GIVE WAR A CHANCE?

 

Iraq 2.0: The REAL Reason Hawks Oppose the Iran Deal

In unguarded moments, many hawks concede they are against an agreement in principle. As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s strategic affairs minister Yuval Steinitz admitted recently, “we are against a deal in general.” Similarly, Senator Tom Cotton, author of the embarrassing letter imploring Iran’s Supreme Leader to scuttle the deal, admitted to an audience at the Heritage Foundation before writing the letter: The end of these negotiations isn’t an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak. So, despite their protests that what they’re really after is a “better deal,” their own words betray the truth: They oppose any deal. Vox’s Max Fisher suggests that the reason is because their real desire is to change the Iranian regime by force, and a diplomatic deal makes that less likely.  More

 

Adelson Holds Court as Kristol Blasts Corker, AIPAC

Casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson will once again host the annual convention and ring-kissing ceremony of the Republican Jewish Coalition...  The event comes on the heels of Bill Kristol‘s remarkable declaration of war on the Corker-Menendez bill (many hours of Senate debate on which got underway Thursday afternoon) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in his capacity as chairman of the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI). This latter group provided nearly $1 million to super-hawk (and Kristol protege) Sen. Tom “Cakewalk” Cotton’s campaign in the closing weeks of last November’s election. In a Weekly Standard editorial, Kristol, who had speculated last week that the bill actually was a “trap,” apparently decided that it was indeed a trap.  More

 

The Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and Its Implications for U.S. Sanctions Policy

Generally speaking, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act is being offered as an oversight bill… However, the legislation exceeds the scope of oversight by withdrawing from the President the power to implement a nuclear deal reached with Iran, both during the period of Congressional review and thereafter should Congress enact a Joint Resolution of Disapproval… Pending passage in both Houses of Congress, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act will provide Congress a period of review and a level of oversight over a nuclear agreement between the U.S., its P5+1 partners, and Iran. However, the legislation will also limit the President’s authorities to implement the terms of a nuclear deal during the period of Congressional review and perhaps thereafter should Congress enact a Joint Resolution of Disapproval. Such limitations threaten to delay the implementation of a nuclear deal.   More

 

Mass Sen. Ed Markey joined all the other Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee in supporting a “compromise” bill pushed by Republican and Israel Lobby opponents of the potential Iran agreement.  Markey’s statement included this hardly “diplomatic” assertion that he would only accept: “the most invasive inspections possible, the most intensive enforcement provisions possible, and the most aggressive means to remove the technological capability for Iran to make a nuclear weapon.”  Full statement here.

 

Mohammad Javad Zarif: A Message From Iran

Iran has been clear: The purview of our constructive engagement extends far beyond nuclear negotiations. Good relations with Iran’s neighbors are our top priority. Our rationale is that the nuclear issue has been a symptom, not a cause, of mistrust and conflict. Considering recent advances in symptom prevention, it is time for Iran and other stakeholders to begin to address the causes of tension in the wider Persian Gulf region… We need a sober assessment of the complex and intertwined realities here, and consistent policies to deal with them. The fight against terror is a case in point.  One cannot confront Al Qaeda and its ideological siblings, such as the so-called Islamic State, which is neither Islamic nor a state, in Iraq, while effectively enabling their growth in Yemen and Syria.  More

 

Meanwhile, members of the House circulated a letter supporting the negotiations.  It has already been signed by all the Mass Reps. except Kennedy (let him hear from you if you’re in his district!).  Keating, who is on the House Foreign Relations Committee, has been unhelpful so far on Iran and Israel-related issues, apparently signed as a result, at least in part, of a spirited pressure campaign from his constituents on Cape Cod.

 

“We must pursue diplomatic means to their fullest and allow the negotiations to run their course – especially now that the parties have announced a strong framework – and continue working to craft a robust and verifiable Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action by June 30. We must allow our negotiating team the space and time necessary to build on the progress made in the political framework and turn it into a long-term, verifiable agreement”

 

Iran still respecting terms of interim nuclear deal: U.N. report

Iran has continued to meet its commitments under an interim nuclear agreement with six world powers, a confidential United Nations nuclear agency report seen by Reuters showed on Monday.  The monthly update by the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran was not enriching uranium above a fissile concentration of 5 percent... It also said Iran had not made "any further advances" in its activities at two enrichment facilities and a heavy water reactor under construction.   More

 

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Friday-Sunday, April 24-26

PEACE AND PLANET:

Mobilizing for a Nuclear Free, Just, and Sustainable World  

The April 24 - 26 Peace & Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-free, Peaceful Just and Sustainable World, in New York City and around the world, begins today!

Sign up for our Thunderclap using Facebook and/or Twitter!

If you can get to New York, there’s still time to register for the April 24-25 international conference with its spectacular line up of plenary speakers and 44 workshops.

On Sunday, April 26, join the Interfaith Convocation, and then hit the streets for a mass rally, march and festival, and launch of the “Global Wave”.  Peace Action will meet at 17th and Broadway at 12:30 pm in front of PETCO.  Round trip to NYC in one day: Get on the Bus at Alewife or Riverside MBTA station (YES, there's still space!), or in Worcester.  Mass. Peace Action will be carrying 50 posters designed by our Student Art Contest winners!

 

If you can’t come to New York, there are several ways you can participate!

·         Sign up for our Thunderclap! Like Peace & Planet on Facebook, and follow Peace & Planet on Twitter. Post some tweets in the next couple days, tagging @PeaceAndPlanet (we're using #NoNukes #70Years #NPTRevCon #ConnectingTheStruggles), and please also tag three of your friends or followers to make sure that our Thunderclap goes out on Friday the 24th!!

·         Sign the Peace & Planet petition. Your signatures will be added to more than 7 million signatures from Japan that will be presented to United Nations and NPT officials during the April 26 peace festival.

·         Add your group’s name to the list of more than 300 endorsing organizations.

·         Watch the conference plenary sessions. They will be livestreamed, so you can even watch from home!

·         Wave goodbye to nuclear weapons wherever you are! The “Global Wave” will be launched at the April 26 rally in New York, with participants symbolically waving goodbye to nuclear weapons. The Global Wave will travel west, by time zone, with public events scheduled in Papeete, Manila, Amman, Bethlehem, Stockholm, Paris, London, Sao Paulo and points in-between, arriving back at the UN for the opening of the NPT Review Conference on April 27.   See Massachusetts Global Wave plans here.

Next week, join the Dialogue with Japanese A-Bomb Survivors and Activists. Thursday, April 30, 6pm at Cambridge Friends Meeting (note: you MUST sign up first!)

 

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

"RUNNING WHILE BLACK"

Protests Swell Over Death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore Police Custody

Baltimore has entered its fifth day of protests amid the death of Freddie Gray. The 27-year-old African-American man died Sunday from spinal injuries, one week after Baltimore police arrested him. His family and attorney say his voice box was crushed and his spine was "80 percent severed at his neck." A preliminary autopsy report showed Gray died of a spinal injury. Video shot by a bystander shows Gray screaming in apparent agony as police drag him to a van. Another witness said the police bent Gray like a pretzel… “There are no jobs in that community. There is no economic development happening in that community. But the other issue is the harassment of police, the unnecessary detainment of police… And so I think that we really need to take a look at how policing is done in Baltimore. It cannot be disconnected from our high incarceration rate. Black folks make up almost 80 percent of the total population in the Maryland prison system, yet we comprise about 28 percent of the population in the state.”   More

 

Missouri National Guard: Ferguson protesters are 'Enemy forces'

As the Missouri National Guard prepared to deploy to help quell riots in Ferguson, Missouri, that raged sporadically last year, the guard used highly militarized words such as "enemy forces" and "adversaries" to refer to protesters, according to documents obtained by CNN… The documents reveal that the Missouri guard was especially concerned that "adversaries" might use phone apps and police scanners to expose operational security. "Counterintelligence operations are directed at supporting an information campaign. Their audience does not require the information to be accurate and is easily swayed," one document read.  More

 

“KILLING AFRICA”

In many different ways, much of the world is invested in killing Africa. At the foundation of this push is the theft of Africa's resources, which threatens Africa's subsistence - and is linked to the global oppression of members of the African diaspora, known to many in the West and around the world as Black people.  While Black people in the United States continue to battle discrimination and oppression at the hands of White supremacy, the practice of subjugating Black people transcends the borders of this young empire. Beyond whatever implications the current (though still limited) concern for Black life brings about in the midst of ongoing police violence in the United States, Black life is vulnerable across cultures, internationally.  More

 

How Punitive and Racist Policing Enforces Gentrification in San Francisco

Stories about gentrification typically revolve around a certain set of characters - landlords, developers, speculators, tenants facing eviction, long-time residents and rich newcomers. But there is another set of characters typically left out - police and the criminal legal system. In fact, the agency that physically enforces evictions is the Sheriff's Department. San Francisco represents a case study in how punitive and racist police practices enforce gentrification… Landlords, developers and speculators work in tandem with police to effectively kick out marginalized communities, both through direct strategies and by making them feel unwelcome. By harshly cracking down on petty offenses, enforcing evictions and disproportionately incarcerating and killing people of color, the criminal legal system fuels gentrification.  More

 

Muslims the New "Enemy Within"

For half a century, cultural conservatives have vowed to protect America against threats from domestic insurgencies: black militancy, feminism, the gay-rights movement. But those insurgencies involved large and restive groups. Muslims, by contrast, make up only 1 percent of the U.S. population… Muslims have become the right’s greatest cultural enemy in large part because they are what remains after the ideological collapse of the “war on terror.” … Although most conservatives are happy to bomb ISIS, the American right has lost its appetite for a vast overseas struggle against jihadist terror. Instead of tempering their view of the threat, conservatives have domesticated it. By reconceiving the Islamist danger as a largely domestic problem, conservatives can now fight it ferociously without having to invade any other countries. All they need to do is prevent Muslims from Islamicizing America.  More

 

GLENN GREENWALD: What Explains the Power of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Middle Finger?

Like most things that happen in a U.S. criminal court, and like most dominant narratives propagated by the American media, the message created by exploiting this photograph was completely misleading. All anyone has to do in order to see that is watch the 37-second video from which the screen shot was grabbed: Rather than some sort of calculated, sustained display of evil scorn for America and his victims — CNN’s “defiant salute” — the actual video shows a 19-year-old prisoner bored from sitting alone for hours in a jail. The middle finger was preceded by other gestures that he maintained longer. He was using the camera as some sort of mirror and appears to be occupying and mildly amusing himself. The still photo was shown by prosecutors rather than the video because the former is menacing and the latter is not.   More

 

Vets for Peace: Spare Tsarnaev

“I’m opposed to the death penalty in any circumstances, on moral and ethical grounds. More importantly to me, I’m trying to get a discussion between this crime of terrorism and war and peace,” said Warfield. Warfield said the marathon bombings were an example of “blowback” meaning the blasts were the fruits of hawkish American foreign policy that included drone strikes and assassinations various countries around the world. “We Americans should be more serious about insisting on peace by our government,” he said. “We are now getting caught up in this insanity.”  More

 

The Richest 0.01 Percent of Americans Gave 42 Percent of Political Donations in 2012

Just over 30,000 individuals contributed nearly half of all money. It is no coincidence that this proportion has increased steadily as economic inequality has increased… Candidates devote 80 percent of their time to begging rich people for money. Any extremist Republican can get a billionaire sugar daddy. The world's eighth richest man can summon the entire Republican primary field to kiss his ring. Millionaires are now complaining about being ignored in favor of billionaires. The average member of Congress is a millionaire.  More

 

Kansas wants the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich

Wealthier Kansans are paying much less in taxes after Republican Gov. Sam Brownback overhauled the state's income tax a few years ago. Brownback and other Republican officials hoped that more generous policies would stimulate the economy, bringing more revenue into the state's coffers and making up the difference on the bottom line. It didn't work… One thing they're not considering: asking the wealthy to chip in. Instead, in a legislature that last week barred welfare recipients from using their benefits to go swimming or watch movies, the proposals that look most likely to succeed are sales and excise taxes that would be paid disproportionately by Kansas's poor and working class.  More

 

Corporations now spend more lobbying Congress than taxpayers spend funding Congress

Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures – more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.16 billion) and Senate ($820 million).  More

 

America's Political Obsession With the "Middle Class" Hurts Workers

It’s an odd state of affairs when nine out of ten people imagine themselves to be part of the middle class, as The New York Times’ Patricia Cohen recently pointed out. “The middle-class label is as much about aspirations among Americans as it is about economics,” Cohen observes. “But a perspective that was once characterized by comfort and optimism has increasingly been overlaid with stress and anxiety.” … Making huge swathes of working people believe they belong with the middle class convinces them that they are already well enough off to be fine without class-based agitation, and also distances them from those with whom they genuinely share class concerns. When you add in that Great American Virtue of individualism—think postage-stamp lawns and neat, isolated suburban households—that the middle class is known for, solidarity among the working class becomes difficult to imagine.  More

 

As Corporate Forces Push TPP Fast Track Bill, Progressives Draw Battle Lines

Warning that passing Fast Track legislation would amount to rubber-stamping corporate trade pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, progressives are vowing to hold members of Congress accountable for their votes on the compromise bill announced Thursday—and reminding them of how dangerous such trade policies are for the public, workers, and the planet… The open warring among Democrats over fast-track trade legislation, and the party’s broader existential crisis on free trade, grew more pronounced Thursday as senior lawmakers announced a breakthrough on the trade bill. Many Democrats still feel the burn, 20 years later, of lost manufacturing jobs from the North American Free Trade Agreement — pushed through by former President Bill Clinton — and they fear another Democratic president is on the verge of turning his back on working-class Americans by negotiating a trade deal that would send jobs overseas.  More

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Won’t Be a Good Deal for American Workers

TPP proponents who highlight the treaty’s estimated net national gains while ignoring its likely regressive distributional outcomes are hiding the ball from policymakers. The net national gains from trade have the exact same root as the regressive distributional outcomes—they both stem from reshuffling of domestic production away from labor-intensive import-competing sectors—and you cannot have one without the other… In fact, studies that show the TPP will increase overall American national income also show that it will cause substantial reshuffling of domestic production away from labor-intensive import-competing sectors. This will clearly inflict damage on large groups (probably the majority) of American workers.  More

 

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Until we find a way to overcome the many anti-democratic effects of our political system, it will be difficult to stop wars or to make significant progress on a host of other issues. Here’s a start we at DPP support:

On January 15, the "We the People Act" was filed in the Massachusetts House and Senate by our lead sponsors. Learn about this new vital legislation at www.WeThePeopleMass.org.

NATIONALLY, you can tell our members of Congress that you support for a Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision here.

 

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

 

How the US Contributed to Yemen’s Crisis

Not long ago – at the height of the Arab Spring in 2011 – a broad-based, nonviolent, pro-democracy movement in Yemen rose up against the U.S.-backed government of dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. If Washington and Saudi Arabia had allowed this coalition to come to power, the tragic events unfolding in Yemen could have been prevented… Meanwhile, the United States and Saudi Arabia, joined by the other monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), presented a plan whereby Saleh would step down. According to the deal, he and other top officials in the regime would be granted immunity from prosecution, and a plebiscite would be held within 60 days to ratify the transfer of power to Saleh’s vice-president, Major General Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. Pro-democracy protesters largely rejected this U.S.-Saudi mandate for Hadi. It soon became apparent that despite occasional calls for Saleh to step down – such as US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice’s strong statement in early August – the Obama administration was deferring to its autocratic GCC allies on the peninsula to oversee a political transition.  More

 

US generals: Saudi intervention in Yemen ‘a bad idea’

The fact that the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen was planned and launched independently of the U.S. was, in McCain’s eyes, a rebuke of the administration’s policies. “These countries, led by Saudi Arabia, did not notify us nor seek our coordination or our assistance in this effort,” he said during a March 26 committee hearing, “because they believe we are siding with Iran.”  A senior commander at Central Command (CENTCOM), speaking on condition of anonymity, scoffed at that argument. “The reason the Saudis didn’t inform us of their plans,” he said, “is because they knew we would have told them exactly what we think — that it was a bad idea.” Military sources said that a number of regional special forces officers and officers at U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) argued strenuously against supporting the Saudi-led intervention because the target of the intervention, the Shia Houthi movement — which has taken over much of Yemen and which Riyadh accuses of being a proxy for Tehran — has been an effective counter to Al-Qaeda.  More

 

Houthi arms bonanza came from Saleh, not Iran

But the assumption that the Houthis have been looking to Iran to train their troops or supply their need for weapons ignores the most basic facts of their ascendance. The Houthis built up their military forces from virtually nothing to as many 100,000 troops today through a series of six wars with Yemeni government troops… In the process, the Houthis acquired a new bonanza of weapons that had been provided by the United States over the previous eight years.   According to Pentagon documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act by Joseph Trevithick, the Defence Department had delivered about $500 million in military hardware to the Yemeni military from 2006 on… In light of the reality that the Houthis are already flush with American arms that may be worth as much as hundreds of millions of dollars, the flurry of media excitement over the US Navy sending another warship to intercept an Iranian flotilla of arms is an odd bit of burlesque that ought to be in an embarrassment.  More

 

Sale of U.S. Arms Fuels the Wars of Arab States

To wage war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is using F-15 fighter jets bought from Boeing. Pilots from the United Arab Emirates are flying Lockheed Martin’s F-16 to bomb both Yemen and Syria. Soon, the Emirates are expected to complete a deal with General Atomics for a fleet of Predator drones to run spying missions in their neighborhood.  As the Middle East descends into proxy wars, sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorist networks, countries in the region that have stockpiled American military hardware are now actually using it and wanting more. The result is a boom for American defense contractors looking for foreign business in an era of shrinking Pentagon budgets — but also the prospect of a dangerous new arms race in a region where the map of alliances has been sharply redrawn. Last week, defense industry officials told Congress that they were expecting within days a request from Arab allies fighting the Islamic State — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt — to buy thousands of American-made missiles, bombs and other weapons, replenishing an arsenal that has been depleted over the past year.  More

 

Cartoon: Death & Destruction, Inc.

(click on the image to play in your browser)

 

US Military Spending Still Up 45% Over Pre-9/11 Levels; More Than Next 7 Countries Combined

Despite a decline in military spending since 2010, U.S. defense expenditures are still 45 percent higher than they were before the 9/11 terror attacks put the country on a seemingly permanent war footing. And despite massive regional buildups spurred by conflict in the Ukraine and the Middle East, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next seven top-spending countries combined, according to new figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). That’s nearly three times as much as China, and more than seven times as much as Russia.  More

 

ISIS, Iraq, and the Lessons of Blowback

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the “moderate” armed opposition in the country, receives a lot of attention. But two of the most successful factions fighting Assad’s forces are Islamist extremist groups: Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the latter of which is now amassing territory in Iraq and threatening to further destabilize the entire region. And that success is in part due to the support they have received from two Persian Gulf countries: Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar’s military and economic largesse has made its way to Jabhat al-Nusra, to the point that a senior Qatari official told me he can identify al-Nusra commanders by the blocks they control in various Syrian cities. But ISIS is another matter. As one senior Qatari official stated, “ISIS has been a Saudi project.”  …ISIS achieved scale and consequence through Saudi support, only to now pose a grave threat to the kingdom and the region. It’s this concern about blowback that has motivated Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to encourage restraint in arming Syrian rebels. President Obama has so far heeded these warnings.  More

 

Saudi Arabia is 'biggest funder of terrorists'

Saudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton.  The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still "constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide" and that "it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority". In a separate diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks last night, the militant group which carried out the Mumbai bombings in 2008, Lashkar-e-Toiba, is reported to have secured money in Saudi Arabia via one of its charity offshoots which raises money for schools.   More

 

U.S. says might talk to Iran about regional stability, cites Syria

The U.S. State Department said on Monday it might talk with Iran about promoting regional stability, noting it had been open to including Iran in past efforts to achieve a Syrian peace deal if Tehran had altered its policy.  But it drew a distinction between talking to Iran about issues beyond its nuclear program and actually working with Tehran on such matters, something Washington has ruled out… Washington was put in an awkward position since it blames Tehran for much of the instability and because it does not wish to upset Gulf Arab allies who fear a nuclear deal being negotiated with Iran may pave the way to a wider U.S.-Iranian entente.  More

 

Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die

The drone’s vaunted capability for pinpoint killing appealed to a president intrigued by a new technology and determined to try to keep the United States out of new quagmires. Aides said Mr. Obama liked the idea of picking off dangerous terrorists a few at a time, without endangering American lives or risking the yearslong bloodshed of conventional war… The president’s announcement on Thursday that a January strike on Al Qaeda in Pakistan had killed two Western hostages, and that it took many weeks to confirm their deaths, bolstered the assessments of the program’s harshest outside critics. The dark picture was compounded by the additional disclosure that two American members of Al Qaeda were killed in strikes that same month, but neither had been identified in advance and deliberately targeted.

In all, it was a devastating acknowledgment for Mr. Obama, who had hoped to pioneer a new, more discriminating kind of warfare. Whether the episode might bring a long-delayed public reckoning about targeted killings, long hidden by classification rules, remained uncertain.

Even some former Obama administration security officials have expressed serious doubts about the wisdom of the program, given the ire it has ignited overseas and the terrorists who have said they plotted attacks because of drones.  More

 

Military Veterans Target US Drone Strikes In TV Ads

A group of military veterans is taking aim at U.S. drone strikes overseas with graphic TV ads directly asking Air Force pilots to stop flying the unmanned aircraft, calling the operations immoral and illegal… The two 15-second spots show images from a drone operations video screen, an explosion and civilians searching through rubble after a drone attack. On-screen messages read “Drone killings violate law and morality” and “Drone pilots. Please refuse to fly. No one has to obey an immoral law.”  More    (Watch an ad here. )

 

U.S. dispatches elite troops to train Ukrainians

Hundreds of elite American paratroopers on Monday began training Ukrainian soldiers in the highest level training mission the United States has yet to undertake in that Eastern European nation.  The Pentagon said that the assignment of 300 “Sky Soldiers” – the proud name for members of the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat team – to conduct the training was a significant upgrade from earlier U.S. military exercises with Ukrainians, which previously were undertaken by National Guard units… As the U.S. paratroopers arrived in Ukraine last week to prepare for the training, the Kremlin criticized the exercises. “The participation of instructors and specialists from a third country on the territory Ukraine . . . is far from aiding in the resolution of the conflict,” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Friday. “To the contrary, it helps to destabilize the situation.”  More

 

Walled off: In non-rebel eastern Ukraine, frustrations with Kiev mount

It's been nicknamed the "Great Wall of Ukraine." Its planned combination of barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, berms, and tank traps along Ukraine's 1,300-mile border with Russia look like something you'd find on one of Israel's borders with its hostile neighbors… But in nearby Kharkiv, an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of one-and-a-half million, mention of the wall is mostly greeted with snorts of irritation. The idea of splitting permanently and irrevocably from Russia wins virtually no acceptance. Many people here have family and friends in Russia, the local economy is heavily dependent on trade with Russia, and some say they just can't wrap their heads around the idea of a frontier being there in the first place… "People in the western Ukraine are inclined to tighten their belts and think 'we're at war with Russia, of course there must be sacrifices.' But people here say, 'we lived better under [deposed President Viktor] Yanukovych, before these new people came"… People here overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Yanukovych in 2010.  More

 

How Ukraine Commemorates the Holocaust

Though Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. media continue to dutifully ignore the key role played by neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s February 2014 coup and in the post-coup regime’s subsequent military offensives against ethnic Russians in the east, Ukrainian politicians can’t stop their arms from snapping into Heil Hitler salutes like the fictional character Dr. Strangelove. They can’t hold back this reflex even as the world stopped this week to recall the Nazi barbarity that claimed the lives of some six million Jews as well as other minorities… Ukraine’s honor-the-Nazi-collaborators vote came amid increased repression of opposition politicians and journalists who dare to criticize the U.S.-backed regime as it moves to repudiate the political settlement envisioned by February’s Minsk-2 agreement and instead prepares for a resumption of the war to crush the resistance in eastern Ukraine once and for all.  More

 

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE. . . and the US

 

Thousands return to destroyed Palestinian villages in Israel

Approximately 10,000 people of all ages — mostly Palestinian citizens of Israel — took part in the 18th annual March of Return Thursday, on the land where the destroyed Palestinian village of Hadatha once stood. Setting out under an ominous sky, the demonstrators walked across the lands of the former village, wearing keffiyehs, waving flags and singing…   The March of Return, which always coincides with Israeli Independence Day, commemorates the Nakba and calls for the right of return for Palestinians who were expelled from or fled the land in 1948. The destination changes each year, to one of the more than 400 villages that were destroyed during or following the war. Hadatha, which is located southwest of Tiberias in the Lower Galilee, had around 600 inhabitants before being depopulated across May and June of 1948; now, the area consists of wild fields and scattered groves of trees.   More

 

Why Gaza Casualties were so High: Israel relaxed rules re: high-explosives in populated areas

In a new report entitled ‘Under Fire,’ Action on Armed Violence found that Israel has “gradually relaxed” rules regarding the use of unguided high-explosive weapons in populated areas, greatly increasing the risk to Palestinian civilians. “Despite a stated commitment by the IDF to civilian protection, and much advertised measures such as pre-strike warnings, when it comes to the use of Israeli artillery on Palestinians there is a wide gap between public rhetoric and the reality on the ground,” the report said. Over 2,100 Palestinians were killed in the 51-day conflict and 10,000 injured, with 69 percent of the fatalities civilians and at least 501 children, according to the United Nations.  More

BATTLE OF THE BILLIONAIRES:

Adelson vs. Saban

Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban, a major donor and fundraiser for the Democratic Party and one of those closest to the Clintons, was not happy with the results of the 2008 election campaign… He is returning to the arena with all his financial resources, assuming that Clinton becomes the Democratic presidential candidate. She will be opposed by an as yet unknown Republican candidate, but if it’s Jeb Bush, Governor Chris Christie or another black horse like Marco Rubio, we can assume that no less stormy than the public contest will be the war behind the scenes – between the major fundraiser for the Democrats and the biggest donor to the Republicans (of all times), Sheldon Adelson, who invested at least $93 million in Mitt Romney in 2012 and lost. Adelson declared at the start of the present campaign that this time he would focus on the candidate with the best chances (after losing time and money financing Newt Gingrich in the 2012 primaries), and that he would invest far greater sums than in the past if necessary. All this means that the coming election campaign will be characterized by a behind-the-scenes battle between the two pro-Israel philanthropists.   More

 

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OTHER EVENTS

 

Thursday, April 30: Dialogue with Japanese A-Bomb Survivors and Nuclear Weapons Abolitionists, 7:00pm,

Friends Meeting At Cambridge in Cambridge.  Space limited, MUST pre-register HERE: http://goo.gl/forms/ZE5qNW9YWz Accepting the event is NOT sufficient  47 Japanese anti-nuclear weapons community activists, joined by two survivors of the 1945 A-bomb attacks (hibakusha), will visit Boston April 30 to educate and meet with students and community groups. The two survivors are Mr. Tadao Yamato, age 74, and Mr. Shiro Kawamoto, age 78, both from Shizuoka, Japan. The activists will be in the U.S. because the world’s governments are gathering at the United Nations April 27 for a major nuclear weapons conference, the Non Proliferation Treaty Review. They will join with peace, anti-nuclear weapons and community activists from across the United States and around the world at Peace and Planet, a march, rally and peace festival on April 26 which will demand that the nuclear powers commence the good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

 

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CONTACTING DPP and Joining Our Work:

 

To make it easier to get involved with DPP, we've decided to publish contact info for our coordinators in every issue of this update. We will also regularly publish upcoming meetings of work committees, create a brochure or flyer about DPP, and greet new people at monthly meetings with an explanation of how we work. Here's how to reach them.

 

Facilitation Team:

Jack Snyder        jack_snyder_bos@yahoo.com

Becky Pierce        beckyp44@verizon.net

Sydney Miller        sydsail@gmail.com