[Peace] News from Neptune, 21 September 2018

Sat Sep 22 19:21:51 UTC 2018

News from Neptune #395 - "Bridging the Gap: No Trump Bids"
Episode video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLnDex72ASA <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLnDex72ASA>

[J. B. Nicholson] Notes about items from the show follow. 

Matt Taibbi interviews Noam Chomsky
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-the-fairway <https://taibbi.substack.com/p/preface-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-the-fairway>

New York Times Leonhardt: "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is a myth
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/opinion/columnists/democrats-midterms-progressive-left-trump.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/opinion/columnists/democrats-midterms-progressive-left-trump.html>

Jeffrey St. Clair's "Roaming Charges: the Chickenhawks Have Finally Come Back Home to Roost!"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/21/roaming-charges-4/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/21/roaming-charges-4/>

Daniel Bessner's articles
Jacobin articles should be linked here:
 https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/daniel-bessner <https://www.jacobinmag.com/author/daniel-bessner>

On Dead Pundits Society show:
 RSS of show: https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:292981343/sounds.rss <https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:292981343/sounds.rss>
 Episode 64: The Deep, Deep State with Daniel Bessner: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/498307023-deadpundits-ep-64-the-deep-deep-state-w-daniel-bessner.mp3 <http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/498307023-deadpundits-ep-64-the-deep-deep-state-w-daniel-bessner.mp3>
 Episode 65: A Socialist Foreign Policy with Daniel Bessner (teaser): http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/499206882-deadpundits-ep-65-a-socialist-foreign-policy-w-daniel-bessner-teaser.mp3 <http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/499206882-deadpundits-ep-65-a-socialist-foreign-policy-w-daniel-bessner-teaser.mp3>

Recent opinion column in New York Times:
 What Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Think About the South China Sea?: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/opinion/democratic-party-cortez-foreign-policy.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/opinion/democratic-party-cortez-foreign-policy.html>

"The Crisis of Democracy" book
PDF with text (so you can copy/paste quotes easily and accurately): https://archive.org/download/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralCommission-1975/crisis_of_democracy_text.pdf <https://archive.org/download/TheCrisisOfDemocracy-TrilateralCommission-1975/crisis_of_democracy_text.pdf>

"The CIA Democrats" pointers courtesy of Karen Aram
> An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

Part 1 of 3: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html>
Part 2 of 3: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/08/dems-m08.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/08/dems-m08.html>
Part 3 of 3: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/09/dems-m09.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/09/dems-m09.html>
Related:
 The CIA Democrats vs. Julian Assange: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/23/pers-a23.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04/23/pers-a23.html>
 CIA Democrat complains of political spying by Republicans: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/09/07/span-s07.html <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/09/07/span-s07.html>

George Kennan's Memo
Memo PPS23: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memo_PPS23_by_George_Kennan <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memo_PPS23_by_George_Kennan>

Thomas More's "Utopia":
Complete edition with notes in various formats: http://theopenutopia.org/full-text/introduction-open-utopia/ <http://theopenutopia.org/full-text/introduction-open-utopia/>
English translation: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2130 <http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2130>
Audiobook: https://librivox.org/search?title=Utopia&author=More <https://librivox.org/search?title=Utopia&author=More>

Michael Massing's "Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind"
ISBN-10: 0060517603
ISBN-13: 978-0060517601

Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9"-related interviews on DemocracyNow.org <http://democracynow.org/>:
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/21/michael_moore_v_donald_trump_in <https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/21/michael_moore_v_donald_trump_in>
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/21/michael_moore_are_we_going_to <https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/21/michael_moore_are_we_going_to>
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/21/michael_moore_democrats_made_fatal_mistake <https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/21/michael_moore_democrats_made_fatal_mistake>
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/19/michael_moore_senate_must_take_dr <https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/19/michael_moore_senate_must_take_dr>

Louis Proyect's review of "Fahrenheit 11/9"
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/21/moores-fahrenheit-11-9-entertaining-film-crappy-politics/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/21/moores-fahrenheit-11-9-entertaining-film-crappy-politics/>

Regarding David's considering not voting and "Fahrenheit 11/9" reviews, consider Glenn Greenwald's latest for TheIntercept.com <http://theintercept.com/>, a review of Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9":
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/michael-moores-fahrenheit-119-aims-not-at-trump-but-at-those-who-created-the-conditions-that-led-to-his-rise/ <https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/michael-moores-fahrenheit-119-aims-not-at-trump-but-at-those-who-created-the-conditions-that-led-to-his-rise/>

> Moore quickly escapes the dreary and misleading “Democrat v. GOP”
> framework that dominates cable news by trumpeting “the largest political
> party in America”: those who refuse to vote. He uses this powerful
> graphic to tell that story:
> [See picture of general election figures for Democratic, Republican, and
> non-voters.]
> It’s remarkable how little attention is paid to non-voters given that,
> as Moore rightly notes, they form America’s largest political faction.
> Part of why they’re ignored is moralism: those who don’t vote deserve no
> attention as they have only themselves to blame.
> But the much most consequential factor is the danger for both parties
> from delving too deeply into this subject. After all, voter apathy
> arises when people conclude that their votes don’t change their lives,
> that election outcomes improve nothing, that the small amount of time
> spent waiting in line at a voting booth isn’t worth the effort because
> of how inconsequential it is. What greater indictment of the two
> political parties can one imagine than that?
> One of the most illuminating pieces of reporting about the 2016 election
> is also, not coincidentally, one of the most ignored: interviews by the
> New York Times with white and African-American working-class voters in
> Milwaukee who refused to vote and – even knowing that Trump won
> Wisconsin, and thus the presidency, largely because of their decision –
> don’t regret it. “Milwaukee is tired. Both of them were terrible. They
> never do anything for us anyway,” the article quotes an African-American
> barber, justifying his decision not to vote in 2016 after voting twice
> for Obama.
> Moore develops the same point, even more powerfully, about his home
> state of Michigan, which – like Wisconsin – Trump also won after Obama
> won it twice. In one of the most powerful and devastating passages from
> the film – indeed, of any political documentary seen in quite some time
> – “Fahrenheit 11/9″ takes us in real-time through the indescribably
> shameful water crisis of Flint, the criminal cover-up of it by GOP
> Governor Rick Snyder, and the physical and emotional suffering endured
> by its poor, voiceless, and overwhelmingly black residents.
> After many months of abuse, of being lied to, of being poisoned, Flint
> residents, in May, 2016, finally had a cause for hope: President Obama
> announced that he would visit Flint to address the water crisis. As Air
> Force One majestically lands, Flint residents rejoice, believing that
> genuine concern, political salvation, and drinkable water had finally
> arrived.
> Exactly the opposite happened. Obama delivered a speech in which he not
> only appeared to minimize, but to mock, concerns of Flint residents over
> the lead levels in their water, capped off by a grotesquely cynical
> political stunt where he flamboyantly insisted on having a glass of
> filtered tap water that he then pretended to drink, but in fact only
> used to wet his lips, ingesting none of it.
> President Barack Obama appears to drink water as he speaks at Flint
> Northwestern High School in Flint, Mich., Wednesday, May 4, 2016, about
> the ongoing water crisis.
> [See picture of Obama fake-drinking Flint water at Flint Northwestern
> High School in Flint, Mich., Wednesday, May 4, 2016 as he lectures on
> the ongoing water crisis.]
> A friendly meeting with Gov. Snyder after that – during which Obama
> repeated the same water stunt – provided the GOP state administration in
> Michigan with ample Obama quotes to exploit to prove the problem was
> fixed, and for Flint residents, it was the final insult. “When President
> Obama came here,” an African-American community leader in Flint tells
> Moore, “he was my President. When he left, he wasn’t.”
> Like the unregretful non-voters of Milwaukee, the collapsed hope Obama
> left in his wake as he departed Flint becomes a key metaphor in Moore’s
> hands for understanding Trump’s rise. Moore suggests to John Podesta,
> who seems to agree, that Hillary lost Michigan because, as in Wisconsin,
> voters, in part after seeing what Obama did in Flint, concluded it was
> no longer worth voting. As Moore narrates:
> The autocrat, the strongman, only succeeds when the vast majority of the
> population decides they’ve seen enough, and give up. .  . . . The worst
> thing that President Obama did was pave the way for Donald Trump.
> Because Donald Trump did not just fall from the sky. The road to him was
> decades in the making.
> The long, painful, extraordinarily compelling journey through Flint is
> accompanied by an equally illuminating immersion in West Virginia, one
> that brings into further vivid clarity the misery, deprivation, and
> repression that drove so many people – for good reason – away from the
> political establishment and into the arms of anyone promising to destroy
> it: from the 2008 version of Obama to Bernie Sanders to Jill Stein to
> Donald Trump to abstaining entirely from voting.

Michael Capuano and Ayanna Pressley

Boston.com <http://boston.com/> reports "Michael Capuano and Ayanna Pressley agree on most things. But not everything."
https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2018/08/22/michael-capuano-ayanna-pressley-policy-differences <https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2018/08/22/michael-capuano-ayanna-pressley-policy-differences>

> However, when it comes to the military involvement of American soldiers
> overseas, Capuano is the one with the more resolute position.
> As The Intercept recently reported[1], both candidates were asked by the
> local anti-war group Massachusetts Peace Action if they supported ending
> the country’s military involvement in Syria and Afghanistan.
> Capuano simply checked[2] yes for both questions, noting that he
> introduced a bill to forbid military action in Syria without
> congressional approval, voted several times to withdraw from
> Afghanistan, and was additionally part of a small group of lawmakers who
> sued the Obama administration in 2011 over its military action in
> Libya.
> On the other hand, Pressley declined to provide a simple yes-or-no
> answer on Syria and Afghanistan. In a more detailed answer, the city
> councilor wrote that, even though she first looks to “exhaust all
> diplomatic and non-military options,” the United States has a
> “responsibility” to ending the two conflicts and creating stability in
> the region.
> “It would be irresponsible to foreclose any potential avenues to
> achieving that goal,” Pressley wrote.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/08/18/mike-capuano-ayanna-pressley-massachusetts-primary/ <https://theintercept.com/2018/08/18/mike-capuano-ayanna-pressley-massachusetts-primary/>
[2] http://masspeaceaction.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Capuano.MAPA_.candidate.questionnaire.pdf <http://masspeaceaction.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Capuano.MAPA_.candidate.questionnaire.pdf>
[3] https://www.politico.com/story/2011/06/lawmakers-sue-obama-over-libya-057032 <https://www.politico.com/story/2011/06/lawmakers-sue-obama-over-libya-057032>
[4] http://masspeaceaction.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pressley.MAPA_.candidate.questionnaire.pdf <http://masspeaceaction.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pressley.MAPA_.candidate.questionnaire.pdf>

-J
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