Thursday, November 29, 2018

A View From The Local Left In Boston


DORCHESTER
PEOPLE forPEACE
DPP’s Mission is to oppose current US wars and militarism as the core of our foreign policy. We work with local groups to build a multi-racial peace and justice movement throughout the neighborhoods of Dorchester; to work against the war at home -- including racism, violence, budget cuts, and political oppression; and to make clear the connection between neglect of local human needs and the movement toward a state of permanent war.  dotpeace.org
Weekly Update:  Friday, November 23, 2018
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Next DPP Meeting

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10: 6:30-8:30pm, Vietnamese American Community Center (Viet-AID), 42 Charles St. (second floor), Fields Corner  (behind the Fields Corner T. Station).  AGENDA TBA  

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DPPers at Veterans For Peace November 11 Peace Parade
(l. to r.) Sydney, Jane and Kelley

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(From a previous Thanksgiving edition of the DPP Update)
Remember “PSNA” (Puritan State of North America)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/First_Muster_1637.jpgMost of us have mixed feelings about Thanksgiving.  On the one hand, it has become the US family holiday par excellence, when adult children return home and relatives we don’t often see are invited to the feast,  On the other hand, most readers of the Update are well aware of the dual nature of the holiday.  While Thanksgiving celebrates what we are grateful for in our family life, it also marks the historical process that concluded with genocide and expropriation of indigenous lives and lands.  For Native people, the Thanksgiving has long been marked as a day of mourning.

But there is another aspect of the history which we generally ignore – and that is highly relevant when we are flooded with propaganda about the religion-fueled atrocities of groups like ISIS in the Middle East, now spilling over into “our” cities like Paris.  The Plymouth Plantation, site of the supposed first Thanksgiving and later Puritan Boston were also communities motivated by religious fanaticism and were the spiritual ancestors of the Christian fundamentalism that influence a substantial portion of our population, especially at the base of the Republican Party.

The Puritan “Pilgrims” may themselves have been refugees from religious persecution, but that did not stop them fromdyer-hangingimposing their own brand of intolerance in their New England colonies and toward the native peoples. They saw themselves as modelled on the Exodus and the subjugation of “the Promised Land” -- and they imposed, along with the conquest, their own brand of religious fundamentalism.  The Puritan movement was imbued with biblical imagery, especially from the Hebrew scriptures (“Old Testament”).  If John Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” was morally related to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the other “hill” of Zion was not far from their minds.  That’s why there are towns of Salem (a variant of Jerusalem) in most New England states, along with Canaan, Bethel/Bethlehem, Goshen, Lebanon.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCrA_stjNzC1AlMe_2nQkmRucSddcbOnsTBwddmuvN3Jlvf6NHvwfkAnilRqPUQ7us8d4mUVynbIP4cayWwTIlR4YR2mxxgPDSTxQGLGVd5vqa0pCPsuBgLq8hx4BLcBUmDMj_/s400/plymouth-indian-head.gifThey also imposed their own strict version of biblical law (Shari’a!) to regulate all manner of public and private life.  The capital crimes in the colonies – led by “blasphemy” – were given biblical footnotes in the first and subsequent printed law codes.  Long before the famous “witch trials” of 1692-3 four members of the colony were hanged for the crime of being Quakers.

Indigenous resistance, meanwhile, was met with open terror from the earliest days of the colony.  When the last revolt against the invaders was defeated in 1675-6 the colonists displayed the head of native leader Metacomet (“King Philip”) on a stake in Plymouth.  Other native settlements – even Christian ones -- were destroyed and the inhabitants held in a kind of concentration camp on Deer Island and later sold as slaves in the British West Indies. 

These measures highlighted the irony on the first Great Seal of the colony, which pictured a stereotypical native voicing the plea “Come over and help us.”   It is still the model of the contemporary seal of our state, which includes the Latin motto:  “By the sword we pursue a calm repose under liberty.”

http://media1.shmoop.com/media/images/large/mass-bay-seal.jpg

First Great Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Seal_of_Massachusetts.svg/1024px-Seal_of_Massachusetts.svg.png

Contemporary State Seal of Massachusetts

WHAT WHITE SUPREMACISTS KNOW
The United States is not exceptional in the amount of violence or bloodshed when compared to colonial conquests in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and South America. Elimination of the native is implicit in settler colonialism and colonial projects in which large swaths of land and workforces are sought for commercial exploitation. Extreme violence against noncombatants was a defining characteristic of all European colonialism, often with genocidal results.  Rather, what distinguishes the United States is the triumphal mythology attached to that violence and its political uses, even to this day. The post–9/11 external and internal U.S. war against Muslims-as-“barbarians” finds its prefiguration in the “savage wars” of the American colonies and the early U.S. state against Native Americans. And when there were, in effect, no Native Americans left to fight, the practice of “savage wars” remained. In the twentieth century, well before the War on Terror, the United States carried out large-scale warfare in the Philippines, Europe, Korea, and Vietnam; prolonged invasions and occupations in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic; and counterinsurgencies in Columbia and Southern Africa. In all instances, the United States has perceived itself to be pitted in war against savage forces.  More

GOING NATIVE: LOSING THE HATE
National Football League owners are reacting to Washington, D.C. team owner Daniel Snyder’s plans to rebuild Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium and move his callously named team back to the nation’s capital with a shrug. But American Indian tribes, along with anti-racist organizations, have begun a national movement to stop him…  Since the 1980s, Indian people have sought to put an end to racist names and mascots in schools, colleges, and professional sports teams. A big part of that struggle has been educating our own people about the damage inflicted on our self-worth because of these mascots…  However, a district court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the name and image was not disparaging to American Indians. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case. But the outcry against Indian mascots continues to gain momentum from tribes, celebrities, and racial justice groups.   More

How everything about Thanksgiving as we know it was shaped by the marketing industry
Starting with Thanksgiving’s early champion, Sarah Josepha Hale, the history of Thanksgiving is rooted in marketing. Marketers not only helped create many of the rituals and cultural myths associated with the Thanksgiving meal, but they also legitimized and maintained them. Initially, the Thanksgiving turkey competed with other meats, like duck, chicken and goose, for centerpiece at the Thanksgiving table…  Iconic Swift’s Premium turkey ads focused on the sacredness of the meal by featuring families at prayer, giving thanks before the meal begins. The importance of the turkey to the Thanksgiving celebration dominates, helping to perpetuate the Thanksgiving turkey tradition.  Meanwhile, early ads for the Eatmor Cranberry Company positioned their whole cranberries as a perfect complement to any and all Thanksgiving meat dishes. This brand dominated until the 1930s when another brand, Ocean Spray, entered with its canned gelatin cranberry sauce.   More


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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

U.S. Military Support for Saudi Arabia’s War in Yemen
The President’s assertion that it is possible to balance benefits to the U.S. economy against the heinous behavior of an ally doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. No economic benefit, no matter how large, can justify continuing to arm a regime that has not only killed a journalist in the most brutal way imaginable but has killed thousands of civilians in indiscriminate bombing attacks in Yemen, many of them with U.S.-supplied bombs and aircraft…  The biggest flaw in President Trump’s ever-growing estimate of the U.S. jobs at stake in arms sales to Saudi Arabia is that the size of the alleged $110 billion U.S.-Saudi arms deal—in some cases referred to as if it is a single transaction—is wildly exaggerated…  A bipartisan set of members of Congress from both houses are pressing for an end to arms sales and military support for the Saudi/UAE intervention in Yemen, and the time is ripe to move forward on these efforts.   More

It’s Time for America to Reckon With the Staggering Death Toll of the Post-9/11 Wars
“The major challenge in tracking the full costs of these wars is that the U.S. military doesn’t even meaningfully investigate civilian death tolls. Generally, they know it’s not good to have civilian casualties, but their focus is mainly on fighting, and there is little pressure to make protecting civilians a key priority,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security With Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA. “Meanwhile, the U.S. public simply doesn’t see deaths in other countries. They don’t see civilians being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. With everything going on in the United States at the moment, the fact that we’re even at war has largely fallen off the radar.”  …“There is a perverse dynamic at play, in which we’re killing more people, creating adverse consequences like mass displacement and refugees, and then banning those very people from our shores,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “We really need to question both the fairness and necessity of these policies, which are inflicting devastating human costs abroad while harming our own civil rights at home.”  More

PLANET OF WAR: U.S. Military Prepares for Perpetual Global Combat
With Pentagon budgets reaching record levels -- some $717 billion for 2019 -- Washington has stayed the course, while beginning to plan for more expansive future conflicts across the globe. Today, not a single square inch of this ever-warming planet of ours escapes the reach of U.S. militarization.  Think of these developments as establishing a potential formula for perpetual conflict that just might lead the United States into a truly cataclysmic war it neither needs nor can meaningfully win. With that in mind, here’s a little tour of Planet Earth as the U.S. military now imagines it.   More


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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

Is Trump country really better off under Trump? No. It’s falling further behind.
Two years have passed since Donald Trump made his famous campaign promise in disaffected regions across the country: “We are going to start winning again!” For many voters who felt that they had lost ground in recent decades, the candidate argued, a vote for him would be rewarded with renewed prosperity and prominence…  Not noticeably better, according to the data. By most measures, my latest research shows, Trump counties — and especially counties with higher proportions of Trump voters — continue to fall farther behind the rest of the country economically. The story of our economy, like the story of our politics, continues to be a story of division and divergence.   More


Rocket 88 (Original Version) - Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston

Trump is FREAKING OUT Robert Reich We Are Living through a slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.

Robert Reich<moveon-help@list.moveon.org>
To  Alfred F Johnson  
Dear fellow MoveOn member,
We're living through a slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.
Jeff Sessions recused himself from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, so Donald Trump fired him.
Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was next in line to replace Sessions, but Trump didn't think he'd shut down the Mueller investigation, either.
So, instead, Trump installed as acting attorney general an unqualified lackey named Matt Whitaker, who has already said on CNN how he would go about ending the Mueller investigation—by starving it of funds. Whitaker is well-known in the Justice Department as a "White House spy," who will feed information about the investigation directly to Trump.1 (Let's be clear: Not only is Whitaker a Trump loyalist opposed to the probe, he also has his own record of shady business dealings and a history of attacking the values of non-Christian Americans.)
Congress must act now to protect the rule of law by passing bipartisan legislation to protect the Mueller investigation during the lame-duck session of Congress. And then, when Democrats take over the House in January, they need to begin oversight hearings immediately.
Will you chip in $3 a week to help MoveOn mobilize the grassroots pressure we need to stop Whitaker and protect Mueller? 
Putting a stooge like Whitaker in charge of the Justice Department is shocking even by Trump standards. Whitaker tweeted out an article referring to the Mueller investigation as a "lynch mob."2 He's linked to a firm that scammed veterans out of their life savings.3 And the Justice Department won't even release his financial disclosure forms.4
But now that Trump has installed his lackey as acting attorney general, the next step is obvious: Trump will either order Whitaker to fire Mueller or simply allow Whitaker to implement his own plan of defunding the Mueller probe.
Either way, the very integrity of our democracy and rule of law are at stake.
That's why the American people are rising up against this grotesque abuse of power. MoveOn has a sharp campaign plan to keep the pressure on, including:
  • A media-grabbing "Guilty Pleas-ures" ice cream truck handing out free ice cream, with flavors like "Cocoa Conspirator" and "IndictMint Chip," and sharing real facts about the impact of the Russia probe. Everywhere it goes, the ice cream truck gets great press, and MoveOn has decided to keep it going (next week, the truck will be right outside the Watergate building in Washington, D.C.).
  • Organizing extended protests in Washington, D.C. and around the country, following up on the more than 1,000 events that MoveOn members pulled off in the days after the Sessions firing. 
  • Flooding Congress with calls to make sure Republicans know that they will be held accountable for Trump's abuses and to remind Democrats that their constituents expect them to fight.
  • Producing a raft of new shareable videos to explain in clear terms that people can understand what's at stake and why Trump's actions are so dangerous.
So much of this resistance is tied to the work that MoveOn members have been fueling for the past two years—and relies on MoveOn's continued investment, leadership, and mobilization.
MoveOn has proven time and again that its tactics are effective, but after a knock-down, drag-out midterm election, MoveOn needs our help to sustain this long-term fight.
Can you chip in $3 a week to help build and sustain the next stage of MoveOn's grassroots resistance?
Legal experts from both political parties say that Whitaker's appointment is illegal, and Democrats have filed a lawsuit to stop it.5 Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has threatened to add the Mueller protection bill to must-pass spending legislation to prevent a government shutdown.6
The reason that Democrats in Congress are standing strong is because they've heard our voices. Within hours of Trump firing Sessions, MoveOn members organized more than 1,000 rallies all over the country, which were attended by more than 100,000 people.
MoveOn members are ready to hit the streets again—and, in the meantime, have been hitting the phones, protesting at local events, getting TV coverage, and flooding social media every step of the way to defend the investigation and demand real accountability for Trump and the truth about Russia. It's now just as critical that MoveOn help protect Mueller's work, push Democrats in the House to use every tool at their disposal to hold Trump accountable, and force Whitaker to recuse—or, even better, have him removed from his unconstitutionally-appointed position.
We must keep up the pressure. This is perhaps the greatest threat to our democracy and rule of law that we've seen in a generation, and we need to demand that Republicans join Democrats in passing legislation to protect the Mueller investigation during the lame-duck session of Congress, and then make sure that Democrats begin investigations when they take over the House in January.
Will you chip in $3 a week so that MoveOn can answer this constitutional crisis with the intensity of public outrage that this moment demands?
Thanks for all you do.
–Robert Reich
Sources:
1. "Schumer calls for investigation of Whitaker's contacts with White House," The Hill, November 20, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/61289?t=8&akid=220934%2E38417624%2E4YwZtw
2. "What Sessions's Resignation Means for Robert Mueller," The Atlantic, November 7, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/61284?t=10&akid=220934%2E38417624%2E4YwZtw
3. "The many scandals of Trump's new acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, explained," Vox, November 14, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/61285?t=12&akid=220934%2E38417624%2E4YwZtw
4. "Failure to turn over Whitaker's public financial disclosure forms angers critics," CNN, November 19, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/61286?t=14&akid=220934%2E38417624%2E4YwZtw
5. "Senate Democrats are suing to try to stop Matthew Whitaker from serving as acting attorney general," Vox, November 19, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/61287?t=16&akid=220934%2E38417624%2E4YwZtw
6. "Charles Schumer says Democrats might tie spending bill to Mueller protection," USA Today, November 11, 2018
https://act.moveon.org/go/61288?t=18&akid=220934%2E38417624%2E4YwZtw
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 25th, 2018. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

11/29 Decolonizing Puerto Rico’s Energy: The Renewable Revolution

Charlie Welch<cwelch@tecschange.org>
Via  Act-MA <act-ma-bounces@act-ma.org>
As Puerto Rico seeks to recover from Hurricane Maria, major decisions
are being made about the island’s future. Will global corporations
impose the same old model or will grassroots sustainable alternatives
win the day? What are the implications elsewhere?


Following a showing of Naomi Klein’s short film, The Battle for
Paradise: Naomi Klein Reports from Puerto Rico, which lays out the
challenges Puerto Rico faces, Sajed Kamal will share ideas and examples
of successful efforts to make the shift to renewables. Dr. Kamal, who
has taught in the Sustainable International Development department at
Brandeis for 20 years, has developed exciting renewable energy projects
in the United States, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Armenia, El Salvador and
Zimbabwe.

His books include The Renewable Revolution: How We Can Fight Climate
Change, Prevent Energy Wars, Revitalize the Economy and Transition to a
Sustainable Future, which Bill McKibben endorsed as “Kamal is the
navigator we need to sail with confidence into this new century.”

Join us for this important discussion.

Light refreshments

Cambridge Public Library - Central Square Branch
<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cambridge-Public-Library-Central-Square-Branch/795172037234241?eid=ARA4u0bJ0OyGHHjcxH1yHUJF2CWx-0IRAWOhqJF0WZg6EpjCX3UM3BgQ1OB-ztKRs7IjUUlC_l4T7303>

45 Pearl St, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Thurs. Nov. 29th
6:30 to 8:30 PM

https://www.facebook.com/events/437277436808775/

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From The Archives-TUESDAY: Reese Erlich- What’s wrong with US policy in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen: A journalist’s first hand report

Cole Harrison<cole@masspeaceaction.org>
What’s wrong with US policy in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen: A journalist’s
first hand report
Tuesday, November 27 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ~ First Church in Cambridge, 11
Garden St

Join the author Reese Erlich as he discusses U.S. relations with Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

Erlich’s latest book is *The Iran Agenda Today*
<https://www.routledge.com/authors/i18090-reese-erlich>: *The Real Story
Inside Iran and What’s Wrong with U.S. Policy.
<https://www.routledge.com/authors/i18090-reese-erlich>*

Erlich explores the turbulent recent history between the two countries and
reveals how it has led to a misguided showdown over nuclear technology. He
notes that all the major U.S. intelligence agencies agree Iran has not had
a nuclear weapons program since at least 2003. He explores why Washington
nonetheless continues with saber rattling and provides a detailed critique
of mainstream media coverage of Iran. The book further details the popular
protests that have rocked Tehran despite repression by the country’s Deep
State.

In addition to covering the political story, Erlich offers insights on
Iran’s domestic politics, popular culture, and diverse populations over
this recent era. His analysis draws on past interviews with high-ranking
Iranian officials, the former shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, and Iranian exiles
in Los Angeles, as well as the memory of his trip to Tehran with actor Sean
Penn.

Reese Erlich has been a freelance print and broadcast correspondent for
over 40 years. A Peabody Award-winning journalist, Erlich has authored five
books on foreign affairs. He taught journalism for ten years in the
California State University system and continues to lecture frequently on
college campuses throughout the country.

Recent articles:

Who is the bigger terrorist: Saudi Arabia or Iran?
<https://reeseerlich.com/2018/10/24/foreign-correspondent-who-is-the-bigger-terrorist-saudi-arabia-or-iran/>

What will Iran do now?
<https://reeseerlich.com/2018/05/22/what-will-iran-do-now/>

The Truth About Iran
<https://reeseerlich.com/2018/05/16/the-truth-about-iran/>

Additional Talks by Reese Erlich:

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 12:30pm, Harvard Center for Middle East Studies (CMES)
<https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/journalist%E2%80%99s-firsthand-report-%E2%80%93-what%E2%80%99s-wrong-us-policy-iran>,
room 102, 38 Kirkland St, Cambridge.

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 7:00 pm, First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St.
Sponsored by Mass. Peace Action.

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 11am, Massachusetts State House. Host: Rep. Denise
Provost

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2:30 pm, Lesley University, Cambridge

Monday, Dec. 3, 2:30 pm – Smith College, Northampton

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 7pm – University of Massachusetts, Amherst

More info:
http://masspeaceaction.org/event/reese-erlich-whats-wrong-with-us-policy-in-iran/

--
*Not one step back*

Cole Harrison
Executive Director
Massachusetts Peace Action - the Commonwealth's largest grassroots peace
organization
11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-354-2169 w
617-466-9274 m
www.masspeaceaction.org
Facebook: facebook.com/masspeaceaction
<https://www.facebook.com/masspeaceaction>
Twitter: masspeaceaction <https://twitter.com/masspeaceaction>
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Latest edition of Space Alert! Global Network

Global Network<globalnet@mindspring.com>
To  Global Network  
 

Latest edition of Space Alert!

Our latest edition of Space Alert! is now at the printer and should be in the mail soon.

If you are not on our snail mail list and want a copy sent to you in the post just drop us a line with your street address at globalnet@mindspring.com  and we will send you one.

We are also happy to send you multiple copies in the mail to share with others.  All we ask is a donation of your choosing to help cover the postage. Let us know how many copies you could share.

You can also see the newsletter online at the link above....
 
Best wishes your way.
 
Bruce K. Gagnon
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  (blog)

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. - Henry David Thoreau