Global

For years, Palestinians, as well as Israelis, have labored to redraw the battle lines. The three-day Israeli war on Gaza, starting on August 5, clearly manifested this reality.

 Throughout its military operation, Israel has repeatedly underscored the point that the war was targeting the Islamic Jihad Movement only, not Hamas or anyone else.

On a shrugged-off afternoon of YouTube wandering, I came upon this: “Is There Life After Death?”

Hmmm . . . well, is there?

Turns out it was a presentation by five professors at the University of Virginia, moderated, good God, by John Cleese. I more or less had no choice but to click the link and listen — and doing so pushed me into places I’d never been before, into a universe of questions and wonder. This wasn’t so much because I learned anything new. It was because these profs, who belonged to the university’s Division of Perceptual Studies, were neuroscientists groping to understand the nature of consciousness beyond the physical realm.

Perhaps consciousness isn’t sheerly a manifestation — a side effect — of the brain’s physical functioning. Could “something” exist beyond the brain? If so, what?

It seemed all but a done deal: Israel is finally managing to bend the Arabs to its will, and Palestine is becoming a marginal issue that no longer defines Israel’s relations with Arab countries. Indeed, normalization with Israel is afoot, and the Arabs, so it seems, have been finally tamed. 

 Not so fast. Many events continue to demonstrate the opposite. Take, for example, the Arab League two-day meeting in Cairo on July 31 - August 1. The meeting was largely dominated by discussions on Palestine and concluded with statements that called on Arab countries to reactivate the Arab boycott of Israel, until the latter abides by international law. 

PART ONE:  

A DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO GRASSROOTS VICTORY IN 2022…& THE GLOBAL NUKE NIGHTMARE, FROM UKRAINE TO DIABLO CANYON

On the GREE_GREE zoom #105 we offer a definitive template on the nuts and bolts of the grassroots organizing needed to turn the people’s will in the 2022 mid-term elections.

ANDREA MILLER and RAY MCCLENDON fill us in on the granular steps that forced the 2021 “Georgia Miracle” onto the changing face of American politics.  They’re followed by TATANKA BRICCA who adds to the narrative his hands-on experience organizing with the likes of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

Co-Convenor JOEL SEGAL then joins ROBERT WILSON with their accounts of parallel campaigning in North Carolina.  Joel and Robert later introduce us to LARRY HALL, a critical leader of the NC Legislature.

On August 29 we’ll convene a National Congress of Grassroots 2022 Organizing to link on-the-ground groups together from all over the US.  WENDI LEDERMAN is compiling a master list of the nation’s on-the-ground operations to be represented as we further gather the progressive momentum needed to save this nation.

On the 9th of August, 1945, an all-Christian B-29 bomber crew, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the blessings of its Catholic and Protestant chaplains. In the plane’s hold was the second of the only two nuclear bombs to ever be used against human targets in wartime. The primary target, Kokura, Japan, was clouded over, so the plane, named Bock’s Car, headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki.

St. Mary’s Cathedral, located in Nagasaki City’s Urakami River district, was a massive structure and a landmark easily visible from 31,000 feet above. The cathedral was one of the landmarks on which the Bock’s Car’s bombardier had been briefed for weeks before the mission. The cathedral was briefly seen through a break in the clouds, and the drop was ordered. The bomb exploded in a searing fireball as hot as the sun 500 meters above the church.

The legendary Urakami Cathedral was Ground Zero for the Nagasaki bomb on August 9, 1945

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's recent tour in Africa was meant to be a game changer, not only in terms of Russia's relations with the continent, but in the global power struggle involving the US, Europe, China, India, Turkey and others.

Until recently, Israeli politics did not matter to Palestinians. Though the Palestinian people maintained their political agency under the most demoralizing conditions, their collective action rarely influenced outcomes in Israel, partly due to the massive discrepancy of power between the two sides. 

 Now that Israelis are embarking on their fifth election in less than four years, it is important to raise the question: “How do Palestine and the Palestinians factor in Israeli politics?” 

 Israeli politicians and media, even those who are decrying the failure of the ‘peace process’, agree that peace with the Palestinians is no longer a factor, and that Israeli politics almost entirely revolves around Israel’s own socio-economic, political and strategic priorities. 

 This, however, is not exactly true. 

The arrogance of power is especially ominous and despicable when a government leader risks huge numbers of lives in order to make a provocative move on the world’s geopolitical chessboard. Nancy Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan is in that category. Thanks to her, the chances of a military confrontation between China and the United States have spiked upward.

 Long combustible over Taiwan, the tensions between Beijing and Washington are now close to ablaze, due to Pelosi’s desire to be the first House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Despite the alarms that her travel plans have set off, President Biden has responded timidly -- even while much of the establishment wants to see the trip canceled.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous Peoples.”

So said Pope Francis last week, at a powwow in Alberta, at the start of his “apology tour” across Canada — for the participation of the Catholic Church in the multi-century horror of Native American “residential schools” on this continent, which more accurately might be called concentration camps for 6-year-olds.

This papal mega-apology, while cheered by some, has been widely criticized as little more than a wimpy shoulder-shrug — sorry about that — for a governmental, church-complicit policy, lasting well into the 20th century, of snatching indigenous children from their families and squeezing their culture, if not their life, out of them.

Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Zoom #104 opens with the legendary Bill Russell, the the Greatest of All Time professional athlete/civil rights activist in all sports based on having won 11 NBA championships in 13 years, including the last two as the first African-American coach of a major professional team. Russell did all this while serving as one of our most critically important pioneering activists of equal rights for all citizens.

He will be incredibly missed, as will NICHELLE NICHOLS, Star Trek's first African-American female, one of the great icons of our culture (&counter-culture).

RAY MCCLENDON clarifies the on-going very much alive & well prosecution of Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia. Ray further updates us on the escalating grassroots campaign in GA leading into the 2022 mid-terms.

JOEL SEGAL connects that GA campaign to his work in NC…and then explains in great detail the considerable impact of the new Biden-Manchin bill, not yet passed, on our national health care system.