Anti-War

Nancy Pelosi is having peace activists charged with felonies for nonviolent activities in front of her San Francisco home, and yet not having them investigated for, much less charged with what she has publicly accused them of, namely working for both Russia and China.

Heather Phipps is being represented in court by civil rights attorney Walter Riley. She allegedly splashed washable red paint on Pelosi’s garage door last week. A few drops of the paint accidentally got on a policeman’s uniform. The Pelosis are claiming that the damage to their garage door exceeds $400, and thus Heather committed a felony. The drops of paint on the policeman’s uniform are being used to also charge her with battery. Meanwhile Cynthia Papermaster, coordinator for CODEPINK in the Bay Area, is being charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly leaving red handprints on the garage door. The washable paint was completely washed off by evening.

The typical response in the United States to the gradual buildup to a war, or even the launching of a war, or even the launching of a war that is reported in U.S. corporate media, is absolutely nothing different: work, school, shopping, sports, movies, etc.

Among those who have some response, it’s typically based on their understanding of the particular war, shaped largely by corporate media, by the political party of the U.S. president at the time (which makes waging wars in the name of democracy even stranger), by the accumulated months or decades of related propaganda in the culture at large, and by the nature of the war itself — typically understood as if human history had begun the day the war began.

A report from ABC 3 WEAR, reports:

“Chris Lambert is a decorated Vietnam veteran whose battled PTSD for more than 40 years. Lambert’s a three-time Purple Heart recipient, all before his 20th birthday. He says after hearing reports that the suspected gunman in the Maine shooting was treated and released from a facility only weeks later, it’s clear that more long-term care for veterans is needed. However, he feels the shooting suspect’s mental health issues during his service in the military is overplayed. ‘How many people have we watched in these mass shootings and none of them are veterans,’ Lambert said. Stillm, Lambert acknowledged the suspect’s service potentially played a major role in the high number of fatalities. ‘Being a firearms instructor, how accurate he could be, I don’t care if you’re 100-50 yards and you’re jerking a little bit, you’re missing that target. But if he’s instructed and he knows how to breathe, he can take down a lot of people, and that’s tragic,’ Lambert said.”

Labels are central to the politics of media. And no label has been more powerful than “terrorist.”

 A single standard of language should accompany a consistent standard of human rights, which the world desperately needs. “If thought corrupts language,” George Orwell wrote, “language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.”

 No amount of rhetoric from its defenders and apologists can change the reality that Hamas engaged in mass murder. What Hamas horrifically did to more than 1,000 Israeli civilians of all ages two weeks ago meets the dictionary definition of terrorism.

When Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke outside the Security Council on Sunday, he said: “This is Israel’s 9/11. This is Israel’s 9/11.” Meanwhile, in a PBS NewsHour interview, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said: “This is, as someone said, our 9/11.”

While the phrase might seem logical, “Israel’s 9/11” is already being used as a huge propaganda weapon by Israel’s government -- now engaged in massive war crimes against civilians in Gaza, after mass murder of Israelis by Hamas last weekend.

 We begin with ANDREA MILLER and RAY MCCLENDON, two of our greatest grassroots leaders, introduce their overview for how to organize on the ground with GOTV and democracy center strategies.

 As godparents of the Georgia Way/Miracle, they are at the core of the work we do in preserving democracy in this country.
 
 With JOHN STEINER and CAMILLA REES and ROBERT DESMARAIS (from New Orleans) joining in, our co-producer STEVE CARUSO gives us a first-hand report from Ohio on fascist attacks you could not make up.
 
 TATANKA BRICCA and JOEL SEGAL jump in with their unique long-term political wisdom.

Human history is all-too-full of ghastly acts of cruelty and torment. They are our ultimate downfall.

But 80 years ago, the people of Denmark—-often a great personal risk—-saved some 8,000 Jewish Danes from occupying Nazi murderers.

On October 1-- 1943’s Jewish New Year-- Denmark's King and its underground resistance helped mobilize the nation to ferry nearly all resident Jews to safety in Sweden.

The story is complex, but among the most moving and powerful in the annals of our species.

Hitler’s Wehrmacht had occupied Denmark in 1940. Recognizing the Germans’ overpowering might and love of slaughter, the Danes watched the Nazis march into their country with little violent resistance.  

Conversely, Hitler desperately needed Danish agricultural supplies. The result was an uneasy coexistence. Alone amongst the countries he occupied, Der Fuhrer abstained from slaughtering en masse the country’s Jews, who were generally well integrated into Denmark’s social mainstream.

Ever since Donald Trump became a former president, news outlets and commentators have cited polls showing that many Republicans believe violence might be needed to save the country. As Trump’s legal woes increase, so do mainstream media alarms about the specter of violent responses. But we’ve heard virtually nothing about connections between two decades of nonstop U.S. warfare overseas and attitudes favoring political violence at home.

I am surely not the only one who has noticed that the defensive propaganda lines that are flowing out the Democratic Administration have become more than ordinarily ridiculous of late. One is astonished at the melding of fact and fiction to create narratives that depict the White House and all that pertains to it as forging a new and more wonderful country. Wasn’t “Build Back Better” the battle cry, whatever that is supposed to mean? And the spin is endless, even when a clueless Joe Biden belatedly winds up in Maui to relate to the tragedy in which at least 1,000 died, only to be greeted by surviving local residents saluting the president with their middle fingers upraised. As the president looked out over the destruction of an entire city by fire he reminisced by recalling his long ago “almost” encounter with a fire in his kitchen. Locals who were screaming for help from government were, in fact, getting almost nothing while the nation’s Chief Executive was in the Oval Office gloating over sending another $23 billion to the arch crook Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, money to fight a war that Biden encouraged and has blithely entered into.

Hey World War II fans, Rahm Emanuel has got some great news for YOU! He’s turning Japan into a warmaking country, and bragging about it.

Fun fact: the U.S. tried that before and it kind of backfired.

Funner fact: this is at least Rahm Emanuel’s tenth opportunity to fail upward.

Rahm Emanuel is the formerly much despised mayor of Chicago who tried to cover up police murder.

Congressman Rahm Emanuel in January 2007, after antiwar voters handed his Democratic Party the U.S. Congress to end the war on Iraq, made clear to a friendly Washington Post/CIA reporter that he hoped to keep that war going for two more years in order to “oppose” it in another election.

Rahm Emanuel is on video telling a young Asian-American woman that he’d like to adopt her, that she’s probably quiet and does a lot of studying.

Rahm Emanuel twice volunteered for the Israeli military despite not even being Israeli.