From divisek at yahoo.com Sun Oct 1 14:48:44 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2017 14:48:44 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] N-G article about our lawsuit References: <449644635.1370496.1506869324338.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <449644635.1370496.1506869324338@mail.yahoo.com> http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2017-10-01/tom-kacich-ruling-offers-hope-fans-alternative-parties.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 1 15:21:37 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2017 15:21:37 +0000 Subject: [Peace] My Letter to the NG Message-ID: The most important issue facing humanity is global warming. If we don't do something now, all life on earth will perish. The experts know what to do, but it won't get done, without will. "Will" on the part of the government. We need their support which requires we stop funding the military/industrial war machine. We need to stop the killing, destruction, and control of other nations resources. This requires we stop the manufacture and proliferation of weapons. We need to fund alternative energies, clean air, infrastructure projects and provide proper public transportation. A bi product of infrastructure projects is the provision of jobs. Nuclear war is a major concern, given US provocations and the potential for "accidents." The two issues "global warming and war" are intertwined, we can't prevent one without preventing the other. The only thing our government representatives, within the beltway, care about is maximizing their profits by maintaining their control. It's up to the American people to take back control of their government, through civil resistance, it's the only thing that works. From divisek at yahoo.com Mon Oct 2 20:40:27 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 20:40:27 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] Fw: Destruction of Memory Monday October 9th, 5pm 304 English References: <110982303.2170914.1506976827157.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <110982303.2170914.1506976827157@mail.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Kaplan, Brett Ashley Sent: Monday, October 2, 2017, 2:41:13 PM CDTSubject: Destruction of Memory Monday October 9th, 5pm 304 English Dear All, please join us and help spread the word about the screening on Monday, October 9th at 5pm in 304 English, of the important film, The Destruction of Memory. Tim Slade, the filmmaker, will be here via Skype to introduce the film and to answer questions afterwards.  Based on Robert Bevan’s The Destruction of Memory, the film tells the story of the destruction of culture in Syria and Iraq and the ways in which people have fought back to preserve memory.  More information is here: http://destructionofmemoryfilm.com/about This is an Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies event.  Please share this poster with your colleagues, friends, and students. Thanks!  -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Destruction of memory.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 781257 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kmedina67 at gmail.com Tue Oct 3 02:02:14 2017 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (Karen Medina) Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2017 21:02:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace] peace demonstration this coming Saturday, October 7, 2017; 2pm-4pm Message-ID: Dear Peace, There is a peace demonstration this coming Saturday, October 7, 2017; 2pm-4pm Because of a wedding of friends, Stuart Levy and Karen Medina will not be able to attend this demonstration, so PLEASE be there for us. There is great need in the world. For: * A message of peace. * An opportunity for people to know that there are people doing more than just sitting at home hoping for the best. * An invitation to join the peace movement. Sincerely, -- karen medina From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Tue Oct 3 13:30:24 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 08:30:24 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Gun silencer bill coming up for vote this week Message-ID: <50EF51A3-6F60-4D9E-8964-7F58F31CB5E0@gmail.com> Please call Rodney Davis' office and ask him to consider, before he votes to ease regulations on firearm silencers, how many Congressmen would have been injured or killed at batting practice last summer if they had not been warned by the sound of the shots being fired. 202-225-2371 217-403-4690 Deb Sent from my iPhone From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Tue Oct 3 14:04:12 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2017 09:04:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?Katrina_vanden_Heuvel=3A_Congress=E2=80=99s_war?= =?utf-8?q?_powers_must_be_made_a_reality?= Message-ID: Please spread this all around. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/congresss-war-powers -must-be-made-a-reality/2017/10/03/096d8b74-a7c1-11e7-b3aa- c0e2e1d41e38_story.html *Congress’s war powers must be made a reality* By Katrina vanden Heuvel October 3 at 8:21 AM What does it take to get Congress to act on vital questions of war and peace? The catastrophe in Yemen may test whether Congress is finally prepared to exercise its constitutional responsibility. Four legislators — two House Democrats and two Republicans — have introduced a resolution under the War Powers Act demanding a vote in 15 days to end U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s devastation of Yemen. The resolution, co-sponsored by Democrats Ro Khanna and Mark Pocan (the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus) and by Republicans Thomas Massie and Walter Jones, requires the “removal” of U.S. forces from the war in Yemen unless Congress votes to authorize American involvement. Beginning under President Barack Obama, the U.S. military has assisted the Saudi campaign in Yemen, providing tankers for aerial refueling and targeting intelligence against the Houthi rebels said to be backed by Iran. U.S. support was reportedly part of a deal to get Saudi Arabia to be more supportive of the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Saudi-led campaign in Yemen has been central to creating what U.N. officials call the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. The carpet-bombing of civilian areas has helped produce borderline famine for 7 million , 20 million in need of humanitarian aid and a spreading cholera epidemic that has already reached 700,000 cases and killed more than 2,000 . Saudi Arabia has faced growing global protests over the bombing of civilian areas and other alleged violations of international law. Most recently, the Saudis have barred relief flights from access to Yemen’s airport and blocked delivery of four cranes financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that are vital to unloading medicine and food at Port Hodeida. Saudi influence managed to quash efforts by the Netherlands to force an international inspection of war crimes two years ago. Finally last month, the U.N. Human Rights Council passed a compromise resolution calling for the appointment of independent international experts to investigate humanitarian abuses and identify those responsible. During his campaign, Donald Trump expressed skepticism of failed U.S. interventions across the Middle East. Since coming to office, however, he has ratcheted up U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. The pace of U.S. bombing and interventions by special forces aimed at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has increased dramatically. Trump made no mention of Saudi Arabia’s brutal attacks on Yemen in celebrating its cooperation in the war on terrorism at the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh. In spite of generally opposing all things Obama, Trump appears to be doubling down on his predecessor’s policy toward Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Although a reactionary monarchy, Saudi Arabia has long enjoyed a special relationship with the United States. A blind eye has been turned toward its support for spreading extreme fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrine and its extensive financial ties to extremist organizations. The fact that the 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens has been virtually ignored. A document on Saudi connections to the attackers (from a larger congressional inquiry into the attacks) was released only last year. Now that impunity is starting to wear thin. In his foreign policy speech at Westminster College, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) courageously called out our support for Saudi Arabia’s “destructive intervention in Yemen,” arguing that “such policies dramatically undermine America’s ability to advance a human rights agenda across the world.” Later, in an interview with the Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan, Sanders elaborated , arguing that Saudi Arabia shouldn’t be considered “an ally,” because “it is an undemocratic country that has supported terrorism across the world.” The congressional resolution cites the State Department 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism’s conclusion that the Yemen conflict is “counterproductive to ongoing efforts . . . to pursue Al Qaeda and its associated forces.” The Saudi intervention is creating yet another failed state in which terrorists can take root. As lead co-sponsor Khanna (D-Calif.) argues , the war powers resolution is long overdue: “Congress and the American people know too little about the role we are playing in a war that is causing suffering for millions of people and is a genuine threat to our national security.” The resolution will force Congress to debate this truly deplorable policy that has implicated the United States in Saudi war crimes while fueling the spread of terrorism. The establishment default about the endless wars without victory or sense in the Middle East must end. Indeed, the bipartisan nature of the co-sponsor list for the resolution indicates interest on both sides of the aisle in revitalizing Congress as an effective constitutional check on a long-out-of-control executive branch. Khanna is hopeful that the debate on our support of the Saudi coalition in Yemen will serve as a belated but necessary first step, demonstrating growing bipartisan concern about continued foreign intervention. === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 4 14:10:28 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 14:10:28 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Experts Explain Why Congress Won't Limit Sale of Assault Weapons in US References: Message-ID: Professor Brenner of the University of Pittsburgh and Professor Boyle of the U of Illinois explain why: University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle agreed with Brenner’s assessment. He said there was no indication that the NRA would lose any of its enormous political influence in the foreseeable future. "Regretfully, based upon previous mass ... View article... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Oct 4 14:54:46 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2017 09:54:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Quaker from Burundi, E. Africa, Speaks on Women's Issues Message-ID: <0vydcfmn45q1txy63si41xy2.1507128886682@email.android.com> Women Helping Women: Addressing Gender-Based Violence and HIV in Burundi Parfaite Ntahuba, a Quaker pastor and Director of Friends Women's Association (FWA) in Burundi, will give a talk on addressing gender-based violence and HIV on Wednesday, October 11 at 7 PM at the Quaker Meetinghouse, 1904 E. Main, Urbana.  Light refreshments will be served.  The public is invited.   See below for more on this event - passing it along from Charlotte Green. -------- Original message --------From: Charlotte Green Date: 10/3/17 09:33 (GMT-06:00) To: Karen Medina , Stuart Levy Subject: Quaker from Burundi, E. Africa, Speaks on Women's Issues Hi Karen and Stuart, I hope you are both doing well.  I thought you'd be interested in attending one or more of these talks by our visitor from Burundi.  Could you post it on the AWARE list serve. Thanks!Charlotte  Women Helping Women: Addressing Gender-Based Violence and HIV in Burundi Parfaite Ntahuba, a Quaker pastor and Director of Friends Women's Association (FWA) in Burundi, will give a talk on addressing gender-based violence and HIV on Wednesday, October 11 at 7 PM at the Quaker Meetinghouse, 1904 E. Main, Urbana.  Light refreshments will be served.  The public is invited.   FWA is a grassroots organization founded by and for Burundian women to address their needs in a post-conflict environment.  FWA operates several projects, including a health clinic for women and their families affected by HIV/AIDS and a program that helps women who have survived gender-based violence to reintegrate in their communities.  Donations to FWA will be welcomed. Checks may be made out to Friends Peace Teams with FWA on the memo line. Parfaite will also give a talk on campus on Thursday, October 12 at 1 PM in the Lucy Ellis Lounge of the Foreign Language Building, 707 S. Mathews, Urbana.  The public is also invited to this talk, co-sponsored by the Center for African Studies and the Gender and Women's Studies Department. On Thursday, October 12 at 6 PM at the Quaker Meetinghouse, Friends invite the public to a potluck meal for an opportunity to visit with Parfaite. For more information, please contact Charlotte Green, charlotteg588 at gmail.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Parfaite flyer.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 246688 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 4 16:20:19 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 16:20:19 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases, January 12-14, Baltimore, Maryland References: <090bb12a9ccf856210dc6105b.d18ddf229a.20171004154913.d394a1e291.bb73757a@mail112.atl71.mcdlv.net> Message-ID: Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases January 12-14, 2018 University of Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland Hosted By: Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases Thirteen prominent peace and justice organizations in the United States are collectively organizing a 3-day national conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases on January 12-14, 2018, at the University of Baltimore, Maryland: * Alliance for Global Justice * Black Alliance for Peace * CODEPINK * Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space * International Action Center * MLK Justice Coalition * Nuclear Age Peace Foundation * Popular Resistance * United National Antiwar Coalition * U.S. Peace Council * Veterans For Peace * Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom * World Beyond War The conference will feature national and international experts. Several expert panels will discuss the economic, political, environmental and health costs and impact of U.S. foreign military bases in various regions of the world, including South America, Asia-Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. The conference will be live streamed for the international audience. For more information and to register for the conference: Visit the Coalition's Website [https://gallery.mailchimp.com/090bb12a9ccf856210dc6105b/images/f6af85ca-7e40-4dbf-b2ae-7fbbfb5c6189.jpg] [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-twitter-48.png] [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-facebook-48.png] [https://cdn-images.mailchimp.com/icons/social-block-v2/color-link-48.png] Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Oct 5 13:52:13 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:52:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace] The War you've never heard of........ Message-ID: The war you’ve never heard of by Nick Turse May 18th, 2017 The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe. Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe. In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners in their fight against terrorism and extremism. “At any given time, you will find SOCAFRICA conducting approximately 96 activities in 20 countries,” Donald Bolduc, the U.S. Army general who runs the special operations command in Africa (SOCAFRICA), wrote in an October 2016 strategic planning guidance report. (The report was obtained by VICE News in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and is published in its entirety below.) VICE News reached out to SOCAFRICA and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) for clarification on these numbers; email return receipts show an AFRICOM spokesperson “read” three such requests, but the command did not offer a reply. “Africa’s challenges could create a threat that surpasses the threat that the U.S. currently faces from conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.” The October 2016 report offers insight into what the U.S. military’s most elite forces are currently doing in Africa and what they hope to achieve. In so doing, it paints a picture of reality on the ground in Africa today and what it could be 30 years from now. That picture is bleak. “Africa’s challenges could create a threat that surpasses the threat that the United States currently faces from conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria,” Bolduc warned. He went on to cite a laundry list of challenges with which he and his personnel must contend: ever-expanding illicit networks, terrorist safe havens, attempts to subvert government authority, a steady stream of new recruits and resources. Bolduc indicated his solution was the “acceleration of SOF [special operations forces] missions [filling] a strategic gap as the military adjusts force structure now and in the future.” Translation: U.S. commandos “in more places, doing more” in Africa going forward. At the same time, Bolduc says the U.S. is not at war in Africa. But this assertion is challenged by the ongoing operations aimed at the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia, which operates often in all-but-ungoverned and extraordinarily complex areas Bolduc calls “gray zones.” In January, for example, U.S. advisers conducting a counterterrorism operation alongside local Somali forces and troops from the African Union Mission in Somalia “observed al-Shabaab fighters threatening their safety and security” and “conducted a self-defense strike to neutralize the threat,” according to a press release from AFRICOM. A U.S. Army Green Beret patrols with Nigerian soldiers during a training exercise in February. Earlier this month, in what AFRICOM described as “an advise-and-assist operation alongside Somali National Army forces,” Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two other U.S. personnel were injured during a firefight with al-Shabaab militants about 40 miles west of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The battle occurred shortly after President Donald Trump loosened Obama-era restrictions on offensive operations in Somalia, thereby allowing U.S. forces more discretion and leeway in conducting missions and opening up the possibility of more frequent airstrikes and commando raids. “It allows us to prosecute targets in a more rapid fashion,” Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the AFRICOM commander, said of the change. In April, the U.S. military reportedly requested the locations of aid groups working in the country, an indication that yet a greater escalation in the war against al-Shabaab may be imminent. “Looking at counterterrorism operations in Somalia, it’s clear the U.S. has been relying heavily on the remote-control form of warfare so favored by President Obama,” said Jack Serle, who covers the subject for the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Recently, the U.S. has augmented this strategy, working alongside local Somali forces and African Union troops under the banner of “train, advise, and assist” missions and other types of “support” operations, according to Serle. “Now they partner with local security forces but don’t engage in actual combat, the Pentagon says. The truth of that is hard to divine.” U.S. operations in Somalia are part of a larger continent-spanning counterterrorism campaign that saw special operations forces deploy to at least 32 African nations in 2016, according to open source data and information supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command. The cornerstone of this strategy involves training local proxies and allies — “building partner capacity” in the military lexicon. “Providing training and equipment to our partners helps us improve their ability to organize, sustain, and employ a counter violent extremist force against mutual threats,” the SOCAFRICA report says. As part of its increasing involvement in the war against Boko Haram militants in the Lake Chad Basin — it spans parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad — for example, the U.S. provided $156 million to support regional proxies last year. In addition to training, U.S. special operators, including members of SEAL Team 6, reportedly assist African allies in carrying out a half dozen or more raids every month. In April, a U.S. special operator reportedly killed a fighter from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army during an operation in the Central African Republic. U.S. forces also remain intimately involved in conflict in Libya after the U.S. ended an air campaign there against the Islamic State group in December. “We’re going to keep a presence on the ground… and we’re going to develop intelligence and take out targets when they arise,” Waldhauser said in March. “We believe the situation in Africa will get worse without our assistance.” Though Bolduc said special operators are carrying out about 96 missions on any given day, he didn’t specify how many total missions are being carried out per year. SOCAFRICA officials did not respond to several requests for that number. The marked increase in U.S. activity tracks with the rising number of major terror groups in Africa. A 2012 version of SOCAFRICA’s strategic planning documents also obtained by VICE News lists five major terror groups. The October 2016 files list seven by name — al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Magreb, ISIS, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Murabitun, Boko Haram, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and al-Shabaab — in addition to “other violent extremist organizations,” also known as VEOs. In 2015, Bolduc said that there are nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” operating on the African continent. Terror attacks in sub-Saharan Africa have skyrocketed in the past decade. Between 2006 and 2015, the last year covered by data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, attacks jumped from about 100 per year to close to 2,000. “From 2010 to the present,” Bolduc says in the report, “VEOs in Africa have been some of the most lethal on the planet.” “Many of Africa’s indicators are trending downward,” he writes. “We believe the situation in Africa will get worse without our assistance.” Colby Goodman, the director of the Washington, D.C.–based Security Assistance Monitor, pointed to some recent tactical gains against terror groups, but warned that progress might be short-lived and unsustainable. “My continuing concerns about U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Africa,” he said, “is an over-focus on tactical military support to partner countries at the expense of a more whole-government approach and a lack of quality assessments and evaluations of U.S. security aid to these countries.” -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Fri Oct 6 00:15:04 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 19:15:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE ON THE AIR for Tuesday 26 September In-Reply-To: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> > AWARE on the Air - Episode #423 Produced by the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana ### -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Fri Oct 6 10:27:18 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2017 05:27:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace] need more letters/emails to Congress to help Puerto Rico Message-ID: Folks, In the combined aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, Puerto Rico is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Thirteen days after Maria made landfall the President traveled to Puerto Rico, told them how lucky they were not to have had a "real catastrophe like Katrina" and threw rolls of paper towels at survivors as if they were so many trained seals. FEMA has yet to declare a full disaster emergency in Puerto Rico, and Congress has yet to put together a robust aid package specifically aimed at Puerto Rico's special needs. Please use this link to send a message to our members of Congress: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/help-puerto-rico Then call their offices and demand action now. Senators Durbin and Duckworth have shown some leadership on this issue--Reps Davis and Shimkus not so much. Sen Durbin 202-224-2152 Sen Duckworth 202-224-2854 Rep Davis 202-225-2371 Rep Shimkus 202-225-5271 I talked to a staffer in the Puerto Rico Delegate's office Monday. He pleaded for us to keep calling and emailing Congress--"Don't let them forget about us," he said. Use the link, write, and call today. Please. Deb From galliher at illinois.edu Sat Oct 7 05:21:33 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 00:21:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace] NEWS FROM NEPTUNE for Friday 6 October In-Reply-To: <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: “The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.” --Rosa Luxembourg News from Neptune - Episode #253: A MASS MURDER EDITION ‘From a Concert in Las Vegas to Funerals in Yemen, We Must Stop Mass Murder’ --Kathy Kelly [commondreams.org] ### From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sat Oct 7 15:11:07 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2017 10:11:07 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Mark Ruffalo: Ask Repubs to choose the Constitution over Saudis Message-ID: Please RT: https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/916640207084105730 *Mark Ruffalo*‏Verified account @MarkRuffalo 3h Ask Repubs to choose the Constitution over Saudis: join @RepRoKhanna & @RepThomasMassie to end war&famine in Yemen Mark Ruffalo added, *Sunjeev Bery*Verified account @SunjeevBery Good morning. I need to share a few things.… 8:23 AM - 7 Oct 2017 - *141* Retweets - *427* Likes === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sun Oct 8 15:29:44 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 10:29:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace] JFP alert: Mark Ruffalo: "Ask Repubs to choose the Constitution over Saudis" Message-ID: We're trying to break 1000 retweets on Mark Ruffalo's post. Right now we are at 943. Please throw a retweet in the hat. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy Date: Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 3:52 PM Subject: Mark Ruffalo: "Ask Repubs to choose the Constitution over Saudis" To: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org [image: Just Foreign Policy] Dear Robert, *Share Mark Ruffalo's Tweet. * Remember *Mark Ruffalo*? He was in "Spotlight," the Academy Award-winning movie about the newspaper that broke the "*omerta* code" of the Catholic Church in Boston that was covering up abuse of children by priests. We've been working for over a year to break the "*omerta* code" of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who's *covering up the killings of Yemeni children by Saudi Arabia*. [1] Paul Ryan hasn't allowed a floor vote in the House on any aspect of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia since the House voted overwhelmingly last September to allow the 9/11 widows to sue Saudi Arabia. Paul Ryan hasn't allowed any House vote on U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen since the House narrowly failed to prohibit the transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia in June 2016. *Mark Ruffalo is standing with us*. Here's the tweet he sent out this morning: *Mark Ruffalo*‏Verified account @MarkRuffalo Following More Mark Ruffalo Retweeted Sunjeev Bery Ask Repubs to choose the Constitution over Saudis: join @RepRoKhanna & @RepThomasMassie to end war&famine in Yemen Here's how you can help: 1. Spread Mark's Tweet on Twitter. *Go here* . https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/916640207084105730 2. Share Mark's Tweet on Facebook. Just post *this link* into your status update. https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/916640207084105730 3. Forward this email wherever you want. Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just, Robert Naiman 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.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-saudi-un/ u-n-blacklists-saudi-led-coalition-for-killing-children -in-yemen-idUSKBN1CA2NI [image: Please support our work. Donate for a Just Foreign Policy] © 2016 Just Foreign Policy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Sun Oct 8 16:54:35 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2017 16:54:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] N-G editorial supporting our lawsuit References: <690103538.3520627.1507481675274.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <690103538.3520627.1507481675274@mail.yahoo.com> This is stronger than I'd expected. Although not completely accurate, it's helpful to our cause.  Dianna Court gives outsiders a shot | | | | | | | | | | | Court gives outsiders a shot Democrats and Republicans work well together when it's convenient to do so. | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Mon Oct 9 09:48:08 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 04:48:08 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 12:42:13 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 12:42:13 +0000 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 14:46:01 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:46:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Exactly, when speaking with those opposed to war, any initial exhilaration I feel at hearing their opposition, is immediately dashed when they assume, its all about Trump and we need to get rid of him, and get a Democrat in power, or a third party candidate, Bernie. I control my need to ask, where have you been for over eight years now, by pointing out Bush put us into 2 wars, Obama extended those to now 7. On Oct 9, 2017, at 07:14, Boyle, Francis A > wrote: And I would add that Amy Badman is typical for what passes for most of the American “left” these days—warmongers. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Boyle, Francis A Sent: Monday, October 9, 2017 8:05 AM To: Karen Aram > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Ditto for Amy Badman on Syria. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Karen Aram [mailto:karenaram at hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 7:42 AM To: Boyle, Francis A > Cc: Estabrook, Carl G >; Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war I wasn’t aware of Amy’s support for Libyan intervention at the time, but given her take on Syria of recent, I no longer pay attention to DN when it comes to foreign policy. Trump, also supported intervention in Libya, accusing Gaddafi of murdering thousands. Its’ time people recognize that anything anyone says when running for office, especially as regards foreign policy, should be ignored. Foreign policy is set in stone, and has been for decades by the various groups who run our government. NSA, CIA, CFR, Pentagon, State Dept., and the many contractors who profit from war, own the DNC and GOP. The only difference in either party or groups holding power is strategy and tactics, and their only concern is “power”. There is no difference in the goal of perpetual war and containment of China and Russia. Containment of these two powerful, nuclear armed nations will ultimately lead to WW3. Only the American people standing up to government through solidarity and civil resistance can bring about change and progress. Many Americans are organizing against the government now, but they aren’t united, and they aren’t focused on those who possess power. We need total system change. On Oct 9, 2017, at 04:56, Boyle, Francis A via Peace-discuss > wrote: – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... Yeah well Amy Badman fully supported Obama’s unconstitutional war against Libya for eight months that killed about 50,000 Muslims/Arabs/Africans of Color, Men, Women and Children, destroyed Libya as a State and turned Libya into Somalia on the Med, along with her Boy Toy Juan Cole of UMichigan, a reported CIA Asset. Fab. Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (phone) 217-244-1478 (fax) (personal comments only) From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Carl G. Estabrook via Peace Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 4:48 AM To: Estabrook, Carl G > Cc: Peace-discuss List >; prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace > Subject: [Peace] Trump's defeat by the political establishment leads to war Trump/Bannon’s America First policy put the interests of the immiserated middle class ahead of those of globalizing corporations. The political establishment (including - but not limited to - the Obama-Clinton administration) couldn’t stand that. So they destroyed it, to further their long-standing policies to retard the economic development of Eurasia, seen as a threat to the US one-percent’s profits. They’re wiling to kill a lot of people to do that. "Americans pushed into pro-war frenzy by elite-controlled MSM & NATO”: >: ...the failure of Donald Trump’s America First policy ... Trump has done a pretty horrible job selling his policy. There was a non-interventionist component that he campaigned on, which proved pretty popular, particularly in places like the Rust Belt. ...these numbers ... started to shift when the election campaign began. They reflect a concerted campaign by the mainstream media and by the national security state, which has unprecedented access and control over mainstream media – particularly CNN and MSNBC – to bring the American public’s views in line with the elites’ [views] of our interventionist bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington. Two years of non-stop red-baiting, Russia hysteria, and fearmongering over North Korea have done the trick, particularly among Democrats. ...liberals tend to support interventionist policies at higher rates than even Republicans... From 2015 to this summer we saw a 20 percent surge in the number of Americans who would support sending troops to defend South Korea. We also see, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans willing to send US troops to fight and die for Latvia against Russia, and that is a reflection of their support for NATO. Liberals disproportionately support these militaristic policies, which seem to suggest support for a hot war with Russia, and even hot war with China. It would be disastrous if they took place. So why didn’t that take place? Because of the partisan war against Trump, who has been portrayed as an enemy of NATO – even though he is now as supportive of NATO as ever; as someone who is a Manchurian candidate of Russia, who is controlled by Putin’s nine-dimensional chess and has colluded with Russia. So, Democrats tend to see Russia in a negative light, and they support interventionist policies. But if you also look at CNN and MSNBC versus Fox News, which is the de-facto channel of the Republican Party and Trump, you see non-stop contributors from the national security state – like James Clapper, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director – pushing these kinds of militaristic policies. So, these are the channels that Democrats watch. Their media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has really stepped up the fearmongering and militarism. So, you see a total reversal from the Bush period, the Bush era – when Democrats were staunchly against the Iraq war, because it was Bush’s war. And now you see the people that are against guns that are against mass shooting – favoring pointing guns and committing mass shootings abroad... In 2014, Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, wife of the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, said that Americans were ready to fight and die for Latvia. That wasn’t true at the time. Now it is. These attitudes have been manufactured. They’ve been partly manufactured by NATO propaganda. We heard at lot – especially on CNN from figures like Jake Tapper, “Deep State Jake,” who almost every show is pushing regime change in one of the non-compliant states. We heard a lot about the Zapad [West] military exercises, thinking Romania, where Russia was said to have amassed 100,000 troops on NATO borders – even “Democracy Now!” reported that... _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Oct 9 15:22:31 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:22:31 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Excellent article Message-ID: From Prof. Francis Boyle, An article from Counterpunch 2013 By JEAN BRICMONT Once upon a time, in the early 1970’s, many people, including myself, thought that all the “struggles” of that period were linked: the Cultural Revolution in China, the guerillas in Latin America, the Prague Spring and the East European “dissidents”, May 68, the civil rights movement, the opposition to the Vietnam war, and the nominally socialist anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia. We also thought that the “fascist” regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece, by analogy with WWII, could only be overthrown through armed struggle, very likely protracted. None of these assumptions were correct. The Cultural Revolution had nothing to do with the anti-authoritarian movements in the West, the Eastern European dissidents were, in general, pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist, and often fanatically so, the Latin American guerrillas were a pipe dream (except in Central America) and the national liberation movements were just that: they (quite rightly) aimed at national liberation and called themselves socialist or communist only because of the support offered to them by the Soviet Union or China. The southern European “fascist” regimes transformed themselves without offering a serious resistance, let alone an armed struggle. Many other authoritarian regimes followed suit: in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, in Indonesia, Africa and now in part of the Arab world. Some collapsed from inside, other crumbled after a few demonstrations. I was reminded of these youthful illusions when I read a petition “in solidarity with the millions of Syrians who have been struggling for dignity and freedom since March 2011”, whose list of signatories includes a veritable who’s who of the Western Left. The petition claims that “The revolution in Syria is a fundamental part of the North African revolutions, yet it is also an extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.” The signatories of course demand the immediate departure from power of Bashar al-Assad, which is supposed to be the only “hope for a free, unified, and independent Syria”. They also characterize Russia, China and Iran as standing “in support of the slaughter of people”, although they are “allegedly friends of the Arabs”; they acknowledge that “the U.S. and its Gulf allies have intervened in support of the revolutionaries”, but blame them for “having done so with a clear cynical self-interest” and trying to “crush and subvert the uprising”. It is not clear how this squares with the next line of the text, which claims that “regional and world powers have left the Syrian people alone”. The upshot of the petition consists in grandiose claims of “solidarity” from “intellectuals, academics, activists, artists, concerned citizens and social movements”, “with the Syrian people to emphasize the revolutionary dimension of their struggle and to prevent the geopolitical battles and proxy wars taking place in their country.” Nothing less! This petition is worth analyzing in detail, because it nicely summarizes everything that is wrong in today’s mainstream leftist thinking and it both illustrates and explains why there is no Left left in the West. The same sort of thinking dominated the Western Left’s thinking during the Kosovo and the Libyan wars, and to some extent during the wars in Afghanistan (“solidarity with Afghan women”) and Iraq (“they will be better off without Saddam”). First of all, the presentation of the facts about Syria is very doubtful. I am no expert on Syria, but if the people are so united against the regime, how come that it has resisted for so long? There have been bricmontimprelatively few defections in the army or in the diplomatic and political personnel. Given that the majority of Syrians are Sunnis and that the regime is constantly depicted as relying on the support of the “Alawi sect”, something must be wanting in that narrative about Syria. Next, like it or not, the actions of “Russia, China and Iran” in Syria have been in accordance with international law, unlike those of the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”. From the viewpoint of international law, the current government of Syria is legitimate and responding to its request for help is perfectly legal, while arming rebels is not. Of course, the leftists who sign the petition would probably object to that aspect of international law, because it favors governments over insurgents. But just imagine the chaos that would be created if every Great Power was arming the rebels of its choice all over the world. One could deplore the selling of arms to “dictatorships”, but the U.S. is hardly in a position to lecture the world on that topic. Moreover, it is “Russia and China” who have, by their vote at the UN prevented another U.S. intervention, like the one in Libya, which the Western Left, opposed very lukewarmly, if at all. In fact, given that U.S. used the U.N. Resolution on Libya to carry out a regime change that the resolution did not authorize, isn’t it natural that Russia and China feel that they were taken for a ride in Libya and say: “never again!”? The petition sees the events in Syria as an “extension of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico, the landless movement in Brazil, the European and North American revolts against neoliberal exploitation, and an echo of Iranian, Russian and Chinese movements for freedom.”, but they are careful not to link them to the anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, since the latter stand squarely against foreign interventions and for the respect of national sovereignty. Finally, what should make anybody think that the “immediate” departure of Bashar al-Assad would lead to a “free, unified and independent Syria”? Aren’t the examples of Iraq and Libya enough to cast some doubts on such optimistic pronouncements? That brings us to a second problem with the petition, which is its tendency towards revolutionary romanticism. The present-day Western Left is the first to denounce the “Stalinist” regimes of the past, including those of Mao, Kim Il Sung or Pol Pot. But do they forget that Lenin fought against tsarism, Stalin against Hitler, Mao against the Kuomintang, Kim Il Sung against the Japanese and that the last two ones, as well as Pol Pot, fought against the U.S.? If history should have thought us anything, it is that struggling against oppression does not necessarily turn you into a saint. And given that so many violent revolutions of the past have turned sour, what reason is there to believe that the “revolution” in Syria, increasingly taken over by religious fanatics, will emerge as a shining example of freedom and democracy? There have been repeated offers of negotiations by “Russia, China and Iran”, as well as from the “Assad regime” with the opposition as well as with its sponsors (the “U.S. and its Gulf allies”). Shouldn’t one give peace and diplomacy a chance? The “Syrian regime” has modified its constitution; why be so certain that this cannot lead a “democratic future”, while a violent revolution can? Shouldn’t one give reform a chance? However, the main defect of this petition, as well as with similar appeals from the humanitarian interventionist Left in the past, is: to whom are they talking? The rebels in Syria want as many sophisticated weapons as possible- no signatory of the petition can deliver them, and it is hard to see how the “global civil society, not ineffective and manipulative governments” can do it. Those rebels want Western governments to provide them with such weapons-they couldn’t care less what the Western Left thinks. And those Western government hardly know that the wishful thinking Left even exists. And if they did, why would they listen to people with no serious popular support, and so no means of pressuring governments? The best proof of that is given by the cause to which so many signatories have devoted a good part of their lives: Palestine. Which Western government pays any attention to the demands of the “Palestine solidarity movement”? Just because the petition has no effect in Syria does not mean that it has no effect tout court. It weakens and confuses what is left of antiwar sentiments, by stressing that “our” priority must be empty gestures of solidarity with a rebellion that is already militarily supported by the West. Once this mindset is acquired, it becomes psychologically difficult to oppose U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Syria, since intervention is precisely what the revolutionaries that we must “support” want (apparently, they have not noticed, unlike the petitioners, that the West wants to “crush and subvert the uprising”). Of course, defenders of the petition will say that they don’t “support” the more violent extremists in Syria, but who exactly are they supporting then, and how? Moreover, the false impression that the “world powers have left the Syrian people alone” (while, in fact, there is a constant flood of arms and jihadists into Syria) comes partly from the fact that the U.S. is not foolish enough to risk a World War, given that Russia seems to mean what it says in this affair. The thought that we might be on the brink of a World War never seems to occur to the petitioners. Defenders of the petition will probably say that “we” must denounce both U.S. imperialism and the oppressive regimes against which the “people” revolt. But that only shows the depth of their delusions: why claim doing two things at once, when one is not capable of doing either, even partly? If such petitions are worse than doing nothing, what should the Left do? First of all, mind its own business, which means struggling at home. This is a lot harder than expressing a meaningless solidarity with people in faraway lands. And struggling for what? Peace through demilitarization of the West, a non-interventionist policy, and putting diplomacy, not military threats, at the center of international relations. Incidentally, a non-interventionist policy is advocated by the libertarians and by the paleoconservative Right. This fact, plus invocation of pre-World War II history (the Spanish civil war, the Munich agreements), is constantly used by the Left to give anti-interventionism a bad name. But this is silly: Hitler is not really being constantly resurrected, and there are no serious military threats faced by the West. In the present situation, it is a perfectly legitimate concern of American citizens to cut back the costs of Empire. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to set up a broad Left-Right coalition of people opposed to militarism and interventionism. Of course, within that coalition, people might still disagree on Gay marriage but, important as this issue may be, it should perhaps not prevent us from working together on issues that might also seem important to some people, such as World peace, the defense of the U.N. and of international law, and the dismantling of the U.S. empire of bases. Besides, it is not unlikely that a majority of the American public could be gained to such positions if sustained and well organized campaigns were set up to persuade them. But of course, the spirit of the petition goes exactly in the opposite direction, towards more U.S. involvement and interventions. Many signatories certainly think of themselves as anti-imperialists and pro-peace, and some of them have had an important role in opposing previous U.S. wars. But they do not seem to have noticed that the tactics of imperialism have changed since the days of the national liberation movements. Now, that decolonization is complete (with the exception of Palestine), the U.S. is attacking governments, not revolutionary movements, that are considered to be too independent. And, in order to do that, they use a variety of means that are similar in their tactics to the revolutionary or progressive movements of the past: armed struggle, civil disobedience, government funded “N”GO’s, colored revolutions, etc. The latest example of these tactics is the attempt by Western governments to use the LGBT community as ideological storm troopers against Russia and the Winter Olympics, in a transparent effort to deflect public attention from the embarrassing fact that, in the Snowden affair, it is Russia and not the U.S. that is on the side of freedom. It is to be feared that the humanitarian interventionist Left will jump on the bandwagon of this new crusade. Yet, as Gilad Atzmon has pointed out, with his usual slightly provocative style, it is unlikely that this will do any good to the LGBT community in Russia, since this sort of support allows their opponents to brand them as bearers of foreign influence. It is not a good idea for any minority, anywhere in the world, to be seen as agents of a foreign power, and least of all, of a government so hated for its arrogance and its interventionism as the present U.S. administration. And incidentally, the people who call for boycott of the Winter games in Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime, whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mere peccadillos. People who succumb to the illusions of revolutionary romanticism or who side with the apparent underdog, regardless of the underdog’s agenda, are being taken in by the tactics of present-day imperialism. But those who aspire to a more peaceful and more just world order, and who think that a precondition of this order is the weakening of U.S. imperialism, easily see through this camouflage. These two different world views divide both the Left and the Right: liberal interventionists and neoconservatives on one side, libertarians, paleoconservatives and traditional leftists on the other, and it may call for new and heterodox alliances. JEAN BRICMONT teaches physics at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is author of Humanitarian Imperialism. He can be reached at Jean.Bricmont at uclouvain.be -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Tue Oct 10 01:25:27 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2017 20:25:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?HuffPo=3A_Celebrities_=26_Experts_Push_Congress?= =?utf-8?q?_To_End_Trump=E2=80=99s_Support_For_Saudi_Carnage_In_Yem?= =?utf-8?q?en?= Message-ID: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yemen-war-saudi-coalition-us-support_us_ 59dbde4be4b0b34afa5b8c62 Celebrities And Experts Push Congress To End Trump’s Support For Saudi Carnage In Yemen With a House vote this week, a diverse group — including Mark Ruffalo, Alice Walker, Laurence Tribe and FreedomWorks — is getting involved. By Akbar Shahid Ahmed WASHINGTON ― The lawmakers behind a major bipartisan effort to end U.S. assistance for a devastating Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen are getting help from big names in multiple arenas as they try to whip votes. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) want an up-or-down House vote before the end of the week on a resolution to end American support for the Saudi-led coalition. A letter dated Oct. 9 and provided exclusively to HuffPost shows strong backing for their initiative from across the political spectrum and the national conversation: Foreign policy commentators like Noam Chomsky and Stephen Walt signed the letter, and so did actors Mark Ruffalo, Brie Larson and Martin Sheen, author Alice Walker, playwright Eve Ensler, prominent legal scholars like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe and Yale’s Bruce Ackerman, the tea party-linked group FreedomWorks , former officials under Democratic and Republican presidents, and former members of Congress from both parties. “By invoking provisions of U.S. law allowing for the introduction of a privileged resolution to withdraw unauthorized U.S. forces from this conflict, you are reasserting the rightful role of Congress,” reads the letter, formally addressed to the four congressmen. “We, the undersigned, encourage all U.S. Representatives to vote yes to this resolution. This measure strengthens U.S. governance to comport better with the Constitution, assists in reducing a genuine threat to national security posed by the expansion of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and promises to assist in ending the senseless suffering of millions of innocent people in Yemen.” The Saudi-led coalition began fighting pro-Iran rebels in Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest country, on behalf of the Yemeni government in March 2015. It received U.S. help from the start. Currently, aerial refueling provided by American aircraft enables bombing runs by the planes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), while the U.S. government provides the coalition with intelligence and fresh stocks of weapons. But Congress has never authorized this military adventure or identified the Iran-backed rebel militia, the Houthis, as a threat to the United States. President Barack Obama originally approved U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other U.S.-aligned governments in the coalition. Obama administration officials have since explained he did it to reassure those countries that Washington’s support for them remained steadfast even after the U.S. reached a nuclear deal with Iran. That logic, however, never satisfied constitutionalists and anti-war activists who saw the U.S. support as militaristic executive overreach. It’s become less and less popular as the Saudi-led coalition has been accused of committing major war crimes in Yemen, which might implicate American officials , and of creating a humanitarian crisis with its naval blockade and bombing of key infrastructure in that country. The letter points to U.S. culpability in the suffering of Yemen’s people. It also highlights a major conundrum for U.S. foreign policy makers. While executive branch officials have justified many recent military interventions, including counterterror operations focused on Yemen, on the basis of a broad authorization for the use of military force against al Qaeda and its associates that Congress approved in 2001, support for the Saudi-led coalition is largely unrelated to the fight against al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other Islamic extremist groups. In fact, according to the U.S. State Department, the Yemen intervention has created a situation that’s benefiting the Yemeni branch of al Qaeda. The proposed House resolution would end U.S. support for the coalition’s operations against the Houthi rebels within 30 days. It’s written to appeal widely. It frames the question as one of American constitutional authority, avoiding messy debates about international laws of war and specifically preserving U.S. operations in Yemen that are narrowly focused on al Qaeda and similar threats. The resolution would be the most sweeping congressional action on the war yet. Previous efforts in both houses have targeted U.S. arms shipments to Saudi Arabia rather than the overall strategy of U.S. support for the campaign. Since 2015, lawmakers skeptical about the war have scheduled House and Senate votes aimed at those weapons sales. None of those measures passed, but they signaled how widely shared dislike of the war has become on Capitol Hill, with 204 House members supporting an effort to stop transfers of cluster munitions last year and 47 senators, including almost all Democrats, trying to block the sale of precision-guided bombs this summer. Fans of those measures often spoke of them as efforts to pressure Saudi Arabia and the UAE to be more careful in how they waged the war and to move more quickly to negotiate an end to it. In recent weeks, congressional staffers and human rights advocates have begun to focus more on American responsibility for Yemen’s pain and the possibility of ending U.S. support altogether. The logic behind the new House effort , backed by more than a dozen legal experts who signed the Oct. 9 letter, is that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 compels lawmakers to act because the ongoing American refueling and targeting assistance to the Saudi coalition constitute the introduction of unauthorized U.S. forces into hostilities ― and because there’s a clear threat the executive will approve such use of U.S. forces again. Congressional aides and activists trying to win support for the House resolution are concerned that GOP leadership may try to quash it. But the public approval of influential figures on the right and left, from former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a libertarian hero, to anti-war activist Phyllis Bennis, is giving them more confidence as they prepare for a vote on Thursday or Friday. “My three colleagues and I are grateful for this strong endorsement of H.Con.Res 81 from some of our country’s leading authorities in law, national security, and foreign affairs, as well as renowned creative artists and grassroots leaders from across the political spectrum,” Khanna told HuffPost. “As millions of Yemenis suffer from unimaginable and avoidable hunger as a result of this unauthorized U.S.-Saudi war, our bill is the first step to fulfilling Congress’s constitutional mandate to stop this war. We are channeling the aspirations of millions of ordinary Americans — left, right, and center — who seek a foreign policy of restraint and non-intervention.” *Read the letter below:* === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 00:39:03 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:39:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Krugman, "Virginia is for Haters" In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <3665D5F3-75ED-4907-A054-AAF9576342E5@illinois.edu> [In ambiguous defense of the home of my youth.] I’ve never been a great fan of Krugman’s, but he used to be the source of reliably liberal (if boring) opinions. But he’s been driven nuts in the last year, like some other establishment pundits (e.g., Robert Reich), by the defeat of the neoliberal champions (Obama/Clinton). He asks a good question: "Why is America the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee essential health care for all? ... Why do we have much higher poverty than our economic peers … We are uniquely unwilling to take care of our fellow citizens.” But his answer is propagandistic and wrong: “...behind that political difference lies one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery.” No; it’s the legacy of capitalism. It comes from ‘slavery' only in the sense that the Civil War was the substitution of one method of exploiting labor (wage slavery) for another (chattel slavery). In the post-bellum US, the Southern states (including Virginia) were subjected to Northern capitalism as internal, largely agricultural, colonies - generally exempt from the subsequent social progress of the industrial north. Krugman follows the mythology of the Clinton campaign - that that splendid example of neoliberalism was defeated by racism. It’s nonsense. She was defeated by war and immiseration: . In order to avoid serious criticism of the our capitalist order, liberals like Krugman are desperate to see Trump’s victory and subsequent politics as fundamentally a matter of race relations. It’s not: it’s a matter of class relations. It’s a given among such people that "political difference” comes from "one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery” - our political and historical mythology agree. But serious US historians know better: "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the United States as primarily a system of race relations—as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’.7 He does not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating Africans would go to the trouble and expense of transporting them across the ocean for that purpose, when they could have achieved the same end so much more simply by leaving the Africans in Africa. No one dreams of analysing the struggle of the English against the Irish as a problem in race relations, even though the rationale that the English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’ Irish later served nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and indigenous American Indians.8 Nor does anyone dream of analysing serfdom in Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even though the Russian nobility invented fictions of their innate, natural superiority over the serfs as preposterous as any devised by American racists.” —Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” NLR I/181, May-June 1990 Krugman and his ilk are desperate to have us talk about race relations - in Virginia and elsewhere - and not look at class relations, after 40 years of increasing (and accelerating) inequality - the real reason Trump was elected, and the continuing chasm in US society - which the government, working for the 1%, covers over with war and rumors of war. —CGE From galliher at illinois.edu Wed Oct 11 02:23:45 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:23:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Prairiegreens] Krugman, "Virginia is for Haters" In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <3665D5F3-75ED-4907-A054-AAF9576342E5@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Race was “a part of slavery” as Barbara Fields explains (cf. Ireland and Russia). Wage slavery is not the same as chattel slavery; e.g., antebellum New Orleanians would not risk the lives of valuable slaves for the dangerous job of draining the pestilential swamps around New Orleans: they hired cheap and easily replaceable Irishmen from New York. One distinguishing feature of the Confederacy was its explicit intention to defend the its economic and social order from the attack by the North, spear-headed by the Republican party: “...this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free ... it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." The attempt since the 1970s of US liberals to ignore issues of exploitation (wages in the US have been flat since 1973) by strenuously emphasizing issues of discrimination is increasingly threadbare - as Clinton’s defeat shows. —CGE > On Oct 10, 2017, at 8:37 PM, John Randolph wrote: > > Since it seems to be impossible to removed from this list, I think as a historian I should note that Mr. Estabrook's opinions that race was not a part of slavery is not shared by historians, that 'wage slavery' is not at all the same as chattel slavery, and that indeed one distinguishing feature of the confederacy was its explicit intention to found a racial order. Reductivist theories of capitalism impoverish our history when they exclude race. > > > On 10/10/17 7:39 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: >> >> >> [In ambiguous defense of the home of my youth.] >> >> I’ve never been a great fan of Krugman’s, but he used to be the source of reliably liberal (if boring) opinions. >> But he’s been driven nuts in the last year, like some other establishment pundits (e.g., Robert Reich), by the defeat of the neoliberal champions (Obama/Clinton). >> >> He asks a good question: "Why is America the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee essential health care for all? ... Why do we have much higher poverty than our economic peers … We are uniquely unwilling to take care of our fellow citizens.” But his answer is propagandistic and wrong: “...behind that political difference lies one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery.” >> >> No; it’s the legacy of capitalism. It comes from ‘slavery' only in the sense that the Civil War was the substitution of one method of exploiting labor (wage slavery) for another (chattel slavery). In the post-bellum US, the Southern states (including Virginia) were subjected to Northern capitalism as internal, largely agricultural, colonies - generally exempt from the subsequent social progress of the industrial north. >> >> Krugman follows the mythology of the Clinton campaign - that that splendid example of neoliberalism was defeated by racism. It’s nonsense. She was defeated by war and immiseration: . >> >> In order to avoid serious criticism of the our capitalist order, liberals like Krugman are desperate to see Trump’s victory and subsequent politics as fundamentally a matter of race relations. It’s not: it’s a matter of class relations. >> >> It’s a given among such people that "political difference” comes from "one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery” - our political and historical mythology agree. But serious US historians know better: >> >> "Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the >> United States as primarily a system of race relations—as though the >> chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy >> rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One >> historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’.7 >> He does not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating >> Africans would go to the trouble and expense of transporting >> them across the ocean for that purpose, when they could have achieved >> the same end so much more simply by leaving the Africans in Africa. >> No one dreams of analysing the struggle of the English against the >> Irish as a problem in race relations, even though the rationale that the >> English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’ Irish later served >> nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and >> indigenous American Indians.8 Nor does anyone dream of analysing >> serfdom in Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even >> though the Russian nobility invented fictions of their innate, natural >> superiority over the serfs as preposterous as any devised by American >> racists.” >> —Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the >> United States of America,” NLR I/181, May-June 1990 >> >> Krugman and his ilk are desperate to have us talk about race relations - in Virginia and elsewhere - and not look at class relations, after 40 years of increasing (and accelerating) inequality - the real reason Trump was elected, and the continuing chasm in US society - which the government, working for the 1%, covers over with war and rumors of war. >> >> —CGE >> From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 11 12:52:49 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 12:52:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Focus war on nations in Africa Message-ID: This is a statement from Foreign Policy posted by Carl Estabrook this morning. "...the acting head of U.S. Army Africa [SIC] says that “approximately 80 percent of our theater security cooperation activities are going to be focused in Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon area for next year.” [REMEMBER CONGRESS' DECLARATION OF WAR THAT AUTHORIZED THIS?] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 01:19:58 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:19:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> counterpunch.org "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” by Janet Contursi The “Battle of Cable Street” is a key event in the “creation myth” of the anti-fascist movement. It goes like this: On Sunday, October 4, 1936, about 5,000 members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Sir Oswald Mosley, planned to march in full Blackshirt regalia through several Jewish neighborhoods in London’s East End. Six thousand police were assigned to protect them from about 100,000 anti-fascist protesters. The anti-fascists fought the police and erected barricades to block the marchers. When the fascists saw there was no possibility of moving beyond the barricades, they abandoned the march and dispersed. [1] Some accounts of the battle claim that the fascists and anti-fascists fought hand-to-hand, but Reg Weston, a journalist who was in his early twenties when he actually participated in the battle, makes it clear that the two sides never clashed. The police and barricades kept them apart. It’s a myth, Weston says, “that the ‘battle’ was between the protesters and the Blackshirts. It was not — it was a battle with the police.” [2] Nevertheless, the crowd celebrated that day. The “Battle of Cable Street” went down in history as a victory for anti-fascist forces and to this day is part of the heroic mythology of the ultra-left: “For many members of contemporary anti-Fascist groups, the incident remains central to their mythology, a kind of North Star in the fight against Fascism and white supremacy across Europe and, increasingly, the United States.” [3] But was it really a victory? On the surface, the battle appears to justify the preferred tactic of the ultra-left: direct physical confrontation in the streets. However, like all myths, the battle and its outcome have been distorted and embellished over the years. When we look at what actually happened in the weeks, months and years following the battle, two things become clear. First, as a tactic violence can, at best, bring short-term gains, but those have to be weighed against long-term consequences. In other words, we don’t want to win the battle but lose the war. This is what happened at Cable Street. Second, justifying violence by comparing the U.S. today with fascism in the 1930s is a red herring. In the 1930s, Nazis posed a real threat to democracy; in 2017 America, they do not. It’s time to ask, cui bono – who benefits? After the battle the fascists grew stronger Unfortunately, the anti-fascists celebrating their victory in 1936 couldn’t have known that their actions would ultimately do nothing to stop either the Nazi juggernaut that descended upon Europe three years later, or the immediate popularity of the BUF. In fact, the BUF benefitted from the violence and became even stronger over the next four years, until 1940, when it was banned by the government. What the anti-fascist forces did achieve at Cable Street was a singular victory in stopping a single march. But at what price? In the aftermath of that action, membership in the BUF grew. Rather than smashing fascism, the battle turned out to be a recruitment tool for the BUF. The organization gained an additional 2,000 members immediately, and its membership continued to climb steadily. Seven months before the battle, BUF membership was around 10,000; one month after the battle, it rose to 15,500. It continued to rise until, by 1939, the BUF had about 22,500 members. [4] The anti-fascist actions didn’t dampen the peoples’ enthusiasm for Mosely’s message. In the weeks after the battle, pro-fascist crowds in the thousands turned out for BUF meetings, listened to Mosley’s fascist proselytizing, and marched through London without much opposition. [1] An intelligence report on the battle noted that afterwards, “A definite pro-Fascist feeling has manifested itself. The alleged Fascist defeat is in reality a Fascist advance.” [1] Violence, it seems, provided free publicity for the fascists. The BUF “thrived off the publicity that violent opposition produced. The national media, under pressure from the government, largely avoided reporting on Fascist activity other than when disorder occurred. A leading Mosleyite lamented the ‘total silence’ in the press when BUF events passed without incident, complaining that only after disruption by opponents did newspapers show any interest.” [1] And the fascists were quick to make the best of their notoriety. They cast themselves in the role of victim and hammered home the charge that the Left was interfering with their right to free speech and assembly. Other confrontations with BUF fascists at Stockton (September 1933) and Newcastle (May 1934) had similar results. The anti-fascists succeeded in stopping the BUF temporarily, but as long as the fascists were perceived to be the victim of mob violence, their popularity and membership grew. If these arguments from the 1930s sound familiar it’s because what we’re witnessing today in the ultra-right vs. ultra-left skirmishes is a replay of the anti-fascist strategy – and failures – from that era. But does that mean that the only choice we have is between doing nothing and taking violent action? That’s the ultra-left position, but it’s a false dichotomy that smacks of a lack of imagination or commitment to social change. What stopped the British fascists? The single event that put a dent in the BUF’s power and propaganda was the end of its access to the press. The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror were its main propaganda tools. Their owner, Lord Rothermere, stopped supporting Mosley after the fascists were accused of initiating brutal violence during a meeting at Olympia in 1934. After that meeting, Rothermere’s Jewish advertisers in the UK threatened to pull their advertising unless he stopped editorially supporting Mosley. [5] Without the press, the BUF’s message was limited, and its membership dropped to 5,000 the following year. The final nail in the BUF’s coffin came in 1940, when the government banned them after the start of WW2. So, the lessons to draw from Cable Street and the other anti-fascist actions in the 1930s are: 1) Violence is not an effective long-term tactic against Nazi hate groups. When Mosley’s fascists were perceived to be the victims of violence, their membership grew; but when they were perceived to be the perpetrators of violence, it dropped. 2) What does work, but is more difficult for peace groups to achieve, is applying economic pressure to the fascists’ financial base and swamping their propaganda with truth. This requires a long-term organizing strategy beyond the occasional demonstration or peace march (a good example of a long-term nonviolent strategy is the BDS movement). No, today’s America does not resemble 1930s Germany While this notion is thrown around – mostly into the faces of people who don’t condone violent confrontation with white supremacists – as “common knowledge,” it’s never actually questioned. Peace workers are simply expected to quake at the very idea of 1930s Germany. But what did 1930s Germany look like, and is there really any comparison with today’s America? Hitler pretty much took over the German state in seven months, between January and July 1933. In January 1933, President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor under pressure from the German ruling political and business classes. In February, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler began his move against the Left, which inGermany was strong in the labor movement. Using the SA (Sturmabteilung–Storm Detachment, the paramilitary wing of the National Socialist party) and his Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State, Hitler suspended civil liberties and began a full-scale terror campaign against the German Communist Party (KPD), including arrests, occupation of their offices, and shutting down of their press (again, note the critical role communications play). Many Party leaders went underground and many were executed. Without visible leadership and a printing press, the Communists were effectively neutered. In early March, Hitler went after the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and confiscated its property, including its press. By late March, the regime passed the Enabling Bill, giving Hitler the power to rule by decree. With the Left parties out of the way, the trade unions no longer had effective leadership and Hitler was free to attack them next. In May he occupied the offices of the independent trade unions and confiscated their property. The regime then created the German Labour Front to “represent” German workers. In June, the SPD was banned, and in July the regime passed the Law Against the Establishment of Parties—outlawing all political parties except the National Socialists. With all political and trade union opposition out of the way, and Germany a police state, it remained only for Hindenburg to die, which he did the following year in August 1934, whereupon Hitler merged the offices of the Chancellery and Presidency and became dictator. [6] Even in this brief summation of the early years of 1930s Germany one would be hard pressed to see any comparison with today’s America, Trump notwithstanding, or any grounds for the irrational fear among liberals that the country is about to be overrun by Nazis. Instead, what should be clear is the continuity of the neocon and neoliberal agenda from the 1990s — under both political parties — that has brought us never-ending regime change wars, deep cuts in domestic programs, and internecine identity politics conflicts within the working and middle classes. Divided, we cannot effectively confront the ruling classes, and they know it. There is one issue capable of splitting and cracking the organized peace and justice movement, and that’s the issue of tactics — violence vs. nonviolence. Historically it has split the Left into smithereens over and over again. In fact, if the ultra-left hadn’t appeared at this point in history, the ruling class would have had to create it, sponsor it, glorify it in the media, and allow it the freedom to divide the left and destabilize protests that, in the past, have gone on without incident. Again, cui bono? Violence is a dead-end…time to get creatively nonviolent Why violence? "[Antifa] believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist. There’s this ‘It’s going down’ mentality and this ‘Hit them with your boots’ mentality that goes back many decades to confrontations that took place, not only here in the American South, but also in places like Europe." — Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. [7] "The idea in Antifa is that we go where they (right-wingers) go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece." — Scott Crow, a former 30-year member of an Antifa group. [7] "When you look at this grave and dangerous threat — and the violence it has already caused — is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it, or should we confront it? Their existence itself is violent and dangerous, so I don’t think using force or violence to oppose them is unethical." — Antifa activist [8] What strikes me in the rhetoric of the ultra-left is a sense of urgency and danger, which then feeds the perceived need for the use of force against an overwhelming enemy. This is a crusade, and the enemy is evil itself. So, to the question of, “Why do you use violence,” Antifa answers, “Violence is necessary against Nazis because you can’t talk to evil.” If this seems to mirror what imperialist America has been saying about its “enemies” for decades, that’s no coincidence. The war industry has become America’s bread and butter, and its world view has percolated down through every level of society. But “Why” is the wrong question. From a purely tactical stance, the question should be, “Does is work?” And the answer that comes down to us from history and experience is, “Not in the long-term.” The lesson from Cable Street is clear—the anti-fascists succeeded in shutting down one march. But in the aftermath of that action, fascist membership grew and, within a few weeks, the BUF was marching again—with little or no opposition. Most organizations working for social change do so with an explicit commitment to nonviolence, as stated in their mission statements. There are good reasons, and a lot of historical precedents, for this. These groups know that peace work is long-term work that requires decades, often generations of commitment. No organization can hope to sustain its work and maintain its membership over the long term through violence. Organizing the masses around hatred of an “Other” is not a long-term winning strategy, especially when that Other isn’t even the real enemy. There is some irony in the fact that the ultra-right hates the Deep State as much as the ultra-left does. The Nazi organizations in the U.S. are not the Italian Blackshirts or the German Brownshirts. Contemporary U.S. Nazis resemble their Italian and German idols only in their symbols and rhetoric. Beyond that, they are isolated groups that split, fracture, often kill one another, and have no political party backing. The fact that the media and its political handlers have chosen this moment in history to hype the “Nazi threat” should raise a few eyebrows, if not questions. Is nonviolence “pacifism”? Ultra-leftists use the “P” word to imply that those advocating nonviolence are cowards, do-nothings and enablers of fascism. These charges can be expected from individuals who have little foresight, little knowledge of history and little experience in actual organizing – but who have a lot of fear and confusion about current events. So, a word about what nonviolence is and is not. Nonviolence is not pacifism. It is not toleration. It is not cowardice. Nonviolent direct action is struggle. It is courage. It is thoughtful and creative strategizing. It is for the future of humankind. To the false and loaded question of, “Is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it?” we can let Howard Zinn, a life-long nonviolent fighter for peace and justice, have the final word: Thus, none of the traditionally approved mechanisms for social change (not war, nor revolution, nor reform) is adequate for the kind of problems we face today in the United States and in the world. We need apparently some technique which is more energetic than parliamentary reform and yet not subject to the dangers which war and revolution pose in the atomic age. This technique, I suggest, is that which has been used over the centuries by aggrieved groups in fitful, semi-conscious control of their own actions. With the Negro revolt inAmerica, the technique has begun to take on the quality of a deliberate use of power to effect the most change with the least harm. I speak of non-violent direct action. This encompasses a great variety of methods, limited only by our imaginations: sit-ins, freedom rides and freedom walks, prayer pilgrimages, wade-ins, pray-ins, freedom ballots, freedom schools, and who knows what is on the horizon? Whatever the specific form, this technique has certain qualities: it disturbs the status quo, it intrudes on the complacency of the majority, it expresses the anger and the hurt of the aggrieved, it publicizes an injustice, it demonstrates the inadequacy of whatever reforms have been instituted up to that point, it creates tension and trouble and thus forces the holders of power to move faster than they otherwise would have to redress grievances. [9] References [1] Daniel Tilles, “The Myth of Cable Street.” History Today, Volume 61 Issue 10 October 2011 [2] Reg Weston, “Fascists and police routed: the battle of Cable Street” [3] Daniel Penny, “An Intimate History of Antifa.” The New Yorker. August 22, 2017 [4] G. C. Webber, “Patterns of Membership and Support for the British Union of Fascists,” Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 19, No. 4, Reassessments of Fascism (Oct., 1984), pp. 575-606 [5] Steven Banks, “Revealed: The Extent of the Daily Mail’s Support for the British Union of Fascists.” [6] Stephen Salter, “The Object Lesson: The Division of the German Left and the Triumph of National Socialism.” In The Popular Front in Europe, ed. by Helen Graham and Paul Preston. NY: St. Martin’s Press. 1987. For a definitive account of 1930s Germany see Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Books. 2005. [7] Jessica Suerth, “What is Antifa?” [8] Thomas Fuller, Alan Feuer, Serge F. Kovaleski, “Antifa’ Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far Right.” The New York Times. August 17, 2017. [9] Howard Zinn, “Non-Violent Direct Action” Janet Contursi is a freelance writer and peace activist in Minneapolis. She can be reached at jancontursi at msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johncmilano at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:37:36 2017 From: johncmilano at gmail.com (johncmilano) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:37:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? Message-ID: <59dec762.0407240a.175ec.9393@mx.google.com>  Can someone remove  me from this email listserv? Thanks -------- Original message --------From: "Carl G. Estabrook via Peace" Date: 10/11/17 20:19 (GMT-06:00) To: Peace-discuss List , Peace Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net Subject: [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? counterpunch.org "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” by Janet Contursi The “Battle of Cable Street” is a key event in the “creation myth” of the anti-fascist movement. It goes like this: On Sunday, October 4, 1936, about 5,000 members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by Sir Oswald Mosley, planned to march in full Blackshirt regalia through several Jewish neighborhoods in London’s East End. Six thousand police were assigned to protect them from about 100,000 anti-fascist protesters. The anti-fascists fought the police and erected barricades to block the marchers. When the fascists saw there was no possibility of moving beyond the barricades, they abandoned the march and dispersed. [1] Some accounts of the battle claim that the fascists and anti-fascists fought hand-to-hand, but Reg Weston, a journalist who was in his early twenties when he actually participated in the battle, makes it clear that the two sides never clashed. The police and barricades kept them apart. It’s a myth, Weston says, “that the ‘battle’ was between the protesters and the Blackshirts. It was not — it was a battle with the police.” [2] Nevertheless, the crowd celebrated that day. The “Battle of Cable Street” went down in history as a victory for anti-fascist forces and to this day is part of the heroic mythology of the ultra-left: “For many members of contemporary anti-Fascist groups, the incident remains central to their mythology, a kind of North Star in the fight against Fascism and white supremacy across Europe and, increasingly, the United States.” [3] But was it really a victory? On the surface, the battle appears to justify the preferred tactic of the ultra-left: direct physical confrontation in the streets. However, like all myths, the battle and its outcome have been distorted and embellished over the years. When we look at what actually happened in the weeks, months and years following the battle, two things become clear. First, as a tactic violence can, at best, bring short-term gains, but those have to be weighed against long-term consequences. In other words, we don’t want to win the battle but lose the war. This is what happened at Cable Street. Second, justifying violence by comparing the U.S. today with fascism in the 1930s is a red herring. In the 1930s, Nazis posed a real threat to democracy; in 2017 America, they do not. It’s time to ask, cui bono – who benefits? After the battle the fascists grew stronger  Unfortunately, the anti-fascists celebrating their victory in 1936 couldn’t have known that their actions would ultimately do nothing to stop either the Nazi juggernaut that descended upon Europe three years later, or the immediate popularity of the BUF. In fact, the BUF benefitted from the violence and became even stronger over the next four years, until 1940, when it was banned by the government. What the anti-fascist forces did achieve at Cable Street was a singular victory in stopping a single march. But at what price? In the aftermath of that action, membership in the BUF grew. Rather than smashing fascism, the battle turned out to be a recruitment tool for the BUF. The organization gained an additional 2,000 members immediately, and its membership continued to climb steadily. Seven months before the battle, BUF membership was around 10,000; one month after the battle, it rose to 15,500. It continued to rise until, by 1939, the BUF had about 22,500 members. [4] The anti-fascist actions didn’t dampen the peoples’ enthusiasm for Mosely’s message. In the weeks after the battle, pro-fascist crowds in the thousands turned out for BUF meetings, listened to Mosley’s fascist proselytizing, and marched through London without much opposition. [1] An intelligence report on the battle noted that afterwards, “A definite pro-Fascist feeling has manifested itself. The alleged Fascist defeat is in reality a Fascist advance.” [1] Violence, it seems, provided free publicity for the fascists. The BUF “thrived off the publicity that violent opposition produced. The national media, under pressure from the government, largely avoided reporting on Fascist activity other than when disorder occurred. A leading Mosleyite lamented the ‘total silence’ in the press when BUF events passed without incident, complaining that only after disruption by opponents did newspapers show any interest.” [1] And the fascists were quick to make the best of their notoriety. They cast themselves in the role of victim and hammered home the charge that the Left was interfering with their right to free speech and assembly. Other confrontations with BUF fascists at Stockton (September 1933) and Newcastle (May 1934) had similar results. The anti-fascists succeeded in stopping the BUF temporarily, but as long as the fascists were perceived to be the victim of mob violence, their popularity and membership grew. If these arguments from the 1930s sound familiar it’s because what we’re witnessing today in the ultra-right vs. ultra-left skirmishes is a replay of the anti-fascist strategy – and failures – from that era. But does that mean that the only choice we have is between doing nothing and taking violent action? That’s the ultra-left position, but it’s a false dichotomy that smacks of a lack of imagination or commitment to social change. What stopped the British fascists?   The single event that put a dent in the BUF’s power and propaganda was the end of its access to the press. The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror were its main propaganda tools. Their owner, Lord Rothermere, stopped supporting Mosley after the fascists were accused of initiating brutal violence during a meeting at Olympia in 1934. After that meeting, Rothermere’s Jewish advertisers in the UK threatened to pull their advertising unless he stopped editorially supporting Mosley. [5] Without the press, the BUF’s message was limited, and its membership dropped to 5,000 the following year. The final nail in the BUF’s coffin came in 1940, when the government banned them after the start of WW2. So, the lessons to draw from Cable Street and the other anti-fascist actions in the 1930s are: 1) Violence is not an effective long-term tactic against Nazi hate groups. When Mosley’s fascists were perceived to be the victims of violence, their membership grew; but when they were perceived to be the perpetrators of violence, it dropped. 2) What does work, but is more difficult for peace groups to achieve, is applying economic pressure to the fascists’ financial base and swamping their propaganda with truth. This requires a long-term organizing strategy beyond the occasional demonstration or peace march (a good example of a long-term nonviolent strategy is the BDS movement). No, today’s America does not resemble 1930s Germany  While this notion is thrown around – mostly into the faces of people who don’t condone violent confrontation with white supremacists – as “common knowledge,” it’s never actually questioned. Peace workers are simply expected to quake at the very idea of 1930s Germany. But what did 1930s Germany look like, and is there really any comparison with today’s America? Hitler pretty much took over the German state in seven months, between January and July 1933. In January 1933, President von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor under pressure from the German ruling political and business classes. In February, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler began his move against the Left, which inGermany was strong in the labor movement. Using the SA (Sturmabteilung–Storm Detachment, the paramilitary wing of the National Socialist party) and his Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State, Hitler suspended civil liberties and began a full-scale terror campaign against the German Communist Party (KPD), including arrests, occupation of their offices, and shutting down of their press (again, note the critical role communications play). Many Party leaders went underground and many were executed. Without visible leadership and a printing press, the Communists were effectively neutered. In early March, Hitler went after the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and confiscated its property, including its press. By late March, the regime passed the Enabling Bill, giving Hitler the power to rule by decree. With the Left parties out of the way, the trade unions no longer had effective leadership and Hitler was free to attack them next. In May he occupied the offices of the independent trade unions and confiscated their property. The regime then created the  German Labour Front to “represent” German workers. In June, the SPD was banned, and in July the regime passed the Law Against the Establishment of Parties—outlawing all political parties except the National Socialists. With all political and trade union opposition out of the way, and Germany a police state, it remained only for Hindenburg to die, which he did the following year in August 1934, whereupon Hitler merged the offices of the Chancellery and Presidency and became dictator. [6] Even in this brief summation of the early years of 1930s Germany one would be hard pressed to see any comparison with today’s America, Trump notwithstanding, or any grounds for the irrational fear among liberals that the country is about to be overrun by Nazis. Instead, what should be clear is the continuity of the neocon and neoliberal agenda from the 1990s — under both political parties — that has brought us never-ending regime change wars, deep cuts in domestic programs, and internecine identity politics conflicts within the working and middle classes. Divided, we cannot effectively confront the ruling classes, and they know it. There is one issue capable of splitting and cracking the organized peace and justice movement, and that’s the issue of tactics — violence vs. nonviolence. Historically it has split the Left into smithereens over and over again. In fact, if the ultra-left hadn’t appeared at this point in history, the ruling class would have had to create it, sponsor it, glorify it in the media, and allow it the freedom to divide the left and destabilize protests that, in the past, have gone on without incident. Again, cui bono? Violence is a dead-end…time to get creatively nonviolent Why violence? "[Antifa] believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist. There’s this ‘It’s going down’ mentality and this ‘Hit them with your boots’ mentality that goes back many decades to confrontations that took place, not only here in the American South, but also in places like Europe." — Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. [7] "The idea in Antifa is that we go where they (right-wingers) go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that. And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece." — Scott Crow, a former 30-year member of an Antifa group. [7] "When you look at this grave and dangerous threat — and the violence it has already caused — is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it, or should we confront it? Their existence itself is violent and dangerous, so I don’t think using force or violence to oppose them is unethical." — Antifa activist [8] What strikes me in the rhetoric of the ultra-left is a sense of urgency and danger, which then feeds the perceived need for the use of force against an overwhelming enemy. This is a crusade, and the enemy is evil itself. So, to the question of, “Why do you use violence,” Antifa answers, “Violence is necessary against Nazis because you can’t talk to evil.” If this seems to mirror what imperialist America has been saying about its “enemies” for decades, that’s no coincidence. The war industry has become America’s bread and butter, and its world view has percolated down through every level of society. But “Why” is the wrong question. From a purely tactical stance, the question should be, “Does is work?” And the answer that comes down to us from history and experience is, “Not in the long-term.” The lesson from Cable Street is clear—the anti-fascists succeeded in shutting down one march. But in the aftermath of that action, fascist membership grew and, within a few weeks, the BUF was marching again—with little or no opposition. Most organizations working for social change do so with an explicit commitment to nonviolence, as stated in their mission statements. There are good reasons, and a lot of historical precedents, for this. These groups know that peace work is long-term work that requires decades, often generations of commitment. No organization can hope to sustain its work and maintain its membership over the long term through violence. Organizing the masses around hatred of an “Other” is not a long-term winning strategy, especially when that Other isn’t even the real enemy. There is some irony in the fact that the ultra-right hates the Deep State as much as the ultra-left does. The Nazi organizations in the U.S. are not the Italian Blackshirts or the German Brownshirts. Contemporary U.S. Nazis resemble their Italian and German idols only in their symbols and rhetoric. Beyond that, they are isolated groups that split, fracture, often kill one another, and have no political party backing. The fact that the media and its political handlers have chosen this moment in history to hype the “Nazi threat” should raise a few eyebrows, if not questions. Is nonviolence “pacifism”? Ultra-leftists use the “P” word to imply that those advocating nonviolence are cowards, do-nothings and enablers of fascism. These charges can be expected from individuals who have little foresight, little knowledge of history and little experience in actual organizing – but who have a lot of fear and confusion about current events. So, a word about what nonviolence is and is not. Nonviolence is not pacifism. It is not toleration. It is not cowardice. Nonviolent direct action is struggle. It is courage. It is thoughtful and creative strategizing. It is for the future of humankind. To the false and loaded question of, “Is it more dangerous to do nothing and tolerate it?” we can let Howard Zinn, a life-long nonviolent fighter for peace and justice, have the final word: Thus, none of the traditionally approved mechanisms for social change (not war, nor revolution, nor reform) is adequate for the kind of problems we face today in the United States and in the world. We need apparently some technique which is more energetic than parliamentary reform and yet not subject to the dangers which war and revolution pose in the atomic age. This technique, I suggest, is that which has been used over the centuries by aggrieved groups in fitful, semi-conscious control of their own actions. With the Negro revolt inAmerica, the technique has begun to take on the quality of a deliberate use of power to effect the most change with the least harm. I speak of non-violent direct action. This encompasses a great variety of methods, limited only by our imaginations: sit-ins, freedom rides and freedom walks, prayer pilgrimages, wade-ins, pray-ins, freedom   ballots, freedom schools, and who knows what is on the horizon? Whatever the specific form, this technique has certain qualities: it disturbs the status quo, it intrudes on the complacency of the majority, it expresses the anger and the hurt of the aggrieved, it publicizes an injustice, it demonstrates the inadequacy of whatever reforms have been instituted up to that point, it creates tension and trouble and thus forces the holders of power to move faster than they otherwise would have to redress grievances. [9] References [1] Daniel Tilles, “The Myth of Cable Street.” History Today, Volume 61 Issue 10 October 2011 [2] Reg Weston, “Fascists and police routed: the battle of Cable Street” [3] Daniel Penny, “An Intimate History of Antifa.” The New Yorker. August 22, 2017 [4] G. C. Webber, “Patterns of Membership and Support for the British Union of Fascists,” Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 19, No. 4, Reassessments of Fascism (Oct., 1984), pp. 575-606 [5] Steven Banks, “Revealed: The Extent of the Daily Mail’s Support for the British Union of Fascists.” [6] Stephen Salter, “The Object Lesson: The Division of the German Left and the Triumph of National Socialism.” In The Popular Front in Europe, ed. by Helen Graham and Paul Preston. NY: St. Martin’s Press. 1987. For a definitive account of 1930s Germany see Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich. Penguin Books. 2005. [7] Jessica Suerth, “What is Antifa?” [8] Thomas Fuller, Alan Feuer, Serge F. Kovaleski, “Antifa’ Grows as Left-Wing Faction Set to, Literally, Fight the Far Right.” The New York Times. August 17, 2017. [9] Howard Zinn, “Non-Violent Direct Action” Janet Contursi is a freelance writer and peace activist in Minneapolis. She can be reached at jancontursi at msn.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:43:10 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:43:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: All, The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: > counterpunch.org > > "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” > by Janet Contursi > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From galliher at illinois.edu Thu Oct 12 01:53:14 2017 From: galliher at illinois.edu (Carl G. Estabrook) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:53:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: Stuart et al.: The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I posted this link: >. Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. Regards, CGE > On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss wrote: > > All, > > The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. > > On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >> counterpunch.org >> >> "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” >> by Janet Contursi >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 01:55:21 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:55:21 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Antifa: cui bono? In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> <95529A54-C6FB-405C-8397-7E6C5FAF6EDE@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <92300a80-935c-bb62-641f-229ebb04ad14@gmail.com> Carl, I will set your Peace messages to be moderated for now.   Peace has never been the place for posting articles and the discussions about them. On 10/11/2017 08:53 PM, Carl G. Estabrook wrote: > Stuart et al.: > > The AWARE Peace list is intended for links. Under this subject head, I > posted this link:  > > .  > > > Then I saved you the bother of clicking through to it. > > Regards, CGE > >> On Oct 11, 2017, at 8:43 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss >> > > wrote: >> >> All, >> >> The AWARE Peace list is intended for announcements, not discussions >> and articles -- this belongs on Peace-Discuss, but not on Peace. >> >> On 10/11/2017 08:19 PM, Carl G. Estabrook via Peace wrote: >>> counterpunch.org >>> >>> "No, Antifa, This is Not the 1930s and We Don’t Need to Punch a Nazi” >>> by Janet Contursi >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace-discuss mailing list >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net >> >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Thu Oct 12 05:02:18 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:02:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Event announcement In-Reply-To: References: <05DFFC44-9BDD-476C-AAC4-BA22A1FA8743@illinois.edu> <74C64896-E7D9-4175-A7BA-E427669FB05F@illinois.edu> Message-ID: <69A5E348-FA3F-4F19-B37C-89318F92F991@gmail.com> At the regular AWARE meeting on October 8, members of AWARE considered what their reaction should be - in conjunction with the antiwar movement at large - in the event of a US armed attack on North Korea, Iran, or elsewhere. It was suggested that the most prominent US government installation in Champaign County was probably the Federal Courthouse at 201 S. Vine St. in Urbana. A significant expansion of US war-making - we're already at war in eight countries - should produce anti-war demonstrations around the country. AWARE's should probably be centered on the sidewalk in the 200 block of S. Vine Street (and perhaps around the corner on E. Main Street). We should make plans for such a demonstration and use the means available to publicize them, and to communicate them to anti-war individuals and organizations in the area. Meanwhile, we should continue our presence at the Market, our monthly demonstration, and UPTV. Perhaps a new flyer discussing such plans is in order. —CGE From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Thu Oct 12 14:49:04 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 09:49:04 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Keith Ellison: "We have to stop this war and famine." Message-ID: Please RT: https://twitter.com/keithellison/status/918484587352862722 We have to stop this war and famine. I’m proud to join my colleagues in demanding an end to unconstitutional action. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/yemen-war-unconstitutional.html 10:32 AM - 12 Oct 2017 === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Sat Oct 14 14:30:19 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2017 09:30:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Kate Gould & Kate Kizer on Al Jazeera Arabic on HConRes81 Message-ID: Kate Gould of FCNL and Kate Kizer of YPP on Al Jazeera Arabic on HConRes81 and ending U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen. Please spread this video on Arabic Facebook pages, etc. Even if you don't speak Arabic, you can get a feel of the thing by watching the visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bnYLOuek6w === Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 <(202)%20448-2898> Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Oct 15 12:42:14 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 12:42:14 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: AWARE Teach-In Video References: Message-ID: Subject: RE: AWARE Teach-In Video Date: October 14, 2017 at 20:41:23 PDT https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From niloofar.peace at gmail.com Mon Oct 16 22:51:19 2017 From: niloofar.peace at gmail.com (Niloofar Shambayati) Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 17:51:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War In-Reply-To: <1641228994.181723.1508190051790@tardis-app4.cites.illinois.edu> References: <1641228994.181723.1508190051790@tardis-app4.cites.illinois.edu> Message-ID: After June 1967: a film and symposium Click here to see this online [image: Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies] *address:* 910 South Fifth Street, Champaign, IL 61820 • *phone:* (217) 244-7331 • *email:* csames at illinois.edu College of Liberal Arts & Sciences • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Subscribe Unsubscribe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 18:45:00 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:45:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace] CODE PINK action: NO to Cotton-Corker bill which would kill the Iran nuclear deal In-Reply-To: <59e62c48c508e_c10f12f997c63615@asgworker-qmb2-20.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> References: <59e62c48c508e_c10f12f997c63615@asgworker-qmb2-20.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: In short:    Tell our senators to oppose the Cotton-Corker bill, and respect our international obligations.  Protect the nuclear deal with Iran:       http://www.codepink.org/cotton_corker_bill?utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=iran_33&n=2   See Medea Benjamin's article - ten reasons the US should stick with the Iran Nuclear Deal:      https://www.truthdig.com/articles/10-reasons-u-s-stick-iran-nuclear-deal/ More below. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: This bill could take us into war with Iran Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 16:14:00 +0000 (UTC) From: CODEPINK To: CODEPINK - Communications CODEPINK Iran_deal.jpg Dear Stuart, On Friday, Donald Trump struck a major blow to diplomacy by refusing to say the truth: that Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal. Now the administration wants Congress, in the next 60 days, to pass legislation that would kill the agreement. We can’t let that happen! Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Bob Corker have introduced dangerous legislation that would amend the “sunset clause” and add “triggers” to automatically impose new sanctions within a year of Iran gaining nuclear capabilities. It is an attempt to re-negotiate an international agreement, and it would put us on a dangerous path towards war. Tell your Senators to oppose the Cotton-Corker bill. Ask them to respect our international obligations by taking leadership to protect the Iran deal. Iran’s compliance with the deal has been certified in eight reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the past two years. The other six countries involved in the deal want it to be maintained. Trump’s refusal to certify the agreement has already isolated us from our allies. Destroying the deal, as Cotton-Corker bill would do, would free up Iran to rapidly reconstitute its nuclear program. It would also send a dangerous signal to North Korea not to engage in talks. Read Medea’s article in TruthDig, 10 Reasons the U.S. Should Stick with the Iran Nuclear Deal . Senators must not support the Cotton-Corker bill. Tell them to vote NO and to take leadership in protecting the Iran deal. Don't forget to share this message on Facebook and Twitter . Last week, ahead of Trump’s decertification announcement, we took a caravan to the embassies of the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran. We brought candy and flowers to thank them all for upholding the deal. Let’s hope we can soon thank Congress for upholding the deal as well. Hoping for peace! Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Haley, Jodie, Katie, Mariana, Mark, Mary, Medea, Nancy, Paki, Taylor and Tighe *P.S. * * Join us in *Washington D.C.* this weekend for our Divest from the War Machine Summit . * Time is running out to sign up for the November 23-December 1 human rights/election observer delegation to *Honduras*. This low-cost, high-impact delegation is a chance of a lifetime. To get more info and sign up, email lavozdelegations at gmail.com . Donate Now CODEPINK     Unsubscribe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Wed Oct 18 03:34:26 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (stuartnlevy) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 22:34:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE Message-ID: Discussion remains open on peace-discuss.  Peace is not a list intended for discussions, including articles.  That understanding of the purposes of each list did not start with me.    If you are interested in establishing a new open antiwar e-mail list, you are welcome to create one, invite people to it, and run it however you wish.   An invitation to join such a list would be entirely appropriate for the Peace list.  -- Stuart -------- Original message --------From: C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss Date: 10/17/17 17:33 (GMT-06:00) To: Peace Cc: Peace-discuss List Subject: [Peace-discuss] Censorship at AWARE AWARE has two email lists and . When they were founded, they were described as follows: “ is an AWARE mailing list for announcements and calls to action relating to anti-war, anti-racism and other AWARE issues. AWARE meeting minutes are also posted to this list.” “ is an unmoderated mailing list for general discussion.” The lists have different if overlapping lists of subscribers. Stuart Levy has taken it upon himself to censor my posts to on the grounds that the list is only for event announcements. That’s not what the description says, and in any case, AWARE as an organization has never authorized anyone to enforce the different descriptions of the two lists. It’s difficult to see how censorship of AWARE email lists contributes to the local anti-war movement. Stuart and I have disagreed about aspects of the antiwar movement in the past. Our most recent disagreement was about antifa - he’s for it; I’m against it. But it would seem far better to discuss these differences than to suppress comments to an AWARE email list. --CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Oct 18 12:49:19 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2017 12:49:19 +0000 Subject: [Peace] AWARE Teach In at the U of I Message-ID: https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 11:37:49 2017 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 06:37:49 -0500 Subject: [Peace] please write to Congress--ceasefire needed in Iraq Message-ID: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/iraqi-kurdish-ceasefire From stuartnlevy at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 15:35:16 2017 From: stuartnlevy at gmail.com (Stuart Levy) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 10:35:16 -0500 Subject: [Peace] 9/23 Anti-War Teach In at the U of I: who spoke when during 4-hour program, plus Mort Brussel on AOTA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <94b2908e-5649-cd49-91b3-6848bc60625f@gmail.com> Here is a short link to the video of the 9/23/17 Anti-War Teach-in:      https://youtu.be/-OrPE6ZQgEI Who spoke when:    00:00:00 - 00:03:17 Nick Goodell and Karen Aram - Introduction    00:03:17 - 00:20:03 Francis Boyle - Illegalities of US Wars    00:20:15 - 00:36:22 Carl Estabrook - History of US War    00:39:03 - 00:56:41 Rich Whitney - US Government Support for Dictatorships    00:57:16 - student groups        Nick Goodell on Students for Economic Empowerment, and Undergraduate-Graduate Alliance    01:01:15 - 01:15:23  questions for above speakers    01:15:24 - 01:41:16  Paula Bradshaw -- Libya and Syria    01:41:22 - 02:12:54  David Green -- Israel and Palestine    02:12:54 - 03:03:06  Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga -- Africa    03:03:12 - 03:14:11  question on Palestine - David Green, Francis Boyle    03:14:13 - 03:23:12  Harry Mickalide - STEM Students Rage Against the War Machine    03:23:18 - 04:00:00  Fr. Thomas Royer - El Salvador    04:00:06 - 04:09:38  F. Boyle (in place of David Johnson who'd had to leave) - US' threats against Venezuela The teach-in ran well past its scheduled time, and Mort Brussel also wasn't able to stay to speak that day but did later on AWARE on the Air on 10/3/2017.   That recording is here:     https://youtu.be/FPEhUIVTRt8     00:05:26 - 00:24:34  Mort Brussel - Militarization of US society, and the US military budget       with discussion between Mort Brussel and Carl Estabrook throughout the hour (I hope at some point to separate out the pieces so that we'd also have a collection of posted videos with one speaker each, as David Green suggested, but hope this helps in the mean time.) On 10/18/2017 07:49 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: >> >> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01%7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata=M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mickalideh at gmail.com Thu Oct 19 17:19:44 2017 From: mickalideh at gmail.com (Harry Mickalide) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 12:19:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace] 9/23 Anti-War Teach In at the U of I: who spoke when during 4-hour program, plus Mort Brussel on AOTA In-Reply-To: <94b2908e-5649-cd49-91b3-6848bc60625f@gmail.com> References: <94b2908e-5649-cd49-91b3-6848bc60625f@gmail.com> Message-ID: Small correction: The campaign is called "STEM Strikes the War Machine" On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Stuart Levy via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > Here is a short link to the video of the 9/23/17 Anti-War Teach-in: > > https://youtu.be/-OrPE6ZQgEI > > Who spoke when: > 00:00:00 - 00:03:17 Nick Goodell and Karen Aram - Introduction > 00:03:17 - 00:20:03 Francis Boyle - Illegalities of US Wars > 00:20:15 - 00:36:22 Carl Estabrook - History of US War > 00:39:03 - 00:56:41 Rich Whitney - US Government Support for > Dictatorships > > 00:57:16 - student groups > Nick Goodell on Students for Economic Empowerment, and > Undergraduate-Graduate Alliance > > 01:01:15 - 01:15:23 questions for above speakers > > 01:15:24 - 01:41:16 Paula Bradshaw -- Libya and Syria > 01:41:22 - 02:12:54 David Green -- Israel and Palestine > 02:12:54 - 03:03:06 Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga -- Africa > 03:03:12 - 03:14:11 question on Palestine - David Green, Francis Boyle > > 03:14:13 - 03:23:12 Harry Mickalide - STEM Students Rage Against the > War Machine > 03:23:18 - 04:00:00 Fr. Thomas Royer - El Salvador > 04:00:06 - 04:09:38 F. Boyle (in place of David Johnson who'd had to > leave) - US' threats against Venezuela > > The teach-in ran well past its scheduled time, and Mort Brussel also > wasn't able to stay to speak that day but did later on AWARE on the Air on > 10/3/2017. That recording is here: > > https://youtu.be/FPEhUIVTRt8 > > > 00:05:26 - 00:24:34 Mort Brussel - Militarization of US society, and > the US military budget > with discussion between Mort Brussel and Carl Estabrook throughout > the hour > > (I hope at some point to separate out the pieces so that we'd also have a > collection of posted videos with one speaker each, as David Green > suggested, but hope this helps in the mean time.) > > On 10/18/2017 07:49 AM, Karen Aram via Peace wrote: > > > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url= > https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F-OrPE6ZQgEI&data=02%7C01% > 7Ckarenaram%40hotmail.com%7C711ebc24a7624b15f27908d5137e9d94% > 7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636436356877624697&sdata= > M9wih696nO8ExpvnJ9hmh1%2FsyofaP6ZfZb%2B59R%2Fh%2FgU%3D&reserved=0? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing listPeace at lists.chambana.nethttps://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 naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Oct 20 02:36:46 2017 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 21:36:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] The Democrats embarrass themselves even more, were that possible In-Reply-To: <4D8DFEC7-F3F3-4DE7-830E-AD272C190E6D@gmail.com> References: <4C1263AF-516A-42D3-B670-53E8150C7F84@gmail.com> <4D8DFEC7-F3F3-4DE7-830E-AD272C190E6D@gmail.com> Message-ID: Thanks for sharing this. AFAIK, any "progressive" who gives a nickel to the DNC is a mark. Give to the candidate you want. Not to the DNC. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1 Co-Sponsor Khanna-Massie to #StopSaudiFamineInYemen https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/force-vote-on-saudi-war?r_by=1135580 On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 9:10 PM, C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > NBC'S ALEX SEITZ-WALD: "Shakeup at Democratic National Committee, Longtime > Officials Ousted: A shakeup is underway at the Democratic National > Committee as several key longtime officials have lost their posts, exposing > a still-raw rift in the party and igniting anger among those in its > progressive wing who see retaliation for their opposition to DNC Chairman > Tom Perez. > > "The ousters come ahead of the DNC's first meeting, in Las Vegas, Nevada, > ...Those who have been pushed out include: Ray Buckley, the New Hampshire > Democratic chairman and longtime DNC official who ran against Perez for > chair before backing Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., lost his spots on the > Executive Committee and DNC Rules Committee; James Zogby, the president of > the Arab American Institute and prominent Sanders backer, is no longer > co-chair of the Resolutions Committee and is off the Executive Committee ... > > "Alice Germond, the party's longtime former secretary and a vocal Ellison > backer, who was removed from her at-large appointment to the DNC; and > Barbra Casbar Siperstein, the first transgender member of the DNC who > supported Ellison and Buckley, was tossed from the Executive Committee." ” > > _______________________________________________ > 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 susanroseparenti at gmail.com Fri Oct 20 16:02:41 2017 From: susanroseparenti at gmail.com (Susan Parenti) Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 11:02:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Recommended: See 'Inner Voices' Production Message-ID: Hi friends--- I strongly recommend going to see the new production of "Inner Voices", called "far from utopia...and we're running out of breath". This is an hour-long work of around 15 young people and Lisa Fay, the director. If you want an intensive immersion into how young people see the problems we're in, especially in relation to our environment, then this is the experience for you. There's a great talk back after each show. -- INNER VOICES Social Issues Theatre presents: far from utopia... ...and we’re running out of breath Armory Free Theatre Room 160 Armory Wednesday, October 18th,7:00 PM Thursday, October 19th, 7:00 PM Friday, October 20th, 5:00 PM Friday, October 20th, 7:00 PM Channing Murray Foundation 1209 W Oregon St, Urbana Tuesday, October 24th, 7:00 PM Independent Media Center 202 S Broadway Ave, Urbana Wednesday, October 25th, 7:00 PM Ikenberry Commons / SDRP Room 2009 Thursday October 26th, 7:30 PM free and open to the public a discussion follows each performance performance locations are wheelchair accessible innervoices at illinois.edu Or find us on facebook [image: age1image7104] [image: age1image8808] [image: age1image8968] INNER VOICES Social Issues Theatre is sponsored by the Counseling Center and the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign These performances are sponsored in part by the Student Sustainability Committee Special thanks to the Channing Murray Foundation, the IMC and Jeff Glassman for his graphic work. [image: age1image11920] You are receiving this email because you are on a friends of INNER VOICES Social Issues Theatre mailing list. PLEASE let us know if you’d no longer wish to recieve notices. Thanks! [image: Far from Utopia[1].pdf] *Susan Parenti* *Educational Coordinator * *The School for Designing a Society *www.designingasociety.net *Like us on Facebook !* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Oct 21 03:09:19 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2017 03:09:19 +0000 Subject: [Peace] =?windows-1252?q?Fwd=3A_US_Admitting_Syrian_Militants_Use?= =?windows-1252?q?_Chemical_Weapons_=91Welcome=92_Overdue_Corrective?= References: Message-ID: Shared from sputniknews.com US Admitting Syrian Militants Use Chemical Weapons ‘Welcome’ Overdue Corrective https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201710211058422305-usa-terrorists-use-chemicals-syria/ US KNEW ALL ALONG The US government was finally started to acknowledge that groups it had supported had employed chemical weapons in Syria where the Trump and Obama administrations had sought to blame the Damascus government for such attacks, University of Illinois Professor of Law Francis Boyle told Sputnik. These policies were part of a wider US strategy to topple the Damascus government that was clearly illegal under international law, Boyle pointed out. The United States had backed the Syrian terror groups "as part of an illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government in violation of the United Nations Charter and the rulings of the World Court in the Case of Nicaragua versus United States of America (1984-1986)," he said. US policymakers could have had no doubt that the terror groups they were financing, helping to organize and arming had been s using chemical weapons, Boyle observed. "Of course the United States government knows full well that some of its surrogate terrorist organizations in Syria have used chemical weapons," he said. [cid:image001.jpg at 01D349EC.323092F0] © SPUTNIK/ MIKHAIL VOSKRESENSKIY OPCW Says Found Evidence of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria's Hama in March Over the past four years, successive US administrations had deliberately and cynically blamed Damascus for chemical attacks that they knew their own allies had carried out, Boyle stated. "Both the Obama administration and now the Trump administration have maliciously exploited their surrogates’ uses of chemical weapons as pretexts and propaganda to justify direct US military intervention into Syria," he said. Boyle also warned that even after the admission buried deep in this week’s Travel Advisory, the US government could again in the future blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks that it knew had been carried out in reality by its own allies. "It very well could happen again. Caveat emptor!" he said. Al-Nusra Front controls Syria's Idlib Governorate through the umbrella terrorist group al-Sham and is still thought to be a front for al-Qaeda. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 69100 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From susanroseparenti at gmail.com Mon Oct 23 14:31:23 2017 From: susanroseparenti at gmail.com (Susan Parenti) Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2017 09:31:23 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Last week Inner Voices new production--don't miss it! Message-ID: INNER VOICES Social Issues Theatre presents: far from utopia... ...and we’re running out of breath Channing Murray Foundation 1209 W Oregon St, Urbana Tuesday, October 24th, 7:00 PM Independent Media Center 202 S Broadway Ave, Urbana Wednesday, October 25th, 7:00 PM Ikenberry Commons / SDRP Room 2009 Thursday October 26th, 7:30 PM free and open to the public a discussion follows each performance performance locations are wheelchair accessible innervoices at illinois.edu Or find us on facebook [image: page1image7104] -- *Susan Parenti* *Educational Coordinator * *The School for Designing a Society *www.designingasociety.net *Like us on Facebook !* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: E875F06D-9753-4EDC-BC39-75F3B8AFE947.png Type: image/png Size: 81650 bytes Desc: not available URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Tue Oct 24 02:10:25 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 02:10:25 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] schedule for symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War In-Reply-To: References: <176384924.1088267.1508606108477.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <176384924.1088267.1508606108477@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1414287449.2112908.1508811025507@mail.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: csames-email To: Dianna Visek Sent: Monday, October 23, 2017, 2:40:08 PM CDTSubject: RE: schedules for symposia Hi, Please see attached the flyer and schedule for the symposium on The Seventh Day: 50 Years after the Six-Day War.  Kindly circulate to all those you think might be interested. Thank you, Jovita Jovita Terpetschnig Office Support Associate Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 221 International Studies Building, MC-489 910 South Fifth Street Champaign, IL 217-244-7331 Email: csames at illinois.edu web: www.csames.illinois.edu   Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/csamesuiuc Follow CSAMES on Twitter: https://twitter.com/csamesillinois    -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 6 Day War.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 497387 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: The Seventh Day - 50 Years after the Six Day War - Program.docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 22135 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 24 12:12:00 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:12:00 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Anti-War Teach-In on UPTV References: <495d9b3a763d4e6085b8ef1efe97f0a6@Zefram.city.urbana.il.us> Message-ID: AWARE’S ANTI-WAR TEACH IN Will be aired this coming Thursday night on UPTV channel 6. It is also available currently on Utube. October 26th, beginning at 7:00PM. All four hours of the event will be shown. From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 24 14:04:02 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 14:04:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Documented proof of US involvement in the genocide of half a million Indonesians 1965. Message-ID: Scholar Brad Simpson provides documents proving US instigation and involvement, as well as complicity of the NYT’s, in the genocide of half a million Indonesians in 1965. See: The Real News. http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20282:US-Didn%27t-%27Stand-By%27-Indonesia-Bloodbath---It-Helped -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mickalideh at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 15:18:27 2017 From: mickalideh at gmail.com (Harry Mickalide) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:18:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Upcoming anti-war justice sings Message-ID: The We Wanna Woke Justice Choir will be singing at two upcoming dates. Anyone can join in because the songs are taught-on-the-spot. We sing songs about various topics from anti-war to labor revolution to self-care. Hope to see you there! Thursday 10/26 6pm Krannert Art Museum https://www.facebook.com/events/181783205731239/ & Friday 11/3 6pm Iron Post https://www.facebook.com/events/2001445703434905/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 24 15:42:00 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:42:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Minutes from the AWARE meeting, October 22 Message-ID: <8D5FAD03-5AB4-4012-9C84-C43F55D2345A@gmail.com> At their regular meeting (Sundays 5-6pm at Pizza M, 208 W Main St, Urbana) this week, members of AWARE considered which AWARE activities in our communities best publicized US war making and the opposition to it: [1] The literature table at the Farmers’ Market in Lincoln Square is over for the year. This weekly activity will be replaced by an indoor market until Xmas, run by the Urbana Business Association. It was suggested that AWARE have a table there on three or four Saturdays - perhaps December 2, 9, 16, and/or 23 [2] Our monthly antiwar demonstration in downtown Champaign (the first Saturday of every month, 2-4pm, at the corner of Main and Neil Streets) will occur inshallah on Saturday 4 November. Suggestions (or drafts) of a flyer to be distributed then are welcome. [3] ‘AWARE on the Air’ (a TV program available on Urbana Public TV and YouTube) is our weekly one-hour discussion of the ongoing U.S. wars and the resistance to them. New programs are recorded every Tuesday, noon to 1pm, in the studios of UPTV, 200 Vine St., Urbana. Members and friends of AWARE are invited to participate in this unrehearsed discussion. [4] AWARE members at the meeting recommend the following articles this week: > > > > > > > > [5] The following appeared in the News-Gazette: “We want to hear your Vietnam stories... This is a forum open to all who lived during those years: servicemen, civilians, refugees, protesters, contractors, and local, state and federal officials. One objective: to continue this newspaper's tradition of sharing history through the stories of local people. But it's also our hope that by reading about each other's experiences, we as a society can bridge the divisions that were painfully obvious in the U.S. during the 1960s and '70s. Feel free to contact Managing Editor Dan Corkery at dcorkery at news-gazette.com or by mail at The News-Gazette, P.O. Box 677, Champaign, IL 61824-0677.” It’s suggested that members and friends of AWARE of the appropriate age should write a comment of this sort (perhaps 100-700 words) and send it in. Antiwar stories should counter war stories. [6] Note the following: >. ### -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Oct 25 16:56:31 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 11:56:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE ON THE AIR, October 24 References: Message-ID: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mly0J_S6_oA From susanroseparenti at gmail.com Sat Oct 28 18:29:13 2017 From: susanroseparenti at gmail.com (Susan Parenti) Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2017 13:29:13 -0500 Subject: [Peace] New play by Mark Enslin and Susan Parenti---FRIDAY NOV 3---please come! Message-ID: Hi friends---Next *Friday, November 3, 7:30-9pm at Channing Murray *will be the DEBUT performance of a new acoustic play that Mark Enslin and I wrote, on the subject of global immigration. It's based on the book Global Heartland by our friend Faranak Miraftab. Latrelle Bright directed. PLEASE COME IF YOU CAN!!!This will be our first performance, and we need your responses and critiques on what we're doing. We're going to be performing this play in libraries and schools all over Illinois, to audiences with various views on immigration--so we need to be prepared. Your comments and observations will be a BIG help. The play is free; donations to Channing Murray are welcome! [image: Inline image 1] -- *Susan Parenti* *Educational Coordinator * *The School for Designing a Society *www.designingasociety.net *Like us on Facebook !* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: GloHeart2.posterprint.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 185770 bytes Desc: not available URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Sun Oct 29 17:30:33 2017 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2017 17:30:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] lecture: "Theorizing Populism East and West" References: <1617559728.5449205.1509298233676.ref@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1617559728.5449205.1509298233676@mail.yahoo.com> New Directions Lecture: Emilia Zankina, "Theorizing Populism East and West" | | | | | | | | | | | New Directions Lecture: Emilia Zankina, "Theorizing Populism East and West" | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Oct 17 22:09:20 2017 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2017 17:09:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE ON THE AIR - Episode 424 Message-ID: October 3, 2017: > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Oct 31 16:19:50 2017 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:19:50 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Latest released documents on JFK reveal's Message-ID: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20337:Homegrown-Terror%3A-JFK-Docs-Show-US-Considered-Attacks-at-Home-to-Blame-on-Cuba -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: