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Newsletter: Changing Our Story

March 28, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , , , , ,
Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk of The Rules write in "Capitalism is Just a Story and Other Dangerous Thoughts" that our system of neo-liberal capitalism is one story that is told about the way the world works. In this story, natural resources are turned into commodities so they can be monetized. As in the feudal age, the wealthy few are taking more and more, cutting the rest of us off from the treasures we once shared and expanding the wealth divide so that more of us become 'serfs'. 1neofeudalLadha and Kirk go on to say, "our only absolute limitation is our collective imagination, expressed through our will to change the mythologies that hold this house of cards together." For once we see neo-liberalism and its related "isms" of colonialism, imperialism and racism for what they are and what they do, we are closer to being free of their grip and creating a new story.

Report From Jeju Island

February 1, 2015 Bruce Gagnon, www.space4peace.blogspot.com , , , ,
The Navy base now under construction will eventually host US aircraft carriers, nuclear subs, and destroyers outfitted with so-called 'missile defense' interceptors, all to be aimed at China and Russia in that part of the world. A call went out for help and people rushed in to join the barricades against the threat to destroy the permanent protest tents that are a symbol of the villagers refusal to give even more precious land for the base. But the South Korean government, under the forceful direction of the Pentagon, pushes ahead. The people on Jeju need our solidarity and prayers. Their spirited and determined eight-year daily struggle at the Navy base gates has spread globally. Hearts from around the world are in Jeju right now.

Newsletter: What It Means To #ReclaimMLK

January 16, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , ,
This week, in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, people around the country are organizing actions to #ReclaimMLK as the true person he was; one that recognized the roots of the crises being experienced and who made connections between many issues. Dr. King was a critic of capitalism, racism and imperialism. He said: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Dr. King called for a “revolution of values,” meaning a shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. A new generation of young activists is embracing the radical Dr. King and rejecting the watered-down version presented in major media. We have no doubt that Dr. King would be part of the movement for social, economic and environmental justice. Many of us are already working on the issues of Dr. King, in many ways we have already reclaimed him.

#ReclaimMLK Protests Begin On Rev. King’s Real Birthday

January 15, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResisitance.org , , , , , ,
The #BlackLivesMatter movement is seeking to reclaim the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in protests across the nation with the hash tag #ReclaimMLK. People are not focusing on his "I Have a Dream" speech but instead on his challenge to the United States as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world" as well as his criticism of capitalism. When King was murdered he was preparing to lead an occupation of Washington, DC -- Resurrection City -- as part of the Poor People's Campaign. King had already shown himself to be a powerful organizer and mobilizer of people in the Civil Rights movement, but at the end of his life he had taken on other big causes and was mobilizing people to challenge capitalism and militarism. Since his death both of those issues have gotten worse and much of the world and many thousands in the United States are organizing to challenge them. King described three interlocking evils: "the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism."

Narrow-Minded Focus On Military & Weapons Makes Us Less Secure

November 23, 2014 David J. Ragland, www.theportlandalliance.org , , ,
Researchers for some time now have been able to understand how freedom from violence and the threat of violence, community-based economic development, authentic democratic processes and transparency increase human security. Violence and security have often been linked; human security research suggests they are mutually exclusive. Choosing violence to attain security precludes that very security for anyone who critiques violence, as thousands have learned in Ferguson. Clanging claims that we live in a great democracy that protects everyone’s rights sound awfully hollow to an unarmed protestor who has just been injured and arrested by a jack-up cop strapped with an official lethal sidearm and a legal system that affords him every benefit of every doubt. Democracy is not just a system of voting but an approach to governing that recognizes obstacles to participation and development and listens, trying to hear what communities need.

Trials Of Egyptian Activists, Many On Hunger Strike, Begin

October 11, 2014 Dahlia Kholaif, www.aljazeera.com , , ,
Twenty-three Egyptian activists are due to stand trial for breaching a widely criticised law that bars protests unauthorised by the government. Among those to appear before the court in Cairo on Saturday is 20-year-old Sana Seif, who was arrested on July 21 while peacefully demonstrating against the arrest of her brother, renowned blogger and activist Alaa Abdel Fattah. Abdel Fattah has since been released, while Seif's trial has faced repeated postponements. "We don't know what to expect anymore," Laila Soueif, Seif's mother and an assistant professor of mathematics at Cairo University, told Al Jazeera. "We've given up on understanding. If things proceed according to logic, it should be postponed, since the case was referred to a new judicial circuit and a new judge. But our lawyers are braced for all scenarios."

Ellsberg Sees Vietnam-Like Risks In ISIS War

October 6, 2014 Barbara Koeppel, www.consortiumnews.com , , , ,
At a recent talk at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says he believes there’s not one person in the Pentagon who would agree that President Obama can achieve his aim of destroying ISIS in Iraq and Syria with air strikes, along with training and arming local military forces. Nor, he says, can the Administration do it even if the U.S. sends ground troops, contrary to Obama’s repeated assurances. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg described the similarities with Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the near-certainty of comparable failure. I interviewed him after his talk, and updated the discussion this week, after the U.S. airstrikes inside Syria had begun. In his Press Club talk and with me, he read from some documents, as indicated below, and cited Web-links.

Official Washington’s Syrian ‘Fantasy’

October 3, 2014 Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com , , , ,
What does it say when the capital of the world’s most powerful nation anchors a major decision about war in what every thinking person acknowledges is a “fantasy” – even the principal policymaker and a top advocate for foreign interventions? It might suggest that the U.S. government has completely lost its bearings or that political opportunism now so overwhelms rationality that shortsighted expediency determines life-or-death military strategies. Either way, it is hard to see how the current U.S. policy toward Iraq, Syria and the larger Middle East can serve American national interests or translate into anything but more misery for the people of the region.

Veterans And Allies To Mark 13 Years Of Afghanistan War

October 1, 2014 Stop These Wars, www.stopthesewars.org , ,
At 7 pm on October 7 veterans and their allies will gather again at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to lament 13 years of war in Afghanistan and to grieve for and remember a very special human being, one of the finest examples of resistance to war and the inhumanity that spawns war, Jacob George. We will play Jacob’s music, and members of Guitarmy, who marched with Jacob, will play some of his songs. We will remember and be motivated by this much beloved comrade’s life. We will also be there to affirm, once again, our right to assemble peacefully at this memorial at any hour. Chris Hedges and a few others will speak.

Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria

September 30, 2014 Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org , , , , ,
As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland.

Murder, Mass Incarceration, Militarization And Genocide In Progress

September 29, 2014 Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Kevin Berends, www.blackagendareport.com , , ,
How does one explain the totality of: mass incarceration of healthy young black males in their most productive years; their falling to state-sponsored murder coast-to-coast; the impoverishment of black wealth through wholesale thievery by corporate and banking foreclosures, and the militarization of police forces arrayed nationwide against black communities? Were these crimes against African-Americans committed in a theater of war they would rise to the level of genocide as defined by the United Nations. The systematic and brutal execution of black men is illegal under domestic and international law. Under UN conventions this crime alone rises to the level of genocide as defined in international law under Article II.

Can A Treaty To Regulate Arms Trade Become Law?

September 29, 2014 Joel Jaeger, www.ipsnews.com , , ,
With state support moving at an unprecedented pace, the Arms Trade Treaty will enter into force on Dec. 24, 2014, only 18 months after it was opened for signature. Eight states – Argentina, the Bahamas, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Saint Lucia, Portugal, Senegal and Uruguay – ratified the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at a special event at the United Nations this past Thursday, Sep. 25, pushing the number of states parties up to 53. As per article 22 of the treaty, the ATT comes into force as a part of international law 90 days after the 50th instrument of ratification is deposited.

Syria’s White Helmets — World’s Most Dangerous Job

September 27, 2014 Anna Lekas Miller, www.wagingnonviolence.org , ,
Although many of the residents of liberated areas like Aleppo and Idlib have fled, those that remain — often either the poorest and most vulnerable or most dedicated residents — experience daily indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombardments from the Assad regime, destroying neighborhoods and brutally killing and maiming civilians in the process. Despite the risk of a secondary bombing, a common regime tactic, the White Helmets immediately rush to the site of the bombing, moving aside concrete to pick out bodies and rush anyone who might still be alive to the hospital. “There used to be an uncertainty that a bomb could be dropped at any moments, and — if it happened to be dropped on your house — you would die,”Le Mesurier said. “Now there is hope amongst people that even if their building does collapse, they can be rescued.”

National Call: Save Civilian Public Education

September 22, 2014 Staff, www.savecivilianeducation.org , , ,
The national call introduction states: Over the last several decades, the Pentagon, conservative forces, and corporations have been systematically working to expand their presence in the K-12 learning environment and in public universities. The combined impact of the military, conservative think tanks and foundations, and of corporatization of our public educational systems has eroded the basic democratic concept of civilian public education. It is a trend that, if allowed to continue, will weaken the primacy of civilian rule and, ultimately, our country’s commitment to democratic ideals. The National Call suggests actions for foundations, organizations and individuals to take to implement the call.

Stop Giving Schools Military Hardware

September 20, 2014 Susan Ferriss, www.publicintegrity.org , ,
More than 20 national education and civil rights advocates sent a letter Monday to Department of Defense officials, urging them to stop giving U.S. school police departments anti-mine vehicles, military-grade firearms like M16s, and even grenade launchers. News reports and lists of recipients of surplus hardware reveal that assault-style rifles, armored vehicles and other military supplies have been handed over to school districts large and small, from California, Texas, Nevada and Utah to Florida, Georgia, Kansas and Michigan. In California, the San Diego Unified School District acquired an 18-ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, called a MRAP, through the DOD’s 1033 program to transfer surplus supplies to civilian law enforcement.
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