GIVE WAR A CHANCE?

 

Unprecedented: 151 Reps Support Iran Framework Deal

151 members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama commending the political framework reached between the P5+1 countries and Iran and pressing for continued diplomatic efforts to secure a negotiated nuclear agreement… The letter cautions that "if the United States were to abandon negotiations or cause their collapse, not only would we fail to peacefully prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, we would make that outcome more likely." The signatories include Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the third-ranked House Democrat Rep. James Clyburn, and the Chair of the House Democratic Caucus Rep. Xavier Becerra. The signatories represent more than three quarters of the House Democratic Caucus, and the majority of House Democrats serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee.  More

 

ALL 9 House members from Massachusetts signed the letter – thank them!

The text and signers can be viewed here:

“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”

 

Overwhelming US Public Approval of Iran Talks gives Momentum to Peace Deal

Despite the fury of the war party, momentum today is clearly in favor of the diplomacy between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) that would render war moot. Once again, the Republicans and many Democrats have seriously misjudged majority sentiment in America or intentionally ignore it… Last week Quinnipiac reported that 77% of Americans prefer a negotiated settlement over military intervention. Last month, the Economist reported more than 60% of Americans support negotiations. An NBC poll reporting 54% trust the Obama Administration over Congressional Republicans to ‘handle an agreement with Iran’ offers a vivid confirmation of the trend.  More

 

The Nuclear Crisis Nobody Mentions

Those congressmen beating the war drums against Iran have reached new heights of hypocrisy considering their total disregard for the more dangerous, more immediate problems created by Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal… As a count of its nuclear arsenal edges toward several hundred, and as it increasingly deploys tactical nuclear weapons near its border, Pakistan’s government faces extraordinary challenges of command and control… Since the early 1990s–for more than two decades–hawks have been talking up a war against Iran. Meanwhile, barely a word is said about Pakistan.   More

 

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

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THE NEW AGE OF COUNTERINSURGENCY POLICING

Over the course of 24 hours, which would see economically devastated parts of Baltimore erupt in open rebellion, city and state police would deploy everything from a drone and a “military counter attack vehicle” known as a Bearcat to SWAT teams armed with assault rifles, shotguns loaded with lead pellets, barricade projectiles filled with tear gas, and military-style smoke grenades. The BPD also came equipped with “Hailstorm” or “Stingray” technology, developed in America’s distant war zones to conduct wireless surveillance of enemy communications.  This would allow officers to force cell phones to connect to it, to collect mobile data, and to jam cell signals within a one-mile radius… It is, in fact, no longer unusual but predictable for peacefully protesting citizens to face military-grade weaponry and paramilitary-style tactics, as the counterinsurgency school of protest policing has become the new normal in our homeland security state. More

 

You Will Be Surprised Who the Outside Agitators Really Are in Baltimore

According to data posted on the city of Baltimore’s OpenBaltimore website in 2012, over 70 percent of Baltimore Police Department officers live outside city limits, with at least 10 percent living over state lines, in places as far away as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. By contrast, almost all of those arrested in ongoing protests sparked by the police killing of the unarmed Baltimorean Freddie Gray reside firmly within the city. These facts were apparently lost on Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake when she blamed “outside forces” for all the looting of local businesses and attacks on cops..  More

 

Chicago Passes Ordinance Granting Reparations to Police Torture Survivors

Over a period of nearly 20 years, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his "midnight crew" allegedly tortured at least 119 people, forcing them to make confessions.  The police officers beat the victims, burned them with lit cigarettes and handcuffed them to hot radiators. They tied plastic bags over their heads and nearly suffocated them. They put cattle prods on their genitals and in their mouths and electrocuted them… On Wednesday, the City Council approved an ordinance to compensate Burge's victims, most of them African-American men, and their families. The reparations ordinance is the first of its kind in the country to address police abuse. The measure draws from the United Nations Convention against Torture and human rights practices around the world, especially in nations that overcame the legacy of violent, repressive regimes.   More

 

Long Before ISIS, a Man Was Barbarically Burned Alive -- in America

The victim’s name was Jesse Washington. The year was 1916. America would soon go to war in Europe “to make the world safe for democracy…  Not a heretic burned at the stake by some ecclesiastical authority in the Old World. This was Texas, and the white people in that photograph were farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, some of them respectable congregants from local churches in and around the growing town of Waco… Jesse Washington was just one black man to die horribly at the hands of white death squads. Between 1882 and 1968 — 1968! — there were 4,743 recorded lynchings in the US.   More

 

Israeli-trained police invade Baltimore in crackdown on Black Lives Matter

The similarities in suppression tactics employed by Baltimore and Israeli security forces are no coincidence.  Under the cover of  counterterrorism training, nearly every major police agency in the United States has traveled to Israel for lessons in occupation enforcement, including many of the agencies active in Baltimore last week.  In 2002, Baltimore city police officers went to Israel on a junket organized by the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), where they studied Israeli occupation tactics used against Palestinians, including “crowd control, and coordination with the media,” according to a JINSA press release. “Participants resolved to begin the process of sharing ‘lessons learned’ in Israel with their law enforcement colleagues in the United States,” boasted JINSA. 

Baltimore city police returned to Israel for more occupation training in a 2009 trip arranged by the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange.   More

 

FROM FERGUSON TO BALTIMORE: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation

Baltimore, not at all uniquely, has experienced a century of public policy designed, consciously so, to segregate and impoverish its black population. A legacy of these policies is the rioting we have seen in Baltimore… Certainly, African American citizens of Baltimore were provoked by aggressive, hostile, even murderous policing, but Spiro Agnew had it right. Without suburban integration, something barely on today’s public policy agenda, ghetto conditions will persist, giving rise to aggressive policing and the riots that inevitably ensue. Like Ferguson before it, Baltimore will not be the last such conflagration the nation needlessly experiences.  More

 

ROBERT REICH: The Political Roots of Widening Inequality

A deeper understanding of what has happened to American incomes over the last 25 years requires an examination of changes in the organization of the market. These changes stem from a dramatic increase in the political power of large corporations and Wall Street to change the rules of the market in ways that have enhanced their profitability, while reducing the share of economic gains going to the majority of Americans.  This transformation has amounted to a redistribution upward, but not as “redistribution” is normally defined. The government did not tax the middle class and poor and transfer a portion of their incomes to the rich. The government undertook the upward redistribution by altering the rules of the game… The changes in the organization of the economy have been reinforcing and cumulative: As more of the nation’s income flows to large corporations and Wall Street and to those whose earnings and wealth derive directly from them, the greater is their political influence over the rules of the market, which in turn enlarges their share of total income.  More

 

KRUGMAN:  Race, Class and Neglect

The point is that there is no excuse for fatalism as we contemplate the evils of poverty in America. Shrugging your shoulders as you attribute it all to values is an act of malign neglect. The poor don’t need lectures on morality, they need more resources — which we can afford to provide — and better economic opportunities, which we can also afford to provide through everything from training and subsidies to higher minimum wages. Baltimore, and America, don’t have to be as unjust as they are.   More

 

Legal Theory for Dragnet Surveillance Programs Invalidated by Federal Appeals Court Decision

When a federal appeals court ruled that the United States government’s telephone metadata program was illegal, it did not only call attention to how Congress had not authorized the massive surveillance program exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It also acknowledged that the legal theory the government relied upon to defend the program is significantly flawed. In doing so, it invalidated the government’s rationale for maintaining any and all of its dragnet surveillance programs in the “war on terrorism.”  More

 

CHELSEA MANNING: We Have the Right to Criticize Government without Fear
When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … After 9/11, a dedicated office of lawyers specializing in novel applications of law for national security issues, the National Security Division (NSD), was created and now, with a small caseload and an enormous amount of resources, this division of the Department of Justice has been waging a quiet war against the media, their sources and the right to free speech and a free press, using the growing national security and surveillance apparatus to prosecute various cases and, occasionally, target the media… The US needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the US government.   More

 

The US From Abroad: Still Seen as a Strange Liberator

The perception of the US as a hypocritical power is reinforced by the gap between deed and creed.  The world is not culturally globalized, but information is, and since Western (mostly US) media dominate the world, information about the US spreads instantaneously. The world knows more about the US than the US knows about the world… If propaganda does not work, and if the rhetoric of "freedom and democracy" does not win "the hearts and minds" of people, the question then remains: Why does the US stick to it? In advertising, a bad campaign is usually scrapped. The answer to this apparent conundrum lies in the real target audience of this rhetoric: It is actually Americans themselves who are the target of this international propaganda… A plutocratic United States promoting "democracy" may be a form of global chutzpah, but domestically, it serves to change the conversation from touchy topics and reinforce national beliefs about American exceptionalism.  More

 

Coddling the Rich

Question: How much did Congress save taxpayers last year when it cut food stamp benefits for 16 million poor children?

Answer: Less than the windfall Congress is trying to bestow on a few of the richest American families by ending the federal estate tax. The House has already approved a bill to do this, and the Senate is poised to follow suit.  More

 

With Banks 'Still Too Big to Fail,' Another Financial Meltdown Looms

Titled Still Too Big to Fail (pdf), Thursday's report charges that since the meltdown began in 2008, regulators have failed to make sufficient progress on key components of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or to boost transparency in political spending.  According to the CRC, which is made up of more than 75 good governance, organized labor, and environmental groups, action on both these fronts is necessary in order to prevent another financial disaster. "The top six bank holding companies are considerably larger than before, and are still permitted to borrow excessively relative to the assets they hold," the report states. "They are dangerously interconnected and remain vulnerable to sudden runs, because they borrow billions of dollars from wholesale lenders who can often demand their cash back each and every day."  More