283245B9B22D29042452EB7434AB1B@CITESMBX4.ad.uillinois.edu> Message-ID: <812528C5-6343-4E27-8084-C662DDFCFEDB@illinois.edu> What about next week, & the week after? Will there be a weekly “crisis” & “emergency”? On Jun 11, 2017, at 12:25 PM, 'Fields, A Belden' a-fields at illinois.edu [sf-core] > wrote: ________________________________ From: noreply at news-gazette.com [noreply at news-gazette.com] on behalf of Belden Fields [belden.fields at gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2017 12:23 PM To: Fields, A Belden Subject: Someone has sent you a message from News-Gazette.com Message from sender: No need to county loan for nursing home to meet payroll despite earlier articles in News-Gazette. Please help us spread the real facts out. Send to all lists you can. We are still fighting to keep this home out of privaate hands. Belden [News-Gazette.com] Published on News-Gazette.com (http://www.news-gazette.com) Home > State payment good news for county nursing home ________________________________ State payment good news for county nursing home Won't have to tap into $250,000 loan to meet payroll this week URBANA — The Champaign County Nursing Home will not need to tap into a $250,000 loan to meet its payroll this week, county board Chair C. Pius Weibel said Wednesday. The $250,000 fund was set up earlier this year by the county board to help with the nursing home's cash flow problems. ________________________________ Source URL: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-06-07/state-payment-good-news-county-nursing-home.html __._,_.___ ________________________________ Posted by: "Fields, A Belden" > ________________________________ Reply via web post • Reply to sender • Reply to group • Start a New Topic • Messages in this topic (1) ________________________________ [https://s.yimg.com/ru/static/images/yg/img/megaphone/1464031581_phpFA8bON] Have you tried the highest rated email app? With 4.5 stars in iTunes, the Yahoo Mail app is the highest rated email app on the market. What are you waiting for? Now you can access all your inboxes (Gmail, Outlook, AOL and more) in one place. Never delete an email again with 1000GB of free cloud storage. ________________________________ VISIT YOUR GROUP [Yahoo! Groups] • Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From niloofar.peace at gmail.com Sun Jun 11 18:24:04 2017 From: niloofar.peace at gmail.com (Niloofar Shambayati) Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2017 13:24:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace] The Hidden Costs of War Message-ID: A panel discussion on the toll the U.S. military expenditure takes on the lives of the American people, followed by Q & A. Sunday, June 18, 1:30-3:00 PM Champaign Public Library Please, see the attached flyer, spread the word and participate in this important discussion. Thanks! Niloofar Shambayati -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: HIDDEN COSTS OF WAR-use this file.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 273853 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jun 12 14:29:12 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 14:29:12 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Paul Jay interview with Nina Turner in relation to the People's Summit. Message-ID: Interesting interview. The People’s Summit, is in fact, the Democratic Party Summit, given they would not allow The Green Party, or Socialist Alternative to participate. Last year it was all about promotion of Hillary, this year's focus is on Bernie. Discussion revolves around reform of the Democratic Party, with focus on electoral politics, because mere reform unless there are significant changes in the "system" of government, will do nothing to change the Party's policies. Paul Jay did elicit, finally, an acknowledgement that the Peoples Summit, the Democratic Party only focuses on domestic issues, avoiding all discussion of foreign policy. He also made the point, that supplying billions of dollars to the US war machine, while cutting social services is and should be the main concern or topic of discussion, not his words, mine. Please see the link below: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19310:Wall-St.-Democrats-vs-Working-Class-Democrats -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Mon Jun 12 14:52:45 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 09:52:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Paul Jay interview with Nina Turner in relation to the People's Summit. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Curious report. As one of the partnering organizations and as one of the very few organizations with the word "Democrats" in our name, I can unequivocally state that promoting the Democratic Party was not a core part of the agenda. In fact we (Progressive Democrats of America) had to fight hard to get a break-out session on transforming the Democratic Party. Mostly the speakers focused on issues, and when they focused on electoral politics, the message was getting more progressives elected no matter their party affiliation. I met a lot of activists there who do not identify as Democrats. I also attended last year's People's Summit, and can state with absolute certainty that it was NOT focused on supporting Clinton, but on how to get a progressive agenda pushed forward through the Democratic Party platform and the remainder of the 2016 election cycle, and exploring options of supporting progressives, again regardless of party affiliation, while avoiding election of reactionary Republicans. In that last goal there were a few successes and at least one spectacular failure. Deb Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 12, 2017, at 9:29 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: > > Interesting interview. The People’s Summit, is in fact, the Democratic Party Summit, given they would not allow The Green Party, or Socialist Alternative to participate. Last year it was all about promotion of Hillary, this year's focus is on Bernie. Discussion revolves around reform of the Democratic Party, with focus on electoral politics, because mere reform unless there are significant changes in the "system" of government, will do nothing to change the Party's policies. Paul Jay did elicit, finally, an acknowledgement that the Peoples Summit, the Democratic Party only focuses on domestic issues, avoiding all discussion of foreign policy. He also made the point, that supplying billions of dollars to the US war machine, while cutting social services is and should be the main concern or topic of discussion, not his words, mine. Please see the link below: > > http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19310:Wall-St.-Democrats-vs-Working-Class-Democrats > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon Jun 12 16:43:59 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:43:59 -0500 Subject: [Peace] do you know peace folks in Indiana? Message-ID: We need to generate more Indiana calls to the Senate today against Trump's Saudi arms deal. Young and Donnelly are key for us to win. Please forward this info to anyone you know in Indiana who might be willing to call: Tuesday: A Senate Roll Call on Saudi Arabia's War and Yemen's Famine http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/6/12/1671043/-Tuesday-A-Senate-Roll-Call-on-Saudi-Arabia-s-War-and-Yemen-s-Famine And please vote in the poll. We want to create a sense of Momentum... Thanks for anything you can do... === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Sign the petition: Congress: Vote NO on Trump's Saudi Arms Deal https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-vote-no-on-trumps?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Jun 13 18:59:34 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 18:59:34 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Paul Street on Counterpunch with twelve blasphemous thoughts to be shared Message-ID: JUNE 13, 2017 Twelve Blasphemous Thoughts: Some Summer Sacrilege by PAUL STREET * * * * Email * * [https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2015/07/print-sp.png] [https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2017/06/Screen-Shot-2017-06-13-at-6.37.10-AM.png] Photo by Thomas sauzedde | CC BY 2.0 Summer’s here and the time is right for sacrilege in the streets. Here are twelve blasphemous thoughts for the current Russo-phobic season, likely to be a real carbon- and (see below) capital-cooked scorcher. Wouldn’t That Have Been Russia’s Job? Forget for now the question of whether the Kremlin intervened to any significant degree against Hillary Clinton in “our great democratic process and elections” last year. I’ve been consistently skeptical about the claim, which continues to be made in the absence of any smoking gun. At the same time, I’ve always harbored the following question in the back of my mind: if the Russian did do what they are accused of, wouldn’t that have been the Russian foreign policy intelligence apparatus doing its very basic job of patriotic national self-defense? Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the broader Russo-phobic U.S.-imperial foreign policy establishment she represented seemed Hellbent on provoking a potentially deadly conflict with Russia over Ukraine, Crimea, and/or Syria. Hello? What Democratic Process and Elections? The Big Money-run United States is a damn near openly plutocratic oligarchy where the wealthy Few get what they want again and again regardless of majority working class sentiment. There’s a strong body of solid academic research demonstrating what Joe and Jane Six Pack already know about U.S. politics and policy: “money talks, bullshit walks.” You can’t have meaningful “democracy” in a nation where the top tenth of the upper 1 Percent owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Eighty-six years ago, the great American philosopher John Dewey observed that “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” Dewey rightly prophesized that U.S. politics would stay that way for as long as power resided in “business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents, and other means of publicity and propaganda.” Ten years later, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis made the very basic and elementary observation that Americans “must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Why all this nonsensical talk about “American democracy”? It’s a childish fantasy. Uncle Sam Interferes Abroad Like Crazy Who on Earth is the United States to get enraged about Russia or anyone else’s real or possible interference in other nation’s political processes and elections? Uncle Sam has long and regularly undertaken such interference across the planet. It still does. Just for starters, ask the people of Latin America about U.S. political interference past and present. “We” interfered like crazy in Russian politics during the 1990s and certainly continue to conduct covert political operations there as in countless other sovereign nations. “We” have acted to topple and overthrow dozens of foreign governments since World War Two. Why shouldn’t other nations try to impact U.S. politics by any means possible? Washington and Wall Street exercise powerful influence on life and politics in other nations whose people never have a say in U.S. policy. The United States’ outsized and deadly Superpower role (responsible for many millions of deaths around the world since 1945) means that other nations (Russia is certainly no exception) have a vested interest in the U.S. political process. Hello Mike Pence? But let’s ask another unpleasant question. If it were ever shown that the Orange-Tinted Beast treasonously colluded with Russia, do we really want Mike Pence in the White House? Impeachment and removal would put a vicious right-wing Christian white-nationalist zealot (Pence) in the Oval Office and probably speed the passage of the full right wing Republican agenda through Washington. That’s what the Constitution says. It lets Trump use Pence as a kind of deadly insurance policy against removal. What’s so Great About the Holy Constitution? This suggests another and truly sacrilegious question: what’s so damn great about the widely fetishized and damn-near deified U.S. Constitution? I won’t elaborate on this as I have recently published a Truthdig report on why we should hold a Constituent Assembly to go beyond that absurdly glorified and hideously anti-democratic charter, which was crafted with expressly classist intent and consequences by the early republic’s propertied masters near the end of the 18thcentury. Read that essay, titled “Impeach the Constitution,” here.Certainly, it’s absurd to think that a document crafted by wealthy slave-owners, opulent merchants, and other vast property-holders with the explicit purpose of keeping the “wicked” popular majority and its “secret sigh for a more equal distribution” of wealth (James Madison’s lovely phrase) at bay (see my essay if you think I’m lying) can function in meaningful service to popular self-rule in the 21st (or any other) century. Questions Not Posed to Comey Speaking of class rule, notice how none of James Comey’s examiners during the nationally televised hearings of the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday asked the former FBI Director any of the following questions suggested by Amy Goodman and Dennis Moynihan: “How far-reaching is the FBI’s surveillance of journalists?…Why did the FBI label nonviolent water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, possible domestic terrorists? What about the FBI’s similar infiltration of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter?…Regarding the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO suppression of dissent in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, how many of those targeted who are still incarcerated, such as American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, and the many imprisoned former Black Panthers, were imprisoned based on FBI misconduct?….Finally, where do you think we would be, as a country, if the FBI hadn’t targeted Martin Luther King Jr., with its unrelenting campaign of surveillance, intimidation and harassment, which very likely contributed to the climate of hate that led to his assassination?” Of course these queries were not posed. Russiagate is following in the footsteps of the Watergate hearings, which focused on Richard Nixon’s cover-up of an amateurish break-in of the headquarters of one of the nation’s leading capitalist parties but ignored the Nixon White House and FBI’s egregious violation of basic civil liberties in the domestic police state war on the New Left and the Black Freedom struggle. The small potatoes Watergate investigation also steered clear of Nixon’s arch-criminal invasion and bombing of Cambodia. See Noam Chomsky Weapons of Mass Distraction: The Biggest Issue of Our or Any Time is Not a News Story Here’s a scandalous observation: the news is a constant maddening distraction from the issues and problems that matter most, especially the deepening environmental crisis generated by the profits system. Nothing that Anderson Cooper and the rest of his Trump- and Comey- and Russia-obsessed panels have been jabbering about on CNN these days is remotely significant compared to the chilling (no irony originally intended) fact that atmospheric carbon parts per million (ppm) is now at a shocking 409.21, nearly full 10 points above just four years ago. We are now heading to 500 ppm by 2050. As Steven Newton wrote on Huffington Post almost one year ago: “That’s only 35 years away. A child born today will barely have moved out of Mom’s basement (at least, judging by some millennials) by the time CO2 reaches 500 ppm. The hundred-point rise between 300 to 400 ppm took about a century; the rise between 400 to 500 ppm will take only about 35 years, and with accelerating rates, the rise to 600 ppm will happen even faster.” Newton left something out: that is not survivable for the species. As the Australian Earth and paleoclimate scientist, Andrew Gliskon explained seven years ago: “The consequences of open ended rise in atmospheric CO2 are manifest in the geological record (Frontispiece). The world is in a lag period, when increasing atmospheric energy is expressed by intense hurricanes, increased pressure at mid-latitude high pressure zones and shift of climate zones toward the poles. With ensuing desertification of temperate zones, i.e. southern Europe , southern Australia , southern Africa , the desiccated forests become prey to firestorms….There is nowhere the 6.5 billion of contemporary humans can go, not even the barren planets into the study of which space agencies have been pouring more funding than governments allocate for environmental mitigation to date. At 460 ppm CO2-equivalent, the climate is tracking close to the upper stability limit of the Antarctic ice sheet, defined at approximately 500 ppm [5,7]. Once transcended, mitigation measures would hardly be able to re-form the cryosphere. According to Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Climate Impacts Institute and advisor to the German government: ‘We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.’” “Humans can not argue with the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere. What is needed are urgent measures including: Deep cuts in carbon emissions; Parallel Fast track transformation to non-polluting energy utilities – solar, solar-thermal, wind, tide, geothermal, hot rocks; Global reforestation and re-vegetation campaigns, including application of biochar. The alternative does not bear contemplation.” As the left philosopher John Sanbonmatsu told me years ago, global warming “is the biggest issue of our or any time.” (Though correspondent Richard Matthews recently reminded me to worry about “the 400 nuke power plants that will melt down as industrial civilization collapses if nuke war doesn’t come first.”). Please note the deafening silence in the reigning media and politics culture on “the biggest issue of our or any time.” Of all the maddening and insane things about the malignant narcissist Donald Trump, the most dangerous of all and is his climate change-denialist promise to “deregulate energy” – a pledge that amounts to what Noam Chomsky considers a potential “death-knell for the species.” The corporate media-politics system is deadening the citizenry to the most significant existential threats the species has ever faced. It’s insane. BDS the USA? Now that Trump has pulled the world’s top cumulative carbon contributor (USA, USA! being far in the historical lead) out of even the painfully modest and inadequate Paris Climate Accord, I am moved to ask another sacrilegious and not-entirely tongue-in-cheek question: Given U.S. leadership of geocidal climate destruction, the unparalleled and racist U.S. incarceration rate, the mass-murderous U.S. military Empire (which accounts for more than 40 percent of world military spending, eats up more than half of U.S. federal discretionary spending, maintains more than 1000 military installation across more than 100 “sovereign” nations, and has the largest carbon footprint of any institution on Earth), and the extreme inequality and plutocracy prevalent in the U.S….given all these and other problems (including rampant hedonistic idiocy and indifference), should we now issue a call to the international community for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) targeting the United States and its institutions engaged in the destruction of the common good? Think Capitalogenic, not Anthropogenic Climate Change Now for some sacrilege on our holy “free market” profits system. We should follow the lead of the brilliant Marxist environmental historian and sociologist Jason Moore and replace the term “anthropogenic global warming” with “capitalogenic global warming.” The currently popular scientific concept of “the Anthropocene” – an era in which Earth systems are now for the first time decisively influenced by human activity – has rich geological validity and holds welcome political relevance in countering the carbon-industrial complex’s denial of humanity’s responsibility for contemporary climate change. Still, we must guard against lapsing into the historically unspecific and class-blind uses of “anthros,” projecting the currently and historically recent age of capital onto the broad 100,000-year swath of human activity on and in nature. As Moore told the left interviewer Sasha Lilley two years ago, “It was not humanity as whole that created …large-scale industry and the massive textile factories of Manchester in the 19th century or Detroit in the last century or Shenzen today. It was capital.” Read those two sentences again and commit them to memory. It is only during a relatively small slice of human history – roughly the last half-millennium giveor take a century or so – that humanity has been socially and institutionally wired from the top down to wreck livable ecology. Moore and other left analysts argue with good reason that it is more appropriate to understand humanity’s Earth-altering assault on livable ecology as “Capitalocene.” After all, it is only during the relatively brief period of history when capitalism has existed and ruled the world system (since 1600 or thereabouts by some academic calculations, earlier and later by others) that human social organization has developed the capacity and inner accumulation- and commodification – and “productivity” – and growth-mad compulsion to transform Earth systems – with profitability and “productivity” dependent upon on the relentless appropriation of “cheap nature” (cheap food, cheap energy, cheap raw materials and cheap human labor power or cheap human nature). Moore maintains that human destruction of livable ecology is best explained by changes that capitalism’s addictive and interrelated pursuits of profit and empire imposed on humanity’s relationships with “the web of life” since “the long sixteenth century” starting in 1450. One of the great and tragic consequences of contemporary class (capitalist) rule and mass consent manufacture is that most U.S. Americans can now more readily imagine the end of life itself than they can envision the end of the relatively recent and very specific historical phenomenon known as capitalism. No More Children Until We Fix This Now for some real blasphemy. I really cannot recommend anyone having children at this juncture. I know that’s a terrible thing to say but we are currently on track for 500 ppm, by 2050 (that’s 33 years away) and 500 ppm is the dissolution of the cryosphere. Antarctica is gone at that level. That’s game over. The “very life support of the system of this planet” is now in epic crisis and the most powerful nation on earth and in history (the U.S.) is also the leading cumulative carbon emission contributor by far and is ruled by a soulless, socio-pathological capitalist class that is shockingly ready to lead the world over the cliff. Talk about “The End of History.” Fukuyama may have been right but not in quite the way he thought. The only thing that can save chances for a decent future worthy of new life is a massive popular upheaval leading to a full conversion from fossil fuels to renewable energy along with giant programs of global re-forestation and re-vegetation. I see young adults with 1-2-year old babies and toddlers in strollers and car seats and I have three blasphemous thoughts these days: (1) are they aware that those strollers and car seats (posture nightmares) are destroying the structure and development of their child’s backs and necks? (2) did they look at the Earth science before they brought new life into this world? (3) They’d better figure out how to focus their lives on bringing about an eco-socialist revolution if they want their kids to have any shot at a decent life. Bernie is Who We Said He Was Let me re-state some especially irritating sacrilege to my “progressive” friends: we “perfectionist” radicals told you so and not just about Obama, but also about Bernie F-35 Sanders. It’s considered rude to gloat about having gotten things right while others didn’t. But I don’t really mean to gloat. I wish instead to instead to suggest that the progressive and liberal left (think The Nation, AlterNet, In These Times and the like) might want to pay more attention to its more serious “hard radical” voices (think Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, John Pilger) when we issue serious and deeply considered warnings about Democratic Party politicos posing as populist champions of peace, equality, and the common good. I won’t belabor the point about Obama, who Dr. Adolph Reed, Jr. all too easily and accurately identified as a “vacuous to repressive neoliberal” as early as January of 1996. That’s old news though now with the added proof of the Dollar Obomber’s great and highly distasteful post-presidential cash-in (since nothing says “show me the money” like POTUS on your resume). With Bernie of late, we have gotten yet more evidence that he is in fact the imperialist and sheep-dogging fake-socialist Democratic Party company man that some of us the “hard radical” Left said he was. “Bomber Bernie” (as he was quite properly nicknamed by Vermont peace activists when he jumped on board Bill Clinton’s criminal attack on Serbia in 1999) let his imperialist colors fly regarding Donald Trump’s ridiculous, dog-wagging missile-launch into Syria this last spring. Behold this reflection from Young Turk Michael Tracy last April 11th: “Sanders’ initial statement on the strikes contained nothing that could be reasonably construed as a declaration of opposition…misleadingly, the statement was then excerpted into individual tweets, which falsely gave the impression that Sanders opposed the strikes, when all he had done was signal his “deep concern” as to the potential ramifications of the strikes. That’s a crucial distinction….’Raising concerns’ is not tantamount to an expression of clear, articulable opposition. One can support the Syria strikes, and yet be ‘concerned’ about the second-order effect of them, and the escalated conflict that might result. (See Schumer, Chuck, who rushed to endorse Trump’s attack within hours, only to then follow-up later with expressions of “worry” as to the long-term consequences).” “Similarly, Sanders expressed ‘concern’ about the potential consequences of Trump’s attack, but not opposition to the act itself. Unlike Schatz, Paul, and Gabbard, he has not rejected on principle the utility of American military force in this circumstance. He merely wants Trump to ‘explain to the American people’ what is to be achieved by the strikes, and to put forward a plan for a ‘political solution.’ Neither of these demands constitutes first-order opposition to the strikes: They are second-order worries. Even Sanders’ procedural complaints don’t signify opposition — unlike [even] Kaine, he doesn’t declare the strikes ‘unlawful,’ he merely says that ‘Congress has a responsibility to weigh in,’ which virtually no one in that body would disagree with.” “Then, on Meet the Press this past Sunday, Sanders went further: ‘We eventually have got to get rid of Assad,’ he told Chuck Todd, thereby endorsing the underlying logic of regime change. His only apparent recommendation is that this particular regime change be effectuated multi-laterally, i.e, the US should enlist some Middle Eastern autocrats to help out.” (emphasis added). How’s was that for Left Resistance, Bernie-style? That’s war socialism for you, as in Kautsky, Karl (who was, however, actually a Marxist and socialist, unlike the New Deal liberal Sanders). One is not a “perfectionist” just because they can’t get behind a politician who claims to a social democrat – even a democratic socialist – but who can’t seem to grasp the elementary moral and practical (fiscal and programmatic) contradiction between (a) calling for progressive policy and (b) backing the giant Pentagon System and the historically unmatched global empire it equips and staffs. If one is a left “perfectionist” because they expect post-Vietnam era progressives to honor the basic anti-imperial wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 4th 1967 “A Time to Break the Silence” speech, then I plead guilty. It’s true that Bernie recently gave a rousing Chicago speech in which he properly bellowed that “Trump didn’t win the election, the [neoliberal Clinton-Obama – P.S.] Democratic Party lost the election” and that “the current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure.” Sanders’ criticism of the Democratic party as out-of-touch and elitist resonated with activists at the People’s Summit. Audience members roared their approval when Sanders said that “the Democratic Party needs fundamental change [and to] understand what side it is on. And that cannot be the side of Wall Street, or the fossil fuel industry, or the drug companies.” I won’t bother to criticize the notion that significant revolutionary change will or even can take place within and through the Democratic Party (it can’t and won’t). That’s an ancient, never-ending progressive fantasy. The main things that struck me were (a) that Sanders’ oration indicated no movement left (Dr. King-ward) on U.S. foreign policy (imperialism) and (b) that he repeated the establishment claim that Vladimir Putin has been trying to “destabilize democracy” (listen the speech hyperlinked above from 38:45 to 39:10) in the U.S. What democracy, Bernie? (There was also this strange and repellent line in Sanders speech: “Even a very conservative Republican president like George W. Bush understood that one of the important functions of a leader in a democratic society is to bring people together, not separate them.” That statement, which must be some kind of reference to Dubya rallying the nation [in nationalistic hatred] after the 9/11 jetliner attacks [the hatred was then exploited for the arch-criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq], is so stupid and reactionary it almost defies belief.) Something Rotten in the State of Independent Left Media My final blasphemy: there’s something wrong with what passes for independent “left” media in the U.S. today. In an interview concerning David J. Garrow’s recent epic biography of Barack Obama on Dr. Jared Ball’s show imixwhatilike last week, I told the host the story of my last-minute cancellation at Democracy Now! (DN) in December of 2008. I had been scheduled to discuss my all-too sadly predictive book Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics(Paradigm, June 2008). I was in New York, flown out there with assistance from my publisher to try to warn folks about the fake-progressive and arch-corporatist, Goldman Sachs-staffed, and imperialist Obama presidency to come. The then the call came to my cell phone on the morning of my scheduled interview as I walked out of midtown Manhattan’s Port Authority and started heading down to DN’s headquarters. The spot was off, cancelled. I had trekked out to the Big Apple for…nothing. Amy and Juan had other matters to which to attend. There was no hint of rescheduling or revisiting prior to the Inauguration. A very basic calculation took hold: nice middle-class DN viewers and contributors would have been put off by my all-too subsequently validated evidence- and history-based projections on the Obamanistic betrayals to come. Ball then related how having “perfectionist” me on to speak candidly and seriously about the limits of candidate Sanders from a left perspective was a factor in his recent dismissal from another leading left media outlet. DN’s Goodman has given some credence to the dismal dollar-drenched Dems’ cynical and distracting Russiagate narrative. So now has The Intercept, founded by the E-Bay and Pay Pal billionaire Pierre Omidyar, who pays the journal’s top and brilliant civil-libertarian writer Glenn Greenwald between $250K and $1 million per year. To his credit, the Rolling Stone’s also brilliant and left-liberal, Trump presidency-predicting writer Matt Taibbi ran away from Omidyar’s “independent journalism” scheme after a brief fling three years ago. But now comes depressing news from the left Canadian writer Joe Emersberger: “In an op-ed for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi called Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ‘the infamous left-wing dictator of Venezuela.’ To back up his case, Taibbi cited Julio Borges, president of the National Assembly and a leading opposition figure and Henrique Capriles, the opposition governor of the state of Miranda. Didn’t Taibbi notice a huge contradiction in his piece right there? How does the opposition win major elections in a dictatorship?…It gets worse. Julio Borges, as Taibbi also alludes to in his piece, has been using his position as head to the National Assembly to try to get economic sanctions implemented against Maduro’s government. Borges’ predecessor as president of the National Assembly, another opposition leader (Henry Ramos), boasted about having a lot of success scaring away investors – again by using his position as head of the National Assembly which the opposition won control over in December of 2015.” Good grief. I like Matt Taibbi and have learned a lot about Goldman Sachs and Wall Street’s perversion of America from him, but now even he has lined up with the vicious U.S.-sponsored right-wing assault on Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Is nothing sacred? Join the debate on Facebook More articles by:PAUL STREET Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014) CounterPunch Magazine [minimag-edit] Subscribe! 36 Pages, 6 Times a Year [bernie-the-sandernistas-cover-344x550] [zen economics] June 13, 2017 PAUL STREET Twelve Blasphemous Thoughts: Some Summer Sacrilege TYLER WILCH The Drone War: Understanding Who Must Die From Above REV. WILLIAM ALBERTS “Forgive Us Our Trespasses, as We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us” CHRIS WRIGHT A 21st-Century Marxism: The Revolutionary Possibilities of the “New Economy” BEN DANGL “For the Many, Not the Few:” Labour Party Gains in Britain Highlight Political Viability of Socialism MEDEA BENJAMIN Head of National Nurses Encourages Bernie Sanders to Start a People’s Party FRANK SCOTT Islamophobic Neocons, Russophobic Neolibs JOHN K. WHITE Liars, Damn Liars, and Scoundrels DAVID MACARAY Trump’s Extraordinary Cabinet N.D. JAYAPRAKASH No More Con Games: Abolish Nuclear Weapons Now! LAWRENCE WITTNER National Illusions and Global Realities JEFFREY PERRY 100th Anniversary of Hubert Harrison’s Founding of the First Organization of the Militant “New Negro Movement” CLANCY SIGAL Wonder Women ANDRÉS CASTRO Without a Grain of Salt June 12, 2017 KENNETH SURIN Sometimes Our Nightmares Don’t Come True: the Tories Lose Their Majority BILL MEULEMANS What the Nazis Did to Us ELLEN BROWN Mr. President, Be Careful What You Wish for: Higher Interest Rates Will Kill the Recovery DAVID ROSEN An End to Conversion Therapy? PATRICK COCKBURN Britain Refuses to Accept How Terrorists Really Work DANIEL READ Qatar on the Back Foot: Even Without “Shock and Awe” Trump’s Foreign Policy Lurks Behind Renewed Crisis in the Middle East KEVIN ZEESE - MARGARET FLOWERS Corbyn’s Lesson: Embrace Change We Need SUSAN BABBITT What Not to say to New Graduates Who do Care About the Planet NICK OLTMANN Katie McHugh’s Expendable Labor THOMAS S. HARRINGTON Such a “Surprise” in the UK! YVES ENGLER Trudeau Ramps Up Military MARK WEISBROT The Resurrection of Jeremy Corbyn BINOY KAMPMARK The Comey Show JESSELYN RADACK Reality Winner is a Whistleblower Weekend Edition June 09, 2017 Friday - Sunday CHRIS FLOYD False Dawn or New Hope: Right-Wing Pact Imperils UK Paradigm Shift ANDREW LEVINE Pro-Trump Identity Politics JEFFREY ST. CLAIR The Architect vs. the FBI: Frank Lloyd Wright at 150 JONATHAN COOK The Facts Proving Corbyn’s Election Triumph VIJAY PRASHAD Trump’s World Order BEN DEBNEY The Paranoid Style of Counter-Terrorism CHRIS WELZENBACH The Plight of the “Other”: Immigrants and Refugees in America’s Heartland SHAMUS COOKE Lessons From Portland’s Clashes With Fascists RUSSELL MOKHIBER Single-Payer is Not a Priority Even for Democrats Who Say They Support Single-Payer TED RALL The Donald Trump Lies You Forgot PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS Without a New Glass-Steagall America Will Fail STANLEY L. COHEN Breaking With Qatar PETE DOLACK A Climatic Baby Step Forward Beats a Leap Backward RYAN LAMOTHE Patriotism: the Future of an Illusion THOMAS S. HARRINGTON The Relentless Pulse of Pro-Israel Propaganda in Our Lives JOHN FEFFER Can South Korea Prevent a US Attack on North Korea? ANN GARRISON Putin vs. Megyn Kelly: a Poorly Planned Match CounterPunch Tells the Facts and Names the Names Published since 1996 Copyright © CounterPunch All rights reserved. counterpunch at counterpunch.org Mailing Address CounterPunch PO Box 228 Petrolia, CA 95558 Telephone 1(707) 629-3683 or 1(800) 840-3683 Editorial Jeffrey St. Clair, Editor Joshua Frank, Managing Editor Nathaniel St. Clair, Social Media Alexander Cockburn, -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Tue Jun 13 19:54:02 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 14:54:02 -0500 Subject: [Peace] The Hidden Costs of War In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <83562410-7F39-40BD-8C82-61C1FE8B558E@illinois.edu> What would we have said of a discussion in a German university town in 1942 "about the financial, social, and environment costs Germans bear to support and pay for the conduct of endless military interventions in Asia and Africa"? That it was an exercise in missing the point? —CGE > On Jun 11, 2017, at 1:24 PM, Niloofar Shambayati via Peace wrote: > > A panel discussion on the toll the U.S. military expenditure takes on the lives of the American people, followed by Q & A. > > Sunday, June 18, 1:30-3:00 PM > Champaign Public Library > > Please, see the attached flyer, spread the word and participate in this important discussion. Thanks! > > Niloofar Shambayati > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Wed Jun 14 10:41:30 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2017 05:41:30 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Call Senators now on health care bill Message-ID: <4140D640-C76E-4D40-B784-D9325BEC7BBC@gmail.com> 1. Need more people to have access to affordable, quality health care 2. Pre-existing conditions should not be a financial barrier to access to affordable, quality health care 3. Oppose any form of TrumpCare that leaves fewer people insured 4. Ultimate solution to U.S. Health crisis is Medicare for All There are 52 Republican Senators. Call them all plus call Sens Duckworth and Durbin and ask them to become original co-sponsors of Sen Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill. You can get numbers from DC switchboard; Daily Kos has a listing of all Senators and their health care staffers. Get on the phones! Silence = Complicity Deb Sent from my iPhone From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jun 14 23:17:37 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2017 23:17:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace] New infrastructure, but privatized? Message-ID: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » What is in Trump’s $200 billion infrastructure plan? By Gabriel Black 14 June 2017 Trump’s infrastructure plan was released late last month as part of his proposed 2018 budget. The vague proposal, which according to his administration will be worked out in detail by the fall of this year, will lead to the mass sell-off of public infrastructure throughout the country while simultaneously slashing the transportation budget. The plan earmarks $200 billion over 10 years. Though there are no details yet, a Trump administration memo suggests that the bulk of the money will be given to states and local governments as incentives for privatizing public infrastructure. Moreover, more than $200 billion will simultaneously be cut from the transportation budget. This will likely hurt, among other programs, Amtrak, the national passenger rail service, potentially shutting it down, and TIGER, a program that gives state grants to fund infrastructure projects. Trump’s dubious plan will not repair or upgrade the decrepit and outmoded American infrastructure and transit systems. The proposal will force the public to pay new tolls and fees for basic transportation needs with no guarantees that the monopolies that control the roads will maintain them properly. The true beneficiaries of Trump’s plan are a handful of financial parasites and corporate conglomerates that will rake in the cash from this unprecedented transaction. Everything about the plan stinks of a disastrous con job. Trump ran for president on the promise that he would bring $1 trillion in infrastructure spending to the decaying and broken infrastructure of the United States. It is notable then that his administration has essentially slipped this into the 2018 budget without any mention of it to the public. The deal is too rotten to show more publicly. The heart of the deal seems to be the encouragement of something known as P3, that is a public-private partnership schemes. The plan has most notably been tested in Australia, where it is known as the “Asset Recycling Initiative.” Since 2013, the Australian government has paid an Australian state and two territories 15 percent of public assets they sell off as an incentive to make the sale. Joyce Nelson, an economist, writes in her book Beyond Banksters: “Australian critics of ‘asset recycling’ say it is basically ‘selling a hospital to build a road,’ with the federal government bribing local governments with incentive payments in order to sell off public assets.” Australian economist William Mitchell notes that these schemes “have systematically failed to deliver on the promises made by the consultants.” Meanwhile, he writes, “The stockbroking and legal companies and economists who advised governments in these public robberies have all done very well.” The Trump Administration is also considering some direct federal investments, but its memo makes clear that it believes local governments have become too reliant on federal funds. It euphemistically calls on “encouraging self-help” at the local level, by which it means pressuring local governments to make the choice to sell off assets. It must be stressed that there is nothing unique in Trump’s championing of P3. The Democratic Party and Republican Party have both stressed the need for public-private partnerships as the solution to the infrastructural and local-public debt problem in the United States. In the Detroit metro area, for example, Democratic politicians have played a key role in selling off infrastructure to private companies. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which has repeatedly warned about the dismal state of US infrastructure, also advocates P3 as the solution. The group has written, “Infrastructure owners and operators must charge, and Americans must be willing to pay, rates and fees that reflect the true cost of using, maintaining, and improving infrastructure.” The ASCE advocates “user generated fees,” hiking the gasoline tax, and other regressive proposals that would disproportionately affect the country’s poorest citizens. The group also calls for more “public-private” partnerships, along with the streamlining of approval for private investment in public infrastructure projects. These are all currently being considered by the Trump administration. Because roads, highways, transit lines, and other infrastructure investments are expensive long-term investments, it is rare to be able to have any kind of competition between service providers in a region. Having two highways going between the same places would be unprofitable, not to say irrational. The result is that privatization of public infrastructure always means monopoly privatization, with one company in charge of necessary infrastructure. This monopoly allows the company to charge exorbitant fees or provide sub-standard service with no repercussions. Reorienting American infrastructure along private lines would only create an ever more class-based infrastructure system, where only those who could afford to will be able to drive on high-toll expressways and bridges, send their children to quality schools, drink clean water and live in areas not threatened with constant flooding or environmental disasters. States and local municipalities whose budgets partially rely on revenue from transportation will likely be hurt in the long run by P3 schemes. For example, a privatization scheme of Chicago meters cost the city $974 million in revenue, according to the Inspector General’s office. Depriving states and municipalities of this source of revenue would compound a future budget crisis in the event of a future financial collapse. This would encourage cases like Detroit and Stockton where the collapse of city funds acts as a springboard for brutal cuts to worker pensions, pay, medical benefit and city services. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 15 01:26:57 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 01:26:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Democrats Foreign Policy Vision? Message-ID: Democrats Don’t Have a Progressive Foreign Policy Vision. And They Need One by Evan Popp * * * * * * * 13 Comments [https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/views-article/afghanistan_12.jpeg?itok=orFzF4Sd] President Barack Obama waves at the conclusion of his remarks to U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 25, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit.” By this he meant not putting boots on the ground in long-term, unwinnable wars. What this vision didn’t include was ending those wars or pursuing a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. Obama’s Democratic Party has not advanced far past this vision since the end of his time in office. While the party has moved to the left on many domestic issues, and emerged as an effective counterbalance to the meanness and incoherence of Donald Trump, many Democrats remain wedded to Obama’s foreign policy legacy. This is the one area in which Trump has managed to win bipartisan support. He does not deserve it. For example, last week airstrikes in Syria by a U.S.-led coalition killed at least 12 people, including women and children. The response from Democrats in Congress: radio silence. Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit,” but his vision didn’t include a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. Even worse, consider the Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s April airstrike in Syria after the Syrian government’s horrific use of chemical weapons on its own people. Critics slammed Trump for bypassing Congress, arguing that the airstrike was unconstitutional and didn’t solve any of the underlying issues in Syria. But twenty-nine Democratic Senators supported the strike; only five opposed it. In addition, a number of Democratic leaders in the House praised the strike. Beyond their support for the Syrian airstrike, top Democrats have disappointing records on issues of war and peace. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is a leading supporter of Israel, despite its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi also has a history of hawkishness in the Middle East, as documented by the Institute for Policy Studies. And Hillary Clinton, the Democratic standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election, promoted militaristic solutions to international issues as Secretary of State, as well as during her campaign for President. Even Democrats like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have failed to articulate a progressive foreign policy. During his presidential campaign, Sanders’s main foreign policy talking point was his vote against the war in Iraq. While he was less hawkish overall than Clinton, Sanders didn’t rule out continuing Obama’s drone program that has killed thousands of civilians. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK, tells The Progressive that Democrats “have a foreign policy message that is pretty much a continuation of what George Bush had and Obama followed. It’s hard for them to challenge Donald Trump because they have a vision that’s quite similar. I think that the Democrats are really a war party, just like the Republicans are.” There are individual Democrats whose foreign policy is less hawkish. Representative Barbara Lee of California, for example, has consistently opposed war. Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the post 9/11 authorization of military force, has spoken outagainst Obama’s aggressive use of drone strikes. And Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has called for a de-emphasis of American military force and slammed the proposed $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which is using U.S. weapons in its brutal war against Yemen. But Murphy also opposes cuts to the United States’ bloated military budget, which is larger than the next seven highest spending countries combined. Norman Solomon, author of the book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and co-founder of the group RootsAction, tells The Progressive that Democrats would likely gain politically if they had a more forward-looking foreign policy. [A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy] “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate,” he argues. Polls back him up. A 2017 survey found more than half of Democratic voters disapproved of Trump’s airstrike in Syria. In addition, a 2016 poll showed that a majority of Democrats would support cutting the defense budget by $36 billion. “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate.” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, tells The Progressive that one problem with Democratic foreign policy is that many lawmakers were previously on city councils or were members of state legislatures and didn’t have to deal with foreign affairs. He says when they get to Congress, lawmakers often follow the Democratic leadership on foreign policy votes. Martin says there needs to be a focus on educating lawmakers about foreign policy. “It’s important that Democrats think about foreign policy and find a good position,” he says. “They need to take some ownership for their positions and not fall into the trap where they feel like they have to react to things with force all the time.” With terror attacks on the rise and fears growing over ISIS, the temptation to pursue military strategies will only grow. As the opposition party, Democrats need an alternative foreign policy based on international diplomacy and the pursuit of peace, rather than the same warmongering strategies that create terrorist organizations like ISIS. If the Democrats regain power in Congress and the White House, it’s important they have a foreign policy that breaks from the Bush-Obama-Trump continuum of endless war. But what would such a foreign policy look like? Along with ending the war in Afghanistan, CODEPINK’s Benjamin says it would mean challenging the Pentagon on its extreme budget as well as stopping weapons deals with oppressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Democrats appear to be taking a step forward on that front, with the majority opposing an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, tells The Progressive that forward-thinking foreign policy also has to rely on negotiations rather than violence. “If you look at Obama’s foreign policy successes like the Paris climate deal, the move toward normalcy in Cuba and most of all the Iran nuclear deal, they were all examples of the victory of diplomacy over war,” she says, adding that Obama’s foreign policy failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia were instances when war trumped diplomacy. However, Bennis says the peace movement will have to pressure Democrats to move toward a progressive foreign policy. They won’t do it themselves, she argues. “The Democrats are never going to lead the progressive movement,” Bennis says. “The movements lead and demand of the Democratic Party that if they want support from the most mobilized, most conscious, and most committed component of their base, they damn well better include a progressive foreign policy vision.” © 2016 The Progressive [https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_bio_small/public/authors/popp.jpg?itok=NbTRQODk] Evan Popp is a journalism student at Ithaca College currently interning at the Institute for Public Accuracy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 15 10:59:53 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 10:59:53 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Democrats Foreign Policy Vision? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Carl G. Estabrook Nonsense. Democrats (and Republicans) have a progressive [sic] foreign policy vision, as the State Department pointed out years ago: "...we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction." — Report by the Policy Planning Staff | top secret | February 24, 1948 | PPS/23 On Jun 14, 2017, at 18:26, Karen Aram via Peace > wrote: Democrats Don’t Have a Progressive Foreign Policy Vision. And They Need One by Evan Popp * * * * * * * 13 Comments [https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/views-article/afghanistan_12.jpeg?itok=orFzF4Sd] President Barack Obama waves at the conclusion of his remarks to U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 25, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit.” By this he meant not putting boots on the ground in long-term, unwinnable wars. What this vision didn’t include was ending those wars or pursuing a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. Obama’s Democratic Party has not advanced far past this vision since the end of his time in office. While the party has moved to the left on many domestic issues, and emerged as an effective counterbalance to the meanness and incoherence of Donald Trump, many Democrats remain wedded to Obama’s foreign policy legacy. This is the one area in which Trump has managed to win bipartisan support. He does not deserve it. For example, last week airstrikes in Syria by a U.S.-led coalition killed at least 12 people, including women and children. The response from Democrats in Congress: radio silence. Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit,” but his vision didn’t include a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. Even worse, consider the Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s April airstrike in Syria after the Syrian government’s horrific use of chemical weapons on its own people. Critics slammed Trump for bypassing Congress, arguing that the airstrike was unconstitutional and didn’t solve any of the underlying issues in Syria. But twenty-nine Democratic Senators supported the strike; only five opposed it. In addition, a number of Democratic leaders in the House praised the strike. Beyond their support for the Syrian airstrike, top Democrats have disappointing records on issues of war and peace. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is a leading supporter of Israel, despite its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi also has a history of hawkishness in the Middle East, as documented by the Institute for Policy Studies. And Hillary Clinton, the Democratic standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election, promoted militaristic solutions to international issues as Secretary of State, as well as during her campaign for President. Even Democrats like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have failed to articulate a progressive foreign policy. During his presidential campaign, Sanders’s main foreign policy talking point was his vote against the war in Iraq. While he was less hawkish overall than Clinton, Sanders didn’t rule out continuing Obama’s drone program that has killed thousands of civilians. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK, tells The Progressive that Democrats “have a foreign policy message that is pretty much a continuation of what George Bush had and Obama followed. It’s hard for them to challenge Donald Trump because they have a vision that’s quite similar. I think that the Democrats are really a war party, just like the Republicans are.” There are individual Democrats whose foreign policy is less hawkish. Representative Barbara Lee of California, for example, has consistently opposed war. Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the post 9/11 authorization of military force, has spoken outagainst Obama’s aggressive use of drone strikes. And Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has called for a de-emphasis of American military force and slammed the proposed $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which is using U.S. weapons in its brutal war against Yemen. But Murphy also opposes cuts to the United States’ bloated military budget, which is larger than the next seven highest spending countries combined. Norman Solomon, author of the book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and co-founder of the group RootsAction, tells The Progressive that Democrats would likely gain politically if they had a more forward-looking foreign policy. [A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy] “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate,” he argues. Polls back him up. A 2017 survey found more than half of Democratic voters disapproved of Trump’s airstrike in Syria. In addition, a 2016 poll showed that a majority of Democrats would support cutting the defense budget by $36 billion. “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate.” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, tells The Progressive that one problem with Democratic foreign policy is that many lawmakers were previously on city councils or were members of state legislatures and didn’t have to deal with foreign affairs. He says when they get to Congress, lawmakers often follow the Democratic leadership on foreign policy votes. Martin says there needs to be a focus on educating lawmakers about foreign policy. “It’s important that Democrats think about foreign policy and find a good position,” he says. “They need to take some ownership for their positions and not fall into the trap where they feel like they have to react to things with force all the time.” With terror attacks on the rise and fears growing over ISIS, the temptation to pursue military strategies will only grow. As the opposition party, Democrats need an alternative foreign policy based on international diplomacy and the pursuit of peace, rather than the same warmongering strategies that create terrorist organizations like ISIS. If the Democrats regain power in Congress and the White House, it’s important they have a foreign policy that breaks from the Bush-Obama-Trump continuum of endless war. But what would such a foreign policy look like? Along with ending the war in Afghanistan, CODEPINK’s Benjamin says it would mean challenging the Pentagon on its extreme budget as well as stopping weapons deals with oppressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Democrats appear to be taking a step forward on that front, with the majority opposing an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, tells The Progressive that forward-thinking foreign policy also has to rely on negotiations rather than violence. “If you look at Obama’s foreign policy successes like the Paris climate deal, the move toward normalcy in Cuba and most of all the Iran nuclear deal, they were all examples of the victory of diplomacy over war,” she says, adding that Obama’s foreign policy failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia were instances when war trumped diplomacy. However, Bennis says the peace movement will have to pressure Democrats to move toward a progressive foreign policy. They won’t do it themselves, she argues. “The Democrats are never going to lead the progressive movement,” Bennis says. “The movements lead and demand of the Democratic Party that if they want support from the most mobilized, most conscious, and most committed component of their base, they damn well better include a progressive foreign policy vision.” © 2016 The Progressive [https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_bio_small/public/authors/popp.jpg?itok=NbTRQODk] Evan Popp is a journalism student at Ithaca College currently interning at the Institute for Public Accuracy. _______________________________________________ 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 Thu Jun 15 12:56:16 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 12:56:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace] "An important upcoming event Message-ID: WHAT: A panel discussion about the financial, social, and environment costs Americans bear to support and pay for the conduct of endless military interventions in Asia and Africa. WHERE: Champaign Public Library, Rooms A&B, 200 W. Green St., Champaign WHEN: Sunday, June 18, 1:30 - 3 PM PANELISTS: * Maryam Ar-Raheem, Chair, Champaign County Democrats; Racial Justice Task Force; founding member, Sister Net; fmr. Dir., A Woman’s Place; fmr. Exec. Dir., UI YWCA; ret. AFSCME union rep at- large. * Morton Brussel, Professor of Physics emeritus, UIUC, nuclear physics research, Union of Concerned Scientists * David Johnson, Host, World Labor Hour; Jobs with Justice; Industrial Workers of the World ( I.W.W.); AFL-CIO of Champaign County * Augustus Wood, UIUC PhD candidate; Co-President, Graduate Employees Organization; Black Students for Revolution; Co-Host, World Labor Hour CO-SPONSORS: Build Programs, Not Jails; Channing Murray Foundation; Central Illinois Jobs with Justice; Eco-Justice Collaborative; People Demanding Action; The People’s Agenda; Food Not Bombs; Prairie Group of Sierra Club; Peace & Service Comm. of the U-C Friends Meeting; Three Spinners. [https://scontent.ford1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/c0.4.733.386/p526x395/18922092_10155467631117502_218656547965845180_n.jpg?oh=fe52cee55010b574f4358645efa3a424&oe=59DF99D8] JUN18 Going Hidden Costs of War panel Sun 1:30 PM CDT · Champaign Public Library · Champaign, IL 8 Going · 46 Interested -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 15 13:10:45 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 13:10:45 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Democrats Foreign Policy Vision? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I had a point in posting this article from Common Dreams, which I rarely read anymore, but the lies contained within aren’t worth the trouble disputing. Carl Estabrook disputed one below: Others I have commented on FB, such as the lie in relation to the Syrian government being responsible for the gas attacks on their own people, a statement I missed, also any suggestion that the Democratic Party has moved to the left, is ridiculous of course, given they have moved to the right over the years. So please ignore this article, and chalk it up to my foggy glasses when reading it. On Jun 15, 2017, at 03:59, Karen Aram > wrote: Carl G. Estabrook Nonsense. Democrats (and Republicans) have a progressive [sic] foreign policy vision, as the State Department pointed out years ago: "...we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction." — Report by the Policy Planning Staff | top secret | February 24, 1948 | PPS/23 On Jun 14, 2017, at 18:26, Karen Aram via Peace > wrote: Democrats Don’t Have a Progressive Foreign Policy Vision. And They Need One by Evan Popp * * * * * * * 13 Comments [https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_large/public/views-article/afghanistan_12.jpeg?itok=orFzF4Sd] President Barack Obama waves at the conclusion of his remarks to U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 25, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit.” By this he meant not putting boots on the ground in long-term, unwinnable wars. What this vision didn’t include was ending those wars or pursuing a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. Obama’s Democratic Party has not advanced far past this vision since the end of his time in office. While the party has moved to the left on many domestic issues, and emerged as an effective counterbalance to the meanness and incoherence of Donald Trump, many Democrats remain wedded to Obama’s foreign policy legacy. This is the one area in which Trump has managed to win bipartisan support. He does not deserve it. For example, last week airstrikes in Syria by a U.S.-led coalition killed at least 12 people, including women and children. The response from Democrats in Congress: radio silence. Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit,” but his vision didn’t include a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. Even worse, consider the Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s April airstrike in Syria after the Syrian government’s horrific use of chemical weapons on its own people. Critics slammed Trump for bypassing Congress, arguing that the airstrike was unconstitutional and didn’t solve any of the underlying issues in Syria. But twenty-nine Democratic Senators supported the strike; only five opposed it. In addition, a number of Democratic leaders in the House praised the strike. Beyond their support for the Syrian airstrike, top Democrats have disappointing records on issues of war and peace. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is a leading supporter of Israel, despite its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi also has a history of hawkishness in the Middle East, as documented by the Institute for Policy Studies. And Hillary Clinton, the Democratic standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election, promoted militaristic solutions to international issues as Secretary of State, as well as during her campaign for President. Even Democrats like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have failed to articulate a progressive foreign policy. During his presidential campaign, Sanders’s main foreign policy talking point was his vote against the war in Iraq. While he was less hawkish overall than Clinton, Sanders didn’t rule out continuing Obama’s drone program that has killed thousands of civilians. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK, tells The Progressive that Democrats “have a foreign policy message that is pretty much a continuation of what George Bush had and Obama followed. It’s hard for them to challenge Donald Trump because they have a vision that’s quite similar. I think that the Democrats are really a war party, just like the Republicans are.” There are individual Democrats whose foreign policy is less hawkish. Representative Barbara Lee of California, for example, has consistently opposed war. Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the post 9/11 authorization of military force, has spoken outagainst Obama’s aggressive use of drone strikes. And Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has called for a de-emphasis of American military force and slammed the proposed $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which is using U.S. weapons in its brutal war against Yemen. But Murphy also opposes cuts to the United States’ bloated military budget, which is larger than the next seven highest spending countries combined. Norman Solomon, author of the book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and co-founder of the group RootsAction, tells The Progressive that Democrats would likely gain politically if they had a more forward-looking foreign policy. [A free and independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy] “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate,” he argues. Polls back him up. A 2017 survey found more than half of Democratic voters disapproved of Trump’s airstrike in Syria. In addition, a 2016 poll showed that a majority of Democrats would support cutting the defense budget by $36 billion. “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate.” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, tells The Progressive that one problem with Democratic foreign policy is that many lawmakers were previously on city councils or were members of state legislatures and didn’t have to deal with foreign affairs. He says when they get to Congress, lawmakers often follow the Democratic leadership on foreign policy votes. Martin says there needs to be a focus on educating lawmakers about foreign policy. “It’s important that Democrats think about foreign policy and find a good position,” he says. “They need to take some ownership for their positions and not fall into the trap where they feel like they have to react to things with force all the time.” With terror attacks on the rise and fears growing over ISIS, the temptation to pursue military strategies will only grow. As the opposition party, Democrats need an alternative foreign policy based on international diplomacy and the pursuit of peace, rather than the same warmongering strategies that create terrorist organizations like ISIS. If the Democrats regain power in Congress and the White House, it’s important they have a foreign policy that breaks from the Bush-Obama-Trump continuum of endless war. But what would such a foreign policy look like? Along with ending the war in Afghanistan, CODEPINK’s Benjamin says it would mean challenging the Pentagon on its extreme budget as well as stopping weapons deals with oppressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Democrats appear to be taking a step forward on that front, with the majority opposing an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, tells The Progressive that forward-thinking foreign policy also has to rely on negotiations rather than violence. “If you look at Obama’s foreign policy successes like the Paris climate deal, the move toward normalcy in Cuba and most of all the Iran nuclear deal, they were all examples of the victory of diplomacy over war,” she says, adding that Obama’s foreign policy failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia were instances when war trumped diplomacy. However, Bennis says the peace movement will have to pressure Democrats to move toward a progressive foreign policy. They won’t do it themselves, she argues. “The Democrats are never going to lead the progressive movement,” Bennis says. “The movements lead and demand of the Democratic Party that if they want support from the most mobilized, most conscious, and most committed component of their base, they damn well better include a progressive foreign policy vision.” © 2016 The Progressive [https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_bio_small/public/authors/popp.jpg?itok=NbTRQODk] Evan Popp is a journalism student at Ithaca College currently interning at the Institute for Public Accuracy. _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Jun 15 13:33:03 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 08:33:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Democrats Foreign Policy Vision? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <072B4774-F769-4A5F-A49D-3E7E4902863B@illinois.edu> I think you were quite right to post this article. Many of our liberal friends accept the WWII myth about the US - that it won that war and has ever since been a force for peace, economic development, and democracy - a force best represented by the Democrats, occasionally retarded by Republicans (Nixon, Reagan). This malign lie reaches a certain apotheosis in the HRC campaign and its mad aftermath (‘Russiagate’). Anything that exposes that is worthwhile. —CGE > On Jun 15, 2017, at 8:10 AM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > I had a point in posting this article from Common Dreams, which I rarely read anymore, but the lies contained within aren’t worth the trouble disputing. Carl Estabrook disputed one below: Others I have commented on FB, such as the lie in relation to the Syrian government being responsible for the gas attacks on their own people, a statement I missed, also any suggestion that the Democratic Party has moved to the left, is ridiculous of course, given they have moved to the right over the years. So please ignore this article, and chalk it up to my foggy glasses when reading it. > >> On Jun 15, 2017, at 03:59, Karen Aram wrote: >> >>> Carl G. Estabrook Nonsense. Democrats (and Republicans) have a progressive [sic] foreign policy vision, as the State Department pointed out years ago: >>> >>> "...we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction." >>> — >>> Report by the Policy Planning Staff | top secret | February 24, 1948 | PPS/23 >> >>> On Jun 14, 2017, at 18:26, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: >>> >>> Democrats Don’t Have a Progressive Foreign Policy Vision. And They Need One >>> by Evan Popp >>> • >>> • >>> • >>> • >>> • >>> • >>> • >>> 13 Comments >>> >>> President Barack Obama waves at the conclusion of his remarks to U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 25, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) >>> Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit.” By this he meant not putting boots on the ground in long-term, unwinnable wars. What this vision didn’t include was ending those wars or pursuing a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. >>> >>> Obama’s Democratic Party has not advanced far past this vision since the end of his time in office. While the party has moved to the left on many domestic issues, and emerged as an effective counterbalance to the meanness and incoherence of Donald Trump, many Democrats remain wedded to Obama’s foreign policy legacy. >>> >>> This is the one area in which Trump has managed to win bipartisan support. He does not deserve it. >>> >>> For example, last week airstrikes in Syria by a U.S.-led coalition killed at least 12 people, including women and children. The response from Democrats in Congress: radio silence. >>> >>> Former President Barack Obama once articulated his vision of foreign policy as not doing “stupid shit,” but his vision didn’t include a progressive foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. >>> >>> Even worse, consider the Democrats’ reaction to Trump’s April airstrike in Syria after the Syrian government’s horrific use of chemical weapons on its own people. Critics slammed Trump for bypassing Congress, arguing that the airstrike was unconstitutional and didn’t solve any of the underlying issues in Syria. >>> >>> But twenty-nine Democratic Senators supported the strike; only five opposed it. In addition, a number of Democratic leaders in the House praised the strike. >>> >>> Beyond their support for the Syrian airstrike, top Democrats have disappointing records on issues of war and peace. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer is a leading supporter of Israel, despite its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi also has a history of hawkishness in the Middle East, as documented by the Institute for Policy Studies. And Hillary Clinton, the Democratic standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election, promoted militaristic solutions to international issues as Secretary of State, as well as during her campaign for President. >>> >>> Even Democrats like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have failed to articulate a progressive foreign policy. During his presidential campaign, Sanders’s main foreign policy talking point was his vote against the war in Iraq. While he was less hawkish overall than Clinton, Sanders didn’t rule out continuing Obama’s drone program that has killed thousands of civilians. >>> >>> Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK, tells The Progressive that Democrats “have a foreign policy message that is pretty much a continuation of what George Bush had and Obama followed. It’s hard for them to challenge Donald Trump because they have a vision that’s quite similar. I think that the Democrats are really a war party, just like the Republicans are.” >>> >>> There are individual Democrats whose foreign policy is less hawkish. Representative Barbara Lee of California, for example, has consistently opposed war. Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the post 9/11 authorization of military force, has spoken outagainst Obama’s aggressive use of drone strikes. >>> >>> And Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has called for a de-emphasis of American military force and slammed the proposed $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which is using U.S. weapons in its brutal war against Yemen. But Murphy also opposes cuts to the United States’ bloated military budget, which is larger than the next seven highest spending countries combined. >>> >>> Norman Solomon, author of the book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and co-founder of the group RootsAction, tells The Progressive that Democrats would likely gain politically if they had a more forward-looking foreign policy. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate,” he argues. >>> >>> Polls back him up. A 2017 survey found more than half of Democratic voters disapproved of Trump’s airstrike in Syria. In addition, a 2016 poll showed that a majority of Democrats would support cutting the defense budget by $36 billion. >>> >>> “The Democratic Party base is more skeptical of and opposed to the warfare state than most Democrats in the House and Senate.” >>> >>> Paul Kawika Martin, senior director of policy and political affairs at Peace Action, tells The Progressive that one problem with Democratic foreign policy is that many lawmakers were previously on city councils or were members of state legislatures and didn’t have to deal with foreign affairs. He says when they get to Congress, lawmakers often follow the Democratic leadership on foreign policy votes. >>> >>> Martin says there needs to be a focus on educating lawmakers about foreign policy. >>> >>> “It’s important that Democrats think about foreign policy and find a good position,” he says. “They need to take some ownership for their positions and not fall into the trap where they feel like they have to react to things with force all the time.” >>> >>> With terror attacks on the rise and fears growing over ISIS, the temptation to pursue military strategies will only grow. As the opposition party, Democrats need an alternative foreign policy based on international diplomacy and the pursuit of peace, rather than the same warmongering strategies that create terrorist organizations like ISIS. >>> >>> If the Democrats regain power in Congress and the White House, it’s important they have a foreign policy that breaks from the Bush-Obama-Trump continuum of endless war. >>> >>> But what would such a foreign policy look like? Along with ending the war in Afghanistan, CODEPINK’s Benjamin says it would mean challenging the Pentagon on its extreme budget as well as stopping weapons deals with oppressive regimes like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Democrats appear to be taking a step forward on that front, with the majority opposing an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. >>> >>> Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, tells The Progressive that forward-thinking foreign policy also has to rely on negotiations rather than violence. >>> >>> “If you look at Obama’s foreign policy successes like the Paris climate deal, the move toward normalcy in Cuba and most of all the Iran nuclear deal, they were all examples of the victory of diplomacy over war,” she says, adding that Obama’s foreign policy failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Somalia were instances when war trumped diplomacy. >>> >>> However, Bennis says the peace movement will have to pressure Democrats to move toward a progressive foreign policy. They won’t do it themselves, she argues. >>> >>> “The Democrats are never going to lead the progressive movement,” Bennis says. “The movements lead and demand of the Democratic Party that if they want support from the most mobilized, most conscious, and most committed component of their base, they damn well better include a progressive foreign policy vision.” >>> >>> © 2016 The Progressive >>> >>> Evan Popp is a journalism student at Ithaca College currently interning at the Institute for Public Accuracy. >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Peace mailing list >>> Peace at lists.chambana.net >>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 15 22:08:57 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2017 22:08:57 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Washington's war crimes in Syria Message-ID: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Washington’s war crimes in Syria 15 June 2017 The United States government is guilty of war crimes. This is the stark conclusion reached by the independent international commission of inquiry established by the United Nations in 2011 to investigate human rights violations stemming from the protracted US-backed war for regime change in Syria. The Pentagon’s relentless bombing campaign in and around the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the so-called “capital” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has inflicted a “staggering loss of civilian life,” while forcing over 160,000 civilians to flee their homes, Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN’s commission of inquiry, said on Wednesday. US warplanes have dropped tens of thousands of munitions on Raqqa and the surrounding area, killing and maiming thousands of Syrian men, women and children. US Marines units, which have steadily swelled the ground forces illegally deployed on Syrian soil, have unleashed further lethal firepower, firing 155mm howitzers into crowded urban neighborhoods and flying Apache attack helicopters to provide close air support to the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces. This proxy force of Washington is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia and “advised” by US Special Operations troops. The bloody siege of Raqqa is unfolding even as the Pentagon is carrying out a similar slaughter, begun last October, in Mosul, an Iraqi city 232 miles to the east that once boasted a population of over 2 million. Most of Mosul has been pulverized by US bombs, rockets and shells. Thousands have been killed and wounded, while many remain still buried under the rubble. The scope of the war crimes being carried out by the Pentagon comes more sharply into focus with the verified reports that US artillery units are firing white phosphorus shells into both Raqqa and Mosul. These incendiary chemical weapons, banned under international law for use in populated areas, ignite human flesh on contact, burning it to the bone, while those who breathe the gases released by the shells suffocate and burn from the inside out. The horrific wounds caused by these weapons reopen when exposed to air. White phosphorus is used to strike terror among those under attack. Another murderous weapon being employed against the populations of Raqqa and Mosul is the MGM-140B rocket. Fired from a mobile rocket launcher, the weapon detonates in midair, scattering some 274 anti-personnel grenades, each of which is capable of killing anyone within a 15-meter radius. Last month, US Defense Secretary James Mattis told the media that the Pentagon was adopting “annihilation tactics” in its anti-ISIS campaign, adding, “Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation.” Mattis, a recently retired Marine general whom the military nicknamed “Mad Dog,” knows whereof he speaks. In 2004, he led the two murderous sieges of Fallujah that claimed the lives of thousands of Iraqis, and, as in the latest US atrocities, made use of white phosphorus shells against a civilian population. The US military interventions in Iraq and Syria are not aimed at “annihilating” ISIS, itself the product of the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, followed by Washington’s utilization of Islamist fighters as proxy ground forces in the regime-change wars in both Libya and Syria. While Raqqa has been surrounded by US-backed forces from the north, east and west, an escape route for ISIS fighters has been opened up to the southeast in order to funnel them into the province of Deir al-Zour, so they can fight the Syrian army there. Similarly, large numbers of ISIS fighters were allowed to flee Mosul, crossing the border into Syria for the same purpose. Washington’s strategic objectives in Iraq and Syria are not those of “fighting terrorism,” but rather consolidating US hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and preparing for war against the principal obstacles to this objective, Iran and Russia. For US imperialism, undisputed control over both the Persian Gulf and Central Asia would provide the means to cut off energy supplies to its global rival, China. These predatory aims are the source of war crimes, and not only in Iraq and Syria. In Yemen, Washington is backing a near-genocidal war led by the Saudi monarchy with the objective of weakening Iran’s influence in the Persian Gulf. During his visit to Riyadh last month, President Donald Trump announced a $110 billion arms deal with the kingdom, which will, in the first instance, replenish the bombs and missiles it is raining on the population of the most impoverished nation in the Arab world. This arms package follows similar deals signed by the Obama administration, which also supplied the Saudis with logistical and intelligence aid for the Yemen war, including mid-air refueling for its warplanes and US naval backing for a blockade that is starving the population and denying it medical supplies. In addition to killing 12,000 people outright, the US-Saudi war has left at least 7 million Yemenis on the brink of famine, while cholera is threatening to kill thousands more. Save the Children reports that, on average, one Yemeni child is contracting the disease every 35 seconds. Meanwhile, Washington is preparing to once again escalate the protracted slaughter in Afghanistan. US officials reported Tuesday that Trump has authorized Mattis to set troop levels in the country, which the US has occupied since 2001. Thousands more soldiers are expected to be deployed, with the aim of carrying out the “annihilation tactics” favored by the defense secretary. A taste of what is to come was seen Monday when US troops whose convoy hit a roadside bomb opened fire indiscriminately on civilians, killing a brick kiln laborer and his two sons, ages eight and 10. As these atrocities play out across an ever-expanding global battlefield, what is striking is the absence of any organized opposition to US war crimes. The continuous wars are not even a subject of debate in Congress and are supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The media, a faithful propaganda arm of the Pentagon and the CIA, has shown a complete disinterest in US war crimes, paying attention only when allegations are made against Russia or the Syrian government. Moreover, while masses of working people in the US and around the world are opposed to war, the pseudo-left groups that got their start in the middle class antiwar protests of the 1960s and 1970s have abandoned even verbal opposition to US military aggression. Reflecting the interests of privileged middle-class layers, groups like the International Socialist Organization in the US, the Left Party in Germany and the New Anti-capitalist Party in France have articulated the politics of this new constituency for imperialism, justifying neo-colonial interventions in the name of “human rights” and portraying CIA regime-change operations as in Libya and Syria as “revolutions.” The emergence of a genuine antiwar movement is today a matter of life and death, as the war crimes being carried out by Washington across the globe threaten to coalesce into a global conflict involving the major nuclear powers. Such a movement can be built only in the fight to mobilize the working class independently on the basis of a socialist program to put an end to capitalism, the source of war. Bill Van Auken WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Jun 16 18:12:10 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 13:12:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace] JFP alert: Back UN Call for Saudi-Yemen Cease-fire to Stop Cholera & Famine Message-ID: We especially need to spread this where folks close to the following people will see it: Raskin Pocan Conyers McGovern Lee Lieu Khanna Capuano Welch Gabbard ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Just Foreign Policy Date: Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 12:54 PM Subject: Back UN Call for Saudi-Yemen Cease-fire to Stop Cholera & Famine To: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org [image: Just Foreign Policy] Dear Robert, *Urge your Rep. to use WPR to force a House vote on the Saudi war in Yemen.* Take Action . On June 15, the *United Nations Security Council unanimously called for a cease-fire* in the conflict between the Saudi-UAE coalition and the Houthi-Saleh forces in Yemen. "The U.N. Security Council urged the warring parties in Yemen on Thursday to immediately agree on a cease-fire and keep all ports open for humanitarian aid to confront the threat of famine and the rapid spread of cholera," *AP* reported. [1] *Urge your Rep. to force a House vote to back the UN call for ceasefire. * On June 13, using the Arms Export Control Act to force a floor vote, the U.S. Senate narrowly failed to block an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Senators opposed to the deal stressed the need to end the humanitarian crisis in Yemen rather than escalate it. [2] "The Saudi-led war in Yemen has created a humanitarian disaster," Senator *Bernie Sanders* said. "Millions are at the risk of starvation...the chaos in Yemen has also been strategically disastrous for the United States, providing fertile ground for the extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS...it is long past time that we begin to take a very hard look at our relationship with Saudi Arabia...it is important that we begin to discuss...the decades long effort by Saudi Arabia to export an ultra-reactionary form of Islam throughout the world." [3] "The human rights and humanitarian concerns have been well documented and are important,” Senate Democratic leader *Chuck Schumer* said. “Of equal concern to me is that the Saudi government continues to aid and abet terrorism via its relationship with Wahhabism and the funding of schools that spread extremist propaganda throughout the world." [4] Yet the *New York Times* reported on June 14 that *the Trump Administration plans to escalate* U.S. participation in the Saudi bombing of Yemen, with U.S. military advisers in the Saudi air operations control center in Riyadh. [5] *U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen has never been authorized by Congress.* [6] Under the Vietnam Era War Powers Resolution of 1973, *a single Member of Congress* can force a debate and vote on withdrawing U.S. participation from the Saudi war in Yemen - the conflict that *the UN Security Council has just unanimously said should stop immediately to save Yemen from cholera and famine*. Under the Arms Export Control Act, any Senator could force a vote on the Saudi arms deal, allowing the Senate to vote on U.S. participation in Saudi Arabia's war and blockade in Yemen. But *the only way for House Members to force a vote on the war is to invoke the War Powers Resolution*. The last time the House voted on any aspect of U.S. participation in the Saudi war was *June 2016*, when the House narrowly failed to prohibit the transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. [7] *Urge your Representative to use WPR to force a House vote on backing the UN cease-fire call to save Yemen from cholera and famine by signing our petition .* Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just, Robert Naiman, Avram Reisman, and Sarah Burns Just Foreign Policy *If you think our work is important, support us with a $17 donation.* http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/donate References: 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/un-urges- yemen-cease-fire-and-open-ports-to-confront-cholera/ 2017/06/15/ec92b4b8-5219-11e7-b74e-0d2785d3083d_story.html 2. https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/saudi-yemen-war-famine?r_by=1135580 3. Senator Bernie Sanders, "We Must Reevaluate Our Relationship With Saudi Arabia," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqbebpDHCnE 4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chuck-schumer-trump-saud i-arabia_us_593ec911e4b02402687bae98 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/world/middleeast/saudi-ar abia-arms-training-yemen.html 6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/ 02/alarm-grows-in-washington-as-saudi-coalition-attack-on- yemen-port-appears-imminent/; https://www.washingtonpost.com /news/global-opinions/wp/2017/05/19/trump-may-be-helping-to- create-a-famine-in-yemen-congress-could-stop-him/ 7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/obama-heeding-cl ose-house_b_10516480.html [image: Please support our work. Donate for a Just Foreign Policy] © 2016 Just Foreign Policy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jun 16 23:34:25 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 23:34:25 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Interview with Max Blumenthal on The Real News, worth a listen, to the whole thing. Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19337:Bernie-Sanders-and-Rand-Paul-Buck-Party-Consensus-on-Russia-and-Iran-Sanctions -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Sat Jun 17 00:07:32 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 19:07:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Interview with Max Blumenthal on The Real News, worth a listen, to the whole thing. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <02CDA6DE-C39B-4921-8C93-8B8118863486@illinois.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Jun 18 03:08:54 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2017 03:08:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Panel discussion reminder Message-ID: WHAT: A panel discussion about the financial, social, and environment costs Americans bear to support and pay for the conduct of endless military interventions in Asia and Africa. WHERE: Champaign Public Library, Rooms A&B, 200 W. Green St., Champaign WHEN: Sunday, June 18, 1:30 - 3 PM PANELISTS: * Maryam Ar-Raheem, Chair, Champaign County Democrats; Racial Justice Task Force; founding member, Sister Net; fmr. Dir., A Woman’s Place; fmr. Exec. Dir., UI YWCA; ret. AFSCME union rep at- large. * Morton Brussel, Professor of Physics emeritus, UIUC, nuclear physics research, Union of Concerned Scientists * David Johnson, Host, World Labor Hour; Jobs with Justice; Industrial Workers of the World ( I.W.W.); AFL-CIO of Champaign County * Augustus Wood, UIUC PhD candidate; Co-President, Graduate Employees Organization; Black Students for Revolution; Co-Host, World Labor Hour CO-SPONSORS: Build Programs, Not Jails; Channing Murray Foundation; Central Illinois Jobs with Justice; Eco-Justice Collaborative; People Demanding Action; The People’s Agenda; Food Not Bombs; Prairie Group of Sierra Club; Peace & Service Comm. of the U-C Friends Meeting; Three Spinners. [https://scontent.ford1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/c0.4.733.386/p526x395/18922092_10155467631117502_218656547965845180_n.jpg?oh=fe52cee55010b574f4358645efa3a424&oe=59DF99D8] JUN18 Going Hidden Costs of War panel Sun 1:30 PM CDT · Champaign Public Library · Champaign, IL 8 Going · 54 Interested LikeShow more reactions CommentShare -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jun 19 11:54:32 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:54:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace] interview from The Real News, of Paul Jay regarding the need for urgency on war and climate crisis Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19354:The-Need-for-a-Sense-of-Urgency-About-War-and-the-Climate-Crisis%3A-Katie-Halper-Interviews-Paul-Jay -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jun 19 22:30:34 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2017 22:30:34 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Oliver Stone's interview with Putin Message-ID: No guarantee this will work, but it’s what I have: https://pixeldra.in/u/JmSNg_ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Tue Jun 20 02:38:28 2017 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2017 02:38:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Oliver Stone's interview with Putin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <17AA2880-FD99-4992-80B3-C3D7872231E0@illinois.edu> The interview, four parts separated, is available on UTube. Enlightening. —mkb On Jun 19, 2017, at 5:30 PM, Karen Aram via Peace > wrote: No guarantee this will work, but it’s what I have: https://pixeldra.in/u/JmSNg_ _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cge at shout.net Wed Jun 21 11:36:32 2017 From: cge at shout.net (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2017 06:36:32 -0500 Subject: [Peace] This week's AWARE ON THE AIR In-Reply-To: <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> Message-ID: <38dd9634ddb6d642a9e18e34d02ee607@shout.net> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3GAS_qm2mk Karen Aram, C. G. Estabrook, and Stuart Levy discuss U.S. government war-making and how it can be opposed. AWARE on the Air - Episode #413. Produced by the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana on Urbana Public Television, From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jun 21 11:46:08 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2017 11:46:08 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Terrific review of the film "War Machine" Message-ID: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Netflix drama strikes a nerve … A spook comes out of the woodwork to attack Brad Pitt’s War Machine By David Walsh 21 June 2017 Does art have social consequences? Does it matter which attitude filmmakers or novelists, for example, adopt toward the big events of the day? Here’s a case that may help settle the argument or at least provides strong circumstantial evidence. Three weeks ago we reviewed War Machine, the Netflix satire about Gen. Stanley McChrystal and the bloody, neo-colonial American war effort in Afghanistan. We noted its unusually biting character. This is not a film that makes obeisance to the greatness of the US military. It presents the war in Afghanistan as “a debacle, presided over by lunatics and egomaniacs,” the WSWS review noted. [http://www.wsws.org/asset/0d10a9b5-34dd-4ed3-87ac-aae32b406d7K/image.jpg?rendition=image480]Brad Pitt and Ben Kingsley in War Machine Written and directed by Australian David Michôd, and based on the 2012 non-fiction book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan, by the late American journalist Michael Hastings, War Machinesarcastically hails the US in its opening moments, “Ah, America. You beacon of composure and proportionate response. You bringer of calm and goodness to the world.” The WSWS noted that for once a film reflected some of the widespread hostility toward a quarter century of brutal war and toward the politicians and generals who have conducted it. It was only fitting that a spokesperson for those war criminals would respond. Whitney Kassel, late of the Defense Department, Special Operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a former member of McChrystal’s “team,” and an associate in private business of a long-time leading figure in the CIA, has written a denunciation of War Machine in Foreign Policy magazine, “Screw Brad Pitt and the ‘War Machine’ he rode in on.” The unusually frank language of the headline presumably provides some sense of Kassel’s disapproval. Indeed, she acknowledges that her initial “eye-rolling quickly gave way to expletives.” The character of Kassel’s objectivity in regard to Gen. McChrystal makes itself evident early on when she notes that Hastings (whose Rolling Stone article, later expanded into the book on which War Machine is based, essentially ended the general’s career) “took down a man I worked with during the time in question and deeply respected—one near-universally viewed as an American hero of integrity and intelligence.” McChrystal was a ruthless practitioner of counterinsurgency warfare, responsible for the killing of thousands of Iraqis. His entourage in Afghanistan, according to Hastings, was “a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs.” A staffer neatly describes in Hasting’s book the now infamous Gen. Michael Flynn, one of McChrystal’s toadies, as a “rat on acid.” Kassel presents the 16-year US-led intervention in Afghanistan as “a war effort that, while certainly replete with absurdities and mistakes, was and continues to be fought by men and women who are dedicated to improving the security of the United States and its allies by helping to build an Afghanistan that will not provide safe haven for al Qaeda or, more recently, the Islamic State.” [http://www.wsws.org/asset/34ae1d87-bd41-4144-b966-e6d4b5d1415L/image.jpg?rendition=image480]War Machine This is a pack of lies. The US is not in Afghanistan to protect American lives, but to advance its interests in a geopolitically strategic area. The war has led to nothing but death, destruction and misery on a vast scale. Kassel is particularly concerned that War Machine casts doubt on the legitimacy of the entire “war on terror,” the code phrase with which American imperialism has justified its drive for global hegemony since 2001. She goes on: “Likewise—and this is the part that matters today—the portrayal of the U.S. and NATO’s very presence in the country since 2001 as rooted in fantasy and an inflated sense of American prowess is disingenuous and dangerous in its mischaracterization of a war that remains, particularly in the face of escalating violence and instability, an important part of reducing global terrorism.” Kassel seems unaware that this last sentence contains an obvious contradiction. The longest war in US history has ostensibly been carried out in the name of “reducing global terrorism,” yet there is “escalating violence and instability.” War Machine is not a primer in anti-imperialist politics, but it does make clear that the war in Afghanistan is a doomed project. The film’s narrator asks in the opening moments, “What do you do when the war you're fighting just can't possibly be won in any meaningful sense?” The narrator further explains that the US military’s “counterinsurgency” strategy runs up against basic political realities: “When … you’ve just gone and invaded a place that you probably shouldn’t have, you end up fighting against just regular people in regular-people clothes. These guys are what are called insurgents. Basically, they’re just guys who picked up weapons ’cause ... so would you, if someone invaded your country. Funnily enough ... insurgencies are next to impossible to defeat.” [http://www.wsws.org/asset/4e7833ee-f38b-4a76-a68a-360b9470ed7O/image.jpg?rendition=image480]War Machine But Kassel inhabits a different political and moral universe. Her writing has the ghastly quality of the “democratic” military bureaucrat or intelligence agent, the muffled, perpetually disingenuous tone of the individual who plots bombings and murders and mass repression, but refers to such activities as “strategic options” and “the tools available for trying to turn around what was considered an urgent national security priority,” and half-believes her own obscurantism. She presents a glowing picture of the same crowd among whom Hastings placed “killers … and outright maniacs.” Kassel writes: “I found McChrystal and his team to be respectful, thoughtful … McChrystal spent endless hours with the members of the assessment team [which included Kassel—very few of whom had direct military experience—exploring the strategic options available to the United States and NATO.” Toward the end of her tirade, Kassel once again expresses anxiety about the impact of War Machine and points to “a particular hazard,” that the film will reinforce “a view of the war in Afghanistan as this generation’s Vietnam, led by men … who care only about protecting their own egos and reputations, with no sense of the sacrifices inherent in war and no strategic vision or logic behind their decisions.” She expresses nervousness about the “reworking” of the US approach to Afghanistan that Trump administration officials may be considering and asserts that “it is critical that they, and the American public to whom they report, understand how we got here, and the reasons why some elements of a counterinsurgency strategy may remain valid moving forward.” Kassel, according to the Huffington Post, for whom she writes occasionally, “spent four years at the Office of the Secretary of Defense where she focused on Special Operations, Counterterrorism, and Pakistan policy. During this time she spent a year in Pakistan working for the Office of the Defense Representative and Special Operations Command Forward. She also served as the representative of the Secretary of Defense to General Stanley McChrystal's Strategic Assessment Team in Afghanistan in 2009.” This is someone up to her neck in imperialist violence and intrigue. At one point, Kassel served “as Assistant for Counterterrorism Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict, and Interdependent Capabilities (ASD SO/LIC&IC) within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (OSD-Policy).” Kassel, a Democratic Party supporter apparently, often tweets about women’s rights and racism—and Russian aggression! Of course, how could it be otherwise? A special mention must be made of her association with the Arkin Group, the private intelligence firm, where she “served as a senior director focused on strategic analysis and risk management.” A founding partner of the Arkin Group is Jack Devine, according to the company’s website, “a 32-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (‘CIA’). Mr. Devine served as both Acting Director and Associate Director of CIA’s operations outside the United States from 1993-1995, where he had supervisory authority over thousands of CIA employees involved in sensitive missions throughout the world. In addition, he served as Chief of the Latin American Division from 1992-1993 and was the principal manager of the CIA’s sensitive projects in Latin America.” In fact, Devine’s first foreign assignment was in Chile, where he arrived in August 1970. Even before being physically assigned there, he writes, “I had worked the night shift for the Chile Task Force in Langley, synthesizing cables from Santiago into a morning intelligence report for the bosses.” Devine was present in Santiago in September 1973 when the Nixon administration and the CIA organized a coup, along with the Chilean military, that brought the brutal Pinochet dictatorship to power, which tortured and murdered tens of thousands of political opponents, trade unionists and young people. The Arkin website also notes, “From 1985-1987, Mr. Devine headed the CIA’s Afghan Task Force, which successfully countered Soviet aggression in the region. In 1987, he was awarded the CIA’s Meritorious Officer Award for this accomplishment.” In other words, Devine is one of the figures criminally responsible for arming and fomenting Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan as part of the effort to undermine the Soviet Union. In his own words, in his autobiography, Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story, Devine moved “guns and ammunition across the border into Afghanistan,” aiding “the Afghan mujahideen and their determined opposition to the Soviet Union’s occupation of their country in the 1980s. I ran the last, and largest, cover operation of the Cold War.” The career of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and ISIS itself all emerge, directly or indirectly, from this operation. Devine and Kassel have co-authored numerous articles, including “Afghanistan: Withdrawal Lessons,” in the World Policy Journal, 2013. This cynical morsel of realpolitik offered advice to the Obama administration on the best policy to pursue “in protecting U.S. interests” in the region. “Robust covert action” remained high on the list. Should the Pakistani government, for example, turn down US aid, “we should respond with appropriate covert action. This would include paramilitary activities as well as psychological operations, propaganda, and political and economic influence.” Devine also acknowledges Kassel’s assistance in the preparation of his autobiography. Devine and Kassel continued to do at Arkin what they did at the CIA and the Defense Department, respectively, defend the interests of American corporate and financial interests. The Arkin website, in its “Case Studies” section, offers the example of the work it did for an investor, “concerned about instability and uncertain about prospects for South African agriculture.” The firm “initiated a political risk analysis and market intelligence project, and also completed an investigation of political, legal, and regulatory events that could impact foreign investors, agriculture operations, and the industry of interest.” Arkin “uncovered no evidence indicating that South Africa’s leaders would reverse foreign investment-friendly policies.” In Vietnam, Arkin assessed “the future of pro-privatization initiatives” and also laid out “incentives and road blocks associated with privatization and elucidated the process by which entities become eligible for consideration.” This background has provided Ms. Kassel with the moral and intellectual high ground from which to criticize the anti-war satire, War Machine, which lifts the lid on the lethal madness of the US military and dares to call into question American foreign policy. It is entirely to the film’s credit that it has provoked an angry response from this trusted agent of American imperialism. WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Jun 21 15:12:13 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2017 10:12:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?Fwd=3A_Tonight_at_6_p=2Em=2E_=E2=80=93_How_you_?= =?utf-8?q?can_help_the_Champaign_County_Nursing_Home!?= In-Reply-To: <837955483e17bc69cfb8a185b.40b270530f.20170621130737.5bcc864e39.54ef4538@mail230.atl171.mcdlv.net> References: <837955483e17bc69cfb8a185b.40b270530f.20170621130737.5bcc864e39.54ef4538@mail230.atl171.mcdlv.net> Message-ID: Meeting at CCHCC tonight in advance of tomorrow's County Board vote on the nursing home ... -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Tonight at 6 p.m. – How you can help the Champaign County Nursing Home! Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2017 13:10:38 +0000 From: Champaign County Health Care Consumers Reply-To: Champaign County Health Care Consumers To: stuartnlevy at gmail.com Tonight at 6 p.m. – How you can help the Champaign County Nursing Home! Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) View this email in your browser Tonight at 6 p.m. How you can help the Champaign County Nursing Home! Dear Stuart, The Champaign County Nursing Home (CCNH) is an important community health asset, but it is in financial distress largely as a result of the State of Illinois’ failures to make Medicaid payments. /Please read below to learn more about what’s happening now, and how _you can help by signing our petition_, and getting involved – we have a new _CCNH Community Action Task Force, meeting for the first time *this* evening, Wednesday, June 21 at 6 p.m. at CCHCC._/ Also, please feel free to share and forward this message to others, and help get more people to sign the petition! *_What’s happening with the CCNH_* The County Board is moving quickly on a path toward selling the CCNH (most likely to a for-profit corporation), following the outcome of the two Nursing Home referenda this past April. One referendum on the ballot asked about raising property taxes to help fund the Nursing Home. It failed. The other referendum asked about the sale or “disposal” of the Nursing Home. It passed. The County Board is set to vote at its meeting *tomorrow* - Thursday, June 22 at 6:30 p.m. at Brookens – on a contract to hire a brokerage firm. Hiring a brokerage firm will mean that the County Board is moving swiftly toward securing a buyer for the CCNH. /But there is also good news: /the County Board will also be voting to hire a new management company to manage the CCNH. By all accounts, this company – SAK – has tremendous experience in helping to turnaround distressing nursing homes. https://will.illinois.edu/news/story/champaign-county-board-chooses-firm-to-run-broker-potential-sale-of-nursing *Did you know that the referenda are _not_ binding?* That’s right. The County Board does _not _have to sell or dispose of the CCNH, based on the referendum outcome. However, the financial difficulties remain. *The question is: might it be possible that the CCNH /could/ be turned around financially, and not have to be sold?* With a new management company that specializes in helping distressed nursing homes, and with community involvement to help the CCNH, we believe it could be possible! *_You can help! There /is/ hope for the Champaign County Nursing Home._* One of the biggest reasons that the CCNH is facing financial challenges in paying for its operations is because of the State of Illinois and its failure to a) process Medicaid applications in a timely way; and b) make timely Medicaid payments. This problem has been going on for approximately two years, since the State of Illinois has not had a budget. And this not only affects the County Nursing Home, but creates uncertainty for the residents of the nursing home. *Did you know:* The Medicaid applications for CCNH are processed through a state office in Decatur, and there have been over 40 applications languishing, awaiting processing. No payments can begin until an application is processed and approved. In addition to the delays in processing applications, there are also delays in making Medicaid payments. /If Medicaid applications were processed and claims were paid on a more timely basis, the CCNH could break even financially on the cost of its operations./ *Add your name to our petition calling on the State of Illinois to improve its Medicaid application and payment process.* With your help, we can build enough public pressure to make the State of Illinois more responsive to the CCNH. *Add your name to our petition:* http://bit.ly/2siLTcY *Did you know:* Many health care providers and social service agencies are getting commercial loans from banks to help them out through these tough times while the State is not paying. But the /CCNH is not allowed to take a commercial loan because it is a government entity./ And that is why getting Medicaid to work better for the CCNH is so crucial to the financial well-being of the CCNH. Unlike other entities, the CCNH does not have the option of securing a commercial loan. *_CCNH Community Action Task Force Meeting_* If you would like to get involved and be part of the community effort to help the Champaign County Nursing Home, please consider joining our CCNH Task Force! We will hold our first meeting next week. *WHAT:* CCNH Community Action Task Force Meeting *WHEN: *Wednesday, June 21, 2017 at 6 p.m. *WHERE:* Champaign County Health Care Consumers The Lincoln Building 44 E. Main Street, Suite 208 – in downtown Champaign *PARKING:* There is metered parking on the street and in the small City lot across from The Lincoln Building. And there is free parking (after 5 p.m.) in the private lots behind Jos. Kuhn, the Pawnshop, and the City Lot (all across the street from The Lincoln Building). http://www.healthcareconsumers.org/index.php?action=Directions *RSVP:* Not required, but helpful. To RSVP, e-mail Claudia Lennhoff at claudia at shout.net We hope to see you at the CCNH Task Force Meeting! *Thank you for your support!* Sincerely, Champaign County Health Care Consumers Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Website Website Email Email *Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) 44 East Main Street, Suite 208, Champaign, IL 61820 (map) * *(217) 352-6533* cchcc at healthcareconsumers.org healthcareconsumers.org /Copyright © 2017 Champaign County Health Care Consumers, All rights reserved./ Unsubscribe from this list | Update subscription preferences -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 22 11:51:35 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:51:35 +0000 Subject: [Peace] A message from the Green Party Message-ID: It’s not about Party Politics, it’s simply about time. Let’s join together and do this. A proposal for consideration: That the Green Party of the United States take the lead in issuing a call for a national mobilization and day of protest against U.S. intervention in Syria, the Middle East and Africa. There are many political vacuums in America that need to be filled, but one that is practically screaming to be filled right now is an active peace movement, and, in particular, a major national mobilization to oppose our government's disastrous and World War III-threatening intervention in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa. The peace movement in this country needs a god-damned wake up call. The main national peace coalitions, United For Peace and Justice, and the ANSWER Coalition, oppose U.S. intervention in Syria but UPJ just has a "Call the White House & Congress" post on its main page, from two months ago, and ANSWER seems focused on its "People's Congress of Resistance" gathering to "fight the Trump agenda" in September. That's great but if the U.S. shoots down a Russian plane, or vice-versa, we may not make it 'til September. There are some great journalists like Robert Parry, Caitlin Johnstone, Mark Crispin Miller and the gang at Counterpunch doing some pushback against our nation's current disastrous course, as are many Greens individually, but online posting and propaganda wars are only going to go so far. What do people think about the national Green Party trying to fill this void by initiating a call for a national day of protest, and then trying to build an ad hoc coalition around a national mobilization for that purpose? If the existing peace organizations aren't going to take the initiative, why not us? The need could hardly be greater, the cause could hardly be more urgent, those committed to the corporate parties clearly aren't going to do it and it's right up our alley. And by us taking the lead, we further publicize a critical distinction between ourselves and those parties, and we help build more effective congressional campaigns in 2018, accentuating our role as the only peace party. If we were to try, I bet some of the same good journalists would help us get out the word. I bet we could get UPJ and ANSWER affiliates to start signing on, and maybe get the national coalitions behind it. It could snowball. There are plenty of people out there who don't like the dangerous course our nation is on. I think the Green Party should seize the moment and lead the charge. What do you think, David Keith Cobb, Jill Stein, Bruce A. Dixon, Chris Blankenhorn, Scott McLarty, Paula Densnow,Michael J. Harrington, Karen Aram, Tamar Byczek Yager, Zerlina Smith,Howie Hawkins and other friends? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Jun 25 11:25:49 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 11:25:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Oliver Stone speaks out at the Screen Writers Guild, short and to the point. Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY6yuHF3dG0&feature=youtu.be -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cge at shout.net Sun Jun 25 11:58:23 2017 From: cge at shout.net (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 06:58:23 -0500 Subject: [Peace] News-Gazette area history, June 24, 2017 In-Reply-To: <38dd9634ddb6d642a9e18e34d02ee607@shout.net> References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> <38dd9634ddb6d642a9e18e34d02ee607@shout.net> Message-ID: <11a3e6f7cbc9fa68332a0079c6684e49@shout.net> http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-06-24/area-history-june-24-2017.html In the words of my coeval, Mick Jagger, it's a gas, gas gas... --CGE From jbw292002 at gmail.com Sun Jun 25 19:46:27 2017 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 14:46:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace] News-Gazette area history, June 24, 2017 In-Reply-To: <11a3e6f7cbc9fa68332a0079c6684e49@shout.net> References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> <38dd9634ddb6d642a9e18e34d02ee607@shout.net> <11a3e6f7cbc9fa68332a0079c6684e49@shout.net> Message-ID: And what has Green Party candidate Carl Estabrook done for us lately? :-) On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 6:58 AM, C. G. Estabrook via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-06-24/area-histo > ry-june-24-2017.html > > In the words of my coeval, Mick Jagger, it's a gas, gas gas... > > --CGE > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > Virus-free. www.avg.com <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cge at shout.net Sun Jun 25 20:05:07 2017 From: cge at shout.net (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 15:05:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Prairiegreens] News-Gazette area history, June 24, 2017 In-Reply-To: References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> <38dd9634ddb6d642a9e18e34d02ee607@shout.net> <11a3e6f7cbc9fa68332a0079c6684e49@shout.net> Message-ID: Pray. On 2017-06-25 14:46, John W. wrote: > And what has Green Party candidate Carl Estabrook done for us lately? > :-) > > On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 6:58 AM, C. G. Estabrook via Peace > wrote: > >> > http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-06-24/area-history-june-24-2017.html >> [1] >> >> In the words of my coeval, Mick Jagger, it's a gas, gas gas... >> >> --CGE >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace mailing list >> Peace at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace [2] > > [3] > Virus-free. www.avg.com [3] > > > > Links: > ------ > [1] > http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-06-24/area-history-june-24-2017.html > [2] https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > [3] > http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail > > _______________________________________________ > Prairiegreens mailing list > Prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/prairiegreens > http://www.prairienet.org/greens/ From kmedina67 at gmail.com Mon Jun 26 13:42:00 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 08:42:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Mon Jun 26 at 6:30pm Community Meeting on Senate Health Bill / Champaign Public Library Message-ID: *emergency Community Meeting about the proposed health care bill this evening (June 26, 2017) at 6:30 p.m. at the Champaign Public Library.* ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Champaign County Health Care Consumers Date: Mon, Jun 26, 2017 at 8:01 AM Subject: TONIGHT at 6:30 p.m. – Community Meeting on Senate Health Bill To: kmedina67 at gmail.com Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) View this email in your browser TONIGHT at 6:30 p.m. Community Meeting on Senate Health Bill Dear Karen, The draft Senate health care bill came out last week, and it is devastating. This afternoon, a CBO score is expected on a *revised* Senate health care bill. *Please see below for information about our emergency Community Meeting this evening at 6:30 p.m. at the Champaign Public Library.* *The Senate bill released last week would:* - Make drastic, devastating, and irreversible cuts to the 52-year old Medicaid program (this has nothing to do with “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act). The cuts – almost a trillion dollars’ worth – would come in the form of turning Medicaid into a per capita cap program, and tying its growth to the general inflation rate rather than the faster-growing medical inflation rate, thereby strangling the program over many years; - Begin to phase out the Medicaid expansion in 2021 – in Illinois, as a result of our “trigger” law, this would mean that the *Medicaid expansion would end in 2021 in IL * since that is when the federal matching rate would drop below 90%; - Provide smaller subsidies for less generous health insurance plans with larger deductibles; - Allow states to opt out of ACA marketplaces and the Essential Health Benefits requirement thereby reducing the services insurance companies would have to cover (leaving consumers responsible for more of the costs of their care), and which would also mean that protections against annual and lifetime caps would go away; - Defund Planned Parenthood for one year; and - Give the extremely wealthy massive tax cuts, financed by the cuts to the Medicaid program. The Senate’s bill does nothing to improve the problems with the ACA (for example, high deductibles), *and* *it devastates the 52-year old Medicaid program* which existed before the ACA. *More people will lose coverage under the Senate bill (aka, “Trumpcare”) than gained it under the ACA, while extremely wealthy individuals and corporations will get massive tax cuts.* We do not expect the *revised* Senate bill to make significant improvements. But we will review the bill, and the CBO’s score, at tonight’s meeting. We will also have information about how to take urgent action to prevent the passage of this bill. *Community Meeting on Senate Health Care Bill – Monday, June 26 at 6:30 p.m.* We are organizing an emergency community meeting on the Senate’s health care bill. The meeting is *tonight*. Please join us at this meeting to learn more about the bill, the upcoming CBO score on the bill, and *what you can do to help protect the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid!* *WHAT:* Community Meeting on Senate’s Health Care Bill *WHEN:* Monday, June 26, 2017 at 6:30 p.m. *WHERE:* Champaign Public Library, 200 W. Green Street, Champaign *Refreshments will be served. Free Parking. Accessible.* *Take Action!* *Call your member of Congress at 1-866-877-3303 <%28866%29%20877-3303>* and demand that they publicly oppose the House’s American Health Care Act and the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act. *Call Gov. Rauner at 312-814-2121 <%28312%29%20814-2121>* and demand that he publicly oppose the House’s American Health Care Act and the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, which will cost Illinois billions of dollars in Medicaid funding and thousands of jobs. *New Health Care Fact Chat Video* We have a new Health Care Fact Chat video to tell you about what we know so far. You can watch the video here: https://youtu.be/cDRkU32az_g Thank you for your ongoing activism. We hope to see you at tonight’s meeting! Donate to CCHCC *Thank you for your support!* Sincerely, Champaign County Health Care Consumers [image: Facebook] Facebook [image: Twitter] Twitter [image: Website] Website [image: Email] Email *Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC) 44 East Main Street, Suite 208, Champaign, IL 61820 (map) * *(217) 352-6533 <%28217%29%20352-6533>* cchcc at healthcareconsumers.org healthcareconsumers.org *Copyright © 2017 Champaign County Health Care Consumers, All rights reserved.* Unsubscribe from this list | Update subscription preferences -- -- karen medina "The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Mon Jun 26 18:32:48 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:32:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace] World Beyond War action -- U.S.-Russia War Risked in Syria In-Reply-To: <5951300cb338_1894d5bafe78299082a2@ip-10-0-0-61.mail> References: <5951300cb338_1894d5bafe78299082a2@ip-10-0-0-61.mail> Message-ID: <71619260-1b06-d516-8e93-2091066f3982@gmail.com> -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: U.S.-Russia War Risked in Syria Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 16:02:20 +0000 From: World Beyond War via ActionNetwork.org Reply-To: info at worldbeyondwar.org To: stuartnlevy at gmail.com Action Network Email *The U.S. is risking a catastrophic military clash with Russia in Syria. * ** *Click here to help get the American military out of Syrian skies.* ** The world's two big nuclear-armed governments are risking direct warfare. The U.S. shot down a Syrian government jet, after which Russia threatened to shoot down U.S. planes over Syria. Then Australia suspended its air missions over Syria, and Russian and U.S. planes reportedly came within 5 feet of each other over the Baltic. This is happening while the U.S. military, which may very well have defied then-President Obama in September by bombing Syrian troops and scuttling a cease-fire agreement, has been given greater authority by President Trump to proceed as it sees fit. ** *Click here to add your name to an important petition demanding that the U.S. pull back from the brink.* **** Asked for a legal justification for having shot down a Syrian plane, the U.S. military cited the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which applied to al Qaeda, not Syria. Even many who accept the AUMF as constitutional rejected the argument in this case. Regardless, Congress has no capacity to make war legal in violation of international law. Even the U.N. has now begun objecting to the killing of large numbers of civilians in Syria by the U.S. and its allies, as well as by other parties to the war. *There is no legal or moral basis for the United States to be waging war in Syria, risking nuclear apocalypse for us all. Click here to demand that all U.S. planes get out and stay out of Syrian air space. * Background: > /Guardian:/ Russia warns U.S. its fighter jets are now potential target in Syria > /CBS News: /Armed Russian jet comes within five feet of U.S. military plane > /AP: /Syria brings new urgency to easing U.S.-Russia tensions > /Guardian: /Australia suspends air missions over Syria amid U.S.-Russia tensions >/Reese Erlich, The Progressive: /Trump’s Escalations of War in Syria *##########** * *Protecting the earth and waging war are incompatible. * Wear your advocacy for peace and the environment! Lots of colors, also women's styles, plus stickers. Go to: *https://teespring.com/planet-or-war* ** Action Network Sent via Action Network, a free online toolset anyone can use to organize. Click here to sign up and get started building an email list and creating online actions today. Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action. We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them. You can unsubscribe or update your email address by changing your subscription preferences here . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Jun 26 23:32:07 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 23:32:07 +0000 Subject: [Peace] CIA details long hidden role in Iran Coup for those unaware Message-ID: ________________________________ June 25, 2017 64 Years Later, CIA Details Long-Hidden Role in Iran Coup The quiet release of long-awaited and long-hidden CIA documents offers key details on how the U.S. and Britain overthrew Iran’s democratic government in 1953, says the National Security Archives’ Malcolm………… See: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=19382 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cge at shout.net Tue Jun 27 00:04:53 2017 From: cge at shout.net (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 19:04:53 -0500 Subject: [Peace] A Debate on the US in the Mideast In-Reply-To: <11a3e6f7cbc9fa68332a0079c6684e49@shout.net> References: <5880c407a1db5_222964d980682c3@asgworker-qmb2-1.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> <3014b58c3080570ba473a4b2bdcb0659@shout.net> <1f26ef3688b593a338a8fbc7cd45b7a6@shout.net> <38dd9634ddb6d642a9e18e34d02ee607@shout.net> <11a3e6f7cbc9fa68332a0079c6684e49@shout.net> Message-ID: AWARE, the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana, wishes to sponsor a debate in the fall semester on the current American wars in SW Asia and N Africa - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Members of the university and the community are invited to participate in a formal debate on the resolution - RESOLVED: THE US SHOULD WITHDRAW TROOPS AND WEAPONS FROM MENA (MIDEAST & NORTH AFRICA) Each side (affirmative and negative) will be afforded two opening ‘constructive’ speeches, and two closing ‘rebuttal’ speeches, for a total of eight talks, each of five minutes - followed by questions and comments from the audience. If you wish to participate in this debate - or have suggestions for those who might - contact . ============================ Two generations ago, in 1967, Americans first began to object to the US government’s war in SE Asia, five years after it had begun with President Kennedy’s invasion of South Vietnam, in 1962. Today, in 2017, we are more than fifteen years into the US government’s wars in SW Asia. The Obama administration - the first administration in US history to be at war throughout two presidential terms - was able largely to distract Americans from the Mideast killing for which they were responsible. But debate about US wars in the Mideast was raised again by the Trump administration. We Americans - in the academy and in general - should consider what we are doing. ### From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Jun 27 00:05:58 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:05:58 +0000 Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?_The_Big_Corporate_Money_That=E2=80=99s_Fightin?= =?utf-8?q?g_Single-Payer?= Message-ID: From the International Business Times POLITICAL CAPITAL Democrats Help Corporate Donors Block California Health Care Measure, And Progressives Lose Again BY DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA ON 06/26/17 AT 4:06 PM ''"Until Rendon’s move, things seemed to be looking up for Democratic single-payer proponents in deep blue California, which has been hammered by insurance premium increases. There, the Democratic Party — which originally created Medicare — just added a legislative supermajority to a Democratic-controlled state government that oversees the world’s sixth largest economy. That 2016 election victory came as a poll showed nearly two-thirds of Californians support the creation of a taxpayer-funded universal health care system in a state whose population is roughly the size of Canada — which already has such a system. California’s highest-profile federal Democratic lawmaker recently endorsed state efforts to create single-payer systems, and 25 members of its congressional delegation had signed on to sponsor a federal single-payer bill. Meanwhile, after Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had twice vetoed state single-payer legislation, California in 2010 elected a governor who had previously campaigned for president on a pledge to support such a system. Other statewide elected officials had also declared their support for single-payer, including the current lieutenant governor, who promised to enact a universal health care program if he is wins the governorship in 2018. .... None of that, though, made the difference: Late Friday, Rendon announced that even though a single-payer bill had passed the Democratic-controlled state senate, he would not permit the bill to be voted on by the Assembly this year. ... Since 2012, Rendon has taken in more than $82,000 from business groups and healthcare corporations that are listed in state documents opposed the measure, according to an International Business Times review of data amassed by the National Institute on Money In State Politics. In all, he has received more than $101,000 from pharmaceutical companies and another $50,000 from major health insurers. In the same time, the California Democratic Party has received more than $1.2 million from the specific groups opposing the bill, and more than $2.2 million from pharmaceutical and health insurance industry donors. That includes a $100,000 infusion of cash from Blue Shield of California in the waning days of the 2016 election — just before state records show the insurer began lobbying against the single-payer bill. ...The episode in California was the latest defeat for single-payer health care advocates, who have faced a string of losses at the hands of Democrats whose party has continued to attract significant cash from the health care industries that benefit from the current system." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Tue Jun 27 11:37:40 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 06:37:40 -0500 Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?The_Big_Corporate_Money_That=E2=80=99s_Fighting?= =?utf-8?q?_Single-Payer?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Situation in CA is bad but not hopeless. We have until Thursday to get the Speaker to change his mind. Activists are demonstrating across the state, especially in LA today and boarding buses to go to Sacramento Wednesday. If you have friends or family in CA, urge them to call Speaker Rendon. This situation underlines the dual need to get big money out of politics and to support truly progressive candidates for office from the top of the ballot to the bottom Deb Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 26, 2017, at 7:05 PM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: > > From the International Business Times > > POLITICAL CAPITAL > Democrats Help Corporate Donors Block California Health Care Measure, And Progressives Lose Again > BY DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA ON 06/26/17 AT 4:06 PM > > ''"Until Rendon’s move, things seemed to be looking up for Democratic single-payer proponents in deep blue California, which has been hammered by insurance premium increases. There, the Democratic Party — which originally created Medicare — just added a legislative supermajority to a Democratic-controlled state government that oversees the world’s sixth largest economy. That 2016 election victory came as a poll showed nearly two-thirds of Californians support the creation of a taxpayer-funded universal health care system in a state whose population is roughly the size of Canada — which already has such a system. > California’s highest-profile federal Democratic lawmaker recently endorsed state efforts to create single-payer systems, and 25 members of its congressional delegation had signed on to sponsor a federal single-payer bill. > Meanwhile, after Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had twice vetoed state single-payer legislation, California in 2010 elected a governor who had previously campaigned for president on a pledge to support such a system. Other statewide elected officials had also declared their support for single-payer, including the current lieutenant governor, who promised to enact a universal health care program if he is wins the governorship in 2018. > .... None of that, though, made the difference: Late Friday, Rendon announced that even though a single-payer bill had passed the Democratic-controlled state senate, he would not permit the bill to be voted on by the Assembly this year. > ... Since 2012, Rendon has taken in more than $82,000 from business groups and healthcare corporations that are listed in state documents opposed the measure, according to an International Business Times review of data amassed by the National Institute on Money In State Politics. In all, he has received more than $101,000 from pharmaceutical companies and another $50,000 from major health insurers. > In the same time, the California Democratic Party has received more than $1.2 million from the specific groups opposing the bill, and more than $2.2 million from pharmaceutical and health insurance industry donors. That includes a $100,000 infusion of cash from Blue Shield of California in the waning days of the 2016 election — just before state records show the insurer began lobbying against the single-payer bill. > ...The episode in California was the latest defeat for single-payer health care advocates, who have faced a string of losses at the hands of Democrats whose party has continued to attract significant cash from the health care industries that benefit from the current system." > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Tue Jun 27 11:45:05 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 06:45:05 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Call Sens Durbin and Duckworth Message-ID: <291D4AC2-389B-40FE-8D4B-D110AA77C284@gmail.com> Ask them to use every tool to slow down and oppose vote on deadly Senate health care bill. Sen Durbin 202-224-2152 Sen Duckworth 202-224-2854 Thanks Deb Sent from my iPhone From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jun 28 12:42:26 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 12:42:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Putting it all in "perspective." Message-ID: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » Trump’s Syrian chemical weapons claims: A house of cards 28 June 2017 In the latest season of the Netflix drama House of Cards, the fictional administration of President Francis Underwood and Vice President Claire Underwood, facing a domestic political crisis, uses a manufactured chemical weapons attack in Syria to declare war on the country. In a case of politics following art, the Trump administration has accused the Syrian government of “preparing” to use chemical weapons against the civilian population. No evidence has been presented to back up the concocted threat. On Monday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared that the US had “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children.” If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons,” the statement continued, “he and his military will pay a heavy price.” Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, added Tuesday, “The goal is at this point not just to send Assad a message, but to send Russia and Iran a message… That if this happens again, we are putting you on notice.” In other words, any alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria could be used to justify war against Iran and Russia. Pressed to substantiate the White House’s allegation, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis refused to produce any evidence. He said the alleged intelligence was from “the past day or two” and regarded “specific aircraft in a specific hangar, both of which we know to be associated with chemical weapons use.” This was a reference to the Shayrat airfield, which the US targeted with a cruise missile strike on April 6. Some military officials said they had “no idea” what the White House was referring to. British defense officials said they had not seen the evidence, but would support US military escalation regardless—meaning they do not care whether the allegations are true or false. The White House statement followed by just one day the publication of a detailed article in Die Welt by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, the reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, which demonstrated that the allegations used by the Trump administration to justify the April 6 missile attack on Syria were entirely unsubstantiated. Drawing on background interviews with military and intelligence personnel, Hersh wrote that the administration possessed no evidence to back up its claims that the Syrian government had launched a sarin gas attack on April 4. The false allegations of a chemical attack and subsequent bombardment of the Syrian airbase were so brazen that they provoked opposition from within sections of the military/intelligence apparatus. “None of this makes any sense,” Hersh cited one officer as saying. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack...” At the time, Trump was under immense pressure from the Democratic Party and intelligence agencies to shift to a more aggressive stance against the Syrian government. Just days before, the Senate Intelligence Committee had held a hearing at which it was alleged that Trump had effectively collaborated with Russian efforts to undermine the 2016 US election. Columnists and pundits painted the president as little more than an agent of the Kremlin. But that all changed—at least for a few days—after the attack. As Hersh put it, “The next few days were his most successful as president. America rallied around its commander in chief, as it always does in times of war... One prominent TV anchorman, Brian Williams of MSNBC, used the word ‘beautiful’ to describe the images of the Tomahawks being launched at sea. Speaking on CNN, Fareed Zakaria said: ‘I think Donald Trump became president of the United States.’ A review of the top 100 American newspapers showed that 39 of them published editorials supporting the bombing in its aftermath, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.” At the time, no major US news publication even raised the question of whether the White House’s allegations were credible. They were simply accepted as good coin, demonstrating that the media’s role as a propaganda organ for war had not abated. Indeed, Hersh was unable to find a news source to publish his most recent article in the United States. The story was also rejected by the UK’s London Review of Books, which published earlier investigative reports by Hersh, forcing him to turn to the German newspaper. As shown by the latest fabricated Syrian “atrocity”—this time, supposedly in “preparation”—nothing has changed in regard to the media’s readiness to serve as a sounding board for government propaganda. But the media’s acceptance of the administration’s concocted claims about weapons of mass destruction in Syria cannot hide the fact that they are, in fact, concocted. In what has become standard operating procedure, the administration has not attempted to present a shred of evidence, making only the most general allegations, which the American population is expected to swallow whole. Fourteen years ago, the Bush administration used lies about weapons of mass destruction to start a war in Iraq that led to the deaths of millions. Now the Trump administration, with the full support of the media and the entire political establishment, is using equally groundless claims to escalate a war that could result in a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, the world’s second biggest nuclear power. Far from opposing the escalation of war, the Democratic Party has made this its central demand since the election of Trump and the focus of its opposition to his administration. In an article published this month in Foreign A ffairs, Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, spelled out the aggressive foreign policy aims that underpinned Clinton’s candidacy and are at the center of the present hysterical campaign over Trump’s alleged “collusion” with Russian President Putin. Kaine pilloried the Obama administration’s foreign policy, declaring that Obama’s “unwillingness to forcefully intervene early in the Syrian civil war will come to haunt the United States in the future.” He excoriated Obama’s “lackadaisical response to Russia’s cyberattacks and its unprecedented interference in the 2016 election,” concluding, “The United States must always send a clear message to those who mean Americans harm: don’t mess with us.” As a recent article in the Washington Post makes clear, the Obama administration had expected to transfer power to a Clinton White House that would immediately begin preparing a major escalation in Syria, entailing a possible clash with Russia. Trump’s surprise election victory disrupted these plans, which were well advanced. Hence the ferocity of the efforts by the Democrats and the intelligence agencies to pressure Trump to carry out a shift to a more aggressive and more anti-Russian foreign policy—efforts that appear to be succeeding. The deepening tensions between the US and Russia over Syria pose an existential danger to humanity. The only way to avert the catastrophe to which the US political establishment is rushing is for the working class to intervene independently, on the basis of its own socialist, internationalist and revolutionary program. Andre Damon WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jun 28 22:58:03 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 22:58:03 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Listen to David Swanson of World Beyond War's interview with Ajamu Baraka Message-ID: https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-ajamu-baraka-on-the-black-alliance-for-peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Jun 28 23:23:38 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 23:23:38 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Listen to David Swanson of World Beyond War's interview with Ajamu Baraka References: <3EC688B7-492B-44D1-8973-D5828BC7159C@hotmail.com> Message-ID: Subject: Listen to David Swanson of World Beyond War's interview with Ajamu Baraka Date: June 28, 2017 at 15:58:01 PDT https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-ajamu-baraka-on-the-black-alliance-for-peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 29 01:38:18 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 01:38:18 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Jeffrey St.Clair of Counterpunch: Message-ID: Jeffrey St Clair writes: I used to believe that rightwing militarism would be countered by a liberated and reanimated anti-war movement that had refused to confront liberal wars. But where is it now? Where are the mass protests against Trump's expanding wars in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the new re-surge in Afghanistan? Where are the protest against the rising slaughter of civilians? Where indeed. The liberal antiwar movement has morphed into an anti-Russia movement, aligning itself fatally with some of the most bloodthirsty hawks on the Hill and in doing so is abetting every drone strike, Cruise missile and MOAB bomb Trump drops. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Jun 29 02:11:34 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 21:11:34 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Jeffrey St.Clair of Counterpunch: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The Democrats have co-opted and eviscerated the anti-war movement for two generations, from Johnson (“no wider war’) to Obama (“no dumb wars”) - while they expanded the killing. The Democrat war party is responsible for the duplicitous and fantastical anti-Russia movement - "aligning itself fatally with some of the most bloodthirsty hawks on the Hill and in doing so … abetting every drone strike, Cruise missile and MOAB bomb…” The anti-war movement should have nothing to do with them, unless they agree to demand all US troops (and weapons) be brought home. —CGE > On Jun 28, 2017, at 8:38 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: > > Jeffrey St Clair writes: > I used to believe that rightwing militarism would be countered by a liberated and reanimated anti-war movement that had refused to confront liberal wars. But where is it now? Where are the mass protests against Trump's expanding wars in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the new re-surge in Afghanistan? Where are the protest against the rising slaughter of civilians? Where indeed. The liberal antiwar movement has morphed into an anti-Russia movement, aligning itself fatally with some of the most bloodthirsty hawks on the Hill and in doing so is abetting every drone strike, Cruise missile and MOAB bomb Trump drops. > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Jun 29 02:38:41 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2017 02:38:41 +0000 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Jeffrey St.Clair of Counterpunch: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: True, but the Republicans haven’t exactly, led, the anti-war movement either, now have they? Johnson escalated it, until his Advisors told him to stop. We then got Nixon who was responsible for the secret bombing of Cambodia, in which we dropped more bombs than on any nation ever, as of 2007 according to Chomsky. Cambodia, Laos destroyed, along with Chile, during Nixon's reign. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House, our foreign policy of death and imperialism continues unabated, under both Party’s. The American people tended to sleep during the 8 years of Obama, now perhaps they will awaken, because Trump’s domestic policies are killing us. And, it is on Trump’s plate now, no excuses. > On Jun 28, 2017, at 19:11, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: > > The Democrats have co-opted and eviscerated the anti-war movement for two generations, from Johnson (“no wider war’) to Obama (“no dumb wars”) - while they expanded the killing. > > The Democrat war party is responsible for the duplicitous and fantastical anti-Russia movement - "aligning itself fatally with some of the most bloodthirsty hawks on the Hill and in doing so … abetting every drone strike, Cruise missile and MOAB bomb…” > > The anti-war movement should have nothing to do with them, unless they agree to demand all US troops (and weapons) be brought home. > > —CGE > >> On Jun 28, 2017, at 8:38 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss wrote: >> >> Jeffrey St Clair writes: >> I used to believe that rightwing militarism would be countered by a liberated and reanimated anti-war movement that had refused to confront liberal wars. But where is it now? Where are the mass protests against Trump's expanding wars in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the new re-surge in Afghanistan? Where are the protest against the rising slaughter of civilians? Where indeed. The liberal antiwar movement has morphed into an anti-Russia movement, aligning itself fatally with some of the most bloodthirsty hawks on the Hill and in doing so is abetting every drone strike, Cruise missile and MOAB bomb Trump drops. >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Jun 30 23:26:09 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2017 23:26:09 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Anti-war Demonstration Message-ID: For those who hate war, and want to do “something” to protest the killing: Please join AWARE for our monthly demonstration downtown Champaign, Saturday July 1st. at (2:00pm - 4:00pm) on the corners of Church and Neil Streets. We have signs available, or bring your own. All are welcome.