*****From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Socialist Future

*****From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Socialist Future

Logo Of The Communist Youth International

Click below to link to a Communist Youth archival site

http://www.marxisthistory.org/subject/usa/eam/yci.html



Sam Eaton, once he got “religion” on the questions of war and peace after a close high school friend in Carver was killed in the jungles of Vietnam in 1968, and Ralph Morris, once he had served in Vietnam after having become totally disenchanted with the war effort and had been discharged back to Troy, New York in 1970 were both very interested in left-wing anti-war politics, in studying about how previous generations fought against the highly-charged war blood lust currents that periodically burned over the American landscape.

Sam, exempt from the military draft since he was the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after his father had passed away suddenly of a heart attack in 1965, who had been prior to his friend Jeff Mullin’s death been very political in a conventional way but somewhat indifferent to the war blazing all around him in this country as well as in Vietnam and Ralph who was as gung-ho as any naïve young soldier before the “shit hit the fan” (his expression) when he went into Vietnam had met down in Washington, D.C.  

Had met under frankly odd circumstances, circumstances which kind of came with the times when people who ordinarily would not run into each other did so as they came to oppose the war in Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, home of the Washington Redskins football team after they had been arrested in different incidents during the May Day 1971 actions. The idea behind those actions by those like Sam and Ralph who were enraged by the continuation of the war was to attempt to close down the government if it did not close down the war. For their efforts, Sam trying to help close down Massachusetts Avenue a main thoroughfare and Ralph at an action at the White House (which his group never got close to), along with thousands of others were placed in the bastinado for several days without much food or shelter and without the quick release demanded by law for such minor infractions (in the event they had actually just walked out of a side exit one day and nobody stopped them, some kind of poetic justice, since law enforcement was totally overworked out on the streets). They had met in some forlorn line when Ralph noticed that Sam had a Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) button on his lapel and had asked him whether he was a member. Sam told him why he was a supporter of VVAW after Ralph told him he was a member and had taken part in a couple of actions on the streets that made people freeze in their tracks when they saw the long lines of anti-war veterans, some on crutches and others in wheelchairs silently marching as was a tactic of the time. That meeting in any case formed a lifelong friendship as Ralph recently had mentioned to Sam when they met for one of their periodic Boston meetings when Ralph came to town.          

That May Day event more than any other of the actions which they had participated in during those years was pivotal in bringing them to an understanding that if you were going to take on the government then you had better have more than a few thousand committed souls with you and better be better prepared, damn better, when the “shit hits the fan” (again Ralph’s expression). So they both started to hit the books, to read old time left-wing Socialist and Communist literature to get a fix on things that went wrong with May Day (although Ralph admitted he was not much of a reader of such materials he did plod through the stuff and still remembered a fair amount of it). They would talk about what they had read between themselves and even began to attend study classes provided by a collective in Cambridge (the Red Book collective some of whose members are still around Cambridge although not "red" but aging faculty members at local colleges if anybody is asking) where both young men were staying for the summer of 1972.

Sam and Ralph were especially intrigued by the work that left-wing political organizations did in recruiting young people to the cause, a task that would have made it far easier for them to get involved if such organizations had existed in their respective growing up towns of Carver, Massachusetts and Troy, New York. So for a while they were all abuzz with thoughts of the Socialist and Communist youth organizations, especially when they read about Spain the 1930s and the key role left-wing youth played there and on the battle fronts. Although both would slide away from 24/7 type politics that had driven them early in the decade later in the decade as the aura of 1960s confrontation faded back into “normalcy” and they began careers and families they for a time considered themselves “left-wing youth,” maybe even communist youth although that designation was a tough dollar to swallow given their backgrounds.

During that period Sam, more of a writer than Ralph, wrote up some materials about their experiences. He more recently in the age of the Internet got involved with a blog, American Socialist History, which was accumulating stories about anything related to socialist youth in the 1960s and Sam had written another short piece for that publication. Here is what he had to say:

“One of the declared purposes of this blog is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past, spotty and incomplete as they may be, here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-socialist and communist wing. And particularly how to draw the young into the struggle. Historically these lessons would be centrally derived from the revolutions of 1848 in Europe, especially in France, the Paris Commune of 1871, and most vividly under the impact of the Lenin and Trotsky-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, a world historic achievement for the international working class whose subsequent demise was of necessity a world-historic defeat for that same class. To that end I have made commentaries and provided some archival works in this space in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over.

More importantly, for the long haul, and unfortunately given that same spotty and incomplete past the long haul is what appears to be the time frame that this old militant will have to concede that we need to think about, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common socialist future. An education that masses of previous generations of youth undertook gladly but which now is reduced to a precious few.  That is, beside the question of numbers, in any case no small or easy task given the differences of generations (the missing transmission generation problem between the generation of ’68 who tried unsuccessfully to turn the world upside down and failed, the missing “in between” generation raised on Reagan rations and today’s desperate youth in need of all kinds of help); differences of political milieus worked in (another missing link situation with the attenuation of the links to the old mass socialist and communist organizations decimated by the red scare Cold War 1950s "night of the long knives" through the new old New Left of the 1960s and little notable organizational connections since); differences of social structure to work around (the serious erosion of the industrial working class in America, the rise of the white collar service sector, the now organically chronically unemployed, and the rise of the technocrats); and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses (today’s  computer, cellphone, and social networking savvy youth using those assets as tools for organizing).

There is no question that back in my youth in the 1960s I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available on-line at the press of a button today. When I developed political consciousness very early on in my youth, albeit a liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.

As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically worrying more about a possible cushy career on the backstairs of politics. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I vaguely knew they were around from my readings but not in my area. In any case the aura of the red scare was still around so it is a toss-up if I had known about those groups that I would have contacted them.   

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me on-line and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a left-wing youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become radicals with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.

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Third Congress of the Communist International

The Communist International and the Communist Youth Movement

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Source: Theses Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congress of the Third International, translated by Alix Holt and Barbara Holland. Ink Links 1980;

Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

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12 July 1921

1 The young socialist movement came into existence as a result of the steadily increasing capitalist exploitation of young workers and also of the growth of bourgeois militarism. The movement was a reaction against attempts to poison the minds of young workers with bourgeois nationalist ideology and against the tendency of most of the social-democratic parties and the trade unions to neglect the economic, political and cultural demands of young workers.


In most countries the social-democratic parties and the unions, which were growing increasingly opportunist and revisionist, took no part in establishing young socialist organisations, and in certain countries they even opposed the creation of a youth movement. The reformist social-democratic parties and trade unions saw the independent revolutionary socialist youth organisations as a serious threat to their opportunist policies. They sought to introduce a bureaucratic control over the youth organisations and destroy their independence, thus stifling the movement, changing its character and adapting it to social-democratic politics.

2 As a result of the imperialist war and the positions taken towards it by social democracy almost everywhere, the contradictions between the social-democratic parties and the international revolutionary organisations inevitably grew and eventually led to open conflict. The living conditions of young workers sharply deteriorated; there was mobilisation and military service on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasing exploitation in the munitions industries and militarisation of civilian life. The most class-conscious young socialists opposed the war and the nationalist propaganda. They dissociated themselves from the social-democratic parties and undertook independent political activity (the International Youth Conferences at Berne in 1915 and Jena in 1916).


In their struggle against the war, the young socialist organisations were supported by the most dedicated revolutionary groups and became an important focus for the revolutionary forces. In most countries no revolutionary parties existed and the youth organisations took over their role; they became independent political organisations and acted as the vanguard in the revolutionary struggle.

3 With the establishment of the Communist International and, in some countries, of Communist Parties, the role of the revolutionary youth organisations changes. Young workers, because of their economic position and because of their psychological make-up, are more easily won to Communist ideas and are quicker to show enthusiasm for revolutionary struggle than adult workers. Nevertheless, the youth movement relinquishes to the Communist Parties its vanguard role of organising independent activity and providing political leadership. The further existence of Young Communist organisations as politically independent and leading organisations would mean that two Communist Parties existed, in competition with one another and differing only in the age of their membership.

4 At the present time the role of the Young Communist movement is to organise the mass of young workers, educate them in the ideas of Communism, and draw them into the struggle for the Communist revolution.


The Communist youth organisations can no longer limit themselves to working in small propaganda circles. They must win the broad masses of workers by conducting a permanent campaign of agitation, using the newest methods. In conjunction with the Communist Parties and the trade unions, they must organise the economic struggle.

The new tasks of the Communist youth organisations require that their educational work be extended and intensified. The members of the youth movement receive their Communist education on the one hand through active participation in all revolutionary struggles and on the other through a study of Marxist theory.

Another important task facing the Young Communist organisations in the immediate future is to break the hold of centrist and social-patriotic ideas on young workers and free the movement from the influences of the social-democratic officials and youth leaders. At the same time, the Young Communist organisations must do everything they can to ‘rejuvenate’ the Communist Parties by parting with their older members, who then join the adult Parties.

The Young Communist organisations participate in the discussion of all political questions, help build the Communist Parties and take part in all revolutionary activity and struggle. This is the main difference between them and the youth sections of the centrist and socialist unions.

5 The relations between the Young Communist organisations and the Communist Party are fundamentally different from those between the revolutionary young socialist organisations and the social-democratic parties. In the common struggle to hasten the proletarian revolution, the greatest unity and strictest centralisation are essential. Political leadership at the international level must belong to the Communist International and at the national level to the respective national sections.


It is the duty of the Young Communist organisations to follow this political leadership (its programme, tactics and political directives) and merge with the general revolutionary front. The Communist Parties are at different stages of development and therefore the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International should apply this principle in accordance with the circumstances obtaining in each particular case.

The Young Communist movement has begun to organise its members according to the principle of strict centralisation and in its relations with the Communist International – the leader and bearer of the proletarian revolution – it will be governed by an iron discipline. All political and tactical questions are discussed in the ranks of the Communist youth organisation, which then takes a position and works in the Communist Party of its country in accordance with the resolutions passed by the Party, in no circumstance working against them.

If the Communist youth organisation has serious differences with the Communist Party, it has the right to appeal to the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

Loss of political independence in no way implies loss of the organisational independence which is so essential for political education.

Strong centralisation and effective unity are essential for the successful advancement of the revolutionary struggle, and therefore, in those countries where historical development has left the youth dependent upon the Party, the dependence should be preserved; differences between the two bodies are decided by the EC of the Communist International and the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International.

6 One of the most immediate and most important tasks of the Young Communist organisations is to fight the belief in political independence inherited from the period when the youth organisations enjoyed absolute autonomy, and which is still subscribed to by some members. The press and organisational apparatus of the Young Communist movement must be used to educate young workers to be responsible and active members of a united Communist Party.


At the present time the Communist youth organisations are beginning to attract increasing numbers of young workers and are developing into mass organisations; it is therefore important that they give the greatest possible time and effort to education.

7 Close co-operation between the Young Communist organisations and the Communist Parties in political work must be reflected in close organisational links. It is essential that each organisation should at all times be represented at all levels of the other organisation (from the central Party organs and district, regional and local organisations down to the cells of Communist groups and the trade unions) and particularly at all conferences and congresses.

In this way the Communist Parties will be able to exert a permanent influence on the movement and encourage political activity, while the youth organisations, in their turn, can influence the Party.

8 The relations established between the Communist Youth International and the Communist International are even closer than those between the individual Parties and their youth organisations. The Communist Youth International has to provide the Communist youth movement with a centralised leadership, offer moral and material support to individual unions, form Young Communist organisations where none has existed and publicise the Communist youth movement and its programme. The Communist Youth International is a section of the Communist International and, as such, is bound by the decisions of its congresses and its Central Committee. The Communist Youth International conducts its work within the framework of these decisions and thus passes on the political line of the Communist International to all its sections. A well-developed system of reciprocal representation and close and constant co-operation guarantees that the Communist Youth International will make gains in all the spheres of its activity (leadership, agitation, organisation and the work of strengthening and supporting the Communist youth organisations).

A View From The Left -WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

A 9/11 Retrospective:

WASHINGTON'S 15-YEAR AIR WAR

In response to al-Qaeda’s brief set of air strikes against U.S. targets, Washington launched an air campaign that has yet to end, involving the use of hundreds of thousands of bombs and missiles, many of a “precision” sort but some as dumb as they come, against a growing array of enemies. Almost 15 years later, American bombs and missiles are now landing on targets in not one but seven largely Muslim countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen)… In our world, there is only one type of barbarism: theirs… Perhaps this September 11th, it’s finally time for Americans to begin to focus on our endless air war in the Greater Middle East, our very own disastrous Fifteen Years’ War.  Otherwise, the first explosions from the Thirty Years’ version of the same will be on the horizon before we know it in a world possibly more destabilized and terrorizing than we can at present imagine.   More

 

Will Either Clinton or Trump End the Forever War?

The key to understanding the Forever War -- and the legal basis for virtually every counterterrorism operation since 9/11 -- is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a 60-word law passed in the days after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. The legislation grants the president the authority to use military force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and those who harbored them. But in the nearly 15 years since it was passed, the AUMF has been stretched to give legal cover to a war without boundaries against groups that didn't exist in 2001 -- groups like ISIS… "Because neither the President nor the Congress have a clear vested interest in eliminating the 2001 AUMF, it is difficult to imagine that it will go away anytime soon," Elizabeth Beavers, policy and activism coordinator at Amnesty International, told me in an email. "And as long as it exists, this state of war will be on autopilot, relieving both the President and Congress of the political accountability that comes with debates and votes."  However, some close observers believe that the war has become so entrenched that it will continue even if the 2001 AUMF is eventually revoked. "The Forever War is unlikely to end, regardless of who is next in the White House, and regardless if whether or not the 2001 AUMF is repealed,"   More

 

Inspector General Report: Pentagon Misreporting $$Trillions

The Department of Defense continues its (largely successful) quest to be the biggest financial black hole in world history. A recent report by the Inspector General [PDF] found that the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (OASA) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service Indianapolis (DFAS Indianapolis) made unsupported journal voucher (JV) “adjustments” totaling up to $6.5 trillion by year end… Given that improper adjustments were made and records were removed, the report found that “the data used to prepare the FY 2015 AGF third quarter and year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. Furthermore, DoD and Army managers could not rely on the data in their accounting systems when making management and resource decisions.”  In other words, the Pentagon has been caught, once again, not keeping track of where the money is going and remains unable to go through an audit—a problem that has been persistent for decades, even after a law passed in 1996 that required all federal agencies to conduct annual audits.  More

 

Donald Trump promises huge boost in military spending

Republican Donald Trump vowed to boost military spending by tens of billions of dollars on Wednesday, outlining plans for major increases in the number of active troops, Navy ships and submarines, and fighter planes as he works to convince skeptics in both parties that he’s ready to lead the world’s most powerful military…  The United States currently spends more than $600 billion a year on the military, more than the next seven countries combined.   More

 

Hillary Clinton’s National Security Advisers Are a “Who’s Who” of the Warfare State

Hillary Clinton is meeting on Friday with a new national security “working group” that is filled with an elite “who’s who” of the military-industrial complex and the security deep state.  The list of key advisers — which includes the general who executed the troop surge in Iraq and a former Bush homeland security chief turned terror profiteer — is a strong indicator that Clinton’s national security policy will not threaten the post-9/11 national-security status quo that includes active use of military power abroad and heightened security measures at home. It’s a story we’ve seen before in President Obama’s early appointments. In retrospect, analysts have pointed to the continuity in national security and intelligence advisers as an early sign that despite his campaign rhetoric Obama would end up building on — rather than tearing down — the often-extralegal, Bush-Cheney counterterror regime.   More

 

The rising cost of Islamophobia: Muslims and immigrants increasingly targeted in U.S.

Three Bangladeshi Muslims in New York and a Lebanese man in Oklahoma were murdered in a recent spate of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Khalid Jabara, a 37-year-old Christian immigrant from Lebanon, was shot and killed on the evening of Aug. 12 by his neighbor, 61-year-old Stanley Majors. His murder was the culmination of years of epithets (“dirty Arabs” and “Moo-slems”) and malevolence by Majors, who had an “unusual fixation” with the Jabara family.  In broad daylight on Aug. 13, Bangladeshi Imam Maulama Akonjee and his assistant, Thara Uddin, were shot execution-style in the back of their heads as they walked home from prayer at a mosque. A few weeks later on the night of Aug. 31, Nazma Khanam, a 60-year-old Bangladeshi woman, was stabbed multiple times as she strolled home  And while the macabre details of these killings is horrifying, the context in which they occurred remains the most disturbing and consequential part.  More

 

The Shameful Spectacle of Denying People Their Vote

Every once in a while, the curtains part and we get a glimpse of the ugliest, most shameful spectacle in American politics: the Republican Party’s systematic attempt to disenfranchise African-Americans and other minorities with voter ID laws and other restrictions at the polls…  The ostensible reason for these laws is to solve a problem that doesn’t exist—voter fraud by impersonation. Four years ago, you may recall, a Republican Pennsylvania legislator let slip the real reason for his state’s new voter ID law: to “allow” Mitt Romney to win the state. In the end, he didn’t. But Republicans tried mightily to discourage minorities, most of whom vote Democratic, from going to the polls.  Now, thanks to documents that surfaced in a lawsuit, we have an even clearer and more egregious example of attempted disenfranchisement, this time in North Carolina. As The Washington Post reported, the documents show “that North Carolina GOP leaders launched a meticulous and coordinated effort to deter black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.”  More

 

‘AND THEN THE DOGS CAME’: Dakota Access Gets Violent, Destroys Graves, Sacred Sites

On the afternoon of September 3, a procession of prayerful water defenders, consisting of men, women, and children, walked on foot up to the original protest site where the first demonstrations took place in early August. Unbeknownst to them, Dakota Access construction workers were fast at work, approximately a mile up the road, bulldozing the earth, destroying graves and sacred sites, while creating a path for pipe to be laid… Construction workers jumped into their trucks, and Frejo says they started to use the vehicles like weapons, going through the crowd erratically and coming very close to hitting some… Approximately eight dog handlers, hired by Dakota Access, led the barking and snarling dogs right up to the front line.  “The women joined arms, and we started saying ‘Water is life!’ A dog came up and bit my leg, and right after that a man came up to us and maced the whole front line,” Young Bear said… That evening, a press conference was held up at the construction site. Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II, and Tribal Historical Preservation Officer Tim Mentz, confirmed that treasured sacred sites were destroyed, and Dakota Access knew about those documented sites.  More

 

A Pipeline Fight and America’s Dark Past

This week, thousands of Native Americans, from more than a hundred tribes, have camped out on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which straddles the border between the Dakotas, along the Missouri River. What began as a slow trickle of people a month ago is now an increasingly angry flood. They’re there to protest plans for a proposed oil pipeline that they say would contaminate the reservation’s water; in fact, they’re calling themselves protectors, not protesters… Pictures from that confrontation recall pictures from Birmingham circa 1963. But the historical parallels here run much deeper—they run to the original sins of this nation. The reservation, of course, is where the Native Americans were told to live when the vast lands they ranged were taken by others. The Great Sioux Reservation, formed in the eighteen-sixties, shrunk again and again—in 1980, a federal court said, of the whole sad story, “a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.” … History offers us no chances to completely erase our mistakes. Occasionally, though, we do get a chance to show we learned something.   More

 

A HISTORY OF RESISTANCE

At Standing Rock and across indigenous territories, indigenous peoples are resisting hundreds of years of dispossession, subjugation, and elimination committed in the name of capitalist accumulation and white possession. As indigenous people put their bodies on the line to resist the Dakota Access Pipeline, they are fighting for their sovereignty while offering an alternative relationship to land, water, and each other…  The people who have endured centuries of dispossession and attempted elimination — the poorest of the poor, the most likely to be killed by law enforcement, the most easily forgotten — are still here and still fighting. They have built alternatives within and beyond capitalism for hundreds of years. They are the carriers of traditions of indigenous resistance and resurgence simultaneously rooted in Lakota land and history, and global in scope… At Standing Rock, disparate tribes have set aside differences and come together as one. People from indigenous nations across the continent have travelled thousands of miles to stand with them. Indigenous people are rallying in support from New York City to San Francisco. Together, they are envisioning a future without a Dakota Access Pipeline, and enacting a future where indigenous nations exercise their rights to define a more just, equal, and sustainable path forward, as stewards of land, water, humanity, and each other.  More

 

Who's Banking on the Dakota Access Pipeline?

When the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the 1,100-mile Dakota Access Pipeline in July, executives at the corporations behind the plan probably thought their path forward was clear. They’d moved easily through the permit process, seemingly dodging the concerns of people affected by the pipeline, and were ready to go ahead with construction… Powerful oil and gas companies are taking appalling steps to override the Sioux’s objections, using their immense financial resources to push for building this pipeline, which will further line their pockets. But behind the companies building the pipeline is a set of even more powerful Wall Street corporations that might give you flashbacks to the 2007 financial crisis.  More

 

48 Words at 4 AM Is All Network News Has to Say About Pipeline Protests

The broadcast news networks have aired exactly one report on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests since the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began an encampment against the project in April, according to a search of the Nexis news database… Also missing from what is so far the entirety of broadcast TV news’ coverage of the Dakota Access protest is any mention of the threat the pipeline poses to water resources—the pipeline crosses the Missouri River just half a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation—or the climate destruction facilitated by pipelines designed to ship fracked oil out to consumers.   More

 

*   *   *   *

NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

 

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND NUCLEAR HYPOCRISY

The apparent new testing of a nuclear weapon by North Korea is certainly bad news for nuclear proliferation. But the “outrage” expressed by the US – the only nation to have actually used nuclear weapons and which is evading its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty by planning an expensive “modernization” and expansion of its nuclear weapons arsenal – and by Israel, which is not a signatory to the NPT, has a nuclear arsenal estimated in the hundreds of weapons and which helped Apartheid South Africa to become a nuclear power -- reeks of hypocrisy.  So does the hysteria over a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program. Unlike its enemies, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has long advocated a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East.   Meanwhile, the US is apparently not going to rule out the “first-use” of nuclear weapons.  Few Americans are probably aware that nuclear “first-strike” has been the long-standing US policy – or that the old Soviet Union pledged not to be the first to use nuclear weapons as far back as 1982.

 

Obama Flinches at Renouncing Nuke First Strike

Ever since President Truman ordered two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, the United States has reserved the right to initiate nuclear war against an overwhelming conventional, chemical or biological attack on us or our allies. But peace advocates — and more than a few senior military officers — have long warned that resorting to nuclear weapons would ignite a global holocaust, killing hundreds of millions of people… In a talk to the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association on June 6, Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin Rhodes promised that President Obama would continue to review ways to achieve his grand vision of a nuclear-free world during his last months in office. Obama was reportedly considering a “series of executive actions” to that end, including a landmark shift to a “no first use” policy.

Two-thirds of adult Americans surveyed support such a policy. So do 10 U.S. senators who wrote President Obama in July, proposing a no-first-use declaration to “reduce the risk of accidental nuclear conflict” and seeking cut-backs in his trillion dollar plan for nuclear modernization over the next 30 years.   More

 

Media Trumpet Another Phony ''Secret Nuclear Deal'' Story

The stories were based on claims in a report co-authored by David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, who has long been treated by corporate media as the leading "independent" expert on Iran's nuclear program…  Albright's attack on the Obama administration and the Joint Commission was only the latest installment in the current campaign by pro-Israeli media and political opponents of the JCPOA to claim existence of "secret side deals" between the Obama administration and Iran. Just six weeks ago, the Associated Press correspondent in Vienna, George Jahn, published a story that falsely portrayed Iran's report to the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] on its plan for implementation of the agreement as such a "secret side deal." The agreement reached between Iran and the IAEA on the issue of alleged past Iranian nuclear work, which included arrangements for taking environmental samples at Iran's Parchin military facility, was also treated by JCPOA opponents as a "secret side deal."   More

 

IAEA: Iran Is Keeping Its End of the Nuclear Bargain

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is reporting that Iran has so far complied with its obligations under the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which went into effect in January and limits Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. The IAEA report, which is confidential but was apparently shown to the Reuters news agency, “did not point to any violations in Tehran’s observance of the deal”:   “Throughout the reporting period, Iran had no more than 130 metric tonnes of heavy water … Iran’s total enriched uranium (up to 3.67 percent purity) stockpile did not exceed 300 kg,” the report said, citing the nuclear deal’s limits on the two substances.  More

 

‘Moral Idiocy’ Department. . .

US DEFENSE SECRETARY: “Russia sowing seeds of global instability”

In a hard-hitting speech at Oxford University, Carter emphasized deep skepticism about Russian intentions in Syria, even as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry considered traveling to Geneva on Wednesday for more talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Their weekend discussions, on the sidelines of an economic summit in China, failed to produce an agreement on more cooperation in Syria…  “Despite the progress that we made together in the aftermath of the Cold War, Russia’s actions in recent years - with its violations of Ukrainian and Georgian territorial integrity, its unprofessional behavior in the air, in space, and in cyberspace, as well as its nuclear saber rattling - all have demonstrated that Russia has clear ambition to erode the principled international order,” Carter said.   More

 

AMERICA’S TRUE ROLE IN SYRIA

Syria’s civil war is the most dangerous and destructive crisis on the planet. Since early 2011, hundreds of thousands have died; around ten million Syrians have been displaced; Europe has been convulsed with Islamic State (ISIS) terror and the political fallout of refugees; and the United States and its NATO allies have more than once come perilously close to direct confrontation with Russia.  Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has greatly compounded the dangers by hiding the US role in Syria from the American people and from world opinion. An end to the Syrian war requires an honest accounting by the US of its ongoing, often secretive role in the Syrian conflict since 2011, including who is funding, arming, training, and abetting the various sides. Such exposure would help bring to an end many countries’ reckless actions.   More

 

'What Is Aleppo?' Asks Gary Johnson--and NYT Gives Three Wrong Answers

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, when asked in an MSNBC interview (Morning Joe, 9/8/16) what he would do about the battle raging over the Syrian city of Aleppo, responded, “What is Aleppo?”  That’s troubling, that a presidential candidate would be unaware of one of the main battlefields in one of the world’s deadliest conflicts. But even more troubling is that the New York Times, the US paper of record, can’t seem to figure out what Aleppo is, either…  The New York Times ran a correction on its misidentification of Aleppo. But then it had to run a correction on the correction—because the first correction misidentified Aleppo as the capital of Syria. The actual capital of Syria is Damascus.

If history and the polls are any guide, Gary Johnson will probably not be elected president in November. But the New York Times is and will likely continue to be the country’s most influential newspaper—so its gaps in knowledge are far more worrisome.  More

 

Obama administration arms sales offers to Saudi top $115 billion

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, other military equipment and training, the most of any U.S. administration in the 71-year U.S.-Saudi alliance, a report seen by Reuters has found.  The report, authored by William Hartung of the U.S.-based Center for International Policy, said the offers were made in 42 separate deals, and the majority of the equipment has yet to be delivered. Hartung told Reuters the report would be made available publicly on Sept. 8.  The report said U.S. arms offers to Saudi Arabia since Obama took office in January 2009 have included everything from small arms and ammunition to tanks, attack helicopters, air-to-ground missiles, missile defense ships, and warships. Washington also provides maintenance and training to Saudi security forces.   More

 

Senators to Introduce Measure Opposing $1B Arms Sale to Saudis

A bipartisan push against a $1.15 billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia is gaining steam in protest of Riyadh’s bombing campaign in Yemen — but remains split on whether to oppose the sale or block it outright. Multiple congressional aides tell Foreign Policy that Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut are preparing legislation, to be filed this week, opposing the U.S. package of tanks, ammunition, and machine guns to Saudi Arabia. It follows a letter last week from more than 60 House lawmakers who sought to delay the arms sale after a series of Saudi-led airstrikes reportedly killed civilian targets in August.   Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who helped lead the House’s letter campaign, praised his Senate colleagues for “taking action” against the arms sale. “Once the public learns the facts of the Saudi military’s atrocities in Yemen, they will call for this arms sale to be rejected and for the U.S. to withdraw its support of the Saudis in this conflict,” he told FP on Wednesday.  Spokespeople for Paul and Murphy declined comment.  More

 

Please call the Capitol Switchboard at 1-855-86-NO WAR (1-855-686-6927) to urge both of your senators to join Murphy and Paul in blocking bombs to Saudi Arabia.

Urge Senator Warren and Senator Markey to support a resolution of disapproval against the Saudi arms deal by signing the petition at MoveOn.

 

64 U.S. Lawmakers Seek Delay of Billion-Dollar Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia

In a sign that frustration is growing in the U.S. Congress over Saudi Arabia, a bipartisan group of 60 lawmakers has signed a letter seeking to delay the Obama administration’s planned sale of $1.15 billion in arms and military equipment to Riyadh. The letter, addressed to President Barack Obama, cites the growing number of civilian casualties in Yemen caused by the Saudi-led military coalition and the Obama administration’s failure to rein in its Arab ally…  The proposed sale, approved by the State Department on Aug. 9, includes up to 153 tanks, ammunition, hundreds of machine guns, and sundry other military equipment. Congress has 30 days to block the sale, but the lawmakers appear irritated that notification of the sale came in the middle of their summer recess.  More

 

A copy of the letter with the members’ signatures can be found here. All the House members from Massachusetts except Kennedy and Moulton signed the letter.

 

House Expected to Pass Bill Allowing 9/11 Lawsuits Against Saudi Arabia

The House is expected to fast track a bill on Friday that would let the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the terrorist plot, ushering in a showdown with the White House, which has threatened to veto the legislation. The bill, which was passed unanimously by the Senate this year, was not debated on either chamber’s floor…  The measure highlights a growing desire to examine Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, a relationship that has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy in the Middle East for decades. Lawmakers also appear to have felt intense pressure from families of the victims, who have pushed for the legislation to be passed before the 15th anniversary on Sunday of the attacks.  The Saudi government, which has long denied any involvement, has warned that it might liquidate hundreds of billions of dollars of American assets if the bill becomes law, although many experts say they believe it is an empty threat.  More

 

And, right on schedule, the Washington Post publishes a laudatory op-ed about Saudi Arabia written by a key leader of the US Israel Lobby.  Israel has long been pursuing a de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia against Iran.

 

“In Saudi Arabia, a revolution disguised as reform”

Today, it’s hard to be optimistic about anything in the Middle East. And yet having just visited Saudi Arabia, in which I led a small bipartisan group of former national security officials, I came away feeling hopeful about the kingdom’s future. That may seem paradoxical when some portray the Saudis as both “arsonists and firefighters” in the struggle with radical Islamists. While Saudi funding of madrassas internationally has contributed to the spread of a highly intolerant strain of Islam, I wonder whether a lag effect is causing the Saudis to be singled out for behaviors their leadership no longer embraces. In any case, that is certainly not the Saudi Arabia I just encountered.   More

 

US sends 500 more troops to Iraq to prepare for Mosul battle

The United States has increased its forces in Iraq by almost 500 troops in the last week to support the operation to take Mosul from the Islamic State group, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday. The increase in personnel and equipment is needed to meet the Iraqi government goal of recapturing Mosul before the end of the year, Col. John Dorrian, the Baghdad-based spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve told reporters at the Pentagon… in the last week, U.S. forces based in Iraq have risen from about 4,000 to 4,460, he said. The additional forces are assisting with the “tremendous amount of work going on” to set the pre-battle conditions to defeat the estimated 3,000 to 4,500 Islamic State group fighters estimated in Mosul, Dorrian said. The additional U.S. forces are part of the 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Their deployment was announced in August to help establish a base of operations at Qayyarah Air Field West.  More

 

Documents Show U.S. Military Expands Reach of Special Operations Programs

The United States is spending more money on more missions to send more elite U.S. forces to train alongside more foreign counterparts in more countries around the world, according to documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act.

Under the Joint Combined Exchange Training program, which is designed to train America’s special operators in a variety of missions — from “foreign internal defense” to “unconventional warfare” — U.S. troops carried out approximately one mission every two days in 2014, the latest year covered by the recently released documents.  At a price tag of more than $56 million, the U.S. sent its most elite operators — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and others — on 176 individual JCETs, a 13 percent increase from 2013. The number of countries involved jumped even further, from 63 to 87, a 38 percent spike.   More

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