A View From The Left- NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

The Libya Model: It’s Not Always All About Trump

John Bolton and Mike Pence must have known what they were doing. President Trump’s national security adviser and Vice President could not have been oblivious that advocating a “Libya model” for North Korea’s denuclearization would go over badly with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who presumably does not wish to be overthrown and killed after giving up his nukes, the fate that befell Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi…  While ultimately the United States will need to be part of any peace deal, inter-Korean diplomacy toward peace and reconciliation, supported by other peace-makers and diplomats, should continue. Nobody in the current administration has any track record of success in international peace and diplomacy, but such people do exist, including some who made progress with North Korea in the past. They could task themselves with doing the job Trump and company are backing away from, offering to advise or serve this administration, or going to Korea themselves to make peace.    More

Warning Against 'Return to Rhetoric of Nuclear Annihilation,' Koreans and Anti-War Voices Demand Trump Resume Peace Talks

Refusing to let a chance to achieve lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula slip away and warning against "return to a rhetoric of nuclear annihilation," a group of peace activists, foreign policy experts, and ordinary Koreans gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Seoul on Friday to call on President Donald Trump to reverse his cancellation of the June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and immediately return to the negotiating table. "The people of both North and South Korea, and especially women, have worked too long and have come too close to reaching the first steps towards the signing of a Peace treaty to see the talks collapse," Christine Ahn, Korea expert and founder of Women Cross DMZ, said in a statement on Thursday.   More

Trump’s Iran Sanctions Are an Obvious Prelude to War

The Trump plan is to use the power of the American economy to strong-arm nations into line. Back our sanctions, threatens the administration, or lose access to the U.S. market. And given that the world uses the dollar as its de-facto international currency, financial institutions may find themselves barred from using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunications (SWIFT), the American-controlled network that allows banks and finance centers to transfer money from country to county.  Those threats have not exactly panicked the rest of the world. China and India, which between them buy more than 1 million of the 2.1 million barrels of oil Iran produces each day, say they will ignore the sanctions. And according to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign affairs minister, “The European Union is determined to act in accordance with its security interests and protect its economic investments.”  …In short, the sanctions won’t work, but were they really meant to?  It’s possible that the White House somehow thinks they will — delusion is a characteristic of the Oval Office these days — but other developments suggest the administration is already putting in place a plan that will lead from economic sanctions to bombing runs.    More

House NDAA Clarifies Trump Has No War Authorization for Iran

Trump himself has hinted at military action against Iran and both he and Pompeo have taken a page from the Iraq war playbook by falsely linking Iran to al-Qaeda. Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Jim McGovern (D-MA), and Walter Jones (R-NC) deserve tremendous credit for taking a stand for peace and Congress’ Constitutional war-making authorities by introducing the amendment and ensuring its passage in the House. Now, the Senate should make sure that this clear statement of fact is included in the final version of the NDAA.    More

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

131 House Dems Help GOP Pass Massive Pentagon Budget with Billions for New Nuclear Arsenal

While the world responds with alarm over President Donald Trump's spontaneous decision to cancel diplomatic talks with North Korea scheduled for next month—which aimed to ease rising nuclear tensions—131 Democrats in the U.S. House joined with the overwhelming majority of Republicans to pass a $717 billion Pentagon spending bill that includes massive expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. "The overwhelming cost of unnecessary and aggressive military invasions could be better spent at home meeting human needs."  —Michael McPhearson, Veterans for Peace. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2019 authorizes the development of new low-yield submarine-launched nuclear warheads that the Trump administration demanded in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was released in February and denounced by disarmament advocates as "radical" and "extreme."  On Thursday, anti-war activists and lawmakers shamed the Democrats who voted with the GOP to approve the military spending bill, and warned of its consequences. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), according to Politico, said the measure "pushes us even further and faster down the path to war, toward a new nuclear arms race."     More

Keating, Lynch, Moulton, Neal, Tsongas YES; Capuano, Clark, Kennedy, McGovern NO

RALPH NADER: Audit The Outlaw Military Budget Draining America's Necessities

Top military, diplomatic, and political leaders have exposed, warned of, and condemned our runaway, unaudited military budgets for decades, to no avail.  (For many examples, see America’s War Machine: Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts by James McCartney, with Molly Sinclair McCartney.)  They usually come to the same desperate conclusion: that only organized citizens back in their Congressional Districts can make Congress stop this spending spree. Only us, Americans!   … There is some light. Fifty-three members of the House of Representatives have signed on to H.R. 3079, which would reduce the budget of the Department (subject to emergency presidential waivers) by one-half of one percent if the Pentagon’s financial statements do not receive an audit OK by the GAO. H.R. 3079 is a stirring in the body politic, however weak the pulse.  Obtain a copy of H.R. 3079 and its named sponsors to see whether your Representative is on board. If not, demand to know why. All of Connecticut’s Representatives have ducked co-sponsoring this bill.  [McGovern, Clark. Moulton are so far co-sponsoring]    More

The Deep, Uniquely American Roots of Our Affordable-Housing Crisis

In the 1990s, the national crisis in affordable
housing didn’t feel as acute because income growth was relatively strong, giving people more of a cushion to afford their rent. But when the subprime-mortgage crisis hit in 2007, America’s long-term refusal to deal with housing was once again laid bare. If modern mass homelessness began in the 1980s, the foreclosure and housing crises at the end of the 2000s represented a second wave that redoubled the problem. Nearly 3 million homes were foreclosed on in both 2009 and 2010; those homeowners sank back into the rental market, competing for cheap units with the low-income people who were already renting. Millennials delayed homeownership. The share of households renting in the country’s 50 largest cities climbed from 36 percent in 2006 to over 40 percent in 2014. Roughly 10 million more families rented in 2016 compared with the decade prior… The housing crisis “is like a game of musical chairs,” says Nan Roman. “There’s just not enough chairs for the number of people.” And the private sector simply can’t solve this problem.   More

HOW TO PROTECT A RENTER NATION

Nationwide, renters make up 51 percent of the population of the 100 largest U.S. cities. This resurgence to establish rent control policies is part of a statewide—and national—movement for tenants’ rights. This specific policy is just one part of a larger effort by people and organizations who believe that housing is a human right and that it shouldn’t only be a sure thing for those with a lot of money…  In 2017, Homes for All, a national campaign launched byRight to the City Alliance, a network of racial, economic, and environmental justice organizations, held a “Renter Week of Action.” Among other items, it advocated for tenants’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, to establish community control over land and housing through land trusts, cooperatives, and non-market solutions for affordable homes, and to support increased funding for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development so that everyone who qualifies for assistance can get it.  The fight for housing rights is steeped in history that has affected people differently based on their class and race. It’s important to understand that tenants’ rights is not a small, niche issue, Urban Habitat’s Samara says. “It’s a major fight for people of color,” he says. “This is part of a long history of working-class people of color asserting their right to place.”  More

Long but very interesting read:

THE 9.9 PERCENT IS THE NEW AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children. We are not innocent bystanders to the growing concentration of wealth in our time. We are the principal accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy. Our delusions of merit now prevent us from recognizing the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents. We tend to think that the victims of our success are just the people excluded from the club. But history shows quite clearly that, in the kind of game we’re playing, everybody loses badly in the end.   More

The Surprising List of Democrats Who Just -- Gratuitously -- Bowed to Big Finance

In a win for amnesia, Congress advanced a bipartisan bill on Tuesday deregulating the banking industry, just a decade after Wall Street triggered a financial crisis that caused millions to lose their jobs and their homes. S.2155, known as the Crapo bill both for its co-author, Senate Banking Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and its general quality, was pitched as a narrow measure to provide relief for salt-of-the-earth community banks and credit unions. But anyone making that claim is either misinformed or trying to spin the truth. In reality, the Crapo bill will deregulate 25 of the 38 largest banks in America, weaken capital requirements that force banks to pay for their own mistakes, free some lenders from disclosing data used to detect lending discrimination and largely handcuff the Federal Reserve's ability to apply special regulations to the biggest banks, to name just a few provisions.    More

Media Quote Frank on Rolling Back Dodd/Frank--Not Disclosing He’s Now a Bank Director

While some criticized the Democrats who took the side of the banks, they could point in their defense to a seemingly authoritative source: former Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, one-half of Dodd/Frank’s namesake and its chief sponsor in the House. Frank weighed in on the rollback in an interview with CNBC (5/22/18), saying that “It does not in any way weaken the regulations we put in there for the largest banks or that were there to prevent the kind of crisis we had ten years ago,” and noting that the rollback “is not a big number on the bill. It’s a small number.”  What CNBC does not cite is Frank’s role as a member of the board of Signature Bank, a New York-based institution that held $43 billion in assets at the end of 2017.    More

“Honoring the Flag”. . .

The Unbearable Whiteness of NFL Ownership

On Wednesday, 31 out of 32 NFL team owners voted to appease President Donald Trump by banning any form of on-field protest or demonstration during the pregame singing of the national anthem…  At least 70 percent of NFL players are black, according to the latest information available from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, or TIDES, at University of Central Florida. Yet ownership of the league is much less diverse, according to TIDES: Only two teams, the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills, have people of color in majority ownership — a Pakistani-born American and an Asian-American, respectively. What’s more, the entire league doesn’t have a single African-American team owner — not one. And it is the team owners who are making the executive decisions in this case. The NFL players union announced that they weren’t even consulted before the team owners voted and made their announcement about the ban of any on-field demonstrations during the national anthem.    More