On August 4, hours before a massive explosion rocked the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, issued an ominous warning to Lebanon.

 

“We hit a cell and now we hit the dispatchers. I suggest to all of them, including Hezbollah, to consider this,” Netanyahu said during an official tour of a military facility in central Israel.

 

“They were covered with blood and burned and blackened and swollen, and the flesh was hanging from the bones. Parts of their bodies were missing, and some were carrying their own eyeballs in their hands. And as they collapsed, their stomach burst open.”

But war is necessary, right?

The speaker, quoted recently on NPR, is 88-year-old Setsuko Thurlow, one of Planet Earth’s remaining hibakushas: survivors of the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She was in Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Since that day, she has devoted her life to the elimination of nuclear weapons — that is to say, to creating awareness. Everybody knows that war is hell, but hell is just an abstraction, easily shrugged off, unless you live through it.

Please join us Monday, August 10, 5-6:30 pm ET / 2-3:30pm PT

For our next Zoom meeting. 

Please register in advance for this meeting here:  https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYldumtrjIiH9L7_KfcFV1n8ynuO3anTGwp

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Convened by Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman & Joel Segal

Engineer:  Mike Hersh

Special thanks to Dr. Paul Zeitz and the COVID-19 response coalition

PRELIMINARY AGENDA:  

NORTH CAROLINA:  Amazing organizational progress; Hendersonville soliciting students to work polls at $15-20/hour?   Joel Segal

GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATION REPORTS

REALITY WINNER, RUSSKIES & KILLCHAIN :  Lori Grace

Submitted by fightback on Fri, 08/07/2020 - 10:27am

Bob interviews Asian American professor and activist Phil Tajitsu Nash about the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings, immigration, the pandemic, Trump and the pedagogy of the oppressed.
  Download audio file

Artist: Bob Fitrakis and Phil Tajitsu Nash Title: The Other Side of the News with Phil Tajitsu Nash
Length: 23:46 minutes (18.04 MB)
Format: MP3 Joint stereo 44kHz 106Kbps (VBR)   Source: https://www.wcrsfm.org/content/other-side-news-phil-tajitsu-nash

In the next three months, a dozen states will determine whether Donald Trump wins another four years as president. Those swing states should be central to the work of progressives who are determined to prevent that outcome.

 

With so much at stake, we can’t afford the luxury of devoting time and energy to endless arguments about whether progressives should vote for Joe Biden if they live in California or New York, or Alabama or Alaska, or other states where the electoral votes are sure to all go to Biden or Trump.

 

What will matter are the swing states, generally understood this time around to include Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. (Also in play are “swing districts” in two states where the statewide winning candidate doesn’t automatically get all of the state’s electoral votes: Maine’s second congressional district and Nebraska’s second congressional district.)

 

 

What will it take for the idea of a two-state solution, which was hardly practical to begin with, to be completely abandoned? 

 

Every realistic assessment of the situation on the ground indicates, with palpable clarity, that there can never be a viable Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

 

Politically, the idea is also untenable. Those who are still marketing the ‘two-state solution’, less enthusiastically now as compared with the euphoria of twenty years ago, are paralyzed in the face of the Israeli-American onslaught on any attempt at making ‘Palestine’ a tangible reality.

 

As election 2020 draws ever closer, the flawed, easily gamed nature of the American quasi-democracy becomes increasingly visible, thanks, of course to Donald Trump, our Fluhrer wannabe, who sees no need to hide his contempt for any result in November other than his own victory.

Election theft could well be looming, in a number of ways, and it’s crucial to look at them. But first, I feel the need to point out that the theft is already well underway. Indeed, Part 1 is already finished. Have you noticed? There’s no candidate with a progressive vision in the race, even though public demand for such a candidate — Bernie Sanders, maybe someone else — has been swelling.

The North Coast awaits $4 billion and thousands of jobs with a repeal of the infamous set-back clause. 

 

We must do it!

ZOOM 7-8pm Wednesday, August 5.

 

Ohio’s biggest-ever bribery case is rocking America’s reactor industry ... and the fall election.

Full details of the shocking arrest of Ohio’s powerful Speaker of the House are still unfolding.

But on Monday, the FBI charged Larry Householder and four associates with taking $60 million (that’s NOT a typo) in bribes from “Company A,” suspected to be the Akron-based nuke utility FirstEnergy. The company has not been formally named as the source of the bribe, but FE’s stock has since plummetted.

Householder is suspected of buying votes for the widely hated $1.5 billion bailout of two decrepit nuke reactors on Lake Erie. Donald Trump lobbied at least five legislators to support the cash giveaway. Ohio’s moderate Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has asked Householder to resign. 

Without the bailout, Perry and Davis-Besse would already be dead in the rising tsunami of US reactor shutdowns. 

The handout also supported two ancient coal burners (one in Indiana), and ten small solar plants. It killed a big, highly successful state-wide efficiency program and crippled further Ohio development of wind and solar.