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Four students dead, six more, plus a teacher, wounded. Can you believe – another mass shooting last week. This one north of Detroit, at Oxford High School. A 15-year-old boy – and his parents – were arrested.

While the shock and collective horror are still fresh, before the news cycle moves on, a question resonates with every heartbeat. It’s always the same one: Why? Why? Why?

Partial answers abound. Mostly, we keep them to ourselves. Nothing changes. The accused killer, Ethan Crumbley, has been charged as an adult for murder. . .  and terrorism. So what? Should we call in drone strikes on Oakland County? Bureaucratic “justice” is not going to keep us safe, any more than endless war has kept us safe.

For whatever reason, some mistakenly perceive the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, as liberal, progressive and even ‘pro-Palestinian’. Of course, none of this is true. This misconstrued depiction of an essentially Zionist and anti-Palestinian newspaper tells of a much bigger story of how confusing Israeli politics is, and how equally confused many of us are in understanding the Israeli political discourse.

On November 28, newly-elected Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) with hundreds of soldiers and many illegal Jewish settlers, including the who’s who of Israel’s extremists. 

Keynote Speaker:
KENNY BRUNO: DEFCON FOR DEMOCRACY

The Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition zoom #75 headlines the great long-time activist KENNY BRUNO in a devastating 90-minute discussion of what we need to do to save our democracy.

We start with a brief report from HEDY TRIPP in Minnesota who organized our GREEP #74 call with KEITH ELLISON, the state’s Attorney-General.

Kenny’s bio includes important work with Greenpeace USA, Pipeline Fighters Hub, the Ruckus Society, EarthRights International and more.  He is co-author with Beth Handman and their daughter Antonia Bruno of a number of very cool children’s books.

Kenny’s current article “Trump Has Already Laid the Groundwork to Subvert the 2024 Election” appears at Truthout (https://truthout.org/articles/trump-has-already-laid-the-groundwork-to-subvert-the-2024-election/) with an overview of what we face to preserve what’s left of our democracy and protect ourselves from a devastating dictatorship.

The Belgian government’s decision on November 25 to label products made in illegal Israeli Jewish settlements is welcome, although it will ultimately prove ineffectual.

Our 74th GRASSROOTS EMERGENCY ELECTION PROTECTION COALITION Zoom features the great KEITH ELLISON, Attorney-General of Minnesota in a riveting All-Star gathering that gets to the core of to save our democracy under fire.

Keith was the lead prosecutor in the GEORGE FLOYD case and has been at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement and much much more.

He is a brilliant, personable, deeply dedicated grassroots politician who helped found the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  Today he works to preserve the right of our citizens to safely cast ballots and have them reliably counted (what a concept!).

Keith is joined by ANDREA MILLER of the Center for Common Ground, whose work in Georgia and elsewhere on voting centers and computerized mass mobilization has been pathbreaking and essential.and getting ever moreso…

RAY MCCLENDON of the Atlanta NAACP tells us how the GEORGIA WAY of grassroots organizing is key to fighting off the fascist right-wing assault bearing down on our nation.

“Protecting the border” is essentially the same thing as protecting your own property, right? You’ve got to protect it from invaders, thieves — lawless jerks who want what you have.

If you’re rich and paranoid, then you have no doubt that’s what refugees are, especially down there at the southern U.S. border, or if you’re the European Union, the northern edge of Africa. The EU’s “Mexico” is the failed state of Libya, which, thanks to its former colonial conquerors, can now make a little scratch stopping the desperate hordes of people fleeing poverty, violence and the vicious effects of climate change from crossing the Mediterranean and finding a more secure life in Europe.

How do we move beyond a world that is shredded by invisible (imaginary) borders into endless enclaves of us and them? How do we embrace Planet Earth as a single, organic whole, of which we are just a part? How do we govern with a reverence for this whole?

Backroom deals are being made to introduce secretive, paperless, risky Internet voting (IV) to San Francisco (SF) and the Bay Area (BA). This has been going on for many months, with no notification to the public, and most tellingly, no notification to the SF Elections Commission (EC) until October, 2021. 

To stop this, democracy advocates are now going public. We are asking you to speak out for paper-based, transparent elections, and for assisting the disabled to vote without endangering our government.

To make them easy to find, we are starting with a Summary, Objectives and Contacts. Below these is a Background section that you may need to read to understand what is involved.
 

Secret SF Bay Area IV project

SF is working in collaboration with BA-UASI to develop a voting system using Internet voting (IV). They issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) April 2, 2021. Nobody informed the SF Elections Commission until October, 2021.

While “anti-vaxxers” continue to clash with police in various European cities, a whole media discourse has been formulated around the political leanings of these angry crowds, describing them in matter-of-fact terms as conspiracy theorists, populists and right-wing fanatics.