Doug Nielson's List: analysis of Peace Movement

• Although energized and given a local presence nationwide by a significant pacifist   and youth contingent, UFPJ is organizationally dominated by current and former   members of the Communist   Party, USA, and allied organizations,

  • just testing to see where this sticky note goes

• Let’s go back to the largest action against the Iraq War which was held September 24, 2005 in Washington D.C., which drew some 700,000 people. Unfortunately, two things of a distinctly negative character happened in the aftermath of that action.
• One was the swing against mass action by big chunks of the movement, who advocated electoral politics as the central strategy. The focus was on electing a Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress as the way to end the Iraq War. Well, the Democrats got control of both the Senate and House of Representatives as a result of the 2006 elections but the war continued and even escalated. And the Democrats continued voting to fund it.
• The other negative development was the split in the antiwar movement. Instead of parlaying the success of the 2005 mobilization, which was co-sponsored by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and the ANSWER Coalition, and concentrating on organizing even larger united actions, the movement fractured,
• The current period has ushered in major developments that profoundly affect the antiwar movement. The first, of course, is the very severe economic crisis. For tens of millions of people in this country, the central issue today is survival.
• Today we are witnessing increasing numbers of protest actions against budget cuts,

  • not so much really
• the choice is guns or butter, because we can’t have both.
• That’s much too long for many in the antiwar movement but since the casualties are down and the direction appears to be to get out, large numbers are prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and no longer feel the same compulsion to take to the streets to demand “Out Now!”
• Top leaders of the movement – such as Michael T. McPhearson, UFPJ’s Co-Chair and Executive Director of Veterans for Peace, and Brian Becker, ANSWER’s National Coordinator -- are scheduled to address the conference
• We believe in the strategy of mass action as the principal way to end the wars and occupations.
• Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq, and more than 180,000 civilians, including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis, are under U.S. contracts.  All must be sent packing and when we call for “Out Now!”

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• In fact the drive for gay marriage is against the trend of the times, which is the single state, or people increasingly united - depending on the state they live in -   by some form of civil union for the purpose of benefits, pensions, health care, wills, inheritances and so forth. Across America, on the last Census, there were  100 million unmarried employees, consumers, taxpayers, and voters  who headed up a majority of households in 22 states, more than 380 cities.

   

  Gays are crowding to board a sinking ship.

• In fact the drive for gay marriage is against the trend of the times, which is the single state, or people increasingly united - depending on the state they live in -   by some form of civil union for the purpose of benefits, pensions, health care, wills, inheritances and so forth. Across America, on the last Census, there were  100 million unmarried employees, consumers, taxpayers, and voters  who headed up a majority of households in 22 states, more than 380 cities.

   

  Gays are crowding to board a sinking ship.
• But congress, the White House, and the myriad far-right think tanks and foundations won't budge. They want debt consolidation, austerity measures, structural adjustment and belt-tightening. "That is what the market demands", they opine. Here is a response from economist J.Bradford DeLong from his blog "Grasping Reality With Both Hands":
• ("Jean-Claude trichet rejects the counsels of history", J.Bradford DeLong, "Grasping Reality With Both Hands")
• ("Jean-Claude trichet rejects the counsels of history", J.Bradford DeLong, "Grasping Reality With Both Hands")
• “Democracies don't fear their own people,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her July 3 speech in Poland at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Community of Democracies. “They recognize that citizens must be free to come together to advocate and agitate.”
• The minimum quantity of crude oil spurting out of the broken riser pipe now up around 60,000 bbd, heading towards the estimate by the Perdue scientists of around 90,000bbd, which is apparently what an internal BP memo suggested back in the immediate aftermath of the explosion on April 20.
• Because of the expense, time and paperwork it would take to record each of the assignments of the thousands of mortgages in each securitization, Wall Street firms decided to just issue blank mortgage assignments all along the channel of transfers, skipping the actual physical recording of the mortgage at the county registry of deeds.
• to the final empty personal guarantee that cleanup efforts will restore the Gulf not just to where it was before this accident happened but to where it was years ago.  
• From his earliest years he has schooled himself not to be excitable, not to be an angry black man who would be alarming to his white friends at Harvard and his later corporate patrons.
• However, as George Stigler, another Nobel Prizewinner, pointed out several decades ago, regulators are invariably captured by the industries that they regulate.
• Offshoring transforms American workers’ wages into performance bonuses for executives, capital gains for shareholders, and honoraria and research grants for economists who shill for the practice.
• As the jobs have departed, there is no work to which low interest rates and massive government spending can recall workers. This is the real freefall.
• The idea of war crimes arose after the horrendous atrocities of the 30-year war, which devastated central Europe. The idea was that it is impossible to prevent brutal actions if they are needed to win a war, but that such actions are illegitimate if they are not needed for this purpose. The principle is not moral, but practical. Killing prisoners and civilians is a war crime, because it serves no effective military purpose, since both sides can do it.  So is the wanton destruction of property.
• instead of improving their minds and political potential by reading the Eighteenth Brumaire.
• No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.”
• Opposition to the war and the slaughter of the masses apparently stops and flees at the hideous possibility of causing embarassment to the San Francisco Labor Council.  There is not a hint in Mackler’s lengthy  email suggesting that the Labor Council might owe anti-war forces an explanation for having invited Pelosi  in the first place.
• This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.
• The Damocles sword of suspicion of disloyalty hangs above their heads. For them, this is the ultimate nightmare: to be accused of putting the security of Israel ahead of the security of the US. Therefore it is important for them to repeat endlessly the mantra that the interests of Israel and the US are identical.
• “Our partners in the anti-war movement have been calling me to say they are condemning this protest as irresponsible and divisive. U.S. Labor Against the War has written an email condemning this action. The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition is also not supporting Zeltzer,
• For all too many on the left, the so-called 9/11 conspiracy has become the magic key. If it can be turned, then history at its present impasse will be unlocked and we can move on.

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• Yet the real change, and far more significant, is the one taking place in   the population at large, among Republicans as well as Democrats. A new Washington   Post/ABC News poll   finds, for the first time, that a majority of Americans think the Afghan war   is "not worth it." The breakdown is even more ominous for the Obamaites:   of the antiwar contingent, 41 percent feel strongly, while on the other side,   only 31 percent feel that way.
• More bad   news for the War Party: hostility to overseas adventurism is amplified in times   of economic trouble, when it seems – to any ordinary person, that is – as if   we have enough problems to deal with right here at home. Why, they want to know,   are we engaging in "nation-building"   in Afghanistan, of all places, when our own country seems to be literally falling   apart at the seams?
• if American progressives really, really want these   programs, then why aren’t they fighting for them by demanding an end to a war   that will wind up devouring   any chance for a fiscally feasible national healthcare system?
• It’s fascinating to watch "antiwar leaders" like Soltz   – who openly supports the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan – move in the   opposite direction from the rest of the country. What "people"   don’t want to take on the administration? Why, Soltz and his oh-so-progressive   friends who run Democratic front organizations, that’s who.
• The Washington   Post/ABC News poll shows almost eight in ten self-identified liberal Democrats   saying the war isn’t worth it, a precipitous 22 percent decline in support   since March from that particular demographic.
• Looking just by   partisan   affiliation, support for decreasing the U.S. deployment has risen by 20   points since   January among Democrats, but also by 15 points among independents and by   12 points   among Republicans. Since March, views that the war’s been worth fighting   have lost 14   points among Democrats, but also 7 points among independents and Republicans   alike."
• The major rationale – a purely political one, I might point out – for the Afghan   war among Democrats, and the argument advanced by "centrists" against   the antiwar base, is that exhibiting "weakness"   in foreign policy matters opens the administration and the party in general   to attacks from Republicans. Yet if a good part of the GOP’s own base is increasingly   disenchanted with our Afghan adventure, then that excuse becomes ever less credible.
• Contra Soltz, while money is an important factor is building an effective   antiwar movement – we’ve just finished a particularly grueling fundraising   drive, as I probably needn’t remind you – it is hardly decisive. What’s more   important is the depth of commitment, and that is what seems truly lacking   in what passes for the antiwar movement these days.

  • a point
• These people have long been a drag on the antiwar   movement, stifling the creation of a broad-based anti-interventionism in favor   of saddling protests with the familiar litany of liberal demands. Now Obama’s   campaign for free ice cream has totally eclipsed the ostensibly antiwar aims   of the movement, inducing near complete paralysis.
• the determination of some elements   of the movement is admirably unequivocal: "In the next year, it will more   and more become Obama’s war," says Perry O’Brien, president of the New   York chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "He’ll be held responsible   for the bloodshed."

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