Bulletin N° 875
Films for the Humanities &
Sciences
“Human, All Too Human” - Nietzsche
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkhbSLExYbc
BBC production, directed by Simon
Chu and published by Ilker Yoldas,
June 2015
(50min)
Subject : “Where you see
ideals, I see what is human; alas, all too human.” – F. Nietzsche.
January
10, 2020
Grenoble,
France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
In
his book Human,
All Too Human (1878), Friedrich Nietzsche wrote of “free will” as a
delusion, using hundreds of aphorisms in which he discussed metaphysics, the
Christian idea of good and evil, religious worship, the idea of divine
inspiration in art, social Darwinism, the respective roles of men, women, and
children in society, the power of the state, and in a final section “Man Alone with
Himself”:
At the
waterfall.
When we see a waterfall, we think we see freedom of will and choice in the
innumerable turnings, windings, breakings of the waves; but everything is
necessary; each movement can be calculated mathematically. Thus it is with
human actions; if one were omniscient, one would be
able to calculate each individual action in advance, each step in the progress
of knowledge, each error, each act of malice. To be sure the acting man is
caught in his illusion of volition; if the wheel of the world were to stand
still for a moment and an omniscient, calculating mind were there to take
advantage of this interruption, he would be able to tell into the farthest
future of each being and describe every rut that wheel will roll upon. The acting
man's delusion about himself, his assumption that free will exists, is also
part of the calculable mechanism.(“Human, All Too Human,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human,_All_Too_Human#cite_note-8
)
Nietzsche's
radical study is echoed in the pathos expressed in the writings of the late
American historian, Professor Gabriel Kolko, who in
one of his many classic works, Century
of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society since 1914 (1994), wrote this
sensitive description of “The Polish Torment” at the advent of World War Two.
The
nuances and complexities in fathoming and making judgments on the relationship between
the Nazi occupiers and those who administered the governmental and economic
institutions they sought to utilize are so problematic in western Europe
because the personal risks for anyone in a senior post who hesitated or refused
to participate in Nazi plans involved their careers and fortunes, or the
material welfare of their families, but their lives were not often at stake.
Organizations as such had few choices, for the Nazis had both the power and the
will to utilize them, but those who headed them were dispensable and there were
always people eager, and generally able, to replace them. Concerning those in
less exalted positions, until 1943 even worker’s or farmers, who were
essentially anonymous and whom the Nazis disregarded outside their roles in
institutions (of which they were but small cogs), could also usually choose
courses that spared them the hazards of destructions.
Moral judgments regarding the conduct of
people facing such predicaments are possible, and to the degree that the context
in which men and women exist is nonlethal, they become less and less
problematic. For in a world full of crises constantly threatening to undermine,
erode and destroy national values and social organizations, moral judgments
regarding the objective consequences of individual action or inaction are not
only possible and far easier, but are obligatory insofar as preserving minimal
norms for necessary individual reactions to evil and oppression become a
prerequisite for continuity of civilized human behavior and life itself, above
all in situations that intrinsically require of the difficult and even
dangerous personal choices. Although not everyone can or even should play a
heroic role, the perpetuation and attainment of rational human values and
institutions depends very heavily upon the existence of a sufficient number of
foolhardy and selfless idealists preparing at a cost to their own material and
physical welfare to inhibit or resist instructional oppression and stimulate
needed social changes, for if only egoists and opportunists peopled the world,
then chaos would quickly replace human civilization in the positive meaning of
that term. After 1942 a very small number of west Europeans began to confront
such issues and take what actions their values demanded.
For those living every day in eastern
Europe’s vortex of total oppression, where the risks of death were
overwhelming, each individual was required to adopt altogether distinctive
criteria for personal conduct when survival became the principal objective of
his or her life. The measure of acceptable or ideal human behavior, if not
theoretically for moral philosophers reflecting comfortably after the events
then at least in reality, became radically more problematic in those situations
where everyone’s choices of action were tantamount to decisions involving life
or nearly certain death. Once we comprehend the irreversible predicaments that
millions on the verge of destruction confronted, the standards for praise and
condemnation become far more difficult, notwithstanding the need to maintain a
socially responsible basis for judging individual conduct in the face of evil.
The very notion of people acting in a minimally socially responsible manner
implicitly precludes the prospect of instant death of those behaving with a
modicum of decency. In western Europe such risks existed but were not the
inviolable rule, but in Poland they were: one could easily die any day in
countless ways, and for reasons that were often wholly capricious - nearly 6
million Poles perished and the imminence of death became integral to existence.
Even today, after nearly a century of barbarism and war, there are simply no
sufficiently nuanced and sensitive moral criteria for facilely evaluating human
comportment in the midst of cataclysms.
It was the existence of such cataclysmic
options that profoundly affected the relationship of Poles to the Nazi-managed
government, which employed about 280,000 of them. The Nazis ignored entirely
The Hague conventions on occupied countries that they nominally respected in
western Europe, but collaborators and members of the Polish Home Army alike
were eager to work in the Nazi regime, for only in that manner could one
markedly improve one’s chances of survival or, in many instances, assist the
Resistance. There were upwards of 1 million genuine collaborators by the summer
of 1944, according to Nazi estimates, not including the many Poles among the
100,000 prewar residents of Poland who claimed to be Germans by blood.
Wartime Poland was a nightmare.
Blackmailing Jews in hiding or secret Resistance members became widespread.
Banditry, much less ordinary thievery, became an increasingly common and
ultimately widespread fact of existence that far transcended servicing the
black market or the corruption endemic in maintaining it. All of these
activities were simply basic forms of survival for those determined to live at
any price. Indeed, banditry assumed ostensibly patriotic shapes also, although
the population itself could never tell the difference, and it extended the
grave problems of living in urban areas to the far more affluent countryside.
Disputes between underground organizations or over property, or personal and
even family squabbles were resolved when someone sent an anonymous denunciation
to the Nazi police – which occurred in at least hundreds of cases. Profound and
growing social disintegration and social anarchy produced all the other
symptoms associated with violence; alcoholism was the most common by far, but
occult practices also flourished in diverse forms: the belief in millennial
rumors, fortune-telling, astrology, and the like. Criminal behavior, usually
for personal but sometimes for social ends, became pervasive.
In effect, Poland’s social organization,
and the human bonds and obligations upon which a normal society is based,
disintegrated to such an extent that widespread collaboration became integral
to the antisocial context which suffused the nation. The population was to an
extraordinary degree desocialized and reduced to the
most private existences as individuals and their families sought ways to
survive. The systemic corruption built into the economy and daily existence
reinforced this destruction of a sense of community and social solidarity among
much of the population. This insensitivity to each other was also an inevitable
concomitant of the large majority of Poles’s profound
anti-Semitism and indifference, if not initial sympathy among many toward the
Nazi persecution of the Jews – which eventually moderated to mere neutrality
when the Poles realized that the Nazis were committing genocide. Although there
was absolutely nothing that the Poles in their adversity could safely do to
prevent it, the fact remains that much Jewish property fell into the hands of
many of them, few of whom welcomed any changes that might require them to
return it.
Both Jews and Poles suffered a common
tragedy in the large areas of Poland where ethnic Ukrainians and White Russians
were dominant. The bulk of the latter were farmhands who, like people
everywhere, were victims caught in the maelstrom of war: they might become Red
Army soldiers or partisans, or be suspected of being enemies and killed; or
they could volunteer to become menial auxiliaries of the initially victorious
German army, and possibly live. Not many had political convictions but merely
wanted to survive the war in the face of the Nazi colossus. Most detested the
Poles, who had persecuted all of its minorities for decades. Some
unquestionably accepted Nazi arms to murder at least 60,000 of their Polish
neighbors, or to avenge themselves against Polish partisans who slaughtered
entire Ukrainian villages. When the Nazis began to use some of them as
concentration–camp guards or policemen, the Ukrainians or White Russians who
volunteered for the Nazi-created auxiliaries were the inevitable deadly
products of the intense nationalist prejudices and violence that had inspired
Poland’s rulers until then. The Nazis recruited almost a half-million of these
support forces by the summer of 1942, only about one-fifth of whom lived in
Poland itself and then lost track of their growth, which may have reached as
high as 1.2 million the following year. They helped to kill countless numbers
of Jews, Poles, and their own countrymen.
This profoundly destructive transformation
of human attitudes and behavior in the face of imminent death affected even the
Jewish community, whose manpower the Nazis sought to use for the time- and
labor-consuming tasks of the Holocaust in much the same way that they also
attempted elsewhere to employ Europe’s people and economy to extend their own
resources. The Nazi-sponsored Judenräte –
Jewish councils – grew out of the prewar organizations that had for generations
dealt with the outside political authorities on behalf of the Jewish community,
although the Nazis established them anew in the USSR; 43percent of the members
of the Judenrat had been active in Jewish
councils and organizations before the war, principally as Zionists. The Judenrat’s major assignment was to list and deliver
Jews for ‘resettlement.’ Many Jewish leaders heroically refused the Nazi
demands that they share the Judenrat’s work
and died for it, but thousands agreed, and some even volunteered. Many of them,
vainly in the case of four-fifths, hoped to save their families and themselves
thereby. Some treated their Judenrat roles as
simply a means of prospering; a few were very corrupt. At first many of them
handed over lists of the old, the very young, and the sick, but during the
great harvest of lives in Lodz and Warsaw in 1942 the Judenrat
names became more ‘democratic.’ In 1942 the councils worked too slowly for the
Nazis, who supplemented them with their own forces, but the majority of the Judenräte also opposed resistance and did much to
discourage it.
The Nazis unquestionably would have
destroyed the Jewish community without the aid of the Judenräte,
although they would have been less efficient and lives may have been overlooked
or spared thereby, and no one doubts that the vast majority of its members
detested the unenviable positions into which they had fallen. But the Judenräte needed their own staffs to fulfill their
tasks, and in Warsaw they had about 6,000 employees, over one-third as police –
all but 100 of whom were essentially unpaid volunteers. A majority of the
Jewish policemen had been merchants and artisans by trade, and the Nazis
preferred to hire refugees with no close ties to the local community. A small
portion of them were Resistance members seeking to exploit the police forces,
and some of the police attempted to maintain good relations with the
underground, which meant they could perform useful tasks at various times.
Two-fifths of the police were members of Zionist parties, among whom the
Revisionists (who before the war had evolved a quasi-fascist ideology and wore
brown shirts) composed almost a half of this excrescence of the human condition
in extreme distress. But all were uniformly detested and feared by those over
whom they ruled with mounting arrogance. They normally had wooden and rubber
clubs, but during the Vilna roundup on October 1942 the Nazis entrusted them
with guns. Notwithstanding exceptions, as a whole these volunteer police
exploited fully the potential for corruption inherent in their control over the
fates of people; many lived very well, they were key figures in the smuggling
trade, and they became reliable collaborators with the Nazis in their demonic
project to destroy all Jews.(pp.233-237)
And
in the following section of the same chapter, “European Responses to World War
Two,” Kolko continues his comparative description of
the process of mass socialization when fully collaborating with totalitarian
culture, and occasionally the subsequent mental migration beyond - a condition he
calls ‘Atantisme.’ He introduces this section,
“Attentisme
and Public Opinion,” with the following observations:
Collaboration
was widespread everywhere in occupied Europe, above all among the small group
of prewar business and government leaders whose decisions had always compelled
the masses to conform to their policies. But independently of the overwhelming
constraints others imposed on their opposition, Europe’s people felt beaten and
demoralized, and what very little defiance there was at the inception went
virtually unrecorded. Collaboration unquestionably harnessed much of the
Continent’s economic resources and manpower to the Nazi war effort, and so long
as Hitler succeeded, the willingness of countless millions to tolerate such a
course persisted in spite of the war’s mounting costs to the occupied peoples
in terms of lives lost or recast, and of hunger and want. However much they
disliked the Nazi cause, Europe’s people obeyed their orders, and at least two
years passed before significant exceptions arose.
The motives for collaboration varied so
radically – from the weight of a sense of overwhelming defeatism, to sheer
terror and oppression, to a genuine preference for fascist solutions, and much
else – that simplistic explanations remain misleading. Poland revealed how the
Nazis ultimately defined almost completely the parameters of possible behavior,
disintegrating the very fabric of social life and organization in the course of
imposing total terror. Vichy France favored the defeat of the USSR and Great
Britain, aligning a traditional, eminently respectable, and reactionary ruling
class with Hitler for reasons that principally reflected their free choice. In
Belgium and Holland, notwithstanding the earlier-mentioned fascination among big-business
and financial elements for an integrated European economy akin to the Nazi ‘New
Order,’ the basic influence guiding the traditional leaders of both nations’
collaboration was their belief during 1940-41 that the Nazis had won the war
and that they had to prepare to live as well as possible with the calamity. By
comparing the Belgians and Dutch to the French we can better assess how many
fewer compromises the former made than they might have, and these should not be
minimized. But in all three nations the pillars of the business community
operated as normally as possible, and while very few could have kept their
factories from operating, many sought also to profit.
The transition from collaboration to ‘attentisme,’ which involved people conforming in their
daily conduct but also beginning to withdraw the moral or political support
they once gave a regime, while at the same time passively waiting for it to be
replaced, is a stance inherently too ambiguous to measure or even describe
precisely. There were many who always subjectively disliked, even detested, the
Nazi-dominated status quo and yet aided it greatly in many functional ways for
diverse reasons, including for some a belief that only by working with an
authority could they mitigate its evils. Attentisme
is a transitional phase between support and opposition to a ruling power,
inspired by anything from a wholly opportunistic urge to be on the winning
side, whichever it is, to a critical posture as yet incapable of finding
expression in personal behavior. It is less an individual endorsement of a new
political option than a mental retraction of toleration or support for an old
one. For many it leads no further, for others it is a stage before becoming a
part of the opposition when the risks are no longer so overwhelmingly
dangerous. The politics of withdrawal and survival can remain politics
nonetheless, because beneath the external posture of caution there frequently
exists a set of residual attitudes, including perceptions of reality, which are
often an intermediate stance fully capable of later being organized at the
right time if the leadership or proper context arises. Forces and events
inevitably affect people and produce a latent, potentially radicalized
consciousness among many of those who have lost the material preconditions for
survival or are exhausted. By itself inconclusive, attentisme
among the masses is an interval pregnant with potential.
But in social terms and certainly at least
in the short run, the practical consequences of individuals’ behavior
immeasurably outweighs the often opaque meaning of their subjective feelings,
which are in the last analysis proper topics for psychologists or intellectual
historians rather than social analysts.(pp.237-238)
Professor
Kolko, whose writings are much influenced by the
teachings of Karl Marx and Max Weber, emphasizes the political aspects
of Political Economy. In our age of Monetarism-gone-wild,
this emphasis on behavior is justified for a better understanding of the matrix
in which we live; reminding us that when we study contemporary economic
activities we are not simply examining the natural laws of some
immutable System and the function of its intricate
inner-relationships; rather, very often we are investigating criminal
behavior at the highest level against civil society.
The
18 + items
below will bring to the attention of readers those activities of contemporary
capitalists which are, at best, criminal negligence and often
constitute nothing less than premeditated homicide and even ecocide.
The private ownership of production
and the private profit motive, which
governs our behavior today, has infected society on the scale of a global
epidemic, affecting all individuals in institutions and organizations, at every
level, making empathy all but impossible and resistance almost unimaginable.
Francis
Feeley
---
Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur de
Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org
a.
“Surveillance
Capitalism”
(video, 50min)
with Shoshana
Zuboff
+
David Harvey
Talks about “The Crimes of Capitalism”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5zLfhGIR0c
(audio, 30min)
with
Jeremy Scahill
For the past
year, we’ve all experienced an intense sort of political or news vertigo. It’s making
us dumber by the day. Of course, part of this is due to the fact that Donald
Trump is president and he constantly scoops the story of the latest outrage
about himself by performing yet another outrage just as we start discussing the
previous one. It’s exhausting and brain melting. But this is also because major
media organizations have all chosen to constantly chase the rabbit. In a way,
all of us in media are complicit. When we’re constantly on the run, it’s very
difficult to take stock of where we are and where we’ve been. To take a good
look at the big picture becomes a luxury that none of us seem able to afford.
And this is going to have serious consequences. Our brains are actually being
altered. The way we process news and information, our ideas about what
constitutes resistance and what constitutes tyranny. In general, we live in a
society that doesn’t study its own history — its unvarnished history. And often
current events are analyzed in a vacuum that almost never includes the context
or history necessary to understand what’s new, what’s old, and how we got to
where we are. We’ve become detached from our own reality and our own work.
+
From: CovertAction Magazine
[mailto:info@CovertActionMagazine.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2020
Subject: JULIAN ASSANGE: Countdown to Freedom--new podcast
series--interviews on upcoming extradition trial
===========
b.
The Assassination of Qassem
Soleimani:
What Would Crassus Say?
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/06/the-assassination-of-qassem-soleimani-what-would-crassus-say/
by
John Wight
===========
c.
“Trump Kills
#1 Enemy Of Isis In Iran, WTF?”
with
Jimmy Dore & Max Blumenthal
+
Trump Sparked
“Unnecessary Crisis” by Killing Soleimani,
Barely Avoiding
War
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/9/andrew_bacevich_iran_iraq_qassem_soleimani
with
Andrew Bacevich
===========
d.
America Escalates
Its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/06/america-escalates-its-democratic-oil-war-in-the-near-east/
by
Michael Hudson
===========
e.
Axis Of Resistance
Announces How It Will Avenge Qassem Soleimani
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52815.htm
+
Iran blacklists U.S. Pentagon as "terrorist
organization"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52816.htm
by Xinhua
+
“IRANIANS
HAVE TO RETALIATE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjWllto0Xzg&feature=youtu.be
with
George Galloway
+
Iran's FARS News Agency Posts Video Of Sniper Assassinating
US President Donald Trump
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52818.htm
===========
f.
Why Trump is
escalating the US-Israeli war on Iran
https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-trump-escalating-us-israeli-war-iran/29231
by
Ali Abunimah
+
Europe Cravenly Appeases Trump
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52819.htm
===========
g.
Iran missile strike was to “save face”!
with
Ned Ryun
===========
h.
Iran didn’t want
to kill US troops with its strike, it wanted to make point to Trump about its
missile tech & resolve. It did that
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/477759-iran-missiles-subdued-us-strike/
by
Scott Ritter
+
Iraq PM confirms
receiving ‘signed’ US pullout letter
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52817.htm
by Press TV
Amid confusion over a reported US letter to Iraq
announcing the steps its military would take to move out of Iraq, Prime Minister
Adel Abdul Mahdi confirms that Baghdad has actually
received "signed and translated" copies from the US Army concerning
the withdrawal.
In a televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Abdul Mahdi clearly refuted all US claims that the letter had
been sent by mistake or it had been inauthentic.
On Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament voted unanimously in
favor of a bill demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by
the United States from the country.
The vote came only two days after US airstrikes
assassinated senior Iranian commander Lt. Gen. Qassem
Soleimani, and the second-in-command of Iraq's
Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) anti-terror group, Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis in the Iraqi capital.
Earlier, various news agencies reported that
Brigadier General William Seely, who oversees US Task
Force Iraq, had sent a letter to the head of Iraq’s Joint Operations Command on
Monday, suggesting potential withdrawal of the forces belonging to a US-led
coalition, which has been operating in Iraq since 2014 under the pretext of
fighting Daesh.
===========
i.
Trump Hints NATO Should Take US Place in Middle
East; Lies About Iran and Slaps on More Humiliating
Sanctions
by Joe Lauria
+
"Trump stops neocon
drive towards war with Iran"
with Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris
===========
j.
From: CODEPINK
[mailto:info@codepink.org]
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2020
Subject: Is Iran the only adult in the room?
|
Dear friends, Last night bombs were falling and it seemed like another major Middle East war was breaking out. But Iran intentionally didn’t cause any casualties with its missile attack on the Ain al-Assad and Erbil U.S. military bases Iraq. Iran warned Iraq and probably even the U.S. before the strike so people could evacuate the area. Iran announced that its retaliation for General Soleimani’s assassination would be complete as long as the U.S. does not retaliate, leaving the ball in Trump’s court. Even though Trump is not striking back militarily, we are still on the brink and we must MOBILIZE QUICKLY to stop this war. Tomorrow, on January 9, in over 100 cities across the U.S., people will be taking to the streets to say PEACE WITH IRAN!
Find and join a protest in your city! The assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani is the most dangerous foreign policy decision that Trump has made to date and responsibility for the present crisis rests solely at his feet. Trump’s tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal and imposing brutal sanctions laid the groundwork for the conflict to snowball. It is now up to us the people to stop the escalation and push Trump to lift the sanctions and withdraw U.S. forces from the Middle East.
Along with attending a protest tomorrow, Thursday, January 9, here are a number of other actions for you to take: · Add your name to our letter to the Iranian people apologizing for the actions of the Trump administration and pledging to do all that you can to stop a war and end the sanctions. We will stream the letter and names in both English and Farsi on January 25, the NO WAR WITH IRAN International Day of Action. · Tell Congress to pass a war powers resolution ensuring that Trump cannot go to war with Iran without congressional legislation. A floor vote is expected in the House next week and the Senate soon after that. · Get started on plans for an action in your city on Saturday, January 25, the No War With Iran International Day of Action. CODEPINK is here to help you organize and advertise your event and provide you with posters, talking points, press release templates, chants, social media graphics and more. We are proud to be partnering with the National Iranian-American Council, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, ANSWER, Black Alliance for Peace, Veterans for Peace, Pastors for Peace and almost 100 other organizations. We must do everything that we can to stop Trump’s war on Iran, including the economic warfare of sanctions. While Trump tries to goad Iran into war—going so far as to threaten war crimes—we will continue to respond with principled love for the people of the Middle East, who have already suffered for way too long from U.S. violence and aggression. We must stop the next war, Ann, Ariel, Asia, Carley, Caty, Cody, Emily, Enas, Jodie, Leonardo, Medea, Michelle, Nancy, Paki, Teri, and Tighe P.S. Two webinars on Iran coming up: · On Friday, January 10 at 12pm EST learn what it is like on the ground in Iran as Ariel Gold speaks with Foad Izadi of the University of Tehran. · On Sunday, January 12 at 12pm EST, join us for a webinar conversation between Medea Benjamin and Iranian-American peace activist Leila Zand. (Please note date/time change: this event was originally scheduled for Wednesday, January 8.) |
|
===========
k.
“Putin’s Big Lie : Putin Blames Poland for World War II”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/putin-blames-poland-world-war-ii/604426/
by Anne Applebaum
In a series of comments in late December, the
Russian president appeared to blame Poland for the outbreak of the Second World
War.
+
Putin
accuses Poland of colluding with Hitler
https://www.france24.com/en/20191224-putin-accuses-poland-of-colluding-with-hitler
+
Poland's president decides to boycott
Holocaust memorial in Israel
===========
l.
Geopolitical puzzle: What is behind Pompeo’s visit to Kazakhstan?
https://www.rt.com/news/477028-pompeo-visit-kazakhstan-geopolitical-reasons/
===========
m.
From: Carolyn Eisenberg via H-PAD
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2020
Subject: [H-PAD] Iran/Iraq
Emergency Message #1
In view of the
escalating Middle East crisis, now intensified by the US assassination of
General Qassem Soleimani,
expect additional H-Pad messages with updates on possible action and helpful
resources.
H-PAD
Legislative Coordinators:
Carolyn
Eisenberg and Prasannan Parthasarathi
The
immediate need is to contact your member of Congress, urge them to block any
further acts of war by the Trump Administration and demand diplomacy
To
reach your Senators and Representatives call the Capitol Switchboard 202
-224-3121
Some
resources:
Oona Hathoway, "The Soleimani Strike Defied the US Constitution
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/soleimani-strike-law/604417/
Andrew Bacevich, Trump’s Suleimaini Strike is More of the Same Old Losing US Game
Plan
Triti Parsi, Could Trump's
Credibility Problems Impact Belief of his Iran Assertions
Ervand Abrahmian, Phyllis Bennis, Impact of Suleimani
Assassination
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/3/right_wing_populists_will_sweep_the
Juan Cole,
Making America Hated Again
https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/america-thousands-soleimani.html
===========
n.
From: Medea
Benjamin and Leila Zand, CODEPINK
[mailto:info@codepink.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2020
Subject: URGENT! Congress to
Vote on Iran
|
Dear friends,
This is the first time since the 2002 lead up to the Iraq war
that things have been this terrifying and dangerous—maybe even
worse given that President Trump is a sociopath with the emotional maturity
of a toddler. Since assassinating General Qasem Soleimani, Trump has been threatening the use of
disproportionate force and taunting Congress with such tweets as:
“these Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States
Congress.” Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced War Powers
resolutions to put a stop to Trump’s violent madness—the votes will start
this week. If passed, Rep. Slotkin and
Senator Kaine’s resolutions will mandate that
without congressional authorization, the Trump Administration must cease its
military actions in Iran within 30 days. Send a message
now to your representatives in Congress telling them to stop a war with Iran.
We need a veto-proof majority to get this done. Of course, a lot can happen in 30 days and Trump has already
proven his disregard for the checks and balances the American system was set
up to have, so our work can’t end at the steps of Congress. We need the
public to take to the streets. WE NEED PEOPLE POWER! Join the
January 25 International NO WAR WITH IRAN Day of Action. Sign up here to
organize or attend an event in your city. We will supply you will
materials, help you get the word out, support you to outreach to local media,
and more. Last Saturday, over 80 cities across the U.S. took to the streets
in protests. For January 25, we need even more. On Sunday, Trump tweeted out threats to bomb Iranian cultural
sites—a clear war crime. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper responded by saying that no, the U.S. would not do
this and would abide by the international rules of armed conflict. But
then Trump doubled down, tweeting: “We're not allowed to touch their cultural
sites? It doesn't work that way." Iranians in Iran, the U.S., and across the world responded to
Trump’s vile hatred in the most beautiful way possible. They took to Twitter
to post pictures of their favorite cultural sites, from the ancient ruins of
Persepolis to the striking beauty of the Jāmeh
Mosque of Isfahān. We must help Iranians save their beautiful culture—and their
lives. Now is the moment for us to come together in a newly revived peace
movement. While B-52 bombers are being deployed—they are—we must make sure that
Congress passes war powers resolutions and that our numbers in
the streets are overwhelming. Sign up now to
be part of the January 25 International No War With Iran day of action. Towards peace with Iran, Medea, Leila,
and the entire CODEPINK team: Ann, Ariel, Asia, Carley, Caty, Cody, Emily, Enas, Jodie, Leonardo, Michelle, Nancy, Paki, Teri, and Tighe February 2019 CODEPINK Peace
Delegation to Iran at the Peace Museum in Tehran, Iran P.S. How much do you know about Iran? Pick up Medea’s book Inside the
Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tune in Wednesday 8pm EST, webinar conversation between Medea and Iranian-American peace activist Leila Zand. RSVP now! Join us Friday 12pm
EST, webinar discussion with Professor Foad Izadi from the University of Tehran, speaking with us
live from the ground. RSVP now!
|
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===========
o.
From: Mark Crispin Miller
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2020
Subject: [MCM] "Operation Blackout": Mossad-connected
tech firm is running doomsday drills for next Election Day (if any)
Aside
from the preposterous claim that "voting machine software" is one
of the "key
pillars of American democracy" (!), this is an important article.
(When
will brave and able journalists like Whitney Webb get up to speed
on the corruption
of the US voting system? That they know nothing of
this urgent subject istestament to the effectiveness with which
our Masters
have erased it,
through long use of the "conspiracy theory" meme.)
MCM
OPERATION
BLACKOUT Why a Shadowy Tech Firm With Ties to
Israeli Intelligence Is Running Doomsday Election Simulations
https://www.mintpressnews.com/cybereason-israel-tech-firm-doomsday-election-simulations/263886/
by Whitney Webb
A shadowy tech firm with deep ties to
Israeli intelligence and newly inked contracts to protect Pentagon computers is
partnering with Lockheed Martin to gain unprecedented access to the heart of
America’s democracy.
access to the heart of America’s democracy.
January 04th, 2020
25
Comments
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Election Day 2020: 32 Americans dead, over 200 injured, martial
law declared and the election itself is canceled. While this horrific scenario
seems more like the plot of a Hollywood film, such was the end result of a
recent simulation examining the preparedness of U.S. officials from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and
the U.S. Secret Service against “bad actors” seeking to undermine the upcoming
presidential election.
Yet,
this simulation was not a government-organized exercise but was instead
orchestrated by a private company with deep ties to foreign and domestic intelligence
services, a company that is also funded by investors with clear connections to
individuals who would stand to benefit if such a catastrophic election outcome
were to become reality.
Much of
the rhetoric since the last presidential election in 2016 has focused on the
issue of foreign meddling by U.S. rival states like Russia, while China has
emerged as the new “meddler” of choice in American corporate media as the 2020
election approaches. Though time has revealed that many of the post-2016 election
meddling claims were not as significant as initially claimed, the constant
media discussion of foreign threats to U.S. democracy and electoral processes –
whether real or imagined – has undeniably created a climate of fear.
Click
on the link for the rest: https://www.mintpressnews.com/cybereason-israel-tech-firm-doomsday-election-simulations/263886/
===========
p.
The End of Cheap Money and Cheap Loans
with
Richard Wolff
+
Inflation and the Crisis in Brazil
with Richard Wolff
+
World Bank warns of global debt crisis amid
borrowing buildup
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/08/world-bank-global-debt-crisis-borrowing-build-up
+
The Three Key Economic Issues of 2020
(1h 22min)
with
Richard Wolff
===========
q.
Trump is a Criminal, But the Democrats Belong to the Same Mafia
Trump is a Criminal, But the
Democrats Belong to the Same Mafia
https://blackagendareport.com/trump-criminal-democrats-belong-same-mafia
by Glen Ford
The Republicans and Democrats are united under the
American imperial banner, and only differ on details of strategy to maintain
Washington’s global domination.
“None can be
free of the scourge of war – the ultimate crime against humanity, from which
all others flow – while the warmakers
are in power in the
Citadel of Capital.”
The grievously wronged Iranians have apparently
fired a purposely harmless salvo of missiles into several U.S.-occupied bases
in Iraq to avenge last Friday ’s U.S. drone assassination
of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassi Suleimani. Although the Fars
news agency claimed, for Iranian popular consumption, that “at least
80 US armed personnel have been killed and around 200 others wounded,"
American and other NATO forces in Iraq report no casualties, giving Trump an
opportunity to claim victory and back off from further aggressions. Trump
followed the Iranian lead, holding a press conference to dance away from continued armed
hostilities, on Wednesday.
Since there is no “peace party” with any influence
on governance in the United States, a U.S. retreat from Armageddon is the most
that the world can hope for, in the near term. Trump’s mafia-style
hit on the revered Iranian general – yet another Nuremburg-level U.S. crime against
peace and humanity, for which death by hanging is the historical punishment –
seemed designed to set the stage for a reprise of George Bush’s 2003 “Shock and
Awe” demonstration of U.S. imperial firepower, this time with an orange tinge.
“A U.S. retreat
from Armageddon is the most that the world can hope for, in the near term.”
===========
r.
French
protests show that it is Macron’s vision that is the real utopia
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/477819-france-protests-macron-utopia/
by Slavoj Zizek