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

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WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

With Over 120,000 Petition Signatures, the People's Budget Earns Its Name

At a June 7 press conference entitled, “The People Support the People’s Budget: A Roadmap for the Resistance,” representatives of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and a host of grassroots advocacy and social justice organizations announced the delivery of over 120,000 petition signatures to Congress in support of the CPC’s People’s Budget.  President Trump’s budget proposal includes massive cuts to government programs ranging from education, healthcare, and social security, to international diplomacy, humanitarian aid, and more. It also includes a significant increase in military spending. The People’s Budget offers an alternative plan for how to keep Americans safe and secure, and how to meet the needs of the American people.  More

Sanders Backers Plant Left-Wing Flag in the Massachusetts Democratic Party

At the Massachusetts Democratic convention over the weekend, the normally sober event had an unruly and raucous vibe. It took some strange twists.  Eventually, the journey resulted in a platform that is among the most progressive ever passed by a state party. It’s likely the most progressive platform by a major party in the nation's history, period. It calls for single-payer healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, paid family leave, forgiveness of student loan debt, a ranked-choice voting system, an independent commission to draw the state’s congressional districts, the abolition of Massachusetts superdelegates, an end to for-profit prisons, a carbon tax, more accountability for police officers who use excessive force, and more…  In the end, progressives got most of what they sought from the process, though they narrowly lost a vote on an amendment that called for an end to the statewide ban on local rent-control measures. And, after much contentious back and forth, the convention chair ruled that two proposals, relating to foreign policy and peace in the Middle East, were out of order, on the basis that the state party doesn’t take a stance on federal-level policy questions.   More

THE DEMOCRATS’ ‘WORKING-CLASS PROBLEM’

The Democrats don’t have a “white working-class problem.” They have a “working-class problem,” which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate, including the Rising American Electorate of minorities, unmarried women, and millennials. This decline contributed mightily to the Democrats’ losses in the states and Congress and to the election of Donald Trump…  Bernie Sanders’s “revolution” and attack on big money was much closer to hitting the mark than was Hillary Clinton’s message, and he won millennials and white working-class voters in the primary. It is not surprising that white working-class voters then went for Trump, and that some Sanders voters went for the Green Party in the general election, but the Democrats’ working-class problem go way beyond what Sanders broached…  What the national Democrats’ embrace of the liberal moral frame and America’s economic ascendance misses is not just the plight of nonmetropolitan America, but also the reality on the ground in the big cities, which are ground zero for our country’s greatest challenges.   More

America is a world leader in health inequality

The divide between health outcomes for the richest and poorest Americans is among the largest in the world, according to a new study…  The timing of the study is important — it was conducted just before many of the Affordable Care Act's major policies were enacted. A major facet of the ACA was a redistribution of income, a tax on the richest Americans that helped pay to expand health coverage for the country’s poorest, and the study's authors said it suggests that any reduction in coverage could be a step backward, in an area where the United States has been underperforming…  But he and his co-authors caution that there's more to closing the health outcome gap than providing insurance. When the researchers tried to do more of an apples-to-apples comparison by adjusting for whether people had insurance or not when making the cross-country comparison, they found that the disparity was only slightly decreased.   More

The Demolition of American Education

Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos’s proposed budget for the US Department of Education is a boon for privatization and a disaster for public schools and low-income college students. They want to cut federal spending on education by 13.6 percent. Some programs would be eliminated completely; others would face deep reductions. They want to cut $10.6 billion from existing programs and divert $1.4 billion to charter schools and to vouchers for private and religious schools. This budget reflects Trump and DeVos’s deep hostility to public education and their desire to shrink the Department of Education, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of it entirely. The proposed budget would shrink the assistance programs that now enable 12 million students to attend college: funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, thus “saving” $490 million.  More

BERNIE SANDERS:

Why Trump's So-Called Infrastructure Plan Is Good for Wall Street But Bad for America

At a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers says we need to spend $2 trillion above current spending levels just to get our infrastructure back to a state of good repair, Trump actually cuts direct federal spending on our crumbling infrastructure by nearly $145 billion over the next decade…  Just like Trump’s “health care” bill is actually a $231 billion tax cut for the top 2 percent, his infrastructure plan would create $200 billion in new tax loopholes and other giveaways for wealthy investors, and it would reward corporations that have stashed their profits overseas with huge tax cuts.  Under Trump’s proposal, billionaires on Wall Street, wealthy campaign contributors and even foreign governments would receive hundreds of billions in tax breaks to purchase our highways, airports, and water treatment plants. They would then be allowed to impose huge new tolls and fees on the backs of American commuters and homeowners.  The reality is that Trump’s plan to sell off our nation’s highways, bridges, and other vital infrastructure to Wall Street, private investors, and foreign governments is an old idea that does not work.  More

Trump Is Losing His Most Loyal Supporters: Poll

Twitter is not the only thing hindering Trump’s presidency, because the president’s traditional die-hard supporters are beginning to change their tune, according to the Washington Post. FiveThiryEight’s Nate Silver pointed out that there has been “a considerable decline in the number of Americans who strongly approve of Trump, from a peak of around 30 percent in February to just 21 or 22 percent of the electorate now. (The decline in Trump’s strong approval ratings is larger than the overall decline in his approval ratings, in fact.)”  A poll released by Quinnipiac University on Wednesday corroborates with Silver’s observation, according to the Post. “If you look at the trend in Quinnipiac’s polling since January, strong approval of the president’s job performance has faded in a number of constituencies — including Republicans and whites without college degrees.”   More

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

“POTS AND KETTLES” IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Most Americans – even avid news followers – are probably confused by recent disputes among the Arab petro-monarchies, which are all nominally members of the same Gulf Cooperation Council alliance (GCC).  Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), joined by Egypt, have broken diplomatic relations with Qatar and placed the tiny but natural gas-rich Persian Gulf emirate under virtual siege.  Qatar, with a citizen population of only 200,000 – along with 2 million expatriate workers – is vulnerable because, as a peninsula adjoining Saudi Arabia, it depends for most of its food and other imports on the now closed border.  Turkey, Russia and Iran have offered to supply Qatar by air or sea. (Turkey is also preparing to send troops to defend Qatar.)

Saudi Arabia and its allies charge that Qatar is “financing terrorists” around the Arab-speaking world.  But of course Saudi Arabia is a well-known promoter of the extremist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and is a backer of its own violent proxies in Syria and elsewhere. What’s really going on? 

Qatar (with its ally Turkey) and the Saudi block both support violent religious extremists, but different brands. Qatar backs the Muslim Brotherhood, which in some countries seeks to gain power through elections and is anti-monarchistin general – clearly dangerous to Saudi Arabia and its allies. Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV was a cheerleader for the Arab Spring uprisings – despite autocratic rule in its home country.

In Syria, the two sides support rival violent jihadist groups.  Qatar and Turkey also maintain commercial and political relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the Saudi-led coalition fiercely opposes on political and sectarian grounds -- with encouragement from the Trump administration.  (Iran itself was the victim of an ISIS terrorist attack this week, perhaps with Saudi collusion.)  

Complicating the situation is the fact that the US maintains its Fifth Fleet headquarters in Saudi-aligned Bahrain, while it has its largest Middle East base in Qatar, the Al Ubaid air field and the CENTCOM operations center – with 10,000 military personal in all.   As the US continues its interventions in the Middle East – especially in Syria -- it finds itself unable to maintain a coherent policy because of the conflicting interests of its various allies, many of whom support violent and anti-democratic religious extremists of one sort or another.

WHY QATAR IS IN THE NAUGHTY CORNER

There is no doubt that the al-Thani clan, which rules the emirate from its capital, Doha, has funded militants fighting the regime of president Bashar al-Assad in Syria and meddled in the internal affairs of other Arab nations through its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, notably in Egypt. But these are relative sideshows in a broader regional game. Even allowing for the seeming hypocrisyof Saudi Arabia’s making such accusations, given its history of backing Sunni militant groups in Syria and its military intervention in Yemen, the allegations are so well known as to be tired at this point.  The more heinous sin for which Doha is being punished is its willingness to acknowledge that Iran occupies a position as an important regional power and that political Islamists like Hamas and Hezbollah have a role to play in determining the future of the Middle East.   More

VIJAY PRASHAD:

ISIS Wins, as Trump Sucks Up to the Saudis, and Launches Destructive Fight with Qatar

By the close of 2015, the Saudi agenda appeared to be in disarray while Qatar and Turkey appeared to be fearful of the Saudis. Turkey, badly battered by its miscalculation in Syria, began to rely on Qatar’s natural gas revenue to stabilize its economy and leaned on Qatar to open discussions with Russia. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, went to the United States, brought more weapons and attempted to forge a new kind of Arab NATO against both Iran and the patrons of the Muslim Brotherhood, namely Turkey and Qatar…  But Trump, carrying the Israeli agenda on his shoulders, seemed entranced by the Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli axis. Isolation of Iran ran along the grain of the agenda of his own team. If this meant that Qatar had to be drawn in, well, so be it despite the fact that Qatar hosts one of the largest U.S. military bases in the world.   More

UK may not publish terrorist funding report amid claims it focuses on Saudi Arabia

An investigation into the foreign funding of extremist Islamist groups may never be published, the Home Office has admitted.

The inquiry commissioned by David Cameron, was launched as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats in December 2015, in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Isis into Syria. But although it was due to be published in the spring of 2016, it has not been completed and may never be made public due to its "sensitive" contents. It is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia, which the UK recently approved £3.5bn worth of arms export licences to.  More

DEMAND THAT CONGRESS END ALL WEAPONS SALES TO THE SAUDI REGIME  

Click here to send an email to your Senators and your Representative.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy ruled by Wahhabism, an intolerant form of Sunni Islam, and the Saudi state has supported movements such as Al Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. The Saudi government fiercely discriminates against Muslims of other sects, bans public worship by Christians, and supports gender inequality. The Saudis opposed the 2015 U.S.-Iran nuclear deal even though it guarantees a world with fewer nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain to support that country's rulers during the 2011 Arab Spring, and it is presently making war in Yemen, where its airstrikes have led to many thousands of civilian deaths and risks a serious famine. Our country is providing indispensable military aid and support for the Saudi war in Yemen; in the last two years our government has sold over $20 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia. We refuel Saudi warplanes that have bombed schools, hospitals, marketplaces, weddings, and funerals.

Additionally, Saudi military actions have disrupted the food supply in Yemen. Yemen  imports nearly 90% of its food; according to the UN, 17 million Yemenis suffer from severe food insecurity.

Avoiding Apocalypse on the Korean Peninsula

The Korean peninsula, all 85,270 square miles of it, is about the size of Idaho. It contains more soldiers (2.8 million, not counting reserves) and armaments (nearly 6,000 tanks, 31,000 artillery pieces, and 1,134 combat aircraft) than any other place on the planet. The armies of North and South Korea face each other across the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, and Seoul, South Korea’s capital, is a mere 35 miles away as the artillery shell flies. More than 25 million people inhabit that city’s greater metropolitan area, home to about half of South Korea’s population. Unsurprisingly, untold numbers of North Korean missiles and artillery pieces are trained on that city. Once the guns started firing, thousands of its denizens would undoubtedly die within hours. Of course, North Koreans, too, would be caught in an almost instant maelstrom of death.  And the war wouldn’t be a bilateral affair.  South Korea hosts 28,500 American troops. In addition, there are some 200,000 American civilians in the country, most of them in Seoul.  Many in both categories could be killed by North Korean attacks and the United States would, in turn, hit multiple targets in that country.    More

At remote desert garrison in Syria, a US-Iran confrontation is brewing

US-backed forces announced Tuesday that they had begun the long-awaited assault on the northeastern Syrian city of Raqqa, the so-called Islamic State's main stronghold in the country and its self-declared capital.  But some 170 miles to the south, in a remote corner of Syria’s southeastern desert, another clash is brewing that is pitting the strategic objectives of the United States against those of Iran, and that could soon bring US troops and Iranian-backed forces into direct military confrontation.  Both US and Russian warplanes have been deployed, and some shots have already been fired, including by US-backed coalition forces on Tuesday, the US military said.  The clash is over a military garrison at Tanf, located near a border crossing on a highway that cuts through hundreds of miles of flat desert…  But if Tanf’s main value to the US so far has been in the war on ISIS, it has also, perhaps unwittingly, become a front-line outpost in the US containment of regional power Iran, whose allies are advancing on the garrison from two directions.     More

ALEPPO: The Return of Omran to No Fanfare from Western Media

Omran has been found alive and well in East Aleppo. Syrian & Lebanese media have been interviewing the father of Omran Daqneesh the traumatized boy that graced the covers of virtually every media outlet in August 2016. Omran’s bewilderment reduced news anchors to tears and tipped the world over the edge of rational thought and into the realms of sentimentalized chaos. To the West, he became the symbol of intervention. We almost went to war over Omran…  “Omran’s image was widely used to illustrate the brutality of the Assad regime as it tried to crush the opposition in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. But his family, like many others in rebel-held east Aleppo, are reported to have remained loyal to the regime throughout the siege.  They refused all media interviews and reportedly went into regime-held west Aleppo when they had a chance.”    More

Jeremy Corbyn Dares to Speak Truth About the 'War on Terror'—and British Voters Are Responding

While many progressives have portrayed the so-called War on Terror as an unfortunate but necessary evil, Corbyn has made a crucial break with the norms of the political establishment, condemning the imperial wars the West has waged and emphasizing that this military intervention has only fueled the violent extremism the British government claims to be combating. A new series of polls shows Corbyn has slashed Prime Minister Theresa May's enormous lead to just 3 points, and has surged ahead of her in London…  In the past, right-wing politicians have successfully exploited terror attacks like the kind carried out in Manchester, stoking fear and anti-Muslim bigotry to shift public opinion. Jeremy Corbyn, a left-wing anti-war stalwart, upended the dynamic by introducing a counter-narrative that challenged violent extremism at its roots. While many liberals spoke of the bombing as a mere tragedy, whitewashing its politicized nature, Corbyn pointed his finger at interventionism and empire.   More

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ISRAEL, PALESTINE, GAZA. . . and the US

US Senate passes resolution declaring Jerusalem 'undivided' capital of Israel

The non-binding resolution, introduced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, was passed with widespread bipartisan support with a vote of 90-0, according to The Jerusalem Post.  The Jerusalem Post reported that the Senate passed the resolution in order to express its support for the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which would move the US embassy to Jerusalem. Trump signed a presidential waiver to prevent the act’s implementationlast week, following on the footsteps of every US president since the act’s introduction. The resolution’s passing also came on the same day that Palestinians around the world commemorated the “Naksa,” meaning “setback,” marking the Israeli invasion and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights that began on June 5, 1967 during the Six-Day War, displacing some 300,000 Palestinians, as well as thousands of Syrians, from their homes.   More

Why Jerusalem is not recognized internationally as the capital of Israel

Israel - which captured the western half of Jerusalem in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war - frames the day as the "reunification" of the east and west of its capital.   Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem effectively put the entire city under de-facto Israeli control. The state's jurisdiction and ownership of Jerusalem, however, is not recognised by the international community, including the United States…  Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan to divide historic Palestine between Jewish and Arab states, Jerusalem was granted special status and was meant to be placed under international sovereignty and control. The special status was based on Jerusalem's religious importance to the three Abrahamic religions...  In 1980, Israel passed the"Jerusalem Law", stating that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel", thereby formalising its annexation of East Jerusalem.   In response, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 478 in 1980 declaring the law "null and void"… Though Israel claims Jerusalem as its undivided capital, the realities for those who live there cannot be more different. While Palestinians live under apartheid-like conditions, Israelis enjoy a sense of normality, guaranteed for them by their state.    More

US, Israel ‘jointly engaged in street fighting’ at UN

An early indication of the new campaign’s success, analysts noted, was the election last week of Danny Danon as a vice-president of the UN’s main representative forum, the General Assembly. Danon has been Israel’s ambassador to the UN since 2015.

He is known as an arch-opponent of the two-state solution and, before heading to the UN in New York, had repeatedly called for Israel to annex most of the West Bank…  “The US and Israel are now jointly engaged in ‘street fighting’ at the UN,” a Western diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera. “Washington is throwing its weight around and bullying people. The old rules of diplomacy have been thrown out of the window.”  That view was confirmed by Hanan Ashrawi, a former Palestinian negotiator and member of the PLO Executive Committee.  “The Trump administration has become a very vocal and aggressive attorney for Israel,” she told Al Jazeera. “It threatens consequences for anyone seen to be supporting the Palestinians or criticising Israel.”   More

The Six Day War and Israeli Lies: What I Saw at the CIA

As a junior analyst at the CIA, I helped to draft the report that described Israel’s attack against Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967.  There were sensitive communications intercepts that documented Israeli preparations for an attack, and no evidence of an Egyptian battle plan.  The Israelis had been clamoring about indications of Egyptian preparations for an invasion, but we had no sign of Egyptian readiness in terms of its air or armored power.  The assumption was that the Israelis were engaging in disinformation in order to gain U.S. support…  Rostow cited “assurances” from the Israeli ambassador in Washington that under no circumstances would the Israelis attack first.  Over the protests of Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan, the Israeli government lied to the White House about how the war started.  President Johnson was told that the Egyptians had initiated firing on Israeli settlements and that an Egyptian squadron had been observed heading toward Israeli. Neither statement was true.   More

On 50th Anniversary of Israeli Occupation, Palestinian Opinions Largely Ignored

This week marks the 50th anniversary of what’s called in Israel and the United States the Six-Day War, and an-Naksah (“The Setback”) in Palestine—a conflict that lasted from June 4 to June 10, 1967, and marked the beginning of a decades-long occupation of Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli military. In their respective opinion pieces analyzing the conflict and its subsequent effect on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, major US media have favored Israeli and pro-Israel American voices at the expense of Palestinians by a wide margin. A survey of opinion pieces in major US newspapers and magazines over the past week found that an overwhelming majority of voices featured in the media—23 out of 26—were Israeli or American, while only three were Palestinian or Palestinian-American.   More

Israeli settler activity triples, 7,721 homes planned or approved

In the last six months, the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria has advanced or authorized plans for 4,909 new homes in West Bank settlements, Peace Now said in a report it published on its website on Thursday.  Out of those, 3,178 were advanced or approved this week alone by the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria, the group said. Additionally, in 2017, the government published tenders for 2,812 new homes, which is the last bureaucratic step needed before tractors can begin to work in the field.    More

Israeli politicians celebrate book that says Arabs should be incarcerated in camps

Likud politicians celebrated the launch of a book by an Islam expert Wednesday night, but it wasn’t your typical book party. The author, historian Raphael Israeli, says the Israeli Arabs are a fifth column who “suck from the state’s teats” and cannot be integrated into Israeli society.  He even cites admiration for the Americans’ internment of Japanese citizens during World War II and objects to the fact that Israeli Arabs "are not confined in camps."   More

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OTHER EVENTS

Saturday, June 10:  Mobilizing Against Anti-BDS Legislation, @ 10:30 am - 1:00 pm

Central Square Branch Library, 45 Pearl St, Cambridge.  Legislation has been filed in the Massachusetts legislature which aims to penalize supporters of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This legislation (S.1689 /H.1685), deceptively titled “An Act Prohibiting Discrimination in State Contracts,” is in fact a dangerous attempt to restrict our right to use boycotts to advocate for Palestinian human rights. Click here or here to learn more

NEW DATE!  Monday, June 12: Protest Israel's 50-Year Military Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, 5-8pm, Cambridge City Hall, 759 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge. On June 5th 2017 Israel will have occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights for 50 years.  Join local Palestine solidarity organizations in protesting the ongoing occupation. We will be taking action against Hewlett Packard, one of the many companies that profit off of the occupation and surveillance of Palestinians. https://www.facebook.com/events/1967462893474636/

Thusday, June 15: You're invited to a Boston Town Hall in Dorchester! 7pm, Great Hall in Codman Square. Attorney General Maura, along with Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, Representative Russell E. Holmes, City Councilor-at-Large Ayanna Pressley, and District 4 City Councilor Andrea J. Campbell and the Communities of Color, invite you to a Boston Town Hall Meeting

Tuesday, June 20:  Learn about the Moral Revival and the National Poor People's Campaign, 6pm
UU Urban Ministry, 10 Putnam Street Roxbury .  All Moral Revival supporters are invited to our quarterly gathering.  We will provide updates on the  national Poor People’s Campaign being led by Rev. William Barber,  and how our work can align with it.
A simple supper will be provided. Donations gratefully accepted.  Kindly RSVP here

Tuesday, June 20:  CENTRO PRESENTE: “Know and defend your rights: What to do if you are detained by Immigration,”   9am,  First Hispanic Baptist Church, 10 Kingsboro Park, Jamaica Plain.  Childcare and refreshments will be provided  For more information, call Centro Presente 857-256-2981