NEW WARS / OLD WARS – Are You Feeling Safer Now?

 

Syria Becomes the 7th Predominantly Muslim Country Bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate

Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama—after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.  The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).

It was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assad’s enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters is that it be at war, always and forever.  More

 

I despised Saddam’s police state, but U.S. wars set the stage for the Islamic State.

I’m mourning not just those who have died over the past decade, but for a country that I haven’t been able to recognize for a very long time… Until 1990, I never heard a mosque call for prayer. I almost never saw a woman covering her hair with a hijab. My mom wore make-up, skirts, blouses with shoulder pads and Bermuda shorts. She never covered her hair… I despised Saddam, but I don’t think an extremist group like the Islamic State would exist under his rule. Even if Saddam had gone crazy and killed a bunch of people, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the number who have died since he was overthrown. I see a civil war coming, and an Iraq divided into states… Sometimes, I watch old YouTube videos that show the way Iraq used to be. But the Iraq I loved and was proud of — the country I lived in before 1990 — doesn’t exist anymore. And I don’t see that changing in my lifetime.  More

How Many Wars is the US Fighting?

The White House spent much of last week trying to figure out if the word "war" was the right one to describe its military actions against the Islamic State… The problem is that our traditional definition of "war" is outdated, and so is our imagination of what war means.  World War II was the last time Congress officially declared war. Since then, the conflicts we've called "wars" — from Vietnam through to the second Iraq War — have actually been congressional "authorizations of military force." And more recently, beginning with the War Powers Act of 1973, presidential war powers have expanded so much that, according to the Congressional Research Service, it's no longer clear whether a president requires congressional authorization at all… So how many wars is the US fighting right now? Somewhere between zero and 134.   More

 

OBAMA'S LATEST WAR BREAKS THE LAW

…the New York Times reported [3] that “senior Obama administration officials said on Tuesday that the airstrikes against the Islamic State – carried out in Syria without seeking the permission of the Syrian government or the United Nations Security Council – were legal because they were done in defense of Iraq.” The same report said that “Iraq had a valid right of self-defense against the Islamic State because the militant group was attacking Iraq from its havens in Syria, and the Syrian government had failed to suppress that threat.” … The right of “self-defense” under international law exists as the single, narrow exception to the [UN] Charter’s overarching prohibition of the threat or use of force… The crises in Iraq and Syria are appropriately addressed not by the United States alone, which, by virtue of its military and intelligence policies, supported the conditions in which ISIS was created and proliferated [7], but by the world community acting through the UN Security Council.   More

 

Syria Vote Isn't Last Word From Congress On War

As far as Congress is concerned, President Barack Obama's Mideast war strategy isn't in the clear yet.

The president got what he wanted this past week when the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved arming and training moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants. But the go-ahead is good for less than three months. And many lawmakers want a say over the rest of a plan featuring more than 1,600 U.S. military advisers in Iraq and airstrikes expanding into Syria… A showdown looms when lawmakers return to the Capitol after midterm elections — and no one knows yet how it's going to play out. Permission to prepare vetted Syrian opposition units as a ground force to complement U.S. airstrikes expires Dec. 11, at which point the training effort won't even have begun. American military leaders say the operation needs up to five months to get off the ground. Authorization for the training program is also included in a version of this year's defense policy bill, but its passage is not guaranteed… Conservatives such as Paul and liberal Democrats including Reps. Barbara Lee of Texas and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts cited the legal case in voting "no" on the Syrian training mission. Foreign policy centrists who supported intervention are joining the push for a broader authorization.  More

 

The audacity of air strikes and secret deals: just making Isis grow stronger?

Members of Congress – and the public – who care about a sustainable peace in the Middle East, the wise use of American tax dollars and the balance of power between our branches of government must not stand by as idle accomplices to President Obama’s increased air strikes and weapons deals in Syria. US-led air strikes make recruiting exponentially easier for the Islamic State (Isis) and other extremist movements without actually making America any safer. And selling weapons to state and non-state actors in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East only aids and abets insurgent movements. Insurgent groups, it seems, have found a reliable source for armaments in the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency… But there are other options. The US could avoid repeating its past mistakes in Iraq by deemphasizing its military focus and admitting that air strikes and drone strikes won’t work to effect regional change. A strategy focused on political reconciliation, regional cooperation, arms embargoes and humanitarian aid that finally meets the basic needs of a war-ravaged nation is the only plan that could bring lasting security and political stability.  More

 

Why Americans’ support for bombing ISIS may not last

Trends in opinion on wars in the past half-century suggest that the American public can quite quickly begin to suffer from war fatigue. The Gallup poll has asked a relatively consistent question about wars going back to Korea in 1950. The question, in various forms, asks: “Do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to __ or not?”  In the early stages of each war — Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — large numbers said troop deployments were not a mistake. But over time, without fail, those numbers reversed with majorities or near-majorities saying each conflict was a mistake… Support for the Iraq war increased six points within days of Saddam Hussein’s capture on Dec. 13, 2003. In those early stages of the war, majorities considered it worth the effort. But within two months of his capture, opinions were split, with 48 percent saying it was worth it and 50 percent saying it wasn’t.  In late March 2004, a convoy of U.S. military contractors was ambushed and killed in Fallujah and their bodies were burned and dragged through the streets. Public opinion went south on the war in Post-ABC polls within months of that attack, never to return to majority support.  More

 

U.S. -- Strikes on Islamic State, Khorasan in Syria first step of a years-long campaign

U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria are likely to last “for years,” a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday, as the United States began to assess the impact of three waves of aerial assaults launched in the early morning hours that targeted both Islamic State installations in eastern Syria and facilities housing a shadowy al Qaida group further west… “You are seeing the beginning of a sustained campaign, and strikes like this in the future can be expected,” said Army Lt. Gen. William C. Mayville Jr., the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The operational pace, the tempo of this thing, will be dictated by the facts on the ground and what the targets on the ground mean.” Asked how long the effort to “degrade and eventually destroy” the Islamic State could take, Mayville replied, “I would think of it in terms of years.”  More

 

White House won’t estimate cost of ISIS war

Pressed on that point Monday, press secretary Josh Earnest wouldn't give a ballpark figure for how much the administration expected military operations to cost.  “I don’t have an estimate on that,” Earnest said. “I know that we’re interested in having an open dialogue with Congress to ensure that our military has the resources necessary to carry out the mission that the president has laid out.” So far, the administration has relied on the Overseas Contingency Operations budget to pay for operations against the terrorist group. The White House had previously requested a cut in that pool — from $85 billion to $58.6 billion — for the next fiscal year, but lawmakers decided instead to keep funding at current levels in the temporary budget measure passed last week.   More

The war on ISIS already has a winner: The defense industry

It’s far too soon to tell how the American escalation in the sprawling, complex mess unfolding in Iraq and Syria will play out. But this much is clear: As our military machine hums into a higher gear, it will produce some winners in the defense industry.  New fights mean new stuff, after all. And following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan—and the belt-tightening at the Pentagon imposed by steep budget cuts—military suppliers are lining up to meet a suddenly restored need for their wares. Presenting his vision for expanding the confrontation with the terrorist group ISIS in a speech to the nation on Wednesday night, President Obama outlined a program of intensified airstrikes designed to keep American troops away from the danger on the ground. So defense analysts are pointing to a pair of sure-bet paydays from the new campaign: for those making and maintaining the aircraft, manned and unmanned, that will swarm the skies over the region, and for those producing the missiles and munitions that will arm them.   More

 

Syrian rebels angry that strikes hit al Qaida but not Assad

Anti-government media activists and rebel commanders gave a mixed assessment of U.S.-led airstrikes in northern Syria on Tuesday…  But the greatest damage, they said, may be to the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebel faction that enjoyed U.S. support for years. By focusing exclusively on Islamic State insurgents and al Qaida figures associated with the Khorasan unit of the Nusra Front, and bypassing installations associated with the government of President Bashar Assad, the airstrikes infuriated anti-regime Syrians and hurt the standing of moderate rebel groups that are receiving arms and cash as part of a covert CIA operation based in the Turkish border city of Reyhanli.  More

 

Demise of group backing moderate Syria rebels is a warning for U.S.

Two years after the Obama administration granted it a rare license to raise money for Syrian rebels, a Washington-based opposition nonprofit group that tried to help the United States build a moderate fighting force is defunct. The Syrian Support Group quietly shut down last month, another casualty of the murky battleground conditions, lack of resources and infighting that have doomed every U.S.-backed attempt at creating a viable opposition partner… Now, some U.S. officials speak dismissively of the group and seek to disassociate themselves from it. But for years they enjoyed cozy ties with the Syrian-American activists. In 2012, the Treasury Department granted a sought-after license that made it the only U.S. group authorized to collect money for the rebels… The Obama administration’s effort to work with the Free Syrian Army, which in truth is less an army than a loosely affiliated band of militias, was similarly unsuccessful. It didn’t take long for the rebels to complain publicly that promised U.S. assistance wasn’t arriving; they also begged in vain for heavier weapons and Western air support.  Their cause wasn’t helped by Free Syrian Army units being caught repeatedly coordinating with the Nusra Front.   More

 

Bombing Syria

Syria cannot join the anti-ISIS coalition even though Syria has been fighting ISIS for over two years. Obama’s reason is that the Syrian government has “no legitimacy.” But Obama’s “coalition” of Gulf states are composed of totalitarian dictatorships that, in comparison, make Syria look like the bastion of democracy… Obama’s “coalition of the willing” is largely a mirage, since it’s composed of Gulf state monarchies that are completely dependent on U.S. aid, supplying these dictatorships with enough fire power to protect them from their own citizens, who would otherwise topple their “royalty” in minutes… To complicate matters more, there are large sections of support in the Gulf states for groups like ISIS, since these governments give institutional support to religious institutions that hold an extremist interpretation of Islam… The U.S. politicians understand that the intended outcome of funding the Syrian rebels is regime change, while they tell the American public that ISIS is the only target. The real agenda is quite simple: keeping the Middle East under U.S. control by any means necessary.  More

 

Why Syria is the Gordian knot of Obama’s anti-ISIL campaign

The Syrian opposition remains notoriously fragmented and undependable. Obama did not name a militia or organization with which to partner because even after three and a half years of vetting rebel groups, the U.S. has yet to identify a credible ally…    Last year the U.S. tried to unite Western-friendly militias under a supreme military command, but that effort proved a debacle… Fixing the deep-seated political breakdown of which ISIL’s rise is one symptom is beyond Obama’s capability. Ten years of nation-building by more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq failed to create a new stability, and today’s challenge of failing statehood extends way beyond Iraq. Bombing is envisaged as a Band-Aid solution to the region’s problems. But the wounds run deep and wide.  More

 

2-minute Video: 

HOW DOES THIS END? 35 Military Interventions since 1980 and Terrorism Grows

 

U.S. Turns Up the Heat on Turkey Over Islamic State

A North Atlantic Treaty Organization member that is home to a large American air base, Turkey has been conspicuously absent as a U.S.-led military coalition including Gulf Arab countries conducted a series of airstrikes on the radical Sunni group in neighboring Syria this week. At minimum, U.S. officials say, Mr. Obama wants Mr. Erdogan to do more to stop the flow of foreign fighters in and out of Turkey. "We have made a clear declaration of political will against the Islamic State," a senior Turkish official said on Thursday. "We are discussing political and military cooperation, but the question is how we commit."  The official added that Turkey would decide the scope of cooperation based on its own security concerns and not based on international pressure… Next week, Turkey's parliament will debate the renewal of current authorizations to use force in both Syria and Iraq. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has pledged to expand the scope and content of the resolutions, but didn't elaborate on the specifics.  More

 

Deal With Saudis Paved Way for Syrian Airstrikes

Officials on both sides say the partnership could help rebuild trust between longtime allies whose relations have been deeply strained over the U.S.'s response to the Arab Spring uprisings and Mr. Obama's outreach to Saudi rival Iran. It was also a sign the Saudis might take on a greater security role in the region, something the U.S. has long pressed for.  Reaching that agreement, however, took months of behind-the-scenes work by the U.S. and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when. The process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh U.S. commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority.  More

 

THE OTHER BEHEADERS

In recent months IS has carried out hundreds, possibly thousands, of executions, mostly by gunfire rather than beheading and typically without a trial of any kind. Saudi Arabia is far less trigger- or sword-happy. Still, in the space of just 18 days during the month of August, the kingdom beheaded some 22 people, according to human-rights advocates… Some Saudi critics fear that the sudden upsurge represents a response by the religious establishment to the challenge from IS. Perhaps it is an attempt to prove to the most conservative Saudis that the kingdom remains a truer “Islamic” state than any other. Others see it as part of a broader policy to assert government control amid signs of growing discontent among the bored Saudi young, including a drift into unbelief.    More

 

What Arab Partners Will Get in Return for Strikes on Syria
Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia can hope to shift attention away from the criticism for their attitude to Islamist extremism. Over the years, they have been charged not only with supporting radical Islamists in Syria, but also with allowing their religious elites to propagate a version of Islam that is open to easy manipulation at the hands of radical jihadist recruiters. Both countries will also hope that weakening the radical Islamists of IS will help moderate elements of the Syrian opposition regain the initiative against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Some among the elites of Riyadh and Doha might even be hoping Washington will realise the threat of IS will never be extinguished while Bashar al-Assad’s regime remains in place – and that Obama will see the job is finished.  More

 

FAREED ZAKARIA: The fight against the Islamic State must include Iran

If President Obama truly wants to degrade and destroy the Islamic State, he must find a way to collaborate with Iran — the one great power in the Middle East with which the United States is still at odds. Engagement with Iran — while hard and complicated — would be a strategic game-changer, with benefits spreading from Iraq to Syria to Afghanistan… The United States has some influence with the Iraqi government, but Iran has far more. The Shiite religious parties that today run the country have been funded by Iran for decades. Their leaders lived in Tehran and Damascus during their long exiles from Saddam Hussein’s regime. When Washington sought to remove the previous prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, Iran provided the push that made it happen. If the goal is to get the Iraqi government to share more power with the Sunnis, Iran’s help would be invaluable, perhaps vital. In Syria, Washington’s strategy is incoherent. It seeks to destroy the Islamic State there and attack Jabhat al-Nusra and the Khorasan group but somehow not strengthen these groups’ principal rival, the Bashar al-Assad regime. This is impossible.  More

To Get Rich is Glorious”?

PLUTOCRACY, ENDLESS WAR and A DESTROYED PLANET

The Rich Aren't Just Grabbing a Bigger Slice of the Income Pie - They're Taking All Of It

…the wealthy are capturing more and more of the overall income growth during each expansion period. Notice the sharp drop in the bottom 90 percent's share of growth starting with the 1982-1990 period — thanks, Reaganomics! Not only that, but the bottom 90 percent actually saw their real income drop between 2009 and 2012.  More

 

America’s Deranged Security Agenda

HOW OBAMA AND CONGRESS BLEW IT ON CLIMATE AND WAR

Using his executive authority Monday and Tuesday, President Obama took two steps to combat dangerous forces that threaten the country…  While Obama’s notice to Congress of the escalation cited two congressional Authorizations to Use Military Force — the 2001 Afghan AUMF and the 2002 Iraq AUMF, AUMFs so old that a majority in each house of Congress was not there to vote on them – most experts deem that justification, particularly to cover Syrian bombing, dubious. Ultimately, the president is waging war on his own executive authority… While Mother Nature may not be making YouTube videos showing vicious beheadings of people, climate change is causing death and misery and extensive damage already. Even in the U.S… And yet, Obama has not used his executive authority to protect this country against the ongoing impact of climate change with nearly the scope or audacity he has used to fight terrorists who threaten our access to more fossil fuel resources.  More

 

Climate Crisis? That's Not News

If over 300,000 people march in New York City to demand action on climate change, does it make a sound? Not if you're watching the Sunday morning network chat shows.  The September 21 People's Climate March lived up to its billing as the largest climate change march ever, drawing a massive crowd to focus world attention to the climate emergency. Similar events happened in other major cities around the world. But the highest-profile discussion shows in the corporate media--ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday and Face the Nation on CBS--either did not know it was happening or didn't think it was important.   More

 

AMERICA OUT OF WHACK

Instead of promoting equality, public policy has left millions locked into lives of restricted opportunity while bestowing the benefits of growth on the very few. We know this and yet we let it continue. On Sept. 18, the Federal Reserve announced what sounded like good news: in the United States, “the net worth of households and nonprofits rose by $1.4 trillion to $81.5 trillion during the second quarter of 2014. The value of directly and indirectly held corporate equities increased $1.0 trillion and the value of real estate expanded $230 billion.”  Taking a somewhat longer view, the Fed reported that since 2000, household wealth in the United States has grown by $37 trillion — from $44.45 trillion to $81.49 trillion at the end of the second quarter of this year, but these spectacular gains in wealth are mostly benefiting upper-income Americans. Not only has the wealth of the very rich doubled since 2000, but corporate revenues are at record levels. From 2000 to the present, quarterly corporate after-tax profits have risen from $529 billion to $1.5 trillion. On an annual basis, growth was from $2.1 trillion to $6 trillion in annual after-tax profits. In 2013, according to Goldman Sachs, corporate profits rose five times faster than wages…  In 2001, what had been a slow decline in the share of total national income going to labor took a sharp downward turn that became a precipitous fall.    More

PAUL KRUGMAN: The Show-Off Society

…why had the elite moved away from the ostentation of the past? Because it could no longer afford to live that way. The large yacht, Fortune tells us, “has foundered in the sea of progressive taxation.” But that sea has since receded. Giant yachts and enormous houses have made a comeback. In fact, in places like Greenwich, Conn., some of the “outsize mansions” Fortune described as relics of the past have been replaced with even bigger mansions.  And there’s no mystery about what happened to the good-old days of elite restraint. Just follow the money. Extreme income inequality and low taxes at the top are back. For example, in 1955 the 400 highest-earning Americans paid more than half their incomes in federal taxes, but these days that figure is less than a fifth. And the return of lightly taxed great wealth has, inevitably, brought a return to Gilded Age ostentation… Human nature being what it is, it’s silly to expect humility from a highly privileged elite. So if you think our society needs more humility, you should support policies that would reduce the elite’s privileges.   More

 

WHY WE MARCH: Stepping Forth for a Planet in Peril

We don’t march because there’s any guarantee it will work. If you were a betting person, perhaps you’d say we have only modest hope of beating the financial might of the oil and gas barons and the governments in their thrall. It’s obviously too late to stop global warming entirely, but not too late to slow it down -- and it’s not too late, either, to simply pay witness to what we’re losing, a world of great beauty and complexity and stability that has nurtured humanity for thousands of years.  There’s a world to march for -- and a future, too. The only real question is why anyone wouldn’t march.  More

 

CHRIS HEDGES: The Coming Climate Revolt

We have undergone a transformation during the last few decades—what John Ralston Saul calls a corporate coup d’état in slow motion. We are no longer a capitalist democracy endowed with a functioning liberal class that once made piecemeal and incremental reform possible… The old liberal class, the safety valve that addressed grievances and injustices in times of economic or political distress, has been neutered. There are self-identified liberals, including Barack Obama, who continue to speak in the old language of liberalism but serve corporate power. This has been true since the Clinton administration… If we appeal to self-identified liberals in the establishment who have no capacity or desire to carry out the radical reforms, we will pour energy into a black hole… If the response of the corporate state is repression rather than reform then our strategy and our tactics must be different. We will have to cease our appealing to the system. We will have to view the state, including the Democratic Party, as antagonistic to genuine reform. We will have to speak in the language of ... revolution.   More

 

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – Are You Feeling Safer Now?

 

Syria Becomes the 7th Predominantly Muslim Country Bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate

Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama—after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Iraq.  The utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors and emperors).

It was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now bombing Assad’s enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters is that it be at war, always and forever.  More

 

I despised Saddam’s police state, but U.S. wars set the stage for the Islamic State.

I’m mourning not just those who have died over the past decade, but for a country that I haven’t been able to recognize for a very long time… Until 1990, I never heard a mosque call for prayer. I almost never saw a woman covering her hair with a hijab. My mom wore make-up, skirts, blouses with shoulder pads and Bermuda shorts. She never covered her hair… I despised Saddam, but I don’t think an extremist group like the Islamic State would exist under his rule. Even if Saddam had gone crazy and killed a bunch of people, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the number who have died since he was overthrown. I see a civil war coming, and an Iraq divided into states… Sometimes, I watch old YouTube videos that show the way Iraq used to be. But the Iraq I loved and was proud of — the country I lived in before 1990 — doesn’t exist anymore. And I don’t see that changing in my lifetime.  More

How Many Wars is the US Fighting?

The White House spent much of last week trying to figure out if the word "war" was the right one to describe its military actions against the Islamic State… The problem is that our traditional definition of "war" is outdated, and so is our imagination of what war means.  World War II was the last time Congress officially declared war. Since then, the conflicts we've called "wars" — from Vietnam through to the second Iraq War — have actually been congressional "authorizations of military force." And more recently, beginning with the War Powers Act of 1973, presidential war powers have expanded so much that, according to the Congressional Research Service, it's no longer clear whether a president requires congressional authorization at all… So how many wars is the US fighting right now? Somewhere between zero and 134.   More

Instilling Hope in Gaza: The Legacy of Dr. Eyad el Sarraj

 The Gaza Mental Health Foundation presents:

A Memorial Tribute

Tuesday, October 28, 2014 at 7 PM

First Parish in Cambridge, Harvard Square (corner of Mass Ave and Church Street)

Featuring:

• NOAM CHOMSKY, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• JESS GHANNAM, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at the University of California at San Francisco
• SARA ROY, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
• NANCY MURRAY, Co-founder, Gaza Mental Health Foundation , Gaza Mental Health Foundation
• BILL SLAUGHTER, President, Gaza Mental Health Foundation

 

Dr. Eyad el Sarraj (1943-2013) was the first psychiatrist in the Gaza Strip and a renowned campaigner for peace with justice who recognized the vital connection between mental health and human rights. The founder in 1990 of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), he received the first human rights award given by the US Physicians for Human Rights, among many other international honors. His courage, decency, independence of mind, and vision of a better world made him a beacon of moral conscience and hope for those Israelis seeking peace with Palestinians and Palestinians struggling with both the occupation and their own ruinous political divisions.

 

Nearly a year after his death on December 17, 2013, “Instilling Hope in Gaza” will examine the conditions in the Gaza Strip that shaped his life and work, how the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme is today forging ahead with his work, and what more can be done to build on his legacy in the years ahead.

 

Suggested donation at the door: $10 - or more! Funds will support the work of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.

 

Host: The Middle East Education Group at First Parish Cambridge. Co-sponsors: American Friends Service Committee - New England Region, Boston Coalition  for Palestinian Rights, Grassroots International, Harvard School of Public Health, Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston, Physicians for Human Rights, United for Justice with Peace.

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

TUESDAY: Iran, the Bomb, and Nuclear Disarmament

Understanding the Call to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons

When: Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Where: MIT Stata Center - Room 32-155 • 32 Vassar St • Kendall T • Cambridge

In November 2013, the UN Disarmament Committee passed a resolution establishing the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.  This event is held in answer to that call.

Jim Walsh is a Research Associate in MIT’s Security Studies Program.  He is an expert in international security and has been to both Iran and North Korea to discuss nuclear issues. He has testified in Congress and written many articles and books about nuclear weapons. He will talk about his recent meeting with Iran’s President Rouhani, the current situation of the nuclear weapons states, and the challenges and opportunities facing disarmament.

Elaine Scarry is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Scarry is the author of eight books, most recently Thermonuclear Monarchy. In it, she contends that nuclear weapons eliminate the citizenry and the legislature from the sphere of decision-making about war. Scarry shows how elements of the US Constitution can be used as tools to abolish nuclear weapons.

Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action and the Technology and Culture Forum at MIT

United for Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic justice. Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP today.
info@justicewithpeace.org	617-383-4857	www.justicewithpeace.org

Upcoming Events: 

Anatomy of a False Flag

As the U.S. expands military operations in Syria, we look at the Khorasan group, the shadowy militant organization the Obama administration has invoked to help justify the strikes. One month ago, no one had heard of Khorasan, but now U.S. officials say it poses an imminent threat to the United States. As the strikes on Syria began, U.S. officials said Khorasan was "nearing the execution phase" of an attack on the United States or Europe, most likely an attempt to blow up a commercial plane in flight. We are joined by Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept, whose new article with Glenn Greenwald is "The Khorasan Group: Anatomy of a Fake Terror Threat to Justify Bombing Syria."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The United States is continuing to expand its military operations in Iraq and Syria. Late last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel deployed a division headquarters unit to Iraq for the first time since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011. The 200 soldiers from the Army’s 1st Infantry Division headquarters will joins 1,200 U.S. troops already inside Iraq. Overnight, U.S.-led warplanes hit grain silos and other targets in northern and eastern Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attacks killed a number of civilians working at the silos.
While the United States has been bombing areas in Syria controlled by the Islamic State, it has also struck targets connected to a separate militant group that U.S. officials are calling the Khorasan group. If you never heard of the group before this month, you’re not alone.

full piece, with video interview


 

Dear All, President Obama hasn’t had an easy time of it up to now, and watching him last night on 60 Minutes, it looks like the unending string of crises has taken its toll.  That said, his decision to abandon his commitment to restaint in the use of military force to resolve international crises is disappointing and disturbing to all who hope for a more peaceful and just future.  Bombing Iraq and Syria will likely serve more as a recruiting tool for violent extremists than a means to defeat terrorism. The other great crisis to capture press coverage last week was the threat posed by climate change.  The largest march for climate justice in history highlighted growing public dissatisfaction with the lack of progress to address this threat.  One might fairly ask if the lack of action is due to the fact that the U.S. can’t bomb the climate into would-be submission, although it’s more likely because the energy industry has the U.S, economy under its thumb. As the elections draw near, the new war and climate change need to be in the forefront of the political debate.  Peace Action is working to make that happen, Humbly for Peace, Kevin Martin Executive Director Peace Action War – What Is It Good For? Two weeks ago the House of Representatives voted 273-156 to fund and train “moderate” Syrian rebels to fight the radical terrorist group Islamic State or ISIS. Thank you for your calls against this ill-advised scheme especially since Congress has not authorized the president’s new war in Syria and Iraq. Now, please call your representative via the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121 and let him or her know what you think of his or her vote. Read More Back to Top Elections Matter! As you know, midterm elections are only 5 weeks away. And one of the unique aspects about Peace Action is that we use all the tools in the social tool box to create a better world. Our comprehensive electoral work includes registering voters, educating candidates and the electorate and endorsing and financing peace candidates. Read More Back to Top Peace and Climate Justice: Inseparable The largest climate justice march in history thronged New York City September 21 and Peace Action helped to make it happen. Why? We because we believe that the only way we can save Mother Earth is by ending wars and militarism, which are the biggest obstacles to funding initiatives to address global warming. Wars prevent and disrupt the necessary collaboration between countries to address climate crisis. Both wars and climate crisis require a political solution which can only become a reality if the climate justice movement links to ending wars and militarism and the peace movement connects to justice: climate, economic and racial justice. Read More Back to Top Your help is needed Your tax-deductible contribution will support this work. CONNECT TO US:  Find us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  Read our blog  Contact us You are subscribed to Peace Action's Action Alert Network. You can unsubscribe here.

UJP to march in HONK! Parade with Drone replica.

When: Sunday, October 12, 2014, 12:00 pm to 6:30 pm

Where: Davis Square • Elm Street • Somerville

The Somerville-based HONK! Parade of Activist Street Bands will take place on Sunday, October 12 at noon, and once again UJP's Eastern Massachusetts Anti-Drones Network (EMAD) will march carrying signs and its eye-catching Drone replica. The group's message is encapsulated in the banner it will carry: "No Killer Drones! No Spy Drones!" The U.S. Government must stop surveilling its citizens and killing people from other countries with drones.

 

The HONK! Parade is the culmination of the annual weekend-long HONK! Festival. Dozens of bands, community, artist and activist groups, including Veterans For Peace, will march from Davis Square down Elm Street, Beech Street and Massachusetts Avenue to Harvard Square, where they'll join forces with the Octoberfest celebration. Thousands of people view the parade, and last year, EMAD's Drone replica and anti-drones message were well-received. This year, EMAD's participation coincides with the first Global Action Day Against the Use of Drones for Surveillance & Killing, called by the KnowDrones.com network.

 

We welcome marchers to join our contingent.  Join us at the Parade gathering place in Davis Square at 11:30 am.

 

To join or support the Eastern Massachusetts Anti-Drones Network, email info@justicewithpeace.org or call 617-383-4857

 

One final, unforgettable moment from last week’s CGI meetings in New York… In CNN interview, President Clinton calls the Fair Food Program, “brilliant,” adds, “You’ve got a success model, and you ought to put the pedal to the metal…” Last week’s ceremony at which the CIW was honored with the 2014 Clinton Global Citizen Award was a night that will not soon be forgotten.  But the three days that followed the award ceremony — the actual business end of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting — were every bit as exciting.  Here’s a thumbnail summary of the week from the Rev. Noelle Damico, a longtime CIW ally who witnessed the scene at the Times Square Sheraton firsthand: The CIW’s model of worker-driven social responsibility, operational in the Fair Food Program, electrified not only the award ceremony but the entire conference. President Clinton described the CIW’s Fair Food Program as “the most astonishing thing politically happening in the world we’re living in today.”  The array of world leaders from business, government, the arts, foundations, and NGOs was astounding — and the excitement around the model was palpable from conversations in the hallway to tweets.  The CIW and the Fair Food Program were at the center of this incredible vortex of connection and conviction expressed during the CGI.  The video at the top of this post conveys just how fully the CIW’s work captured the imaginations of those who attended the conference, from President Clinton himself on down.  The clip is an excerpt of a CNN town hall meeting filmed on the CGI’s  final day during which the Emmy Award-winning actress, anti-slavery activist, and former UN Goodwill Ambassador Julia Ormond (right, with microphone) asks a question from the audience of the panel headlined by President Clinton.... Take five minutes to head over to the CIW website and check out the full video of President Clinton on the Fair Food Program -- you’ll be glad you did!

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***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Doors

Peter Paul Markin comment December 2013:

A while back, maybe a few years ago, I started a series presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs that I thought would get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Posted at a time, 2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of uprising against the economic royalists (chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the response from the American and world working classes has if anything entrenched those interests. So as the dog days continue I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

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WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.”  Meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                 

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.   

The origin of my emergence into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest.

I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.

And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) - Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin would surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.

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