Thursday, November 22, 2018

[SocialistWorker.org] Solidarity rises up to greet the caravan in Mexico

SocialistWorker.org<no-reply@socialistworker.org>

SocialistWorker.org

FYI from Mike Heichman

Solidarity rises up to greet the caravan in Mexico

Afsaneh MoradianBea AbbottHéctor A. Rivera and Brian Napoletano report from Mexico and the U.S. on the progress of the migrant caravan through Mexico — and on the inspiring displays of solidarity at every stop that set an example for activists in the U.S.
November 12, 2018
DONALD TRUMP has been demanding for weeks that Mexico prevent the Central American migrant caravan, now numbering some 5,000 people, from reaching the southern border of the U.S.
Instead, on its journey through Mexico, the caravan has been met with solidarity and love, not scapegoating and hate.
The migrants fleeing violence, repression and poverty in Central America received substantial support from the communities they pass through, including popular mobilizations that at times compelled local officials to also provide assistance, despite the government’s traditional hostility to migrants.
This is a welcome contrast to the militarized reception that the Trump administration — along with neo-fascist movements inspired by Trump — are preparing at the U.S. border.
Central American refugees continue their journey across Mexico
Central American refugees continue their journey across Mexico
Such solidarity is an important source of hope. If the popular support and mobilization for the caravan was able to compel Mexico’s authoritarian government to avoid overt use of force against the migrants — at least so far — then supporters of the migrants in the U.S. can take confidence that that their initiatives can have an effect as well.
This response of ordinary people in Mexico is unsurprising for a number of reasons.
Trump’s racist and xenophobic attacks on Mexicans themselves have encouraged a deeper sense of solidarity with the rest of Latin America — and attempts by Republicans to demonize people in the caravan as invaders, terrorists and criminals has actually drawn more attention in Mexico to the real reasons people are fleeing: extreme poverty and political marginalization.
Plus, Trump’s claims that Mexico was doing nothing to stop the caravan get little traction in Mexico, where the government’s role as a junior partner in U.S. efforts to prevent Central Americans from reaching the southern border are widely recognized.
Hence, the demands that outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto take steps to block the caravan created a difficult situation for an already hated politician, since the open use of force at the behest of Washington risked a backlash against an administration that already has the reputation of resorting to violence against all threats.
Any attempts made by the Peña Nieto government to halt or demoralize migrants through police barricades and abductions prompted strong denunciations from political, religious and other leaders demanding that the Mexican government stop acting as a “watchdog for U.S. interests.”
The incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), who takes office on December 1, has declared that he “will not do the United States’ dirty work” on migration, and while AMLO is not as radical as the U.S. media make him out to be, Mexico will be less likely to act as a border guard for Washington.

MORE IMPORTANT to the caravan’s progress than anything the government has done has been the surge of solidarity from communities all along the way in Mexico.
The caravan defied federal police in riot gear and armed with tear gas at the border crossing into Mexico at Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on October 20, and again faced a force of 700 federal police on the highway to Tapachula, who finally withdrew when the migrants came within 200 yards.
The caravan reached the city of Mapastepec in Chiapas around October 25, where volunteers from the Morelia campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico who were delivering aid reported being amazed by the way in which community members organized to provide food and shelter to the thousands of migrants — despite widespread evidence of poverty and neglect by the state in the community.
The volunteers described the solidarity shown as a moving but absolutely necessary response to the heartbreaking conditions of the migrants, many of whom are families with young children, including one couple with a 21-day-old infant.
The next day, while the caravan was moving on from Mapastepec, Peña Nieto apparently decided to shift from attempts at direct force to a more conciliatory posture. The government announced its “Estás en tu casa” (You are in your home) plan, which offered medical attention, schooling for children and regularization of legal status for migrants, all provided they did not leave Chiapas or Oaxaca.
Reports on the number of people who accepted Peña Nieto’s offer vary widely — Mexican authorities claim to have granted nearly 3,000 temporary visas, while Denis Omar Contreras of Pueblos sin Fronteras (People Without Borders) stated that 99 percent of the migrants rejected the proposal. Clearly, the main body rejected it and continued onward.
When the caravan, then numbering more than 7,000 people, arrived in Juchitan in Oaxaca on October 30, the city mobilized to provide food and shelter.
Juchitan was badly damaged during the earthquake in September 2017 that killed 98 of its inhabitants. But even as parts of the city remain in disrepair, the local government, members of Section 22 of the Oaxaca state teachers’ union and others organized relief efforts for the caravan. That same day, the main body of a second caravan arrived in Mexico.
Despite xenophobic calls by some to ignore the caravans, residents of Juchitan provided support. Many recalled how migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and elsewhere stopped on their way to the U.S. border to help dig victims out of the rubble in the aftermath of the 2017 earthquake.
An entire bus terminal was turned over to be temporary housing for the caravan, and health care professionals arrived to provide medical attention. The second caravan received the same hospitality when it arrived on November 5.
It was here in Juchitan that members of the caravan decided, by democratic vote, to split into two groups. One group continued to travel through Oaxaca en route to Veracruz, and the larger group went on a more direct route to Veracruz.
Once there, the migrants were offered transportation to Mexico City by state authorities, but in the end, most migrants got to the capital by riding on the backs of trucks and trailers making the trip or in other vehicles passing through the state.

THE MAIN body of the first caravan arrived in Mexico City early in the first week of November. The migrants were provided temporary shelter in the large Complejo Deportivo Magdalena Mixhuca (Magdalena Mixhuca Sports Complex) east of the city.
Here, they remained for the week, resting and regrouping for the second half of the journey ahead, while discussing next steps and voting on how to proceed in nightly assembly meetings.
The bulk of the caravan’s members slept in large tents inside the stadium, while those who could not find space or arrived later slept in the bleachers and in makeshift tents scattered around the property.
The LGBT Migrant Solidarity group of Mexico City, including LGBT Quakers, also organized to welcome LGBT members of the caravan.
These activists reported being overwhelmed by the sight of the caravan itself. Most people had been walking for three weeks, and were nearly destitute when they arrived. Most had no sweaters to protect them from the cold, high-altitude weather of Mexico City. Very few had blankets, either. The blankets some possessed were flea-infested and in tatters. But whatever they had, the migrants shared.
After a meeting with the LGBT Quakers, an assessment of the particular needs and wants of caravan members was undertaken. Volunteers discovered that retroviral HIV treatment, STD tests, condoms and numerous other medical supplies were needed. Within 24 hours, LGBT organizations of Mexico City had begun responding. Volunteers report an Occupy-style atmosphere of organic solidarity.
Many trans women also requested deodorant, shampoos and makeup. Volunteers answered this call, too, and were disappointed to learn of machista discrimination against LGBT groups in the caravan. They have made extensive efforts to ensure that future queer migrants would be warmly received.
At a forum organized for these groups to speak publicly about their issues, queer migrants, heartened by the support they received, began chanting; “Trans resistance is here!”
Greater Mexico City has more than 23 million inhabitants, and the caravan arrived at the peak of a citywide “corte de agua” (water outage), with a majority of population without running water for over a week as the city struggles to repair its failing infrastructure.
Nonetheless, Chilangos (the nickname for people from or living in Mexico City) were very hospitable. Indeed, many are no strangers to such a dangerous journey.
At the stadium, volunteers delivered supplies, provided massages and haircuts, made fresh tortillas, and offered daycare and games for children. Mariachis entertained crowds of people, and food trucks gave out food.
The city government, as well as big NGOs like Oxfam, Save the Children, the Red Cross and UNICEF, had a presence at the stadium, but the fact that the migrants in the caravan were themselves running the show was never in doubt. Collectively, caravan members have been making major decisions and articulating their demands to local governments and NGOs.
This included an effort by 200 caravan members who traveled to the UN offices in Mexico City on November 8 to try to negotiate buses to carry them further north. By the next day, it became clear that the UN was unwilling to provide such assistance, and members agreed to set out on the second half of their journey on Saturday morning.
After receiving free transportation via metro to northernmost part of Mexico City, migrants again set out on foot for the next leg of their journey to Querétaro, and from their eventually to the Tijuana-San Diego border crossing. Meanwhile, two subsequent caravans reportedly met up and merged while on their way to Mexico City.

THOUGH IT is around three times the distance to the nearest border crossing into McAllen, Texas, caravan members decided to travel to Tijuana because the route is believed to be somewhat safer.
Even so, the caravan will face brutal weather and will have to pass through areas where migrants are frequently abducted by criminal organizations operating in the region.
The massive growth of the narcotics industry in Latin America to service the U.S., along with the “drug war” promoted by Washington, has allowed cartels to seize control of most rural municipal governments, effectively splintering the countryside into what researcher Claudio Garibay Orozco describes as a matrix of competing narco-fiefdoms, frequently at war with one-another.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has intensified control over a limited number of border crossings, contributing to the increased violence in the north of Mexico — though the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border has done virtually nothing to halt the flow of drugs.
These are the conditions that the caravan will face now. Given their precarious social status and political marginalization, migrants passing through these fiefdoms are particularly vulnerable to extortion and random aggression, including the horrific levels of femicide near the border.
Migrants are also frequently forced by cartels, under threat of death, to act as drug mules — and then they are labeled and treated as criminals by U.S. authorities.
It was just such threats that forced many of the migrants in the caravan from their homes in Central America. Banding together for the journey, rather than attempting to reach and enter the U.S. individually or in smaller groups, will hopefully increase the chances of migrants reaching the U.S. alive.
But these are still grave and intolerable risks in the caravan — and that is not to mention the threat they face at the border, including the deployment of the most powerful military in the world.
Nevertheless, the solidarity for the caravan shown across Mexico is inspiring, and it should encourage our efforts in the U.S. to build solidarity. Protests and actions in the U.S. should not only oppose the Trump administration’s cruel response at the border, but illuminate the policies and actions of the U.S. government in Latin America that contribute to forced migration in the first place.
Forced international migration is a vital question for the international working class, as the living conditions of workers everywhere continue to deteriorate and as the ruling classes of numerous nations become increasingly reactionary in their efforts to channel popular dissent into nativist and xenophobic outlets.
In these conditions, internationalist politics are more important than ever. As the Mexican people have shown, the necessary solidarity is already present, waiting to be mobilized.

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Why was Question 1 defeated? The Ongoing Stuggle for a Just Health Care System | Sunday, November 18 | 2:00 - 4:00 PM

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Revolution to decolonization, and the age of mass incarceration.

*Sunday, November 18 | 2:00 - 4:00 PM*
*Why was Question 1 defeated? The Ongoing Struggle for a Just Health Care
System*
Sandy Eaton, Mass.Nurses Association, Wadi'h Halabi, CPUSA
Why was Question 1 defeated? What could the labor movement have done
better? Question 1 called for safe nurse staffing! Join long-time MNA
leader (and working nurse) Sandy Eaton, and the CPUSA's Wadi'h Halabi for a
discussion of this and the ongoing struggle for a just health care system.

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A flyer that Veterans For Peace is beginning to distribute to U.S. soldiers who are being deployed to the Mexican border to confront the caravan of Central American asylum seekers.

Dear VFP Members and Friends,

Attached is a flyer that Veterans For Peace is beginning to distribute to U.S. soldiers who are being deployed to the Mexican border to confront the caravan of Central American asylum seekers.  It offers perspective, support and resources to soldiers who may be questioning this misguided military mission and their role within it. 

Please feel free to download, print and distribute, or to share online.  Or if you wish to put together your own flyer, you are free to use any of this flyer that you may find useful.

Even if you do not live near the U.S./Mexico border, it is important to reach out to GI's wherever they are.  Please consider organizing vigils or protests outside military bases or nearby.

The specter of veterans reaching out to GI's at this time may be appealing to the media.  It could help us to educate both soldiers and the wider public about how U.S. foreign policy in Latin America - decades of support for corrupt, undemocratic governments - has created the situation that is forcing Central American families to flee from extreme violence and poverty.

The wars at home and abroad are now intersecting.  They are challenging us to seize the moment.

Peace at Home, Peace Abroad!
Gerry Condon

President, Board of Directors
VETERANS FOR PEACE

206-499-1220

Tonight: Here's what experts want to tell you about Yemen MoveOn Civic Action Iram Ali

MoveOn Civic Action Iram Ali<moveon-help@list.moveon.org>
To   
Dear MoveOn member,
We're going on Facebook Live in just a few moments at 7 p.m. ET with Representative Mark Pocan, Yemeni-American activist Jehan Hakim, and Win Without War policy director Kate Kizer to talk about Yemen—one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world—and what you can do to stop the catastrophe.
Yemen is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. This crisis, leaving millions on the brink of famine, is completely man-made by a conflict in which the United States is involved illegally. 
By supporting the repressive Saudi regime, the U.S. is enabling the Saudi-led war on Yemen—but this month, a bipartisan group of senators led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee, will be introducing legislation to end our illegal support for this war and the crisis it's creating. 
With this remarkable opportunity to transform relations with Saudi Arabia and a critical chance to help the people of Yemen, it's important for MoveOn members to learn about this situation—and head to Thanksgiving meals this week ready to talk to family and friends about what is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world right now. And here's an opportunity to learn more: we're hosting a Facebook Live event with Jehan Hakim from the Yemeni Alliance Committee, Kate Kizer from Win Without War, and Representative Mark Pocan at 7 p.m. ET today, November 20, over at Facebook.com/MoveOn. 
If you can't make it to the Facebook Live event, here is some of what the experts want to share with you: 
Jehan Hakim, Director
YEMENI ALLIANCE COMMITTEE
The Saudi-led war in Yemen has been brutal: It is heartbreaking for Yemenis in the U.S. who have to check in daily with our loved ones in Yemen to see if they are safe, it is devastating for Yemenis trying to flee the U.S.-backed Saudi violence but who cannot unite with family in the U.S. because of…
 
Kate Kizer, Policy Director
WIN WITHOUT WAR
For nearly four years, the United States—without congressional authorization and with no public debate—has literally fueled the conflict in Yemen by providing in-air refueling, sharing intelligence and targeting advice, and selling bombs to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). For nearly…
MoveOn members have been acting on this situation for nearly a year, with tens of thousands of signatures on petitions and thousands of calls to confront this war and disrupt the U.S. support of the Saudi regime.
We've already come a long way. 
Advocacy on Yemen started off with many members of Congress and the Trump administration refusing to admit the U.S. was even involved. After courageous organizing efforts forcing Congress to discuss this conflict, thousands of calls from MoveOn members and allies, and news coverage shedding light on U.S. involvement, there's nowhere left to hide. 
There are currently bipartisan war powers resolutions in both the House and Senate—introduced by Representative Ro Khanna and Senator Bernie Sanders, respectively—that would end U.S. military support for this horrific human rights catastrophe and hold Saudi Arabia accountable.
It's important to be part of this moral fight. To demand Congress reclaim its war powers. To make sure Congress passes these war powers resolutions to build the momentum toward the war's end. 
We'll continue to put pressure on the current and incoming members of Congress to act. But right now, an important step you can take is learning more about this issue and engaging your community—by sharing the video below, forwarding this email to friends and family, joining today's Facebook Live, and, yes, talking about this issue over the upcoming holiday weekend.
The children who survived the airstrike sit outside of the classroom.
Share on Facebook 
Share on Twitter 
Thanks for all you do.
–Iram, Nick, Tzyh, Chris, and the rest of the team

Want to support our work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it we need your support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?
Contributions to MoveOn.org Civic Action are not tax deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. This email was sent to Alfred Johnson on November 20, 2018. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

Views From The Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME



*   *   *   *
WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC?
The partial victory of the Democrats on Election Day is a reminder of the limits on popular sovereignty built into our political system.  The word “:democracy” appeared nowhere in our constitution, and this was no accident.  The document was prepared by white men of property and tailored to maintain the “right people” in power, while keeping the “rabble” at bay.  It was also framed to maintain the power of slaveholders by giving disproportional power to the slaveholding states. 

Centuries of reform have broadened the electorate, but the system continued to guarantee that all votes were not equal.  Despite all kinds of barriers, 10 million or more cast their votes for Democrats rather than Republicans in the last election and yet they succeeded in eking out a slight majority in the House, while Republicans deepened their control of the Senate.  A Senator from California represents dozens of more voters than a similarly elected Senator from say Wyoming.  Yet both Senators have an equal vote in  Congress. The Supreme Court remains firmly in Republican hands – possibly to be deepened under the remaining years of the popular-vote-losing but electoral-college-chosen Trump administration – and will continue to rule in favor of money over people.  Even the Democratic Party leadership is more accountable to wealthy donor  interests than to its voter base.

We need to struggle to gain more victories under the present skewed system, but we also need to reform it.  “One-person-one-vote” is a powerful idea supported in principle by most Americans.  We should work strategically to make that a reality.

YES, THERE WAS A BIG BLUE WAVE LAST WEEK
Make no mistake: It was a blue wave. Democrats won at least 35 seats in the House, and as results continue to come in from California and elsewhere, that number could go as high as 40. Meanwhile, although 10 incumbent Democratic senators were running in states Trump carried, only two of them lost (there is one recount), while the party picked up Republican Senate seats in Nevada and Arizona. So far, their popular-vote margin seems to be close to 7 percent; as Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote, that surpasses the margin in the GOP wave elections of 1994 and 2010.  As the truth of the Democrats’ success begins to dawn on the pundit class, a new half-baked narrative emerges: that the Democrats are in danger of “overreach,” or overreliance on progressive candidates and issues that are out of step with an imaginary “mainstream.”   More

Image result for FIGHTING TO VOTEMidterm Takeaway: WE NEED A LOT MORE DEMOCRACY
Suppression may have helped the GOP governor candidates fend off strong challenges inFlorida and especially Georgia, where tens of thousands of voters were scrubbed from the rolls and lines in Democratic precincts ran up to five hours long.  And thanks to gerrymandering, it took an extraordinary effort for Democrats to win even a slim House majority. They’re up only a few seats despite decisively winning the popular vote by at least 9 points. Had it been “only” a 4 or 5 point win, Vox’s Matthew Yglesias estimates, the GOP might have retained its majority. Also worth noting: Democratic Senate candidates actually racked up over 10 million more votes than Republicans, even as Republicans picked up Senate seats on a GOP-tilting map,   More

When Media Say ‘Working Class,’ They Don’t Necessarily Mean Workers
—but They Do Mean White
Since the 2016 elections, corporate media narratives about US politics have fixated on the “white working class” as a pivotal demographic, presented as a hardscrabble assortment of disaffected outsiders. Piece after piece has been published in establishment outlets attempting to decipher the motivations of this racialized socio-economic group, depicted as fighting from the Heartland against “cultural elites” on both coasts…  But the media focus distorts the composition of this class, racially and otherwise… Americans who make their living by selling their labor (mostly in the service industry) are in fact disproportionately people of color, who are projected by the Economic Policy Institute (6/9/16) to constitute an outright majority of the working class by 2032…  Despite the significant number of people of color in the working class, non-white members of this class are rarely talked about as such. While use of the phrase “white working class” has been ubiquitous in political journalism in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, the “black working class” is discussed much less often.   More

'Straight-up racist;' Massachusetts Democrats raise concerns with party leadership
Massachusetts Democrats, who won race after race in Tuesday's elections, appear to have a some racial tensions within their party. In a televised interview that aired Friday night on WGBH, Suffolk County District Attorney-elect Rachael Rollins and state representatives-elect Nika Elugardo and Liz Miranda, all of Boston, pledged to be forceful agents of change, discussed how they built winning campaigns, and raised serious concerns with leadership in the Democratic party, with Elugardo describing the party as "straight-up racist." "What I found was a little disappointing was that I think that the Democratic party of our commonwealth and across the country needs to take a look at themselves," Miranda told Basic Black host Callie Crossley. "We all won without major support for our primaries." "Or any," added Rollins. "Stop being nice."   More

You can watch the program here:

PHYLLIS BENNIS, REV. DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER II:
After the Election, We Have Movement Work To Do
Elections are not how we change history. But they are a big part of how we—social movements, poor and disenfranchised and marginalized people, communities of color—engage with power. So when we win electoral victories, it matters.  A lot. It's not because of which party wins, which state turns from red to purple or back again. Elections are not a box of crayons.  It's because of what happens when people are sent to congress or to the state house by and from our movements, and voted in by mobilized, engaged and enraged constituencies who will hold them accountable for what they do.  We didn't win everything last night—we never do.  But we did see amazing victories in diversifying who serves in Congress (including topping 100 women for the first time) and expanding who gets the right to vote…  But to mobilize, to organize, to build the movements and the organizations we're going to need to fight for power.  We have a long way to go – last night was only the latest of our beginnings.  We have movement work to do.   More

What If Only Men Voted? Only Women? Only Nonwhite Voters?
Imagine if only one group of Americans cast their ballots this November. What would happen to the electoral map? We’veconducted this kind of thought experiment before; it can help shed light on why the parties are hoping that certain groups — such as suburban women for Democrats, white working class voters for Republicans — will help them win seats in 2018…  If only nonwhite Americans could cast ballots, they would elect a gigantic Democratic majority (the largest projected majority out of any group we looked at). While white voters on the whole are Republican-leaning (Trump won them by about 15 to 20 percentage points in 2016), nonwhite voters are strongly Democratic (Hillary Clinton won them by more than 50 points). African-AmericansAsian-Americans and Latinos all overwhelmingly vote Democratic, although there are exceptions.  More

https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/skelley-HOUSE-MAPS-1-2.png

HOW MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH CARE COMPANIES DEFEATED QUESTION 1
On the face of it, the appeal of Question 1 seems obvious: Would you rather be cared for by a nurse who has three other patients, or a nurse who has seven other patients?  Safe patient limits are the Holy Grail for nurse unions. While many union contracts establish nurse-to-patient ratios, only in California have nurses won universal ratios at the legislature.  The results speak for themselves. “In California they have lower instances of avoidable readmissions and their patient outcomes are better,” said Nora Watts, a forty-three-year nurse at Newton-Wellesley Hospital outside Boston. “The morbidity and mortality rates from hospital-associated problems are decreasing faster than anywhere else in the country.”  So how did employers persuade the public to vote no? The Massachusetts hospital lobby spent upwards of $30 million to drum up fear and confusion in a campaign that strongly resembled an anti-union drive.  Question 1 pitted MNA’s ground game against the deep pockets of the state’s $28 billion hospital industry.   More

Boston dodged a bullet. . .
AMAZON HQ2 WILL COST TAXPAYERS AT LEAST $4.6 BILLION
Amazon’s announcement this week that it will open its new headquarters in New York City and northern Virginia came with the mind-boggling revelation that the corporate giant will rake in $2.1 billion in local government subsidies. But an analysis by the nation’s leading tracker of corporate subsidies finds that the government handouts will actually amount to at least $4.6 billion. But even that figure, which accounts for state and local perks, doesn’t take into account a gift that Amazon will also enjoy from the federal government, a testament to the old adage that in Washington, bad ideas never die. The Amazon location in Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens, is situated in a federal opportunity zone…  Supporters claim opportunity zones spur renewal and revitalization in impoverished areas. It’s a decades-old bipartisan fantasy that sits uncomfortably at odds with the demonstrated results. Researchers who have studied opportunity zones find that these tax schemes rarely ever help cities, and often financially cripple them.    More


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

New Study Details 'Staggering' $6 Trillion (and Counting) Price Tag of Endless US War
While the human costs will remain impossible to calculate, a new analysis shows that the Pentagon barely scratched the surface of the financial costs of U.S. wars since September 11, 2001 when it released its official estimate last August regarding how much the U.S. has spent on fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs reports (pdf) that by the end of the 2019 fiscal year, the U.S. will have spent $5.9 trillion on military spending in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other countries, as well as veterans' care, interest on debt payments, and related spending at the Homeland Security and State Departments.   More

US 'WAR ON TERROR' HAS KILLED AT LEAST HALF A MILLION PEOPLE
The report, which was published on Saturday by the Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, put the death toll between 480,000 and 507,000.  The toll includes civilians, armed fighters, local police and security forces, as well as US and allied troops.  The report states that between 182,272 and 204,575 civilians have been killed in Iraq; 38,480 in Afghanistan; and 23,372 in Pakistan. Nearly 7,000 US troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. The paper, however, acknowledged that the number of people killed is an "undercount" due to limitations in reporting and "great uncertainty in any count of killing in war".   More

You can read the full report here.  Other studies have suggested that these numbers are very conservative and that the actual toll is in the millions.

PENTAGON FAILS ITS FIRST-EVER AUDIT, OFFICIAL SAYS
The Pentagon has failed what is being called its first-ever comprehensive audit, a senior official said on Thursday, finding U.S. Defense Department accounting discrepancies that could take years to resolve. Results of the inspection - conducted by some 1,200 auditors and examining financial accounting on a wide range of spending including on weapons systems, military personnel and property - were expected to be completed later in the day. “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters, adding that the findings showed the need for greater discipline in financial matters within the Pentagon.  It was an audit on a $2.7 trillion dollar organization, so the fact that we did the audit is substantial,” Shanahan added.   More

House GOP Moves Swiftly to Keep US Involved in Saudi-Led War on Yemen
Anti-war groups have been cautiously hopefully in recent weeks that the U.S. would withdraw support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen following widespread outcry over Saudi Arabia's murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—but those hopes were dashed late Tuesday when House Republicans moved to stop a long-planned-for vote from going to the floor…  The Republican maneuver was denounced as "disgraceful" by the anti-war group Peace Action. "Apparently, neither Saudi Arabia's brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi nor its mid-summer bombing of a school bus packed full of children were enough to break the ice surrounding House Majority Leader Paul Ryan's heart," said Kevin Martin, president of the group, in a statement.  More

On the positive side, in a nearly party-line vote, nearly all the Democrats voted to allow a vote on the Yemen War resolution, including all House members from Massachusetts (except for Lynch, who did not vote).  Rollcall here: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll418.xml

A Flawed American Sanctions Policy on Iran
The Trump Administration’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran is animated by a deeply flawed grasp of Iranian politics and an incoherent strategy, one that will not be realized by dreams of regime change in the country. Rather than force Iran’s capitulation in the coming months, the administration will confront a tumultuous regional and global map whose contours will be shaped by three intersecting waiting games: one played by the United States, another by the Islamic Republic, and a third by a group of countries seeking to sustain the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). While these competing moves play out, Iran will continue to try to shape the region’s geostrategic map in ways that will protect its basic interests. The capacity of the United States and its regional friends to affect this map could diminish further as flaws in the American strategy become more evident.   More

LISTEN TO THE GOVERNOR OF OKINAWA
The first step the United States should take to reduce the chance of confrontation is to listen to Denny Tamaki, the new governor of Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture and most complicated constituency. Home to over half of the 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan and to American nuclear assets as well, Okinawa is the East China Sea’s most valuable piece of real estate to American security interests. Governor Tamaki, currently on his first trip to the United States since taking office in early October, is meeting with anyone and everyone who will hear his plea to stop construction of a new American military facility in his prefecture. Okinawans already host 70% of the existing American bases in Japan in their territory, which comprises 1% of the mainland. This new one, which has been 20 years in the making, would add six helipads off of Okinawa’s northeast coast in Oura Bay, adjacent to Camp Schwab, the U.S Marine base in the town of Henoko.   More