Tuesday, September 26, 2017

This edition's playlist

toria



1) Tori Amos' NATIVE INVADERS.


2) Aimee Mann's MENTAL ILLNESS.



3) Alicia Keys' HERE.



4) Janet Jackson's UNBREAKABLE.




5) Sam Smith's IN THE LONELY HOUR DROWNING SHADOW EDITION.



6) Aretha Franklin's ARETHA SINGS THE GREAT DIVA CLASSICS.



7) Ben Harper's CALL IT WHAT IT IS.
8)  Steve Grand's ALL AMERICAN BOY.
9) Nick Jonas' LAST YEAR WAS COMPLICATED.
10) Pretenders' ALONE.




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The last thing Iraq needs

Repost from THE COMMON ILLS at readers' requests.  Can you see a safe world if Iraq has nuclear waste?




The last thing Iraq needs

No, we're not talking about the September 25th referendum.


Jennifer Paltz (AP) reports, "Iraq's foreign minister is asking nuclear countries for help building an atomic reactor for peaceful purposes, saying the country has a right to use atomic power peacefully."


It's the last thing Iraq -- or the world -- needs.

Forget that nuclear power isn't safe -- faux greens claim otherwise but corporate money pays them to say that, doesn't it?

Iraq is a country still torn by an ongoing war.

That's reason enough not to build a nuclear power plant.

There's also the fact that US weapons and equipment supplied to the Iraqi government ended up in the hands of . . . ISIS.

If they can't hold onto their own arms, how the hell do we expect the 'government' of Iraq to keep control of nuclear waste?

The very recent past would appear to indicate that Iraq can't safe guard nuclear waste and that many wanting to build a dirty bomb would see Iraq as the place to go shopping.


And that's before you factor in that Iraq still doesn't have a government that the Iraqi people feel represents them.

Meanwhile, the referendum is still scheduled to be held Monday, September 25th.



The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley and Cindy Sheehan -- updated:





The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq Iraq
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Trump’s UN tirade and the logic of imperialism – SEP newsletter


The SEP publishes WSWS.   






Trump’s UN tirade and the logic of imperialism

By Bill Van Auken
In 1938 Leon Trotsky warned that imperialism “toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe.” Within just a year of these remarks, Hitler unleashed his army against a largely defenseless Poland and set into motion the cataclysm of the second imperialist world war.
Trotsky’s words acquire renewed relevance in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s tirade at the United Nations, where the US president openly threatened the launching of a genocidal war, using language that has not been heard since the days of the Third Reich.
If nothing more was involved than the ranting of a madman, Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea would have been met with a chorus of denunciations in the mass media and throughout the political establishment. But nothing of the sort has taken place. What is most striking is the mildness of the response, particularly within the American political establishment and its major media outlets. To the extent that the speech has encountered criticism, it has taken the form of quibbling with some of Trump’s more grotesque rhetorical excesses or questioning the tactical expediency of his intervention. Read more »

Obama adviser Samantha Power calls for crackdown on social media

Internet censorship and government war plans
By Andre Damon
In the US, the drive for Internet censorship has been spearheaded by the so-called “liberal” wing of the political establishment, concentrated in the Democratic Party, whose chief media organ is the New York Times. On the eve of the UN assembly, the Times published an unambiguous brief for censorship of the Internet in the form of an op-ed column by the ambassador to the UN under Barack Obama, Samantha Power.
Under the headline “Why Foreign Propaganda Is More Dangerous Now,” and on the pretext of combating Russian disinformation and subversion, Power calls for the use of “professional gatekeepers” to police public discourse on the Internet. Read more »
Fears of nuclear war grow after Trump’s threat to annihilate North Korea
By Alex Lantier
US President Donald Trump’s fascistic tirade at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, in which he declared Washington “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy North Korea,” shocked and horrified people around the world yesterday.
The North Korean regime’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) warned that it might now attack US targets if it detects that US forces are preparing to destroy it. The KCNA said Pyongyang would prepare a “resolute and pre-emptive strike if they show any slight sign of provocation. In case the US opts for confrontation and war at last... it will meet horrible nuclear strike and miserable and final ruin.” Read more »
Puerto Rico devastated by Hurricane Maria
By Rafael Azul
A clearer picture of the massive damage in Puerto Rico began to emerge Thursday, a day after Hurricane Maria smashed through the island, knocking out power for its 3.4 million residents and leaving a path of destruction through small towns, cities and the capital of San Juan. Homes and buildings were destroyed, power lines downed and trees uprooted and thrown across roads. The hurricane cut a 120-mile swath through the US colonial territory Wednesday. Read more »
St. Louis Police declare “We’re in control” as crackdown on protests enters fifth day
By Genevieve Leigh
“We’re in control,” announced the head of the St. Louis, Missouri Police Department, Lawrence O’Toole, at a press conference Monday after a weekend of unrest in the city over the acquittal of a white cop who shot a black man to death in 2011.
“This is our city and we’re going to protect it,” O’Toole declared. The escalation of the brutal police crackdown in St. Louis came as the demonstrations entered their fifth day Tuesday.
In sharp contrast to the largely peaceful character of the protests, police have displayed alarming levels of belligerence and arrogance in their repression of protesters. Groups of police officers in riot gear were heard early Monday morning marching through areas forcibly cleared of demonstrators chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” mocking protesters with a slogan commonly used at rallies. Read more »
Hillary Clinton’s What Happened: A conspiracy theory of the 2016 election
By Andre Damon
Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, released September 13, is the former presidential candidate’s first-person account of the 2016 election.
With all the hallmarks of a volume carefully constructed by a team of ghostwriters, Clinton’s book is not so much a political memoir as the Democratic Party’s semi-official narrative of its electoral defeat. Those sections of the book regarding Clinton’s personal life and thoughts are largely fictional, penned with a view to their impact on various constituencies.
Clinton’s theory of the election, drawn from articles in the New York Times and Washington Post, the proclamations of state intelligence agencies, and the statements of high-level Democratic Party functionaries, amounts to a grand conspiracy theory in which the movement of great masses of people is reduced to the actions of individual conspirators out to do in Clinton because she is a powerful woman who loves freedom and democracy. Read more »
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Articles: Copyright © 2017 wsws.org, All rights reserved.










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Vietnam—a graveyard for the US’s imperial ambitions




Vietnam—a graveyard for the US’s imperial ambitions


Vietnam was torn apart by imperialism
Vietnam was torn apart by imperialism
Secret troop build-ups under the guise of deploying military advisers, an anti-imperialist struggle and a brutal war in response.

It sounds like it could be the story of almost any imperialist intervention in the last century—or today. This one was in Vietnam, torn apart by imperialism in the wake of the Second World War.

The Vietnam War is a new ten-party documentary that takes a detailed look at the war, its causes and consequences. Graphic and remarkable new footage and interviews detail one of the darkest periods in US history.

US involvement started after France’s colonial regime in Vietnam tried to defeat the national liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh.

The US armed the French against Ho Chi-Minh’s Viet Minh army.

Funding

 By the end of the war, which the French lost, the US was funding three quarters of its entire budget.
The rebels appealed to the US for help and Ho Chi Minh wrote directly to Truman, the US president at the time. They were ignored.

Although he was not president when the troop build up started, numbers rose to over 11,000 in the first two years of John F Kennedy’s presidency.

“We have not sent combat troops in the generally understood sense of the term,” said Kennedy.

The US hypocrisy over the war is clearly on display—footage shows “military advisers” fighting.
The justification for projecting US power into Asia at the time of Vietnam was the rise of communism in China and its potential spread. Many accounts fall into the trap, intentionally or otherwise, of portraying anti?imperialist struggles and imperialists on an equal moral footing.

Directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick seem to want to avoid that pitfall.

New testimonies from US fighters and National Liberation Front armies as well as journalists and secret service members gives a measured account of the war.

Resentment

 The grinding horror of Vietnam is dramatically shown and the resentment towards the US comes through strongly.

Some interviews are revealing. “We should have seen it as the end of the colonial era in South East Asia, which it was,” said Donald Gregg from the CIA. “But instead we saw it in Cold War terms, we saw it as a defeat of the free world, which was related to the rise of China.

“It was a total misreading of a pivotal event, which would cost us very, very dearly.” Some two million civilians lost their lives in Vietnam and as many as half a million more in US secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s secret bombing in Cambodia.

The documentary describes Kennedy as being “caught between the truth and the lie,” as a conflicted individual.

He was a mass murderer. Bao Ninh was in the National Liberation Front’s armed wing. “To my parents’ generation you Americans were no different from the French,” he said. “I inherited their ideas.”

This new documentary is comprehensive enough for an introduction to the war.

But its great fault is its “balance” between those who fought for the US and those who fought against it, between those who backed the war and those who resisted it.

The Vietnam War, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. On BBC Four, Mondays at 9pm

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Isakson to Hold Hearing on Veteran Suicide Prevention

Senator Johnny Iskason is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  His office issued the following today:






FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY
Contact: Amanda Maddox, 202-224-7777
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Camlin Moore, 202-224-9126
***HAPPENING TOMORROW***
Isakson to Hold Hearing on Veteran Suicide Prevention
‘Be There: What more can be done to prevent veteran suicide’
WASHINGTON – The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., will hold a hearing on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017 at 10:00 a.m., to examine the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) suicide prevention programs and assess what legislative changes may be needed to ensure the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has the necessary resources to combat veteran suicide.
VA Secretary David Shulkin will testify at the hearing on veteran suicide prevention.
The hearing will be streamed online at www.veterans.senate.gov. Media who plan to attend should RSVP to Majority_Press@vetaff.senate.gov.
WHO:        Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs

WHERE:   418 Russell Senate Office Building

WHEN:     Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2017 at 10:00 a.m.

WHAT:      #BeThere: What more can be done to prevent veteran suicide?
See below for the witness list.
Panel I
John D. Daigh, Jr., MD, CPA, Assistant Inspector General for Healthcare Inspections, Office of Inspector General
Craig Bryan, PsyD, ABPP, Executive Director, National Center for Veterans Studies, the University of Utah
Mr. Matthew Kuntz, Executive Director, the National Alliance on Mental Illness for Montana
Panel II
The Honorable David J. Shulkin, M.D., Secretary of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 
Accompanied by:
Dr. David Carroll, Executive Director, Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, Department of Veterans Affairs
###
The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in the 115th Congress. Isakson is a veteran himself – having served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966-1972 – and has been a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs since he joined the Senate in 2005. Isakson’s home state of Georgia is home to more than a dozen military installations representing each branch of the armed services as well as more than 750,000 veterans.



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Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends, Ann of Ann's Mega Dub, Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.




"The last thing Iraq needs" -- this was a requested reposting by at least 30 readers so we'll repost it.

"Kat's Korner: Another classic from Tori Amos" -- Kat reviews Tori's latest album.



"KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE," -- Stan goes to the movies.


"Corrine Brown" -- Isaiah dips into the archives.


"Easy Chicken Soup in the Kitchen" -- Trina serves up an easy recipe.


"Boycott Ken Burns" and "Ken Burns lies again" -- Ken Burns -- we can't stand him.


"Racism" -- Betty calls it like it is.
  
"When a trash fiction writer loses popularity" -- who even knew Anne Rice was still alive?











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