From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat May 1 00:01:58 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2021 19:01:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Highly valuable and detailed VDO related to Afghanistan with Aaron Mate & Scott Horton References: Message-ID: > > A podcast with Aaron Mate of the Moderate Rebels, interviewing Scott Horton in relation to Afghanistan. Details provided that we have never seen or heard before from beginning to end, assuming there will be an end. > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAK1KGCJgn0 > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace From jbn at forestfield.org Sun May 2 16:51:10 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sun, 2 May 2021 11:51:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Recommended videos for AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV Message-ID: Here are the videos I recommended to run during AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV. As a reminder: If anyone else has anything to run, please feel free to get your pointers to Jason Liggett (jcliggett at urbanaillinois.us). I routinely ask him to prioritize AWARE members pointers over mine for AWARE on the Air, Carl Estabrook & David Green's pointers over mine for News from Neptune, and David Johnson's pointers over mine for Labor's World View TV. -J Status Coup https://youtube.com/watch?v=mAqWgxbW77c (12m 44s) -- "Flint Water is STILL a Crisis Seven Years Later and No One is Talking About It" Grayzone https://youtube.com/watch?v=6AXcjwX-JGA (35m 03) -- "BlueAnon: Glenn Greenwald on why Russiagate disinformation never ends" RT https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dg5YKSLHfZI (26m 55s) -- "Police Abuse & Torture" TheAnalysis.news https://youtube.com/watch?v=s4VAu-HTEmc (56m 18s) -- "10 Things Wrong With Biden?s Foreign Policy ? Medea Benjamin" Democracy at Work https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cggma2u3_S8 (9m 07s) -- "AskProfWolff: Latin America's Pink Tide" https://youtube.com/watch?v=bzLq4cMV-qk (4m 02s) -- "Three More Reasons There Won't Be an Economic Boom - Richard Wolff" https://youtube.com/watch?v=XET40VvMrSk (8m 53s) -- "Ask Prof Wolff: How Anti-Capitalists Defeat 'Capital Flight'" https://youtube.com/watch?v=jNuqjRqeIDw (11m 10s) -- "Ask Prof Wolff: Capitalism and Racism" laborvideo https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ZL9cSolNFw (6m 49s) -- "On Workers Memorial Day 2021 Former OSHA WPP Lawyer & Investigator Darrell Whitman Speaks Out!" https://youtube.com/watch?v=v2E6yaqF8_A (15m 09s) -- "2021 May Day San Francisco ILWU Marches & Supports Chilean Dockworkers & Angela Davis Speaks Out" https://youtube.com/watch?v=z9ZqsB_rQq0 (6m 28s) -- "On May Day 2021 ILWU Backs Chilean Dockers In San Francisco! Solidarity Has No Borders" From jbn at forestfield.org Sun May 2 17:19:31 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sun, 2 May 2021 12:19:31 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Highly recommended Syrian gas attack coverage, purposefully ignored by establishment media and covered by alternative media Message-ID: <683b20a2-27e8-11ef-4715-36a367085def@forestfield.org> Here's how consent is manufactured -- more on the fake Douma gas attack where actual murders are being covered up and not talked about by the establishment media (ABC, NBC, CBS, Democracy Now, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Wikipedia articles, and so many more) and their sycophants (such as "The Young Turks"). Journalist Aaron Mat? has been covering this story at The Grayzone on his show Push Back with Aaron Mat?. He's also discussed (on Jimmy Dore's show) that Democracy Now would not cover this story. https://youtube.com/watch?v=FTB6yM69KpA (39m 35s) -- "Biggest Cover-Up Since Iraq Exposed By Journalist Aaron Mat?" From jbn at forestfield.org Mon May 3 23:33:26 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 18:33:26 -0500 Subject: [Peace] More on why Democracy Now and The Intercept are establishment media Message-ID: <5f4b15bd-5959-7ba5-d6d5-a920edfd4057@forestfield.org> Aaron Mat? and Glenn Greenwald discuss the "Left media promoting propaganda it once exposed". I highly recommend this and the preceding segment of this interview: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6AXcjwX-JGA (35m 03s) -- "BlueAnon: Glenn Greenwald on why Russiagate disinformation never ends" https://yewtu.be/watch?v=FoCDZESfgV4 (19m 23s) -- "Neocon Now!: Glenn Greenwald on Left media promoting propaganda it once exposed" I can't recommend the latter for UPTV because Glenn Greenwald rightly called Stuart Stevens' book "It Was All a Lie" a "shitty book" about 5 minutes into the second segment listed above. But that doesn't stop me from recommending this clip to you, here, and I do strongly recommend both of these clips. They also bring up Jimmy Dore's show because they're both repeat guests on Dore's show and because Dore's show is one of the few places you can find the kind of expos?s you used to get on, for example, Democracy Now. DN used to have guests on who did the journalism needed to uncover the 2003 Iraq War lies and DN used to provide this on a regular ("drumbeat") basis. No more, now DN has ceded that work to Jimmy Dore (as Dore regularly says, "Thanks for leaving me this wide lane" to show that he can do journalism better than you and do it while he's high on cannabis, which he often is). Now things are different for DN. As Greenwald pointed out just after a clip of Stevens on DN hawking his book at 5m 36s: > Glenn Greenwald: ...but he [Stuart Stevens] went on and poured that book out and > [DN co-hosts] Amy [Goodman] and Juan Gonzalez talked about talked about this book > like it was such an important piece of political literature, and he [Stuart > Stevens] got to talk all about how George Bush was genuine a compassionate > conservative and they didn't say, 'well, isn't, like, rendition and torture, and > like Guantanamo, and lying to destroy Iraq, and letting New Orleans drown contrary > to the view that compassionate conservatism reigned in the Bush years?'. They said > nothing! He was treated like -- what happened is the Trump era broke everybody's > brain in the center left or left-wing media not everybody's brain to the point > where everything became binary: you were either pro-Trump or anti-Trump and if you > were anti-Trump you are considered to be an ally, somebody who is, you know, > deserves adoration and support -- Bill Kristol, David Frum -- became stars of > MSNBC because of that framework and that's what led Stuart Stevens to onto > Democracy Now. Conversely, if you weren't sufficiently anti-Trump, if you didn't > shape your entire politics to oppose Trump, if you didn't endorse every lie > disseminated in the name of stopping Trump, you became an enemy to the point where > you are blackballed. So, Democracy Now which always, like The Intercept, conceived > of itself as earring dissident marginalized voices; it wasn't just me, they don't > put anyone on who's banned from MSNBC or CNN because of left wing descent. Even > Matt Taibbi or yourself, it's just that they are indistinguishable from all of the > liberal outlets that they always perceived and conceived of themselves as being > opposed to and they're no different; they fit perfectly into the kind of Vox, you > know, MSNBC, Talking Points Memo, pro-DNC media, they do nothing different! All > the people they put on could easily go on those programs and do, and all the > people they ban and exclude are excluded and banned from those same networks. And > that has contaminated so much center-left and left-laying media that, you know, > it's almost impossible to find distinctions between them and CNN or the New York > Times at this point. Regarding "the Trump era [nearly] broke everybody's brain": I find this to be rather inarticulately expressed, and I can understand the social pressure Mat? and Greenwald discuss -- I think that the establishment outlets vet their interviewers/newsreaders for qualities that tend toward adopting whatever line their advertisers like -- but I don't think people are unaware of where their money comes from and I think people work to preserve that income and I doubt few need to explicitly be told to do something conformant (those people who need such reminders are probably fired in favor of those who demonstrate obeisance). Read twitter.com account posts from young stand-up comics and you'll find plenty of people who echo mainstream narrative, don't exhibit serious analytical skill, and effectively audition themselves for establishment media jobs. I believe it was Max Blumenthal who had another take on this: that Ford Foundation funding provides a way to understand the change for DN. I'll see if I can find the reference, but the gist was that the DN co-host Nermeen Shaikh was basically supplied by or approved by the Ford Foundation and DN takes Ford Foundation money. That money informs why DN became supportive of the establishment. That said, I think that the interview is well worth your time to hear in its entirety. The vast majority of it is prescient to explain what frauds the "left" media is. -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu May 6 12:13:20 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Thu, 6 May 2021 07:13:20 -0500 Subject: [Peace] David Johnson is in the hospital Message-ID: Message from his daughter on FB 13h ? Update on my dad: his quadruple bypass surgery was successful! They won?t be waking him up until tomorrow while they check for any issues that may arise, but we are so incredibly relieved that the surgery went well. There is still a long road to recovery ahead and hopefully no complications, so continued thoughts and prayers are much needed. My mom and I are so appreciative of all the love we?ve received from you all! Thank you so much! Danielle Galardy is withHeidi Johnson . May?4?at?2:21?PM ? Please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers. My dad went in this morning for what we thought was a simple stent procedure for his heart, only to find out shortly into the surgery that it was much more serious than they thought. He will need quadruple or possibly quintuple bypass surgery, happening tomorrow. My mom and I are devastated and so worried about him. Even worse, I?m not able to go see him at all due to Covid restrictions, only my mom can go. We could use all the good vibes / thoughts / prayers right now for a successful surgery and recovery for my dad -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Sat May 8 22:41:14 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 17:41:14 -0500 Subject: [Peace] John Kiriakou on Obama/Biden just before Kiriakou was sent to prison for letting us know more about our torture program Message-ID: An old John Kiriakou interview conducted shortly before he went to prison for releasing info on US's torture program. The interview is still pertinent and it helps put the entire Obama/Biden administration into context. https://youtube.com/watch?v=kXI_U2w0WSM -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat May 8 23:33:10 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Sat, 8 May 2021 18:33:10 -0500 Subject: [Peace] For those wishing to write to Daniel Hale Message-ID: For those wanting to write Daniel Hale, who exposed so much of the criminality and ineffectiveness of the US drone assasination program, his address is: Daniel E. Hale William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Ctr. 2001 Mill Rd. Alexandria, VA 22314 **only on plain white paper in black ink or printed!** Without Daniel, we would not have the ironclad evidence that we do have that the US drone program kills 90% civilians, and that dozens of civilians are killed for each targeted person killed. We also have proof of deliberate strikes, as a matter of tactics and policy, by US forces on first responders, e.g. ambulance crews, as well as the use of targeting individuals due to ?patterns? that resemble terrorists; which in practice means that these targeted individuals are of a certain age, live in a certain area, and have a daily routine that someone in an office in the US determines to be the signature of a terrorist as determined by a camera from 12,000 feet in the air. These are all war crimes, which, of course is bad enough, but these drone strikes are also one of the leading reasons why people join and support anti-US groups, so not only immoral and criminal, but incredibly counter-productive. Please write to Daniel.? Thank you Felice Cohen-Joppa for Daniel?s address. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Tue May 11 23:18:29 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 18:18:29 -0500 Subject: [Peace] March & Rally for Justice in Palestine Wed. in Chicago Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jbn at forestfield.org Wed May 12 00:08:45 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Tue, 11 May 2021 19:08:45 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Recommended videos for AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV Message-ID: Here are the videos I recommended to run during AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV. As a reminder: If anyone else has anything to run, please feel free to get your pointers to Jason Liggett (jcliggett at urbanaillinois.us). I routinely ask him to prioritize AWARE members pointers over mine for AWARE on the Air, Carl Estabrook & David Green's pointers over mine for News from Neptune, and David Johnson's pointers over mine for Labor's World View TV. -J RT https://youtube.com/watch?v=PC_sh5DygPM (28m) -- "Renegade Inc | Workers - Don't Just Organise, Unionise!" Empire Files with Abby Martin https://youtube.com/watch?v=HnZSaKYmP2s (1h 23m 58s) -- "Gaza Fights For Freedom (2019) | Full Documentary | Directed by Abby Martin" -- a very important (and, sadly, still timely) documentary on how we're complicit in Israel killing Palestinians MintPressNews https://youtube.com/watch?v=7di4ZhTpu0c (10m 23s) -- "Meet The Neo-Nazi Advising Colombian Police On How To Break The National Strike" Grayzone https://youtube.com/watch?v=S-ZGdAi8Ji0 (1h 28m 14s) -- "Economist Michael Hudson on new cold war, Super Imperialism, China & Russia, dedollarization" laborvideo https://youtube.com/watch?v=KZfdLhg-CoQ (24m 02s) -- "CCSF Faculty & Students Rally & Speak-out As AFT 2121 Leaders Make Major Concessions On Salaries" Reaction to the CIA's latest "woke" ad campaign: RT & Empire Files. https://youtube.com/watch?v=T_6RBnMP4yk (2m 01s) -- "HUMANS OF RT* (*Spoof of THAT CIA video)" https://youtube.com/watch?v=TsoA-QGHJPA (7m 01s) -- "The Woke CIA PsyOp" From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed May 12 11:51:46 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 06:51:46 -0500 Subject: [Peace] RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT Message-ID: Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson testifies on the proposal to establish a United States Space Force during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., April 11, 2019. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Staff Sgt. Rusty Frank) nuclear weapons How a hearing on nuclear weapons shows all that?s wrong with US foreign policy making The panel with no diversity of views was meant to reinforce a forgone conclusion: more money for more weapons. May 5, 2021 Written by Joe Cirincione If you want to understand why our nuclear strategy is so badly out of date, and out of touch with most Americans, look no further than the abysmal hearing last week staged by the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. A panel of old white men spent 90 minutes hectoring Congress to replace every weapon in the U.S. arsenal and to maintain the Cold War policies that repeatedly brought us to the brink of nuclear war. The hearing was titularly chaired by Senator Angus King but choreographed by subcommittee staff director Jonathan Epstein, who is said to be the guiding force behind the subcommittee. The witnesses were selected to present a nearly uniform endorsement of existing programs and contracts, particularly the controversial new intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, and to rebut arguments in favor of revising obsolete Cold War doctrines. Leading the panel was Frank Miller, who had a large role in crafting the nuclear postures of President George W. Bush and Donald Trump. He is now a defense lobbyist and consultant, affiliated with the think tank CSIS that receives substantial contributions from nuclear weapons contractors. He ?has made a career ? and likely a small fortune ? pushing a hawkish nuclear policy,? according to one investigative reporter. Also on the panel was Brad Roberts, a director at the nuclear weapons contractor, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Roberts was originally in charge of President Barack Obama?s nuclear posture review but produced a draft so far to the right of Obama?s preferences that it had to be redone. At the Pentagon, Roberts resisted Obama?s policy reform efforts, according to those familiar with the review process. Retired general Claude Robert Kehler, former commander of the Strategic Command and now on the board of the satellite company, Maxar Technologies, was in sync with Miller and Roberts on the panel, boosting a new ICBM ?as a mainstay of deterrence.? He opposed any changes to nuclear policies, including taking missiles off hair-trigger alert or requiring the president to get a second opinion before launching a nuclear war. Our defense, he said, ?is based on our demonstrated capabilities and the willpower to use nuclear weapons.? Paul Bracken of Yale University seems to have been added to provide an air of academic objectivity. He offered mildly differing opinions, including that the policy of not using nuclear weapons first ?should not be rejected out of hand.? But his views were overshadowed by Roberts, who spent his entire testimony attacking the recommendations of former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Ploughshares Fund Policy Director Tom Collina, who advocate for a ?no first use ? policy canceling the new $264 Billion ICBM. Both are under active consideration by the Biden administration and opposed by the nuclear weapons industry. Roberts said he was specifically asked to rebut Perry and Collina?s new book, ?The Button .? Miller piled on, denouncing a no first use policy as ?narcissistic, self-indulgent, dangerous and destabilizing.? Neither Perry nor Collina were allowed to be present at the hearing but they?re now trying to get King to convene another hearing so they can present alternative views. When I was a national security congressional staffer, we thought that the best hearings were ones where we presented the best witnesses with various points of view and let them argue in front of the members. That is not how it is done anymore. Last week?s hearing was typical of current congressional nuclear policy hearings: a stacked deck, more show than debate, and designed to validate existing programs, contracts, and policies rather than investigate them. I worked on the House Armed Services Committee against the nuclear buildup of the Reagan administration and for procurement reform. One day, while walking down the halls of the Rayburn building, a veteran staffer put his arm around my shoulder and said, ?Joe, 95 percent of what we do here is keep the money flowing. The sooner you realize that, the happier you?ll be.? He wasn?t criticizing me; he was trying to help me understand the nature of the committee. It is even more true today. Congress rubber-stamps Pentagon budgets with little oversight. Try to name the last congressional investigation into Pentagon procurement, or the last time Congress actually cancelled a weapons program. But now the Democratic controlled Congress is directly flouting President Biden?s promise to develop a foreign policy for the middle class . National security adviser Jake Sullivan says that Biden has ?tasked us with reimagining our national security for the unprecedented combination of crises we face at home and abroad: the pandemic, the economic crisis, technological disruption, threats to democracy, racial injustice, and inequality in all forms.? None of that is present during congressional hearings on U.S. foreign policy. King?s hearing was restricted not just by race, gender, and philosophy but also by a narrow view of security. It confined consideration to abstract military theories of deterrence and witnesses? claims of how the failure to build new weapons would supposedly undermine U.S. credibility. Like Sherlock Holmes? dog that did not bark, the most striking aspect of this hearing was the lack of any consideration for the burden of paying for these new systems, of the opportunity costs, of the morality of nuclear weapons, the humanitarian consequences of using these weapons, or the environmental impact of their production and deployment. Rather than follow Biden?s lead, King?s hearings (and most defense hearings) continue a profoundly undemocratic process. A process that believes that nuclear policy is so complex that ?only those with special knowledge of weapons capability and strategic thinking should have the power to make policy for all of us in the interests of national security,? writes policy expert Kennette Benedict. ?But if that is the case,? she adds, ?then this special class of people is being given sole responsibility for deciding whether or not to kill millions and destroy vast areas of the planet by firing nuclear weapons ? without any participation by the people who paid for the weapons with their taxes or by those who voted for the leaders who give the final orders.? Compounding this myopia, King lead a group of senators on a trip this past weekend to the U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska and the ICBM base at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. They got a heavy dose of pro-weapons arguments. Still, King claims that he?s ?not fully convinced? on the need for a new ICBM. The independent senator from Maine should convene a new hearing, better yet, a series of hearings to fundamentally examine the basis and consequences of a nuclear policy forged in the fearful days of the Cold War ? as Miller proudly said, ?U.S. nuclear policy is virtually unchanged since the Kennedy years.? But this time include all the Americans impacted by nuclear policy. Congress should follow Biden?s lead and help craft policies ?not to meet yesterday?s challenges, but today?s and tomorrow?s.? ?There?s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy,? says Biden. ?Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind.? It is time for Congress to get on board. Written by Joe Cirincione -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed May 12 13:30:12 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 08:30:12 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Most important: Ben Norton on the CIA and the fake left. Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMap-6KxQJIBen From jbn at forestfield.org Wed May 12 23:59:03 2021 From: jbn at forestfield.org (J.B. Nicholson) Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 18:59:03 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Max Blumenthal on Jimmy Dore show regarding Israel government killing Palestinians with US backing Message-ID: <7d4d7a5d-5af9-5386-7665-e60753b76022@forestfield.org> Last night's Jimmy Dore live show with The Grayzone's -- https://thegrayzone.com/ -- Max Blumenthal was quite informative particularly for an anti-war group such as AWARE: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7dbLAiEdQv4 -- "DISGUSTING: Biden Admin Neutral On Child Murder" https://youtube.com/watch?v=E1wKxfT0URo -- "CAUGHT: NY Times Deceptively Editing Out Truth About Israel" Both segments are worth watching. Unfortunately we can't play these segments on UPTV due to prohibitions on speech. But please don't let that stop you from watching the segments and engaging in discussion or debate. -J From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun May 16 14:08:38 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Sun, 16 May 2021 09:08:38 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Chris Hedges from article/podcast in 2016 Message-ID: Chris Hedges is often referred to as morbid, or a nihilist. Yes, he is, but I find him refreshing in that he doesn't offer false hope, he offers truth as to where we are, and where we are headed if we don't do something about it. He offers a solution, and it's not the usual nonsense offered by other intellectuals, such as voting for the "right candidate." He suggests civil disobedience/ resistance with critical mass movements. I take it a step further requiring a vanguard offering a plan, shared goals of system change. Hedges makes it clear that protests, strikes, sit downs, must be non-violent, to which I agree. I don't agree with him on everything, such as the goal of "scaring government into doing the peoples bidding," as was done in the seventies influencing Nixon to implement reforms, as was done by Roosevelt with his introduction of programs to save humanity, and capitalism. I believe it's time, beyond time, to end capitalism as we know it, and replace it with a new system of socialism. US socialism won't look anything like that of other socialist nations as every culture with its own material conditions differs in results. To be clear, I'm not a pacifist, I support uprisings under certain conditions such as "occupation," but as a tactic to engage large masses of the American people it is necessary to remain non-violent, though we know the powers that be will respond with violence. This should not however, deter us from taking action, as the violence being perpetrated against people's around the world by our government and ally's/proxy's needs to end. https://www.pacificapost.com/confronting-signs-of-a-society-in-decline From kmedina67 at gmail.com Mon May 17 16:46:00 2021 From: kmedina67 at gmail.com (kmedina67) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 11:46:00 -0500 Subject: [Peace] This Wednesday: Emergency Broadband Benefit Info-Session In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <60a29dcc.1c69fb81.a8af2.d82a@mx.google.com> * group: MediaJustice:?Internet Rights and Platform Accountability* goal : share information* goal: partner with communities on creating community relevant outreach?Event (virtual):?Emergency Broadband Benefit ProgramWednesday May 19th, 2021. 3:30pmCentral time to 5pmCentral Time.?RSVP?here!See forwarded email below. - karen medina -------- Original message --------From: Jai Dulani Date: 5/17/21 08:53 (GMT-06:00) To: Media Justice Exchange Listserv Subject: [MJ Exchange] This Wednesday: Emergency Broadband Benefit Info-Session Dear Network Members,?Join us this Wednesday?for?an?EBB?MediaJustice Info-Session,?led by Brandon Forester, National Organizer for Internet Rights and Platform Accountability.?We will have resources to share with you, information about how the program will work and how you can help promote the program to your folks. We'll also have plenty of time for questions and answers. Please note we're also looking for folks to partner with on creating community relevant outreach and explainer materials like radio PSAs, Flyers and anything else we can think of!Wednesday May 19th. 1:30pm - 3pm PT/ 4:30pm - 6:00pm EST.?RSVP?here!Warmly,Dulani?Sesi?n informativa sobre el EBB de MediaJustice, Ven a una sesi?n informativa de MediaJustice sobre el Programa de Beneficio de Emergencia Para Internet dirigida por Brandon Forester, Organizador Nacional de Derechos de Internet y Responsabilidad de la Plataforma. Tendremos recursos que compartir al respecto, informaci?n sobre c?mo funcionar? el programa y c?mo puedes ayudar a promover el programa entre tu gente. Tambi?n tendremos mucho tiempo dedicado a las preguntas y respuestas. Adem?s, estamos buscando miembres de la red para colaborar en la creaci?n de materiales de divulgaci?n y para explicar el programa a la comunidad, tales como anuncios de servicio p?blico en la radio, folletos y cualquier otra cosa que se nos ocurra.?Mi?rcoles 19 de mayo. 1:30pm - 3pm PT/ 4:30pm - 6:00pm EST. Confirme su asistencia?aqu?.-- DulaniMediaJustice |?mediajustice.orgNetwork Education Coordinator -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Media Justice Exchange Listserv" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to exchange+unsubscribe at mediajustice.org. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/mediajustice.org/d/msgid/exchange/CAC9GZ-uzgggiVQZ4SrP30kRd3KqqoMmt6d1CN5v0VwLAvmL%3D_A%40mail.gmail.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carl at newsfromneptune.com Tue May 18 02:18:33 2021 From: carl at newsfromneptune.com (C. G. Estabrook) Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 21:18:33 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer, at the Halsey Institute References: <0E142742-8515-4EC2-8B79-F919315A42F1@gmail.com> Message-ID: <11F52E24-3D41-4838-8304-A555ED0FCC85@newsfromneptune.com> > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Dan Estabrook > Subject: Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer, at the Halsey Institute > Date: May 17, 2021 at 11:51:41 AM CDT > To: Dan Estabrook > > Hello all, > > Please check out my current exhibition of photographs and sculptures, on view now through July 17th at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC: https://halsey.cofc.edu/main-exhibitions/wunderkammer/ > > Snapshots of the installation can be seen here: http://danestabrook.com/portfolio/wunderkammer/ > > If you can, join us on Tuesday, May 18, 7:00 PM EDT for an Artist Talk, online at halsey.cofc.edu/live > > Yours sincerely, > Dan > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: KillingABunny.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 25563 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jbw292002 at gmail.com Tue May 18 07:10:17 2021 From: jbw292002 at gmail.com (John W.) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 02:10:17 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer, at the Halsey Institute In-Reply-To: <11F52E24-3D41-4838-8304-A555ED0FCC85@newsfromneptune.com> References: <0E142742-8515-4EC2-8B79-F919315A42F1@gmail.com> <11F52E24-3D41-4838-8304-A555ED0FCC85@newsfromneptune.com> Message-ID: Any relation to you, Carl? On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 9:19 PM C. G. Estabrook via Peace < peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote: Begin forwarded message: > > *From: *Dan Estabrook > *Subject: **Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer, at the Halsey Institute* > *Date: *May 17, 2021 at 11:51:41 AM CDT > *To: *Dan Estabrook > > Hello all, > > Please check out my current exhibition of photographs and sculptures, on > view now through July 17th at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in > Charleston, SC: https://halsey.cofc.edu/main-exhibitions/wunderkammer/ > > Snapshots of the installation can be seen here: > http://danestabrook.com/portfolio/wunderkammer/ > > If you can, join us on Tuesday, May 18, 7:00 PM EDT for an Artist Talk, > online at halsey.cofc.edu/live > > Yours sincerely, > Dan > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: KillingABunny.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 25563 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed May 19 02:43:35 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Tue, 18 May 2021 21:43:35 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Recommended videos for AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV In-Reply-To: <42a71fa8-c303-b9f6-9419-72074b7470e6@forestfield.org> References: <42a71fa8-c303-b9f6-9419-72074b7470e6@forestfield.org> Message-ID: J.B. The Analysis, is very worthwhile. Phyllis Bennis does an excellent job of presenting a reasonable analysis and suggestion of reparations, though when did the USG ever pay reparations for the damage done by our government? Larry Wilkerson was a real disappointment, given he has been criticizing the USG for our interventions and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan for sometime now. Yes, he takes a strategic geo-political position which is necessary, but as Phyllis points out, he does it as the USG, opposing China and Russia, which is exactly why the US is there in the first place, beginning with the Carter Administration in 1979 when Zbigniew Berezinski began his policy of arming the Taliban to give Russia their Vietnam. A lot could be said in reference to Wilkerson?s bringing up Korea, but as Paul Jay said, let?s stick to Afghanistan. I wasn?t able to finish the podcast tonight, but was it ever noted that pulling out our troops to send elsewhere, we?re not bringing them home, we?re still leaving our ?advisors,? ?contractors" and trained mercenaries, etc., because I don?t believe for a moment we will ever leave Afghanistan. Please see below from Leo Zhou: "The photos are of urban Afghanistan under the socialist government which took power in 1979. But the under educated and very religious farmers in the rural areas of that time were not big fans. The USA saw this opportunity, and took it: by funding religious fundamentalists in the country side, creating the Mujahideen, headed by a "freedom fighter" called Osama Bin Laden, to mount a rebellion against the socialist government. The socialist government of Afghanistan then asked the USSR for help. A fundamentalist theocracy next door was the last thing the Soviets wanted, so answered the invitation, and sent troops to Afghanistan to help preserve the socialism that you see in the photos. Then the USA military entered, justified by lies: "to protect Afghanistan from the USSR and from religious Fundamentalism". By the year 2000, Osama had kind of began to understand, and the militant extremists became anti-USA. And we all know what happened after 9/11." > On May 16, 2021, at 7:23 PM, J.B. Nicholson via Peace wrote: > > Here are the videos I recommended to run during AWARE on the Air, News from Neptune, and Labor's World View TV. > > As a reminder: If anyone else has anything to run, please feel free to get your pointers to Jason Liggett (jcliggett at urbanaillinois.us). I routinely ask him to prioritize AWARE members pointers over mine for AWARE on the Air, Carl Estabrook & David Green's pointers over mine for News from Neptune, and David Johnson's pointers over mine for Labor's World View TV. > > I won't submit videos for a couple of weeks due to a very busy personal and work schedule, so this should last while I'm unable to get time to watch and collect links for appropriate videos for these timeslots. > > -J > > > > > > > > > > Katie Halper > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=HLVJYmRvvKQ (1h 39m 45s) -- "Norman Finkelstein on Israel & What's happening Here" > > > > MintPressNews > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=KV_ACbhN1ik (35m 54s) -- ""Impossible To Deal With The Number Of Casualties" - Gaza Doctor Warns Of Imminent Israeli Assault" > > > > RT > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=qqxS5OMXOGQ (17m 31s) -- "Roger Waters | Israel won?t change its ?murderous? policies unless the govt is pressured" > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=QSToH4lkEpU (2m 6s) -- "'Hamas uses population as human shield' | IDF spokesperson to RT" > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=iv0QASuZWLw (27m 21s) -- "Palestinian and Israeli hostilities" -- Chris Hedges interviews Dr. Sami Al-Arian > > > > theAnalysis.news > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZRpJGnCANTY (37m 40s) -- "Does the U.S. Owe Reparations to Afghanistan, Should U.S. Troops Leave? ? Bennis & Wilkerson" -- interesting and sensible responses from Phyllis Bennis and Larry Wilkerson is there to make the argument for continued US occupation. Paul Jay offers his response which quickly marginalizes any moral response -- let Afghans decide what to do with their country -- to Bennis to bring up at all. Paul Jay brings his usual neither-nor viewpoint to this at one point saying "I have particularly no interest or care whether the United States remains a predominant player in that region" (29m 09s). I think Phyllis Bennis is worth hearing from so I recommend this segment almost entirely on that basis. > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZHEixyYoXiw (43m 09s) -- "Israel's War on Palestine - Ali Abunimah" > > > > World Socialist Web Site > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=BAV2HvHqCek (3m 14s) -- "Striking Jacobs Douwe Egberts workers in the UK speak out against fire and rehire" > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=9Dsm7dG-HVg (2h 9m 21s) -- "When the workers took power: 150 Years since the Paris Commune" > > > > laborvideo > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=OBhACvTjq8k (46m 32s) -- "May Day 2021! Time For Labor Unity & Voices In San Francisco Of Working People" > > https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ZL9cSolNFw (6m 49s) -- "On Workers Memorial Day 2021 Former OSHA WPP Lawyer & Investigator Darrell Whitman Speaks Out!" > > > > Grayzone > > You can get this video from either site: > https://youtube.com/watch?v=xRoPOX_W9QY (1h 36m 49s) -- "Killing Gaza" > https://vimeo.com/549520612 (1h 36m 49s) -- "Killing Gaza" > > https://twitter.com/KillingGaza/status/1393599322881671174 encourages us to share this movie: >> In light of the mass-murder campaign Israel is carrying out in the Gaza Strip, we have now made the documentary ?Killing Gaza? free. It?s available in English, Spanish, Arabic, French, German and Portuguese. Please watch, share and >> distribute widely. vimeo.com/549520612 > _______________________________________________ > Peace mailing list > Peace at lists.chambana.net > https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naiman.uiuc at gmail.com Wed May 19 17:15:05 2021 From: naiman.uiuc at gmail.com (Robert Naiman) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 13:15:05 -0400 Subject: [Peace] AOC: US should not be rubber-stamping weapons sales to the Israeli government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: "I endorse this message." https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1395054704086892545 [image: image.png] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.png Type: image/png Size: 161244 bytes Desc: not available URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Wed May 19 18:48:49 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Wed, 19 May 2021 13:48:49 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Vijay Prashad on Afghanistan/Iraq 2016 Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2JD01whZRI From karenaram at hotmail.com Sat May 22 13:28:23 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Sat, 22 May 2021 08:28:23 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Zionism defined by Kwame Ture late 90's Message-ID: Over an hour long, with gems throughout. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQrDBZfDjZA From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun May 23 15:03:01 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 10:03:01 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Aaron Mate and Norm Finkelstein worthwhile discussion related to Gaza Message-ID: https://breadtube.tv/thegrayzone/finkelstein-gaza-assault-a-disaster-for-israel-while-palestine-solidarity-is-revived/ From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun May 23 19:41:24 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 14:41:24 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: Memorial Day by S. Brian Wilson References: Message-ID: > S Brian Willson > 13h ? > Monday, May 31, 2021, US Memorial Day > I would hope that most US Americans will use Memorial Day to become aware of the incredibly demonic history of US imperialism, almost 600 wars since 1798, thousands of massacres against Indigenous before and after 1798, and to get a grip on how many human beings have been killed/murdered, maimed, displaced by these USA imperial wars. > I confess I am still angry and ashamed of the US war against the people of Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos that I was part of. I know I have been through plenty of therapy about forgiving myself, making amends as best as possible, understanding the deep US history and politics and lies behind virtually all of our wars, but I still experience bouts of anger, lots of it, especially since the US is endlessly involved in perpetual wars that make any lessons from Viet Nam totally irrelevant. > Herein, I am once again reminding people of the heartbreaking statistics of the US war against Viet Nam, supported by US politicians, taxpayers, and guinea pigs like me who didn't know any better at the time. And the US is still at it, destroying people's lives, economically, culturally, physically, psychologically, ecologically, etc. : > *Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal zones) > *Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed > *Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed > *Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing > *Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maimings created > *13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing > *Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing > *350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing > *Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing > *Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing > *10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing > *Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost > *36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters were lost or severely damaged > *26 million bomb craters created, the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across) > *39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) were littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut > *21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides) were applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals > *24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South Viet Nam was sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests > *Over 500,000 Vietnamese have died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring > *Nearly 375,000 tons of fireballing napalm was dropped on villages > *Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees > *As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. *On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; > *150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia: 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war > *13.7 billion gallons of fuel were consumed by US forces during the war > *If there was space for all 6,000,000 names of Southeast Asian dead on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, it would be over 9 sobering miles long, or nearly 100 times its current 493 foot length -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Sun May 23 20:19:37 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 15:19:37 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Exerts from V.J. Prasad's book "Washington Bullets." Message-ID: Eric C. Anderson 12h ? 70 Years of CIA Coups, Assassinations, False Flag Operations and Mass Murder A Review of Vijay Prashad?s book, " Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations", with foreword by Evo Morales Jeremy Kuzmarov in COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE [ pls consider a donation ] During his confirmation hearing in February, the CIA?s latest director William J. Burns continued a long Agency tradition of playing up the threat from Russia and China along with North Korea, and said that Iran should not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. Vijay Prashad?s new book Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations, details how manufactured foreign threats have historically been used by the Agency to carry on a war against the Third World?in order to extend U.S. corporate dominance. In a foreword, Evo Morales Ayma, the former president of Bolivia who was deposed in a 2019 U.S.-backed coup, writes that Prashad?s book is about ?bullets that assassinated democratic processes, that assassinated revolutions, and that assassinated hope.? Prashad is a distinguished political analyst who has authored important studies of imperial interventions, corporate capitalism, and Third World political movements. His latest book synthesizes his wealth of knowledge. It includes personal revelations of ex-CIA agents such as the late Charles Cogan, chief of the Near East and South Asia Division in the CIA?s Directorate of Operations (1979?1984), who told Prashad that in Afghanistan, the CIA had ?funded the worst fellows right from the start, long before the Iranian revolution and long before the Soviet invasion.? Washington?s Bullets starts in Guatemala with the 1954 coup that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz, whose moderate land reform program threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles? law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, had represented United Fruit, and Dulles and his brother, Allen, the head of the CIA (1953-1961), were large shareholders. The former CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith became president of United Fruit after Arbenz? removal, and President Dwight Eisenhower?s personal secretary, Ann Whitman, was the wife of United Fruit?s publicity director, Edmund Whitman. After the coup, Arbenz? successor, Castillo Armas stated that ?if it is necessary to turn the country into a cemetary in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so.? The CIA assisted in the bloodbath by providing Armas with lists of communists and with the gift of its assassination manual. This manual was later applied in operations directed against Third World nationalists such as Patrice Lumumba of Congo (1961), Mehdi Ben Barka of Morocco (1965), Che Guevara (1967) and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso (1987). Sankara was killed in a plot that was carried out through close coordination between a CIA operative at the U.S. embassy in Burkino Faso and French secret service, SDECE. According to Prashad, while ?many of the assassins? bullets have been fired by people who had their own parochial interests, petty rivalries and small-minded gains, more often than not, these have been ?Washington?s bullets.?? Their main purpose, he says, was to ?contain the tidal wave that swept from the October Revolution of 1917 and the many waves that whipped around the world to form the anti-colonial movement.? Prashad, as these comments indicate, roots the CIA?s crimes in the larger history of colonialism and hostility of the world?s capitalist elites to the working-class empowerment bred by the Russian revolution. Imperialism, he reminds us, is the attempt to ?subordinate people to maximize the theft of resources, labor, and wealth.? The targets of Washington?s bullets, in turn, have been those like Sankara and many others who tried to assert their nation?s economic sovereignty. The pattern for the CIA?s behavior was established in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when it supported political factions in Europe which collaborated with the Nazis against the communists, who had led the resistance against Nazism. The Agency?s work, as Prashad writes, helped ?bring back to life the cadaver of Europe?s reactionary political bloc.? In Japan, this meant creating a new party ( Liberal Democratic Party?LDP ) to defeat the socialists that absorbed old fascists ( Ichiro Hatoyama and Nobusuke Kishi ) and developed enduring ties with big business and organized crime ( Yoshio Kodama ). In 1953, the CIA succeeded in toppling Iran?s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh who had moved to nationalize Iran?s oil industry. From 1960-1965, the agency tried to assassinate Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro at least eight times by sending mafia gangsters with poison pills, poison pens, a poisoned cigar, a tuberculosis-laced scuba suit, with botulinum toxin, and other deadly bacterial powders. In total, 638 assassination attempts were made?all of them failed. The CIA also orchestrated a coup in South Vietnam in 1963 against the Diem brothers when they sought rapprochement with the left-wing National Liberation Front ( NLF ). A further coup was carried out against Indonesia?s socialist government of Achmed Sukarno, whose ouster in 1965 triggered an anticommunist bloodbath. The 1965 Indonesian coup?like its Guatemalan and Iran predecessors and successor in Chile?followed a modus operandi involving 9 different steps: lobby public opinion appoint the right man on the ground make sure the Generals are ready make the economy scream diplomatic isolation organize mass protests green light assassination Deny Perfected and refined over the years, almost all these steps have been applied most recently in the Maidan coup of 2014 in Ukraine, and right-wing coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2019. With respect to economy, Prashad unearthed an early 1950s CIA study on how to damage Guatemala?s coffee industry in order to undermine the Arbenz government. This was a precursor to the better-known campaign by the Nixon administration to ?make Chile?s economy scream? after Chileans had the audacity to elect a socialist, Salvador Allende, who nationalized Chile?s copper industry (the industry has been controlled by two U.S. corporations, Kennecott and Anaconda who lobbied for a coup). The CIA station chief at the time of the 1973 Chilean coup, which brought the Fascist General Augusto Pinochet to power, was Henry Hecksher. He had worked underground as a coffee buyer in Guatemala at the time of the Arbenz coup and bribed Colonel Hern?n Monzon Aguirre who became the leader of the junta that replaced Arbenz. After earning promotion, Hecksher went on to spearhead CIA subversion operations in Laos and Indonesia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before running a project against the Cuban revolution in Mexico. Hecksher was a counterpart to sinister figures like Lincoln Gordon?a ruthless anticommunist who helped orchestrate the 1964 coup in Brazil?Marshall Green, who helped trigger the 1965 coup in Indonesia, and CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt and State Department officer Loy Henderson, who helped advance the coup against Mossadegh. The U.S. embassy played such a direct role in coups in so many different countries that a popular joke during the Cold War held: ?Why is there never a coup in the United States? Because there is no U.S. embassy there.? One trick of the trade was the recruitment of trade union activists who could purge communists and organize strikes against leftist governments that would help facilitate their demise. ?Anything was acceptable,? Prashad writes,? to undermine the class struggle, both inside Europe and in the national liberation states.? Prashad?s attention to class divisions offers a refreshing antidote to mainstream liberal histories of the CIA ? such as Tim Weiner?s book Legacy of Ashes?which present good information but fall short in analyzing what drove the Agency?s rogue activity. Prashad writes that ?whether in Guatemala or in Indonesia, or by the 1967 Phoenix Program (or Chien dich Phung Hong) in South Vietnam, the U.S. government and its allies egged on local oligarchs and their friends in the armed forces to completely decimate the left.? In South America, the CIA-driven Operation Condor killed around 100,000 people and imprisoned about half a million. The CIA allied with ex-Nazi torturers like Klaus Barbie, a senior intelligence asset for General Hugo Banzer, Bolivia?s president from 1971-1978, and a key figure running Condor. Many of Condor?s victims were proponents of liberation theology, which sought to apply the Christian gospel in support of social justice causes. The CIA helped to kill progress in Africa by supporting such acts as the 1971 coup in Sudan by Colonel Gafar Nimiery, which deposed the communist Major Hashem al-Atta and resulted in the execution of Sudan?s Communist Party founder Abdel Khaliq Mahjub. In the Middle East, the CIA?s crusade against communism resulted in a preference for Islamic fundamentalist like the Saudi Royal family and Pakistani General Zi-al-Huq (1978-1988), who had his predecessor Zulfaqir Ali Bhutto hanged and armed violent jihadist fundamentalists in Afghanistan to carry on the holy war against the Soviet Union. When a Third World project emerged in the 1970s to advance the idea of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) drawing on the principle of economic nationalism, Washington worked to undermine its advancement through the delegitimization of the United Nations General Assembly, which had endorsed the NIEO in 1974. It was in this period that the U.S. began to pressure the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tie loans to structural adjustment programs that cut state services and were beneficial to multi-national corporations. In the 21st century, Washington has brazenly used sanctions to try and undermine defiant governments. It has also helped manufacture corruption scandals, such as those that brought down leftists Lula and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, whose policies had lifted almost 30 million Brazilians out of poverty. Prashad ends his book with a quote from Otto Ren? Castillo (1936-1967), a poet who took his notebooks with him into Guatemala?s jungles in the 1960s to fight against the U.S. imposed dictatorship. Castillo wrote: ?The most beautiful thing For those who have fought a whole life Is to come to the end and say; We believed in people and life, And life and the people Never let us down.? These words ought to haunt every person who has worked for the CIA; an agency on the wrong side of humanity from its inception. In today?s increasingly authoritarian political landscape, critiques of the CIA are few and far between. Many liberals have bought into the CIA?s disinformation about Russia?particularly when Donald Trump was being accused of being a Russian agent?and lionize a President, Barack Obama, who was a major supporter of the agency. Obama and CIA Director John O. Brennan (2013-2017) in the Oval Office during Tuesday meetings in which they selected targets to be killed in drone strikes. The two are revered figures in some liberal circles, with Brennan now serving as a commentator on MSNBC. [Source: nytimes.com ] Prashad?s book is especially important as such. With hope, it will provoke the reemergence of a movement to abolish the CIA and offshoots like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is long overdue. [ ... always click through to the original article, and please consider a donation to Covert Action Magazine. ... ] https://www.amazon.com/Washington-Bullets.../dp/1583679065 https://covertactionmagazine.com/.../manufacturing... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu May 27 00:15:36 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 19:15:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace] US aggression now in Ethiopia and Eritrea Message-ID: By Ann Garrison of The Black Agenda Report: US hostilities towards Ethiopia and Eritrea look more and more like those preceding US wars in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, writes Ann Garrison. On May 20, the US Senate passed Senate Resolution 97 "calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and other belligerents in the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations." The resolution also called on neighboring Eritrea to withdraw troops from Ethiopia. On May 21, Cameron Hudson told Foreign Policy , ?This is a major strategic shift in the Horn of Africa, to go from an anchor state for U.S. interests to become a potential adversary to U.S. interests.? Hudson self-describes on Twitter as former CIA, State Department, and White House staff, now with the Atlantic Council. On May 23, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued a statement announcing sanctions on both Ethiopia and Eritrea, including official travel restrictions and aid cuts, most of which targeted Ethiopia, which receives the largest share of US aid in Sub-Saharan Africa. On May 24, Ethiopia responded angrily with their own statement , saying, ?As the Ethiopian Government has made it clear, time and again, the attempt by the U.S. administration to meddle in its internal affairs, is not only inappropriate but also completely unacceptable. Ethiopia should not be told how to run and manage its internal affairs.? On the same day, the Telegraph published ?Exclusive: Ethiopians suffer horrific burns in suspected white phosphorus attacks ,? citing anonymous ?leading chemical weapons experts? who had ?evaluated footage? from Tigray. The publication acknowledged, ?The UN and other bodies were called to investigate. But nobody would, and nobody condemned its use because it?s very hard to prove it was used with ?intent? against people." International law allows for the use of white phosphorous to illuminate the battlefield at night or to provide tactical smoke screens, but the United Nations? Geneva Conventions classify its use to harm civilians as a war crime. We all know this playbook We all know this playbook. The US and its ancillary powers and publications allege atrocities, usually in the Global South, then claim to be the exceptional arbiters of peace, justice, and human rights for the entire world. Jeff Pearce, who identifies on Twitter as ?historian, novelist, career surrealist,? wasted no time responding to the unsubstantiated white phosphorous alarms with a sardonic analysis on his Medium blog: ?Ethiopia: Manufacturing More Outrage .? Pearce?s blog and Twitter page are a hilarious running commentary on the demonization of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and I recommend them to anyone trying to keep up with this. Recently he tweeted, ?They keep telling me the earth is flat, and they?re going to push this African country off the edge to prove it.? I asked Pearce if I could use the above screenshot from his Twitter page with this article, and he responded: ?Sure, but could you please mention that I'm the author of a book on Ethiopian history, Prevai l: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941? This is because folks are quite entitled to wonder why anyone should listen to this bald, white doofus about African affairs. ?And the other thing that you may wish to mention is that I've written articles on Medium that have investigated the Axum Massacre, the Mai Kadra Massacre, and United Nations officials allegedly threatening Ethiopian aid workers, and that none of the mainstream news operations have bothered to pick up or check any of these stories, even though they are clearly taking some cues and tips from social media. ?While this last bit may sound self-serving, frankly, it's downright damn appalling that NONE of these stories are being pursued with proper investigative zeal. ?Their mainstream narratives are treated as already established facts. Same with the white phosphorus story in the Telegraph, for which, if you actually go over the details, nothing is proved at all yet. ?All that Ethiopians have been asking for is BALANCED coverage and not to be penalized in the international community, which is relying on a version of events put forward by a terrorist organization/criminal oligarchy, the TPLF. ?They deserve far better than this.? Indeed. And we know that in instances including Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, these fabulist human rights campaigns are often followed by US/NATO bombing, asset seizures, international criminal indictments and arrests, CIA-engineered coups, proxy wars, and/or occupation. The US leads the world in creating chaos in the name of human rights. The US is scrambling to regain control of the Horn of Africa I spoke to Eritrean American medical doctor Simon Tesfamariam, as I did in March when the EU imposed new sanctions on Eritrea . Tesfamariam lives in New York City, but he has a long history of organizing and activism within the global Eritrean community. He has lived and worked in Eritrea, volunteering in Eritrean hospitals and lecturing at the University of Asmara. He says that the US counted on the Tigray People?s Liberation Front , commonly known as the TPLF, to control Ethiopia and thereby the Horn of Africa for 30 years, but it?s struggling to regain control now that the TPLF is out of power in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?s capital. Simon Tesfamariam: America basically bet on the TPLF to maintain control of the Horn of Africa, but the TPLF rule was repressive, based on tribalism, and it built up resentment throughout the country until the people removed them from power in 2018. Now America?s scrambling to figure out how to regain control. Ann Garrison: What do you mean when you say that the US used the TPLF to control the Horn? What sort of control did they exert that benefited US interests? ST: Prior to 2018, TPLF was, first, what we call a puppet or client regime for Washington. Second, TPLF was a minority regime in that it preferentially represented the interests of the Tigrayan people, which make up only six percent of the Ethiopian population. Third, TPLF was a bourgeois nationalist regime in that it only represented a small group of Tigrayans. Over the last three decades, the US showered the tribalist, bourgeois TPLF minority regime with roughly a billion dollars a year in aid under the guise of humanitarian assistance. (This is generosity akin to that the US shows to Egypt and Israel, which respectively receive $1.5 and $3 billion annually). In exchange, TPLF served as Washington's policeman in the Horn of Africa and used its influence in the African Union, which is based in Addis Ababa, to protect Washington's interests on the African continent. Think about that for one minute: one six-percent minority tribe in Ethiopia was exercising that much power over the whole of Africa. More than anything, the US seeks to control the Horn militarily and strategically. Resource acquisition is secondary. Thus, with undue power and influence, the US-backed TPLF illegally invaded both Eritrea and Somalia in 1998 and 2006, respectively, to bring those countries under US control. Then, when Eritrea stood up for the Somali people by opening its doors to all the exiled Somali political leaders who were looking to unite to expel the TPLF-led Ethiopian invaders, it was denounced by the US as a "spoiler" in the Horn, accused of militarily supporting Al-Shabaab, and consequently sanctioned in 2009. TPLF committed unspeakable war crimes against the Somali people, even using white phosphorus bombs on the civilian population . Let's also not forget about TPLF's war on Eritrea from 1998 to 2000, under the guise of reclaiming the supposedly contested border town of Badme . AG: I?m glad you brought that up. Badme seems to be a nowhere desert town with nothing to fight for on the border of Eritrea and Ethiopia?s Tigray Province. So I guess it was just an excuse? ST: Yes. And during this totally unnecessary war, TPLF sent to their death hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Oromo peasants as "minesweepers" barbarically launched in human waves against the Eritrean Defense Forces. This reveals the class-based and tribalist nature of TPLF. Anyone who doubts this, should read the groundbreaking 1999 article by David Hirst , who wrote about this in the Guardian back when it was still a somewhat progressive paper. In that article he wrote: "It was Oromo peasants it [the TPLF] selected as human minesweepers, and Tigrayan officers who shot them from the rear. Yet it showed hardly less contempt for its own people. Local Tigrayan villagers were pressed into that suicidal baggage train, and mainly Tigrayan soldiers died in the tanks that were entrusted to no other nationality." During the so-called border war, TPLF also ethnically cleansed Ethiopia of almost 80,000 Eritreans living there on account of the "color of their eyes" and then seized their assets. TPLF would go on to do to Ethiopians themselves what it had already done to Somalis and Eritreans?invade their lands, ethnically cleanse innocent people, and seize their resources. The US not only turned a blind eye to TPLF's crimes against innocent Ethiopians, Somalis and Eritreans and provided them international cover, but also actively took a hand in supporting TPLF in their assault on the peoples of the Horn. The US integrated TPLF's security architecture with its own. It has sent drones, armaments, and troops to Somalia, but, interestingly, 80 percent of US weapons ultimately end up in Al-Shabaab's hands. This has kept Somalia weak in a "forever war" and essentially rendered it a US colony. The US also pursued a hostile isolation strategy against Eritrea and sought to implode its economy. However, Eritrea survived and became the final bastion of resistance in the Horn. To put it simply, the Eritrean state and its defense forces served as the primary obstacle to Washington's total control of the Horn through its TPLF puppet regime. It is the only African country still refusing to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. AG: Has anything changed in Ethiopia's posture toward the US aside from its alliance with Eritrea? ST: Yes, Ethiopia is boldly asserting its sovereignty in defiance of Washington. When you consider TPLF's 27 years of neocolonial servitude to Washington, the mere assertion of sovereignty alone is revolutionary. Lately, America has done a lot of "urging" and expressing "concern" every time Ethiopia does something it doesn't like. We?ve heard a lot of this from Blinken in regards to Tigray. But Ethiopia refuses to submit. Instead, it continues on its own sovereign path. At one point, Trump threatened to "blow up" Ethiopia's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) through its Egyptian allies because Ethiopia refused to bend to his will. Instead of backing down, Ethiopia is moving forward with filling its dam. When Washington's EU allies threatened to cut off roughly $100 million in aid if it didn't commit to a ceasefire that would largely benefit the terrorist TPLF forces, Prime Minister Abiy responded?to the shock of many Westerners?by saying, "threatening Ethiopia for coins will not work ." When Blinken pressured Abiy to force Eritrean troops to leave Tigray in February, Abiy followed by publishing an article in Project Syndicate that established his new doctrine?the Abiy Doctrine?that a ?New Ethiopia? will push for regional integration among neighbors with which it is ?inseparably linked?: ?An Ethiopia free of the TPLF will champion peace and inclusive development. Internally, our ?New Ethiopia? will be based on equality among all of our constituent groups, including the suffering people of Tigray. Externally, we will act in a way that recognizes that our national interests are inseparably linked to those of our neighbors.? AG: In January 2021, Global Firepower released a ranking of 140 militaries with the most power to wage conventional war. It ranked Ethiopia 60th in the world and sixth in Africa, with 140,000 troops in a population of 12 million, and 2 million people reaching military age annually. Ethiopia also contributes more troops to UN Peacekeeping Missions than any other nation in the world, so this represents a major disruption of US strategic and military alliances in the Horn and in Africa. Eritrea's military is, however, ranked 134th of 140 nations overall, and 33rd of 36 African nations that Global Firepower bothered to rank. It seems to have 200,000 active duty soldiers in a population of about 3.5 million, but it has nothing like the weaponry that the US has bestowed upon the Ethiopian army. Why is the US so irked by Eritrea and now by Ethiopia's alliance with Eritrea? ST: Eritrea follows its own progressive developmental model based on self-reliance and socioeconomic justice and does not submit to Washington's diktats. Basically, it rejects the sort of neocolonial, neoliberal model that has led to the super-exploitation of Africa by Washington, Brussels and other predatory powers. Eritrea, a nation of fewer than 5 million people, is, like Cuba, an example that Washington finds intolerable. Ethiopia's alliance with Eritrea and increasingly bold defiance of the West suggests the formation of a new resistance bloc in the Horn of Africa. Add in Somalia under the leadership of Farma a jo and you have potential resistance spanning from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and down into the interior of Africa. In January 2020, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia signed an agreement to form a tripartite alliance. Looking at a map, their close proximity to one another and situation near coast lines shields and insulates them from cross-border threats. If they can continue the current course and shield off Washington, one can only imagine what this means for Africa. The implications are enormous. Will we finally be talking of a genuine African resistance bloc? AG: It seems that Ethiopia's border war with Eritrea was really a war between Tigray and Eritrea prosecuted because the TPLF were in power. Eritreans and Tigrayans both speak Tigrinya, so they must share history, however distant, that made them one people at some point in time. What's the story of that fracture? ST: First, Eritrea is a multi-ethnic state with no official language but rather nine different languages spoken by different ethnic groups. Tigrinya just happens to be commonly used as a working language given that Tigrinyas make up roughly 60 percent of the population. Second, it's important to note that the 1998-2000 war was the TPLF?s irredentist regime change war against Eritrea?s People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) government. The TPLF were trying to reverse Eritrean sovereignty and capture Eritrean land, so as to have access to the sea. This plan to expand Tigray's borders to reach the Red Sea has its roots in British meddling in the 1940s and was officially pursued by TPLF in 1976 after it published its manifesto calling for the formation of a "Greater Tigray," which was not unlike the old "Eretz Yisrael " claims for Biblically established land title. That manifesto also stated that secession from Ethiopia was among its goals. It does not represent the ambition of the average Tigrayan peasant but rather the aspiration of the TPLF elite and their brand of bourgeois nationalism. After 2000, the so-called border war morphed into an outright war of attrition?a war to the death. Either TPLF would fall or PFDJ would fall. This is due to the fact that TPLF's raison d'etre, as outlined in its 1976 manifesto, was to expand into and capture Eritrea, which is impossible given everything the Eritrean people sacrificed to achieve independence. Again, this is not the aspiration of the Tigrayan people. There may be some sympathizers in Tigray, but the average Tigrayan, when pressed, would not be on board with this agenda. If the TPLF were removed from power, the relationship between the Tigrayan people and Eritrean people could finally begin to be reconstructed and reconciled on the basis of their shared ancient history. AG: Samantha Power, Obama?s UN Ambassador and now Biden?s USAID chief, and one of the main architects of the US/NATO War on Libya, has been alleging Ethiopian and Eritrean army atrocities in Ethiopia?s Tigray Province, as she did prior to US military action in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria. Some on the US left, including prominent Black Lives Matter activists, young anarchists, and Democracy Now, have given some credence to Power?s argument. Democracy Now has relied heavily on London-based Sudanese CNN correspondent Nima Elbagir as a source. Have you made any effort to reach out to Democracy Now or any of these young activists with the Ethiopian and Eritrean side of this story? ST: We?ve made efforts to reach out to many forms of progressive media, including Democracy Now and outlets further to the left, but the response has been abysmal. Why progressives and leftists remain silent is truly confounding. I don?t think they truly understand what is at stake here. Eritreans and Ethiopians have been protesting together around the world, which is truly a sight to behold, especially in light of their long history of Western-manufactured hostilities. We need regular, daily coverage of this matter as things are escalating quickly. The US is becoming increasingly desperate and seems to be following the Libya playbook that led to the invocation of ?Responsibility to Protect? and the no-fly zone under the guise of opening up humanitarian access. They could do the same to Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, the world is very different in 2021 than it was in 2011. It?s more of a multipolar world. There?s social media to challenge mainstream media narratives. Also, the highly mountainous Eritrea is no cake walk, and the Eritrean people, who are highly unified at home and abroad, have been mobilized and vigilant for this type of eventuality since 1998. The Ethiopian people are also following suit, with Ethiopia quickly training conscripts in preparation for whatever is to come. It will be hard to justify intervention against Eritrea and Ethiopia. You can?t conceal a US and/or EU intervention. Publicity will only lead Western audiences to start reading more about Eritrea and Ethiopia, which will lead them to see the unbelievable absurdity of the lies by journalists like Nima Elbagir. Because of the West?s racism and disregard for Black Africa, they were sloppy with their lies, which are out in the open, extremely absurd and obvious. Hopefully, it will only be a matter of time before leftists, progressives, and even liberals see what?s really going on. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu May 27 00:15:36 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 19:15:36 -0500 Subject: [Peace] US aggression now in Ethiopia and Eritrea Message-ID: By Ann Garrison of The Black Agenda Report: US hostilities towards Ethiopia and Eritrea look more and more like those preceding US wars in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, writes Ann Garrison. On May 20, the US Senate passed Senate Resolution 97 "calling on the Government of Ethiopia, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and other belligerents in the conflict in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia to cease all hostilities, protect human rights, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and cooperate with independent investigations of credible atrocity allegations." The resolution also called on neighboring Eritrea to withdraw troops from Ethiopia. On May 21, Cameron Hudson told Foreign Policy , ?This is a major strategic shift in the Horn of Africa, to go from an anchor state for U.S. interests to become a potential adversary to U.S. interests.? Hudson self-describes on Twitter as former CIA, State Department, and White House staff, now with the Atlantic Council. On May 23, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued a statement announcing sanctions on both Ethiopia and Eritrea, including official travel restrictions and aid cuts, most of which targeted Ethiopia, which receives the largest share of US aid in Sub-Saharan Africa. On May 24, Ethiopia responded angrily with their own statement , saying, ?As the Ethiopian Government has made it clear, time and again, the attempt by the U.S. administration to meddle in its internal affairs, is not only inappropriate but also completely unacceptable. Ethiopia should not be told how to run and manage its internal affairs.? On the same day, the Telegraph published ?Exclusive: Ethiopians suffer horrific burns in suspected white phosphorus attacks ,? citing anonymous ?leading chemical weapons experts? who had ?evaluated footage? from Tigray. The publication acknowledged, ?The UN and other bodies were called to investigate. But nobody would, and nobody condemned its use because it?s very hard to prove it was used with ?intent? against people." International law allows for the use of white phosphorous to illuminate the battlefield at night or to provide tactical smoke screens, but the United Nations? Geneva Conventions classify its use to harm civilians as a war crime. We all know this playbook We all know this playbook. The US and its ancillary powers and publications allege atrocities, usually in the Global South, then claim to be the exceptional arbiters of peace, justice, and human rights for the entire world. Jeff Pearce, who identifies on Twitter as ?historian, novelist, career surrealist,? wasted no time responding to the unsubstantiated white phosphorous alarms with a sardonic analysis on his Medium blog: ?Ethiopia: Manufacturing More Outrage .? Pearce?s blog and Twitter page are a hilarious running commentary on the demonization of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and I recommend them to anyone trying to keep up with this. Recently he tweeted, ?They keep telling me the earth is flat, and they?re going to push this African country off the edge to prove it.? I asked Pearce if I could use the above screenshot from his Twitter page with this article, and he responded: ?Sure, but could you please mention that I'm the author of a book on Ethiopian history, Prevai l: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941? This is because folks are quite entitled to wonder why anyone should listen to this bald, white doofus about African affairs. ?And the other thing that you may wish to mention is that I've written articles on Medium that have investigated the Axum Massacre, the Mai Kadra Massacre, and United Nations officials allegedly threatening Ethiopian aid workers, and that none of the mainstream news operations have bothered to pick up or check any of these stories, even though they are clearly taking some cues and tips from social media. ?While this last bit may sound self-serving, frankly, it's downright damn appalling that NONE of these stories are being pursued with proper investigative zeal. ?Their mainstream narratives are treated as already established facts. Same with the white phosphorus story in the Telegraph, for which, if you actually go over the details, nothing is proved at all yet. ?All that Ethiopians have been asking for is BALANCED coverage and not to be penalized in the international community, which is relying on a version of events put forward by a terrorist organization/criminal oligarchy, the TPLF. ?They deserve far better than this.? Indeed. And we know that in instances including Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria, these fabulist human rights campaigns are often followed by US/NATO bombing, asset seizures, international criminal indictments and arrests, CIA-engineered coups, proxy wars, and/or occupation. The US leads the world in creating chaos in the name of human rights. The US is scrambling to regain control of the Horn of Africa I spoke to Eritrean American medical doctor Simon Tesfamariam, as I did in March when the EU imposed new sanctions on Eritrea . Tesfamariam lives in New York City, but he has a long history of organizing and activism within the global Eritrean community. He has lived and worked in Eritrea, volunteering in Eritrean hospitals and lecturing at the University of Asmara. He says that the US counted on the Tigray People?s Liberation Front , commonly known as the TPLF, to control Ethiopia and thereby the Horn of Africa for 30 years, but it?s struggling to regain control now that the TPLF is out of power in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?s capital. Simon Tesfamariam: America basically bet on the TPLF to maintain control of the Horn of Africa, but the TPLF rule was repressive, based on tribalism, and it built up resentment throughout the country until the people removed them from power in 2018. Now America?s scrambling to figure out how to regain control. Ann Garrison: What do you mean when you say that the US used the TPLF to control the Horn? What sort of control did they exert that benefited US interests? ST: Prior to 2018, TPLF was, first, what we call a puppet or client regime for Washington. Second, TPLF was a minority regime in that it preferentially represented the interests of the Tigrayan people, which make up only six percent of the Ethiopian population. Third, TPLF was a bourgeois nationalist regime in that it only represented a small group of Tigrayans. Over the last three decades, the US showered the tribalist, bourgeois TPLF minority regime with roughly a billion dollars a year in aid under the guise of humanitarian assistance. (This is generosity akin to that the US shows to Egypt and Israel, which respectively receive $1.5 and $3 billion annually). In exchange, TPLF served as Washington's policeman in the Horn of Africa and used its influence in the African Union, which is based in Addis Ababa, to protect Washington's interests on the African continent. Think about that for one minute: one six-percent minority tribe in Ethiopia was exercising that much power over the whole of Africa. More than anything, the US seeks to control the Horn militarily and strategically. Resource acquisition is secondary. Thus, with undue power and influence, the US-backed TPLF illegally invaded both Eritrea and Somalia in 1998 and 2006, respectively, to bring those countries under US control. Then, when Eritrea stood up for the Somali people by opening its doors to all the exiled Somali political leaders who were looking to unite to expel the TPLF-led Ethiopian invaders, it was denounced by the US as a "spoiler" in the Horn, accused of militarily supporting Al-Shabaab, and consequently sanctioned in 2009. TPLF committed unspeakable war crimes against the Somali people, even using white phosphorus bombs on the civilian population . Let's also not forget about TPLF's war on Eritrea from 1998 to 2000, under the guise of reclaiming the supposedly contested border town of Badme . AG: I?m glad you brought that up. Badme seems to be a nowhere desert town with nothing to fight for on the border of Eritrea and Ethiopia?s Tigray Province. So I guess it was just an excuse? ST: Yes. And during this totally unnecessary war, TPLF sent to their death hundreds of thousands of mostly ethnic Oromo peasants as "minesweepers" barbarically launched in human waves against the Eritrean Defense Forces. This reveals the class-based and tribalist nature of TPLF. Anyone who doubts this, should read the groundbreaking 1999 article by David Hirst , who wrote about this in the Guardian back when it was still a somewhat progressive paper. In that article he wrote: "It was Oromo peasants it [the TPLF] selected as human minesweepers, and Tigrayan officers who shot them from the rear. Yet it showed hardly less contempt for its own people. Local Tigrayan villagers were pressed into that suicidal baggage train, and mainly Tigrayan soldiers died in the tanks that were entrusted to no other nationality." During the so-called border war, TPLF also ethnically cleansed Ethiopia of almost 80,000 Eritreans living there on account of the "color of their eyes" and then seized their assets. TPLF would go on to do to Ethiopians themselves what it had already done to Somalis and Eritreans?invade their lands, ethnically cleanse innocent people, and seize their resources. The US not only turned a blind eye to TPLF's crimes against innocent Ethiopians, Somalis and Eritreans and provided them international cover, but also actively took a hand in supporting TPLF in their assault on the peoples of the Horn. The US integrated TPLF's security architecture with its own. It has sent drones, armaments, and troops to Somalia, but, interestingly, 80 percent of US weapons ultimately end up in Al-Shabaab's hands. This has kept Somalia weak in a "forever war" and essentially rendered it a US colony. The US also pursued a hostile isolation strategy against Eritrea and sought to implode its economy. However, Eritrea survived and became the final bastion of resistance in the Horn. To put it simply, the Eritrean state and its defense forces served as the primary obstacle to Washington's total control of the Horn through its TPLF puppet regime. It is the only African country still refusing to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. AG: Has anything changed in Ethiopia's posture toward the US aside from its alliance with Eritrea? ST: Yes, Ethiopia is boldly asserting its sovereignty in defiance of Washington. When you consider TPLF's 27 years of neocolonial servitude to Washington, the mere assertion of sovereignty alone is revolutionary. Lately, America has done a lot of "urging" and expressing "concern" every time Ethiopia does something it doesn't like. We?ve heard a lot of this from Blinken in regards to Tigray. But Ethiopia refuses to submit. Instead, it continues on its own sovereign path. At one point, Trump threatened to "blow up" Ethiopia's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) through its Egyptian allies because Ethiopia refused to bend to his will. Instead of backing down, Ethiopia is moving forward with filling its dam. When Washington's EU allies threatened to cut off roughly $100 million in aid if it didn't commit to a ceasefire that would largely benefit the terrorist TPLF forces, Prime Minister Abiy responded?to the shock of many Westerners?by saying, "threatening Ethiopia for coins will not work ." When Blinken pressured Abiy to force Eritrean troops to leave Tigray in February, Abiy followed by publishing an article in Project Syndicate that established his new doctrine?the Abiy Doctrine?that a ?New Ethiopia? will push for regional integration among neighbors with which it is ?inseparably linked?: ?An Ethiopia free of the TPLF will champion peace and inclusive development. Internally, our ?New Ethiopia? will be based on equality among all of our constituent groups, including the suffering people of Tigray. Externally, we will act in a way that recognizes that our national interests are inseparably linked to those of our neighbors.? AG: In January 2021, Global Firepower released a ranking of 140 militaries with the most power to wage conventional war. It ranked Ethiopia 60th in the world and sixth in Africa, with 140,000 troops in a population of 12 million, and 2 million people reaching military age annually. Ethiopia also contributes more troops to UN Peacekeeping Missions than any other nation in the world, so this represents a major disruption of US strategic and military alliances in the Horn and in Africa. Eritrea's military is, however, ranked 134th of 140 nations overall, and 33rd of 36 African nations that Global Firepower bothered to rank. It seems to have 200,000 active duty soldiers in a population of about 3.5 million, but it has nothing like the weaponry that the US has bestowed upon the Ethiopian army. Why is the US so irked by Eritrea and now by Ethiopia's alliance with Eritrea? ST: Eritrea follows its own progressive developmental model based on self-reliance and socioeconomic justice and does not submit to Washington's diktats. Basically, it rejects the sort of neocolonial, neoliberal model that has led to the super-exploitation of Africa by Washington, Brussels and other predatory powers. Eritrea, a nation of fewer than 5 million people, is, like Cuba, an example that Washington finds intolerable. Ethiopia's alliance with Eritrea and increasingly bold defiance of the West suggests the formation of a new resistance bloc in the Horn of Africa. Add in Somalia under the leadership of Farma a jo and you have potential resistance spanning from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and down into the interior of Africa. In January 2020, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia signed an agreement to form a tripartite alliance. Looking at a map, their close proximity to one another and situation near coast lines shields and insulates them from cross-border threats. If they can continue the current course and shield off Washington, one can only imagine what this means for Africa. The implications are enormous. Will we finally be talking of a genuine African resistance bloc? AG: It seems that Ethiopia's border war with Eritrea was really a war between Tigray and Eritrea prosecuted because the TPLF were in power. Eritreans and Tigrayans both speak Tigrinya, so they must share history, however distant, that made them one people at some point in time. What's the story of that fracture? ST: First, Eritrea is a multi-ethnic state with no official language but rather nine different languages spoken by different ethnic groups. Tigrinya just happens to be commonly used as a working language given that Tigrinyas make up roughly 60 percent of the population. Second, it's important to note that the 1998-2000 war was the TPLF?s irredentist regime change war against Eritrea?s People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) government. The TPLF were trying to reverse Eritrean sovereignty and capture Eritrean land, so as to have access to the sea. This plan to expand Tigray's borders to reach the Red Sea has its roots in British meddling in the 1940s and was officially pursued by TPLF in 1976 after it published its manifesto calling for the formation of a "Greater Tigray," which was not unlike the old "Eretz Yisrael " claims for Biblically established land title. That manifesto also stated that secession from Ethiopia was among its goals. It does not represent the ambition of the average Tigrayan peasant but rather the aspiration of the TPLF elite and their brand of bourgeois nationalism. After 2000, the so-called border war morphed into an outright war of attrition?a war to the death. Either TPLF would fall or PFDJ would fall. This is due to the fact that TPLF's raison d'etre, as outlined in its 1976 manifesto, was to expand into and capture Eritrea, which is impossible given everything the Eritrean people sacrificed to achieve independence. Again, this is not the aspiration of the Tigrayan people. There may be some sympathizers in Tigray, but the average Tigrayan, when pressed, would not be on board with this agenda. If the TPLF were removed from power, the relationship between the Tigrayan people and Eritrean people could finally begin to be reconstructed and reconciled on the basis of their shared ancient history. AG: Samantha Power, Obama?s UN Ambassador and now Biden?s USAID chief, and one of the main architects of the US/NATO War on Libya, has been alleging Ethiopian and Eritrean army atrocities in Ethiopia?s Tigray Province, as she did prior to US military action in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria. Some on the US left, including prominent Black Lives Matter activists, young anarchists, and Democracy Now, have given some credence to Power?s argument. Democracy Now has relied heavily on London-based Sudanese CNN correspondent Nima Elbagir as a source. Have you made any effort to reach out to Democracy Now or any of these young activists with the Ethiopian and Eritrean side of this story? ST: We?ve made efforts to reach out to many forms of progressive media, including Democracy Now and outlets further to the left, but the response has been abysmal. Why progressives and leftists remain silent is truly confounding. I don?t think they truly understand what is at stake here. Eritreans and Ethiopians have been protesting together around the world, which is truly a sight to behold, especially in light of their long history of Western-manufactured hostilities. We need regular, daily coverage of this matter as things are escalating quickly. The US is becoming increasingly desperate and seems to be following the Libya playbook that led to the invocation of ?Responsibility to Protect? and the no-fly zone under the guise of opening up humanitarian access. They could do the same to Eritrea and Ethiopia. However, the world is very different in 2021 than it was in 2011. It?s more of a multipolar world. There?s social media to challenge mainstream media narratives. Also, the highly mountainous Eritrea is no cake walk, and the Eritrean people, who are highly unified at home and abroad, have been mobilized and vigilant for this type of eventuality since 1998. The Ethiopian people are also following suit, with Ethiopia quickly training conscripts in preparation for whatever is to come. It will be hard to justify intervention against Eritrea and Ethiopia. You can?t conceal a US and/or EU intervention. Publicity will only lead Western audiences to start reading more about Eritrea and Ethiopia, which will lead them to see the unbelievable absurdity of the lies by journalists like Nima Elbagir. Because of the West?s racism and disregard for Black Africa, they were sloppy with their lies, which are out in the open, extremely absurd and obvious. Hopefully, it will only be a matter of time before leftists, progressives, and even liberals see what?s really going on. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu May 27 18:18:54 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 13:18:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace] US planned nuclear attack on Chinese cities in 1958 Taiwan crisis Message-ID: US planned nuclear attack on Chinese cities in 1958 Taiwan crisis Andre Damon /WSWS.ORG 25 May 2021Daniel Ellsberg, the US nuclear strategist who leaked the Pentagon papers, has published classified documents making clear that US generals were aggressively pushing for a nuclear attack on Chinese cities in 1958. In order to maintain control over two tiny islets, Quemoy and Matsu, just kilometres off the coast of China, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff were prepared to carry out nuclear attacks against major Chinese cities, including Shanghai, and to accept the consequences of nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union against Taiwan, Japan and the United States, leading to the deaths of millions. A US B-52 nuclear-capable bomber (AP Photo) These documents are so explosive that the United States government sought to keep them from public view for six decades. They have been revealed only because Ellsberg?who copied them alongside the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the motives behind the US war in Vietnam?is risking prosecution under the Espionage act to make them known. During the Second Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1958, Pentagon war planners believed that the islets of Quemoy and Matsu, a few kilometres from China?s coast, were indefensible with conventional weapons. ?The entire military establishment assumed more and more that nuclear weapons would be used in the event of hostilities,? noted the documents released by Ellsberg. ?Atomic weapons would be employed by the United States and probably by the enemy,? Pentagon planners noted, and ?authority to attack targets on the Chinese mainland would be granted.? There would be ?atomic weapons strikes by both sides? based on the premise that the ?use of atomic weapons was inevitable.? The US high command pushed aggressively for the immediate use of nuclear weapons against a Chinese offensive against the islands, while asserting that US war aims would include the ?destruction of Chinese Communist war-making capability.? The United States ?would have no alternative but to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China as far north as Shanghai,? military planners declared. This would ?almost certainly involve nuclear retaliation against Taiwan and possibly against Okinawa? in Japan, as well as potentially the US mainland. The 1958 fighting between Taiwan and China was a continuation of the Chinese Civil War that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in 1949 and forced the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, to flee to Taiwan. The United States never reconciled itself to the ?loss? of China as a result of the Chinese Revolution, which was seen as a devastating blow to US global domination. With US backing, the Nationalists established a military dictatorship on Taiwan, planned to reinvade the mainland and continued to claim sovereignty over all of China. Taipei?s territorial claims received recognition as such from Washington, and the Taiwan regime even kept China?s seat in the UN Security Council, complete with its veto power. The First and Second Taiwanese Strait crises took place only one and five years respectively after the end of the Korean War, which was launched by the US and its puppet state in South Korea in an effort to overthrow the Soviet-aligned government in Pyongyang while threatening Beijing. Once Chinese troops came to the aid of North Korea, General Douglas MacArthur argued for atomic bombs to be dropped on China, which was averted only when he was removed as US commander in chief in Korea. Ultimately, the US plans for nuclear war against China in 1958 were never tested because China broke off attempts to regain the islets controlled by the US-backed Kuomintang dictatorship on Taiwan. Commenting on what is contained in the documents, Ellsberg observed, ?Christian Herter, who succeeded John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State, was reported to have said later, ?The Cuban Missile Crisis is often described as the first serious nuclear crisis; those of us who lived through the Quemoy crisis definitely regarded that as the first serious nuclear crisis.?? Despite the explosive and highly significant nature of the documents, they have not been reported in the US press, with the exception of the New York Times article in which Ellsberg explained why he published them. Ellsberg has published these 63-year-old documents as a warning. As the United States moves to strengthen ties with Taiwan and de facto recognize Taiwanese independence?the geopolitical setup that created the second Taiwan straits crisis?it must inevitably follow that the United States is once again preparing to fight a nuclear war with China. Noting the ?shallow? and ?reckless? character of the 1958 discussions over the use of nuclear weapons over Quemoy and Matsu, Ellsberg warned, ?I do not believe the participants were more stupid or thoughtless than those in between or in the current cabinet.? In other words, the same murderous mindset that led the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1958 to demand that President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorize immediate nuclear retaliation against a conventional assault by China on tiny islets off its coast exists today within the top brass, whose trigger fingers are even more itchy to test out new ?tactical? nuclear weapons at their disposal. In March, Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said the timetable for a US conflict with China over the Taiwan strait ?is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.? ?We absolutely must be prepared to fight and win should competition turn to conflict,? Davidson said. In the months since the inauguration of Joe Biden, the United States has carried out the most sweeping change to its relationship with Taiwan since the adoption of the One China policy in 1978. Biden is the first American president since 1978 to host Taiwan?s ambassador at his inauguration. Then, last month, the White House announced it was ending limitations on official US government contacts with the Taiwanese government, in what commentators argued was the effective end of the One China policy. In February, Biden convened a panel of defence officials to reevaluate US policy toward China, which has until next month to issue its findings. Speculation is rife that the Biden administration will formally abandon the decades-long US policy known as ?strategic ambiguity? in relation to Taiwan?the position that has underpinned the One China policy. In establishing diplomatic relations with China in 1979, Washington de facto accepted Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan, while suggesting that it could come to Taiwan?s aid in the event of a war with China. If ?strategic ambiguity? is replaced by an explicit pledge to defend Taiwan in a conflict with China, it will only encourage Taiwan to declare formal independence from China?a move that Beijing has declared it would oppose with military action. In other words, by undermining the One China policy and encouraging Taiwanese separatism, Washington is creating the conditions for a war between the United States and China, the two largest global economic powers. The United States has abandoned the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and is in active discussions with the governments of Taiwan and Japan on stationing offensive weapons capable of striking the Chinese mainland. In order to fund its ?Pacific Deterrence Initiative,? the Pentagon has requested the doubling of its budget for the Indo-Pacific region, while the Biden administration has proposed the largest military budget in US history. But wars are not fought through weapons alone. There must be a casus belli?a justification to sell a predatory war to the public. The United States media and political establishment is busy manufacturing a casus belli, centered at present on the claim that COVID-19 is a biological weapon manufactured by China. Last year, the Trump administration?s trade adviser Peter Navarro, author of a 2006 book titled The Coming China Wars, charged that COVID-19 is a ?weaponized virus? that was ?spawned? by the Chinese Communist Party. As the World Socialist Web Site warned at the time, These allegations have a definite logic. If the Chinese government deliberately allowed and encouraged the coronavirus to infect the United States and Europe, this would be an act of biological warfare that goes far beyond the terrorist attacks of September 11. It would mean that China had carried out an act of war against the United States. With unbridled recklessness, in order to justify its own criminal indifference to the lives of millions of people, the Trump administration is setting up a situation that can make military confrontation with China unavoidable. At the time, this conspiracy theory, with no scientific basis whatsoever, was rejected by significant sections of the Democratic Party and major news outlets. But over the past week, the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory has been openly embraced by all of the broadcast news networks, the White House, and even Dr. Anthony Fauci, who previously condemned it. On Monday, Fauci declared, ?I am not convinced? about a natural origin of the disease. Under the Trump administration, US imperialism carried out a strategic reorientation of its military policy. The Pentagon declared that ?Great power competition?not terrorism?is now the primary focus of US national security.? The Trump White House left the Intermediate Range Nuclear forces treaty, and began to ?decouple? the US economy from China. Biden has intensified this build-up toward conflict with China, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring that ?China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to challenge the United States.? Washington?s war plans against China are rooted in the decades-long crisis of US imperialism. With its share of global economic output declining year after year, the United States sees military force and intimidation as the only means of ensuring its continued global supremacy. The use of military force against China?including the use of nuclear weapons?is embedded in the logic of capitalist geopolitics. But this does not mean war is inevitable. In 1917, after four years of slaughter that led to the deaths of over 20 million people, the working class of Russia intervened to stop World War I by overthrowing the Tsarist autocracy and the capitalist order that it defended. This once again is the only alternative to a new and far more catastrophic world war. If war is to be avoided, the working class must intervene on the basis of a socialist program aimed at uniting its forces across the globe in a struggle to put an end to capitalism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Thu May 27 18:18:54 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 13:18:54 -0500 Subject: [Peace] US planned nuclear attack on Chinese cities in 1958 Taiwan crisis Message-ID: US planned nuclear attack on Chinese cities in 1958 Taiwan crisis Andre Damon /WSWS.ORG 25 May 2021Daniel Ellsberg, the US nuclear strategist who leaked the Pentagon papers, has published classified documents making clear that US generals were aggressively pushing for a nuclear attack on Chinese cities in 1958. In order to maintain control over two tiny islets, Quemoy and Matsu, just kilometres off the coast of China, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff were prepared to carry out nuclear attacks against major Chinese cities, including Shanghai, and to accept the consequences of nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union against Taiwan, Japan and the United States, leading to the deaths of millions. A US B-52 nuclear-capable bomber (AP Photo) These documents are so explosive that the United States government sought to keep them from public view for six decades. They have been revealed only because Ellsberg?who copied them alongside the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the motives behind the US war in Vietnam?is risking prosecution under the Espionage act to make them known. During the Second Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1958, Pentagon war planners believed that the islets of Quemoy and Matsu, a few kilometres from China?s coast, were indefensible with conventional weapons. ?The entire military establishment assumed more and more that nuclear weapons would be used in the event of hostilities,? noted the documents released by Ellsberg. ?Atomic weapons would be employed by the United States and probably by the enemy,? Pentagon planners noted, and ?authority to attack targets on the Chinese mainland would be granted.? There would be ?atomic weapons strikes by both sides? based on the premise that the ?use of atomic weapons was inevitable.? The US high command pushed aggressively for the immediate use of nuclear weapons against a Chinese offensive against the islands, while asserting that US war aims would include the ?destruction of Chinese Communist war-making capability.? The United States ?would have no alternative but to conduct nuclear strikes deep into China as far north as Shanghai,? military planners declared. This would ?almost certainly involve nuclear retaliation against Taiwan and possibly against Okinawa? in Japan, as well as potentially the US mainland. The 1958 fighting between Taiwan and China was a continuation of the Chinese Civil War that brought the Chinese Communist Party to power in 1949 and forced the Kuomintang, under Chiang Kai-shek, to flee to Taiwan. The United States never reconciled itself to the ?loss? of China as a result of the Chinese Revolution, which was seen as a devastating blow to US global domination. With US backing, the Nationalists established a military dictatorship on Taiwan, planned to reinvade the mainland and continued to claim sovereignty over all of China. Taipei?s territorial claims received recognition as such from Washington, and the Taiwan regime even kept China?s seat in the UN Security Council, complete with its veto power. The First and Second Taiwanese Strait crises took place only one and five years respectively after the end of the Korean War, which was launched by the US and its puppet state in South Korea in an effort to overthrow the Soviet-aligned government in Pyongyang while threatening Beijing. Once Chinese troops came to the aid of North Korea, General Douglas MacArthur argued for atomic bombs to be dropped on China, which was averted only when he was removed as US commander in chief in Korea. Ultimately, the US plans for nuclear war against China in 1958 were never tested because China broke off attempts to regain the islets controlled by the US-backed Kuomintang dictatorship on Taiwan. Commenting on what is contained in the documents, Ellsberg observed, ?Christian Herter, who succeeded John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State, was reported to have said later, ?The Cuban Missile Crisis is often described as the first serious nuclear crisis; those of us who lived through the Quemoy crisis definitely regarded that as the first serious nuclear crisis.?? Despite the explosive and highly significant nature of the documents, they have not been reported in the US press, with the exception of the New York Times article in which Ellsberg explained why he published them. Ellsberg has published these 63-year-old documents as a warning. As the United States moves to strengthen ties with Taiwan and de facto recognize Taiwanese independence?the geopolitical setup that created the second Taiwan straits crisis?it must inevitably follow that the United States is once again preparing to fight a nuclear war with China. Noting the ?shallow? and ?reckless? character of the 1958 discussions over the use of nuclear weapons over Quemoy and Matsu, Ellsberg warned, ?I do not believe the participants were more stupid or thoughtless than those in between or in the current cabinet.? In other words, the same murderous mindset that led the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1958 to demand that President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorize immediate nuclear retaliation against a conventional assault by China on tiny islets off its coast exists today within the top brass, whose trigger fingers are even more itchy to test out new ?tactical? nuclear weapons at their disposal. In March, Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said the timetable for a US conflict with China over the Taiwan strait ?is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.? ?We absolutely must be prepared to fight and win should competition turn to conflict,? Davidson said. In the months since the inauguration of Joe Biden, the United States has carried out the most sweeping change to its relationship with Taiwan since the adoption of the One China policy in 1978. Biden is the first American president since 1978 to host Taiwan?s ambassador at his inauguration. Then, last month, the White House announced it was ending limitations on official US government contacts with the Taiwanese government, in what commentators argued was the effective end of the One China policy. In February, Biden convened a panel of defence officials to reevaluate US policy toward China, which has until next month to issue its findings. Speculation is rife that the Biden administration will formally abandon the decades-long US policy known as ?strategic ambiguity? in relation to Taiwan?the position that has underpinned the One China policy. In establishing diplomatic relations with China in 1979, Washington de facto accepted Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan, while suggesting that it could come to Taiwan?s aid in the event of a war with China. If ?strategic ambiguity? is replaced by an explicit pledge to defend Taiwan in a conflict with China, it will only encourage Taiwan to declare formal independence from China?a move that Beijing has declared it would oppose with military action. In other words, by undermining the One China policy and encouraging Taiwanese separatism, Washington is creating the conditions for a war between the United States and China, the two largest global economic powers. The United States has abandoned the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and is in active discussions with the governments of Taiwan and Japan on stationing offensive weapons capable of striking the Chinese mainland. In order to fund its ?Pacific Deterrence Initiative,? the Pentagon has requested the doubling of its budget for the Indo-Pacific region, while the Biden administration has proposed the largest military budget in US history. But wars are not fought through weapons alone. There must be a casus belli?a justification to sell a predatory war to the public. The United States media and political establishment is busy manufacturing a casus belli, centered at present on the claim that COVID-19 is a biological weapon manufactured by China. Last year, the Trump administration?s trade adviser Peter Navarro, author of a 2006 book titled The Coming China Wars, charged that COVID-19 is a ?weaponized virus? that was ?spawned? by the Chinese Communist Party. As the World Socialist Web Site warned at the time, These allegations have a definite logic. If the Chinese government deliberately allowed and encouraged the coronavirus to infect the United States and Europe, this would be an act of biological warfare that goes far beyond the terrorist attacks of September 11. It would mean that China had carried out an act of war against the United States. With unbridled recklessness, in order to justify its own criminal indifference to the lives of millions of people, the Trump administration is setting up a situation that can make military confrontation with China unavoidable. At the time, this conspiracy theory, with no scientific basis whatsoever, was rejected by significant sections of the Democratic Party and major news outlets. But over the past week, the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory has been openly embraced by all of the broadcast news networks, the White House, and even Dr. Anthony Fauci, who previously condemned it. On Monday, Fauci declared, ?I am not convinced? about a natural origin of the disease. Under the Trump administration, US imperialism carried out a strategic reorientation of its military policy. The Pentagon declared that ?Great power competition?not terrorism?is now the primary focus of US national security.? The Trump White House left the Intermediate Range Nuclear forces treaty, and began to ?decouple? the US economy from China. Biden has intensified this build-up toward conflict with China, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring that ?China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to challenge the United States.? Washington?s war plans against China are rooted in the decades-long crisis of US imperialism. With its share of global economic output declining year after year, the United States sees military force and intimidation as the only means of ensuring its continued global supremacy. The use of military force against China?including the use of nuclear weapons?is embedded in the logic of capitalist geopolitics. But this does not mean war is inevitable. In 1917, after four years of slaughter that led to the deaths of over 20 million people, the working class of Russia intervened to stop World War I by overthrowing the Tsarist autocracy and the capitalist order that it defended. This once again is the only alternative to a new and far more catastrophic world war. If war is to be avoided, the working class must intervene on the basis of a socialist program aimed at uniting its forces across the globe in a struggle to put an end to capitalism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri May 28 14:46:28 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 09:46:28 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Chomsky 10 media manipulation strategies Message-ID: Posted by Carl Estabrook: Noam Chomsky, one of the most important intellectuals in life today, has drawn up the list of 10 media manipulation strategies. Give 5 minutes and you won't regret it. If only to expand your knowledge. 1-The strategy of distraction The primordial element of social control is the distraction strategy which consists of diverting the public's attention from major problems and the changes decided by political and economic elites, through the flooding technique or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public from becoming interested in essential knowledge in the area of science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. Keeping the audience's attention deviated from real social problems, imprisoned by themes without real importance. Keeping the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think, back to the farm like other animals (quoted in the text ?? Silent weapons for quiet wars ??). 2-Creating problems and then offering the solutions. This method is also called a ?? problem-reaction-solution ". It creates a problem, a ?? situation ?? planned to cause a certain reaction from the public, with the aim that this is the source of the measures they want to accept. For example: letting urban violence intensify or intensify, or organize bloody attacks, with the aim of the public being those requiring security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Also: create an economic crisis to make social rights demotion and dismantle public services accept as a necessary evil. 3-The Strategy of Graduation. To make an unacceptable measure accepted, you only need to apply it gradually, to dropper, for consecutive years. This is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberism) were imposed during the decades of the 80 s and 90 s: minimum state, privatisation, precariousness, flexibility, mass unemployment, wages that no longer guarantee dignified incomes , so many changes that would have brought about a revolution if they were implemented at once. 4-The Strategy of Deferring. Another way to get an unpopular decision accepted is to present it as ?? painful and necessary ", gaining public acceptance, in the moment, for future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate sacrifice. First, because effort isn't that taken immediately. Second, because the public, the mass, always tends to naively hope that ?? everything will be better tomorrow ?? and that the required sacrifice could be avoided. This gives the audience more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it resigned when the time comes. 5-Reach to the public like children. Most advertisements directed at the large audience use speeches, arguments, characters and a particularly childish intonation, many times close to weakness, as if the viewer was a few years old creature or a mental moron. When you try to deceive the viewer the more you tend to use a childish tone. Why? Why? ?? If someone addresses a person as if they are 12 or under, then based on suggestionability, they will probably tend to a response or reaction even without a critical sense like that of a 12 person. years or less ?? (see ?? Silent Weapons for quiet wars ??). 6-Using emotional aspect much more than reflection. Take advantage of emotion it's a classic technique to provoke a short circuit on a rational analysis and finally the critical sense of the individual. Additionally, the use of emotional register allows the unconscious access door to implant or inject ideas, desires, fears and fears, compulsions, or induce behaviors. 7-Keeping the public in ignorance and mediocrity. Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used for their control and slavery. ?? The quality of education given to lower social classes must be as poor and mediocre as possible, so that the distance of ignorance that plans between lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to fill from the lower classes ?. 8-Stimulating the public to be complacent with mediocrity. Pushing the audience to think it's fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and ignorant? 9-Strengthening self-guilt. Making the individual believe that he is only the culprit of his disgrace, because of his insufficient intelligence, skills or efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual devalues himself and blames himself, which in turn creates a depressive state, one of whose effects is the inhibition of his action. And without action there is no revolution! 10-Knowing individuals better than they know themselves. Over the past 50 years, science's rapid progress has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those possessed and used by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology, and applied psychology, the ?? system ?? has enjoyed advanced knowledge of the human being, both in its physical and psychological form. The system has managed to learn better about the common individual than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exercises greater control and greater power over individuals, greater than that which the same individual exercises over himself. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri May 28 19:59:58 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 14:59:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: HUGE from CODEPINK References: <60b13fbf14313_14dd32af50409fb@asgworker-qmb3-9.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: > > > > Call on Congress to redirect military spending to eradicate poverty by supporting the Poor People?s Campaign?s Third Reconstruction legislation > > ACT NOW > Dear Karen, > > This is big. > > $753,000,000,000 to be exact. > > President Biden just released his final Pentagon budget proposal for 2022 which reads like an enormous corporate grab bag for military contractors and includes: > > ?At least $30 billion for new nuclear weapons slated to cost $1.7 trillion over the next decades > > ?$17.4 billion for an unnecessary Space Force > > ?Billions for the F-35 fighter jet, a boondoggle with an eventual $1-2 trillion price tag > > ? At least $51 billion to maintain over 800 overseas bases and establish new ones in the Indo-Pacific region > > Ultimately, the Federal Budget is up to Congress to decide, NOT the President. Which is why we?re so excited that Representatives Barbara Lee and Pramila Jayapal just introduced new legislation from the Poor People?s Campaign which calls for redirecting at least 10% of the military budget to meet human needs. > > Call on Congress to redirect military spending to eradicate poverty by supporting legislation from the Poor People?s Campaign ?Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty and Low Wages from the Bottom Up!? > > The Biden Administration is using China as the major justification for this massive increase in military spending by framing China as a danger to the U.S. and its allies. As former President Jimmy Carter stated, ?While the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.? > > He's right: if we?re going to address the crisis of poverty and injustice in our country, we can?t continue to hurl money at the for-profit war industry that's gearing up for war with China. The Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty from the Bottom Up is the bold action we need to address the inter-connected injustices of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and militarism. > > Contact Congress to support legislation that would redirect military funding to invest in human needs! > We can?t allow politicians to use unfounded fear mongering to justify unlimited U.S. military budgets. Together with our progressive movement allies and in solidarity with 140 million poor and low income people across the United States, we must begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. > > Towards peace and justice, > > Madison, Carley, Cody, Danaka, Jodie, Moses, Nancy and the CODEPINK team > > P.S. New nuclear weapons? Omg, no! Join CODEPINK Congress Tuesday, June 1 to mobilize with arms control expert William Hartung to stop this nuclear nightmare. RSVP now! > > > ? 2021 CODEPINK.ORG | Created with NationBuilder > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karenaram at hotmail.com Fri May 28 19:59:58 2021 From: karenaram at hotmail.com (karen) Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 14:59:58 -0500 Subject: [Peace] Fwd: HUGE from CODEPINK References: <60b13fbf14313_14dd32af50409fb@asgworker-qmb3-9.nbuild.prd.useast1.3dna.io.mail> Message-ID: > > > > Call on Congress to redirect military spending to eradicate poverty by supporting the Poor People?s Campaign?s Third Reconstruction legislation > > ACT NOW > Dear Karen, > > This is big. > > $753,000,000,000 to be exact. > > President Biden just released his final Pentagon budget proposal for 2022 which reads like an enormous corporate grab bag for military contractors and includes: > > ?At least $30 billion for new nuclear weapons slated to cost $1.7 trillion over the next decades > > ?$17.4 billion for an unnecessary Space Force > > ?Billions for the F-35 fighter jet, a boondoggle with an eventual $1-2 trillion price tag > > ? At least $51 billion to maintain over 800 overseas bases and establish new ones in the Indo-Pacific region > > Ultimately, the Federal Budget is up to Congress to decide, NOT the President. Which is why we?re so excited that Representatives Barbara Lee and Pramila Jayapal just introduced new legislation from the Poor People?s Campaign which calls for redirecting at least 10% of the military budget to meet human needs. > > Call on Congress to redirect military spending to eradicate poverty by supporting legislation from the Poor People?s Campaign ?Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty and Low Wages from the Bottom Up!? > > The Biden Administration is using China as the major justification for this massive increase in military spending by framing China as a danger to the U.S. and its allies. As former President Jimmy Carter stated, ?While the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.? > > He's right: if we?re going to address the crisis of poverty and injustice in our country, we can?t continue to hurl money at the for-profit war industry that's gearing up for war with China. The Third Reconstruction: Fully Addressing Poverty from the Bottom Up is the bold action we need to address the inter-connected injustices of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and militarism. > > Contact Congress to support legislation that would redirect military funding to invest in human needs! > We can?t allow politicians to use unfounded fear mongering to justify unlimited U.S. military budgets. Together with our progressive movement allies and in solidarity with 140 million poor and low income people across the United States, we must begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. > > Towards peace and justice, > > Madison, Carley, Cody, Danaka, Jodie, Moses, Nancy and the CODEPINK team > > P.S. New nuclear weapons? Omg, no! Join CODEPINK Congress Tuesday, June 1 to mobilize with arms control expert William Hartung to stop this nuclear nightmare. RSVP now! > > > ? 2021 CODEPINK.ORG | Created with NationBuilder > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: