Henry A. Giroux: "The
Nightmare of Neoliberal Fascism," Interview by Mark Karlin, Truthout,
June 10, 2018.
Professor Henry A. Giroux is a major student of the world and a
major teacher. You might want to take a look at some of his life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux#Life_and_career
and some of his accomplishments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Giroux#Accomplishments
One major thing of which he reminds us here
toward the beginning is the importance of keeping some history in
mind. Me I try to keep things in context by reviewing my archives
sometimes, but keeping even that much in mind is not all that easy,
for me anyway. But it really is important to be able to put current
stories into a serious context.
This is a piece written by Dr. Henry A. Giroux that I sent you on July 6, 2014. It included this link and much more besides: "Data Storms and the Tyranny of Manufactured Forgetting," published at Truthout. The
2014 piece is along the same lines--the importance of keeping in mind
historical context--but in the context of four years ago.
For in the world in which we live it is no longer merely a question
of the decay of collective memory and declining consciousness of the
past, but of the aggressive [assault on] whatever memory remains, the
deliberate distortion of the historical record, the invention of
mythological pasts in the service of the powers of darkness. -- Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York: Schocken Books, 1989), p. 105.
All reification is forgetting. --Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 73.
--------------------------------------
Related: sent 6/5/2018 "Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America"
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. Not to blow my own horn, but you might be interested to hear that
one of my answers at Quora has been read over 31,000 times and has
received over 400 "upvotes." I have no clue how or why Quora decided to
distribute that particular answer to 120,000 members in their feeds.
The question was "What has Donald Trump done that is so bad? Other than offend people?," June 3, 2018. My answer was a compilation of three of the four
messages that I sent you on June 3rd, along with a bonus from 18 days
earlier. So you may have seen the content already if you happened to be reading
messages that night. LS
sent 6/10/2018 "Zero-sum Trump: What you learn from reading 12 of Donald Trump's books"
Tonight I watched this 26 min 42 sec speech that Trump gave
yesterday, Saturday June 9, 2018, just before he walked out in the
middle of the G7 summit in Quebec. Trump speaks at G7 before heading to North Korea summit - YouTube He avoided talk abut working against planetary heating and poisoning of air, water, and soil.
As it happened, I also encountered this brilliant book summary yesterday. It is of great help in explaining some of Trump's words and actions. "Zero-sum Trump: What you learn from reading 12 of Donald Trump's books," by Dylan Matthews, Vox, January 19, 2018. To begin with, zero sum means that if anyone else is getting any benefit at all from a deal then Trump is not getting enough.
You might want to see also "Trump Hates the Trade Deficit. Most Economists Don’t," by Jim Tankersley, New York Times, March 5, 2018.
See generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade
Here are links to two recent messages that are most likely related to this message:
sent 6/5/2018 "Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America"
sent 6/7/2018 It appears that Trump is working to cause division in the European Union, not just in the United States
love to you and your family,
Larry
As it happened, I also encountered this brilliant book summary yesterday. It is of great help in explaining some of Trump's words and actions. "Zero-sum Trump: What you learn from reading 12 of Donald Trump's books," by Dylan Matthews, Vox, January 19, 2018. To begin with, zero sum means that if anyone else is getting any benefit at all from a deal then Trump is not getting enough.
You might want to see also "Trump Hates the Trade Deficit. Most Economists Don’t," by Jim Tankersley, New York Times, March 5, 2018.
See generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade
Here are links to two recent messages that are most likely related to this message:
sent 6/5/2018 "Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America"
sent 6/7/2018 It appears that Trump is working to cause division in the European Union, not just in the United States
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 6/7/2018 It appears that Trump is working to cause division in the European Union, not just in the United States
"Trump
Is Choosing Eastern Europe," by Thomas Wright, The
Atlantic, June 6, 2018 This is about Trump working to cause division in the European Union, not just in the United States.
--------------------------------------
On a smaller note, perhaps, depending upon one's point of view, please be reminded of another recent example of U.S. withdrawal from other countries at sent 6/3/2018 1. "US vetoes UN measure to protect Palestinians"; 2. "Freedom Flotilla Sails Again to Gaza in Support of the Palestinian Great March of Return"
For background on that please be reminded of sent 4/8/2017 Book recommendation for those interested in some Zionist terrorism history
----------------------------------------
And of course, keep all that in mind with sent 6/5/2018 "Meet the Economist [James Buchanan] Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America"
--and everything else of course. :-)
----------------------------------------
love,
Larry
--------------------------------------
On a smaller note, perhaps, depending upon one's point of view, please be reminded of another recent example of U.S. withdrawal from other countries at sent 6/3/2018 1. "US vetoes UN measure to protect Palestinians"; 2. "Freedom Flotilla Sails Again to Gaza in Support of the Palestinian Great March of Return"
For background on that please be reminded of sent 4/8/2017 Book recommendation for those interested in some Zionist terrorism history
----------------------------------------
And of course, keep all that in mind with sent 6/5/2018 "Meet the Economist [James Buchanan] Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America"
--and everything else of course. :-)
----------------------------------------
love,
Larry
sent 6/5/2018 "Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America"
"Meet
the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of
America," by Lynn Parramore, Institute for New Economic
Thinking, June 4, 2018.
In 2014 economist Thomas Piketty informed us that money is moving upward and will continue moving upward so that the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, with no way that he could see of stopping the process.*
The article linked at the top is about a new book--Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean (June 5, 2018) that tells the story of how economist James McGill Buchanan developed the plan to make that happen. He graduated from Middle State Tennessee State University in 1940. In 1965 he founded a center to test his theories at the University of Virginia, which later relocated to George Macon University. His work overlapped that of the more famous Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago and his "Chicago boys." Milton Friedman liked publicity. James Buchanan liked being sneakier, it appears.
As time went on he worked directly with Charles Koch and trained operatives to staff institutions funded by Charles Koch and "like-minded tycoons."
"......With Koch’s money and enthusiasm, Buchanan’s academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable....."
"......At the 1997 fiftieth anniversary of the Mont Pelerin Society, MacLean recounts that Buchanan and his associate Henry Manne, a founding theorist of libertarian economic approaches to law, focused on such affronts to capitalists as environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go, too: the scholars considered it a socialist project......"
James Buchanan died in 2013 at the age of 93. The plan was and continues to be the taking away of all support from those who fail to build a sufficient education, health and retirement personally funded for themselves.
The article has some details about how the plan is being carried out. We know about some of them, including destroying public schools and destroying the environmental movement. There is more. You could start by reading the article and continue by reading customer reviews at Amazon.
love to you and your family,
Larry
* To be reminded of Thomas Piketty here is the link to a 21 minute video that I sent May 8, 2014 right after the publication of his book, the one that shook the world of economics.
http://www.upworthy.com/what-the-1-dont-want-you-to-know
"This video is really well done. I know, I know, I can be demanding, but do please set aside the necessary 20min42sec somehow. One needs to listen all the way though and NOT assume that one has got it after 20 seconds. That would not be the case."
In 2014 economist Thomas Piketty informed us that money is moving upward and will continue moving upward so that the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, with no way that he could see of stopping the process.*
The article linked at the top is about a new book--Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean (June 5, 2018) that tells the story of how economist James McGill Buchanan developed the plan to make that happen. He graduated from Middle State Tennessee State University in 1940. In 1965 he founded a center to test his theories at the University of Virginia, which later relocated to George Macon University. His work overlapped that of the more famous Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago and his "Chicago boys." Milton Friedman liked publicity. James Buchanan liked being sneakier, it appears.
As time went on he worked directly with Charles Koch and trained operatives to staff institutions funded by Charles Koch and "like-minded tycoons."
"......With Koch’s money and enthusiasm, Buchanan’s academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable....."
"......At the 1997 fiftieth anniversary of the Mont Pelerin Society, MacLean recounts that Buchanan and his associate Henry Manne, a founding theorist of libertarian economic approaches to law, focused on such affronts to capitalists as environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go, too: the scholars considered it a socialist project......"
James Buchanan died in 2013 at the age of 93. The plan was and continues to be the taking away of all support from those who fail to build a sufficient education, health and retirement personally funded for themselves.
The article has some details about how the plan is being carried out. We know about some of them, including destroying public schools and destroying the environmental movement. There is more. You could start by reading the article and continue by reading customer reviews at Amazon.
love to you and your family,
Larry
* To be reminded of Thomas Piketty here is the link to a 21 minute video that I sent May 8, 2014 right after the publication of his book, the one that shook the world of economics.
http://www.upworthy.com/what-the-1-dont-want-you-to-know
"This video is really well done. I know, I know, I can be demanding, but do please set aside the necessary 20min42sec somehow. One needs to listen all the way though and NOT assume that one has got it after 20 seconds. That would not be the case."
sent 6/3/2018 "European Human Rights Court Exposes Further Complicity in CIA Torture"
"European
Human Rights Court Exposes Further Complicity in CIA Torture,"
by Aisha Maniar, Truthout, June 2, 2018.
The newly appointed CIA director Gina Haspel once ran a U.S./CIA torture prison in Thailand. This piece covers what is known about CIA black sites around the world.
In 1967 or so during the Vietnam War I first saw photos of U.S. soldiers involved in torture, if only standing and watching South Vietnamese "allies" do it. That is when I decided I was not going. I did not realize they would not take me because of a bad leg. I guess that the U.S. government has now accepted torture officially. I never have. For one thing--not that two wrongs make a right--ISIS has used official torture by the U.S. as an excuse for doing some of it themselves. That is the way it goes. That is one thing the Geneva Convention and the United States Convention were designed to prevent.
love to you and your family,
Larry
The newly appointed CIA director Gina Haspel once ran a U.S./CIA torture prison in Thailand. This piece covers what is known about CIA black sites around the world.
In 1967 or so during the Vietnam War I first saw photos of U.S. soldiers involved in torture, if only standing and watching South Vietnamese "allies" do it. That is when I decided I was not going. I did not realize they would not take me because of a bad leg. I guess that the U.S. government has now accepted torture officially. I never have. For one thing--not that two wrongs make a right--ISIS has used official torture by the U.S. as an excuse for doing some of it themselves. That is the way it goes. That is one thing the Geneva Convention and the United States Convention were designed to prevent.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 6/3/2018 The price of electricity looks to be going up: Rick Perry Resorts to Subsidizing Coal With Measures Used in Wartime and Natural Disasters
"Rick
Perry Resorts to Subsidizing Coal With Measures Used in Wartime
and Natural Disasters," by Ashley Braun, DESMOG, June
1, 2018; republished
by Truthout,
June 2, 2018
The cost of electricity is expected to rise because of this rule change. The change would compel electric companies to buy and distribute electricity from sources that are more expensive than natural gas and alternative energy sources.
love to you and your family,
Larry
The cost of electricity is expected to rise because of this rule change. The change would compel electric companies to buy and distribute electricity from sources that are more expensive than natural gas and alternative energy sources.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 6/3/2018 1. "US vetoes UN measure to protect Palestinians"; 2. "Freedom Flotilla Sails Again to Gaza in Support of the Palestinian Great March of Return"
1. "US
vetoes UN measure to protect Palestinians," by MEE and
agencies, Middle East Eye, June 1, 2018
It looks as though the failure of this effort may have been decided upon already even though it has worldwide support.
2. "Freedom Flotilla Sails Again to Gaza in Support of the Palestinian Great March of Return," by Yoav Litvin, Truthout, June 2, 2018
The ship had started off days previously. Security Council votes took place Friday.
Focusing on article number 1 above: There were 10 UN Security Council votes for trying to protect Palestinians, including France. The U.S. against. There were four abstentions including Britain.
The U.S. offered another proposal that tried to place the sole blame on Hamas. There was one vote for--just the U.S., three against, and 10 abstentions.
The worst "flareup" since the 2014 war in Gaze took place earlier last week.
--------------
Related: sent 10/12/2017 "[The United States will formally withdraw from UNESCO due to 'perceived anti-Israel bias.']"
love to you and your family,
Larry
It looks as though the failure of this effort may have been decided upon already even though it has worldwide support.
2. "Freedom Flotilla Sails Again to Gaza in Support of the Palestinian Great March of Return," by Yoav Litvin, Truthout, June 2, 2018
The ship had started off days previously. Security Council votes took place Friday.
Focusing on article number 1 above: There were 10 UN Security Council votes for trying to protect Palestinians, including France. The U.S. against. There were four abstentions including Britain.
The U.S. offered another proposal that tried to place the sole blame on Hamas. There was one vote for--just the U.S., three against, and 10 abstentions.
The worst "flareup" since the 2014 war in Gaze took place earlier last week.
--------------
Related: sent 10/12/2017 "[The United States will formally withdraw from UNESCO due to 'perceived anti-Israel bias.']"
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 6/3/2018 John Brennan: "I will speak out until integrity returns to the White House"
John Brennan: "I
will speak out until integrity returns to the White House," The
Washington Post, June 1, 2018. John Brennan served as
director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 to
January 2017 [after having been part of the CIA for many years
prior to that].
"My first visit to the Oval Office came in October 1990, when I was a 35-year-old CIA officer [and George H.W. Bush was president]....
"Over the next quarter-century, I returned to the Oval Office several hundred times during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The jitters that accompanied my first Oval Office visit dissipated over time, but the respect, awe and admiration I held for the office of the presidency and the incumbents never waned. The presidents I directly served were not perfect, and I didn’t agree with all of their policy choices. But I never doubted that each treated their solemn responsibility to lead our nation with anything less than the seriousness, intellectual rigor and principles that it deserved. Many times, I heard them dismiss the political concerns of their advisers, saying, 'I don’t care about my politics, it’s the right thing to do.'
"The esteem with which I held the presidency was dealt a serious blow when Donald Trump took office. Almost immediately, I began to see a startling aberration from the remarkable, though human, presidents I had served. Mr. Trump’s lifelong preoccupation with aggrandizing himself seemed to intensify in office, and he quickly leveraged his 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. address and his Twitter handle to burnish his brand and misrepresent reality.
"Presidents throughout the years have differed in their approaches to policy, based on political platforms, ideologies and individual beliefs. Mr. Trump, however, has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us.
"Although appalling, those actions shouldn’t be surprising. As was the case throughout his business and entertainment careers, Mr. Trump charts his every move according to a calculus of how it will personally help or hurt him. His strategy is to undercut real, potential and perceived opponents; his focus is to win at all costs, irrespective of truth, ethics, decency and — many would argue — the law. His disparagement of institutions is designed to short-circuit legitimate law enforcement investigations, intelligence assessments and media challenges that threaten his interests. His fear of the special counsel’s work is especially palpable, as is his growing interest in destroying its mandate.
"For more than three decades, I observed and analyzed the traits and tactics of corrupt, incompetent and narcissistic foreign officials who did whatever they thought was necessary to retain power. Exploiting the fears and concerns of their citizenry, these demagogues routinely relied on lies, deceit and suppression of political opposition to cast themselves as populist heroes and to mask self-serving priorities. By gaining control of intelligence and security services, stifling the independence of the judiciary and discrediting a free press, these authoritarian rulers followed a time-tested recipe for how to inhibit democracy’s development, retard individual freedoms and liberties, and reserve the spoils of corrupt governance for themselves and their ilk. It never dawned on me that we could face such a development in the United States......"
"......At a time when deep-seated fears of socioeconomic and cultural change need to be addressed honestly and without prejudice, Mr. Trump grandstands like a snake-oil salesman, squandering his formidable charisma and communication skills in favor of ego, selfishness and false promises....
"......As someone who had the rare privilege of directly serving four presidents, I will continue to speak out loudly and critically until integrity, decency, wisdom — and maybe even some humility — return to the White House......"
What's that again? Missing are:
Integrity
Decency
Wisdom
Humility
John Brennan said it, I didn't.
And traditionally the American President has provided a model for the young.
You might want to read the whole thing if you have not done so already.
love to you and your family,
Larry
"My first visit to the Oval Office came in October 1990, when I was a 35-year-old CIA officer [and George H.W. Bush was president]....
"Over the next quarter-century, I returned to the Oval Office several hundred times during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The jitters that accompanied my first Oval Office visit dissipated over time, but the respect, awe and admiration I held for the office of the presidency and the incumbents never waned. The presidents I directly served were not perfect, and I didn’t agree with all of their policy choices. But I never doubted that each treated their solemn responsibility to lead our nation with anything less than the seriousness, intellectual rigor and principles that it deserved. Many times, I heard them dismiss the political concerns of their advisers, saying, 'I don’t care about my politics, it’s the right thing to do.'
"The esteem with which I held the presidency was dealt a serious blow when Donald Trump took office. Almost immediately, I began to see a startling aberration from the remarkable, though human, presidents I had served. Mr. Trump’s lifelong preoccupation with aggrandizing himself seemed to intensify in office, and he quickly leveraged his 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. address and his Twitter handle to burnish his brand and misrepresent reality.
"Presidents throughout the years have differed in their approaches to policy, based on political platforms, ideologies and individual beliefs. Mr. Trump, however, has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us.
"Although appalling, those actions shouldn’t be surprising. As was the case throughout his business and entertainment careers, Mr. Trump charts his every move according to a calculus of how it will personally help or hurt him. His strategy is to undercut real, potential and perceived opponents; his focus is to win at all costs, irrespective of truth, ethics, decency and — many would argue — the law. His disparagement of institutions is designed to short-circuit legitimate law enforcement investigations, intelligence assessments and media challenges that threaten his interests. His fear of the special counsel’s work is especially palpable, as is his growing interest in destroying its mandate.
"For more than three decades, I observed and analyzed the traits and tactics of corrupt, incompetent and narcissistic foreign officials who did whatever they thought was necessary to retain power. Exploiting the fears and concerns of their citizenry, these demagogues routinely relied on lies, deceit and suppression of political opposition to cast themselves as populist heroes and to mask self-serving priorities. By gaining control of intelligence and security services, stifling the independence of the judiciary and discrediting a free press, these authoritarian rulers followed a time-tested recipe for how to inhibit democracy’s development, retard individual freedoms and liberties, and reserve the spoils of corrupt governance for themselves and their ilk. It never dawned on me that we could face such a development in the United States......"
"......At a time when deep-seated fears of socioeconomic and cultural change need to be addressed honestly and without prejudice, Mr. Trump grandstands like a snake-oil salesman, squandering his formidable charisma and communication skills in favor of ego, selfishness and false promises....
"......As someone who had the rare privilege of directly serving four presidents, I will continue to speak out loudly and critically until integrity, decency, wisdom — and maybe even some humility — return to the White House......"
What's that again? Missing are:
Integrity
Decency
Wisdom
Humility
John Brennan said it, I didn't.
And traditionally the American President has provided a model for the young.
You might want to read the whole thing if you have not done so already.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/24/2018 "Dem operatives craft Trump-Mueller message for 2018 elections"
"Dem
operatives craft Trump-Mueller message for 2018 elections," by
Alex Roarty, McClatchy, May 23, 2018
Apparently most people are not aware of the fact that the investigation has led to 22 indictments so far. Apparently most people think that nothing has been found. There is more in the article, but the best thing to do seems to be to inform people about the fact that the investigation has in fact yielded big results so far.
love to you and your family,
Larry
Apparently most people are not aware of the fact that the investigation has led to 22 indictments so far. Apparently most people think that nothing has been found. There is more in the article, but the best thing to do seems to be to inform people about the fact that the investigation has in fact yielded big results so far.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/24/2018 ‘Savagely funny and bitingly honest’ – 13 writers on their favourite Philip Roth novels
"‘Savagely
funny and bitingly honest’ – 13 writers on their favourite Philip
Roth novels," by Arifa Akbar, David Baddiel, Hannah Beckerman
William Boyd, Peter Bradshaw, Emma Brockes, Xan Brooks, Jonathan
Freedland, Hadley Freeman, Linda Grant, Joyce Carol Oates, Alex Ross
Perry and James Schamus, The Guardian, May 23, 2018.
One of America’s greatest novelists, Philip Roth died this week, aged 85. From 1959’s Goodbye, Columbus to 2010’s Nemesis, 13 acclaimed writers including William Boyd, David Baddiel, Linda Grant and Joyce Carol Oates pick their favourite work
I remember some of his work. He is worth remembering. May he rest in peace.
love to you and your family,
Larry
One of America’s greatest novelists, Philip Roth died this week, aged 85. From 1959’s Goodbye, Columbus to 2010’s Nemesis, 13 acclaimed writers including William Boyd, David Baddiel, Linda Grant and Joyce Carol Oates pick their favourite work
I remember some of his work. He is worth remembering. May he rest in peace.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/23/2018 big mouthfuls from Dr. David Romei, PhD.
Boy is this guy Dr. David Romei, Phd. (twitter link)
wonderful! He has collected and summarized and picturized much news,
one thing after another, with links. Not to feature it exclusively, but
you might want to note the link to another thread under a picture of
Betsy DeVos. Yes she is still a serious embarrassment but perhaps not
quite as much as is Trump. Betsy Devos and Scott Pruitt compete on that
parameter, the embarrassment to our country parameter.
I do not have a Twitter account, but nonetheless I am able to view this (repeat link), thankfully.
love to you and your family,
Larry
I do not have a Twitter account, but nonetheless I am able to view this (repeat link), thankfully.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/22/2018 "Israel Continues Aggression Against Syria While Playing the Victim" plus "History Shows Hypocrisy of US Outrage Over Chemical Weapons in Syria"
"Israel
Continues Aggression Against Syria While Playing the Victim,"
by Zak Witus, Truthout, May 21, 2018
Israel has been trying for years to get control of the land of Syria. So far Israel controls only parts of Syria. Israel has huge military power. The only thing that has held Israel back from an all-out invasion is a desire on the part of Israel and the United States to avoid war with Russia.
"History Shows Hypocrisy of US Outrage Over Chemical Weapons in Syria," by Stephen Zunes (Wikipedia link), Truthout, April 24, 2018
The United States has a history of supporting the use of chemical weapons, even against civilians, when doing so has suited its purpose. And just never mind that U.S. drone warfare has killed large numbers of civilians.
love to you and your family,
Larry
Israel has been trying for years to get control of the land of Syria. So far Israel controls only parts of Syria. Israel has huge military power. The only thing that has held Israel back from an all-out invasion is a desire on the part of Israel and the United States to avoid war with Russia.
"History Shows Hypocrisy of US Outrage Over Chemical Weapons in Syria," by Stephen Zunes (Wikipedia link), Truthout, April 24, 2018
The United States has a history of supporting the use of chemical weapons, even against civilians, when doing so has suited its purpose. And just never mind that U.S. drone warfare has killed large numbers of civilians.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/22/2018 The story of the boy scout Ambassador to Panama quitting the Trump administration
"The
Diplomat Who Quit the Trump Administration," by Jon Lee
Anderson, The New Yorker, May 28, 2018 issue For John
Feeley, the Ambassador to Panama, moral failings at home seemed to
compound tactical failings abroad. "His values are not my
values," John Feeley said, of Trump. He quit this March.
This is another very sad story, of course. The details are rather fascinating. They include changes in the relations and attitudes between the United States and Panama and between the United States and Mexico that will take a long time to restore if they can ever be restored.
There is also news about the decimation of the State Department, some of which is familiar.
You can read the article or listen to it. The audio is 42min17sec.
love to you and your family,
Larry
This is another very sad story, of course. The details are rather fascinating. They include changes in the relations and attitudes between the United States and Panama and between the United States and Mexico that will take a long time to restore if they can ever be restored.
There is also news about the decimation of the State Department, some of which is familiar.
You can read the article or listen to it. The audio is 42min17sec.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/21/2018 Daddy's little ghoul--Ivanka Trump smiles
As for the Daily News picture down toward the bottom of this
message, I struggle not to hate Trump or his family. So perhaps you can
appreciate the picture without hating.
"In Jerusalem, Christian Zionists Seal the Deal With Netanyahu," by Bill Berkowitz, Truthout, May 18, 2018
"Israeli Forces Kill 58 In Gaza Clashes As US Embassy Opens In Jerusalem," by George Bowden and Reuters, Huffpost UK, May 14, 2018 updated May 15, 2018
"While Many US Outlets Equivocate on Israel's Massacre of Unarmed Palestinians, The Onion's Piercing Satire Destroys IDF Talking Points and War Crime Apologists," by Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, May 16, 2017
Scroll down for links to the headlines at The Onion:
"IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child"
"Netanyahu Announces Day Of Mourning For Fence Damaged In Yesterday’s Conflict"
"As World Condemns 'Appalling' Crimes, US Defends Israeli Massacre in Gaza and Blocks Call for UN Probe," by Jake Johnson, staff writer, Common Dreams, May 15, 2018
In contrast to White House refusal to condemn Israel, the U.N. Human Rights Council denounced the massacre and slammed Israel for repeatedly violating international law
"Donald Trump cares more about re-election than the lives and rights of Palestinians," by Andrew Buncombe, Independent UK, May 15, 2018
This week, as the US controversially moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and scores of Palestinian protesters were shot dead by Israeli snipers, the evangelicals received their reward. It's about the end of the world, the rapture, coming.
love to you and your family,
Larry
--
Brother Larry/Attorney Scott archives (Larry at Blogspot) "undisclosed recipients" email message archive, no logging in, no public comments
sent 2/22/15 my motive
sent 4/19/2018 The BEST song: "O, America" (YouTube)
Fast national and world news review: https://www.commondreams.org/news
One way or another, raise yourself up I say; get over fear. If you are not doing it you can do it. Other people are doing it. We can learn from them, I find.
"Lead with your ears, follow with your tongue, let anger trail behind"--Reverend Ryan Henderson September 18, 2016
"Life isn't fair. That is not the problem. The problem for some is that they think that life should be fair." [link]
PLEASE REMEMBER the reading list that is contained in part-two-at-the-top in sent 11/18/2016 Action organizations that might represent one or more of your primary concern(s); (29 min video) President-Elect Trump: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) and
sent 12/14/16 Keep Your Spirits Up: You Can’t Resist Trump When You’re Tired and Sad" + 3 more from Yes!
"In Jerusalem, Christian Zionists Seal the Deal With Netanyahu," by Bill Berkowitz, Truthout, May 18, 2018
"Israeli Forces Kill 58 In Gaza Clashes As US Embassy Opens In Jerusalem," by George Bowden and Reuters, Huffpost UK, May 14, 2018 updated May 15, 2018
"While Many US Outlets Equivocate on Israel's Massacre of Unarmed Palestinians, The Onion's Piercing Satire Destroys IDF Talking Points and War Crime Apologists," by Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams, May 16, 2017
Scroll down for links to the headlines at The Onion:
"IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child"
"Netanyahu Announces Day Of Mourning For Fence Damaged In Yesterday’s Conflict"
"As World Condemns 'Appalling' Crimes, US Defends Israeli Massacre in Gaza and Blocks Call for UN Probe," by Jake Johnson, staff writer, Common Dreams, May 15, 2018
In contrast to White House refusal to condemn Israel, the U.N. Human Rights Council denounced the massacre and slammed Israel for repeatedly violating international law
"Donald Trump cares more about re-election than the lives and rights of Palestinians," by Andrew Buncombe, Independent UK, May 15, 2018
This week, as the US controversially moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and scores of Palestinian protesters were shot dead by Israeli snipers, the evangelicals received their reward. It's about the end of the world, the rapture, coming.
love to you and your family,
Larry
--
Brother Larry/Attorney Scott archives (Larry at Blogspot) "undisclosed recipients" email message archive, no logging in, no public comments
sent 2/22/15 my motive
sent 4/19/2018 The BEST song: "O, America" (YouTube)
Fast national and world news review: https://www.commondreams.org/news
One way or another, raise yourself up I say; get over fear. If you are not doing it you can do it. Other people are doing it. We can learn from them, I find.
"Lead with your ears, follow with your tongue, let anger trail behind"--Reverend Ryan Henderson September 18, 2016
"Life isn't fair. That is not the problem. The problem for some is that they think that life should be fair." [link]
PLEASE REMEMBER the reading list that is contained in part-two-at-the-top in sent 11/18/2016 Action organizations that might represent one or more of your primary concern(s); (29 min video) President-Elect Trump: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) and
sent 12/14/16 Keep Your Spirits Up: You Can’t Resist Trump When You’re Tired and Sad" + 3 more from Yes!
sent 5/16/2018 major, detailed: "Draining the swamp" means getting rid of law and order: "Trump vs. the 'Deep State'"
"Trump vs. the 'Deep State,'" by Evan Osnos (Wikipedia link), The New Yorker, May 21, 2018 issue
The "deep state" is people like the employees of the Civil Service (Wikipedia link). Traditionally they have considered their service to be to law and order rather than to a political party. Trump is trying to mess them up to gain control for his own destabilizing purposes. The great article includes many details of that and goes on. It is not good thing, but we do need to know what is going on. There are various ways that we can respond.
Included part way down is an interesting video of an interview with former FBI Director James Comey concerning his "infamous dinner" with Trump.
-------------------------------------------
This came to me via David Pell of NextDraft. Again I recommend signing up for his news summary emails. The short introductions he gives are great introductions to news items from all over. His emails come five days a week except when he is away with his family or some such. You can see the latest issue here (link). The NextDraft archive is here (link).
love to you and your family,
Larry
The "deep state" is people like the employees of the Civil Service (Wikipedia link). Traditionally they have considered their service to be to law and order rather than to a political party. Trump is trying to mess them up to gain control for his own destabilizing purposes. The great article includes many details of that and goes on. It is not good thing, but we do need to know what is going on. There are various ways that we can respond.
Included part way down is an interesting video of an interview with former FBI Director James Comey concerning his "infamous dinner" with Trump.
-------------------------------------------
This came to me via David Pell of NextDraft. Again I recommend signing up for his news summary emails. The short introductions he gives are great introductions to news items from all over. His emails come five days a week except when he is away with his family or some such. You can see the latest issue here (link). The NextDraft archive is here (link).
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/13/2018 New book plus Interview with Ronan Farrow "Woody, Weinstein and me"
Interview with Ronan Farrow May 13, 2018 "Woody, Weinstein and me"
Ronan Farrow, the son of Mia and Woody Allen, is the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist whose exposé triggered #MeToo. Now, he has written an acclaimed book on waning US diplomatic influence – and he’s still only 30.
The interview itself is quite fascinating, especially if you remember movie director Woody Allen and/or actress Mia Farrow. But Ronan Farrow alone is a brilliant and fascinating man.
The new book is War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow (April 2018).
I have not read the book and so am not recommending it personally. You might want to read the reviews at Amazon.
------------------------------------
This is one review that I found very interesting. Note that the author of this review is criticizing the book, not just repeating what is in it. I have emphasized one paragraph in particular. A reply to this comment suggested that we need both diplomacy and warmongering, not just diplomacy alone. Me I would like to try stopping the warmongering and leave diplomacy and a more isolationist type of self-defense even though I know that won't happen.
love to you and your family,
Larry
Ronan Farrow, the son of Mia and Woody Allen, is the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist whose exposé triggered #MeToo. Now, he has written an acclaimed book on waning US diplomatic influence – and he’s still only 30.
The interview itself is quite fascinating, especially if you remember movie director Woody Allen and/or actress Mia Farrow. But Ronan Farrow alone is a brilliant and fascinating man.
The new book is War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow (April 2018).
I have not read the book and so am not recommending it personally. You might want to read the reviews at Amazon.
------------------------------------
This is one review that I found very interesting. Note that the author of this review is criticizing the book, not just repeating what is in it. I have emphasized one paragraph in particular. A reply to this comment suggested that we need both diplomacy and warmongering, not just diplomacy alone. Me I would like to try stopping the warmongering and leave diplomacy and a more isolationist type of self-defense even though I know that won't happen.
Four star review of book: The Decline and Fall of the State DepartmentMy question in my message just previous received a ninth response since I sent you the link, one that I think is quite good, from Hans Mulders. To see it, scroll down. If some of your realistic forecasts for the future are gloomy, do you think sharing those realistic gloomy forecasts with your children is a good thing to do for the sake of providing them with your best adult guidance?
By David Swanson on April 24, 2018
Format: Hardcover
Ronan Farrow's book War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence recounts episodes from the Obama-Trump militarization of U.S. foreign policy. While the book begins with and has been marketed with the story of Trump firing lots of key diplomats and leaving positions unfilled, much of its content is from the pre-Trump, Obama-era and even Bush-era erosion of diplomacy as something distinct from war and weapons sales.
The distinction between employing diplomats whose opinions are allowed to matter only when they agree with the Pentagon and not employing them at all is not as sharp a distinction as people may imagine. As with the distinction between drones that fire on unknown people when some poor schmuck is ordered to push a button and drones that decide when to fire all on their own, the question of whether or not you have diplomats sounds dramatic but can make little actual difference on the ground.
Farrow might partially agree with my assessment, but he writes as someone who believes that the United States responds to North Korean threats, rather than the reverse, and works nobly to "contain" Iranian pursuits of "regional hegemony," rather than strives for global hegemony at all costs.
While Obama was president, the State Department helped break all records for weapons sales, the United States bombed several countries, the U.S. and NATO destroyed Libya, drone wars came into their own with catastrophic results, serious action on the earth's climate was carefully sabotaged, and the U.S. military expanded into much of Africa and Asia. The crowning achievement called the Iran Nuclear Agreement was not some sort of advance in human rights, peace, justice, or cooperation. Rather, it was the unnecessary and pointless product of U.S. propaganda creating a false threat from Iran, belief in which may outlast the agreement.[emphasis added--LS]
A large chunk of Farrow's book is a portrait of Richard Holbrooke as a power-mad schemer but frustrated advocate for non-militarized diplomacy. This is the same Richard Holbrooke, I had to remind myself, who publicly told Congress that the State Department's job in Afghanistan was to support the military. This is the same guy who claimed that if the United States ended the war, the Taliban would work with al Qaeda which would endanger the United States -- while at the same time admitting that al Qaeda had virtually no presence in Afghanistan, that the Taliban would be unlikely to work with al Qaeda, and that al Qaeda could plan crimes from anywhere in the world, there being nothing special about Afghan air for that purpose.
Asked at a U.S. Senate hearing in 2010, the year he died, what in the world he was doing and toward what end in Afghanistan, Holbrooke repeatedly failed to produce an answer. That could explain his deathbed conversion and his final words to his surgeon: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan." As if his doctor could do what he refused to play any role in, or at least failed to play any role in. It's hard to picture Holbrooke as struggling for peace when we recall that this is the very same man who in 1999 intentionally raised demands to include what Serbia would never accept, so that NATO could begin bombing.
The least we can say is that Holbrooke was employed as a diplomat, a job that can sometimes involve choosing peace instead of war. And nobody replaced him. So, we now have to expect peace out of people employed to wage war.
But the notion that the State Department is now engaged in or was until recently even partially engaged in pursuing peace is difficult to swallow because no account of life inside the State Department can compare with our encounter with that life itself as it was slipped to us through WikiLeaks in the form of all those cables.
It's interesting, for sure, to read about the frustrations of those who want to actually provide humanitarian aid but whose intended recipients need to not be publicly associated with the United States due to its unpopularity. But the need to kiss up to the war makers is something we've seen in public. And the State Department cables reveal an institution dripping with contempt for humanity, democracy, peace, justice, and the rule of law.
The solution is not, I think, to shout "good riddance!" and dance on the grave of diplomacy. Though it is to get out of the way and allow the two Koreas, and numerous other partners, to engage in it unmolested. In the end, what we need is to recognize diplomacy as something incompatible with war mongering and to choose the former over the latter.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 5/9/2018 Thoughts on children and reality
Yesterday I asked a new question on Quora, assigning topics related to
parenting. So far the question has received 975 views, according to
Quora. I do not know what counts as a "view" except that it does not
count the same person twice. "If
some of your realistic forecasts for the future are gloomy, do
you think sharing those realistic gloomy forecasts with your
children is a good thing to do for the sake of providing them
with your best adult guidance?"
Nine people have answered so far, all but one of them previously unknown to me. So far those individual answers have been viewed between 7 and 116 times each.
You might be interested. There are no comments, just some upvotes. Upvotes are the same as "likes." So there may not be a reason for you to log in.
If it should chance that you are inspired to provide your own answer to the question, that is easy enough to do once you have set up a minimal "profile." I am being notified of answers as they happen, so I would see yours. This time I have no plan to write an answer myself.
As always, you are invited to reply to this message. I might or might not share whatever you you say. If I did share your words then I would make you anonymous.
love to you and your family,
Larry
Nine people have answered so far, all but one of them previously unknown to me. So far those individual answers have been viewed between 7 and 116 times each.
You might be interested. There are no comments, just some upvotes. Upvotes are the same as "likes." So there may not be a reason for you to log in.
If it should chance that you are inspired to provide your own answer to the question, that is easy enough to do once you have set up a minimal "profile." I am being notified of answers as they happen, so I would see yours. This time I have no plan to write an answer myself.
As always, you are invited to reply to this message. I might or might not share whatever you you say. If I did share your words then I would make you anonymous.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 4/30 & 5/4/2018 Wake Up to Trump, Distraction and War with Iran by Ralph Nader + Please consider taking this viral: "Trump May Already Be Violating the Iran Deal"
"Wake
Up to Trump, Distraction and War with Iran," by Ralph Nader, Common
Dreams, May 3, 2018
Please remember the Peter Beinart article below for verification on this.
-----------sent 4/30/2018------------------
Please consider taking this viral: "Trump May Already Be Violating the Iran Deal," by Peter Beinart (Wikipedia link), The Atlantic, April 29, 2018
The deal’s opponents keep saying Tehran has failed to live up to its commitments to the U.S. But what if it’s the other way around? Iran has not been breaking the deal, it seems that Trump has been violating the deal by making it difficult for Iran to “reintegrate into the global economy.” Please see the clauses that were supposed to benefit Iran outlined in the third paragraph of the article.
It seems highly likely that T will just keep on repeating his lies, as usual.
Highlighting the last paragraph:
sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
sent 4/21/2018 MAJOR (and long) Paul R. Pillar: What Iran Really Wants
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. Please consider taking this message viral. It is not going to help with the obedient people who hang on and believe T's every word, but it might help with people who have not been paying that much attention to what goes on. This is important. Saudi Arabia and Israel are trying to get us into a war, and T might be following along. Let those who can resist believing him resist believing him. Thank you! LS
“Don’t do it,” declare our allies, Britain, France, and Germany—signatories to the Iran accord along with China and Russia. “Don’t do it,” say former secretaries of state and secretaries of defense from both Republican and Democratic administrations. “Don’t do it,” says Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, and Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly."Denouncing US Imperialism, Iran Charges It Is Trump Who Has 'Consistently Violated' Nuclear Deal," by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, May 3, 2018
“Don’t do it,” say outspoken former top Israeli national security and intelligence officials berating Netanyahu.
Please remember the Peter Beinart article below for verification on this.
-----------sent 4/30/2018------------------
Please consider taking this viral: "Trump May Already Be Violating the Iran Deal," by Peter Beinart (Wikipedia link), The Atlantic, April 29, 2018
The deal’s opponents keep saying Tehran has failed to live up to its commitments to the U.S. But what if it’s the other way around? Iran has not been breaking the deal, it seems that Trump has been violating the deal by making it difficult for Iran to “reintegrate into the global economy.” Please see the clauses that were supposed to benefit Iran outlined in the third paragraph of the article.
It seems highly likely that T will just keep on repeating his lies, as usual.
Highlighting the last paragraph:
".....The truth is that, at least in the post–Cold War era, the United States hasn’t always been very good about keeping the promises it makes in nuclear deals. It’s important Americans know that. It might be nice to think that the U.S., as a democracy, is more trustworthy than its authoritarian adversaries. But America’s government won’t hold itself to a higher standard unless its people do."Related: sent 12/26/2017 NYTimes: Drumpf's royal Saudi friends are causing more trouble in the middle east
sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
sent 4/21/2018 MAJOR (and long) Paul R. Pillar: What Iran Really Wants
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. Please consider taking this message viral. It is not going to help with the obedient people who hang on and believe T's every word, but it might help with people who have not been paying that much attention to what goes on. This is important. Saudi Arabia and Israel are trying to get us into a war, and T might be following along. Let those who can resist believing him resist believing him. Thank you! LS
sent 4/30/2018 Natalie Portman and the Crisis of Liberal Zionism
"Natalie
Portman and the Crisis of Liberal Zionism," by Eric Levitz, The
Daily Intelligencer (New York Magazine), April 26, 2018.
This is a terrifically interesting article. It lays out the problem of being a Jewish humanist ("liberal") and a Zionist both at once, both for those in Israel and for those in the United States.
It also provides some proof of something I have been pointing out for years, that being critical of the Likud (Netanyahu) government of Israel is not a sign of being anti-Semitic.
Again, as I have said many times before, my main problem is with United States foreign policy, including the evil influence of The Israel Lobby for one thing, not with Israel by itself. Israel is none of my business. United States foreign policy is my business.
I do tend to support the BDS movement. It could possibly help inspire Israelis to be critical of their government. Their government is a bad influence on my government.
Related: sent 5/28/16 Please take this viral: "must see" movie: "The Occupation of the American Mind"
love to you and your family,
Larry
This is a terrifically interesting article. It lays out the problem of being a Jewish humanist ("liberal") and a Zionist both at once, both for those in Israel and for those in the United States.
It also provides some proof of something I have been pointing out for years, that being critical of the Likud (Netanyahu) government of Israel is not a sign of being anti-Semitic.
Again, as I have said many times before, my main problem is with United States foreign policy, including the evil influence of The Israel Lobby for one thing, not with Israel by itself. Israel is none of my business. United States foreign policy is my business.
I do tend to support the BDS movement. It could possibly help inspire Israelis to be critical of their government. Their government is a bad influence on my government.
Related: sent 5/28/16 Please take this viral: "must see" movie: "The Occupation of the American Mind"
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 4/27/2018 (MAJOR) Why Trump Is Winning and the Press Is Losing--with YouTube video preface
Preface: This preliminary video is for an overall picture of the President's condition, not for any facts aside from that. Mr. T on Fox
(via YouTube), 30 minutes, April 26, 2018
-------------------------------------------------
The main serious feature:
"Why Trump Is Winning and the Press Is Losing," by Jay Rosen, The New York Review of Books, April 25, 2018. Jay Rosen teaches journalism at New York University. Full text next below.
There is alive in the land an organized campaign to discredit the American press. This campaign is succeeding. Its roots are long. For decades, the Republican coalition has tried to hang together by hating on elites who claim to know things, like: “What is art?” Or: “What should college students be taught?” Or: “What counts as news?”
The media wing of this history extends back to Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964. It passes through Spiro Agnew’s speeches for Richard Nixon in 1969, and winds forward to our own time through William Rusher’s 1988 book, The Coming Battle for the Media, the growth of conservative talk radio in the 1990s, and the spectacular success of the Fox News Channel, which found a lucrative business model in resentment news, culture war, and the battle cry of liberal bias.
Donald Trump is both the apotheosis of this history and its accelerant. He has advanced the proposition dramatically, from undue influence—Agnew’s claim—to something closer to treason, in which journalists have become “enemies of the people.” Instead of criticizing “the Media” for unfair treatment, as Agnew did, Trump whips up hatred of it. Some of his most demagogic moments have been attacks on the press, often by singling out reporters and camera crews for abuse during rallies with an atmosphere of menace.
Nixon seethed about the press in private. Trump seethes in public, a very different act. But his transformation of the right-wing media complaint goes beyond these lurid performances. It starts at the top, with the president’s almost daily attacks on “fake news,” and his description of leading institutions—The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC—as failing and corrupt. Contempt thus has two places to settle.
At the bottom of the pyramid is an army of online trolls and alt-right activists who shout down stories critical of the president and project hatred at the journalists who report them. Between the president at the top and the base at the bottom are the mediating institutions: Breitbart, Drudge Report, The Daily Caller, Rush Limbaugh, and, especially, Fox News.
The campaign operates differently on the three major sections of a Trumpified electorate. For core supporters, media hate helps frame the president as a fighter for them. “I will put these people down for you” was one of the most attractive promises Trump made during the campaign. He has delivered on that pledge. They, in turn, deliver for him by categorically rejecting news reports that are critical of the president, in the belief that journalists are simply trying to bring their guy down.
On his committed opponents, the president’s political style works by inviting ridicule and attack. Their part in the script is simply to keep the culture war going through reflexive responses to the awfulness of the Trump phenomenon. The anger, despair, and disbelief that Trump inspires in his most public doubters is felt as confirmation, and consumed as entertainment by his most committed supporters—and his trolls. Notice how if Trump’s opponents defend the reporting of an institution like The New York Times (or simply make reference to it as revealed fact), that supports his campaign to discredit the press as a merely ideological institution.
Then there’s the third group: Americans who are neither committed supporters nor determined critics of Donald Trump. On them, the campaign to discredit the press works by generating noise and confusion, raising what economists call “search costs” for good information. If the neither-nors give up and are driven from the attention field, that is a win for the president as the polarizer-in-chief.
So that’s my short course in how the campaign to discredit the American press operates. Let me turn to what is at risk because of it. I have a list of items, some of which belong in an “already happened” category.
There is a risk that one third of the electorate will be isolated in an information loop of its own, where Trump becomes the major source of information about Trump, because independent sources are rejected on principle. That has already happened. An authoritarian system is up and running for a portion of the polity. Another way to say this is that before journalists log on in the morning, one third of their potential public is already gone.
There is a risk that Republican elites will fail to push back against Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions, including the press, even though these same elites start their day by reading The New York Times and The Washington Post. This, too, has already happened. “I think that a continual tearing down of institutions in order to inspire your base and keep yourself protected with your base, to me, is damaging to our nation,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, April 18. He added: “I do not think tearing down the media is good for our nation.” That statements like these from Republican leaders are vanishingly rare is a striking feature of the political scene, and an enabling condition for the campaign to discredit the press. Corker, of course, is retiring.
There is a risk that journalists could do their job brilliantly, and it won’t really matter, because Trump supporters categorically reject it, Trump opponents already believed it, and the neither-nors aren’t paying close enough attention. In a different way, there is a risk that journalists could succeed at the production of great journalism and fail at its distribution, because the platforms created by the tech industry have so overtaken the task of organizing public attention.
There is an obvious risk that the press will lose touch with the country, fall out of contact with American culture. Newsroom diversity is supposed to prevent that, but the diversity project has itself been undermined by a longer and deeper project in mainstream journalism, which I have called the View from Nowhere, by which I mean the attempt to acquire authority by constructing an artificial impartiality, by “performing objectivity.”
At the same time, the press is at risk of losing its institutional footing. For instance, in the hands of Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House briefing has gone to ruin. It was always frustrating—now it’s useless, even counterproductive.
Many floors below the surface of journalism there are bedrock attitudes that make the practice possible—and thinkable. For example: the belief in informed consent, or that information sources independent of the state are needed to monitor the state. There is a risk of erosion there. When the president of the United States forcefully rejects the premise of a common world of fact, and behaves like there is no such thing, any practice resting on that premise is in political trouble. This has happened to journalism. No one knows what to do about it.
There is a risk that established forms of journalism will be unable to handle the strain that Trump’s behavior places upon them. For example, the practice we came to call fact-checking has had zero effect in preventing the president from repeating falsehoods. There is a risk that the press will hang onto these forms well past their sell-by date because it’s what they know. They want things to be normal. For instance, access to confusion and disinformation serves no editorial goal, but “access journalism” is alive and well in White House reporting.
It used to be the case that when the American presidency went abroad, the American press came with it. There would be a joint news conference with the foreign head of state. Often, this would be the only time the host country’s press corps got to question their leader. In these moments, the American government and the American press worked together to show the strongmen of the world what a real democracy was like. All that is now at risk. What was once described—yes, with some hyperbole—as a beacon to the rest of the world is flickering. When Donald Trump met the president of China in November of 2017, there was no joint press conference. The Chinese didn’t want it. The State Department didn’t object.
I will conclude with something Steve Bannon put to the author Michael Lewis earlier this year. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon said. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” To this kind of provocation, Marty Baron, editor of The Washington Post, has a succinct reply: “We’re not at war, we’re at work.” I think our top journalists are correct that if they become the political opposition to Trump, they will lose. And yet, they have to go to war against a political style in which power gets to write its own story.
There is a risk that they will fail to make this distinction. In my role as a critic, I have been trying to alert them to that danger. I cannot say it’s working.
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. In my travels on Quora I certainly have seen many destructive trolls like those mentioned by Professor Rosen. They are a rather common topic--a bit too common.
-------------------------------------------------
The main serious feature:
"Why Trump Is Winning and the Press Is Losing," by Jay Rosen, The New York Review of Books, April 25, 2018. Jay Rosen teaches journalism at New York University. Full text next below.
There is alive in the land an organized campaign to discredit the American press. This campaign is succeeding. Its roots are long. For decades, the Republican coalition has tried to hang together by hating on elites who claim to know things, like: “What is art?” Or: “What should college students be taught?” Or: “What counts as news?”
The media wing of this history extends back to Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964. It passes through Spiro Agnew’s speeches for Richard Nixon in 1969, and winds forward to our own time through William Rusher’s 1988 book, The Coming Battle for the Media, the growth of conservative talk radio in the 1990s, and the spectacular success of the Fox News Channel, which found a lucrative business model in resentment news, culture war, and the battle cry of liberal bias.
Donald Trump is both the apotheosis of this history and its accelerant. He has advanced the proposition dramatically, from undue influence—Agnew’s claim—to something closer to treason, in which journalists have become “enemies of the people.” Instead of criticizing “the Media” for unfair treatment, as Agnew did, Trump whips up hatred of it. Some of his most demagogic moments have been attacks on the press, often by singling out reporters and camera crews for abuse during rallies with an atmosphere of menace.
Nixon seethed about the press in private. Trump seethes in public, a very different act. But his transformation of the right-wing media complaint goes beyond these lurid performances. It starts at the top, with the president’s almost daily attacks on “fake news,” and his description of leading institutions—The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC—as failing and corrupt. Contempt thus has two places to settle.
At the bottom of the pyramid is an army of online trolls and alt-right activists who shout down stories critical of the president and project hatred at the journalists who report them. Between the president at the top and the base at the bottom are the mediating institutions: Breitbart, Drudge Report, The Daily Caller, Rush Limbaugh, and, especially, Fox News.
The campaign operates differently on the three major sections of a Trumpified electorate. For core supporters, media hate helps frame the president as a fighter for them. “I will put these people down for you” was one of the most attractive promises Trump made during the campaign. He has delivered on that pledge. They, in turn, deliver for him by categorically rejecting news reports that are critical of the president, in the belief that journalists are simply trying to bring their guy down.
On his committed opponents, the president’s political style works by inviting ridicule and attack. Their part in the script is simply to keep the culture war going through reflexive responses to the awfulness of the Trump phenomenon. The anger, despair, and disbelief that Trump inspires in his most public doubters is felt as confirmation, and consumed as entertainment by his most committed supporters—and his trolls. Notice how if Trump’s opponents defend the reporting of an institution like The New York Times (or simply make reference to it as revealed fact), that supports his campaign to discredit the press as a merely ideological institution.
Then there’s the third group: Americans who are neither committed supporters nor determined critics of Donald Trump. On them, the campaign to discredit the press works by generating noise and confusion, raising what economists call “search costs” for good information. If the neither-nors give up and are driven from the attention field, that is a win for the president as the polarizer-in-chief.
So that’s my short course in how the campaign to discredit the American press operates. Let me turn to what is at risk because of it. I have a list of items, some of which belong in an “already happened” category.
There is a risk that one third of the electorate will be isolated in an information loop of its own, where Trump becomes the major source of information about Trump, because independent sources are rejected on principle. That has already happened. An authoritarian system is up and running for a portion of the polity. Another way to say this is that before journalists log on in the morning, one third of their potential public is already gone.
There is a risk that Republican elites will fail to push back against Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions, including the press, even though these same elites start their day by reading The New York Times and The Washington Post. This, too, has already happened. “I think that a continual tearing down of institutions in order to inspire your base and keep yourself protected with your base, to me, is damaging to our nation,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, April 18. He added: “I do not think tearing down the media is good for our nation.” That statements like these from Republican leaders are vanishingly rare is a striking feature of the political scene, and an enabling condition for the campaign to discredit the press. Corker, of course, is retiring.
There is a risk that journalists could do their job brilliantly, and it won’t really matter, because Trump supporters categorically reject it, Trump opponents already believed it, and the neither-nors aren’t paying close enough attention. In a different way, there is a risk that journalists could succeed at the production of great journalism and fail at its distribution, because the platforms created by the tech industry have so overtaken the task of organizing public attention.
There is an obvious risk that the press will lose touch with the country, fall out of contact with American culture. Newsroom diversity is supposed to prevent that, but the diversity project has itself been undermined by a longer and deeper project in mainstream journalism, which I have called the View from Nowhere, by which I mean the attempt to acquire authority by constructing an artificial impartiality, by “performing objectivity.”
At the same time, the press is at risk of losing its institutional footing. For instance, in the hands of Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House briefing has gone to ruin. It was always frustrating—now it’s useless, even counterproductive.
Many floors below the surface of journalism there are bedrock attitudes that make the practice possible—and thinkable. For example: the belief in informed consent, or that information sources independent of the state are needed to monitor the state. There is a risk of erosion there. When the president of the United States forcefully rejects the premise of a common world of fact, and behaves like there is no such thing, any practice resting on that premise is in political trouble. This has happened to journalism. No one knows what to do about it.
There is a risk that established forms of journalism will be unable to handle the strain that Trump’s behavior places upon them. For example, the practice we came to call fact-checking has had zero effect in preventing the president from repeating falsehoods. There is a risk that the press will hang onto these forms well past their sell-by date because it’s what they know. They want things to be normal. For instance, access to confusion and disinformation serves no editorial goal, but “access journalism” is alive and well in White House reporting.
It used to be the case that when the American presidency went abroad, the American press came with it. There would be a joint news conference with the foreign head of state. Often, this would be the only time the host country’s press corps got to question their leader. In these moments, the American government and the American press worked together to show the strongmen of the world what a real democracy was like. All that is now at risk. What was once described—yes, with some hyperbole—as a beacon to the rest of the world is flickering. When Donald Trump met the president of China in November of 2017, there was no joint press conference. The Chinese didn’t want it. The State Department didn’t object.
I will conclude with something Steve Bannon put to the author Michael Lewis earlier this year. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon said. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” To this kind of provocation, Marty Baron, editor of The Washington Post, has a succinct reply: “We’re not at war, we’re at work.” I think our top journalists are correct that if they become the political opposition to Trump, they will lose. And yet, they have to go to war against a political style in which power gets to write its own story.
There is a risk that they will fail to make this distinction. In my role as a critic, I have been trying to alert them to that danger. I cannot say it’s working.
* * *
N.B. Reminder: Me I just read. But the best televised news
authority at this point is proven to be PBS. Those who watch Fox got
fewer answers to simple questions correct than those with at least a high
school education who watch no news at all. LS
Adapted from an address to the Center
for Media at Risk launch symposium, University of
Pennsylvania, April 21, 2018.
April 25, 2018, 7:00 am
April 25, 2018, 7:00 am
* * *
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. In my travels on Quora I certainly have seen many destructive trolls like those mentioned by Professor Rosen. They are a rather common topic--a bit too common.
sent 4/27/2018 Person of the day: Christopher Sudlik
Christopher (Chris) Sudlik has 309 answers on Quora. All together his answers have received 493,100 views, with 15,000 views just in the past 30 days.
Those numbers are not that unusual. What is unusual is Chris Sudlik's brilliance, about economics in the United States along with a few other things. He describes himself as a "Metamodernist, Engineer, Inventor, Economist, Eagle Scout trying to help the world come to terms with complexity." You might even know some of the same things already and be able to build on what you know by reading what he knows.
You may not have to log in to read his answers, at least the beginnings. But if you would like to see any comments or make any comments of your own then you will need to log in.
By far the most complicated writing of his that I have seen so far is at America is dead – Chris Sudlik – Medium, March 9, 2018. I would not necessarily start there.
love to you and your family,
Larry
Those numbers are not that unusual. What is unusual is Chris Sudlik's brilliance, about economics in the United States along with a few other things. He describes himself as a "Metamodernist, Engineer, Inventor, Economist, Eagle Scout trying to help the world come to terms with complexity." You might even know some of the same things already and be able to build on what you know by reading what he knows.
You may not have to log in to read his answers, at least the beginnings. But if you would like to see any comments or make any comments of your own then you will need to log in.
By far the most complicated writing of his that I have seen so far is at America is dead – Chris Sudlik – Medium, March 9, 2018. I would not necessarily start there.
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 4/26/2018 (PLEASE TAKE THIS VIRAL) What can we do to help save clean air, water, and soil from Charles Koch, Donald Trump, and Scott Pruitt?; (GREAT YouTube video, 10 min) Re: National Geographic: "A Running List of How Trump Is Changing the Environment"; the Koch Brothers again
Please take this message viral. Because it is important. Thank you in advance. LS
1. What can we do to help save clean air, water, and soil from Charles Koch, Donald Trump, and Scott Pruitt?
2. GREAT YouTube video, 10 min
Vote
Make the effort to remove the party that provides us with this sort of leadership in the House of Representatives, so that it no longer controls either house of Congress. Note that there are action groups that you can join if you are so inclined. See near the bottom of this message.
2. The Daily Show - Burn Noticed (YouTube 10min37sec) UNBELIEVABLE CONGRESSIONAL HEARING!
1. "Scott Pruitt’s New Rule Could Completely Transform the EPA," by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, April 24, 2018.
It would forbid the EPA from relying upon the use of the serious medical research that has been done over many years, because patients' records are confidential. Thirty (30) years of clean air regulations based upon that research would be eliminated--this despite the fact that studies have been replicated.
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. PLEASE take this message viral. Because...it is important!
1. What can we do to help save clean air, water, and soil from Charles Koch, Donald Trump, and Scott Pruitt?
2. GREAT YouTube video, 10 min
Vote
Make the effort to remove the party that provides us with this sort of leadership in the House of Representatives, so that it no longer controls either house of Congress. Note that there are action groups that you can join if you are so inclined. See near the bottom of this message.
2. The Daily Show - Burn Noticed (YouTube 10min37sec) UNBELIEVABLE CONGRESSIONAL HEARING!
1. "Scott Pruitt’s New Rule Could Completely Transform the EPA," by Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, April 24, 2018.
It would forbid the EPA from relying upon the use of the serious medical research that has been done over many years, because patients' records are confidential. Thirty (30) years of clean air regulations based upon that research would be eliminated--this despite the fact that studies have been replicated.
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. PLEASE take this message viral. Because...it is important!
On 4/25/2018 12:52 AM, Larry A. Scott
wrote:
The previous related message is at sent 4/25/2018 National Geographic: "A Running List of How Trump Is Changing the Environment"; the Koch Brothers again
sent 4/25/2018 National Geographic: "A Running List of How Trump Is Changing the Environment"; the Koch Brothers again
National Geographic: "A
Running List of How Trump Is Changing the Environment,"
by Michael Greshko, Laura Parker, and Brian Clark Howard, April 24,
2018. The Trump administration has promised vast changes to
U.S. science and environmental policy—and we’re tracking them here
as they happen. They seem to be coming thick and fast.
I have the impression that these events are happening under the influence of the oil and gas giants, the Koch brothers and their friends among those few others who have collectively 0.1 percent of the wealth. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article209373184.html
Related: sent 4/1/17 April 22, 2017 event please read and take this viral: "As Trump Wages War on Science, Energy Grows for Worldwide March for Science"
love to you and your family,
Larry
I have the impression that these events are happening under the influence of the oil and gas giants, the Koch brothers and their friends among those few others who have collectively 0.1 percent of the wealth. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article209373184.html
Related: sent 4/1/17 April 22, 2017 event please read and take this viral: "As Trump Wages War on Science, Energy Grows for Worldwide March for Science"
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 4/21/2018 MAJOR (and long) Paul R. Pillar: What Iran Really Wants
"What
Iran Really Wants," by CIA veteran and professor Paul R.
Pillar, The National Interest, April 16, 2018. N.B. This article is seven (7) pages long. Note the page number links.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pillar
See also this very interesting survey of Iranians, "What Do Iranians Think About the United States?" dated January 2018. I had to copy and paste the white images into my picture viewer and blow them up to where I could read them.
One of my conclusions is that the vast majority of Iranians have no interest in trying to wipe Israel from the face of the earth as the Likud government of Israel keeps alleging. It is possible that some Israelis are afraid of Iran. I think it more likely that some Zionists and some of the others of the global wealthy see Iran as standing in the way of their long-term ambitions for more property. But the article is about what Iran wants.
Related: sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
love to you and your family,
Larry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pillar
See also this very interesting survey of Iranians, "What Do Iranians Think About the United States?" dated January 2018. I had to copy and paste the white images into my picture viewer and blow them up to where I could read them.
One of my conclusions is that the vast majority of Iranians have no interest in trying to wipe Israel from the face of the earth as the Likud government of Israel keeps alleging. It is possible that some Israelis are afraid of Iran. I think it more likely that some Zionists and some of the others of the global wealthy see Iran as standing in the way of their long-term ambitions for more property. But the article is about what Iran wants.
Related: sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
love to you and your family,
Larry
sent 4/20/2018 ACTION PLEASE: "Unlimited Worldwide War: ACLU Warns Senate Against Giving Trump Blank Check to Declare War"
"Unlimited
Worldwide War: ACLU Warns Senate Against Giving Trump Blank Check
to Declare War," Democracy Now!, April 18, 2018. ACTION PLEASE: Please see blue paragraph below this next one.
PLEASE communicate with your Senators and tell them that you oppose this new attempt to abdicate their responsibility for supervising wars on other countries. PLEASE ask them to oppose the Kaine/Corker bill for a new general Authorization for the Use of Military Force. You might or might not mention that you think this is particularly important when we have such a stupid President as the one we have now. You might even mention that according to the news it is very doubtful that the Syrian government had done any chemical attacks, that our Congress should have forced the President to wait for a UN investigation and decision before any attacks especially where there was not the slightest threat to us.
They can be contacted by calling, by mail, or through their websites. Visiting is best if you can manage it. https://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
* In every case, the various Presidents and the various industry beneficiaries have tried to justify the attacks with huge lies, of course, with the actual facts becoming better known after the fact.
** I do not happen to believe that supporting the doing of evil by our leaders is "patriotic." No, if we want to be patriotic then it is our duty to exert whatever influence we can for our country to do the right thing--and not just by voting once in awhile.
Related: sent 4/15/2018 The Syria bombing is a disgraceful act disguised as a noble gesture
sent 4/18/2018 It appears that maybe there was no chemical attack in Syria at all
Not that it matters to Mr. T and the industrial beneficiaries--what's a few more dead bodies of innocents on our doorstep--but since I sent that second one, journalist Robert Fisk's report of no chemical attack has appeared in many more publications--without contradiction from what I have seen from a simple search.
sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. Please communicate with your Senators and ask them to oppose the Kaine/Corker bill for a new general Authorization for the Use of Military Force. They can be contacted by calling, by mail, or through their websites. Visiting is best if you can manage it. https://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
FAIZ SHAKIR: "That is exactly what is happening, that this legislation, in effect, is abdicating congressional responsibility. And to give Senators Kaine and Corker a little bit of credit here, they’re coming at it with good intention. They have recognized that the 9/11 AUMF has been abused. And it is an embarrassment to Congress that it has done nothing while the president and the executive branch expand worldwide operations under that now-17-year-old authorization. So they’re saying, 'OK, well, Congress should wade into this and actually create a new AUMF.' In doing so, what they’re saying is 'We’re just going to justify all the current ongoing operations and just give de facto authorization from Congress to go carry it out for as long as you’d like.'"We have seen time and time again Presidents distracting us from our various major domestic problems with totally unjustifiable* attacks on other counties, getting many people revved up with supposed "patriotism."**
PLEASE communicate with your Senators and tell them that you oppose this new attempt to abdicate their responsibility for supervising wars on other countries. PLEASE ask them to oppose the Kaine/Corker bill for a new general Authorization for the Use of Military Force. You might or might not mention that you think this is particularly important when we have such a stupid President as the one we have now. You might even mention that according to the news it is very doubtful that the Syrian government had done any chemical attacks, that our Congress should have forced the President to wait for a UN investigation and decision before any attacks especially where there was not the slightest threat to us.
They can be contacted by calling, by mail, or through their websites. Visiting is best if you can manage it. https://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
* In every case, the various Presidents and the various industry beneficiaries have tried to justify the attacks with huge lies, of course, with the actual facts becoming better known after the fact.
** I do not happen to believe that supporting the doing of evil by our leaders is "patriotic." No, if we want to be patriotic then it is our duty to exert whatever influence we can for our country to do the right thing--and not just by voting once in awhile.
Related: sent 4/15/2018 The Syria bombing is a disgraceful act disguised as a noble gesture
sent 4/18/2018 It appears that maybe there was no chemical attack in Syria at all
Not that it matters to Mr. T and the industrial beneficiaries--what's a few more dead bodies of innocents on our doorstep--but since I sent that second one, journalist Robert Fisk's report of no chemical attack has appeared in many more publications--without contradiction from what I have seen from a simple search.
sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
love to you and your family,
Larry
P.S. Please communicate with your Senators and ask them to oppose the Kaine/Corker bill for a new general Authorization for the Use of Military Force. They can be contacted by calling, by mail, or through their websites. Visiting is best if you can manage it. https://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_correspond_senators.htm
sent 4/19/2018 Trump’s Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous Collision Course with Iran
"Trump’s
Quiet Meeting with Saudi Arabia and Israel Portends a Dangerous
Collision Course with Iran," by Phyllis Bennis (Wikipedia),
Common Dreams, Foreign
Policy in Focus, March 23, 2018
Despite years of Israeli and Saudi propaganda, Iran isn’t actually an existential threat to either Israel or to Saudi Arabia. But Iran’s rise is definitely a challenge to long-standing Israeli and Saudi efforts at regional dominance.
You might remember past work of Phyllis Bennis. Here is a Democracy Now! video (41min 42sec) from November 12, 2012 whose link I sent November 21, 2012. Israel had been bombing the Gaza Strip at that time. "Gaza Ceasefire to Be Decided in Cairo, But Will Washington Rein In Israeli Occupation, Blockade?"
Related past messages:
sent 03/27/2018 Robert Reich: "How Trump is Preparing for War"; Media Benjamin: "10 Reasons to Fear John Bolton"
sent 7/19/14 TOTAL disgust!
sent 7/30/14 1) call just now from the FCNL; 2) is it worth working on disassociating the United States from Israel?
sent 12/10/14 "Why the Founding Fathers thought banning Torture Foundational to the US Constitution"
sent 8/7/14 1. "MUST READ": "On Heroes and Preachers: Gaza’s New Resistance Paradigm"; 2. VIDEO
sent 10/1/2017 (excellent--long and interesting history) Who or what are neoconservatives ("neocons") “The machiavelian threefold game of the neoconservatives” PLUS IRA CHERNUS
sent 11/12/2017 (1hr15min) The Zionist Story (2009-2010) by a former Israeli soldier
sent 10/18/16 "An Urgently Necessary Briefing on Syria"
sent 9/2/2017 "The West Just Might Be Giving Up On Syrian Regime Change At Last"
sent 8/26/2017 (Major) Prof. Stephen M. Walt: What Trump Got Right About Foreign Policy,,(And screwed up anyway.)
sent 6/21/14 "...Sykes-Picot is dead..." Re: Robert Parry (turning on more lights in the big picture simultaneously) "Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace"
sent 6/19/14 Robert Parry (turning on more lights in the big picture simultaneously) "Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace" (This one has links to messages on the Middle East prior to 6/19/14.
sent 5/11&21/13 Common Sense Voices Pillory US War Hawks on Syria (full article with some links that are now bad)
love to you and your family,
Larry
Despite years of Israeli and Saudi propaganda, Iran isn’t actually an existential threat to either Israel or to Saudi Arabia. But Iran’s rise is definitely a challenge to long-standing Israeli and Saudi efforts at regional dominance.
You might remember past work of Phyllis Bennis. Here is a Democracy Now! video (41min 42sec) from November 12, 2012 whose link I sent November 21, 2012. Israel had been bombing the Gaza Strip at that time. "Gaza Ceasefire to Be Decided in Cairo, But Will Washington Rein In Israeli Occupation, Blockade?"
Related past messages:
sent 03/27/2018 Robert Reich: "How Trump is Preparing for War"; Media Benjamin: "10 Reasons to Fear John Bolton"
sent 7/19/14 TOTAL disgust!
sent 7/30/14 1) call just now from the FCNL; 2) is it worth working on disassociating the United States from Israel?
sent 12/10/14 "Why the Founding Fathers thought banning Torture Foundational to the US Constitution"
sent 8/7/14 1. "MUST READ": "On Heroes and Preachers: Gaza’s New Resistance Paradigm"; 2. VIDEO
sent 10/1/2017 (excellent--long and interesting history) Who or what are neoconservatives ("neocons") “The machiavelian threefold game of the neoconservatives” PLUS IRA CHERNUS
sent 11/12/2017 (1hr15min) The Zionist Story (2009-2010) by a former Israeli soldier
sent 10/18/16 "An Urgently Necessary Briefing on Syria"
sent 9/2/2017 "The West Just Might Be Giving Up On Syrian Regime Change At Last"
sent 8/26/2017 (Major) Prof. Stephen M. Walt: What Trump Got Right About Foreign Policy,,(And screwed up anyway.)
sent 6/21/14 "...Sykes-Picot is dead..." Re: Robert Parry (turning on more lights in the big picture simultaneously) "Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace"
sent 6/19/14 Robert Parry (turning on more lights in the big picture simultaneously) "Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace" (This one has links to messages on the Middle East prior to 6/19/14.
sent 5/11&21/13 Common Sense Voices Pillory US War Hawks on Syria (full article with some links that are now bad)
love to you and your family,
Larry
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