OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #193, SEPTEMBER 4, 2024.

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #193, SEPTEMBER 4, 2024.   Compiled by Dick Bennett

Looking Back to Guide the Future

1978: War Resisters League members demonstrated simultaneously against nuclear weapons in Red Square, Moscow, and on the White House Lawn.  [I will be citing notable historical events like this one in the future, drawn from the War Resisters League Peace Calendars.  –D]

THE NAKBA AND US JEWISH DISSENT
Geoffrey Levin is an assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Prior to joining Emory's faculty, Levin was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Jewish Studies after earning a PhD in Hebrew & Judaic Studies/History from New York University in 2019. His first book, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978, was published by Yale University Press, 2023. [Jewish dissent continues today, and I am glad to be a member of several Jewish anti-war organizations.  –Dick]

Monday, September 16^th, 2024 at 6pm Dr. Levin will be making a live video presentation with questions & answers at the Fayetteville Public Library (FPL) in the Walker Rm. He will be discussing Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978. . . .   “The Israeli government covertly meddled into American Jewish politics from the 1950s to 1970s, and they did so to quash Jewish criticisms of the 1948 Nakba — the mass dispossession and expulsions of Palestinians during Israel’s founding — and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.” Intercept News Service, March 3, 2024.   Hoping you can join us & please invite others.  Dr Susan Colvin & David Druding - co-founders of PIPE Edu Collective, NWA Palestine Israel Peace & Equality (P.I.P.E.) support community 8-19-24.

IMAGINING THE FUTURE

 

8-21-24 The 79th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 79) is fast approaching.     Beginning on September 24, global leaders, activists, and advocates of all ages will gather in New York for UNGA High-Level Week to discuss the state of our world — and debate how we can best move forward.  Now, more than ever, is the time to choose the future we want — for ourselves and our human family.      And this year, at the Summit of the Future, stakeholders across sectors, generations, and countries will take action and agree on what the future should look like.    Held in the days before High-Level Week, the first-of-its-kind Summit asks leaders to choose: breakdown or breakthrough.   Keep reading to learn how you can get involved.   For People. For Planet. For Our Common Future.  The 79th session of the UN General Assembly opens on September 10, 2024 in New York City       The 79th session of the UN General Assembly opens on September 10, 2024 in New York City. Photo: UN Foundation

 

FROM OUR EXPERTS...   What to Expect at UNGA 79: Our Experts Weigh In  UN Foundation experts share the issues they’re following at UNGA 79, and explain why this year’s gathering feels like an inflection point in the UN’s decades-long history. Read more >>   UNGA 79 Hub: Events, Updates, and Insights   UN Foundation has you covered when it comes to tracking events and staying up to date on all things UNGA 79. Explore the hub >>   Summit of the Future: What You Need to Know    The first-of-its-kind Summit takes place on September 22 and 23. With leaders set to adopt a Pact for the Future, the world is watching to see if the Summit will deliver the long-overdue upgrade the international system has been waiting for. Get the details >>    Global Goals Week: Get Involved    Held annually alongside UNGA, Global Goals Week brings together over 150 partners across civil society, business, academia, and the UN system with a shared commitment to accelerate action, awareness, and accountability for the Goals. Learn more >>

 

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From its beginning, OMNI was inspired by the UN Charter.  And OMNI  borrowed its mission statement from the Quakers.  “We seek a world free of war and the threat of war.   We seek a society with equity and justice for all....” The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is a national, nonpartisan Quaker organization that lobbies Congress for peace, justice, and environmental stewardship.  Its sister org.—the AFSC—has a similar mission statement.  “The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) promotes a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression.”   --Dick

 

CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE FUTURE TO ASSESS THE PRESENT

Joe Conason begins It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush with Sinclair Lewis’s sardonically titled, dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935) that showed how fascism/nazism might happen in the US.  His dictator president, Buzz Windrip, posing as “an exponent of traditional values—liberty, democracy righteousness, godliness,” seizes an economic crisis to “arrogate more and more power to the White House.”  In It Can Happen Here (2007) Conason describes how George W. Bush and his administration had so diminished the US idea and institutions of democracy that the US was becoming the police state Lewis had feared, which prepared the way for its further perhaps terminal dismantling by Trump and his cronies.  (All summarized in his Introduction.) 

 

In The Last Independence Day: Secession, the author Ray Niblock imagines the hard right takeover of the state of Arkansas by a ruthless female governor named Landers, as part of a wider movement to split the US into two nations, one struggling to evolve democratically, the other embracing autocracy.   We experience the political process of dismantling the state institution by institution and the breakaway of Arkansas and preparations by other states to join it.   A follow-up seems planned: The Epilogue ends with the words “To be continued.”

And today I learned that Joe Conason this year published another book on the US right wing: The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and  Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (2024).