From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 1 18:17:59 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 18:17:59 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Damn Socialists Message-ID: I am terrified of single-payer systems as implemented in socialist countries. Can this happen in the US? Was Obama trying to give everyone healthcare all along? [Martin Cohen] Martin Cohen, PhD Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles (1994) Updated Jan 31 Of course, be afraid of health and well-being, by all means. The damned “socialists” running the National Health Service of the U.K. saved my eyesight while my highly rated coverage here in the U.S. almost blinded me! My very highly rated coverage here in the U.S., paid for by my employer, still charged me for each visit and procedure, on top of what they received. My exams and treatment in London? Free – even my initial Rx was free, because they had samples in the exam room. If I had to pay for the Rx, it would have been £5.00 out of pocket ($7.50 at the time). Under my current coverage, I pay about $50 a month for just my eye medicines, not including heart medication, etc. [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NHS-created1948-B-240x300.jpg]But of course, those damned socialists come between you and your doctor, right? Well, no. I walked in without an appointment for the equivalent of what in the states is “urgent care.” No record, no file. So, just like in the U.S., I had to fill out a form – damned bureaucracy! But in the States, that form can be 25 pages, while the damned socialists only had one page and 5 questions! Name, address, phone number, emergency contact, reason for visit. And the wait! Well, right away a “triage” nurse interviewed me in a little room. She sent me back to the waiting area, and before I could enjoy the magazine, that damned socialist doctor interupted me and saw me right away! When I returned to the states, I followed the instructions I receved in the UK, and saw a specialist right away, who was more concerned with me not having too many visits for treatment. In great distress only a few days later, my medical coverage “gate-keeper” insisted that I just saw a doctor, and had a follow-up in 30 days, so that was that. Knowing how serious my condition was (they told me in London) I fought and threatened, and after two hours of phone calls, they “let” me see a specialist who told me had I wait less than a full day, I would be blind. So yes, be afraid – be very afraid of the fact that we don’t, and likely won’t, have a decent “socialist” system that puts people above profits. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 1 18:17:59 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 18:17:59 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Damn Socialists Message-ID: I am terrified of single-payer systems as implemented in socialist countries. Can this happen in the US? Was Obama trying to give everyone healthcare all along? [Martin Cohen] Martin Cohen, PhD Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles (1994) Updated Jan 31 Of course, be afraid of health and well-being, by all means. The damned “socialists” running the National Health Service of the U.K. saved my eyesight while my highly rated coverage here in the U.S. almost blinded me! My very highly rated coverage here in the U.S., paid for by my employer, still charged me for each visit and procedure, on top of what they received. My exams and treatment in London? Free – even my initial Rx was free, because they had samples in the exam room. If I had to pay for the Rx, it would have been £5.00 out of pocket ($7.50 at the time). Under my current coverage, I pay about $50 a month for just my eye medicines, not including heart medication, etc. [https://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/NHS-created1948-B-240x300.jpg]But of course, those damned socialists come between you and your doctor, right? Well, no. I walked in without an appointment for the equivalent of what in the states is “urgent care.” No record, no file. So, just like in the U.S., I had to fill out a form – damned bureaucracy! But in the States, that form can be 25 pages, while the damned socialists only had one page and 5 questions! Name, address, phone number, emergency contact, reason for visit. And the wait! Well, right away a “triage” nurse interviewed me in a little room. She sent me back to the waiting area, and before I could enjoy the magazine, that damned socialist doctor interupted me and saw me right away! When I returned to the states, I followed the instructions I receved in the UK, and saw a specialist right away, who was more concerned with me not having too many visits for treatment. In great distress only a few days later, my medical coverage “gate-keeper” insisted that I just saw a doctor, and had a follow-up in 30 days, so that was that. Knowing how serious my condition was (they told me in London) I fought and threatened, and after two hours of phone calls, they “let” me see a specialist who told me had I wait less than a full day, I would be blind. So yes, be afraid – be very afraid of the fact that we don’t, and likely won’t, have a decent “socialist” system that puts people above profits. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From germainelight53 at gmail.com Thu Aug 1 20:10:19 2019 From: germainelight53 at gmail.com (Germaine Light) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 15:10:19 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Protect Middle Fork Fundraiser Message-ID: *Please join us for a Fundraiser to "Protect the Middle Fork" on Saturday, August 10, 2019, between 5pm - 8pm at the Rose Bowl Tavern in Urbana.* Music will be provided by the Bones Jugs and The Emily Anne Band. Food will be available for purchase from the Red Herring Restaurant. Funds raised at this event will support the campaign to Protect the Middle Fork from coal ash pollution, including the cost of signs and flyers. This event is sponsored by the Protect the Middle Fork Citizen's Advocacy Group, Eco-Justice Collaborative, and the Rose Bowl Tavern. A flyer is attached. If you are unable to attend and would still like to donate, please go to the Eco-Justice Collaborative website and follow the links to donate to Protect the Middle Fork. Thank you for your support to Protect the Middle Fork! [image: PDF file] Middle Fork Fundraiser Flier Final.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Aug 2 11:52:39 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2019 11:52:39 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. Message-ID: Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private wealth. Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by all the above. But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting us from sports. Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.” That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter in our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over evil, unless it’s a football Saturday. But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, they’ve got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into the digital, artificially intelligent promised land. Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth? Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old. DAVID GREEN Champaign -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net Fri Aug 2 13:08:30 2019 From: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net (David Johnson) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2019 08:08:30 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002701d54933$62364060$26a2c120$@comcast.net> Great letter David ! David J. From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Friday, August 02, 2019 6:53 AM To: David Green Cc: Peace Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private wealth. Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by all the above. But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting us from sports. Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.” That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter in our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over evil, unless it’s a football Saturday. But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, they’ve got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into the digital, artificially intelligent promised land. Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth? Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old. DAVID GREEN Champaign -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Fri Aug 2 16:10:00 2019 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2019 11:10:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. In-Reply-To: <002701d54933$62364060$26a2c120$@comcast.net> References: <002701d54933$62364060$26a2c120$@comcast.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 8:08 AM David Johnson via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: Great letter David ! > > > > David J. > Yes, it really is. Thank you for passing it on, Karen, to those of us who don't get the News-Gazette. John W. > > > *From:* Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] *On Behalf Of *Karen > Aram via Peace > *Sent:* Friday, August 02, 2019 6:53 AM > *To:* David Green > *Cc:* Peace > *Subject:* [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. > > > > Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has > stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while > making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private > wealth. > > Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars > for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and > species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by > all the above. > > But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, > and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting > us from sports. > > Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state > government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.” > > That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter in > our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over evil, > unless it’s a football Saturday. > > But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, they’ve > got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into the > digital, artificially intelligent promised land. > > Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in > an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and > adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what > self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t > want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient > journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth? > > Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for > Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old. > > DAVID GREEN > > Champaign > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Aug 2 17:53:02 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2019 17:53:02 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. In-Reply-To: References: <002701d54933$62364060$26a2c120$@comcast.net> Message-ID: John, I don’t get the NG either, but every now and then they let me online to read a letter or two. So, the number of times I attempt and am blocked are many. On Aug 2, 2019, at 09:10, John W. > wrote: On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 8:08 AM David Johnson via Peace > wrote: Great letter David ! David J. Yes, it really is. Thank you for passing it on, Karen, to those of us who don't get the News-Gazette. John W. From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Friday, August 02, 2019 6:53 AM To: David Green Cc: Peace Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private wealth. Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by all the above. But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting us from sports. Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.” That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter in our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over evil, unless it’s a football Saturday. But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, they’ve got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into the digital, artificially intelligent promised land. Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth? Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old. DAVID GREEN Champaign _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brussel at illinois.edu Fri Aug 2 21:34:32 2019 From: brussel at illinois.edu (Brussel, Morton K) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2019 21:34:32 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. In-Reply-To: References: <002701d54933$62364060$26a2c120$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <9D3A4B0D-5177-43F3-9956-6516E4F32A23@illinois.edu> One of his best! A punchy letter. Keep it up! On Aug 2, 2019, at 11:10 AM, John W. via Peace > wrote: On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 8:08 AM David Johnson via Peace > wrote: Great letter David ! David J. Yes, it really is. Thank you for passing it on, Karen, to those of us who don't get the News-Gazette. John W. From: Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace Sent: Friday, August 02, 2019 6:53 AM To: David Green Cc: Peace Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private wealth. Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by all the above. But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting us from sports. Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.” That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter in our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over evil, unless it’s a football Saturday. But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, they’ve got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into the digital, artificially intelligent promised land. Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth? Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old. DAVID GREEN Champaign _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Fri Aug 2 22:21:35 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2019 17:21:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. In-Reply-To: References: <002701d54933$62364060$26a2c120$@comcast.net> Message-ID: Today's edition of news from Neptune elaborates on my critique so I highly recommend it. On Fri, Aug 2, 2019, 11:10 AM John W. wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 8:08 AM David Johnson via Peace < > peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > > Great letter David ! >> >> >> >> David J. >> > > Yes, it really is. Thank you for passing it on, Karen, to those of us who > don't get the News-Gazette. > > John W. > > > >> >> >> *From:* Peace [mailto:peace-bounces at lists.chambana.net] *On Behalf Of *Karen >> Aram via Peace >> *Sent:* Friday, August 02, 2019 6:53 AM >> *To:* David Green >> *Cc:* Peace >> *Subject:* [Peace] Excellent letter to the NG, just saw it this morning. >> >> >> >> Over four decades, the globalized, financialized, high-tech economy has >> stagnated the incomes of over half of Americans, immiserating many, while >> making a mockery of social mobility amidst obscene accumulations of private >> wealth. >> >> Consistent with this have been perpetual and ongoing “low-intensity” wars >> for economic domination, increased threat of nuclear war and >> species-threatening carbon-driven climate change, the latter exacerbated by >> all the above. >> >> But these issues are too big to worry about, no less seriously address, >> and they might damage our fragile patriotic self-esteem, while distracting >> us from sports. >> >> Moreover, these problems can’t be laid at the doorsteps of Illinois state >> government, youthful local thugs or “Chicago pols.” >> >> That’s no fun for News-Gazette editors as they lay out the next chapter >> in our local morality play, in which good must inevitably triumph over >> evil, unless it’s a football Saturday. >> >> But never fear, the STEM academic community has got this; that is, >> they’ve got the game-changing Discovery Partners Institute to lead us into >> the digital, artificially intelligent promised land. >> >> Who needs a decent health care delivery system when we’ve got gadgets in >> an imaginary research pipeline? Who needs a decent standard of living and >> adequate housing when we’ve got visualization and “big data”? And what >> self-respecting University of Illinois professor or administrator doesn’t >> want to be hyped to high-tech heaven by ever-ebullient >> journalist/publicist/stenographer Julie Wurth? >> >> Surely, the Golden Age is within us and upon us, if we just clap for >> Tinkerbell, charge our smartphones and refuse to grow old. >> >> DAVID GREEN >> >> Champaign >> _______________________________________________ >> Peace mailing list >> Peace at lists.chambana.net >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 3 00:22:04 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2019 00:22:04 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Join AWARE Saturday the 3rd of August Message-ID: AWARE Anti-war, anti-racism effort of Champaign/Urbana will be holding their monthly anti-war demonstration downtown Champaign Corners of Church and Neil Sts., 2:00 - 4:00pm Please join us, all are welcome, the wars continue unabated, with more on the agenda. War destroys lives, nations, the environment, and US communities. There is only one way to stop or prevent war, and that’s for the American people to rise up and condemn them all. From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 3 00:22:04 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2019 00:22:04 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Join AWARE Saturday the 3rd of August Message-ID: AWARE Anti-war, anti-racism effort of Champaign/Urbana will be holding their monthly anti-war demonstration downtown Champaign Corners of Church and Neil Sts., 2:00 - 4:00pm Please join us, all are welcome, the wars continue unabated, with more on the agenda. War destroys lives, nations, the environment, and US communities. There is only one way to stop or prevent war, and that’s for the American people to rise up and condemn them all. From jbn at forestfield.org Sat Aug 3 16:14:56 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2019 11:14:56 -0500 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #431 notes Message-ID: <83cbf729-fd75-c0fa-d3e6-4b8ed8fca8c9@forestfield.org> News from Neptune #431 A "Democrat Party's Over" edition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTIO_VkQPqM Glen Ford on "Sanders, Biden and the Electability Scam" https://www.blackagendareport.com/sanders-biden-and-electability-scam David Green's recent letter to the News-Gazette https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-serious-issues-just-fall-by-the/article_9b1f0f67-bb31-5462-914a-123dfa4c58f3.html Marshall Sahlins on "The Opioid and Trump Addictions: Symptoms of the Same Malaise" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/the-opioid-and-trump-addictions-symptoms-of-the-same-malaise/ Julie Wurth on "UI's Blue Waters supercomputer gets $11.1M grant to create high-res topographical maps of world" https://www.news-gazette.com/news/ui-s-blue-waters-supercomputer-gets-m-grant-to-create/article_2a390805-9457-5717-ab35-4d9c2892a580.html Julie Wurth's News-Gazette articles https://www.news-gazette.com/users/profile/Julie%20Wurth Wikipedia's entry on National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency Wikipedia's entry on Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Building_and_International_Trade_Center Kyle Rempfer on "Army identifies two soldiers killed in Afghanistan" https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/31/army-identifies-two-soldiers-killed-in-afghanistan/ Kamala Harris' AIPAC Policy Conference speech from 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McK8bPR8pzU Democracy Now on "“You’re Gonna Kill Me”: Bodycam Video Shows Dallas Officers Mocking Man as He Died Pinned to Ground" https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/2/tony_timpa_family_lawsuit_bodycam_footage Jeffrey St. Clair on "Roaming Charges: Measure for Half-Measure" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/roaming-charges-measure-for-half-measure/ Matt Bruenig on "People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly" https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/04/people-lose-their-employer-sponsored-insurance-constantly/ J.B. Nicholson's notes https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051096.html -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Aug 4 13:03:29 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2019 13:03:29 +0000 Subject: [Peace] War with Russia, China, Iran Message-ID: https://ralphnaderradiohour.com/war-with-china-russia-iran/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Sun Aug 4 19:35:37 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2019 14:35:37 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Joe Bauers letter in today's NG In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2A675E86-4AAC-48AC-907D-9B6653BD3993@gmail.com> Write your congressional representatives and demand US troops (and weapons) be removed from Afghanistan: ~ Senator Dick Durbin: ~ Sen. Tammy Duckworth: ~ Representative Rodney Davis: Trump’s continuation of Obama’s war-making constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which he should be impeached. Nothing else. The political establishment continues to threaten impeachment (on other grounds) precisely to see that Trump doesn’t abandon Obama’s war-making (as Trump threatened to do in the campaign). War and war provocations are the bedrock of the political establishment’s foreign policy. Trump is the first major party presidential candidate in 40 years to come into office as a critic of neoliberal and neoconservative policies ( = more war and more inequality). The establishment has worked assiduously (and largely successfully) to see that he maintains those policies. But the threat remains. —CGE > On Aug 4, 2019, at 1:13 PM, David Green via Peace-discuss wrote: > > If you have teenagers romping around your house, most of them have never known a day when the United States was not at war in Afghanistan. Think about that. > This war was allegedly waged in response to the 9/11 attacks of 2001, even though 14 of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. The initial target of that effort, Osama bin Laden, is long since dead. > Recently, I read that 400 Illinois National Guard troops are being deployed to Afghanistan. This war has already consumed the lives of more than 2,300 U.S. service personnel and more than 1,700 U.S. contractors. It has resulted in more than 20,000 U.S. troop injuries and has cost over a trillion dollars. > Hundreds of thousands of Afghan citizens have been killed, wounded or displaced. Their country is in rubble. > Meanwhile, should a natural disaster occur here, Illinois National Guard service people will be depleted by their numbers sent to Afghanistan and other countries. > We have normalized American wars of aggression around the world, despite polls that show that most Americans are sick of it. Yet the political class continues them, feeding at the trough of the war profiteers whom they serve. > And so we are still in Afghanistan, “where empires go to die.” From my point of view, we ought to hold to account all public figures who have been a party to this abomination, from Congress to the White House. > JOSEPH BAUERS Champaign > JOSEPH BAUERS Champaign > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss From deb.pdamerica at gmail.com Tue Aug 6 10:54:27 2019 From: deb.pdamerica at gmail.com (Debra Schrishuhn) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 05:54:27 -0500 Subject: [Peace] REMINDER--VOTING RIGHTS VIGIL AT DAVIS' OFFICE TODAY Message-ID: Noon, 2004 Fox Drive, Champaign. Bring a friend. Hope to see you there to show solidarity with activists around the country. Now more than ever we need electoral solutions to our pressing problems. Let's start by retiring Rodney Davis. Deb -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Aug 6 12:12:49 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 12:12:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Leading Pabloite Gilbert Achcar provided counter-insurgency advice to British Army Message-ID: Leading Pabloite Gilbert Achcar provided counter-insurgency advice to British Army By Thomas Scripps 6 August 2019 The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has paid London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at least £400,000 since 2016 to provide “cultural advice” for its operations abroad. Lectures were delivered by eleven members of SOAS staff, including Gilbert Achcar, a leading representative of the Pabloite United Secretariat. According to Freedom of Information requests obtained by SOAS students, the university designed Regional Study Weeks on Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sessions were attended by members of the military’s Defence Cultural Specialist Unit (DCSU). The DCSU is a secretive formation, established in 2010 “in the spirit of counter-insurgency operations,” to provide support for British military deployments internationally. A 2013 Doctrine Note issued by the MoD explained the “need to develop and exploit specialists ... who have a deep understanding of the language, customs, values and narratives of that culture” in order “to plan and execute military operations” and “identify threats and opportunities.” By 2016, the DCSU had deployed 90 regular and reserve Cultural Advisors in at least 22 countries, including Chad, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Chile. The unit’s trained advisors are described as having a “unique position” with a “central contribution” to Britain’s military footprint. The topic of one of the sessions delivered at SOAS this February was “the war in the Sahel,” the region of Africa just south of the Sahara Desert. In 2018, Sir Richard Ottaway, former chair of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Select Committee, wrote that he had warned in 2014 of “a ‘worrying pattern of unsightedness’ on the part of the UK in relation to events in the Sahel region, and called for the urgent expansion of our presence and knowledge about the whole region.” He continued, “Most pressing in Africa, the UK must increase its diplomatic and security footprint on the ground …” Last July, the British military deployed three helicopters and 120 soldiers to Northern Mali as part of a “pivot to the Sahel” strategic shift in Africa. This February, another 250 troops were deployed to the region. SOAS’s deal with the MoD is further proof of the integration of the armed forces and the academy underway in the world’s major imperialist powers. Significant resources in higher education are being put at the service of the military and security apparatus. Above all, this process relies upon the co-option of a layer of academics into direct service to the state. Representatives of the various pseudo-left groups in this privileged petty-bourgeois milieu play a crucial role. Achcar’s response to his exposure is unapologetic. He has defended his actions in an open letter, claiming that the SOAS lectures “are essentially about the history, politics and socio-economics of the region, provided by critical scholars to lower-ranking military personnel.” He continues, “it is important to let critical voices be heard, even among the military ... Should we prefer that the military and security personnel of this country be solely exposed to right-wing education?” References to “lower-ranking military personnel” and letting “critical voices be heard” are a transparent fraud. Achcar and his fellows are not giving insurgent lectures to privates in the infantry. They are offering advice to a highly specialised unit offering unique support to military operations in crucial geo-strategic theatres. DSCU training includes a course for one- and two-star and brigade headquarters staff. The unit’s cultural advisors consult with senior military commanders. The DCSU is identical in all essentials to the US Army’s Human Terrain System (2007-2014), criticised by the American Anthropological Association for being an “unacceptable application of anthropological expertise.'' The true explanation for Achcar’s intimate relationship with the state is rooted in his political tendency’s history. The United Secretariat was formed in 1963 following the American Socialist Workers Party’s rejection of its Trotskyist traditions and unprincipled re-unification with Pabloite organisations. The Pabloites had broken from Trotskyism in 1953, claiming that the conflict with US imperialism was objectively forcing the Stalinist bureaucracy to pursue a revolutionary course. A similar process of “self-reform” and unconscious revolutionary orientation was supposedly at work within social democratic and bourgeois nationalist movements, meaning that any struggle for the political independence of the working class and its revolutionary mobilisation under the leadership of the Fourth International must be abandoned. The Pabloite groups and leaders would instead integrate themselves into the “real mass movement” as it existed in each country—as advisers pressuring them to the left. Over the years, the liquidationist politics of the Pabloites saw them became ever more naked apologists for imperialism and its political instruments. A key marker of the SWP’s political degeneration was its response to the publication of Security and the Fourth International, an investigation into Trotsky’s assassination launched by the ICFI in 1975. The investigation exposed the activities of Stalinist GPU agents within the SWP in the 1930s and 40s, including leading member Joseph Hansen who initiated relations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an informant immediately following Trotsky’s death. As detailed in the ICFI’s recent publication Agents: The FBI and GPU Infiltration of the Trotskyist Movement, after the Second World War the FBI had at least 20 “confidential informants” in high-level positions within the SWP, reporting directly on a regular basis. Under Hansen, 12 out of 13 SWP members who were students at the small conservative midwestern Carleton College ended up on the party’s national committee. Below the upper ring of agents was a wider network of informants in local branches of the SWP. The anti-socialist politics of the Pabloites, coupled with extensive state infiltration, paved the way to ever-closer integration into the political structures of imperialist rule—including the state apparatus. This process finds consummate expression in Achcar, whose writings on the Middle East and Africa dovetail perfectly with the strategy of British and US imperialism and who has now been exposed as a paid adviser. In 2011, Achcar supported UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorising an imperialist war of plunder against Libya, writing, “Here is a case where a population is truly in danger, and where there is no plausible alternative that could protect it … You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.” He went on to chide the imperialist powers for not dropping enough bombs on the Libyan population, describing airstrikes which killed tens of thousands as “low-key.” He demanded that more weapons be funneled to the anti-Gaddafi opposition, as “consistently and insistently requested” by them. This US-backed opposition, to which the United Secretariat extended “full solidarity,” was led by a reactionary collection of former government officials and Islamic fundamentalist tribal leaders. Achcar was equally hawkish in support of imperialist intervention in Syria, participating in a 2011 meeting of the Syrian National Council, a collection of US and French intelligence assets. He advised the Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad—led by a collection of CIA-linked Islamic fundamentalist militias—to seek indirect assistance rather than direct intervention from Washington. In 2013, he described analyses of imperialist interests and involvement in the region as a “kind of conspiracy theory among those that call themselves anti-imperialist and tend to see the hand of imperialism behind everything.” He lyingly claimed that America “refuses to deliver weapons to the insurgency despite insistent requests.” In March 2018, with the regime-change operation failing, he joined demands for full-scale military intervention by the US and other imperialist powers via an open letter in the New York Review of Books, “Why the World Must Act Now on Syria.” Over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of dead and two destroyed societies, Achcar continues his relentless advocating for imperialist wars. In July 2018, he hosted an “Inconsistent Anti-Imperialism and Selective Solidarity” event at SOAS to launch Rohini Hensman’s, Indefensible: Democracy, Counterrevolution, and the Rhetoric of Anti-Imperialism.Hensman’s book supports virtually every war or overseas operation launched by the Democratic Party since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is a vitriolic attack on all serious opponents of imperialism, denouncing journalists John Pilger and Seymour Hersh, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the World Socialist Web Site . How closely Achcar’s writings align with the strategy of world imperialism is indicated by his recent prescriptions for Sudan, where he advocates a policy of orientation to the military for protesting workers and youth. Achcar has claimed, “The main strength of the Sudanese revolutionaries is their great influence over the soldiers and the officials, some of which even used their weapons to defend the demonstrators … This factor will determine the fate of the Sudanese revolution.” In an article for Jacobin magazine, he writes that the military has been “dissuaded” from “attempting to drown the revolution in blood.” And further, “The troops’ sympathizing with the popular movement was determining in leading the generals to get rid of Bashir. The most important thing now is for the movement to consolidate its support among the rank and file and lower-ranking officers of the armed forces.” This is a thoroughly anti-Marxist position which seeks to replace the organisation of the working class into an independent revolutionary party with moral appeals to the armed guardians of the capitalist state. Given the experience of workers in Egypt in 2013, it is criminal advice. The same line was advanced by the Revolutionary Socialists (RS) in that country, to whose “Socialist Days” conference in 2011 Achcar was invited. RS helped to hand power to the butcher of the Egyptian revolution, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, even as he massacred protestors in the streets. Backed by the world’s imperialist powers, General el-Sisi established a bloody dictatorship which routinely executes political opponents. Britain’s “pivot to the Sahel” will no doubt be accompanied by discussions on an equally bloody military crackdown in Sudan. The greatest obstacle to the predatory ambitions of the UK and the rest of the world’s imperialist powers is Africa’s increasingly militant working class. But as Egypt demonstrated in the negative, this immense social force can only triumph if it acquires and acts upon an international socialist perspective. Achcar works publicly against such a perspective to politically disarm the working class, while discussing with the forces of military repression in closed-door meetings organised by SOAS. Any genuine socialist or even progressive organisation would have expelled Achcar immediately upon hearing of his dealings with the MoD. But the United Secretariat will not bat an eyelid at his giving paid advice to the military, which simply formalises a longstanding political relationship. Neither will Jacobinmagazine, associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Democracy Now! news show, raise the slightest complaint. They have for years provided Achcar with a platform to strategise on behalf of the US government. SOAS was founded in 1916 to promote the long-term interests of British imperialism in Africa and Asia by training a cadre of colonial administrators. Alumni include countless heads of state, diplomats and civil servants in the former colonial countries. Today, the same training is provided by leaders of the pseudo-left tendencies who are mortal enemies of the international working class. WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Aug 6 13:35:07 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 13:35:07 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Aaron Mate with Ali Abunimah now with the Grayzone Project Message-ID: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/29/progressive-democrats-vote-against-bds-palestinian-rights/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Aug 6 13:35:07 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 13:35:07 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Aaron Mate with Ali Abunimah now with the Grayzone Project Message-ID: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/29/progressive-democrats-vote-against-bds-palestinian-rights/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Wed Aug 7 00:59:48 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 19:59:48 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE on the Air #489 notes Message-ID: <39a46f2e-74c5-24e1-b2e6-f6a0b76b276b@forestfield.org> AWARE on the Air #489 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5X4YwPPnZU Joseph Bauers on "Why are we still in Afghanistan?" https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-why-are-we-still-in-afghanistan/article_27334e6a-e7d2-58ed-ad47-3e67b457c02e.html Jonathan Swan on "Lindsey Graham tries to talk Trump out of Afghanistan pullout by 2020" https://www.axios.com/afghanistan-lindsey-graham-donald-trump-2020-election-5092323e-b8e1-4527-8808-a8125392dadf.html Paul Craig Roberts on "Tulsi Gabbard: R.I.P." https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/05/tulsi-gabbard-r-i-p/ Gary Brecher (pseudonym of John Dolan) on "Tanker Games" This article might be available on a subscription basis (such as a magazine or part of Brecher's Patreon-published work), but I couldn't find a pointer to a copy of this article available gratis to all. Related: Radio War Nerd https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6qV1M0aujeZ582k4gaD9wA/videos Related: The War Nerd articles across multiple archives http://pando.com/author/garybrecher/ -- PandoDaily (November 2013 - November 2015) https://www.nsfwcorp.com/desk/war-nerd/ -- NSFWCorp (September 2012-November 2013) http://www.exile.ru/articles/list.php?IBLOCK_ID=35&SECTION_ID=156 -- The Exile (April 2002 - May 2008) http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/ -- The Exiled Online (April 2011-September 2012) teleSUR interview with Janna Jihad, a 13-year-old Palestinian activist and journalist on tour of the US in Washington, DC, talking about what life is like for children under occupation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTZUDAODuYI Aaron Maté's new show "Push Back with Aaron Maté" interviewing co-founder of Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah about the recent Congressional support for an anti-BDS bill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSi3hqnY2u8 -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 8 15:53:01 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2019 15:53:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #431 notes In-Reply-To: <83cbf729-fd75-c0fa-d3e6-4b8ed8fca8c9@forestfield.org> References: <83cbf729-fd75-c0fa-d3e6-4b8ed8fca8c9@forestfield.org> Message-ID: Carl: I have nothing but respect for your long term anti-war stand, focusing on history, based upon knowledge, and reality, connecting the dots as very few are able. Nonetheless I find your focus on electoral politics, defense of Trump, and now support for Tulsi Gabbard disturbing. I don't like to get personal, but the very fact, that you have always blamed the Democrat Party for US wars, but now support a Democrat, Tulsi because she talks the talk, though walk the walk, she will never do, given the power of the DNC. No different than the GOP, they both prevent any candidate/President within the two Party system, from doing anything other than that which they are told, tells me your sudden support for a Democrat, is because she divides the Democratic Party, thus ensuring a Republican wins the next election. Global warming is a very serious issue, and with a Republican in office, we have no hope. Chomsky makes this very clear. One who truly supports anti-war supports a third Party candidate and focuses on uniting groups rather than dividing. True anti-imperialists won’t support a Democrat or Republican candidate no matter what they say, because foreign policy will continue unabated under either administration. I say this in reference to the fact that your public condemnation of Carol Ammons, when she abstained from supporting BDS, was non stop, requiring Carol visit the local Green Party to explain her situation, thus staining the local Green Party and AWARE. Carol’s abstention had little impact, while Tulsi’s voting against BDS has severe ramifications and provides us with a glimpse of what she would likely do if elected. Your reference to Carol on the AWARE FB website, as “whining,” in defending her actions, is trivial and personal. On Aug 3, 2019, at 09:14, J.B. Nicholson via Peace > wrote: News from Neptune #431 A "Democrat Party's Over" edition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTIO_VkQPqM Glen Ford on "Sanders, Biden and the Electability Scam" https://www.blackagendareport.com/sanders-biden-and-electability-scam David Green's recent letter to the News-Gazette https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-serious-issues-just-fall-by-the/article_9b1f0f67-bb31-5462-914a-123dfa4c58f3.html Marshall Sahlins on "The Opioid and Trump Addictions: Symptoms of the Same Malaise" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/the-opioid-and-trump-addictions-symptoms-of-the-same-malaise/ Julie Wurth on "UI's Blue Waters supercomputer gets $11.1M grant to create high-res topographical maps of world" https://www.news-gazette.com/news/ui-s-blue-waters-supercomputer-gets-m-grant-to-create/article_2a390805-9457-5717-ab35-4d9c2892a580.html Julie Wurth's News-Gazette articles https://www.news-gazette.com/users/profile/Julie%20Wurth Wikipedia's entry on National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency Wikipedia's entry on Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Building_and_International_Trade_Center Kyle Rempfer on "Army identifies two soldiers killed in Afghanistan" https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/31/army-identifies-two-soldiers-killed-in-afghanistan/ Kamala Harris' AIPAC Policy Conference speech from 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McK8bPR8pzU Democracy Now on "“You’re Gonna Kill Me”: Bodycam Video Shows Dallas Officers Mocking Man as He Died Pinned to Ground" https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/2/tony_timpa_family_lawsuit_bodycam_footage Jeffrey St. Clair on "Roaming Charges: Measure for Half-Measure" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/roaming-charges-measure-for-half-measure/ Matt Bruenig on "People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly" https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/04/people-lose-their-employer-sponsored-insurance-constantly/ J.B. Nicholson's notes https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051096.html -J _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 8 16:26:16 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2019 16:26:16 +0000 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #431 notes In-Reply-To: <83cbf729-fd75-c0fa-d3e6-4b8ed8fca8c9@forestfield.org> References: <83cbf729-fd75-c0fa-d3e6-4b8ed8fca8c9@forestfield.org> Message-ID: Carl and David In respect to my previous email, I do think the discussion initially taking place in respect to the political situation, on NFN, to be right on target by both of you. Unfortunately, many white working class of a “conservative nature,” or rather those who don’t read, work hard with little to show for it, and or simply take their news from FOX, still believe they have been left out of the “American promise,” blaming the government for favoring people of color. Thus many will only listen to what is said, without looking at what is done, and support Trump again. Only Sanders can win the race, but if what was done in the last election is any measure of what to expect in the next, we may again have Trump for four more years. > On Aug 3, 2019, at 09:14, J.B. Nicholson via Peace wrote: > > News from Neptune #431 > A "Democrat Party's Over" edition > Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTIO_VkQPqM > > Glen Ford on "Sanders, Biden and the Electability Scam" > https://www.blackagendareport.com/sanders-biden-and-electability-scam > > David Green's recent letter to the News-Gazette > https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-serious-issues-just-fall-by-the/article_9b1f0f67-bb31-5462-914a-123dfa4c58f3.html > > Marshall Sahlins on "The Opioid and Trump Addictions: Symptoms of the Same Malaise" > https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/the-opioid-and-trump-addictions-symptoms-of-the-same-malaise/ > > Julie Wurth on "UI's Blue Waters supercomputer gets $11.1M grant to create high-res topographical maps of world" > https://www.news-gazette.com/news/ui-s-blue-waters-supercomputer-gets-m-grant-to-create/article_2a390805-9457-5717-ab35-4d9c2892a580.html > > Julie Wurth's News-Gazette articles > https://www.news-gazette.com/users/profile/Julie%20Wurth > > Wikipedia's entry on National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency > > Wikipedia's entry on Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Building_and_International_Trade_Center > > Kyle Rempfer on "Army identifies two soldiers killed in Afghanistan" > https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/31/army-identifies-two-soldiers-killed-in-afghanistan/ > > Kamala Harris' AIPAC Policy Conference speech from 2017 > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McK8bPR8pzU > > Democracy Now on "“You’re Gonna Kill Me”: Bodycam Video Shows Dallas Officers Mocking Man as He Died Pinned to Ground" > https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/2/tony_timpa_family_lawsuit_bodycam_footage > > Jeffrey St. Clair on "Roaming Charges: Measure for Half-Measure" > https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/roaming-charges-measure-for-half-measure/ > > Matt Bruenig on "People Lose Their Employer-Sponsored Insurance Constantly" > https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/04/people-lose-their-employer-sponsored-insurance-constantly/ > > J.B. Nicholson's notes > https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051096.html > > -J > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Aug 9 22:42:44 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2019 17:42:44 -0500 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #432 notes Message-ID: <9c67b22c-9d1c-1651-9f1a-0fed053904b6@forestfield.org> News from Neptune #432 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trphIyYt1Ko A "Nagasaki Holocaust" edition Dwight Eisenhower's view on using the Atomic Bomb http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/hiroshima-nagasaki/opinion-eisenhower-bomb.htm Source: The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956: A Personal Account (New York: Doubleday, 1963), pp. 312-313. Timothy P. Carney on "‘It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing’ --- Why dropping the A-Bombs was wrong" https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/it-wasnt-necessary-to-hit-them-with-that-awful-thing-why-dropping-the-a-bombs-was-wrong On Curtis LeMay being a hawk https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay Dennis Kucinich on "We Didn't Have to Drop the Bomb" https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/08/08/we_didnt_have_to_drop_the_bomb_127709.html Stephen Schwartz on "The Costs of U.S. Nuclear Weapons" https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapons/ Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EzA0QnSF4 -- RT on "Nuclear threat looms, even years after Hiroshima & Nagasaki nuclear attacks." Adolph Reed, Jr. on "Oats for Breakfast" show https://soundcloud.com/user-108536943/episode-12-race-class-and-the-left-w-adolph-reed-jr -- initially published interview https://soundcloud.com/user-108536943/unlocked-extended-interview-w-adolph-reed-jr -- extended interview Oats for Breakfast https://socialistproject.ca/podcast/ Glen Ford on "The Validity and Usefulness of the Term “Black Misleadership Class”" https://www.blackagendareport.com/validity-and-usefulness-term-black-misleadership-class Jennifer Schuessler on "Ibram X. Kendi Has a Cure for America’s ‘Metastatic Racism’" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/arts/ibram-x-kendi-antiracism.html Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a9lRHfKaCc -- RT on "How corporate media covered mass shootings." Democracy Now! on "“Toni Morrison Will Always Be with Us”: Angela Davis, Nikki Giovanni & Sonia Sanchez Pay Tribute" https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/7/remembering_toni_morrison Kathleen Belew on "The Right Way to Understand White Nationalist Terrorism" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/opinion/el-paso-terrorism.html Kathleen Belew's "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America" ISBN-10: 9780674286078 ISBN-13: 978-0674286078 Julie Wurth on "UI's Blue Waters supercomputer gets $11.1M grant to create high-res topographical maps of world" https://www.news-gazette.com/news/ui-s-blue-waters-supercomputer-gets-m-grant-to-create/article_2a390805-9457-5717-ab35-4d9c2892a580.html Wikipedia's entry on National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency David Price on "Militarized Observers: Institutional Daydreams of Ethics End Runs to Weaponize Culture" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/09/militarized-observers-institutional-daydreams-of-ethics-end-runs-to-weaponize-culture/ Gary Brecher's (pseudonym of John Dolan) Radio War Nerd https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6qV1M0aujeZ582k4gaD9wA/videos Related: The War Nerd articles across multiple archives http://pando.com/author/garybrecher/ -- PandoDaily (November 2013 - November 2015) https://www.nsfwcorp.com/desk/war-nerd/ -- NSFWCorp (September 2012-November 2013) http://www.exile.ru/articles/list.php?IBLOCK_ID=35&SECTION_ID=156 -- The Exile (April 2002 - May 2008) http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/ -- The Exiled Online (April 2011-September 2012) Craig Murray on "In the World of Truth and Fact, Russiagate is Dead. In the World of the Political Establishment, it is Still the New 42" https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/08/in-the-world-of-truth-and-fact-russiagate-is-dead-in-the-world-of-the-political-establishment-it-is-still-the-new-42/ Judge Koeltl's 81-page long judgment explaining why "the basis of Russiagate are insufficient to even warrant a hearing" https://www.scribd.com/document/420269577/DNC-lawsuit-ORDER-Granting-Motion-to-Dismiss-073019 J.B. Nicholson's notes https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051127.html -J From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sat Aug 10 18:40:31 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2019 13:40:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] News from Neptune #432 notes In-Reply-To: <9c67b22c-9d1c-1651-9f1a-0fed053904b6@forestfield.org> References: <9c67b22c-9d1c-1651-9f1a-0fed053904b6@forestfield.org> Message-ID: Here is the discourse that I was referring to regarding Timothy McViegh: http://www.marxmail.org/msg160148.html Which refers back to Richard Seymour's patreon blog post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fascist-28942843 Here is the comment by *Amith Gupta *that I read on the program: I disagree with Michael's reading of McVeigh. There was very little indication that he was motivated by the same factors as the El Paso shooter or other neo-Nazi terrorists (i.e. belief in a conspiratorial genocide against white people). The only indications that I could find were the fact that he had the Turner Diaries in his possession; that is unsurprising, given the plot of the book is about citizens carrying out an armed insurgency against the government, albeit they are all racists. I recall reading (though I can't find it for the life of me) how McVeigh thought of the book as a useful guide for carrying out terrorist plots against the government but rejected its race-related messaging. Likewise, he apparently bought a "White Power" shirt from the KKK during a protest and counter-protest when he was in the military, but from what I could find it is little more than shirt that says "Sic Semper Tyrannis" which a photo of Lincoln (as I'm sure you all know, those were the words that Booth stated before assassinating Lincoln). Given the lack of involvement with active Nazi militias at any point in his life and complete lack of any "race war"-related commentary in any statements he made prior to or after the bombing, I find it a stretch to throw him in with these other guys, though he clearly had some sort of flirtations with other people who had those views. The letters he wrote prior to his execution and other statements he made during his life would indicate that while he was very much a right-winger, the primary factors behind his violence were being desensitized to mass killings during his military service in Iraq and watching the heavily militarized response of the U.S. government to various groups in the United States, including Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians. Those responses involved killing many people and, at least in the Weaver case, involved an ultimately successful entrapment defense (i.e. Weaver was acquitted). Weaver and his family were actually white nationalists but the outrage about the attack on that family was hardly limited to people who share their ideological views; indeed, it was an absolutely ridiculous use of force against a guy they had tried to get on a manufactured gun charge knowing that he had small children and a wife (who was killed) in the home. There is no evidence that the Branch Davidians practiced white supremacy at all (they were just a batshit crazy religious cult led by a maniacal abuser). IOW McVeigh realized that the U.S. government did not mind when he killed people under their orders and decided that the same ethical rules should apply when fighting the U.S. government, which was a fight that he justified by pointing to the police killings mentioned above. Beyond that there is nothing to suggest that he wanted to kill people because of their race, drive non-whites out of the country, etc. Given the quickness of people on the Left to jump at a neo-Nazi/racist angle whenever there is some kind of large attack (including Dayton, which, as I pointed out, was carried out by someone who identified as a Leftist) we should be careful not to sweep with a broad brush. *The bigger issue that McVeigh brings out is not white supremacy;* it is the dehumanizing and desensitizing effect of U.S. wars and the resultant effects when those aspects of war (including militarization of police) are launched domestically. Amith R. Gupta Again, as stated on the program and in a previous post, this relates to my concern with the approach taken by historian Kathleen Belew in her book The War Comes Home, and in her op-ed piece in the NYT, which elides the issues surrounding Ruby Ridge and Waco: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/opinion/el-paso-terrorism.html On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 5:43 PM J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > News from Neptune #432 > Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trphIyYt1Ko > A "Nagasaki Holocaust" edition > > > Dwight Eisenhower's view on using the Atomic Bomb > > http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/hiroshima-nagasaki/opinion-eisenhower-bomb.htm > Source: The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956: A Personal > Account (New York: Doubleday, 1963), pp. 312-313. > > Timothy P. Carney on "‘It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful > thing’ --- Why dropping the A-Bombs was wrong" > > https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/it-wasnt-necessary-to-hit-them-with-that-awful-thing-why-dropping-the-a-bombs-was-wrong > > On Curtis LeMay being a hawk > https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay > > Dennis Kucinich on "We Didn't Have to Drop the Bomb" > > https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/08/08/we_didnt_have_to_drop_the_bomb_127709.html > > Stephen Schwartz on "The Costs of U.S. Nuclear Weapons" > https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapons/ > > Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EzA0QnSF4 -- RT on "Nuclear > threat looms, even years after Hiroshima & Nagasaki nuclear attacks." > > > > > Adolph Reed, Jr. on "Oats for Breakfast" show > > https://soundcloud.com/user-108536943/episode-12-race-class-and-the-left-w-adolph-reed-jr > -- initially published interview > > https://soundcloud.com/user-108536943/unlocked-extended-interview-w-adolph-reed-jr > -- extended interview > > Oats for Breakfast > https://socialistproject.ca/podcast/ > > Glen Ford on "The Validity and Usefulness of the Term “Black Misleadership > Class”" > > https://www.blackagendareport.com/validity-and-usefulness-term-black-misleadership-class > > Jennifer Schuessler on "Ibram X. Kendi Has a Cure for America’s > ‘Metastatic > Racism’" > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/arts/ibram-x-kendi-antiracism.html > > Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a9lRHfKaCc -- RT on "How > corporate media covered mass shootings." > > Democracy Now! on "“Toni Morrison Will Always Be with Us”: Angela Davis, > Nikki Giovanni & Sonia Sanchez Pay Tribute" > https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/7/remembering_toni_morrison > > Kathleen Belew on "The Right Way to Understand White Nationalist Terrorism" > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/opinion/el-paso-terrorism.html > > Kathleen Belew's "Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and > Paramilitary America" > ISBN-10: 9780674286078 > ISBN-13: 978-0674286078 > > > > > Julie Wurth on "UI's Blue Waters supercomputer gets $11.1M grant to create > high-res topographical maps of world" > > https://www.news-gazette.com/news/ui-s-blue-waters-supercomputer-gets-m-grant-to-create/article_2a390805-9457-5717-ab35-4d9c2892a580.html > > Wikipedia's entry on National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency > > David Price on "Militarized Observers: Institutional Daydreams of Ethics > End Runs to Weaponize Culture" > > https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/09/militarized-observers-institutional-daydreams-of-ethics-end-runs-to-weaponize-culture/ > > Gary Brecher's (pseudonym of John Dolan) Radio War Nerd > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6qV1M0aujeZ582k4gaD9wA/videos > > Related: The War Nerd articles across multiple archives > http://pando.com/author/garybrecher/ -- PandoDaily (November 2013 - > November 2015) > https://www.nsfwcorp.com/desk/war-nerd/ -- NSFWCorp (September > 2012-November 2013) > http://www.exile.ru/articles/list.php?IBLOCK_ID=35&SECTION_ID=156 -- The > Exile (April 2002 - May 2008) > http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/ -- The Exiled Online (April > 2011-September 2012) > > > > > Craig Murray on "In the World of Truth and Fact, Russiagate is Dead. In > the > World of the Political Establishment, it is Still the New 42" > > https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/08/in-the-world-of-truth-and-fact-russiagate-is-dead-in-the-world-of-the-political-establishment-it-is-still-the-new-42/ > > Judge Koeltl's 81-page long judgment explaining why "the basis of > Russiagate are insufficient to even warrant a hearing" > > https://www.scribd.com/document/420269577/DNC-lawsuit-ORDER-Granting-Motion-to-Dismiss-073019 > > > > > J.B. Nicholson's notes > https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051127.html > > -J > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Tue Aug 13 13:32:50 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 08:32:50 -0500 Subject: [Peace] RIP Paul Findley Message-ID: <57AD28BC-B7A7-488A-8B3C-CE5D225B6A64@gmail.com> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Findley From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Aug 13 15:58:04 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 15:58:04 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Chris Hedges in relation to elections Message-ID: [Fear vs. Fear]Mr. Fish / Truthdig The old rules of politics no longer apply. The only language understood by Donald Trump and his coterie of con artists, billionaires, generals, misfits and Christian fascists—and a Democratic Party that has sold us out—is fear. Calling out Trump’s lies and racism does not matter. Calling out his nepotism and corruption does not matter. Calling out the criminality of his administration does not matter. Calling out its incompetence and idiocy does not matter. Calling out the abject subservience of the ruling elites to corporate power does not matter. Trump and his Democratic Party opponents are immune to moral suasion. The more we engage in this empty kabuki theater with its predictable outlandish outbursts, usually from Trump, and predictable outraged responses, usually from Democrats, the more certain are government paralysis and corporate tyranny. The drivel and invective that passes for political discourse is a giant hamster wheel that goes nowhere. It masks the root causes of our political and economic decline and fractures the population into warring camps that increasingly communicate through violence, which is why the United States has suffered mass shootings with three or more fatalities more than 30 times this year. We will save ourselves only by pitting power against power. And since our two major political parties slavishly serve corporate power, and have few substantial differences on nearly all major issues from imperialism to unfettered capitalism, we must start from scratch. The political personalities, including those on the left such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren, are distractions. They have no power within the Democratic Party, as Nancy Pelosi often reminds us. They serve to reduce politics to personal feuds, the currency of the vast reality show perpetrated for profit by corporate media. The daily back and forth by these personalities diverts our attention from the rapid consolidation of wealth and power by the ruling elites, the degradation of the ecosystem into a toxic wasteland and the eradication of basic freedoms and rights. The American political system is not salvageable. It will be overthrown in a mass uprising—a version of which we saw recently in Puerto Rico—or vast swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable and the rich will feed like ghouls off the mounting human misery. These are the two stark options. And we have very little time left. The Democrats, if they had a functioning political party and were not owned and managed by corporations, could easily displace Trump and demolish the Republican Party in electoral landslide after landslide. From poll after poll, as Charles Derber points out in his book “Welcome to the Revolution,” we know what the majority of Americans want. A whooping 82% think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington, with 70% singling out large businesses as having too much power. Nearly 80% support stronger rules and enforcement of regulations on the financial industry. Nearly half of Americans think economic inequality is “very big,” and 34% concede it is “moderately big.” Almost 60% of registered voters and 51% of registered Republicans favor raising to $18,000 from $14,820 the maximum amount that workers can make and still be eligible for the earned income tax credit. A staggering 96% of Americans, including 96% of Republicans, believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the American system. Close to 80% believe wealthy Americans should pay higher taxes. Nearly 60% favor raising the federal minimum wage requirement to $12 an hour. Sixty-one percent, including 42% of Republicans, approve of labor unions. Sixty percent of Americans think “[i]t is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare,” and 60% of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.” Nearly 60% favor free early-childhood education, and 76% are “very concerned” about climate disruption. Eighty-four percent support requiring background checks for all gun buyers. Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. A genuine populism and New Deal socialism are the only hope of thwarting the rise of neofascist movements. This, however, will never be permitted by the Democratic Party hierarchy, led by figures such as Pelosi, Joe Biden and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are acutely aware they would instantly lose their power without the prop of hundreds of millions of corporate dollars. They, and their corporate sponsors, will block all reform even if it means another four years of Trump and the extinguishing of democracy. The only thing they have to sell us is fear—fear of Trump and the Russians. While Trump sells the fear of immigrants, Muslims, people of color and those he brands as socialists. This is a toxic diet. The greatest traitors in America are not Trump and his neofascist minions shouting “Lock her up” or “Send her home,” but a decadent, morally bankrupt, self-identified liberal elite consumed by greed. They orchestrated the social inequality that permits Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to control more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American population. They pay lip service to the climate crisis but have not done anything to halt the sixth great mass extinction. The fossil fuel industry, under the Democrats and Republicans, continues to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The polar ice caps disappear. The sea levels rise. The deforestation expands. The clogging of the oceans with floating islands of plastic that poisons our food chain is unchecked. No one among the ruling elites has any intention of restraining a bloated, out-of-control military that consumes half of all discretionary spending while half the country lives in poverty or near poverty, the federal deficit looks set to exceed $1 trillion by the end of this fiscal year and the nation’s infrastructure disintegrates. All meaningful resistance takes place outside the formal political structures. The 10-day protest in April in London led by Extinction Rebellion—which saw 1,130 people arrested as crowds repeatedly shut down major parts of the city in demonstrating against the failure of the ruling elites to confront the climate catastrophe—is what we must emulate. Extinction Rebellion has called for a strike by workers around the world in October, a strike in which thousands of arrests are anticipated. We have exceeded the 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 that climate scientists said was the level at which we still might have thwarted societal collapse. Last July was the hottest in recorded history. We are currently at 415 ppm of CO2, with enough heat in the system to ensure 450 ppm of CO2within a decade. A temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age measurement guarantees catastrophic climate disruptions. “We’re looking at the collapse of the world’s agriculture systems,” Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, told me when we spoke in London. “Long before the sea level rises, we’re going to have a world economic collapse because we’re not going to be able to feed ourselves. That’s what’s shitting everyone. That’s why people are in a panic. In the U.N., in academia, in the elites, they’re looking at this. They’re pulling their hair out. We have this repressed media space so it’s not obvious to everyone. I think this is the role of Extinction Rebellion—to break through that repression. Once you break through it, people will say, yeah. The whole thing is beyond bad.” “We need to insulate all housing stock,” he said. “We need to turn over the economy so that it’s completely electrified. We need to have all the energy coming from renewables. We need a social transformation, so the rich are taxed and pay their fair share. We need to organize communities around quality of life so that people can learn to adapt to these changes, these traumatic changes. This is a matter of physics. It’s not a matter of political opinion. These changes are coming. It’s far too late for massive increases in temperature not to happen. What we’re looking at now is whether we’re going to go extinct or not. I know that sounds like science fiction, but it’s true. We need to look at the figures. It’s like going to the doctor. This is cancer. You don’t like it, that’s fine, but it’s not going to stop you from dying. The only option is do you want to accept that this is the situation? Or don’t you? If you don’t, you’re going to die. If you do, there is a chance. But you’re going to have to get a move on it.” “We’re saying this to everyone in society, not just to progressives,” he said. “Wake up! At the end of the day, we’ve all got kids. We’ve all got young people we know. If we have any empathy or responsibility for the young generation, it’s all hands on deck. The most civilized way of dealing with the situation is to come together as a country, as a world, in citizen assemblies, and allow the ordinary people of the world to decide what to do. After all, it’s their lives.” By stepping outside the system, including in our voting patterns, we begin to make the ruling elites afraid. Change comes from pressure. But if we are not willingly to become outcasts, that pressure will never happen. It was not the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for example, led by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, that first proposed the Green New Deal. It was articulated 12 years ago by the Green Party, which called for massive job and public works programs to transition our energy infrastructure to renewable energy. The deal was promoted by Howie Hawkins when he ran for the governorship in New York in 2014 and by Jill Stein during her 2016 presidential run. The proposal for a Green New Deal by the Green Party has a fundamental difference from what is touted by progressive Democrats. It does not argue that structural change and a transition to renewable energy will come by making alliances with corporate power. Instead, it insists that we bring about a transformational change in our economy by crushing corporate power and establishing a socialist system. “The Democrats don’t have real solutions,” Hawkins, who is seeking the Green Party nomination for the presidency, told me in New York. “Trump is a racist scapegoater. He is a freeloading leech who doesn’t pay his own employees, contracts, taxes. He lies to the people. He needs to go. But if you replace him with a Democrat, they’re not going to enact ‘Medicare for All.’ They’re not going to do a Green New Deal. They are backing Trump, who now wants a war for oil in Venezuela, while the planet is burning from burning oil. It’s madness.” “The historic role of third parties in this country is to raise issues that major parties won’t take up,” he went on. “Like the Liberty Party and the question of slavery. They were the abolitionists when the Whigs and the Democrats didn’t want to touch the issue. We can go for 150 years of history and show how that’s the case.” “We are not going to get to 100 percent clean energy if Exxon gets to reinvest its earnings in more oil exploration extraction and sales,” he said. “The Koch brothers and all their interests in the oil industry, those should be publicly owned. We take the earnings, because we’ll use fossil fuels during the transition, and reinvest it in renewable. That’s the socialist solution. You can get some socialist programs, like Social Security or Medicare for All, which Bernie Sanders champions, but as long as the capitalist oligarchy has power based on their concentrated ownership of the economy, which translates into political power, they can roll it back.” “When I talk about a Green New Deal, I’m talking about an economic bill of rights like [Franklin] Roosevelt called for at the end of his 1944 State of the Union address,” Hawkins said. “A job. Income. Health care. Housing. Education. The civil rights picked that up with the [1963] March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the Freedom Budget, and the [1968] Poor People’s Campaign. But we still don’t have it. The other part is 100 percent clean energy by 2030. We have to reorganize all sectors [of the economy]—agriculture, manufacturing, the military, transportation—toward sustainability. Or we’ll never get to 100 percent clean energy.” Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing, two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power. I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are doomed. Chris Hedges Columnist Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers… [Chris Hedges] Mr. Fish Cartoonist Mr. Fish, also known as Dwayne Booth, is a cartoonist who primarily creates for Truthdig.com and Harpers.com. Mr. Fish's work has also appeared nationally in The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Vanity… [Mr. Fish] IN THIS ARTICLE: alexandria ocasio-cortez bernie sanders bill gates campaign charles derberclimate change democrats donald trump economy election elizabeth warrenenvironment extinction rebellion freedom budget global warming gop governmentgreen new deal green party howie hawkins ilhan omar jeff bezos jill stein liberty partymarch on washington for jobs and freedom money national politics poor people's campaignpuerto rico republicans roger hallam sixth great mass extinction td originals warren buffett COMMENTS * * * * Like what you're reading? Signup for Truthdig's Newsletter. AUG 10, 2019|TD ORIGINALS American History for -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue Aug 13 17:33:42 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 17:33:42 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Massacres at Home and Abroad Message-ID: AUGUST 13, 2019 Massacres at Home and Abroad by JOHN MARCIANO FacebookTwitterRedditEmail[https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2017/09/atoa-print-icon.png] [https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2019/08/Marines_in_Saddams_palace_DM-SD-04-12222.jpg] Photograph Source: Lance Corporal Kevin C. Quihuis Jr. (USMC) – Public Domain On August 5, former President Obama released a powerful statement in response to the latest gun massacres in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton that left scores dead and wounded—including children who were shopping for school supplies at Walmart with their mothers, and with their families at the wonderful Gilroy Garlic Festival. He decried the madness of violence that has been fueled by Trump’s vile pronouncements and policies that help spread anti-immigrant and racist poison across the nation. Obama asserted that “We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people….” He concluded, “It’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much—clearly and unequivocally.” His statement, clearly aimed at the vile Trump whose name was not mentioned, linked racism and white nationalism as key contributing factors creating the climate and context for recent gun massacres. Obama’s statement brought a flood of support from his liberal and celebrity admirers who are nostalgic for the “good old days” under his presidency; people who are outraged at the Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton murderers—as they should be—but were virtually silent when their hero killed untold thousands across the Greater Middle East. There are other factors contributing to gun massacres that Obama and the corporate media erase from consideration; foremost among these is the violence that is fostered by America’s commitment to a permanent warfare state that he deepened during his years in the White House. This included his role in continuing and expanding the so-called “War on Terror” that is now in its eighteenth year, nearly five times longer than the Second World War. When will we connect the dots between massacres at home and those abroad that are ordered by the President of the United States—in flagrant violation of the Constitution and international law—and carried out by the U.S. military? Obama’s statement on the Gilroy-El Paso-Dayton killings revisits his emotional response following the December 2012 gun massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut—where 20 children between 6-7 years of age and 6 staff members were slaughtered. At that time, he “grew emotional … as he made a passionate call for a national ‘sense of urgency’ to limit gun violence. Obama circled back to that shooting in the final moments of his speech. ‘Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,’ Obama said, pausing to wipe away tears” (CNN, Jan. 5, 2013). Obama, then the greatest arms dealer in the world, expressed no similar anguish and sense of urgency on international gun control. As Democracy Now later reported, most of the “weapons exports under [his administration] have gone to the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia tops the list at $46 billion in new agreements.” The brutal Saudi monarchy that has been bombing and producing a famine for millions in Yemen, obtained billions in advanced weapons from Obama, who was teary-eyed about the massacre of children here at home yet shed no tears over the death and destruction he facilitated in the Middle East. The slaughter continues under Trump. Political analyst William Hartung pointed out that “even after adjusting for inflation, the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion.” Our Nobel Peace Laureate thus “approved more arms sales than any U.S. administration since World War II” (Democracy Now, April 2015). I would be moved by Obama’s words about gun massacres and hatred were it not for the fact that during his presidency he presided over wars and violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Honduras, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, and Palestine that have left millions of people—virtually all of color and many of them black—dead, maimed, and displaced. He inherited some of these wars from G.W. Bush and began U.S. involvement in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Aren’t these victims as worthy of our sympathy as those who lost their lives in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton? When will we extend our anguish and outrage about massacres at home to embrace the lives and deaths of others outside our borders? COUNTERPUNCH -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Wed Aug 14 00:25:18 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 19:25:18 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE on the Air #490 notes Message-ID: <21aa1d5f-1615-9b7a-8b04-3f44a3ce34c2@forestfield.org> AWARE on the Air #490 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2qn48iVQKY Matt Taibbi on "Who’s Afraid of Tulsi Gabbard?" https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/podcast-tulsi-gabbard-kamala-harris-syria-iraq-870003/ Quint Forgey on "Gabbard will take two-week break from 2020 campaign for National Guard duty" https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/12/tulsi-gabbard-campaign-break-active-duty-1458155 Jeffrey St. Clair on "Roaming Charges: Measure for Half-Measure" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/02/roaming-charges-measure-for-half-measure/ Related: https://71republic.com/tag/tulsi-gabbard-drone-strikes/ -- Ryan Lau on "Tulsi Gabbard Is a Hawk in Dove’s Clothing" https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ -- J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”." Robbie Jaeger on "Tulsi Gabbard Has Enemies In High Places" https://medium.com/@RobletoFire/tulsi-gabbard-has-enemies-in-high-places-6fa7da05284 Lee Camp post to his Twitter account https://twitter.com/LeeCamp/status/1161046040881111040 Video Lee Camp linked to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emalZZJ-Stc Redacted Tonight shows: https://www.youtube.com/user/redactedtonight/videos Aaron Maté on the program “Going Underground" talks about the US war against Iran (sanctions are war) and the regime change war the US seeks to bring against Iran, as well as the connection to Israel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GZFI0GR018 Aaron Maté on his new program "Push Back" talking about how Russian fearmongering continues even though the Mueller report didn't prove any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians. In this episode, Aaron Maté interviews Stephen Cohen about Russiagate. Stephen Cohen is a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8T6qlXu7bU From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Aug 14 22:12:23 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2019 22:12:23 +0000 Subject: [Peace] From Iran to Mass Shootings on the Mainland, the U.S. Empire is in a State of Decay Message-ID: From Iran to Mass Shootings on the Mainland, the U.S. Empire is in a State of Decay Danny Haiphong, BAR contributor 14 Aug 2019 [https://www.blackagendareport.com/themes/newsclick/assets/images/facebook.png] [https://www.blackagendareport.com/themes/newsclick/assets/images/twitter.png] [https://www.blackagendareport.com/themes/newsclick/assets/images/mail.png] [From Iran to Mass Shootings on the Mainland, the U.S. Empire is in a State of Decay] From Iran to Mass Shootings on the Mainland, the U.S. Empire is in a State of Decay An empire in decay only becomes more violent and ruthless. “The U.S. has killed over 40,000 Venezuelans in one year’s worth of sanctions.” Iran has been subject to crippling U.S. sanctions and military provocations in recent weeks. The most recent U.S. escalation began in mid-July when the U.K., through its territory of Gibraltar, seized an Iranian oil tanker accused of violating E.U.-imposed sanctions against Syria. Iran has since taken three “foreign” tankers into custody and placed 17 Iranians accused of spying for the CIA under arrest. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the 2020 election buzz has been temporarily drowned out by the deaths of over thirty people in three mass shootings. From Iran to Ohio, the U.S. empire is in a state of decay. Iran is responding to U.S. imperial decay by defending itself on behalf of the former colonial world, much of which is still under the thumb of neocolonial and imperialist exploitation. The Islamic Republic has been under a state of siege by the imperialist world for over half of a century. Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was overthrown in 1953 with the help of the CIA . This placed Iran under the autocratic puppet rule of the Shah. The Shah used a secret police force, the SAVAK , to murder, kidnap, and torture of tens of thousands of Iranians. All of this occurred under the supervision of the U.S. and U.K. “The Islamic Republic has been under a state of siege by the imperialist world for over half of a century.” The Iranian people overthrew the Shah and re-nationalized the nation’s vast oil reserves in 1979. Washington never forgave Iran for refusing to bow down to its imperial dictates. Iran maintains sovereignty on several fronts. On the domestic front, Iran has developed an advanced military infrastructure capable of defending the country from foreign invasion. On the international front, the Islamic Republic has developed firm ties with Russia, China, Syria, and a litany of nations which has allowed it to modernize its economy. U.S. sanctions have kept Iran’s people without key medical and other resources necessary for survival, but this hasn’t stopped them from defending the self-determination of Iran and allied nations. When Iran stands up to the U.S. and its imperial allies, it isn’t merely defending itself. Iran is defending the rest of the world’s peoples. Iran has given critical aid to the Syrian government in its righteous fight against foreign-sponsored “jihadist” mercenaries. Iran has also been a key ally of Venezuela ; which, like Iran, has suffered gravely because of U.S. sanctions. Iran’s seizure of foreign oil tankers and CIA agents shows that it is not afraid of the U.S. or its allies. U.S. imperialism is in decay and cannot assert hegemony in the old way. There are no CIA-backed coups in the cards and a full-scale attack on Iran would be political suicide not just for Trump, but for the entire U.S. and E.U. political establishment which has rapidly seen its political legitimacy dwindle over the last several decades. “Washington never forgave Iran for refusing to bow down to its imperial dictates.” Just as the U.S. is unable to operate in the same way around the world, mass shootings in the U.S. represent a domestic example of a militarized, racist Empire in decay. White America has historically acted as the foot soldiers in the Empire’s system of racialized social control dating back to the original sin of slavery. Slave patrols, lynch mobs, and their modern manifestations in the American police and prison state are historical byproducts of a ruthless system of profit rooted in the white supremacist dehumanization of Africans in America. For several centuries, most white Americans relished the benefits conferred to them by a system that placed Blacks and anyone else deemed a sub-human race to the bottom of the class structure. Only in the last 40 to 50 years since Black Americans forced concessions upon the state has it been distasteful to publicly rejoice in the fruits of white supremacy. Mass shootings demonstrate the U.S.’ descent into barbarism. In 2017, in response to the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Democratic Party presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg remarked on Twitter that “I did not carry assault weapons around a foreign country so I could come home and see them used to massacre my countrymen.” Democratic Party representative Steve Cohen deleted a similar tweet not long after the most recent string of mass shootings in California, Ohio, and El Paso “You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to Afghanistan or Iraq. Enlist!” Such responses to white violence in the U.S. reveal the double standard inherent in the logic of white superiority and imperial violence. Mass shootings that disrupt the mythical tranquility of white society represent a crisis worthy of response while institutionalized mass murder in the form of military intervention is characterized as a necessary and heroic act. “A full-scale attack on Iran would be political suicide.” A social system predicated on white supremacy, empire, and a declining capitalist economy inevitably brings about conditions of depravity like those seen in the recent mass shootings. Fascism festers when capitalism forces those who have become comfortable with certain conditions, such as the presence of (white) jobs, into a state of precarity. That’s why the El Paso shooter’s manifesto can simultaneously condemn both U.S. political parties and automation while taking out murderous rage on undocumented immigrants. Economic and political violence is supposed to be reserved for subhuman “savages” such as indigenous peoples, undocumented migrants, and Black Americans. The chickens have come home to roost in White America and it should come as no surprise in an alienated, heavily surveiled society that one of the responses is violence at the barrel of the gun. Much of the world, including large sections of the U.S. population, is no stranger to U.S. imperial violence. Black Americans and indigenous peoples native to what is now the U.S. mainland aremurdered by law enforcement nearly every day in the United States. Iraq lost over one million people during the U.S. invasion beginning in 2003. Iran lost one million itself in the war two decades prior when the U.S. supplied Iraq with chemical weapons to invade the Islamic Republic post-revolution. An empire in decay only becomes more violent and ruthless in its attempt to maintain hegemony. The U.S. has killed over 40,000 Venezuelans in one year’s worth of sanctions. And with China and Russia labeled the greatest threat to U.S. “national security, ” the threat of a global war of nuclear proportions looms over humanity like a storm cloud. The U.S. has long been on the path to barbarism. Iran’s resistance to U.S. imperialism provides an international example of heroism and is a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle of the 20thcentury. Mass shootings and global provocations are a sign of an empire that is even more dangerous because it is dying. Only by joining in this struggle can exploited and oppressed sections of the U.S. population achieve true peace and justice in our lifetime. Without mass resistance to white supremacy and war, the U.S. empire threatens to devour itself alive and will no doubt attempt to take the rest of us with it. Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He and Roberto Sirvent are co-authors of the book entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News -- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Skyhorse Publishing).He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990 at gmail.com, on Instagram at danny_haiphong, and on Twitter at @SpiritofHo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Thu Aug 15 04:34:05 2019 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2019 23:34:05 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Join Me For An Open Government Night In-Reply-To: <201908150002.x7F02J6I017900@s-bulk2-p.house.gov> References: <201908150002.x7F02J6I017900@s-bulk2-p.house.gov> Message-ID: Rowdy Rodney Davis havin' another "transparent" propaganda evening..... ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Congressman Rodney Davis Date: Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 7:02 PM Subject: Join Me For An Open Government Night To: Rodney Davis 13th District, Illinois ------------------------------ www.rodneydavis.house.gov www.facebook.com/reprodneydavis www.twitter.com/rodneydavis ------------------------------ 1740 Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-2371 [image: Congress of the United States // House of Representatives // Washington, DC 20515] Committee on House Administration Ranking Member Committee on Agriculture Subcommittee on Biotechnology, Horticulture, and Research Subcommittee on Nutrition Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Ranking Member Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress August 14, 2019 Dear Friend, I want to invite you to an Open Government Night I am hosting in conjunction with Illinois State Representative Brad Halbrook (R-102) on Monday, August 19th at the Parkland College Harold and Jean Miner Theatre from 6:00-7:30 pm, doors open at 5:00 pm. Seating is first-come, first-serve with no registration and parking is free and immediately north of the theatre entrance in lot M1. This is an opportunity for you to hear directly from your government officials at the state and federal level on important issues. Additionally, if you have ideas, questions or comments on federal legislation or Congress, please feel free to send me an email by visiting my website. The details are below and I hope to see you there. Sincerely, [image: (signed)] Rodney Davis Member of Congress 2004 Fox Drive Champaign, IL 61820 (217) 403-4690 108 W. Market St. Taylorville, IL 62568 (217) 824-5117 15 Professional Park Drive Maryville, IL 62062 (618) 205-8660 2833 S. Grand Avenue East Springfield, IL 62703 (217) 791-6224 104 W. North Street Normal, IL 61761 (309) 252-8834 243 S. Water Street, Suite 100 Decatur, IL 62523 (217) 791-6224 Click Here to view this email in your browser Click Here to be removed from this list -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman at justforeignpolicy.org Fri Aug 16 20:49:41 2019 From: naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (Robert Naiman) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 15:49:41 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Can we get a Yemen question in this WFP event tomorrow? In-Reply-To: References: <5d57144e3af5e_a6553fece1deb14885861fd@ip-10-0-0-119.mail> Message-ID: Can we get a Yemen question in this WFP event tomorrow? I would love to convince the WFP that they should care about Yemen. Can you imagine what America would be like if Democratic leaders believed that the U.S. labor movement cared about peace? ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Bernie Sanders Date: Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 3:38 PM Subject: Ask me your questions tomorrow To: When we talk about what it will take to defeat Donald Trump, we must talk about building a movement that will transform our country. *As part of the Working Families Party’s 2020 endorsement process, each of the six candidates vying for WFP’s endorsement have the opportunity to speak directly to our supporters in order to make the case for their candidacy in the coming days. Please read this invitation from Bernie Sanders below, then click here to save your spot and join us via Crowdcast tomorrow, Saturday, August 17 at 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT. * ------------------------------ Robert, When we talk about what it will take to defeat Donald Trump, we must talk about building a movement that will transform our country. That is because no candidate — not me, not the best candidate you can possibly imagine — can do what is necessary by themselves. It will take *all of us.* That is why tomorrow, I am excited to join Working Families Party supporters for a live Q&A. I am going to make the case and ask for your endorsement, but I also want to hear from you about your vision, your hopes, your dreams, and what you want to see in your next president. This campaign is not about me. It’s about *us*. Will we hear from you tomorrow? *Please join us tomorrow, Saturday, August 17th for my live Q&A with the Working Families Party at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT. * *Join via Crowdcast » * There is so much at stake in this election. We have an opportunity to not only defeat Donald Trump, but to transform our country and create a government that works for all of us, not just the wealthy and powerful. I’m looking forward to answering your questions and talking with all of you tomorrow about our path forward in 2020. I hope you are too. In solidarity, Bernie Sanders *A note from the Working Families Party:* We can’t allow the establishment or corporate media to define the 2020 debate. That’s why the Working Families Party is hosting six in-depth Live Q&As with presidential candidates in order to make sure our progressive values are front and center. *Chip in to help power this grassroots movement:* *Contribute * [image: Like us on Facebook] [image: Follow us on Twitter] [image: Follow us on Instagram] *Become a Working Families Party Member!* Other political groups have corporate donors. We have you. Just $10 a month supports our fight . Paid for by Working Families Party National PAC (1 Metrotech Center North 11th Floor, Brooklyn, NY). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Aug 16 23:38:36 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 18:38:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #433 notes Message-ID: <65a12fe6-c8ae-5a36-34a1-80e390e765b3@forestfield.org> News from Neptune #433 A "Ferragosto" edition Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-gPghwla-M Ferragosto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferragosto Peterloo Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre Michael Roberts on "The political economy of Peterloo" https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/08/16/the-political-economy-of-peterloo/ Michael Roberts' blog: The Next Recession https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/ Kurt Hackbarth on "An $8 Billion Murder Industry" https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/el-paso-shooting-us-mexico-weapons-arms Lyndsay Jones on "Chicago teacher, 'Nazi expert' to lead Bend the Arc event on white nationalism in schools" https://www.news-gazette.com/news/chicago-teacher-nazi-expert-to-lead-bend-the-arc-event/article_5772a027-b6cf-574c-b078-83919e382c7d.html https://www.news-gazette.com/news/expert-in-hate-groups-gets-call/article_5772a027-b6cf-574c-b078-83919e382c7d.html The Great Replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Replacement Bat Ye'or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Ye%27or Rebecca Kheel on "Trump to meet with national security team on Afghanistan peace plan" https://thehill.com/policy/defense/457703-trump-to-meet-with-national-security-team-on-afghanistan-peace-plan "No More Cages" coverage https://www.wcvb.com/article/no-ice-no-prisons-no-more-cages-banner-unfurled-over-fenway-park-green-monster/28583049 https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/no-ice-no-prisons-no-more-cages-banner-unfurled-over-green-monster/ar-AAFdT5w Jean-Yves Camus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Yves_Camus Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement by Robert I. Friedman ISBN-10: 0394580532 ISBN-13: 978-0394580531 Yoram Hazony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoram_Hazony The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtue_of_Nationalism ISBN-10: 9781541645370 ISBN-13: 978-1541645370 Related: https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/israel-virture-of-nationalism-book/ -- Murtaza Hussain on "Why Yoram Hazony Book “Virtue of Nationalism” Gets It Wrong" Gun buyback program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program Beto O'Rourke on gun buyback https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/16/beto-orourke-buyback-gun-1466128 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mandatory-buy-back-means-confiscation/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beto-orourke-gun-control_n_5d556fc8e4b0d8840fef8cea https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/456445-orourke-open-to-mandatory-gun-buyback-program Aaron Maté: "Trump starves Venezuela, Democrats are silent" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37-PILH78Ys Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera on "Venezuela’s Maduro Cracks Down on His Own Military in Bid to Retain Power" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/world/americas/venezuela-military-maduro.html Jennifer Matsui on "La Danse Mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein" https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/16/la-danse-mossad-robert-maxwell-and-jeffrey-epstein/ "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead J.B. Nicholson's notes https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051144.html -J From davidgreen50 at gmail.com Sat Aug 17 16:54:14 2019 From: davidgreen50 at gmail.com (David Green) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2019 11:54:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] News from Neptune #433 notes In-Reply-To: <65a12fe6-c8ae-5a36-34a1-80e390e765b3@forestfield.org> References: <65a12fe6-c8ae-5a36-34a1-80e390e765b3@forestfield.org> Message-ID: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/patrick-crusius-texas-el-paso-massacre-shooting-gun-laws The World That Made the El Paso Mass Shooter After the August 3 mass shooting in El Paso that left twenty-two dead and twenty-four injured, Dan Patrick , the right-wing-radio-host-turned-Texas-lieutenant-governor, offered a glib explanation for what turned Patrick Crusius, the twenty-one-year-old who drove ten hours from his home in the Dallas–Fort Worth area to an El Paso Walmart in hopes of slaughtering the highest number of Mexican immigrants possible, into a mass murderer. It was the lack of school prayer and the popularity of violent video games, Patrick insisted. “We’ve always had guns, always had evil, but I see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill,” he said on Fox and Friends the next day, as the nation reeled from massacres not just in El Paso, but also in Dayton, Ohio. For self-styled “pro–Second Amendment” politicians like Patrick, who in 2018 received an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, the focus on Call of Duty and other shoot-’em-up entertainment certainly diverted attention from the state’s Wild West–like gun laws. In Texas, handguns can be carried openly or concealed in most public places. The AK-47-style weapon Crusius used in his spree is legal in the state. And Texas’s lax gun regulations will become even looser on September 1, when gun owners will be able to carry concealed weapons into churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship, and without a license for up to forty-eight hours anywhere under a mandatory evacuation order following a natural disaster. (In spite of all that legally permitted firepower, Texas recorded 434.4 violent crimes per 100,000 persons in 2017, seventeenth-highest in the country and outranked only by states with similar gun laws.) ....... On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 6:39 PM J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss < peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote: > News from Neptune #433 > A "Ferragosto" edition > Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-gPghwla-M > > Ferragosto > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferragosto > > Peterloo Massacre > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre > > Michael Roberts on "The political economy of Peterloo" > > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/08/16/the-political-economy-of-peterloo/ > > Michael Roberts' blog: The Next Recession > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/ > > Kurt Hackbarth on "An $8 Billion Murder Industry" > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/el-paso-shooting-us-mexico-weapons-arms > > Lyndsay Jones on "Chicago teacher, 'Nazi expert' to lead Bend the Arc > event > on white nationalism in schools" > > https://www.news-gazette.com/news/chicago-teacher-nazi-expert-to-lead-bend-the-arc-event/article_5772a027-b6cf-574c-b078-83919e382c7d.html > > https://www.news-gazette.com/news/expert-in-hate-groups-gets-call/article_5772a027-b6cf-574c-b078-83919e382c7d.html > > The Great Replacement > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Replacement > > Bat Ye'or > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Ye%27or > > Rebecca Kheel on "Trump to meet with national security team on Afghanistan > peace plan" > > https://thehill.com/policy/defense/457703-trump-to-meet-with-national-security-team-on-afghanistan-peace-plan > > "No More Cages" coverage > > https://www.wcvb.com/article/no-ice-no-prisons-no-more-cages-banner-unfurled-over-fenway-park-green-monster/28583049 > > https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/no-ice-no-prisons-no-more-cages-banner-unfurled-over-green-monster/ar-AAFdT5w > > Jean-Yves Camus > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Yves_Camus > > Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement by Robert > I. Friedman > ISBN-10: 0394580532 > ISBN-13: 978-0394580531 > > Yoram Hazony > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoram_Hazony > > The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtue_of_Nationalism > ISBN-10: 9781541645370 > ISBN-13: 978-1541645370 > > Related: > https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/israel-virture-of-nationalism-book/ > -- > Murtaza Hussain on "Why Yoram Hazony Book “Virtue of Nationalism” Gets It > Wrong" > > Gun buyback program > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program > > Beto O'Rourke on gun buyback > https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/16/beto-orourke-buyback-gun-1466128 > > https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mandatory-buy-back-means-confiscation/ > > https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beto-orourke-gun-control_n_5d556fc8e4b0d8840fef8cea > > https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/456445-orourke-open-to-mandatory-gun-buyback-program > > Aaron Maté: "Trump starves Venezuela, Democrats are silent" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37-PILH78Ys > > Anatoly Kurmanaev and Isayen Herrera on "Venezuela’s Maduro Cracks Down on > His Own Military in Bid to Retain Power" > > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/world/americas/venezuela-military-maduro.html > > Jennifer Matsui on "La Danse Mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein" > > https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/08/16/la-danse-mossad-robert-maxwell-and-jeffrey-epstein/ > > "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead > > J.B. Nicholson's notes > https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051144.html > > -J > _______________________________________________ > Peace-discuss mailing list > Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun Aug 18 17:28:54 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2019 17:28:54 +0000 Subject: [Peace] VIDEOS show Antifa attacking bus, cornering right-wing protesters as Portland rally turns violent Message-ID: Footage has emerged of several violent attacks by Antifa on right-wing demonstrators in Portland, Oregon. The clashes come as President Donald Trump threatened to designate the left-wing movement as an “organization of terror.” Scuffles broke out in Portland after left-wing counter-protesters gathered in large numbers on Saturday for a rally of the right-wing Proud Boys, which Antifa consider neo-fascists. [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1102791242956529664/NYLoibKt_normal.jpg] Elijah Schaffer S.O. ✔@ElijahSchaffer [🚨] BREAKING [🚨] Antifa has major CLASH with Proud Boys on Portland bridge in traffic A serious assault took place on PB’s after they busted the door of the bus, they also threw a metal hammer at them. I also got pepper sprayed in the face with many others. Sorry for language [Embedded video] 6,977 1:57 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 6,641 people are talking about this Videos showed masked protesters attacking two buses that were carrying right-wing demonstrators. One skirmish saw “anti-fascists” smashing a door and throwing a hammer into one of the buses, before chasing the vehicle and hurling rocks. A hooded man could also be seen using pepper spray inside the bus. [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/976571801961558016/HK1wJt0q_normal.jpg] Jorge Ventura Media at VenturaReport Anitfa throws rocks and hammers and smashes windows of bus that contained Proud Boys in it. Reporting live #PortlandProtest #antifa #proudboys [Embedded video] 3,509 1:51 PM - Aug 17, 2019 · Portland, OR Twitter Ads info and privacy 3,831 people are talking about this Conflicting reports and additional video of the altercation suggest that the hammer may have been taken from a right-wing demonstrator during the skirmish. Footage shows the door of the bus opening, with a right-wing protester swinging a hammer at Antifa members who had swarmed around the entrance of the vehicle. [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1155044177287290880/xXgtvCSz_normal.jpg] Below Average Student at BelowStudent Replying to @drmistercody @MrAndyNgo Here's another angle that shows clearly who had the hammer first: [Embedded video] 777 7:48 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 249 people are talking about this Another disturbing attack shows a young girl and a man sporting a Spartan helmet and white T-shirt emblazoned with the words “I hate the left and racism” being cornered by a crowd of left-wing demonstrators after getting separated from the right-wing rally. A video shows the pair being surrounded, doused with water, and chased while a crowd chanted “Walk away.” [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1102791242956529664/NYLoibKt_normal.jpg] Elijah Schaffer S.O. ✔@ElijahSchaffer [🚨] BREKAING [🚨] ANTIFA chases conservative protestors through Portland streets They sprayed pepper spray, assaulted multiple victims including a young girl, tasered a teenager Riot police on the scene, protestors on the ground cheered cops to jump off and kill themselves [Embedded video] 8,482 1:36 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 9,691 people are talking about this Another set of videos showed a middle-aged man lying motionless on the ground with a woman kneeling beside him. The woman appears to be shielding the man while trading insults with left-wing activists, who call her a “crazy b**ch.” She is then seen helping the dazed and apparently injured man walk through the parking lot as riot police watch on without intervening. The female angrily rejects an offer of help from another man. Reports on social media claim the man was beaten and maced by Antifa. The footage has been shared by conservative blogger and journalist Andy Ngo, who himself was beaten and splashed with milkshakes at a Proud Boys rally in June. [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1088259541047828480/sexppj2k_normal.jpg] Andy Ngo ✔@MrAndyNgo Replying to @MrAndyNgo Middle-age man was maced and beaten by an antifa mob. He was knocked unconscious to the ground. His partner or spouse was trying to protect him as mob still surrounded them. No police. #PortlandProtests [Embedded video] 13K 2:51 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 13K people are talking about this [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1153354878623866885/yup2LrVE_normal.jpg] The Post Millennial at TPostMillennial Man was beaten and maced by Antifa. He wandered off dazed and bloodied and collapsed in a parking lot. No authorities have helped him yet. #PortlandProtest [Embedded video] 4,514 2:38 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 5,272 people are talking about this In another unsettling episode, a man in black was filmed wresting a US flag from an elderly protester, whose face and clothes were smeared with what appears to be a milkshake. The masked man then throws the flag away to cheers and applause from the crowd. [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1153354878623866885/yup2LrVE_normal.jpg] The Post Millennial at TPostMillennial An old man gets assaulted by Antifa and has his American flag ripped from his hands and thrown to the ground. #PortlandProtests [Embedded video] 4,314 12:55 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 6,634 people are talking about this As tensions flared, Portland police declared a civil disturbance as the crowds were ignoring orders urging them against blocking the streets near Pioneer Courthouse Square. At least 13 people have been arrested so far, police spokeswoman Lt. Tina Jones said. Five persons have been evaluated by medics, including one who had to be taken to hospital for further checks. All the injuries are believed to be minor, Jones said. An estimated 1,200 people showed up at the rally’s peak, according to police numbers. [https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1144695683376566272/thPOLGMN_normal.jpg] Portland Police ✔@PortlandPolice Video Update 6 - The demonstration in downtown Portland has now been declared a civil disturbance. Individuals gathered in the SW Park and Morrison area must now leave the area immediately. Transcript: https://buff.ly/2THyysh #PPBAlert [Embedded video] 532 4:32 PM - Aug 17, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 802 people are talking about this Tensions were running high ahead of the rally, with police saying they confiscated metal poles, bear spray, shields and other weapons. In attempt to prevent the rival groups from squaring off with each other, police erected concert barriers and cordoned off streets and bridges. ALSO ON RT.COMAntifa may be branded ‘organization of terror,’ Trump warns, ahead of Portland right-left showdown As Portland was bracing itself for the showdown between the rival groups, Donald Trump added fuel to the fire, throwing his weight behind the idea of officially labeling Antifa an “organization of terror.” While the idea is not new, having previously been pushed by Republican lawmakers, US law lacks a mechanism that would allow it to recognize a domestic entity as a terrorist organization. Currently, only foreign groups can be designated as such. https://www.rt.com/usa/466737-portland-clashes-proud-boys-antifa/?fbclid=IwAR3z_J9LlqafhsNSbQFvygvjaU-jiIdwXb5C97uKlpMjZlkEzGQVylG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Aug 21 13:29:15 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 13:29:15 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Compare to the 30's Message-ID: https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/08/21/proud-boys-vs-antifa-portlands-pantomime-street-theater/?fbclid=IwAR2MThf-CYq4dr2emGpUvUozzdSHdd0mFusa87pZ5GSsd_lI5eu69U_JceI -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Aug 21 17:27:15 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 17:27:15 +0000 Subject: [Peace] A completely different perspective on the rally in Portland Message-ID: If all they say here is true, see the vdo, then I stand corrected in criticizing antifa or groups in large numbers coming out to counter racists in large numbers with speech, preventing violence. Unlike Charlotte, the Mayor took action and the police did everything right, avoiding conflict. https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/20/portland_far_right_rally_antifa_counterprotest -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgestabrook at gmail.com Wed Aug 21 21:56:30 2019 From: cgestabrook at gmail.com (C G Estabrook) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 16:56:30 -0500 Subject: [Peace] From an interview with Chomsky Message-ID: From an interview with Noam Chomsky by David Barsamian, published in Truthout, August 21, 2019 David Barsamian: Talk about the present occupant of the White House. In some ways, his boorish and grotesque behavior is a pretty easy target. People can feel very virtuous about denouncing Trump. But Public Citizen warns, “Every day we witness a further slide toward authoritarianism under Trump.” Are you concerned about that? Noam Chomsky: I’m less concerned than they are. I think the system is resilient enough to withstand a figure who is defying subpoenas, defying congressional orders and so on. I think Trump is in many ways underestimated. He’s a highly skilled politician who is very successful in what he’s doing. He’s got two major constituencies. One is the actual, standard constituency, the Republican Party — both parties, but much more the Republicans — private wealth, corporate power. You’ve got to keep them satisfied. Then there is the voting base. Here, what’s happened to the Republicans over the years is pretty interesting. During the neoliberal period, both parties have shifted to the right. By the 1970s, the Democrats had pretty much abandoned the working class. The last gesture of support for the working class was the Humphrey-Hawkins bill in 1978, a full employment bill that former President Jimmy Carter watered down so it didn’t really mean anything. But since then, the Democrats have simply handed the working class over to their main class enemy: the Republicans. Some little changes here and there, but it’s pretty substantial. The Democrats have become what used to be called moderate Republicans. The Republicans, meanwhile, have just gone off the edge…. They’ve just become “a radical insurgency.” You see it almost daily. Recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that if Republicans have a chance to appoint someone else to the Supreme Court in an election year, “Fine, we’ll do it.” When it was Obama, he said, “No, in an election year you can’t do it.” They have simply abandoned any pretense of being a parliamentary party, and upped it to the jugular. But meanwhile, we’re going to support private wealth, corporate power with utter dedication. You can’t get votes that way. There are not enough people that are going to say, “Fine, let’s do that.” What the Republicans have had to do since the 1970s is to try to kind of cobble together a voting constituency on some grounds other than their actual policies. It’s been very interesting to watch it. It started with former President Richard Nixon and his Southern strategy. The civil rights movement alienated Southern racists. The Nixon team pretty openly said, “We can pick up votes by being racist.” They didn’t use the word, but essentially did by catering to the racist elements of the South that are opposed to the civil rights movement... For example, forget immigrants — that’s so transparent we don’t have to talk about it. There’s almost 100 percent agreement that China is taking our jobs. But how is China taking our jobs? Does China have a gun to the heads of the CEOs of Apple and GM and Microsoft, and says, “You’ve got to send jobs here?” It’s the corporate managers who are deciding to do it. So if you don’t want the jobs to go to China, you should be saying, “Well, the corporate managers shouldn’t have the right to make that decision.” So, who should have the right? If you believe in democracy, it should be the people who work in the enterprise. But where are we now? Back to the gentleman named Karl Marx in the mid-19th century. We should have worker control of enterprises. So the logical argument about China stealing our jobs goes straight to workers’ control of enterprises, the main theme of the American working class in the early Industrial Revolution. Somehow you don’t read about that... What’s happened in the past roughly 15 years, when you take a look at every Republican primary, when somebody came up from the popular base, they are so “crazy” that the Republican establishment wasn’t able to tolerate them and was able to beat them down — people like Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and others. The difference in 2016 is they couldn’t beat them down. Trump is a skillful politician, and he managed not only to win the nomination, but to put the entire party in his pocket to a remarkable extent. Amazingly, he’s been able to maintain the support of people that he is shafting at every turn with his pretense of being the guy who is standing up for you. It’s very interesting to watch it. There was an interesting article in The New York Times, a long study of Midwest farmers. These are not poor farmers with a garden in their backyard; these are pretty affluent farmers. But they’re suffering from the trade war. They’re losing their market for soybeans. But they’re still supporting Trump. And the reason is, “We’ve got to stop the Chinese practices. It’s unfair to us. And Trump says he supports us.” In fact, the main person they quote in the article says, “Trump says, ‘farmers are marvelous people, I love you,’ and I’m going to vote for him.” So, a little sweet-talk. And also, a little bit of cash doesn’t hurt. So there’s now $16 billion sent to farmers in the Midwest to try to compensate for their trade losses. Where does that $16 billion come from? It comes from the trade war. Tariffs are simply a tax on consumers. That’s what a tariff is: A tariff, the way it spells itself out, it ends up with higher prices for consumers. And it’s not small. The New York Fed just estimated the annual tax bite as about $800 per family. That’s a big tax increase under Trump, which helps pay off his constituency. It’s a pretty nice scam, when you look at it, and they’re carrying it off very effectively. Trump and Steve Bannon and the rest are pretending to be the tribunes of the people, defending the American worker from all these attacks. By now, there are a few Democrats who are starting to talk about it, but as a party, the Democrats have pretty much abandoned the working class. In fact, many working people voted for Obama believing his nice rhetoric about hope and change. But within about two years that was shattered. By the 2010 midterm elections, it was gone. Trump comes along and says, “I’m your defender. I’m going to protect you from not only foreign enemies but the people who are stealing your jobs.” He’s carrying it off, and the Democrats are helping him. Take this laser-like focus on the Robert Mueller report, Russiagate. It was obvious from the beginning that they were not going to find very much. They’ll find that Trump’s a crook. OK, we knew that already — but they’re not going to find any real collusion with the Russians, and they didn’t. They’re not going to find any real significant Russian impact on the election. There couldn’t be. You want to talk about interference with the election? Campaign funding by the wealthy and the corporate sector utterly overwhelms the effect of any imaginable foreign interference. That’s the real interference with elections. Whatever the Russians might have tried to do, it’s a piece of straw in a haystack. And, of course, it’s nothing compared with U.S. interference with Russian elections, let alone other countries, where we just overthrow the government. But the Democrats focused all their hopes on somehow “Mueller is going to save us,” and “Let’s not look at Trump’s policies.” But these policies are murderous. Trump’s climate policy may literally be a virtual death knell for the species. It’s not a small thing. There’s almost no talk about it. The Nuclear Strategy Review, which escalates the threat of nuclear war significantly, that’s not under discussion. The tax scam, which was just a gift to the rich and the corporations, a double gift. For one thing, it poured a lot of money into their pockets. Secondly, it created a huge deficit which can be used as a justification for cutting social spending. We can go on and on. None of this is being discussed. Let’s instead talk about the fact that maybe somebody in the Trump campaign talked to a Russian oligarch who placed an ad somewhere. It’s as if the Democrats are working for him, like paid agents of the Trump campaign. David Barsamian: Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times, writes, “My head hurts, puzzling over whether Trump is just a big blowhard who’s flailing around, or a sinister genius laying traps to get himself impeached to animate the base ahead of the election.” Noam Chomsky: Trump … understands nothing about the economy; he doesn’t care about the world. But he is extremely skillful in carrying off the primary tasks that a “narcissistic megalomaniac” has to achieve. One is maintaining the support of wealth and corporate power, which he is doing. That’s handed over to McConnell and the rest. They make sure that that works. And it’s working brilliantly. Corporate profits are going through the roof. It’s fantastic. Wages are pretty much stagnating. What more can he ask? But the other thing is: He has to keep his voting base energized, and he’s doing it, very well. Impeachment is another case. If the Democrats move to impeachment, I think they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot. You can see exactly what’s going to happen. Suppose the House impeaches Trump. It goes to the Senate. The Senate is in Trump’s pocket. They’ll exonerate him. Then what happens? Trump starts making speeches about how, “I’m exonerated, the Deep State and the treacherous Democrats are trying to destroy the guy who is standing up for you against your enemies.” Just like what happened with the Mueller report. They were just walking into a trap. If you want to be concerned, you want to overturn Trump on the basis of his actual crimes, the thing to look at is not Congress, it’s the New York State Attorney General’s office, which is carrying out, apparently, careful investigations of Trump’s fraudulent dealings over decades, which I’m sure are going to pile up crime after crime, maybe enough to send him to prison after he’s out of office. That’s probably where it’s all going to come out. But in general terms, that’s a minor issue. He’s not my favorite person, as you can see, but as compared with the crimes he may have committed, the fraud in New York with his hotels and so on, that’s very minor as compared with the fact that he’s escalating the race to disaster. This is the most important decision in human history. We’ve got a couple of years to try to deal somehow with the environmental crisis. It can be controlled. It’s not easy, but it can be done. If you waste a couple of years by trying to escalate the crisis, you might just push us over the edge. I don’t know if you’ve looked at this, one of the most amazing documents in human history that came out of the Trump administration, from a part of the bureaucracy, naturally. It was a 500-page environmental assessment study done by the Transportation Administration, the point of which was to argue that we should not impose new emissions controls on cars and trucks. And they had a very sound argument. The argument is, “Look, we’re going off the cliff anyway, and car emissions don’t make that much of a difference. So who cares?” Their estimate was that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have risen 4 degrees Centigrade. That’s way beyond what the scientific consensus says will make life unlivable. So, what they’re saying is, “We’re finished, it’s all done anyhow, by the end of the century, everything will be destroyed. So why stop driving?” Can you think of anything like this in human history, ever? Hitler wasn’t saying. “Let’s destroy the world.” Of course, they’re assuming that … nobody is going to do anything about it. But all of this passes without anybody paying attention. Let’s worry about whether Russia had some minor influence on the election. David Barsamian: Talk about the young people in Congress like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and others, and teen activist students like Greta Thunberg of Sweden, Haven Coleman of Denver, and other young people involved in Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement. That’s very exciting. That’s really the hope for the future. These are very impressive people. Extinction Rebellion are great people. The Sunrise Movement — which is, after all, a small group of young people — succeeded partly just through their activism, like sitting-in in congressional offices, got some support from especially Representative Ocasio-Cortez, who is doing a wonderful job. They managed to put on the agenda the Green New Deal. Now, of course, it immediately got denounced as a “crazy” this, that, and the other thing. But it’s a great achievement. There has to be some kind of Green New Deal if we’re going to survive. And they managed to move it from obscurity to the legislative agenda, along with Ed Markey, the senator from Massachusetts. That’s a real achievement. And there are very solid, substantive proposals as to how you could implement these proposals. One of the most detailed and persuasive I know of is by Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. It can be done. These groups have broken through the silence and apathy on it. That’s a remarkable achievement. In fact, it’s the hope for survival of any kind of civilized life. This is not a small thing. The human species is facing questions that have never arisen before: Is organized human life going to survive in any recognizable form? We’re approaching the level of global warming of roughly 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were about 25 feet higher than they are now. You don’t have to have much of an imagination to know what that means. Shall we race toward it the way the Trump administration and the Republican Party wants us to do? Or shall we do something about it, the way Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion and Ocasio-Cortez want to do? That’s the decision that has to be made. It’s good that you bring that up, because that’s of extraordinary importance. ### -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Thu Aug 22 01:54:12 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 20:54:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace] AWARE on the Air #491 notes Message-ID: <38590ef6-507c-3937-8094-f0cc9767b34a@forestfield.org> AWARE on the Air #491 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23fS5y0Aikw Karen Aram in a post to the peace-discuss mailing list https://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/2019-August/051149.html Follow-up from C. G. Estabrook posted to the News-Gazette https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-don-t-be-fooled-by-the/article_38040da5-6429-5c53-9ab7-89e4b840b40e.html Noam Chomsky on "Nuclear Weapons, Climate Change & the Undermining of Democracy Threaten Future of Planet" on Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2019/4/12/chomsky_nuclear_weapons_climate_change_the Theodore A. Postol on "Russia may have violated the INF Treaty. Here’s how the United States appears to have done the same." https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/russia-may-have-violated-the-inf-treaty-heres-how-the-united-states-appears-to-have-done-the-same/ Other Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles by Theodore A. Postol https://thebulletin.org/biography/theodore-a-postol/ New START https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_START https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/126118.htm -- about the treaty https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/04/08/new-start-treaty-and-protocol -- contains pointer to the Treaty & Protocol http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/140035.pdf -- the Treaty http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/140047.pdf -- the Protocol Doomsday Clock https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/ Chelsea Harvey on "Earth Stopped Getting Greener 20 Years Ago: Declining plant growth is linked toward decreasing air moisture tied to global warming" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-stopped-getting-greener-20-years-ago/ Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe on "CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978" https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/ "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty ISBN-10: 0674979850 ISBN-13: 978-0674979857 Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf Additional segments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37-PILH78Ys -- Aaron Maté on how compliant the Democratic Party is (including those who back the so-called "resistance" to Pres. Trump) as the Trump administration intensifies its anti-Venezuela sanctions via a new Executive Order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pXQMtrrdag -- "On Contact with Chris Hedges"; Chris Hedges interviews Max Blumenthal (The Grayzone Project) regarding his new book "The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump". This wide-ranging discussion covers how Donald Trump to be elected US President, the scam rescue group that is the White Helmets, the origins of Russiagate, and corporate media replete with contributors from the CIA as they transition from the so-called "War on Terror" to (what Blumenthal calls) "something much bigger". The Management of Savagery: How America's National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump by Max Blumenthal ISBN-10: 1788732294 ISBN-13: 978-1788732291 -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 22 13:52:26 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2019 13:52:26 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Heartbreaking account of US history by Paul Street Message-ID: Donald Trump is indeed a neofascist, but the US was built on a mass murderous white supremacism that, until recently, was unapologetically genocidal. For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival. – Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852 One of the occupational and intellectual hazards of being a historian is that current events often seem far less new to oneself than they do to others. Recently a leftish liberal friend told me that the United States under the Donald Trump had “become a lethal society.” My friend cited the neofascist Trump’s: horrible family separations and concentration camps on the border; openly white-nationalist assaults on four progressive nonwhite and female Congresswomen; real and threatened roundups of undocumented immigrants; fascist-style and hate-filled “Make America Great Again” rallies; encouragement of white supremacist terrorism; alliance with right-wing evangelical Christian fascists. Another friend received news of the recent mass-shooting of mostly Latinx Wal-Mart shoppers by racist and nativist white male Trump fan in El Paso, Texas by denouncing Trump’s “fascism” and linking to an essay he’d published about the white-nationalist president’s racist and authoritarian behavior. I agree with my friends about the lethality of the contemporary United States. I largely share their description of Trump and much of his base as fascist or at least fascistic . “Durable fascist tendencies,” the prolific left political scientist Carl Boggs warns in his important book Fascism Old New: American Politics at the Crossroads , “run deep throughout present-day American society…In the absence of powerful counterforces and a thriving democracy, …those tendencies could morph over into something more expansive and menacing – and Donald Trump could serve, wittingly or unwittingly, as a great historical accelerator.” “Durable fascist tendencies run deep throughout present-day American society.” It’s nothing to sneeze at. The institutional forms and technologies of militarized surveillance and policing and thought control that are available to fascism-prone elites in the United States are daunting indeed. The United States enjoys historically unprecedented global power on a scale the fascist Third Reich’s leaders dreamed of achieving but never remotely approached. Still, I sometimes worry about reaching beyond American history to label horrors of its own making. Longstanding foundational aristo-republican U.S. white-settler nationalism and its state-military-capitalist, imperialist, and corporatist evolution has long been disastrous and dystopian enough without “charismatic” dictators, Baretta-toting squadristis, single party states, the suspension of elections, the end of bourgeois law, jackbooted brown-shirts, death squads, state propaganda, political executions, shuttered media, and the rest of the full-on fascist nightmare. Savagely and Mercilessly Exterminating “the Common Enemy of the Country” How new is racist lethality and white nationalism to the U.S.-American experience, after all? The white European “settlers” of North America wiped out millions of the continent’s original inhabitants. They populated their southern colonies and states with Black slaves they mercilessly tortured, raped, maimed, and murdered in forced labor camps that provided the critical raw material for the rise of American capitalism long before Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler rose to power. Trump’s favorite president prior to himself, Andrew Jackson, first rose to prominence in the early 19th century as the head of the Tennessee militia who exterminated the Creek Nation by, in the words of the Yale historian Greg Grandin , “burning houses, killing warriors, mutilating their bodies (he ordered his men to cut off the noses of the Indian corpses, so as to more easily tally the dead), and enslaving their women and children…[thereby] previewing the misery he would later, as president, nationalize” (with the 1830 Indian Removal Act). Jackson later ordered the “Trail of Tears,” a giant and sadistic death march that finalized the ethnic cleansing of the Cherokee Nation from the nation’s Southeastern seaboard. Consider the conclusion of the one-sided “Black Hawk War” – just one of many examples of a ferocious white history of North American extermination. The Sauk and Fox Indians lost 600 people, including hundreds of woman and children. Just 70 soldiers and settlers were killed. The conflict culminated in the so-called Battle of Bad Axe, on the eastern shore of the Mississippi River, near the present-day community of Victory in southwest Wisconsin. Better described as a massacre than a battle, this American military triumph involved U.S. General Henry Atkinson killing every Indian who tried to run for cover or flee across the Mississippi River. On August 1, 1832, Black Hawk’s band reached the Mississippi at its confluence with the Bad Axe River. What followed was an atrocity, committed despite the Indians’ repeated attempts at surrender: “While the Sauk refugees were preparing rafts and canoes,” writes historian Kerry Trask , “the armed [U.S.] steamboat Warrior arrived, whereupon Black Hawk tried to negotiate with its troops under a flag of truce. The Americans opened fire, killing twenty-three warriors.” “As we neared them,” one US officer who “served” in the U.S. assault recalled, “they raised a white flag and endeavored to decoy us, but we were a little too old for them.” Hundreds of Sauk and Fox men, women and children were shot, clubbed, and bayoneted to death. US soldiers scalped most of the dead. They cut long strips of flesh from dead and wounded Indians for use as razor strops. The slaughter was supported by cannon and rifle fire from the aptly named US military ship Warrior, which picked off tribal members swimming for their lives. The United States suffered 5 dead and 19 wounded in the “Battle of Bad Axe.” “They cut long strips of flesh from dead and wounded Indians for use as razor strops.” In a popular account of the “battle” published two years later, US Major John Allen Wakefield offered some interesting reflections. “It was a horrid sight,” Wakefield wrote: to witness little children, wounded and suffering the most excruciating pain, although they were of the savage enemy, and the common enemy of the country…It was enough to make the heart of the most hardened being on earth to ache. [But, Wakefield wrote]…I must confess, that it filled my heart with gratitude and joy, to think that I had been instrumental, with many others, in delivering my country of those merciless savages, and restoring those [invading white] people again to their peaceful homes and firesides”. “Our Great Father,” a government agent told the Sauk Indians, “will forbear no longer. He has tried to reclaim [Native Americans] and they grow worse. He is resolved to sweep them from the face of the earth. … If they cannot be made good they must be killed.” By Wakefield’s account, the US troops at Bad Axe “shrank not from their duty. They all joined in the work of death for death it was. We were by this time fast getting rid of those demons in human shape… the Ruler of the Universe, He who takes vengeance on the guilty, did not design those guilty wretches to escape His vengeance…” Such sentiments were common among American army and militia members, who reveled in the mass murder of indigenous people. This was just one of many such genocidal moments in the rapacious white settlement of North America – the abject annihilation and ethnic cleansing of native people. This terrible history is pock-marked with such horrid and genocidal atrocities as the razing of 20 Cherokee towns in 1776, the forced removal of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Seminole nations to Oklahoma (1828-1840), the savage clearance of the Sauk nation from their ancestral home in northern Illinois (1832-1833), the massacre of at least 75 Pomo Indians trapped on an island in the Russian River area of California (1850), the mass hanging of 38 Lakotas in 1862, the brutal murder of as many as 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado (1864)), the slaughter of more than 100 Cheyenne, including women and children, by Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh U.S. Cavalry at Washita (in Oklahoma in 1868), the openly extermination-ist clearance of Lakota Sioux from the Black Hills (1876-1877), and the Seventh Cavalry’s massacre of 350 unarmed Lakota at Wounded Knee (1890). The nation’s first president, George Washington, was known to the Iroquois as “Town Destroyer.” “Teutonic Conquest” This genocidal history received hearty approval in future US President and Spanish-American War instigator Theodore Roosevelt’s four-volume 1899 study The Winning of the West . Penned by a heralded symbol of “the American soul,” The Winning of the West was a white-supremacist paean to Anglo-America’s near- eradication of North America’s original civilizations. “During the past three centuries,” Roosevelt opined, “the spread of English-speaking people over the world’s waste spaces” (meaning spaces not occupied by “progressive” capitalist-developmental Caucasians) was a great and welcome “feat of power,” for which the “English-speaking race” could justly feel proud. No “feat” of “race power” was more laudable for the “Bull Moose” than “the vast movement by which this continent [North America] was conquered and peopled” – the “crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements.” The Anglo-American pioneers conducted what Roosevelt called the noble civilizing “work” of “overcoming the original inhabitants.” The North American settlers performed the most heroic “work” of all, for they “confronted the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colonists of European stock.” No 20th century fascist had anything on Roosevelt’s Winning of the West when it came to the heralding of white supremacist violence. ”The settler and pioneer,” the future war president wrote, “have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages….The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman.” “The Anglo-American pioneers conducted what Roosevelt called the noble civilizing ‘work’ of ‘overcoming the original inhabitants.’” Roosevelt considered the destruction of the continent’s original civilizations to be part of Teutonic Saxons’ long and noble crusade to master inferior races. “Let the sentimentalist say what they will,” Roosevelt wrote, “the man who puts the soil to use must of right dispossess the man who does not,” with “put the soil to use” understood to mean enclosing the earthly commons, fencing it off as private property and exploiting natural resources and human labor power. “American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, – in each case the victor,” The Winning of the West instructed, “horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people.” “It is of incalculable importance,” Roosevelt opined, “that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races…The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests in alien lands; but the victories of Moslem over Christian have always proved a curse in the end. Nothing but sheer evil has come from the victories of Turk and Tartar.” Destroying the Indian “savages,” Roosevelt claimed, was white North America’s third greatest work to date, exceeded only by “the preservation of the Union itself and the emancipation of the blacks” – this as African-Americans suffered under terrorist Jim Crow regime in the former slave states and faced countless indignities throughout the U.S. (more on that below). Raping and Screaming Like Fiends The “wining of the West” also included savage racist and sexist war crimes against Mexico, which lost the land that makes up current day Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and Utah to the United States in one sided 1846-48 Mexican American War. Ulysses S. Grant would later call it “one of the most unjust [wars] ever won by a stronger against a weaker nation.” He would have known a thing or two about that since he was an officer in the U.S- white-Protestant assault on brown-skinned and Catholic Mexico, which had committed the unpardonable sin of abolishing slavery years before. Here is Grandin’s account of just two of many atrocities that U.S.-American soldiers committed during that conflict, long before the No Gun Ris , Operation Tiger Forces , My Lais, Bola Boluks, and Abu Ghraibs of future centuries: “On February 9, 1847, for one example, a member of the Arkansas volunteer regiment raped a Mexican woman near the regiment’s camp at Agua Nueva, in the state of Coahuila, and Mexicans retaliated by killing a U.S. soldier. Afterwards, over one hundred Arkansans cornered a group of war refugees in a cave. According to one eyewitness, the volunteers screamed ‘like fiends’ as they raped and slaughtered their victims, with women and children ‘shrieking for mercy.’ By the time the killing had ended, scores of Mexicans lay dead or dying on the cave floor, which was covered with clotted blood. Many of the dead had been scalped (more than a few volunteers in the U.S. Army had, before the war, made their living on the borderlands scalping Apaches for bounty money, or ‘barbering,’ as one infamous Texas scalp-hunter called his trade.)” The march of “Saxon civilization” in its glorious campaign against “savagery” was something to behold. Because God: “The Sword of the Lord” Evangelical Christian barbarism wedded to lethal American white nationalism? American evangelicals have been terrorizing their fellow Americans and others around the world for as long as the United States has existed – and indeed before that. The historically astute left political scientist Carl Boggs reminds us that contemporary American right-wing Christianity is “an extension of traditional, homespun, God-fearing Protestantism that historically intersected with racist, colonial, and exceptionalist currents of Manifest Destiny.” Further : “We know that slavery, along with every step toward extermination of Native Americans, was justified and even celebrated as part of God’s will. Did not President William McKinley, as the U.S. was preparing for a war in the Philippines that would slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians, inform Americans that this was a Christian duty?…Replete with images of great violence, hatred, and repression, [the Christians’ ancient holy text] the Bible in fact justifies all forms of mass murder, torture, warfare, and slavery. We have a text, as Michael Parenti notes, that takes enormous gratification in the mass slaughter of humans and animals, with few limits. In the Bible we find executions for taking God’s name in vain, death to practitioners of ‘idolatry,’ and horrific punishment for adulterers not to mention genocidal military attacks on heathen nations and culture. Such fundamentalist views, resonant of the Dark Ages, Parenti correctly likens to a modern fascist outlook.” Seventeen years ago, the evangelical Christian George W. Bush, neo-fascistically turbo-charged by the Reichstag Fire-like gift of the Islamist 9/11 attacks, concluded that God had told him to invade Mesopotamia. The invasion led to more than a million Iraqi deaths accompanied by countless explicitly racist and often evangelically infused acts of torture and murder committed by feral U.S. military forces. “In the Bible we find executions for taking God’s name in vain, death to practitioners of ‘idolatry,’ and horrific punishment for adulterers.” The use of messianic Christianity to justify murdering and maiming people of color en-masse goes back to the original British invasion of what would be called New England. The U.S. Declaration of Independence’s description of North America’s original inhabitants as “merciless Indian savages” anticipated Orwell by projecting onto Native Americans the genocidal practices that white “settlers” exhibited from day one. Consider the celebrated left historian Eric Foner’s textbook description of the grisly and religiously infused Mystic River Massacre of 1637: “A force of Connecticut and Massachusetts soldiers, augmented by Narraganset allies, surrounded the main Pequot fortified village at Mystic and set it ablaze, killing those who tried to escape. Over 500 men, women, and children lost their lives in the massacre. By the end of the war [of New England settlers on the once powerful Pequot tribe], most of the Pequots had been exterminated or sold into Caribbean slavery. The treat that restored peace decreed that their name should be wiped from the historical record.” “…The colonists’ ferocity shocked their Indian allies, who considered European military practices barbaric. A few Puritans agreed. ‘It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire,’ the Pilgrim leaders William Bradford wrote of the raid on Mystic. But to most Puritans, including Bradford, the defeat of a ‘barbarous nation’ by ‘the sword of the Lord’ offered further proof that they were on a sacred mission and that Indians were unworthy of sharing New England with the visible saints of the church.” The Puritans wept with joy and thanked “God” for helping them flame-broil Indian women and children who stood on ground they would turn into a heavenly “City on the Hill.” After a cruel campaign of ethnic cleansing (at the conclusion of “King Phillips’ War”) in which the white (un-) settlers pushed most of the last Indians they had not killed out of New England in the mid-1670s, “the image of Indians as bloodthirsty savages,” Foner writes, “became firmly entrenched in the New England mind.” “America” (the U.S.) was born lethal, merciless, and savage. “Crimes Which Would Disgrace a Nation of Savages” Even worse than killing Native-Americans en-masse was the torture and exploitation of millions upon of millions of African-Americans as slaves – the highly profitable and hidden secret to America’s rise to prominence in the world of nations by the mid-19th century. Racialized chattel slavery found regular Christian “justification” on the part of the white “settlers.” From the nearly 800,000 words that make up the Bible, American Christian slaveholders, particularly loved two texts. They adored this from Genesis IX of the period’s King James Bible, the one they cited to show how Jehovah had made Blacks lifelong servants in the image of “Ham”; “And the sons of Noah that went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole world overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.” It was a ridiculous passage for pro-slavery polemicists to cite. How was it a transgression to see Noah drunk and naked? Why did Noah curse Canaan rather than Ham? Why would Ham have been of a different color than his brothers? But so what? In its popularized southern version, labelled “The Curse of Ham,” Canaan was deleted, Ham was turned Black, and Ham’s descendants were turned into Africans. Slaver Simon said so! The Christian slaveowners’ second favorite text came from Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, VI, 5-7: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters…as unto Christ.” Translation: Black slaves served God and Christ, not white people, by being slaves “with fear and trembling” to white “masters.” These masters tortured slaves to extract the last ounce of profit from them in cotton fields built on blood-soaked land stolen from Native Americans. They stood atop a vicious chattel system whose polemicists justified the regular rape of Black females as a “safety valve” that protected the virtue of white “southern womanhood.” “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked in 1852. “A day,” Douglass answered, “that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” Further: “To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour…Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.” Red Hot Iron Brands and Kerosene Do Americans really need to look overseas or to European-born fascism to learn historical lessons about the horrors of racist barbarism? Consider another among countless horrendous U.S. racist atrocities that occurred on U.S. soil long before Mussolini invented fascism and the demonic Hitler rose to power in the Old World. In 1893, a Black man falsely accused of molesting a white child was burned at the stake before 10,000 cheering white people in Paris, Texas. A New York reporter described the Hellish sight : “The negro was placed upon a carnival float in mockery of a king upon his throne, and, followed by an immense crowd, was escorted through the city so that all might see the…inhuman monster…Smith was placed upon a scaffold, six feet square and ten feet high, securely bound, within the view of all beholders. Here the victim was tortured for fifty minutes by red-hot iron brands thrust against his quivering body. Commencing at the feet the brands were placed against him inch by inch until they were thrust against the face. Then, being apparently dead, kerosene was poured upon him, cottonseed hulls placed beneath him and set on fire. In less time than it takes to relate it, the tortured man was wafted beyond the grave to another fire, hotter and more terrible than the one just experienced.” After this grisly spectacle, many crowd members took away pieces of “Smith’s” body as souvenirs. Many such grisly occurrences took place across the U.S. South during the late and early 20th centuries – a time when images of Blacks who were lynched and burned to death before large and smiling white crowds were popular on American postcards. Between 1889 and 1918, 3,224 Americans were lynched within the United States, mostly in the South. Seventy-eight percent of these atrocity victims were black. In most cases the victims were hung or burned to death by mobs of soulful white “vigilantes,” commonly in front of thousands of gleeful spectators. Lynching continued in the South through 1968, the year in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was executed in Memphis, Tennessee. In November 1898, Grandin reports, “thousands of white men” in Wilmington, North Carolina, celebrated news of Lisbon’s surrender to Washington in the Spanish-American War by “stag[ing] a coup against the elected, multi-racial coalition governing [Wilmington]. The white mob, many of them veterans of the Cuban campaign {the U.S. seizure of Cuba from Spain] just returned from the war, killed between sixty and three hundred African Americans, ransacked African American businesses, and set fire to African American homes.” “Fascism Has Happened Before in America” Another example of lethal racist (and classist) Americanism took place in the rural Arkansas town of Elaine in September of 1919 when hundreds of Blacks were massacred after Black sharecroppers had tried to organize a union. As Smithsonian.com reported last year: “The sharecroppers who gathered at a small church in Elaine, Arkansas, in the late hours of September 30, 1919, knew the risk they were taking. Upset about unfair low wages, they enlisted the help of a prominent white attorney from Little Rock, Ulysses Bratton, to come to Elaine to press for a fairer share in the profits of their labor. Each season, landowners came around demanding obscene percentages of the profits, without ever presenting the sharecroppers detailed accounting and trapping them with supposed debts…Aware of the dangers – the atmosphere was tense after racially motivated violence in the area – some of the farmers were armed with rifles…At around 11 p.m. that night, a group of local white men, some of whom may have been affiliated with local law enforcement, fired shots into the church. The shots were returned, and in the chaos, one white man was killed. Word spread rapidly about the death. Rumors arose that the sharecroppers, who had formally joined a union known as the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America (PFHUA) were leading an organized ‘insurrection’ against the white residents of Phillips County…Governor Charles Brough called for 500 soldiers from nearby Camp Pike to, as the Arkansas Democrat reported on Oct 2, ‘round up’ the ‘heavily armed negroes.’ The troops were ‘under order to shoot to kill any negro who refused to surrender immediately.’ They went well beyond that, banding together with local vigilantes and killing at least 200 African-Americans (estimates run much higher but there was never a full accounting). And the killing was indiscriminate—men, women and children unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity were slaughtered.” “The troops banded together with local vigilantes and killed at least 200 African-Americans.” These extra-legal and ritualistic executions enforced an American version of something very much like fascism. As Ezekiel Kweku and Jane Coastan noted two months after Trump was inaugurated: “If full-throated fascism should rise in the United States, it will be an American fascism, animated by American concerns and with antecedents in American history. Fascism has happened before in America…For generations of black Americans, the United States between the end of Reconstruction, around 1876, and the triumphs of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s was a fascist state. Local and federal governments enforced an authoritarian regime that curtailed the movements and advancement of black Americans, and black Americans only. America has been governed by the heavy hand of white nationalism before. The lessons learned by black Americans living under a restrictive and domineering regime a century ago are ones we can take now, too. If we want to know what it looks like when the worst happens, we don’t have to look to the old world; we have a rich history of horror in the new.” It wasn’t just about the former Confederacy. Mass-murderous white mob violence against Black Americans arose in Chicago , Omaha , East St. Louis , and numerous other northern locations during and after World War One. Racial terrorism, discrimination and apartheid was imposed on ghettoized urban black northerners and the thousands of all-white northern “Sundown Towns” were formed with the threat and reality of violence between 1890 and 1968. Kweku and Coaston might have added that the United States’ Indian Removal and reservation policies and Jim Crow terror regimes were inspirations and role models for Adolph Hitler and other European fascists, who also admired American mass production methods and the potent means of thought- and feeling-control developed by American advertisers and Hollywood. European fascism was Americanism to no small degree. Crushing “Anti-American Subversives” American lethality hasn’t just been about race, of course. Fascism was above all an organized assault on working class resistance and the Left. European fascists could find much to draw models and inspiration in that regard from America, home to the bloodiest industrial relations in the capitalist world in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries – and to a long history of violently repressing working-class activists and radicals. The grisly highlights included the execution of ten Irish-American “Molly Maguire” union militants at the behest of the Pennsylvania employer class on June 21, 1877 (the activists were hanged in two separate prisons surrounded by state militia with fixed bayonets) and the grotesquely inhumane short-rope hanging of four leftist Eight Hour Day activists (the “Haymarket Martyrs”) at the behest of the Chicago bourgeoisie (after a rigged trial followed the legendary merchandiser Marshal Field ordering the Governor of Illinois not to commute the death sentence) on November 11, 1887. Just a month after the ten Molly Maguires were murdered by the state as punishment for organizing coal miners and railroad workers, the one-sided “Battle of the Viaduct” took place on Halsted Street on the Near Southwest Side of Chicago. Federal troops called in from fighting (slaughtering) Sioux Indians (“red savages”) in the Dakota Territory joined local police and state militia in repressing striking workers (“white savages”). After two days, 30 workers lay dead; the gendarmes experienced no fatalities. In April of 1914, you can learn from Wikipedia, “The Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI) Company guards attacked a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914, with the National Guard using machine guns to fire into the colony. Approximately twenty-one people, including miners’ wives and children, were killed.” The ruthless massacre was ordered by the legendary American capitalist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the chief owner of the CFI mine. Three years later came the great “Bisbee Deportation.” Here again one need look no further than good old Wikipedia for a useful introduction: “The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 members of a deputized posse, who arrested these people beginning on July 12, 1917. The action was orchestrated by Phelps Dodge, the major mining company in the area, which provided lists of workers and others who were to be arrested in Bisbee, Arizona, to the Cochise County sheriff, Harry C. Wheeler. These workers were arrested and held at a local baseball park before being loaded onto cattle cars and deported 200 miles (320 km) to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico. The 16-hour journey was through desert without food and with little water. Once unloaded, the deportees, most without money or transportation, were warned against returning to Bisbee…As Phelps Dodge, in collusion with the sheriff, had closed down access to outside communications, it was some time before the story was reported….no individual, company, or agency was ever convicted in connection with the deportations.” The end of the “Great War” (during which the eloquent U.S. Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs was held in federal prison for the sin of opposing mass-murderous inter-imperialist slaughter ) was followed by the nation’s “First Red Scare.” A massive government and employer class crackdown on the Left including the capture and deportation of hundreds of suspected anarchists and communists. While it called its foreign enemies racist names (see below), lethal American white-nationalism in the opening decades of the last century called its “domestic enemies – labor, farmer, and civil rights organizers, both people of color and their white allies – subversives and anti-American.” (Grandin). Slaughtering “Niggers,” “Apaches,” and “Gooks” Abroad As the nineteenth century ended, America’s racist-classist-sexist soul-force was increasingly directed at victims beyond the North American continent. New predominantly non-white victims were searched out and destroyed overseas, always in the name of the United States’ higher morality and commitment to the benevolent ideals of democracy and rule of law. Between 1898 and 1905, for example, the U.S. Army, frequently led by “old Indian fighters,” seized the Philippines from its prior colonial master (Spain) and crushed a Filipino independence movement. The new American Empire’s first overseas counter-insurgency campaign killed perhaps as many as one million in the newly US-acquired Philippine islands. Few prisoners were taken and the Red Cross reported an extremely high ratio of dead to wounded, indicating a U.S. “determination to kill every native in sight.” “You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon,” an anonymous U.S. Congressman reported , “because there isn’t anybody there to rebel….The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country and wherever and whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him.” Throughout the “pacification” of the Philippines, the United States’ armed forces soulfully referred to the Filipinos as “niggers,” “barbarians,” and “savages.” America’s racist and Social-Darwinist President (1901-08) Theodore Roosevelt vilified Filipino resisters as “Apaches.” The phrase “gook” made its first appearance as a U.S. military term to describe angry and frightened Asians who inhabit lands invaded by “freedom-loving” Americans when George Custer’s legendary Seventh Cavalry arrived in the Philippines to help suppress “gook Apaches” in 1905. “Wherever and whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him.” The hideous term “gook” would figure prominently in the United States’ crucifixion of Southeast Asia, which mercilessly and savagely exterminated as many as 5 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians between 1962 and 1975. The criminal and unnecessary atom-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were great acts of racially tinged exterminism as well as the first atomic shots in the Cold War . We can be certain that “the N-word” was used freely by U.S. soldiers when racist U.S. president Woodrow Wilson sent U.S. troops to Black Haiti in 1915. “Wilson‘s troops,” Noam Chomsky has noted , “murdered, destroyed, reinstituted virtual slavery and demolished the constitutional system in Haiti.” These actions followed in accord with Wilson’s Secretary of State Robert Lansing’s belief that “the African races are devoid of any capacity for political organization” and possessed “an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to their physical nature.” That was a testament that Hitler certainly would have appreciated. The U.S. military’s murderous, and extremely racially infused “body count in the Caribbean and Pacific was high” during the first four decades of the last century, by Grandin’s account: “U.S. troops killed about fifteen thousand Haitians…between 1915 and 1935; tens of thousands of Dominicans between 1916 and 1924 fifty thousand Nicaraguans between 1912 and 1933; and thousands upon thousands of Filipinos between 1898 and 1946. Many more hundreds of thousands from these countries died from disease, famine, and exposure….Letters from [U.S.] soldiers, first in the 1898 campaign and then later, in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, are notably similar, lightheartedly narrating to family and friends how they would shoot ‘niggers,’ lynch ‘niggers,’ release ‘niggers’ into the swamp to die, and use ‘niggers for target practice.’” How lethally fascistic was that? The racist American Empire’s racist lethality got worse after it belatedly helped the Soviet Union (the main target of Hitler’s Third Reich) prevail in the great global war against, well, fascism – and then graduated to the status of global hegemon. It is difficult, sometimes, to wrap one’s mind around the extent of the merciless savagery that Superpower Uncle Sam unleashed on the world to advance and maintain its global supremacy. In the early 1950s, the “liberal” Democratic Harry Truman administration responded to an early challenge to U.S. power in Northern Korea with a practically genocidal three-year bombing campaign that was described in soul-numbing terms by the Washington Post years ago: “The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. ‘Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population,’ Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later Secretary of State, said the United States bombed ‘everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.’ After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops … [T]he U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin.” This ferocious bombardment, which killed 2 million or more civilians, began five years after Truman arch-criminally and unnecessarily ordered the atom bombing of hundreds of thousands pf civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to warn the Soviet Union to stay out of Japan and Western Europe. Indirect Massacre The merciless savagery of U.S. foreign policy in “America Era” did not always require direct U.S. military intervention. Take Indonesia and Chile, for two examples from the “Golden Age” height of the “American Century.” In Indonesia, the U.S.-backed dictator Suharto killed millions of his subjects, targeting communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese and alleged leftists. A senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s later described Suharto’s 1965-66 U.S.-assisted coup as s “the model operation” for the U.S.-backed coup that eliminated the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, seven years later. “The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders,” the officer wrote, “[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965.” As John Pilger noted 10 years ago , “the U.S. embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a ‘zap list’ of Indonesian Communist party members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. … The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called ‘the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia.’ ” “No single American action in the period after 1945,” wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, “was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia.” Two years and three months after the Chilean coup, Suharto received a green light from Kissinger and the Gerald Ford White House to invade the small island nation of East Timor. With Washington’s approval and backing, Indonesia carried out genocidal massacres and mass rapes and killed at least 100,000 of the island’s residents. “Spiritual Death”: From “Great Society” and Vietnam to Mass Incarceration and the Destruction of Iraq and Libya By that time, Uncle Sam had just finished killing as many as 5 million Southeast Asians over the previous thirteen years in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia . The slaughter was drastically escalated at the precise moment when the domestic civil rights movement had compelled the liberal “Great Society” Lyndon Johnson administration to expand the welfare state like never before. The enormous taxpayer expense of the “crucifixion of Southeast Asia” (as Noam Chomsky aptly described the so-called Vietnam War at the time) meant that Johnson’s much-ballyhooed “war on poverty” at home was stillborn. Beyond murdering millions in Southeast Asia, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 (one year to the day before his assassination or execution in Memphis, Tennessee), the deadly imperial expenditures crushed “hope for the [U.S.] poor – both black and white.” The anti-poverty program was “broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle plaything of a society gone mad” on a militarism that drew “men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube…A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” King added, “is approaching spiritual death.” America has become lethal under Trump? More openly and soul-numbingly racist, nativist, stupid, eco-cidal and sexist in the time of the textbook malignant narcissist and neofascist Trump-Pence-Bannon-Miller-McConnell regime, surely, but not lethal for the first time. Study North American and U.S. history with clear eyes: it’s a record loaded with vicious white-nationalist exterminist and lethal Americanism. Ask older Black Americans about the Jim Crow and “Sundown Town” eras. Born into a virulently racist society at the tail end of the fading McCarthy era (which absurdly cost my New Dealer grandfather – a future “Vietnam War” enthusiast – a teaching position in the 1950s), I am old enough to harbor early childhood through young-adult memories of Civil Rights activists being murdered in the South, the executions of Malcolm X and King, Chicago’s Mayor Richard J. Daley telling police to “shoot to kill” Black rioters protesting King’s murder, the openly white-supremacist 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace, the racist 1968 “law and order” presidential campaign of Richard Nixon, the racist Chicago police-state execution of the young Black Panther leader Fred Hampton , the imperial state murders of student protesters at Kent State and Jackson State universities in May of 1970, the beginnings of the racist mass-incarcerationist “War on Drugs” under Nixon , the election of the malevolent racist Ronald Reagan in 1980, and much more terrible to contemplate. I’ve experienced the United States as lethal both domestically and globally lethal from my earliest moments of political consciousness. “U.S. history is loaded with vicious white-nationalist exterminist and lethal Americanism.” Speaking of merciless racist savagery in a time still within the living memory of tens of millions of Americans, consider Grandin’s account of how the mass-murderer and war criminal William Calley became a political folk-hero to Confederate flag-waving southerners while being embraced by Nixon during Tricky Dick’s noxious re-election campaign. As Grandin writes in his recent book The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (2019): “The Confederate flag stopped flying as the pennant of reconciliation, the joining of the southern military tradition to northern establishment might to spread Americanism abroad [by the early 1970s]. It now was the banner of those who felt that the establishment had sacrificed that tradition, ‘stabbed it in the back.’ The battle flag became the banner not of of a specific Lost Cause but of all of white supremacy’s lost causes.” “The working-class Floridian lieutenant William Calley, for instance, the only solider convicted for taking part in the March 1968 My Lai Massacre [one of dozens if not hundreds of village massacres carried out by U.S. imperial troops in Vietnam – P.S.] became the representational bearer of this aggrieved standard. He was popular throughout the country,especially in the South; his supporters rallied under the Confederate Flag and Richard Nixon embraced Calley in his reelection campaign. As a result, the massacre of over five hundred Vietnamese civilians was transformed from a war crime into a cultural wedge issue, used to nationalize southern grievance and weaponize the wartime coarsening of sentiment for electoral advantage. ‘Most people,’ said Nixon of Calley’s actions at My Lai, ‘don’t give a shit whether he killed them or not.’ ‘The villagers got what they deserved,’ agreed Louisiana senator Allen Ellender” (emphasis added). How fascistic and lethal was that? Worried about racism in the White House? Consider the following, recently released 1971 telephone exchange between then President Nixon and future president Ronald Reagan insulting African United Nations delegates who defied Washington by voting to recognize the People’s Republic of China: Reagan: “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did.” Nixon: “Yeah.” Reagan: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries — damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon: laughter. It is clear from recently released tapes that “Nixon believed in a ‘hierarchy of races’ with white people at the top and people of African and Latin American descent towards the bottom.” After a brief interlude of Democratic rule (the one-term presidency of the transitional neoliberal Jimmy Carter) produced by Watergate, Reagan doubled down on Nixon’s liberal- and red-baiting and racist “southern strategy” and mass-incarcerationist “war on drugs” and promised (in classic palingenetic fascist-style) national regeneration (a “new morning in America”) to serve two terms of a presidency that justifiably won the title of “friendly fascism” from the political journalist Bertram Gross. Reagan was the standard bearer of a lethal white nationalist and evangelical Americanism as old as the nation’s bloody “settlement.” “Reagan doubled down on Nixon’s liberal- and red-baiting and racist ‘southern strategy’ and mass-incarcerationist ‘war on drugs.’” The arch-neoliberal de facto Republican presidency of racist mass incarcerator Bill “Three Strikes” Clinton , the vicious war presidencies of the two Bushes and the noxious neoliberal imperialism of Wall Street Barry Obomber (the nations silver-tongued “deporter-in-chief” and wrecker of Libya and Honduras) all followed in the same institutionally and ideologically lethal grooves, just with different styles tailored to different partisan/regional constituencies and funding bases. The sick and neofascistic Trump, whose rallies are reminiscent of Mussolini and Hitler, whose hateful rhetoric triggers lone-wolf white-nationalist jihadists to conduct NRA-outfitted assault-weapon pogroms against people of color, is, like Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and the two Bushes. the product of a longstanding racial barbarism that is (like guns and violence) as American as cherry pie. Terrible as he is, Trump has yet to order anything on the scale of Bush41’s Operation Desert Storm (1991), Bush 43’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, or Obama’s destruction of Libya (2011). Concerned about racist barbarism? Among the countless episodes of mass-murderous U.S. savagery in the oil-rich Middle East over the last generation, few can match for the barbarous ferocity of the “Highway of Death,” where the “global policeman’s” forces massacred tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait on Feb. 26 and 27, 1991. Journalist Joyce Chediac testified that: U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. ‘It was like shooting fish in a barrel,’said one U.S. pilot. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun … for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. … ‘Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,’ said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. … U.S. pilots took whatever bombs happened to be close to the flight deck, from cluster bombs to 500-pound bombs. … U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions. … The victims were not offering resistance. … [I]t was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend. “U.S. forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed.” Talk about merciless savagery! The victims’ crime was having been conscripted into an army controlled by a dictator perceived as a threat to U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil. President George H.W. Bush welcomed the so-called Persian Gulf War as an opportunity to demonstrate America’s unrivaled power and new freedom of action in the post-Cold War world, where the Soviet Union could no longer deter Washington. Bush also heralded the “war” (really a one-sided imperial assault) as marking the end of the “Vietnam Syndrome,” the reigning political culture’s curious term for U.S. citizens’ reluctance to commit U.S. troops to murderous imperial mayhem. As Noam Chomsky observed in 1992, reflecting on U.S. efforts to maximize suffering in Vietnam by blocking economic and humanitarian assistance to the nation it had devastated: “No degree of cruelty is too great for Washington sadists.” Bush Junior’s invasion killed at least a million Iraqis. In a poignant 2015 memoir from “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the former U.S. Marine and brilliant antiwar activist Vince Emanuel recalled “the hundreds of prisoners we took captive and tortured in makeshift detention facilities staffed by teenagers from Tennessee, New York and Oregon.” By Emanuel’s account: “I never had the misfortune of working in the detention facility, but I remember the stories. I vividly remember the marines telling me about punching, slapping, kicking, elbowing, kneeing and head-butting Iraqis. I remember the tales of sexual torture: forcing Iraqi men to perform sexual acts on each other while marines held knives against their testicles, sometimes sodomizing them with batons.” “However, before those abominations could take place, those of us in infantry units had the pleasure of rounding up Iraqis during night raids, zip-tying their hands, black-bagging their heads and throwing them in the back of HUMVEEs and trucks while their wives and kids collapsed to their knees and wailed. Sometimes, we would pick them up during the day. Most of the time they wouldn’t resist. Some of them would hold hands while marines would butt-stroke the prisoners in the face. Once they arrived at the detention facility, they would be held for days, weeks, and even months at a time. Their families were never notified. And when they were released, we would drive them from the FOB (Forward Operating Base) to the middle of the desert and release them several miles from their homes.” “After we cut their zip-ties and took the black bags off their heads, several of our more deranged marines would fire rounds from their AR-15s into their air or ground, scaring the recently released captives. Always for laughs. Most Iraqis would run, still crying from their long ordeal at the detention facility, hoping some level of freedom awaited them on the outside. Who knows how long they survived. After all, no one cared…” “Amazingly, the ability to dehumanize the Iraqi people reached a crescendo after the bullets and explosions concluded, as many marines spent their spare time taking pictures of the dead, often mutilating their corpses for fun or poking their bloated bodies with sticks for some cheap laughs. Because iPhones weren’t available at the time, several marines came to Iraq with digital cameras. Those cameras contain an untold history of the war in Iraq, a history the West hopes the world forgets. That history and those cameras also contain footage of wanton massacres and numerous other war crimes, realities the Iraqis don’t have the pleasure of forgetting.” “Unfortunately…Innocent people were not only routinely rounded-up, tortured and imprisoned, they were also incinerated by the hundreds of thousands, some studies suggest by the millions.” How lethal and fascist was that? “Many marines spent their spare time taking pictures of the dead, often mutilating their corpses for fun.” Is Trumpism fascism? It is interesting that the word does not appear once in Grandin’s superb End of the Myth, one of the most important books ever written by a left (or any other kind) of American historian. “The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States – and all the vitriol his campaign and presidency have unleased – has,” writes Grandin, “been presented by commentators as one of two opposing possibilities. Trumpism either represents a rupture, a wholly un-American movement that has captured the institutions of government; or he is the realization of a deep-rooted American form of extremism. Does Trump’s crass and cruel appeal to nativism represent a break from tradition, from a fitful but persistent commitment to tolerance and equality…? Or is it but the ‘dark side,’ to use Dick Cheney’s resonant phrase, of U.S. history coming into the light?” Grandin sees the “dark side” coming back to the fore with a vengeance under Obama and Trump because new limits on American capitalist and imperial expansion have brought an end to the nation’s ability to displace its internal class and racial disparities on to the “frontier,” broadly understood: “When fascism comes to America,” someone (possibly Huey Long, but not Sinclair Lewis) is supposed to have said or written in the 1930s, “it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” That is certainly true – every variant of national fascism will bear the imprint of the specific nation in which it arises – but it would have been better to say that “When American develops its own breed of fascism, it will be wrapped in the Star-Spangled Banner and carrying a cross.” Fascism won’t come to America. It will emerge out of American history. Yes, “it could happen here,” to paraphrase Sinclair Lewis 84 years ago, with “it” meaning an fascism. But let us not turn away from how terrible and dangerous what had already happened here and what is happening now, richly consistent with a savagely racist, patriarchal, eco-cidal, authoritarian, and classist Americanism that is as old as this criminal, savagely merciless and “exceptional” nation itself. Postscript: This essay was completed in the South Loop of Chicago, beneath the intermittent roar of deadly U.S. fighter jets doing practice flights over and around the Midwestern Metropolis’s downtown lakefront. The pilots are practicing for this weekend’s annual Chicago Air and Water Show, when a disproportionately white crowd of one million metropolitan area residents gather along the Chicago shoreline to ooh and ahh over some of the global American Empire’s most awe-inspiring weapons of air-borne mass destruction. The swoosh of the military planes can he heard in 95% Black ghetto South and West Side neighborhoods where a third and more of children are living at less than half the federal government’s hopelessly inadequate poverty level. The cost of just a single U.S. F-35 B Fighter Jet is $250 million (in 2014 dollars) a sum that could be used to vastly improve Chicago’s poorly funded and hyper-segregated inner-city public schools. Many parts of the U.S. military’s airborne arsenal bear Native-American names: the Blackhawk, Apache, and Chinook helicopters are three examples. The city’s National Hockey League team is named after the Sauk warrior who led the battle against white invaders in 1832, only to see his nation devastated and removed from the fertile planes of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Many Chicagoland residents wear “chief” Black Hawk’s profile on t-shirts and jerseys. When you ask them who Black Hawk was and what happened to his people, their responses range from embarrassed ignorance to bemused indifference, mild irritation, and overt hostility. One of the very top U.S. military aviation manufacturers, Boeing, is headquartered in downtown Chicago. Its overseas body count over the decades is incalculable but surely ranks in the millions. Help Street keep writing here . Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014) This article previously appeared in Counterpunch . COMMENTS? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri Aug 23 15:51:49 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2019 15:51:49 +0000 Subject: [Peace] US escalates preparations for nuclear war with Russia and China Message-ID: * Print * Leaflet * Feedback * Share » US escalates preparations for nuclear war with Russia and China By Andre Damon 23 August 2019 After withdrawing from the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, the United States has been barreling ahead with its preparations to fight a nuclear war with China, Russia, or both, by testing and stockpiling dangerous new weapons in a nuclear arms race. In an interview with Fox News, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States military is changing its focus from “low-intensity conflict,” such as the war in Afghanistan, to “high-intensity conflicts against competitors such as Russia and China.” [https://www.wsws.org/asset/461e0b7e-0df2-42cc-914a-3237e6a5cacF/image.png?rendition=image480]The US tests a ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missile that was banned under the INF treaty Key to fighting such “high-intensity conflicts” is the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons, which Esper called “strategic forces.” “Our strategic forces are a key deterrent to nuclear war. I think a strong, reliable, capable, ready deterrent is really what prevents nuclear war from happening in the first place,” he said. In the Orwellian language of the “Defense” department, preserving “peace” is accomplished by expanding America’s “deterrent,” another name for the hellish nuclear weapons that can kill billions of people within an hour. Esper made no secret of who he is seeking to “deter,” saying “China is the number one priority for this department.” He claimed China is trying to “push the United States out” of the “Indo-Pacific theater.” [https://www.wsws.org/asset/6bbe627b-6cef-4267-83be-e21f4f20799G/image.png?rendition=image480]Air Force Airmen perform seal checks on their gas masks during a chemical, biological, and nuclear defense class [Credit: US Air Force] The term “theater” was defined by military theorist Carl Clausewitz as “a portion of the space over which war prevails.” Esper thinks the Indo-Pacific region—home to more than half of the world’s people—is, to the surprise of its inhabitants, a military “theater,” and one over which the United States supposedly has claim, despite being located on the other side of the world. But to secure this supposedly God-given right to dominance over Asia, the United States—the only country to use nuclear weapons in World War II—is making active preparations to ring the entire Chinese mainland with nuclear-capable missiles. Missiles that could reach the Chinese mainland from places like Japan and South Korea were banned under the INF treaty, which the United States pulled out of earlier this year. The United States, Esper said, now needs “to be able to strike at intermediate ranges” to “deter Chinese bad behavior,’ as if he were talking about disciplining a child, not annihilating a country of nearly 1.4 billion people. The United States is moving full-speed ahead with the deployment of new missiles. The Pentagon said Monday it had tested a ground-launched, Tomahawk missile, which would have been banned under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Earlier this month, Esper said that he would like to begin deploying medium-range missiles near China within a matter of “months.” Once conventional missiles are deployed, those with nuclear warheads will inevitably follow. The INF treaty was signed on December 8, 1987, between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, after protracted arms control negotiations. It prohibited the deployment of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The treaty mandated the elimination of intermediate range missiles for the United States, the Soviet Union, and its successor states. [https://www.wsws.org/asset/7786ad04-9d53-41fa-bb3b-317e497d243H/image.png?rendition=image480]Donald Trump smiles with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi [Credit: US Air Force] The United States said that it was withdrawing from the INF in response to Russia’s development of the Novator 9M729 missile, which is based on the earlier SSC-X-4 ground launched cruise missile that the US claimed violated the treaty. Despite the fact that Russia invited the United States to inspect its missile production facilities, the US was unable to seriously substantiate the charges that nominally led it to repudiate the treaty. Article continues below the form Even as the United States ramps up its plans to develop new nuclear weapons, the US military is stockpiling masses of conventional weapons. “The Pentagon has boosted spending to significantly increase the quantity of purchases of high-end weapons that would be used in a war against a peer competitor,” wrote Roman Schweizer, in a research note cited by Defense One. He noted that the Defense Department added $20 billion in spending for “high-end weapons: $12.7B for Lockheed, $6.2B for Raytheon and $1.2B for Boeing.” The Pentagon’s free spending was made possible by congressional Democrats, who voted overwhelmingly for the $738 billion military budget demanded by the Trump administration—the largest Pentagon budget in US history. In fact, the foundations of Trump’s nuclear build-up were laid by the Obama administration, which initiated a multi-trillion dollar nuclear “modernization” program. Trump has only expanded this basic program, developing it within the framework of the Pentagon’s doctrine of “strategic competition,” and pushing for smaller, more “usable” nuclear weapons. The Washington Post and New York Times, the newspapers of Trump’s supposed political opposition, are cheerleaders for the US military buildup. Earlier this month, Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote an op-ed titled “The U.S. Needs More Nukes,” that managed to denounce Ronald Regan as being soft on Russia for passing the INF treaty in the first place. The Times subsequently carried a letter to the editor rebuking Stephens’s warmongering, by Robert Dodge, the resident of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles. “No, the United States does not need new nukes,” Dodge wrote. “New scientific studies have shown that the old paradigm of mutually assured destruction, or MAD, has morphed into SAD, self-assured destruction, inviting global famine from catastrophic climate changes after a small regional nuclear war. Even without a retaliatory strike, our own fate is sealed. There are no winners.” Dodge’s comments came amid the publication this month of a new study that found that a nuclear war between the United States and a peer nuclear power—in this case Russia—would result in nuclear winter. The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres concluded: “The planet would grow colder due to the huge amount of smoke generated by fires ignited by the atomic blasts—the smoke would cover the entire planet for years, blocking the sun.” The actions of the United States are precipitating a global arms race with potentially incalculable consequences. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin, who said last year that anyone who launches a nuclear attack against Russia would go to “hell,” are responding to the American threats with a military build-up of their own. Earlier this month, seven people were killed when a Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile malfunctioned and exploded, in the second Russian nuclear disaster in the span of one month. WSWS.ORG -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 24 15:55:43 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2019 15:55:43 +0000 Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?Trump=E2=80=99s_Concentration_Camps_for_Childre?= =?utf-8?q?n?= Message-ID: JACQUELINE LUQMAN: This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network. This week, the Trump administration declared that immigrant children can be detained separate from their families indefinitely. And this comes after the administration argued in court to be able to detain children in conditions that can arguably be described as concentration camps, destroying the tenants of the two decades old Flores decision. Here to talk with me today about what this means for the families and children of asylum seekers and immigrants, and what this means for this country is Sasha Abramsky. Sasha is a regular contributor to The Nation magazine where his article on this proposed rule change was recently published. He is the author of eight books, and the most recent one is called Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream. Welcome, Sasha. Thank you so much for joining me. SASHA ABRAMSKY: Thanks for having me on. JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So really quickly for people who don’t understand what this means and what this change is, what is the Flores decision and why is what the Trump administration did this week important in the history of immigration policy in the US? SASHA ABRAMSKY: Okay. So the Flores decision came out of a lawsuit more than 30 years ago in California when children fleeing from Central America, from armed conflict at the time, were being kept in really atrocious conditions and a number of immigration attorneys filed suit. A decade later at the end of the 1990s there was an agreement reached with the federal government, which basically set in place a few things. It set in place the kinds of conditions that kids could be kept in, so it mandated certain standards— access to education, to food, to safe bedding, and so on and so forth, but it also set time limits. It basically said, “Look, you want to hold these kids in the least restrictive environment for the least amount of time possible,” because there was an understanding that the longer you hold kids essentially in prison, the more you damage them. You damage them physically, you damaged them psychologically, and you actually can do long-term damage to that child, which is going to follow them for the rest of their life. So the settlement agreement basically said, “All right, if you’re going to hold immigrant families in detention, you can only do it for a certain amount of time. Then you have to release them, you have to process them through the courts, and while they’re waiting for their asylum cases, they have to be in the community.” Trump’s administration right from the get-go has waged a war on immigrants— whether it’s DACA recipients, Temporary Protected Status recipients, whether it’s Muslims seeking visa’s to come into the country, whether it’s legal immigrants seeking access to public benefits. And now what they’re doing is trying to unilaterally rip up that Flora settlement and say, “Well look, we don’t believe that we should have to adhere to standards, and nor do we believe that there are time limits.” If they get away with it, what they’re going to be able to do is basically set up this archipelago of immigration detention camps. You can call them internment camps, you can call them concentration camps, you can call them prisons. But the end result is that thousands upon thousands of kids will be able to be held indefinitely in these appalling conditions, while their asylum cases, while their immigration cases run their way through the courts. It’s extraordinary. What it means is America, which prides itself on being this open pluralist society, which has the Statue of Liberty as it’s national emblem, is now in the business of internment camps for children. I think anybody who cares morally about where this country’s going should just take a look at this and just be absolutely stunned by what is now being done in our names. JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So didn’t the Trump administration declare a few weeks ago, or just a few days ago actually, that it would not issue flu vaccines to detained immigrants? SASHA ABRAMSKY: That’s right. And that is dangerous for so many reasons. It’s dangerous because kids are particularly susceptible to a very deadly flu. It’s also dangerous because these camps, these prisons, are so overcrowded that they’re absolute petri dishes for disease. So when I was in Arizona reporting a story for The Nation Magazine before the summer, I was interviewing people who had been held in these facilities for days, sometimes weeks on end. And what they were telling me was that in some of these rooms that are 75 to 100, in some rooms even 150 people crowded together. They have no access to bedding. They sleep on concrete floors. Sometimes when there’s particular overcrowding, families have been moved outside to sleep outside in the desert, and they were doing that in winter. They’re doing it without access to clean and safe drinking water. They’re doing it without access to an adequate number of bathrooms. I was told stories where 75 to 100 people had access to two bathrooms. And I was told stories where the only drinking water available was from dirty faucets right next to the toilets. There’s almost no medical care in these facilities. And the idea that you would cram human beings into these camps that resembled cattle cars, and that you would then make it even more likely that they would fall prey to whether it’s flu or any other infectious disease, and would then deny preventable vaccinations to stop them getting those illnesses— to me, that’s a crime. I don’t know if it meets the legal definition of crime, but it’s doing something deliberately intended to put already poor, already scared, already vulnerable immigrants into harm’s way. And it could only be done by an administration which has spent three years dehumanizing immigrants, calling them invaders, calling them pests, calling them criminals, calling them rapists. And when you dehumanize entire groups of people, you make it that much easier to put them into conditions in which they are treated in a subhuman manner. And that’s what we’re witnessing today. The United States government is now in the business of denying children vaccines for preventable diseases. JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And not only is this administration denying vaccines to children for preventable diseases, but didn’t the administration go to court earlier this year to argue that basic necessities that we take for granted— like soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste— were not necessary or were not legally considered necessary in detention facilities? SASHA ABRAMSKY: They did. And this was, again, part of the Flores legislation. There was a case, there was a legal suit brought because they were depriving kids of adequate access to food. They were providing inedible food. They were providing dirty drinking water. They were denying them access to toothpaste, to soap, and to shampoo, and even to showers. And then, the DOJ attorneys somehow decided it was okay to go to court and argue that all of that was somehow acceptable under Flores. And not surprisingly, the judge said, “Absolutely not. You’re not meeting any legal standards if you’re denying kids food, you’re denying kids toothpaste, you’re denying kids soap, and so on.” But I would say that any judge who comes up and listens to an attorney for the Department of Justice spouting this nonsense, any judge is going to be looking at this and thinking what on Earth is going on? When did the Department of Justice become so Orwellian? When did the attorneys who work for the Department of Justice decide that it was morally acceptable to go to court to argue that children didn’t need adequate supplies of food, didn’t need access to education, didn’t need access to outside exercise facilities, didn’t need access to personal hygiene? What kind of a country would send its top legal employees to argue that on behalf of the state? JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Now let’s – to be fair, and to draw a comparison, detention facilities existed in the United States in regard to immigration policy to hold people who were across the border “illegally” in the previous administration. What is the major difference between the way family and child detention was handled in previous administrations, and what’s the big difference in the way this administration is handling the situation? SASHA ABRAMSKY: It’s a good question, and there are a few key differences. It’s absolutely true that previous administrations have had detention at the border, and previous administrations have argued against the Flores settlement. That’s absolutely true. The difference is that the previous administration tried to use detention sparingly. So the default understanding was— for families in particular, and for children in particular— there was something of an incentive to get those kids out of a confined incarceration setting because there was a recognition of the harm that was caused. The difference here is, this administration seems to revel in the harm that’s caused. They’re using it as this very, very crude deterrent. They’re trying to terrorize families. They made it abundantly clear. They made it abundantly clear with the family separation policy they tried to implement last year, that they were using the taking of children, that they were using the incarceration of children, that they were using up the breaking up of families not as a last resort immigration policy, but as a first resort deterrent. They’ve essentially concluded that any and every impoverished immigrant, any and every impoverished asylum seeker, any and every would be refugee who is coming to this country because they believe in Emma Lazarus’s words on the Statue of Liberty, that all of those people are dangerous, that all of those people are enemies, and that all of those people are invaders. And they’re using the language of white nationalists. They’re using the exact same language that neo-Nazi groups, that white nationalist groups, that white supremacist groups, that Identitarian groups are using on their websites. And we saw this absolutely scandalous event earlier this week when the Department of Justice sent out a daily news bulletin to immigration judges around the country quoting from a white nationalist website. Imagine that. The Department of Justice of the country that prides itself on being the greatest democracy on Earth, is sending immigration judges links to white nationalist websites. And I think this is the fundamental difference, that we now have a president who goes to campaign rallies and he insights crowds into nativist, racist, bigoted language that can only reverberate and hurt immigrants. That can only shred our sense of community and our sense of society. And he’s doing it quite deliberately. He’s not doing it incidentally. So you asked the difference, and the difference is that this administration has made a decision that the more it demagogues on immigration, the more it demagogues on this idea that our borders are being besieged and that we’re being invaded, the more it demagogues on this, the more it can drive its base to the polls. And it’s a disgraceful policy decision because the impact is now being felt by hundreds of thousands, and probably millions of immigrants all around the country who on a daily basis now feel scared, feel terrorized, feel that the government no longer have their back. And that’s a horrifying situation that the United States government is making it abundantly clear that it doesn’t represent all Americans, that it only represents certain Americans. JACQUELINE LUQMAN: So perhaps the question about whether we should call these detention centers concentration camps are not now – isn’t really a question in the minds of the people who are establishing these new rules to create these conditions, which under the technical definition of a concentration camp, that’s exactly what these are. The only question it seems to be in whether the American people and the rest of the world are, whether we are willing to call these places and these actions what they are, and what we’re going to do about them. So what do you have to say about that, Sasha? SASHA ABRAMSKY: Well, I think whether we call them concentration camps—And they clearly are. They meet the definition of the original concentration camps that the British used against the Boer’s in South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century. They were camps designed to bring families into contained, controlled incarceration environments. Whether we call them concentration camps like that, or whether we call them internment camps like the camps that we used against Japanese Americans during World War II, whatever label we choose to affix on them, we’re clearly now in a moment where the top bureaucracies of the United States immigration system— the Customs Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and so on and so forth— are responding to essentially a policy agenda set by the nationalist Steve Miller. And they’re responding to a policy agenda which views all immigration as bad, that increasingly fails to distinguish between legal and undocumented immigrants, that penalizes all immigrants financially for daring to come to this country. We see this with the new public chart regulations, that there’s this assumption that anybody who tries to come into this country to remake themselves, remake their families, give themselves a better future— that in doing so, they’re transgressing. That they are crossing some kind of boundary and therefore deserve punishment. So to me it’s slightly irrelevant whether we call them concentration camps, internment camps, detention centers, prisons, cages for children. The end results the same. We’re doing things that we know are going to hurt young children who have come to America to escape poverty, to escape violence, to escaping [inaudible] gangs, into armed gangs in places like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. And they’ve come to America because America historically has been a land of welcome – been one of our proudest accomplishments as a nation, that we are strong enough to welcome and absorb immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees. And since World War II we have admitted millions of refugees, and they have started businesses, they have made scientific discoveries and inventions. They have contributed immensely to this society. We are now locking out refugees, we’re locking out asylum seekers, and we’re putting people who do make it to the United States border to claim asylum, into these absolutely awful camps. And I think that anybody in the administration who participates in this, should be shamed for the rest of their lives for the action they are doing now. And it should be made abundantly clear that when this awful administration’s over, they’re not going to get public service jobs again. And they’re not going to be welcomed in think tanks, and they’re not going to be welcomed in universities because the idea that they’re just doing politics as normal is absolutely wrong. There’s nothing normal about putting children into concentration camps. And I think that we as a society, you asked what’s at stake. What’s at stake is a battle for our soul – what kind of a people we are and what kind of actions we’re willing or not willing to stomach when carried out by this administration. JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Well, Sasha Abramsky, thank you so much for your reporting. And we will absolutely continue to see just what kind of nation we will be in regard to this issue. Thank you for coming on today and speaking with me, clarifying what is really going on in these detention centers with these children. SASHA ABRAMSKY: You’re very welcome. Thank you so much. JACQUELINE LUQMAN: And thank you for watching. This is Jacqueline Luqman with The Real News Network in Baltimore -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Mon Aug 26 13:51:01 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2019 13:51:01 +0000 Subject: [Peace] The Moderate Rebels, Max and Ben with Carl Zha on the Hong Kong protests. Message-ID: The Moderate Rebels, Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton cover the inside story in relation to the Hong Kong protests. https://www.facebook.com/dialog/share?app_id=87741124305&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Da38bOtUEXcc%26featu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed Aug 28 11:02:39 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 11:02:39 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Lebanon/Israel- strikes by Andre Vltchek Message-ID: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/467390-lebanon-israel-strikes-war/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 29 12:58:20 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:58:20 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Michael Parenti 1986 Message-ID: Clear, concise and precise. One of the best …….. https://youtu.be/t1ld-1K-yJ0 From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu Aug 29 19:16:27 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 19:16:27 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Nationwide Tour: New Film 'Gaza Fights for Freedom' with Abby Martin! References: <5d6814cb6f778_8e0a6baf6c483de@asgworker-qmb3-15.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: [ANSWER Coalition] Nationwide Tour: New Film 'Gaza Fights for Freedom' with Abby Martin! [https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/answercoalition/mailings/2948/attachments/original/BANNER-GAZA-FINAL.jpg?1566944782] We are excited to announce The Empire Files & ANSWER Coalition are partnering for a U.S./Canada screening tour for the new feature documentary, "Gaza Fights For Freedom". Filmmakers Abby Martin and Mike Prysner will be present at most events to introduce the film and hold a Q&A after the screening. Tickets will go on sale soon. Click here to be the first to be notified when they do. If you are interested in organizing a screening or watch party in a city that is not listed —or would like to volunteer to build an existing event in your city — click here. About the film This collaboration between Martin’s The Empire Files and a team of Gaza journalists shows you Gaza and the ongoing Great March of Return protests as you have never seen them before. The imagery and voices of Palestinian resistance illuminates the heroism of the people of Gaza and provides undeniable documentation of Israeli war crimes. It includes exclusive interviews with civilians shot at during the Great March, as well as its lead organizer, and the family and colleagues of beloved slain medic Razan Al-Najjar. It also shows the untold history that is essential to understanding the situation today but is always ignored by the corporate media. This includes rare archival footage dating back to mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 known as the Nakba. Click here to watch the official movie trailer! Nationwide Tour Gaza Fights For Freedom is available to stream online, but nothing can compare to seeing it in theaters, experiencing on the big screen the impressive cinematography and 5.1 Digital Surround Sound. You do not want to miss this opportunity to hear directly from Abby Martin and connect in-person with The Empire Files team! While many additional tour dates will be announced in the coming weeks, this is an initial list of cities that you can count on hosting a screening with Q&A: Albuquerque, NM; Ashville, NC; Boston, MA; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Indianapolis, IN; New York City, NY; New Haven, CT; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, OR; San Francisco, CA; Sacramento, CA; Seattle, WA; Washington D.C., as well as Montreal, Toronto and more! Donate to the tour via paypal (preferred), or through Patreon and GoFundMe [https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/answercoalition/mailings/2948/attachments/original/donatebutton.png?1566946854] ANSWER Coalition · United States This email was sent to karenaram at hotmail.com. To stop receiving emails, click here. You can also keep up with ANSWER Coalition on Facebook. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moboct1 at aim.com Fri Aug 30 13:39:20 2019 From: moboct1 at aim.com (Mildred O'brien) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 13:39:20 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Nationwide Tour: New Film 'Gaza Fights for Freedom' with Abby Martin! In-Reply-To: References: <5d6814cb6f778_8e0a6baf6c483de@asgworker-qmb3-15.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: <687220404.357721.1567172360477@mail.yahoo.com> Maybe Bend the Arc could bring this film to C-U?   -----Original Message----- From: Karen Aram via Peace To: Peace ; Peace Discuss Sent: Thu, Aug 29, 2019 2:17 pm Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Nationwide Tour: New Film 'Gaza Fights for Freedom' with Abby Martin! | | | | | | Nationwide Tour: New Film  'Gaza Fights for Freedom'  with Abby Martin! We are excited to announce The Empire Files & ANSWER Coalition are partnering for a U.S./Canada screening tour for the new feature documentary, "Gaza Fights For Freedom". Filmmakers Abby Martin and Mike Prysner will be present at most events to introduce the film and hold a Q&A after the screening.Tickets will go on sale soon. Click here to be the first to be notified when they do.If you are interested in organizing a screening or watch party in a city that is not listed —or would like to volunteer to build an existing event in your city — click here. About the filmThis collaboration between Martin’s The Empire Files and a team of Gaza journalists shows you Gaza and the ongoing Great March of Return protests as you have never seen them before. The imagery and voices of Palestinian resistance illuminates the heroism of the people of Gaza and provides undeniable documentation of Israeli war crimes. It includes exclusive interviews with civilians shot at during the Great March, as well as its lead organizer, and the family and colleagues of beloved slain medic Razan Al-Najjar. It also shows the untold history that is essential to understanding the situation today but is always ignored by the corporate media. This includes rare archival footage dating back to mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 known as the Nakba.Click here to watch the official movie trailer! Nationwide TourGaza Fights For Freedom is available to stream online, but nothing can compare to seeing it in theaters, experiencing on the big screen the impressive cinematography and 5.1 Digital Surround Sound. You do not want to miss this opportunity to hear directly from Abby Martin and connect in-person with The Empire Files team!While many additional tour dates will be announced in the coming weeks, this is an initial list of cities that you can count on hosting a screening with Q&A: Albuquerque, NM; Ashville, NC; Boston, MA; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO;  Indianapolis, IN; New York City, NY;  New Haven, CT; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, OR; San Francisco, CA; Sacramento, CA; Seattle, WA; Washington D.C., as well as Montreal, Toronto and more!  Donate to the tour via paypal (preferred), or through Patreon and GoFundMe  | | | ANSWER Coalition · United States  This email was sent to karenaram at hotmail.com. To stop receiving emails, click here.  You can also keep up with ANSWER Coalition on Facebook. | | |   _______________________________________________ Peace mailing list Peace at lists.chambana.net https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From divisek at yahoo.com Fri Aug 30 15:23:57 2019 From: divisek at yahoo.com (Dianna Visek) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 15:23:57 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Peace] =?utf-8?q?Fw=3A_SAVE_THE_DATE=3A=C2=A0Taken_in_the_Heartl?= =?utf-8?q?and=3A_A_Conversation_about_Civil_Asset_Forfeiture?= In-Reply-To: <2501014a07b984a4122577a30.b869de6edb.20190830145948.6d7281619b.3ef5cc50@mail92.suw15.mcsv.net> References: <2501014a07b984a4122577a30.b869de6edb.20190830145948.6d7281619b.3ef5cc50@mail92.suw15.mcsv.net> Message-ID: <227361134.406698.1567178637381@mail.yahoo.com> ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Pam Dempsey To: "divisek at yahoo.com" Sent: Friday, August 30, 2019, 9:59:56 AM CDTSubject: SAVE THE DATE: Taken in the Heartland: A Conversation about Civil Asset Forfeiture Put the evening of Monday, September 16, 2019 on your calendar | | | | | | | | | | | | | SAVE THE DATE: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 AT 6:30 PM   Taken in the Heartland: A Conversation about Civil Asset Forfeiture | | | | | | | | | | | | Under civil forfeiture laws, the government is able to take cash, cars, homes and other property suspected of being involved in criminal activity, without charging the property owner with a crime. Getting it back? Well, that's a whole different story. | | | | | | Pontoon Beach Police Department on June 2, 2019.  Darrell Hoemann/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting | | | | | | | | Taken in the Heartland: A Conversation about Civil Asset Forfeiture Monday, September 16, 2019 6:30 - 9:00 pm Champaign Public Library Join us for a panel discussion to delve into the issues that arose with civil asset forfeiture, and hear directly from journalists, attorneys, and experts. There will be time after the moderated panel for an audience Q & A session. Tickets are free, but RSVP is requested through Eventbrite Light refreshments provided.  Panelists  Ben Rudell, attorney, ACLU of Illinois  Stephen Komie, attorney, Komie and Associates  Bill Frievogel, professor, School of Journalism of Southern Illinois University  Moderator  Brant Houston, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois  | | | | | | | | Find Out More | | | | | Check out  previous coverage of this issue  TAKEN: Despite reforms, burden still heavy on owners of seized property By Karen Liu and Pam Dempsey/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting; June 10, 2019 Taken: Reforms to state civil forfeiture laws still lag, critics say By Karen Liu and Pam Dempsey/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting June 10, 2019 See all coverage by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting   | | | | | Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting Illinois Humanities CU Citizen Access Knight Chair Of Investigative Reporting, Journalism Department At The College Of Media, University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Copyright © 2019 Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, All rights reserved. You are receving this email because you like our news coverage, data tools, events and workshops. Thanks! Our mailing address is: Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting701 Devonshire DrChampaign, IL 61820 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. | | | | | -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Fri Aug 30 23:45:11 2019 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 18:45:11 -0500 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #434 notes Message-ID: News from Neptune #434 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFdeGjETKXE A "What the 2020 Election Is About" edition A list of links to items referenced on the show. Recent Joe Biden talk (and talk of those speaking on his behalf) courtesy of the Jimmy Dore program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5xb4llOhgU -- Biden's Press Secretary's "word salad" on how climate change debate is a bad idea and the time for it was in the past (when the Democrats also said it was a bad idea to have that debate) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbV3l5j3S4E -- Jill Biden admitting her husband is a horrible choice but somehow 'electable' and ultimately we must give up everything to "defeat Trump", right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbE2E9dvGg -- Biden attacking Mexicans in secret video. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard interviewed by CBS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzVSYBNgOeI -- "Defeating Trump" is Rep. Gabbard's goal even if it means supporting whatever Democrat gets the nomination. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tulsi-gabbard-on-her-political-future/ -- a brief video ending with Rep. Gabbard conceding that she'll endorse any Democrat, even one who holds values ostensibly opposite to hers. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaH2rSgQzLE -- Bernie Sanders said he'll vote for Biden in 2020 if Biden is the nominee. J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”" https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ B.B. King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.B._King B.B. King's "The Thrill is Gone" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oica5jG7FpU Tulsi Gabbard with The Intercept in January 2018 https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/ Primo Nutmeg interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GyqD0t2t8 -- video http://audio.voxnest.com/stream/9417a19f73964ff599a9cb7b84a5d268/www.buzzsprout.com/205226/1016930-171-tulsi-gabbard.mp3?blob_id=2161843 -- audio David Green on "Concerns voiced about Bend the Arc" letter to the News-Gazette https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-concerns-voiced-about-bend-the-arc/article_99b2ac36-4279-5cad-8b60-892ca30dde6e.html Donald Trump on Jewish "great disloyalty" for voting Democrat https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/us/politics/trump-jewish-voters.html -- Julie Hirschfeld Davis on "Trump Accuses Jewish Democrats of ‘Great Disloyalty’" https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/459219-most-voters-disapprove-of-trumps-jewish-loyalty-comment-poll -- Rachel Frazin on "Most voters disapprove of Trump's Jewish 'loyalty' comment: poll" Long Stephen Miller articles from The New York Times Rasputin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin Jason DeParle on "How Stephen Miller Seized the Moment to Battle Immigration" (from 2019-08-17) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/us/politics/stephen-miller-immigration-trump.html Michelle Cottle on "Stephen Miller Can’t Act Alone" (from 2019-04-09) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/opinion/stephen-miller-trump-immigration.html Matt Flegenheimer on "Stephen Miller, the Powerful Survivor on the President’s Right Flank" (from 2017-10-09) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/us/politics/stephen-miller-trump-white-house.html Norman Finkelstein on Israel being an "alt-right country" https://www.youtube.com/embed/8e2uhX4QfJw -- Norman Finkelstein Q&A Peter Bolton on "Norman Finkelstein tells The Canary that anti-Corbyn smears have ‘nothing whatever to do with antisemitism’" https://www.thecanary.co/exclusive/2019/08/15/norman-finkelstein-tells-the-canary-that-anti-corbyn-smears-have-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-antisemitism/ DaysOfPalestine.com on "Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein says ‘Israel is a nation of murderers’ loved by the far right" https://daysofpalestine.com/post/12616/jewish-scholar-norman-finkelstein-says-%E2%80%98israel-is-a-nation-of-murderers%E2%80%99-loved-by-the-far-right Patrick Cockburn articles on independent.co.uk https://www.independent.co.uk/author/patrick-cockburn "Patrick Cockburn is an award-winning Independent columnist who specialises in analysis of Iraq, Syria and wars in the Middle East. He has been with The Independent since 1990." Lily Puckett on "Trump administration considering blocking $250m in military assistance to Ukraine" https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-ukraine-military-funding-john-bolton-russia-pentagon-latest-a9084291.html Continuity of policy: US administrations supporting Nazis https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html -- contains pointer to a 600-page Justice Department report (http://documents.nytimes.com/confidential-report-provides-new-evidence-of-notorious-nazi-cases?ref=us#p=1) about how Nazis were given "safe haven" in US https://www.stpete4peace.org/Ukraine -- including criticism of "Progressive media provides cover for US intentions in Ukraine" https://www.rt.com/news/450740-ukraine-radio-nazi-article/ -- "US-funded Ukrainian radio defends neo-Nazi group, deletes article when called out" Jimmy Dore on New York Times editorial board's "pathetic apology for Russiagate coverage failure" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BivCPmU3tjo David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles https://anticapitalistchronicles.libsyn.com/ RSS feed: https://anticapitalistchronicles.libsyn.com/rss David Harvey interview in Jacobin https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/ "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey ISBN-13: 978-0199283279 ISBN-10: 0199283273 "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty ISBN-10: 0674979850 ISBN-13: 978-0674979857 Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf Michael Roberts' blog "The Next Recession" https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/ Recent Dean Baker articles on Trump's trade war with China https://fair.org/home/dean-baker-on-trumps-trade-war-leo-fitzpatrick-on-wireless-merger/ https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-trade-war-with-china-is-waged-to-make-the-rich-richer/ Moderate Rebels (Max Blumenthal & Ben Norton) on "Hong Kong's real colonial history, and the protests' anti-China right-wing nativism - with Carl Zha" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a38bOtUEXcc -- video https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/moderaterebels/Moderate_Rebels_Hong_Kong_Carl_Zha_part_1.mp3?dest-id=553365 -- audio Doug Henwood interviews Brian Hioe on Hong Kong protests http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2019/19_08_22.mp3 Noam Chomsky on reading business press https://www.ft.com/content/bcdefd38-3beb-3506-b24c-82285ac87f6c "My impression in general is that the business press is more open, ... get the facts right..." (used as part of an ad for Financial Times) https://chomsky.info/20081010/ http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,583454,00.html -- October 10, 2008 Der Spiegel interview of Chomsky includes: > SPIEGEL: How does it benefit politicians when the populace drives a lot, > eats a lot and goes shopping a lot? > > Chomsky: Consumption distracts people. You cannot control your own > population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption. The > business press has been quite explicit about this goal. https://chomsky.info/20101101/ http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267553 -- November 1, 2010 Outlook magazine (from India) interview of Chomsky includes: > What has to be done is not really specific to the media. It is to > develop a more functional democratic society, a more democratic culture. > As far as the elites are concerned they want the public to be > disciplined, passive, obedient and directed to other things. Take a look > at the history of the huge public relations and advertising industry > that we have today. It developed in the freest countries in the world — > England and the US — around the time of the First World War. > Incidentally, that was the time Lippmann was writing. It was developed > very consciously, out of the understanding that enough freedom had been > won by popular struggle and the population could not be controlled by > force. Therefore, it was thought necessary to control attitudes and > beliefs. In the business press of the 1920s, you can read very openly > about the need to divert people to what they call the superficial thing > in life like fashionable consumption. If we can direct people to that, > they will keep out of our hair, we can run things. You see that in > India, certainly. Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/ Sonam Sheth on "US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin" https://www.businessinsider.com/spies-react-trump-g7-summit-russian-asset-2019-8 -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 31 00:05:58 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 00:05:58 +0000 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #434 notes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Other than listening to B.B. King, my favorite, is there anything other than Biden, and Gabbard being discussed in relation to the upcoming elections, worth viewing on NFN tonight? I have a lot of Michael Parenti podcasts I prefer to focus on, given we know all the candidates will support whatever Democrats their masters choose, by what is known as “delegate votes,” though I prefer referring to them as the “mythology of elections.” > On Aug 30, 2019, at 16:45, J.B. Nicholson via Peace wrote: > > News from Neptune #434 > Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFdeGjETKXE > A "What the 2020 Election Is About" edition > > A list of links to items referenced on the show. > > > > Recent Joe Biden talk (and talk of those speaking on his behalf) courtesy of the Jimmy Dore program > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5xb4llOhgU -- Biden's Press Secretary's "word salad" on how climate change debate is a bad idea and the time for it was in the past (when the Democrats also said it was a bad idea to have that debate) > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbV3l5j3S4E -- Jill Biden admitting her husband is a horrible choice but somehow 'electable' and ultimately we must give up everything to "defeat Trump", right? > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbE2E9dvGg -- Biden attacking Mexicans in secret video. > > Rep. Tulsi Gabbard interviewed by CBS > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzVSYBNgOeI -- "Defeating Trump" is Rep. Gabbard's goal even if it means supporting whatever Democrat gets the nomination. > https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tulsi-gabbard-on-her-political-future/ -- a brief video ending with Rep. Gabbard conceding that she'll endorse any Democrat, even one who holds values ostensibly opposite to hers. > > Related: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaH2rSgQzLE -- Bernie Sanders said he'll vote for Biden in 2020 if Biden is the nominee. > > J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”" > https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ > > B.B. King > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.B._King > > B.B. King's "The Thrill is Gone" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oica5jG7FpU > > Tulsi Gabbard with The Intercept in January 2018 > https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/ > > Primo Nutmeg interview > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GyqD0t2t8 -- video > http://audio.voxnest.com/stream/9417a19f73964ff599a9cb7b84a5d268/www.buzzsprout.com/205226/1016930-171-tulsi-gabbard.mp3?blob_id=2161843 -- audio > > David Green on "Concerns voiced about Bend the Arc" letter to the News-Gazette > https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-concerns-voiced-about-bend-the-arc/article_99b2ac36-4279-5cad-8b60-892ca30dde6e.html > > Donald Trump on Jewish "great disloyalty" for voting Democrat > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/us/politics/trump-jewish-voters.html -- Julie Hirschfeld Davis on "Trump Accuses Jewish Democrats of ‘Great Disloyalty’" > https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/459219-most-voters-disapprove-of-trumps-jewish-loyalty-comment-poll -- Rachel Frazin on "Most voters disapprove of Trump's Jewish 'loyalty' comment: poll" > > > Long Stephen Miller articles from The New York Times > > Rasputin > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin > > Jason DeParle on "How Stephen Miller Seized the Moment to Battle Immigration" (from 2019-08-17) > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/us/politics/stephen-miller-immigration-trump.html > > Michelle Cottle on "Stephen Miller Can’t Act Alone" (from 2019-04-09) > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/opinion/stephen-miller-trump-immigration.html > > Matt Flegenheimer on "Stephen Miller, the Powerful Survivor on the President’s Right Flank" (from 2017-10-09) > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/us/politics/stephen-miller-trump-white-house.html > > > > > Norman Finkelstein on Israel being an "alt-right country" > > https://www.youtube.com/embed/8e2uhX4QfJw -- Norman Finkelstein Q&A > > Peter Bolton on "Norman Finkelstein tells The Canary that anti-Corbyn smears have ‘nothing whatever to do with antisemitism’" > https://www.thecanary.co/exclusive/2019/08/15/norman-finkelstein-tells-the-canary-that-anti-corbyn-smears-have-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-antisemitism/ > > DaysOfPalestine.com on "Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein says ‘Israel is a nation of murderers’ loved by the far right" > https://daysofpalestine.com/post/12616/jewish-scholar-norman-finkelstein-says-%E2%80%98israel-is-a-nation-of-murderers%E2%80%99-loved-by-the-far-right > > > > Patrick Cockburn articles on independent.co.uk > https://www.independent.co.uk/author/patrick-cockburn > "Patrick Cockburn is an award-winning Independent columnist who specialises in analysis of Iraq, Syria and wars in the Middle East. He has been with The Independent since 1990." > > Lily Puckett on "Trump administration considering blocking $250m in military assistance to Ukraine" > https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-ukraine-military-funding-john-bolton-russia-pentagon-latest-a9084291.html > > Continuity of policy: US administrations supporting Nazis > https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html -- contains pointer to a 600-page Justice Department report (http://documents.nytimes.com/confidential-report-provides-new-evidence-of-notorious-nazi-cases?ref=us#p=1) about how Nazis were given "safe haven" in US > https://www.stpete4peace.org/Ukraine -- including criticism of "Progressive media provides cover for US intentions in Ukraine" > https://www.rt.com/news/450740-ukraine-radio-nazi-article/ -- "US-funded Ukrainian radio defends neo-Nazi group, deletes article when called out" > > > > Jimmy Dore on New York Times editorial board's "pathetic apology for Russiagate coverage failure" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BivCPmU3tjo > > > > David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles > https://anticapitalistchronicles.libsyn.com/ > RSS feed: https://anticapitalistchronicles.libsyn.com/rss > > David Harvey interview in Jacobin > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/ > > "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey > ISBN-13: 978-0199283279 > ISBN-10: 0199283273 > > "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty > ISBN-10: 0674979850 > ISBN-13: 978-0674979857 > Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf > > Michael Roberts' blog "The Next Recession" > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/ > > Recent Dean Baker articles on Trump's trade war with China > https://fair.org/home/dean-baker-on-trumps-trade-war-leo-fitzpatrick-on-wireless-merger/ > https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-trade-war-with-china-is-waged-to-make-the-rich-richer/ > > > > Moderate Rebels (Max Blumenthal & Ben Norton) on "Hong Kong's real colonial history, and the protests' anti-China right-wing nativism - with Carl Zha" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a38bOtUEXcc -- video > https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/moderaterebels/Moderate_Rebels_Hong_Kong_Carl_Zha_part_1.mp3?dest-id=553365 -- audio > > Doug Henwood interviews Brian Hioe on Hong Kong protests > http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2019/19_08_22.mp3 > > > > > > Noam Chomsky on reading business press > > https://www.ft.com/content/bcdefd38-3beb-3506-b24c-82285ac87f6c > "My impression in general is that the business press is more open, ... get the facts right..." (used as part of an ad for Financial Times) > > https://chomsky.info/20081010/ > http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,583454,00.html -- October 10, 2008 Der Spiegel interview of Chomsky includes: >> SPIEGEL: How does it benefit politicians when the populace drives a lot, >> eats a lot and goes shopping a lot? > >> Chomsky: Consumption distracts people. You cannot control your own >> population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption. The >> business press has been quite explicit about this goal. > https://chomsky.info/20101101/ > http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267553 -- November 1, 2010 Outlook magazine (from India) interview of Chomsky includes: >> What has to be done is not really specific to the media. It is to >> develop a more functional democratic society, a more democratic culture. >> As far as the elites are concerned they want the public to be >> disciplined, passive, obedient and directed to other things. Take a look >> at the history of the huge public relations and advertising industry >> that we have today. It developed in the freest countries in the world — >> England and the US — around the time of the First World War. >> Incidentally, that was the time Lippmann was writing. It was developed >> very consciously, out of the understanding that enough freedom had been >> won by popular struggle and the population could not be controlled by >> force. Therefore, it was thought necessary to control attitudes and >> beliefs. In the business press of the 1920s, you can read very openly >> about the need to divert people to what they call the superficial thing >> in life like fashionable consumption. If we can direct people to that, >> they will keep out of our hair, we can run things. You see that in >> India, certainly. > > Business Insider > https://www.businessinsider.com/ > > Sonam Sheth on "US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin" > https://www.businessinsider.com/spies-react-trump-g7-summit-russian-asset-2019-8 > > -J > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 31 12:43:58 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 12:43:58 +0000 Subject: [Peace] Chris Hedges Message-ID: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-silencing-of-dissent/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat Aug 31 20:15:33 2019 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (Karen Aram) Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2019 20:15:33 +0000 Subject: [Peace] News from Neptune #434 notes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I take it back, a worthwhile listen, if only to hear Carl say he was wrong about Tulsi Gabbard and JB Nicholson has been right. Which by extension includes me, as I have been saying for some time, Tulsi is a sheepherder for the DNC focusing on anti-war activists. The discussion was good because it was broad, with coverage of the Ukraine. David uncloaked as did his letter in the NG, the duplicity of the group Bend the Arc, using we only focus on domestic issues, as their excuse. Hong Kong: I liked the Moderate Rebels, David refers to, though I don’t believe naming the names of individuals is necessary. What’s important is the names of the groups or organizations and who they are being funded by. It then becomes obvious that the US and Hong Kong billionaires and there are many, are supporting the demonstrations, and the US NGO’s such as the NED “National Endowment for Democracy,” “Freedom House Foundation,” along with others in the business of intervention are supporting the uprisings. That is not to say the people don’t have legitimate grievances in relation to the high cost of living, low wages, lack of jobs, poor housing etc., the people are angry and rightfully so, but there focus on Beijing is misdirected. I along with many others saw the handwriting on the wall twenty years ago, when working there, as foreign company’s, and corporations were moving to Shanghai, since then Hong Kong’s main business is finance and tourism. Twenty years ago, Hong Kong people looked down on the mainlanders coming there for work, menial jobs. Today, its the reverse with wealthy mainlanders going to Hong Kong to shop. For a deeper, broader analysis please see below the article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance in “Global Research” which has many articles related to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the most extreme examples of big finance, neoliberal capitalism in the world. As a result, many people in Hong Kong are suffering from great economic insecurity in a city with 93 billionaires, second-most of any city. Hong Kong is suffering the effects of being colonized by Britain for more than 150 years following the Opium Wars. The British put in place a capitalist economic system and Hong Kong has had no history of self-rule. When Britain left, it negotiated an agreement that prevents China from changing Hong Kong’s political and economic systems for 50 years by making Hong Kong a Special Administrative Region (SAR). China cannot solve the suffering of the people of Hong Kong. This ‘One Country, Two Systems’ approach means the extreme capitalism of Hong Kong exists alongside, but separate from, China’s socialized system. Hong Kong has an unusual political system. For example, half the seats in the legislature are required to represent business interests meaning corporate interests vote on legislation. Hong Kong is a center for big finance and also a center of financial crimes . Between 2013 and 2017, the number of suspicious transactions reported to law enforcement agencies rocketed from 32,907 to 92,115. There has been a small number of prosecutions , which dropped from a high of 167 in 2014 to 103 in 2017. Convictions dropped to only one person sentenced to more than six years behind bars in 2017. The problem is neither the extradition bill that was used to ignite protests nor China, the problems are Hong Kong’s economy and governance. The Extradition Bill The stated cause of the recent protests is an extradition bill proposed because there is no legal way to prevent criminals from escaping charges when they flee to Hong Kong. The bill was proposed by the Hong Kong government in February 2019 to establish a mechanism to transfer fugitives in Hong Kong to Taiwan, Macau or Mainland China. Extradition laws are a legal norm between countries and within countries (e.g. between states), and since Hong Kong is part of China, it is pretty basic. In fact, in 1998, a pro-democracy legislator, Martin Lee , proposed a law similar to the one he now opposes to ensure a person is prosecuted and tried at the place of the offense. The push for the bill came in 2018 when a Hong Kong resident Chan Tong-kai allegedly killed his pregnant girlfriend, Poon Hiu-wing, in Taiwan, then returned to Hong Kong. Chan admitted he killed Poon to Hong Kong police, but the police were unable to charge him for murder or extradite him to Taiwan because no agreement was in place. The proposed law covered 46 types of crimes that are recognized as serious offenses across the globe. These include murder, rape, and sexual offenses, assaults, kidnapping, immigration violations, and drug offenses as well as property offenses like robbery, burglary and arson and other traditional criminal offenses. It also included business and financial crimes. Months before the street protests, the business community expressed opposition to the law. Hong Kong’s two pro-business parties urged the government to exempt white-collar crimes from the list of offenses covered by any future extradition agreement. There was escalating pressure from the city’s business heavyweights . The American Chamber of Commerce, AmCham, a fifty-year-old organization that represents over 1,200 US companies doing business in Hong Kong, opposed the proposal. AmCham said it would damage the city’s reputation: “Any change in extradition arrangements that substantially expands the possibility of arrest and rendition … of international business executives residing in or transiting through Hong Kong as a result of allegations of economic crime made by the mainland government … would undermine perceptions of Hong Kong as a safe and secure haven for international business operations.” Kurt Tong, the top US diplomat in Hong Kong, said in March that the proposal could complicate relations between Washington and Hong Kong. Indeed, the Center for International Private Enterprise,  a n arm of NED said the proposed law would undermine economic freedom, cause capital flight and threaten Hong Kong’s status as a hub for global commerce. They pointed to a bipartisan letter signed by eight members of Congress, including Senators Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, and Steve Daines and Members of the House of Representatives, Jim McGovern, Ben McAdams, Chris Smith, Tom Suozzi, and Brian Mast opposing the bill. Proponents of the bill responded by  exempting nine of the economic crimes and made extradition only for crimes punishable by at least seven years in prison. These changes did not satisfy big business advocates. The Mass Protests and US Role From this attention to the law, opposition grew with the formation of a coalition to organize protests. As Alexander Rubinstein reports , “the coalition cited by Hong Kong media, including the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Free Press , as organizers of the anti-extradition law demonstrations is called the Civil Human Rights Front. That organization’s website lists the NED-funded HKHRM [Human Rights Monitor], Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Civic Party, the Labour Party, and the Democratic Party as members of the coalition.” HKHRM alone received more than $1.9 million in funds from the NED between 1995 and 2013. Major protests began in June. Building the anti-China movement in Hong Kong has been a long-term, NED project since 1996 . In 2012, NED invested $460,000 through its National Democratic Institute , to build the anti-China movement (aka pro-democracy movement), particularly among university students. Two years later, the mass protests of Occupy Central occurred. In a 2016 Open Letter to Kurt Tong , these NED grants and others were pointed out and Tong was asked if the US was funding a Hong Kong independence movement. During the current protests, organizers were photographed meeting with Julie Eadeh, the political unit chief of US Consulate General, in a Hong Kong hotel. They also met with China Hawks in Washington, DC including Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton, Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Larry Diamond, a co-editor of the NED’s publication and a co-chair of research , has been openly encouraging the protesters. He delivered a video message of support during their rally this weekend. Protests have included many elements of US color revolutions with tactics such as violence — attacks on bystanders, media, police and emergency personnel. Similar tactics were used in Ukraine , Nicaragua , and Venezuela , e.g. violent street barricades. US officials and media criticized the government’s response to the violent protests, even though they have been silent on the extreme police violence against the Yellow Vests in France . Demonstrators also use swarming techniques and sophisticated social media messaging targeting people in the US. Mass protests have continued. On July 9, Chief Executive Carrie Lam pronounced the bill dead and suspended it. Protesters are now calling for the bill to be withdrawn, Lam to resign and police to be investigated. For more on the protests and US involvement, listen to our interview with K. J. Noh on Clearing the FOG (available on Monday). What Is Driving Discontent in Hong Kong? Image on the right: Makeshift shelters at Tung Chau Street Temporary Market in Sham Shui Po. Photo: Nora Tam The source of unrest in Hong Kong is the economic insecurity stemming from capitalism. In 1997, Britain and China agreed to leave “the previous capitalist system” in place for 50 years. Hong Kong has been ranked as the world’s freest economy in the Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom since 1995 when the index began. In 1990, Milton Friedman  described Hong Kong as the best example of a free-market economy. Its ranking is based on low taxes, light regulations, strong property rights, business freedom, and openness to global commerce. Graeme Maxton writes in the South China Morning Post : “The only way to restore order is through a radical change in Hong Kong’s economic policies. After decades of doing almost nothing, and letting the free market rule, it is time for the Hong Kong government to do what it is there for; to govern in the interests of the majority .” The issue is not the extradition proposal, Carrie Lam or China. What we are witnessing is an unrestricted neo-liberal economy, described as a free market on steroids . Hong Kong’s economy relative to China’s gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen from a peak of 27 percent in 1993 to less than 3 percent in 2017. During this time, China has had tremendous growth, including in nearby market-friendly Shenzen, while Hong Kong has not. As Sara Flounders writes, “For the last 10 years wages have been stagnant in Hong Kong while rents have increased 300 percent; it is the most expensive city in the world. In Shenzhen, wages have increased 8 percent every year, and more than 1 million new, public, green housing units at low rates are nearing completion.” Hong Kong has the world’s highest rents , a widening wealth gap and a poverty rate of 20 percent . In China, the poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, according to the World Bank . Hong Kong In The Chinese Context Ellen Brown writes in “Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China ,” that the Chinese government owns 80 percent of banks, which make favorable loans to businesses, and subsidizes worker costs. The US views China subsidizing its economy as an unfair trade advantage, while China sees long-term, planned growth as smarter than short-term profits for shareholders. The Chinese model of state-controlled capitalism (some call it a form of socialism) has lifted 800 million people out of poverty and built a middle class of over 420 million people, growing from four percent in 2002, to 31 percent . The top twelve Chinese companies on the Fortune 500 are all state-owned and state-subsidized including oil, solar energy, telecommunications, engineering, construction companies, banks, and the auto industry. China has the second-largest GDP, and the largest economy based on Purchasing Power Parity GDP, according to the CIA , IMF and World Bank . China does have significant problems. There are thousands of documented demonstrations, strikes and labor actions in China annually,  serious environmental challenges , inequality and social control through the use of surveillance technology. How China responds to these challenges is a test for their governance. China describes itself as having an intraparty democracy. The eight other legal “democratic parties” that are allowed to participate in the political system cooperate with but do not compete with the Communist Party. There are also local elections for candidates focused on grassroots issues. China views western democracy and economics as flawed and does not try to emulate them but is creating its own system. China is led by engineers and scientists, not by lawyers and business people. It approaches policy decisions through research and experimentation. Every city and every district is involved in some sort of experimentation including free trade zones, poverty reduction, and education reform. “There are pilot schools, pilot cities, pilot hospitals, pilot markets, pilot everything under the sun, the whole China is basically a giant portfolio of experiments, with mayors and provincial governors as Primary Investigators.” In this system, Hong Kong could be viewed as an experiment in neoliberal capitalism. The Communist Party knows that to keep its hold on power, it must combat inequalities and shift the economy towards a more efficient and more ecological model. Beijing has set a date of 2050 to become a “socialist society” and to achieve that, it seeks improvements in social , labor and environmental fields. Where does Hong Kong fit into these long-term plans? With 2047 as the year for the end of the agreement with the UK, US and western powers are working toward preserving their capitalist dystopia of Hong Kong and manufacturing consensus for long-term conflict with China. How this conflict of economic and political systems turns out depends on whether China can confront its contradictions, whether Hong Kongers can address the source of their problems and whether US empire can continue its dollar, political and military dominance. Today’s conflicts in Hong Kong are rooted in all of these realities. * Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published. Featured image is from Sky News Hong Kong: Can Two Million Marchers Be Wrong? The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Global Research, 2019 Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page Become a Member of Global Research > On Aug 30, 2019, at 16:45, J.B. Nicholson via Peace wrote: > > News from Neptune #434 > Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFdeGjETKXE > A "What the 2020 Election Is About" edition > > A list of links to items referenced on the show. > > > > Recent Joe Biden talk (and talk of those speaking on his behalf) courtesy of the Jimmy Dore program > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5xb4llOhgU -- Biden's Press Secretary's "word salad" on how climate change debate is a bad idea and the time for it was in the past (when the Democrats also said it was a bad idea to have that debate) > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbV3l5j3S4E -- Jill Biden admitting her husband is a horrible choice but somehow 'electable' and ultimately we must give up everything to "defeat Trump", right? > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbE2E9dvGg -- Biden attacking Mexicans in secret video. > > Rep. Tulsi Gabbard interviewed by CBS > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzVSYBNgOeI -- "Defeating Trump" is Rep. Gabbard's goal even if it means supporting whatever Democrat gets the nomination. > https://www.cbsnews.com/video/tulsi-gabbard-on-her-political-future/ -- a brief video ending with Rep. Gabbard conceding that she'll endorse any Democrat, even one who holds values ostensibly opposite to hers. > > Related: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaH2rSgQzLE -- Bernie Sanders said he'll vote for Biden in 2020 if Biden is the nominee. > > J.B. Nicholson on "Is Tulsi Gabbard really anti-war? No, she’s pro-drone and for “surgical strikes”" > https://digitalcitizen.info/2019/02/13/is-tulsi-gabbard-really-anti-war-no-shes-pro-drone-and-for-surgical-strikes/ > > B.B. King > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.B._King > > B.B. King's "The Thrill is Gone" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oica5jG7FpU > > Tulsi Gabbard with The Intercept in January 2018 > https://theintercept.com/2018/01/17/intercepted-podcast-white-mirror/ > > Primo Nutmeg interview > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0GyqD0t2t8 -- video > http://audio.voxnest.com/stream/9417a19f73964ff599a9cb7b84a5d268/www.buzzsprout.com/205226/1016930-171-tulsi-gabbard.mp3?blob_id=2161843 -- audio > > David Green on "Concerns voiced about Bend the Arc" letter to the News-Gazette > https://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor-concerns-voiced-about-bend-the-arc/article_99b2ac36-4279-5cad-8b60-892ca30dde6e.html > > Donald Trump on Jewish "great disloyalty" for voting Democrat > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/us/politics/trump-jewish-voters.html -- Julie Hirschfeld Davis on "Trump Accuses Jewish Democrats of ‘Great Disloyalty’" > https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/459219-most-voters-disapprove-of-trumps-jewish-loyalty-comment-poll -- Rachel Frazin on "Most voters disapprove of Trump's Jewish 'loyalty' comment: poll" > > > Long Stephen Miller articles from The New York Times > > Rasputin > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin > > Jason DeParle on "How Stephen Miller Seized the Moment to Battle Immigration" (from 2019-08-17) > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/us/politics/stephen-miller-immigration-trump.html > > Michelle Cottle on "Stephen Miller Can’t Act Alone" (from 2019-04-09) > https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/opinion/stephen-miller-trump-immigration.html > > Matt Flegenheimer on "Stephen Miller, the Powerful Survivor on the President’s Right Flank" (from 2017-10-09) > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/us/politics/stephen-miller-trump-white-house.html > > > > > Norman Finkelstein on Israel being an "alt-right country" > > https://www.youtube.com/embed/8e2uhX4QfJw -- Norman Finkelstein Q&A > > Peter Bolton on "Norman Finkelstein tells The Canary that anti-Corbyn smears have ‘nothing whatever to do with antisemitism’" > https://www.thecanary.co/exclusive/2019/08/15/norman-finkelstein-tells-the-canary-that-anti-corbyn-smears-have-nothing-whatever-to-do-with-antisemitism/ > > DaysOfPalestine.com on "Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein says ‘Israel is a nation of murderers’ loved by the far right" > https://daysofpalestine.com/post/12616/jewish-scholar-norman-finkelstein-says-%E2%80%98israel-is-a-nation-of-murderers%E2%80%99-loved-by-the-far-right > > > > Patrick Cockburn articles on independent.co.uk > https://www.independent.co.uk/author/patrick-cockburn > "Patrick Cockburn is an award-winning Independent columnist who specialises in analysis of Iraq, Syria and wars in the Middle East. He has been with The Independent since 1990." > > Lily Puckett on "Trump administration considering blocking $250m in military assistance to Ukraine" > https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-ukraine-military-funding-john-bolton-russia-pentagon-latest-a9084291.html > > Continuity of policy: US administrations supporting Nazis > https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html -- contains pointer to a 600-page Justice Department report (http://documents.nytimes.com/confidential-report-provides-new-evidence-of-notorious-nazi-cases?ref=us#p=1) about how Nazis were given "safe haven" in US > https://www.stpete4peace.org/Ukraine -- including criticism of "Progressive media provides cover for US intentions in Ukraine" > https://www.rt.com/news/450740-ukraine-radio-nazi-article/ -- "US-funded Ukrainian radio defends neo-Nazi group, deletes article when called out" > > > > Jimmy Dore on New York Times editorial board's "pathetic apology for Russiagate coverage failure" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BivCPmU3tjo > > > > David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles > https://anticapitalistchronicles.libsyn.com/ > RSS feed: https://anticapitalistchronicles.libsyn.com/rss > > David Harvey interview in Jacobin > https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/ > > "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey > ISBN-13: 978-0199283279 > ISBN-10: 0199283273 > > "Capital in the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas Piketty > ISBN-10: 0674979850 > ISBN-13: 978-0674979857 > Complete book: https://dowbor.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf > > Michael Roberts' blog "The Next Recession" > https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/ > > Recent Dean Baker articles on Trump's trade war with China > https://fair.org/home/dean-baker-on-trumps-trade-war-leo-fitzpatrick-on-wireless-merger/ > https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-trade-war-with-china-is-waged-to-make-the-rich-richer/ > > > > Moderate Rebels (Max Blumenthal & Ben Norton) on "Hong Kong's real colonial history, and the protests' anti-China right-wing nativism - with Carl Zha" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a38bOtUEXcc -- video > https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/moderaterebels/Moderate_Rebels_Hong_Kong_Carl_Zha_part_1.mp3?dest-id=553365 -- audio > > Doug Henwood interviews Brian Hioe on Hong Kong protests > http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2019/19_08_22.mp3 > > > > > > Noam Chomsky on reading business press > > https://www.ft.com/content/bcdefd38-3beb-3506-b24c-82285ac87f6c > "My impression in general is that the business press is more open, ... get the facts right..." (used as part of an ad for Financial Times) > > https://chomsky.info/20081010/ > http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,583454,00.html -- October 10, 2008 Der Spiegel interview of Chomsky includes: >> SPIEGEL: How does it benefit politicians when the populace drives a lot, >> eats a lot and goes shopping a lot? > >> Chomsky: Consumption distracts people. You cannot control your own >> population by force, but it can be distracted by consumption. The >> business press has been quite explicit about this goal. > https://chomsky.info/20101101/ > http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267553 -- November 1, 2010 Outlook magazine (from India) interview of Chomsky includes: >> What has to be done is not really specific to the media. It is to >> develop a more functional democratic society, a more democratic culture. >> As far as the elites are concerned they want the public to be >> disciplined, passive, obedient and directed to other things. Take a look >> at the history of the huge public relations and advertising industry >> that we have today. It developed in the freest countries in the world — >> England and the US — around the time of the First World War. >> Incidentally, that was the time Lippmann was writing. It was developed >> very consciously, out of the understanding that enough freedom had been >> won by popular struggle and the population could not be controlled by >> force. Therefore, it was thought necessary to control attitudes and >> beliefs. In the business press of the 1920s, you can read very openly >> about the need to divert people to what they call the superficial thing >> in life like fashionable consumption. If we can direct people to that, >> they will keep out of our hair, we can run things. You see that in >> India, certainly. > > Business Insider > https://www.businessinsider.com/ > > Sonam Sheth on "US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin" > https://www.businessinsider.com/spies-react-trump-g7-summit-russian-asset-2019-8 > > -J > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace