Free All The Class-War Prisoners-Help Those Behind The Walls

Free All The Class-War Prisoners-Help Those Behind The Walls 

Inventing Elvis

Commentary



Elvis-The First Year-1954, narrated by Jack Perkins, 1992



Elvis Presley a rock and roll hero of my youth, if not to me personally then to many I knew especially girls, is the subject of this in-depth look at the first year that Elvis began inventing himself as the 'King'. Jack Perkins’s somber narration and idiosyncratic style sets the tone for a thoughtful look back at Elvis’s trials and tribulation on the road to stardom. We have the full ‘talking head’ treatment here from Elvis’s surviving band member, Scotty Moore, to ex-sweethearts, motel owners, agents, radio producers and announcers, cooks, bakers and candlestick makers. Basically anyone who crossed his path in 1954 in that first tough year out on the road.

And what a road it was. Playing small clubs, high school auditoriums, the Louisiana Hayride and every where he could get his foot in the door Elvis stretched and clawed his way to success, and apparently was not a bad guy to hang around with then either. He, moreover, exhibited all the virtues that small town white Southerners liked in the 1950’s, except maybe those sideburns and, just maybe, swinging that pelvis just a little too much when their daughters were around.

An interesting part of this presentation is an attempt to place the roots of Elvis’s music in the context of his time and place. And, as has been expressed elsewhere as well, that included black musical influences in the deeply segregated South. Sun Records Sam Phillip’s old adage comes true through Elvis- finding a white boy who could sing black. This segment only adds to something that I have been arguing for the past few years- the roots of rock and roll owe more than a little to black blues musical influence – think in this regard of the importance of Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll, also produced in 1954. But Elvis certainly rode the wave to great effect and this little valentine to him is good for those who like musical history with their music. For those who need just the music look elsewhere.

Elvis's Sun Sessions Commemorative CD, Elvis Presley, 1990

As to this present compilation of Elvis's Sun sessions that give flesh to the above DVD review some comments are worth mentioning. As with all such compilations there is some unevenness in the quality of performance, even in the case of Elvis. Some of this is calculated with the use of alternative takes to beef up the size of the compilation. However, any way you cut it these Sun sessions and that studio played to Elvis’s strengths musically. Starting with the classics It’s All Right, Mama, Blue Moon of Kentucky and Good Rockin’, Tonight and through such ballad covers as Blue Moon and Harbor Lights Elvis demonstrates his versatility in song style and that distinctive intonation that no one else in the Sun stable could duplicate (and they tried, believe me). Elvis fanatics will want this one just like every other thing that has been put out in his name. But the real reason to get it is to hear pure Elvis when the man, the moment and the environment all came together when Rock 'n' Roll was young.

The following is a comment made in connection with the Public Broadcasting System's documentary about Sun Records entitled Good Rockin' Tonight. I have added it to all comments on Sun Records artists that I have reviewed over the past several months

A note on sound- no, not of this American Masters production which like virtually all PBS productions is technically of high quality. No, I am referring here to the sound in Sun Studio. I do not believe in ghosts or other such things but tell me this. Why, for example, does Johnny Cash in his Sun Records days sound like god’s own creation when on work from other recordings I can take him or leave him? And that goes for Elvis, Carl, Jerry Lee and the others as well. The gods and goddesses of Rock and Roll were smiling on that joint- thanks.

*****On Passing Left-Wing Political “Wisdom” To The Next Generation-With The Lessons Of The 1960s In Mind

*****On Passing Left-Wing Political “Wisdom” To The Next Generation-With The Lessons Of The 1960s In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

 

One of the worst excesses, and there were many although made mostly from ignorance and immaturity and were moreover minuscule compared to the conscious policies of those in power who we were opposing, that we who came of political age in the 1960s were culpable of was our sense that we had to reinvent the wheel of left-wing political struggle. Mostly a very conscious denial and rejection of those thinkers, cadre and organization who had come before us and whom were disqualified from the discourse by having been worn out, old-timey, or just ideas and methods that we had not thought of and therefore irrelevant. The expression “throwing out the baby with the bath water” may seem a cliché but serves a purpose here. Most of the time back then until fairly late, maybe too late when the tide had begun to ebb toward the end of the 1960s and the then current and fashionable anticommunist theories proved to be ridiculously inadequate, we turned our noses up at Marxism, and at Marxist-Leninist ways of organizing the struggle against the American beast.

I can remember more than a few times when somebody identified him or herself as a Marxist that I and the others in the room would groan audibly. Occasionally, as well, taking part in some of the shouting down exercises when the political disputes became heated. Part of the problem was that those who organizationally claimed to be Marxists-the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party and to some extent the Progressive Labor Party were following political lines that were far to the right (right being relative here in the context of the left-wing movement in this country) of the politics of those who considered themselves radical and revolutionary youth. Those organizations far too eager to traffic with what we called respectable bourgeois forces who were part of the problem since they helped control the governmental apparatus. (I won’t even mention the moribund Socialist/Social Democratic organizations that only old laborites and “old ladies in tennis sneakers,” although that might be a slander against those nice do-gooder ladies, followed as the expression went at the time.) I know, and I know that many others at the time,  had no time for a look at the history books, had nothing but a conscious disregard for the lessons of history, good and bad, that we thought was irrelevant in seeking to build the “newer world.” (Strangely, later after all our empirical experiment proved futile and counter-productive, quoting, quoting loudly and vehemently  from this or that book, by this or that thinker, this or that revolutionary or radical became the rage. Ah, the excesses of youth.)               

Of course not everybody who came through the 1960s passed through any left-wing political school. Despite the nostalgia, despite the now puffed-up claims that we had this or that decisive effect on history, especially these days with the commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the trotting out once again of the overblew claims that the American anti-war movement stopped the Vietnam War rather than the heroic struggles of the people of Vietnam, the number of the young who got catch up more than marginally was significantly smaller that the photographs, videos, and remembrances of the times would suggest. A case in point is my old friend Sam Lowell, from my growing in Carver times whose longtime political trajectory I want to highlight in this sketch.

Highlight to provide something, I am not sure what, perhaps a cautionary tale, to what appears to be the makings of the next “fresh breeze” coming through the land that another Carver corner boy, the late Peter Paul Markin, would harangue us with on lonely Friday nights was coming. The big turn in the environmental movement, the fight for better conditions for young workers (and old) epitomized by the “Fight for $15” movement and above all, the bedrock struggle of the “Black Lives Matter” movement portends some new awakening and we old-timers who have kept the political faith have something about all of that early experience which may push those struggles forward. Here’s Sam’s story and see what you think:   

 

Sam Lowell when he was young, when he was coming of age in the 1960s along with his hang around guys at Jimmy Jack’s Diner on Main Street in Carver, did not give a “tinker’s damn” (Sam’s term which he would endlessly utter especially when the late Peter Paul Markin would start talking about what was going on outside of the Jimmy Jack corner world) about politics, about the fate of the world, about the burning and pressing issues of that day nuclear disarmament, black civil rights down South (he if anything had the Northern white working class prejudices inherited from his parents and relatives using the “n” word to refer to blacks for a very long time), and the exploding war in Vietnam. Sam’s world, like many guys of that time, like now too as far as anybody can see, was about girls or sex or name the gender combinations, above all about the music of the times, about what is now called the classic age of rock and roll (the folk music minute of that period which Bart Webber tried to get him interested in was, is, a book sealed with seven seals and he still grinds his teeth when any of us who hang with him still mention that genre).

Sam, declared by his local draft board exempt from military service as the sole support of his mother and four younger sisters after he father had passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack in 1965, had pretty much kept his head in the sand about the war, probably supported the war against demon communism as much as anybody in town who was not directly involved in the escalation of the war. That is until one of his hang around guys, Freddie Callahan, Jack’s younger brother, had lain down his head in some rotted jungle in some unpronounceable hamlet in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in late 1967 and who would later have his name placed on that black granite down in Washington, D.C. which would bring a tear to Sam eye every time he visited it despite his complete change of heart about the war.

The war, the hellish flare-up and destructiveness of the war had not been Freddie’s fault, it had not been Freddie’s war as Sam was at pains to explain when he did get active in the anti-war movement and people around town thought that he was being disrespectful of Freddie’s memory and of the flag, actually probably more the flag until very late, maybe about 1972 when even the American Legion types in town saw the writing on the wall, some of them anyway.

Bart Webber was the first to take his slightly held anti-war feelings to the holding up the wall in front of Jimmy Jack’s Diner night but he was facing the draft himself in 1966 so Sam had not taken his plight to heart. It really had been Freddie’s death that got him thinking, Freddie whom he had known since fifth grade when his own family had moved to Carver from North Adamsville when the shipbuilding trade there bottomed out and his father sought work in the new electronics plant just built up the road from Carver. Got him thinking about lots of things that did not add up in the world, the world of people just trying to get by without being shot at, or shot up by friend or foe.

One day, maybe in early spring 1968 in any case sometime before summer of that year, Sam had gone to Boston about thirty miles up the road from Carver on some business when he was walking near the Park Street subway station and a young guy about his age in regulation long hair (Sam’s was short although long for Carver young adults just then and commented on at Jimmy Jack’s by the older crowd going in for the old-timers’ blue plate specials and gung-ho guys who had no truck with “fairies” and “hippies”), unkempt beard, blue jeans and sandals, a picture of heaven’s own high priest hippie who handed him a leaflet for an anti-war rally sponsored by Students for a Democratic Society that was going to take place on the Common later that afternoon. (That was the notorious SDS that every right-thinking American believed, including Sam a little before Freddie’s death, as they could not understand kids who seemed to have everything going for them including draft exemptions were so rebellious unless some unknown source was prodding them, as the agents, paid or unpaid, of Moscow or China or someplace antagonistic to the interests of the United States. Every time an SDS rally was broken up by the cops, or mass arrests occurred, those believers breathed a short sigh of relief).     

The guy in hippie garb pressed the issue, something Sam thought was odd since in his experience these hippie types were too laid back doing dope and sex and listening to acid rock to bother about politics usually saying that to get involved only “encouraged” those politicians who had depended on free-wheeling unpaid volunteer youth to campaign for them. That drug, sex and rock and roll were okay with him although he had not been into the dope scene then but rather the traditional Carver Friday and Saturday night down by the cranberry bogs drinking cheap whiskey scene, a scene that Carver guys had been doing since time immemorial at the bogs from what he had heard.

This dippy hippie started yelling at him that it that it was his “duty” to attend the rally and help “stop the fucking war.”  Something in that common language “speech” made Sam take notice and he asked the hippie where he was from. He answered from Lynn, a very working class town on the North Shore of Boston, and told Sam, who blushed a little at the information, that he had already been in the Army, had served in Vietnam and had had enough of seeing his buddies killed or otherwise “fucked up.” Sam then out of the blue mentioned the death of Freddie Callahan, something he had never talked about except with the guys at Jimmy Jack’s, and the hippie told him that he had better get his ass to the rally before half their generation went up in smoke.

Sam pleaded business but that afternoon and early evening as the sun went down in Boston Sam was no longer “not political.” And Lance Jones, the hippie who had “recruited” him was there that afternoon and many times later to make sure that he did not backslide, and to give him the “skinny” on what was really going on in Vietnam and whose interests that commitment was serving. Sam and Lance (and others) would do many things together, sit-in at draft boards (Sam uneasy about that given his own status as exempt but Lance said everybody counted in the struggle), rallies, blocking highways and every other kind of civil protest against the damn war.

The defining moment, the moment Sam saw that the movement was ebbing, was becoming ineffective as a way to stop the “fucking war” as even he was prone to express his outrage at the constant bombings and constant lies about the situation, was down in Washington D.C. on May Day 1971 where there was a separation in the movement between those who wanted to endlessly built, presumably, larger mass rallies to show the people’s war weariness and those who decided it was time for more militant in-your-face tactics when the proposal was to “stop the government, if the government did not stop the war.” Sam had gone with the militants, a decision he has since never regretted although not for the outcome of the event itself which was an unmitigated failure but because of the enormity of that failure he had to think through things a bit more carefully, think more strategically.

He had been manhandled and arrested by the cops the first day out as the governmental forces far outnumbered and were more effective in containing the mass than that mass of people had been in evading the waiting cops and troops. Sam had spent a week in detention in RFK Stadium, a goddam football field as he would always tell everybody afterward, for his troubles (although he tempered his remarks about the stadium after the coup in Chile in 1973 where those militants were not merely harassed and detained but jailed for long periods or shot death out of hand in many cases). 

Sam, Lance, Jack Callahan, Frankie Riley, me, maybe a couple of other guys did other things too, things like taking those continent-wide hitchhikes to the West Coast, the rock concerts, all of the stuff that those who had broken from the old expected cookie-cutter, if in Sam’s case only partially and slowly since he was not sure that the whole thing had not been a dream, and he had those family responsibilities although they lessened as his sisters came of age and left the house and his mother re-married to a good guy who ran a tool and die shop in town and had government contracts for high precision machine work. But it was funny thing about Sam, a thing that was not apparent when he hung around Carver in high school but once he was convinced that he needed to do something he stuck with it (he would later tell anybody who would listen that “sticking with it” included his two drawn out failed marriages beyond repair).

Sam, after that debacle in Washington, had settled in for the long haul, had listened to what Lance had to say about needing to organize better, get more substantial allies. Gave a glance at Marx and some other thinkers who knew what they were talking about if you wanted to  effect real change and not just play at the thing for kicks, or for something to do while you are in school or on the loose, had read some and while for a long time he had his misgivings about taking his political cues from around the edges of rational politics, politics that he and his family, his neighbors, his corner boys had dismissed or worse stigmatized as “commie” talk which still hovered over his thinking. But Sam had been the first in the group to sense in the mid-1970s, particularly after the fall of Saigon and the close of the Vietnam era which had almost split the country in two, that the Garden of Eden was going to be postponed for a long time, that the tide had ebbed just as Bart Webber had sensed the rising tide in the mid-1960s.

But Sam stayed with the commitment to serious political change, to right some wrongs, to be a stand-up guy when some egregious governmental decision reared its ugly head. Stayed with it far longer that Lance who wound up going to school and becoming a CPA, longer than Bart who decided writing law briefs was easier than sitting around with about twelve people dedicated to changing the world and projecting when the next great mass upsurge would occur. Stayed with longer than Frankie Riley who also was drawn to writing legal briefs although he made a comeback in the lead-up to the first Iraq war in 1991. Longer than even the late Peter Paul Markin who had totally lost his moorings, let that “wanting habits” hunger that all the Jimmy Jack’s hang out guys had near the surface of their lives get the best of him and got caught up in the down side of the dope trade and wound up in a back alley face down under mysterious conditions in Sonora down in Mexico after a dope deal went bad. Yeah, those were not good years

So Sam faced the next few decades doing his best to keep up the good fight, working mainly with ad hoc committees that would rise and fall over specific issues like the effects of the “Reagan revolution” in this country, the struggles in Central America throughout the 1980s, the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, that first Iraq war in 1991, and a laundry list of other causes great and small which filled his political life in hard times. But always kept his eyes open and ears to the ground to see if some new version of that 1960s experience would get some wind in its sails as new generations got caught up in the whirlwind of trying to right the world’s wrongs. He knew that the 1960s experience could never be exactly replicated, that each new generation would come to understandings in its own ways and forms, did not believe that a lot of 1960s stuff should be replicated but he did believe that another wave would come, believed in that vision for a long time. But when, damn it.

One of Sam’s worries as he got older and got more concerned about the future, especially in the post 9/11 world of the early 2000s, got much more concerned about the possibilities of a socialist future if not for him then for later generations as the American body politic took one of its prolonged turning in and against itself was that there would be no one to pass on whatever accumulated political wisdom he and his dwindling band of aging 1960s sisters and brothers had been through. No one to make sense of the political battles won and lost, no one to pick up the skills necessary to organize any effective opposition to the fierce predatory appetites of the American imperium, or maybe better said, any opposition at all as the post-2003 anti-war landscape demonstrated. Most importantly no one to learn how to avoid the mistakes of the past, mistakes made, unlike the American government, mostly out of willful ignorance, foolhardiness and hubris but certainly avoidable. Avoidable since a great if fairly obvious lesson from his own experiences had been that uprisings against the government, against the social norms of the day are short and precious opportunities not to be squandered by willful ignorance, foolhardiness and hubris.       

Sam’s youthfully derived certitudes had taken a hammering in the process of the reactionary counter-offensive that erupting in the mid-1970s as the spirit of the 1960s rapidly dissipated, and took a decisive turn right under the auspices of the Reagan Revolution. The self-serving, self-promoting, social Darwinist view of society systematically laid out in that period has held a full head of steam since then as everyone almost daily has his or her nose rubbed in the hard fact that most people are not getting ahead while the bourgeoisie, the economic royalists, what did one wag call them, oh yeah, “the one-percent” with all the guns, prosper with no sweat.  That ethos had never really abated despite a couple of promising uprising blips around opposition to the second Iraq war in 2003 which evaporated after the hellish bombs began to fall in earnest in Baghdad and after the world financial meltdown in 2008 and the subsequent short-lived and anarchistic Occupy movement of late 2011.

So Sam had more recently begun to feel that feeling in the extreme,   the fear that there would be nobody to pass the torch to, nobody in the American body politic to learn a couple of things about past left-wing struggles and organizational efforts to attempt to “tame the monster.” Began to wonder if what he believed had not been an idle thought or some kind of self-induced paranoia.

Over the previous several years he had given the immediate reasons some thought as he began to realize that the generation after his which was the logical place to have passed that information onto never in the aggregate cared much about his kind of politics, had turn tail and gotten caught up in the “Reagan revolution” or after witnessing what happened to the ‘60s crowd ducked their heads, seriously ducked their heads when the deal went down. He had also become pretty sanguine about prospects for the generation after that, the grandkids, who seemed preoccupied with “Me” and with looking down toward the ground with their technological gadgetry and their ethereal “social networking” tweeter. But of late he was not so sure he should have been ready to throw in the towel but a new gathering storm, or what old Bart Webber, who he had run into recently in town for the funeral of a brother, had called “the fresh breeze” was still in its embryonic stage.

Sam had had to laugh at one point after a small demonstration of few hundred in Boston’s Park Street on the Common, the historic spot for such activities, against the escalation of the war in Afghanistan in the early days of the Obama administration  (one of the “surges” that was supposed to secure “victory” and which in the final analysis led to more doors in more villages being kicked in and the United States’ action acting, once again,  as a “recruiting sergeant” for ISIS-type organizations). That demonstration drew a cohort young people, people who had not previously been out in the public square but who were bewildered by a “peace” American President, a Nobel Peace Prize winner to boot, sending more boots on the ground after he had told the nation that the best American course was to withdraw from that benighted country. Of course the usual dwindling crew of AARP-worthy older types, the ones that his old friend Pete Markin had called when they were young the “little old ladies in tennis sneakers, Quakers up-tights, and assorted harmless do-gooders” back in the Carver days when he didn’t give a damn about politics and now here he was a “little old man in tennis sneakers” carrying on their seemingly utopian struggle.

An unusual combination indeed. The sly laugh part though was his realization that if there was any new action, any seeking of the “newer world” as that same Markin liked to called it comparable to the 1960s, that it would be the grandpas and grandmas and the grandkids linked up against the world. He was okay with that if that ever happened but after that initial burst of young energy faded he got increasingly more morose about that prospect, and the handing of that goddam torch.

Like with a lot of things in the world of politics, particularly left-wing politics where due to the smallness and isolation of those forces there is tendency to have to react to events not of your own making, the reaction by governments, particularly the United States, following 9/11 with its attempt to institutionalize the national security state and to seek vengeance at any target foreign or domestic that it considered dangerous. No question the scariest time of his political life, the only time he felt the full heat of physical threat from the average citizen whom he assumed usually view people demonstrating about anything as mere cranks and weirdoes was in the aftermath of the frenzied American bombing campaign and troop occupation in Afghanistan in 2001 right after 9/11 when he had with very few others had organized a small, a very small demonstration in opposition to the bombing campaign at Park Street and took more menacing guff from passers-by than he had ever encountered before. Those were dark days when some locally well-known committed peaceniks dependable in fair weather favored folding up the tent rather than face the hostile streets, and no question they were hostile, were suddenly not available to rally.

Like Sam said he hoped the later Occupy movement which arose phoenix-like out of the ashes of the world financial crisis but that fizzled fairly quickly and that sent Sam into another bout with what the hell, no who the hell was going to lead the struggle, who among the young who of necessity with their energy and sense of wonder drive all the great movements, was going to step forward. He felt at that time that he would have no problem taking a back sit in the struggle if the new blood came along.   

Here is a funny thing, a quirk of politics. Everybody Sam talked to, young and old, understood that the social tinder underlying American society only needed a little push to go wild. Knew that as a result of the vast increase in income inequality, knew the weight of the endless wars on the budget and human resources   was at a breaking point, knew that people, a lot of people, did not feel they were getting ahead in life always something that will steadily enflame people. So Sam, and they, the ones he talked to and talked to him knew something had to flare up. But didn’t, for a long time didn’t. Then in a rather quick succession the environment, the fight for a living wage and the fight against police brutality and the fight against the hard racism against black people were taken up by the young, or rather sections of the young from say late 2013 to now.

Not everything that has been proposed, not every action has made political sense but there is some motion toward upping the struggle, getting back into the street politics that Sam had been pushing for some time in various committee meetings since the portals of government seemed to be tone-deaf to what was going on down at the base of society. Here is the kicker though. The kicker for now as things are still in flux, still have a way to go before they are sifted out. Things may be in flux and need sifting out but Sam is starting to get and uneasy feeling already. Sam went to a meeting of those who wanted to respond to the various egregious police shootings of the past years around the country and tried to make some points, give some perspectives. He was rather unceremoniously dismissed by the young leaders there, both the young black and white leaders, as an old-timey too talkative guy.

The young, like in his generation, appear ready to seek to reinvent the wheel. Appear too as well to be as naïve about the enemies they are facing as they were in his generation. But what bothered Sam most of late has been that the young in their identity political way are “ageist” if such a term makes sense, are disrespectful of his right to have his say since when the deal goes down he will be on the barricades right beside them. Sam thought that even with the slights he could still say-“Ah, to young was very heaven” though as old Wordsworth had said in his sunnier days.    

RUSSIA 1905-A DRESS REHEARSAL

DVD REVIEW

THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, SERGE EISENSTEIN, 1925

The Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, among others, once called the aborted Revolution of 1905 that stormed over Russia in the wake of the abject defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (the one that American President Teddy Roosevelt acted as peace broker for, in case the reader is unfamiliar) the dress rehearsal for the victorious October Revolution in 1917. With that thought in mind one can see a slice of that dress rehearsal reenacted in Serge Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin. Cinematically, Eisenstein demonstrates the old revolutionary adage about revolution occurring when the rulers cannot rule in the old way and the ‘people’ refuse to be ruled in the old way. That is the paradox of the 1905 Revolution and of the crew. The outrage, particularly after the events of Bloody Sunday of January of that year set the stage but the haphazardness of the actions as shown by the fate of the Potemkin showed that the times were not fully ripened for successful revolutionary action. In the end the fate of the sailors on the Potemkin demonstrated that a mutiny, for after all that was what occurred, must be linked to forces outside the ship to be successful. The vanguard role of the Kronstatdt sailors of the Baltic Fleet in 1917 under Bolshevik influence bears witness to that hard won piece of wisdom.

As I have written in a review of another Eisenstein classic, October (Ten Days That Shook The World), he was the master of montage, stage direction and reenactment of historical scenes. That skill does not fail him here. The widely acclaimed scene from the Steps of Odessa bears eloquent witness to that ability. As was the case in October it shows here in the faces of the actors used to portray the various participants. One may criticize this work as being too didactic in its portrayal of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys but my friends that is what this film is all about. It is a propaganda film made in the 1920’s and reflects the state of the art and the state of working class politics. The sailors were not society’s ‘beautiful’ people. And that is exactly the point. The intent of the revolution was to turn that world upside down with the forces at hands, warts and all. That Eisenstein captured that feel in a silent film that is driven by sober classical Russian music played as background is a tribute to his work. His on and off again relationship with Stalin, while not irrelevant, does not negate its grandeur.

Keep Space for Peace Week-October 1-8, 2016

October 1-8, 2016

 

Keep Space for Peace Week

International Week of Protest to

Stop the Militarization of Space

 

 

No Missile Defense

Stop Drones Surveillance & Killing

Stop the Endless Wars

No to NATO

End Corporate Domination of Foreign/Military Policy

Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Deal with climate change and global poverty

 

 

 

List in formation

 

• Alice Springs, Australia (Oct 1) National Conference Pine Gap: Serving US Militarism for 50 Years – Time for Independence? Panels include: Pine Gap & US Base in Darwin, Security Threat to Australia?; War with China?; Mass surveillance; Nuclear and Drone warfare; Arms Manufacturers; Regional Arms race threat to peace. The Chifley, Alice Springs Resort, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm,  aspatt2016@gmail.com       
• Alice Springs, Australia (Oct 2) Joint Cavalcade to gates of US Spy base at Pine Gap 9:00am - 12:00pm, aspatt2016@gmail.com   
• Bath Iron Works, Maine (Oct 1) Vigil across from administration building on Washington Street (Navy Aegis destroyers outfitted with “missile defense” systems built at BIW) 11:30-12:30 am   Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm (207) 763-4062
• Berlin, Germany (Sept 30 – Oct 3) ‘Berlin Congress 'Disarm! for a Climate of Peace: Creating an Action Agenda’ at Technical University. Sponsored by IPB, WILPF, Pax Christi and others.    https://www.ipb2016.berlin/event/ipb-world-congress-berlin/
• Berlin, Germany (Oct 8) Nationwide demonstration Down with Weapons! Cooperation Instead of NATO Confrontation, Disarmament Instead of Welfare Cuts http://friedensdemo.org/aufruf-zur-demonstration-am-08-10-2016-in-berlin/
• Boston, Massachusetts WILPF will organize protest
• Caracus, Venezuela (Oct 6) Protest by International Solidarity Committee (COSI), roso_grimau@yahoo.es
• Chandrapur, Mahrashstra State, India (Oct 7) Power Presentation on Space for Peace at Shantaram Pothdukhe Law College,
• USAF Croughton, England (Oct 1) March & Rally at U.S. satellite communication and intelligence base. (Space communications, drones, bomber guidance, missile defence and command & control functions.)  12-3 pm. Oxfordshire Peace Campaign, oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk
• Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea (Oct 1-2) Distribution of leaflets about space week during the Jeju Peace festival  armha2013@gmail.com
• Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea (Oct 7) A Concert in remembrance of US invasion of Afghanistan at Gangjeong Peace Center, Gangjeong village  armha2013@gmail.com
• Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea (Oct 1 to 8) Picketing, educating, expressing solidarity with space week at Navy base where ‘missile defense’ systems will be ported onboard US Aegis destroyers  armha2013@gmail.com
• Gimcheon, South Korea (Oct 1-8) Nightly candlelight vigil against US deployment of THAAD ‘missile defense’ system near their community. 
• Port Louis, Mauritius (Oct 1-2) LALIT 2^nd Action Conference called “Diego Garcia: 50 Years’ Occupation & Banishment, 50 Year’s Struggle”.  Topics include: The secret history of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia and its role as a key installation in the Air Force’s Satellite Control Network.  Contact: raj8@intnet.mu
• Digapahandi, Orissa State, India (Oct 4) Seminar at Bijoy Patnak, Government Women's College, Mr. Haraprasad Rath, Organiser  ratha.haraprasad@gmail.com
• Digapahandi, Orissa State, India (Oct 6) Demonstration and Discussion at Chaamundi College, Mr. Haraprasad Rath, Organiser  ratha.haraprasad@gmail.com
• Fresno, California (Oct 7) Tabling & leafletting at CSUF Cineculture Film Class ilsasso2003@yahoo.com
• RAF Fylingdales, North Yorkshire, England (Oct 1) Demonstrate against US Missile Defence and space-based warfare, 12-3 pm, Yorkshire CND  info@yorkshirecnd.org.uk    
• King of Prussia, Pennsylvania (Oct 8)  Brandywine Peace Community will hold  an anti-war 'REACH-OUT' to our neighbors.  Lockheed Martin, 230 Mall Boulevard (corner of Mall and Goddard Boulevards, behind the King of Prussia Mall) Noon – 2 pm. Lockheed Martin is the world's #1 war (including killer drones) and nuclear weapons profiteer.  Nuclear weapons and use are still the central threat of U.S. global empire.  Music by Tom Music. Come with a whole lotta noise and love for people and the planet in the face of the presidential election madhouse. For more information: call (610) 544-1818, www.brandywinepeace.com/events. 
• Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, New Mexico (Oct 1) Protest at Gibson @ Truman Street SE from 10 am to Noon. Kirtland does Research & development on directed energy beam weapons, lasers, microwave, rail guns and others technologies in the war to defend freedom and liberty for American corporations.  They want to put big killer lasers on aircraft soon. In addition KAFB operates a special satellite control system for global war that also enables drone attacks around the world on a moment’s notice.  Kirtland houses one of the largest offensive cyber warfare centers that hacks into other nation’s computer systems. Sponsored by Stop War Machine and others. citizen@comcast.net
• Maine Peace Walk (Oct 11-26) Stop the War$ on Mother Earth, Penobscot Nation on Indian Island to Kittery Naval Submarine shipyard in Kittery, More info at  http://vfpmaine.org/
• Menwith Hill, England (Oct 4) Demonstration at U.S. NSA/NRO Spy Base in Yorkshire.  Sponsored by CAAB   mail@caab.corner.org.uk  
• Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota (Oct. 5) At the weekly peace vigil on a bridge spanning the Mississippi River between Minneapolis/St. Paul, Women Against Military Madness will hold signs about stopping the provoking of Russia and China. From 5:00-6:00 p.m. during rush hour traffic.  On Oct. 8 a coalition of peace groups in the Twin Cities will rally with a focus on Afghanistan because it is the 15th anniversary of the U.S. war on that country; there is sure to be an anti-drone presence.  beaudmj@gmail.com
• Nagpur, India (Oct 2) Dharna (Squatting Demonstration)  J. Narayana Rao, Coordinator jnrao193636@gmail.com
• Niscemi, Sicily (Oct 2) Protest march at US space warfare communications base by No MUOS campaign sadhusan@virgilio.it
• Regina, Canada (Oct 8) Panel discussion against Canada joining the U.S. ballistic missile "defence" system. The venue is Meeting Room 208, Research and Innovation Center, University of Regina at 2 p.m. Speakers include: David Gehl, Dr. Stephen Moore, and Dr. William Stahl. Sponsors: Regina Peace Council, Making Peace Vigil, and PeaceQuest Regina. Info contact: Ed Lehman 306-718-8010 or edrae1133@gmail.com
• San Francisco, California (Oct. 9) Bay Area CODEPINK Monthly Peace Walk on the Golden Gate Bridge.  Stop Drone Surveillance & Killing: Shut Down Beale AFB & Shut Down Creech AFB. Noon-2pm, Rally & March on the Bridge.   ratherbenyckeling@comcast.net    
• Santa Rosa, California (Oct 10) Lynda Williams, SRJC Physics Faculty presenting ‘The Gold Rush in Space: The Risks of Mining Asteroids’, Noon – 1:00 pm in Newman Auditorium, Emeritus Hall, Santa Rosa Junior College lyndalovon@gmail.com
• Seattle, Washington (October; Dates TBD) Leafleting against the Trident nuclear weapons system, at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor and communities around Puget Sound. Contact Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (gzcenter.org) at info@gzcenter.org
• Seongju, South Korea (Oct 1-8) Nightly candlelight vigil against US deployment of THAAD ‘missile defense’ system near their community. 
• Sunnyvale, California (Sept 26) Vigil at Lockheed-Martin (Fifth Street & L-M Way) at noon.  Lockheed profits from war. Its web site lists over 400 products designed to meet the needs of today's “warfighter.” These range from Hellfire, PAC­3 and Javelin missiles the F16, 22, 35 and 117 fighters, military satellites, integrated defense systems, and dispensers for cluster bombs. Sponsored by Pacific Life Community. ehmke@stanford.edu
• Tucson, Arizona (Oct 4) Peace vigil against drones piloting at Davis-Monthan AFB, Craycroft Road entrance, 7:00am Contact nukeresister@igc.org  or 520-323-8697
• Tucson, Arizona (Oct 4) Speech by John LaForge ‘Dangerous, Useless, Expensive: Why Eliminate Land-Based Missiles’ at Himmel Library (1035 N. Treat Ave), Contact nukeresister@igc.org  or 520-323-8697
• Vadso, Norway (Oct 10-11) National conference called ‘Military Intelligence as a democratic blind zone’.  Event will discuss NSA-cooperation with Norway 1952-2016. In Vadsø is a huge US space Communications-Intelligence station near the Russian border. Event held at Scandic Vadso Hotel.  For more information contact torill@formidlingskraft.no
• Volk Field, Camp Douglas, Wisconsin (Sept 27) Vigil Against Drones 3:30-4:30, Gates of Volk Field, an Air National Guard Base where they train personnel to operate the Shadow Drone. The monthly vigil at Volk Field is a legal vigil where we will be on public property.  It will be a solemn vigil, remembering the victims of US drone attacks. For information joyfirst5@gmail.com  or blbb24@att.ne  
• Pentagon, Washington DC (Sept 26) 9:00 a.m. Nonviolent Action at Pentagon. Our gathering will begin outside The Pentagon near the top of the Metro subway escalators (the Pentagon stop) next to the bus bay. Bring your signs and banners and join our spirited nonviolent witness against war! We will also be delivering to the Pentagon a petition to close Ramstein Air Base in Germany, as U.S. whistleblowers and Germans together deliver it to the German government in Berlin. http://worldbeyondwar.org/  
• Pentagon, Washington DC (Oct 3) Weekly Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Peace Vigil (7-8 AM) will display Keep Space for Peace signs.  artlaffin@hotmail.com      
• White House, Washington DC (Oct 7) Weekly Dorothy Day Catholic Worker White House Peace Vigil (Noon-1PM) will display Keep Space for Peace Signs) artlaffin@hotmail.com     

 

* The award winning documentary Pax Americana & the Weaponization of Space is available online at:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tRA5bEO0cUg#!

 

 

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

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

*   *   *   *

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

In Boston only, QUESTION 5 would enact the Community Preservation Act (CPA) in the city, which would allocate a small real estate tax surcharge (with matching state funds) to finance affordable housing, preserve open space and historic sites, and develop outdoor recreational opportunities.  More information at Yes for a Better Boston. DPP’s neighborhood allies like New England United for Justice (NEU4J) and Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA) support this measure as a (very modest) measure to address the housing crisis. NEU4J is organizing door-to-door canvasing, which it invites DPPers to join. 

 

DPPers opposed Statewide Question 2, which would, if passed, allow for an exponential expansion of publicly-funded but privately-run Charter Schools, and which represents an attack on public education and public school teachers (and their unions).  QUESTION 2 IS BAD FOR OUR SCHOOLS:  it would allow the state to approve 12 new Commonwealth charter schools every year forever, eventually draining billions of dollars from our schools. Charter school proponents have millions of dollars from hedge funds and corporate backers, including the chair of the state board of education. People power needs to stand up for children in our public schools.

Sign up to volunteer at https://saveourpublicschoolsma.com/.

 

Big money pours into Massachusetts to undercut public schools

This Election Day, Massachusetts voters will be voting on whether to lift the state’s cap on the number of charter schools allowed to open. A recent poll showed 48 percent of voters opposed to lifting the cap and planning to vote no on question two, while 41 percent were in favor. Dozens of local school committees, along with the state Democratic party, have already voted to oppose the measure. 

But despite this widespread opposition, there’s a very real chance the measure will pass, for one simple reason: money. Wealthy opponents of public education are pouring money into the state. Walmart heirs Jim and Alice Walton have given a combined $1.8 million. Hedge funders and bankers have given hundreds of thousands of dollars more. In fact, the pro-charter camp has put $11 million into this fight, much of it from out of state… As if to drive the point home what kind of a fight this is, the charter backers have hired the ad firm that did the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads.    More

 

The NAACP Moratorium On Charters Really Matters To Our Public Schools

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples, the nation’s oldest and most highly recognized civil rights organization, called for a national moratorium on charter schools this summer. Soon after, a bipartisan chorus of charter supporters cried foul attempting to present the so- called choice offered by charters, as well as other attributes of corporate education reform, as the next logical step in the Civil Rights Movement. It is all the more curious when many of the same people, like Trump, have been mostly silent on other issues impacting communities of color. They offer no support for the contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement. But, they can hardly contain their indignation when efforts are made on behalf of communities of color to block corporate education reform measures like high stakes testing and unregulated publicly financed charters.  More

 

Media Ask Which Candidate Can Better Exploit Our Irrational Fear

The media’s tendency to focus on horserace issues—who’s up and who’s down, what the cosmetics are of an event rather than the substance—is routinely derided by media critics, and mocking it has become something of an election year tradition. But one 2016 topic in particular, terrorism, has become the hot horserace topic of the year in a way that goes beyond the silly to the potentially damaging…  Something missing from these reports is any discussion of the relative danger of terrorism. The reporters begin with the premise that voters are afraid of it, never challenging the underlying rationality of those fears.   The reality is that terrorism remains, objectively, a very minor threat. (One is 82 times more likely to be killed falling out of bed than by a terrorist.) But by framing the issue as an urgent danger, with two candidates “dueling” over opposing ways of addressing this menace, the media further inflate terrorism’s importance.   More

 

Hillary Clinton is taking the black vote for granted, says America’s first elected black governor

Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder thinks Hillary Clinton has blundered by trying to turn the presidential election into a referendum on Donald Trump. “When I ran for office, I never mentioned my opponent’s name. I always said, ‘Vote for me for these reasons,’” the 85-year-old Democrat said during an hour-long interview here yesterday. “Even today, she still needs to develop a message.”  Wilder, who in 1990 became the first elected black governor in U.S. history, said he knows many African Americans, especially millennials, who may not vote. “A lot of Democrats tell me they don’t see the need,” he lamented. “It’s not so much that people are turned off by Hillary as it is that they’re not turned on by anybody.”  …“You cannot win this election without the African American vote,” he added. “Hillary obviously has the necessary qualifications. … But tell me how what you’ve done relates to what (the black community) needs.”   More

 

A View of Small-Town Decay and Support for Trump

When Rothwell matched his company’s voluminous polling and opinion data with demographic information, Zip Code by Zip Code, he found that the highest levels of Trump support came from places where health was poor and economic mobility stagnant. Within these places, the most intense support for the casino mogul came from those people who are doing comparatively well economically: the insurance agents, the wives of contractors…  If you were applying a moral gloss, you might say that these are responsible people in irresponsible places. If you were not, you might just say they were lucky in places where many others were not. The conservative language of inequality is not yet mature, in part because it is muddied by racial and national resentments, but it exists, as an intense sense of precariousness.  More

 

Colin Kaepernick on death threats: if I'm killed 'you've proved my point'

Kaepernick’s stance has prompted many other athletes to show their support. Several other NFL players have sat, knelt, or raised fists during the Star-Spangled Banner, and World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe has chosen to kneel before US international soccer games. Scores of high school and college players have also picked up the cause.  But Kaepernick has not received universal support. Donald Trump said “maybe [Kaepernick] should find a country that works better for him”, while failed presidential nominee Ted Cruz said: “To all the athletes who have made millions in America’s freedom: stop insulting the flag, our nation, our heroes.”  Kaepernick said he was the target of racial slurs and other insults before last Sunday’s NFL game at Carolina.   “There’s a lot of racism in this country disguised as patriotism and people want to take everything back to the flag but that’s not what we’re talking about,” he said on Tuesday.   More

 

Hate Crimes Against American Muslims Most Since Post-9/11 Era

The trend has alarmed hate crime scholars and law-enforcement officials, who have documented hundreds of attacks — including arsons at mosques, assaults, shootings and threats of violence — since the beginning of 2015.  While the most current hate crime statistics from the F.B.I. are not expected until November, new data from researchers at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes against American Muslims were up 78 percent over the course of 2015. Attacks on those perceived as Arab rose even more sharply. Police and news media reports in recent months have indicated a continued flow of attacks, often against victims wearing traditional Muslim garb or seen as Middle Eastern.   More

 

How corporations rig the rules to dodge the taxes they owe

In recent years, corporate profits have reached record highs, and so too has the amount of untaxed profits U.S. corporations have stashed offshore: $2.4 trillion. And it is estimated corporations could owe as much as $700 billion on those profits. In short, corporations are dodging more and more of their tax responsibilities.  While the statutory tax rate on corporate income is 35 percent, estimates of the rate corporations actually pay put the effective rate at about half the statutory rate. Driving this divergence between what corporations are supposed to pay and what they actually pay is a combination of offshore profit shifting and tax avoidance. Multinational corporations pay taxes on between just 3.0 and 6.6 percent of the profits they book in tax havens.  More

 

Elizabeth Warren Just Gave Hillary Clinton a Big Warning

Warren’s speech, delivered at the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, cast the upcoming presidential election in stark economic terms. She described the tax-slashing, deregulatory approach laid out by Donald Trump and contrasted it to a laundry list of populist economic policies embraced by Hillary Clinton… But towards the end of her remarks, Warren noted that “personnel is policy,” and continued:   “When we talk about personnel, we don’t mean advisors who just pay lip service to Hillary’s bold agenda, coupled with a sigh, a knowing glance, and a twiddling of thumbs until it’s time for the next swing through the revolving door, serving government then going back to the very same industries they regulate. We don’t mean Citigroup or Morgan Stanley or BlackRock getting to choose who runs the economy in this country so they can capture our government. No.”    More

 

Clash Between Saudis and 9/11 Families Is Escalating in Washington

On Monday a constellation of lobbyists for Saudi Arabia, which has spent more than $5 million this past year to buy influence in Washington, called a crisis meeting to try to stop legislation allowing the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the Saudi government for any role in the plot. On Tuesday the 9/11 families, represented in their multibillion-dollar lawsuits by lawyers including Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel with deep relationships in Washington, demonstrated outside the White House to pressure President Obama not to veto the legislation, as he has vowed to do…  The four-page-long bill, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, unanimously passed the House and Senate, and has major national security and diplomatic consequences for the United States. It would alter a 1976 law giving other countries immunity from lawsuits in the United States and force them to face federal lawsuits if they are found to have played any role in a terrorist attack that kills Americans on United States soil.    More

 

9/11 Victims Family Member:

OBAMA, DON’T SHIELD THE SAUDIS!

JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, S.2040) is a well-thought out, powerful piece of anti-terrorism legislation. It does exactly what it says — it brings all those who fund terrorism to justice… One effective way to stop terrorists is to attack them at the root of their enterprise: their terrorist funding… It goes without saying that the largest benefactor of terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom is the incubator for global jihad. Saudis build madrassahs where fiery Imams like the late Anwar Awlaki preach hate, print and distribute school books that teach violence against infidels, and pay large sums of protection money to terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.  Notably, the Saudi role in radical jihad does not stop at underwriting terrorism — it carries into logistical support of individual attacks, as well. This logistical role is how the Saudis are linked to the 9/11 attacks.   More

 

US Air Force Grounds F-35s It Just Declared Ready for War

On Aug. 2, the Air Force said 10 F-35s at Hill Air Force Base in Utah were ready for war. Forty-four days later, those planes have been grounded in the latest embarrassing setback for the most expensive project in Pentagon history…   The grounding order affects 57 aircraft, some of which belong to Norway, officials said. Fifteen of them are operational jets, the 42 others are in various states of production.  The grounding interrupts a general wave of progress for the $400 billion [actually $1 trillion!] program, which made its debut at the Farnborough Air Show in England this summer and has been getting rave reviews from pilots. (In 2014, an engine fire caused the previous high-profile grounding and scotched the plane’s first planned trip to Farnborough.)  More

 

 

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

 

GARETH PORTER: How the Pentagon sank the US-Russia deal in Syria - and the ceasefire

Another US-Russian Syria ceasefire deal has been blown up. Whether it could have survived even with a US-Russian accord is open to doubt, given the incentives for al-Qaeda and its allies to destroy it. But the politics of the US-Russian relationship played a central role in the denouement of the second ceasefire agreement.  The final blow apparently came from the Russian-Syrian side, but what provoked the decision to end the ceasefire was the first ever US strike against Syrian government forces on 17 September.  That convinced the Russians that the US Pentagon had no intention of implementing the main element of the deal that was most important to the Putin government: a joint US-Russian air campaign against the Islamic State (IS) militant group and al-Qaeda through a “Joint Implementation Centre”. And it is entirely credible that it was meant to do precisely that.   More

 

Was it Mutiny? U.S. Rulers Split Over Syria

Last weekend’s American air attack on Syrian Army positions at Deir al-Zor that killed more than 60 Syrian soldiers and resulted in a temporary victory for ISIS forces was a blatant bid by the Pentagon and the CIA to sabotage any prospect of cooperation between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria. In a very real sense, it is a mutiny against a lame duck president who, certainly since 2013, has attempted to achieve regime change in Syria without allowing the jihadists to take power in Damascus.  The mutineers include civilian and military elements of the Pentagon -- probably including Obama’s own Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter – the CIA and other intelligence services (but not the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose analysts warned of the rise of ISIS in 2012). They are encouraged and emboldened by the prospect that a President Hillary Clinton will declare a “no fly zone” over Syria – a move that would necessitate, under U.S military doctrine, an all-out attack on all of that country’s aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons systems, resulting in a war with Russian forces.   More

 

SYRIAN PROPAGANDA WAR, Chapter XXXIX. . .

The one-sided media coverage of the breakdown of the US-Russia agreement for a partial ceasefire continues daily.  Of course it is difficult to ascertain the facts in any case, but the MSM seldom makes any pretense of objectivity, even if the biases are often difficult to notice by a general public woefully misinformed and long fed on a diet of US government – Democratic, in this case – propaganda.  If you want to hear a different point of view, unfiltered by MSM “reportage” you can watch an English-language interview with Bashar al-Assad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTIXZGSPl4c (text here: http://sana.sy/en/?p=88686 if you prefer).  Of course, Assad heads a regime guilty in its own ways of many crimes.  And, his assertions, like those on all sides in this war, should not be taken as automatic truth. However, instead of reading second-hand contempt in our press, it is worthwhile to listen and judge for yourself.

 

On another front in the propaganda war, the liberal magazine The Nation published an appeal by supposed Syrian secular democrats appearing to condemn all outside interference in Syria.  The well-informed and generally astute blogger Asad AbuKhalil commented:

 

The signatories to this statement, like Sadiq Al-Azm, have been advocates of NATO intervention from the very beginning and most of the writers here work in Gulf regimes media, which have been calling for MORE--not less--US intervention in Syria.  Burhan Ghalyun is even one of the signatories.  Their protest is not against US military intervention in Syria but against US agreement with Russia over the cease-fire

 

And amid the relentless MSM focus on opposition zones under siege by Syrian government forces, we rarely hear about or are encouraged to empathize with the victims on the other side – these villages, among many others, and 150,000 civilians trapped by Daesh/ISIS in government-held Deir-ez-Zor, scene of a US air attack against the defenders.

 

Punishing siege drags on for two Shiite villages in Syria

Dozens of towns have been all but destroyed in the 5 1/2-year conflict over Syria’s future, but this has been a different kind of suffering. A punishing siege imposed by Islamist rebels has cut off these two sister towns in northwest Syria for the last 18 months, leaving them at the mercy of truck bombs, mortar barrages, and the terrifying staccato of sniper fire.  The two towns lie in Idlib province, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region southwest of Aleppo. In March 2015, the entire province was overrun by a powerful jihadist coalition known as the Army of Conquest. The exception was Fuah and Kefraya, two Shiite villages whose roughly 17,000 residents have remained, even under a devastating blockade, loyal to the government. For most, there has seemed to be little choice: Shiite Muslims are seen as apostates by Islamist hard-liners, and the Army of Conquest has threatened to wipe them out.   More

 

Senate Approves Massive Saudi Arms Deal, "Indifferent to Yemen's Misery"

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to dismiss a bipartisan bill that would have blocked a massive $1.15 billion weapons shipment to Saudi Arabia, to the dismay of peace groups and rights advocates who have called on the U.S. to end its support for the brutal Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen.  The bipartisan resolution to block the weapons sale failed 71-27, with two senators not voting… "The very fact that we are voting on [this resolution to block the arms sale] today sends a very important message to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia that we are watching your actions closely and that the United States is not going to turn a blind eye to the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children," Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said during the floor debate.   More

 

--Massachusetts Senators Warren and Markey were among the 27 votes to support stopping the sale.

--Arms makers celebrate. . .  see here

 

Israel used to routinely oppose and lobby against arms sales to Saudi Arabia.  Not anymore!  Reflecting its new de facto alliance with the Saudi monarchy, Israel (and AIPAC) was silent on this issue, and all of its staunchest Congressional supporters of both parties supported the sale.

 

For the first time, Saudi Arabia is being attacked by both Sunni and Shia leaders

The Saudis step deeper into trouble almost by the week. Swamped in their ridiculous war in Yemen, they are now reeling from an extraordinary statement issued by around two hundred Sunni Muslim clerics who effectively referred to the Wahhabi belief – practiced in Saudi Arabia – as “a dangerous deformation” of Sunni Islam. The prelates included Egypt’s Grand Imam, Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar, the most important centre of theological study in the Islamic world, who only a year ago attacked “corrupt interpretations” of religious texts and who has now signed up to “a return to the schools of great knowledge” outside Saudi Arabia.  This remarkable meeting took place in Grozny and was unaccountably ignored by almost every media in the world…  Although they did not mention the Kingdom by name, the declaration was a stunning affront to a country which spends millions of dollars every year on thousands of Wahhabi mosques, schools and clerics around the world.   More

 

Ending the Iran-Saudi Cold War

It is understandable for Saudi leaders to feel vulnerable. Saudi Arabia is a young state that by itself is not capable of competing with Iran, given its population of roughly 20 million native citizens, upwards of 15 percent of whom are Shia Muslims that face routine discrimination... Saudi leaders have two choices before them. The first is to continue down their current path of pursuing aggressive, unilateralist foreign policies and preconditioning dialogue on quixotic notions of Iran having zero role in its neighborhood. This approach has been exemplified by the Saudis bombing Yemen with impunity, crushing pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, refusing to recognize the post-war democratic Iraqi government for six years, aiding and abetting terrorism (as attested by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump), and countering the Arab Spring revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, to name but a few destabilizing policies.   More

 

*   *   *   *

ISRAEL, PALESTINE . . . and the U.S.

 

“88 senators press Obama to uphold US policy to veto one-sided UN resolutions”  Chances are you would not have heard about this unless you were a regular reader of the Israeli press – or a visitor to AIPAC’s web site. The bipartisan letter begins with the usual pious nod to “the two-state solution” but the meat of it is to pressure Pres. Obama to oppose any realistic pressure on Israel to negotiate in good faith and promise a veto on any “interference” from the UN.  Among the signers were Massachusetts senators Warren and Markey.  Bernie Sanders and a handful of other Senators declined.  Ironically, some prominent Republican senators --  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Nebraska’s Ben Sasse – also refused to sign because the letter supported a two-state solution, which they and rightwing Republican donors like Sheldon Adelson, oppose.  Some useful commentary here.

 

There is an old joke based on a supposed conversation with the late Israeli Prime Minister (and war criminal) Ariel Sharon.  “Why doesn’t Israel become the 51^st US state,” Sharon was asked. “Because then we would have only two senators,” he replied.

 

The Biggest Israel Aid Deal in History Will Bolster Occupation and the U.S. Defense Industry

The White House has described the recent $38 billion promised aid package to Israel, apportioned each year as $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million in missile defense assistance over the course of 10 years, as an “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.” A better description would have been the White House’s unshakable commitment to Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s quarterly earnings. U.S. “military assistance,” more accurately understood as a circular flow through which U.S. weapons firms profit off the colonization of Palestinian land and Israeli destabilization of the surrounding states, is a long-term structuring element of the U.S.-Israel “special relationship.”   More

 

81% of Americans Oppose $38 Billion Pledge to Israel

An IRmep poll fielded by Google Consumer Surveys reveals 80.8 percent of the US adult Internet user population says they would redirect the proposed spending toward other priorities. Caring for veterans (20.7 percent) was their top priority, followed by education spending (20.1 percent) and paying down the national debt (19.3 percent). Rebuilding US infrastructure was favored by 14.9 percent, while funding a Middle East peace plan received 5.8 percent of support. Only 16.8 percent said the $38 billion of pledged foreign aid should be spent on Israel.  More

 

When $38 billion is “not enough”. . .

US aid to Israel takes a partisan turn

Seven lawmakers signed on to legislation from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that would provide an extra $1.5 billion in missile defense and direct assistance to Israel's military next fiscal year. They object to the White House's efforts to short-circuit unsolicited annual aid hikes by Congress as well as the elimination of a 26% carve-out for Israel's domestic defense industry instead of US weapons-makers… The Obama administration portrays its effort to restrict congressional add-ons as a way to streamline budgeting and avoid recurring spending fights. As part of the package, Israel signed a letter vowing to return congressional appropriations beyond the MOU's agreed-upon amount during the next two fiscal years.  Earlier this year, the White House threatened to veto the House Defense spending bill for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, in part because it allocates $601 million for Israel missile defense, $455 million more than the Pentagon's request. The request for additional funding was made by the government of Israel, according to the report accompanying the Senate's version of the bill.   More

 

U.S. donors gave settlements more than $220 million in tax-exempt funds over five years

Private U.S. donors are massively funding Israeli settlements by using a network of tax-exempt nonprofits, which funnelled more than $220 million (about 850 million shekels) to Jewish communities in the West Bank in 2009-2013 alone, a Haaretz investigation has found.

The funding is being used for anything from buying air conditioners to supporting the families of convicted Jewish terrorists, and comes from tax-deductible donations made to around 50 U.S.-based groups.  Thanks to their status as nonprofits, these organizations are not taxed on their income and donations made to them are tax deductible – meaning the U.S. government is incentivizing and indirectly supporting the Israeli settlement movement, even though it has been consistently opposed by every U.S. administration for the past 48 years.   More     (More of this extensive Haaretz report here.)

 

The GOP’s Jewish Donors Are Abandoning Trump

In 2012, 71 percent of the $240 million that Jewish donors gave to the two major-party nominees went to President Obama’s re-election campaign; 29 percent went to Mitt Romney’s campaign, according to our analysis of campaign contributors, which used a predictive model to estimate which donors are Jewish based on their names and other characteristics. This ratio of support mirrors how Jewish voters cast their ballots in 2012… But in 2016, of the $372 million given to presidential campaigns so far by Jewish donors, 94 percent went to Democrats and just 6 percent went to Republicans. This is particularly interesting, since this figure includes donations to all of Trump’s primary opponents. If we ignore the primary losers and just focus on the nominees, 96 percent of all contributions went to Clinton… In raw dollars, Jewish donors have already given Clinton nearly double the amount they gave to Obama through the whole 2012 cycle. But donations to Trump amount to a third of what was given to Romney.   More

 

Two Years after Gaza War, Not a Single War Crime Indictment

Two years after the Israeli military offensive on Gaza, dubbed “Operation Protective Edge,” more than half of the civilian structures destroyed during the war have yet to be reconstructed, and Palestinian residents of the coastal strip are still finding bones amongst the ruins. And two years after that devastating offensive, Israeli authorities are again proving what previous experience with the Israeli system has long made clear: Israel is unwilling to conduct genuine, independent investigations into suspected war crimes, and does not hold those responsible to account, as required by international law.  At total of 2,251 Palestinians were killed during the 2014 war, most of them civilians, including 299 women and 551 children. More than 18,000 civilian structures were destroyed, including hospitals and essential infrastructure.   More