OMNI
LIBERTY AND
JUSTICE FOR ALL DAY (FLAG DAY June 14, 1777), NEWSLETTER #5, June 14, 2015.
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace.
(#1 June
14, 2009; #2 June 14, 2011; #3 June 14, 2012; #4 June 14, 2013).
What’s at stake: Mindless celebration of the Flag ensures
decline of democracy. Flag Day should be
a time of rigorous critical thinking about the injuries to our Democracy by empire
and illegal wars, expansion of secrecy and surveillance, and domination of
elections by money. Asking our troops to
risk their lives for imperial aggressions while anti-democratic individuals and
groups shrivel liberties at home is the worst of deception and cruelty.
OMNI’S
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT.
Half of the
Project affirms nonviolent DAYs, such as United Nations Day in Support of
Victims of Torture, UN Nuclear Abolition Day, and Human Rights Day. The other half offers alternatives to
violent, imperial, commercialized, or self-directed days, as with Peace Forces
Day (Armed Forces Day). See end of
newsletter for full list.
My
blog:
War Department/Peace Department
War Department/Peace Department
Newsletters
Index:
See end of Newsletter for #3 and #4 Contents.
Contents: Flag Day June
14 Liberty and Justice for All DAY Newsletter #5
Damon, A Dismal
Picture of USA Today
Empire and Wars
Masciotra,
Pentagon, NFL, and Patriotic Propaganda
Two on the
Empire: Harms
David Vine on Diego Garcia and Book on the
Network of
Bases
Bases
Secrecy and
Surveillance
Snowden
Newsletter #6
US Surveillance
State: Damage to Bill of Rights and Privacy
Calabrese and Harwood
Money
Citizens United Newsletter #7
Overturn Citizens United
Some Good
News: President Obama’s Developing
Understanding of US “Exceptionalism” (see newsletters)
Andre Damon, USA 2015
The state of American society as
2015 begins
6 January 2015. (The 2 Parties are the Corporate Party? That Party assails the working class? Our troops fought for this in the dozens of
invasions and interventions? No
distinction between Republicans and Democrats?
–Dick)
As the New Year begins, the social crisis gripping tens of
millions of working people in the United States is worsening. Hunger, poverty
and long-term joblessness remain at the highest levels in decades, while vital
social services continue to be slashed.
One would never know this from reading the press, watching the
evening news, or listening to the statements of politicians. The official
discourse is dominated by the supposed revival of the American economy,
characterized by record corporate profits and stock prices. The fact that the
great majority of the population finds it increasingly difficult to make ends
meet finds no reflection in the media or official politics.
The incoming Republican-dominated Congress, working with the Obama
administration, will focus on cutting corporate taxes and business regulations,
planning new wars, and expanding the repressive apparatus of the state. No
representative of the political establishment, including the supposedly
outspoken liberal Elizabeth Warren and the “independent socialist” Bernie
Sanders, is proposing any significant measures to address the deepening social
crisis.
The constant of domestic policy—enthusiastically pursued by both
big-business parties—is an unrelenting
assault on the working class.
Critical social programs are being cut further. Last week, funding
for a two-year temporary increase in fees paid to doctors who treat Medicaid
patients expired, leading to a reduction in payments of up to 43 percent. The
fee cut will lead doctors to stop accepting Medicaid patients under conditions
where millions more low-income people are being added to the Medicaid rolls as
part of Obamacare.
This week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported
that another one million people are scheduled to lose food stamp benefits next
year as a result of the imposition of a three-month limit on food stamps for
childless adults. Federal food stamp funds were cut by billions of dollars on
two separate occasions over the past three years.
These regressive and antisocial policies are being reproduced at
the state and local level. The city of Detroit,
which just exited from the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history after
slashing municipal workers’ pensions and health benefits, is notifying the
owners of 35,000 occupied homes that they will be foreclosed upon unless they
pay back taxes. The threatened foreclosures could affect nearly 100,000 people,
or one in seven of the city’s residents.
The announcement comes as the city continues the systematic
shutoff of water service to tens of thousands of residents.
The Detroit bankruptcy has served as a model for plundering
workers’ benefits and privatizing public facilities for other cities across the
US. The mass foreclosure and water shutoff programs will similarly serve as a
precedent for purging potentially valuable urban real estate of working-class
and poor residents.
These policies will exacerbate the social crisis facing the
working class, which has been devastated not only by the 2008 crash, but also
by a “recovery” characterized by falling wages and worsening working and living
conditions.
Falling wages have contributed to a rise in poverty, which
increased from 12.6 percent of the population in 2007 to 14.5 percent in 2013.
According to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), 47 percent
of Americans have incomes below 200 percent of the official poverty level,
making half of the country either poor or near poor.
According to one study using the SPM as a baseline, “Nearly
two-thirds of New York City residents struggled to make ends meet at some point
during 2012.”
Nearly one in four US children lives in poverty, the highest level
in 20 years. One in five children does not get enough to eat, and the overall
rate of food insecurity has grown from 11 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in
2013.
While the official unemployment rate has declined, the share of
working-age men who are employed hit its lowest level on record in November
2014. This figure has fallen from 86.7 percent in 1948 to 69 percent today. The
share of employees working at temp agencies has climbed during the economic “recovery.”
More than 12 million people, or ten percent of the labor force, worked for a
temporary employment agency at some point in 2013.
The share of the national income going to the richest 1 percent,
and, above all, the top 0.1 and 0.01 percentiles, grows by leaps and bounds.
Democracy can be nothing but a hoax in a society characterized by such levels
of inequality.
The American political system is not a democracy; it is a
plutocracy—a government of, by and for the rich. The financial aristocracy of
bankers and financial parasites runs the country by means of the CIA, the
military and a thoroughly bribed retinue of politicians from the White House
and Congress down to City Hall.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that “three of the country’s
wealthiest political contributors each saw their net worth grow in 2014 by more
than $3.7 billion, the entire cost of the midterm elections.” This means that
it is within the capacity of one person to buy not just a few congressmen or
senators, but an entire election. Nothing that in any way challenges the
interests of the oligarchy can be broached, much less implemented, within this
framework. The “partisan gridlock” that prevails in Congress is largely a form
of political theater for the purpose of deceiving the public and obscuring the
overriding bipartisan consensus for austerity at home and war abroad.
The growing
divergence between the needs and aspirations of the great majority of the
population
and an increasingly sclerotic political system, expressed in the record low
turnout in last year’s election, must ultimately produce revolutionary
consequences. There are already signs, such as the wave of protests against
police killings, of mass social struggles to come.
They can succeed only if they take the form of an independent
political struggle of the working class against both parties of big business
and the capitalist system they defend.
Andre Damon
PENTAGON, NFL, PROPAGANDA
The military is buying patriotism: A Memorial Day nightmare about Pentagon budgets — and veterans used as a
sideshow. DAVID MASCIOTRA.
Salon MONDAY, MAY 25, 2015 05:00 AM CDT
Salon MONDAY, MAY 25, 2015 05:00 AM CDT
This holiday, let's tell the truth: We remember our fallen veterans
by not making new ones
The American empire is
dying, and the economy is declining. Dysfunction and disrepair define the sick
status and mechanized failure of educational, medical and governmental institutions.
One in 10 Americans take antidepressants, unemployment and underemployment
soar, poverty blights and obliterates inner cities and rural villages alike, 45
million adults are functionally illiterate, and anyone with all but the lowest
lucidity can see clearly that the political system operates as bribery for the
highest bidder. Given that the top 1 percent own 40 percent of the wealth, it
is likely that the extortionists who purchase political representation all shop
at the same clothing store.
In an America suffering
from increasing infirmity, anything that allows for denial of reality and
comforts delusions of superiority becomes essential and central to the national
identity. The United States military, with its garish parades and idolatrous rituals
of uniform and flag consecration, functions as the final and fading echo of its
country’s creed: “We are better than the rest.”
The real religion of
America is America, but as the old gods of economic triumph, middle-class
stability and cultural achievement begin to die, chances for sacrament become
slim. Commentators and Senators were aggrieved to learn that one of America’s
favorite ceremonial rites was nothing more than the slick synthesis of public
relations and propaganda.
The New Jersey Star-Ledger
reports that from 2011 to 2014, the Department of Defense paid 14 NFL teams a
total $5.4 million, while the National Guard paid 11 teams $5.3 million, to
“honor America’s heroes” before football games, and during halftime shows. Not
every NFL ceremony was part of the pay to play scam, but many of those maudlin,
red, white and blue salutes to the soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors,
complete with jet plane fly overs, marching bands and giant banners were no
different than the advertisements for Coca-Cola or Viagra.
There is an ironic
symbiosis between the NFL and the Department of Defense. Both institutions
capture American zeal for grandiose displays of strength, bravado and
gladiatorial machismo. They both benefit, however, from an unwillingness on the
part of the public to closely examine what transpires beneath the surface of
spectacle. A friend of mine once made the dark joke while watching a football
game, “I’m just here for the concussions.” The administration of the NFL has
tried to deny the connection between gridiron combat and early dementia, but
the evidence is overwhelming.
The Pentagon is obstinate
in its refusal to deal with the sexual assault epidemic in the military, where
some reports suggest one-third of servicewomen are raped, and most of them are
too frightened of the consequences to their careers to report the crime.
Twenty-one percent of all domestic violence cases are committed by combat
veterans. Stacy Bannerman, a leading advocate for the service and protection of
military families, has written a bill that would provide military spouses
suffering from violence and harassment transition funding to escape their
tormentors, and begin new lives. The Pentagon is resistant, and not one Senator
has yet to sponsor the bill. Meanwhile, the U.S. government and military
establishment has apparently proceeded without shame or hesitation to allocate
taxpayer money to the let the world know they are ready for some football, and
commercialize the catastrophe of war.
MOREhttp://www.salon.com/2015/05/25/the_military_is_buying_patriotism_a_memorial_day_nightmare_about_pentagon_budgets_and_veterans_used_as_a_sideshow/
THE
US EMPIRE FOR FREEDOM?
David Vine on Diego Garcia and Harms of Us
Bases
|
Recommended
Reading From The American Empire Project
|
|
The
Truth About Diego Garcia
And 50 Years of Fiction About an American Military Base by David Vine  First,
they tried to shoot the dogs. Next, they tried to poison them with
strychnine. When both failed as efficient killing methods, British government
agents and U.S. Navy personnel used raw meat to lure the pets into a sealed
shed. Locking them inside, they gassed the howling animals with exhaust piped
in from U.S. military vehicles. Then, setting coconut husks ablaze, they
burned the dogs' carcasses as their owners were left to watch and ponder
their own fate.
The truth about the U.S. military base on the
British-controlled Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia is often hard to
believe. It would be easy enough to confuse the real story with fictional
accounts of the island found in the Transformers movies,
on the television series 24, and in Internet conspiracy theories about the disappearance of Malaysia
Airlines flight MH370.
|
|
Coming Soon From David Vine |
|
From Italy to the Indian Ocean,
from Japan to Honduras, a far-reaching examination of the perils of American
military bases overseas
American military bases encircle the globe. More than two
decades after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. still stations its troops at
nearly a thousand locations in foreign lands. These bases are usually taken
for granted or overlooked entirely, a little-noticed part of the Pentagon's
vast operations. But in an eye-opening account, Base
Nation shows that
the worldwide network of bases brings with it a panoply of ills—and actually
makes the nation less safe in the long run.
|
SNOWDEN NEWSLETTER #6, December 4, 2014.
- September 22, 2013
Tomgram: Calabrese and Harwood, Privacy Down the Drain - Click
here to read more of this dispatch.: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175750/tomgram%3A_calabrese_and_harwood%2C_privacy_down_the_drain/#more
- In the U.S. these days, privacy is
so been-there-done-that. Just this
week, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret outfit that
hears only the government side of any argument and has generally been a
rubberstamp for surveillance requests, declassified an opinion backing the
full-scale collection and retention of the phone records (“metadata”) of
American citizens. That staggering
act was, the judge claimed, in no way in violation of the Fourth Amendment
or of American privacy. She also
gave us a little peek at corporate courage in our brave new surveillance
world, writing that “no holder of records [i.e., telecommunications
company] who has received an order to produce bulk telephony metadata has
challenged the legality of such an order.”
- That story, like so many others in
recent months, arrived thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden about
the ever-widening powers of the National Security Agency (NSA), led by a
general who, we now know, lives in a world of intergalactic fantasies of
power and control out of Star Trek: The Next Generation and once even
worked in an Army intelligence war room created by a Hollywood set
designer in the style of that show.
As Christopher Calabrese and Matthew Harwood indicate today,
however, gigantic as the NSA’s intrusions on privacy might be, they are
only part of an uncomfortably large story in which many U.S. agencies and
outfits feel free to take possession of our lives in ever more
technologically advanced and intrusive ways.
- Just this week, in fact, the
American Civil Liberties Union (for which both Calabrese and Harwood work)
released an important new report on the post-9/11 morphing of the FBI into
a “secret domestic intelligence agency.”
In addition to the subterranean surveillance of protesters and
religious groups, the Washington Post offered this summary list of the
ways in which, according to that report, the Bureau has expanded in the
twenty-first century: “The changes highlighted in the report include the
FBI’s racial and ethnic mapping program, which allows the FBI to collect
demographic information to map American communities by race and ethnicity;
the use of secret National Security Letters, which asked for account
information from telecommunications companies, financial institutions, and
credit agencies and required no judicial approval; warrantless
wiretapping; and the recent revelations about the government’s use of
Section 215 of the Patriot Act to track all U.S. telephone calls.”
- All of this and, as you’ll see in
today’s piece, so much more has been done in the name of American
“safety,” the mantra with which Washington has funded and built its new
version of a global surveillance state. Tom
- Destroying
the Right to Be Left Alone
The NSA Isn’t the Only Government Agency Exploiting Technology to - Make Privacy Obsolete
By Christopher Calabrese and Matthew Harwood - For at least the last six years,
government agents have been exploiting an AT&T database filled with
the records of billions of American phone calls from as far back as 1987.
The rationale behind this dragnet intrusion, codenamed Hemisphere, is to
find suspicious links between people with “burner” phones (prepaid mobile
phones easy to buy, use, and quickly dispose of), which are popular with
drug dealers. The secret information gleaned from this relationship with
the telecommunications giant has been used to convict Americans of various
crimes, all without the defendants or the courts having any idea how the
feds stumbled upon them in the first place. The program is so secret, so
powerful, and so alarming that agents “are instructed to never refer to
Hemisphere in any official document,” according to a recently released
government PowerPoint slide.
- You’re probably assuming that we’re
talking about another blanket National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance
program focused on the communications of innocent Americans, as revealed
by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. We could be, but we’re not. We’re
talking about a program of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), a
domestic law enforcement agency.
- While in these last months the NSA has cast a long, dark
shadow over American privacy, don’t for a second imagine that it’s the
only government agency systematically and often secretly intruding on our
lives. In fact, a remarkable traffic jam of local, state, and federal
government authorities turn out to be exploiting technology to wriggle
into the most intimate crevices of our lives, take notes, use them for
their own purposes, or simply file them away for years on end. MORE
Tomgram: Calabrese
and Harwood, Privacy Down the Drain
THE RICH BUY ELECTIONS
.
OMNI
CITIZENS UNITED, MCCUTCHEON, CORPORATE
PERSONHOOD, CAMPAIGN FINANCE NEWSLETTER
#7. Feb. 17, 2015.
CREDO AND
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH: OVERTURN CITIZENS UNITED
President Obama
Endorses Campaign
CREDO, Tell
Congress: Overturn Citizens United
79% We've reached 118,855 of our goal of
150,000.
Sign the
petition
Tell Congress:
"January
21 was the fifth anniversary of the terrible Citizens United Supreme Court
decision. Pass a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United."
Sign Petition
http://act.credoaction.com/sign/cu_5th_anniversary?t=3&akid=13070.7979878.GuTmBL
You'll receive
periodic updates on offers and activism opportunities.
Tell Congress:
Overturn Citizens United
The 2014
election – the most expensive midterm in American history – painfully showed
just how much damage the flood of political spending unleashed by the Citizens
United and McCutcheon Supreme Court decisions has done to our democracy.1
Backed by a
geyser of money supplied by ultra-wealthy donors and corporations, radical
right-wing extremists swept Senate and House races across the country.
The domination
of politics by corporations and the mega-rich is a profound threat to democracy
and freedom in the United States, and we have to fight back.
Early this
year, CREDO and dozens of allied organizations plan to deliver 5 million
petition signatures to Congress calling for a constitutional amendment to
overturn Citizens United – we've hit this ambitious goal, and now we need your
help to go even bigger.
Tell Congress:
Overturn Citizens United.
An overwhelming
majority of Americans oppose the toxic influence of money in politics, and we
have enormous momentum in the fight to overturn Citizens United.
Last year, a
majority of senators cast a historic vote in favor of a constitutional
amendment to overturn Citizens United. And although the amendment didn't
receive the needed 67 votes to pass, we now know who is on record in favor of
letting big money buy our elections.2
At the state
and local level, we're already winning major victories. Sixteen states and
roughly 600 communities have formally demanded that Congress vote to pass a
constitutional amendment making it clear that corporations are not people and
money is not speech.
It's incredibly
difficult to pass a constitutional amendment, and it usually takes decades of
grassroots organizing and pressure on elected officials to amend the
constitution. This fight will be no exception. I hope you'll add your voice to
the millions of other Americans who are speaking out against money in politics.
Tell Congress:
Overturn Citizens United.
1. Russ Choma,
"Money Won on Tuesday, But Rules of the Game Changed," Center for
Responsive Politics, November 5, 2014
2. John
Nichols, "The Senate Judiciary Committee Just Backed an Amendment to
Overturn ‘*Citizens United*’" The Nation, July 10, 2014
home
contact
http://act.credoaction.com/sign/cu_5th_anniversary?t=3&akid=13070.7979878.GuTmBL
CREDO Action is
a publication of Working Assets | credomobile.com
Help
us get 5 million signatures to end Citizens United
January
7, 2015
Michelle Chan,
Friends of the Earth foe@foe.org via uark.edu
Tell Congress:
Overturn Citizens United!
Dear Dick,
I don’t have to
tell you how the flood of polluter money in politics has had a devastating
impact on our environment. From the failure to regulate dangerous bee-killing
pesticides to the massive giveaway of billions of taxpayer dollars to the
fossil fuels industry, excessive corporate power has not only poisoned our
environment but our democracy as well.
January 21st
will mark the 5th anniversary of the case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that
corporations had a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of
“independent expenditures” in an effort to sway our elections.
We must put an
end to this unlimited spending.
Tell Congress:
Overturn Citizens United NOW!
Like me, I am
sure you have seen the significant impact that this ruling has had in the last
few election cycles. For example, last year the Chamber of Commerce spent $31
million to ensure its favorite candidates got into office, helping make the
2014 mid-term elections the most expensive in history.
That’s why more
than 3.5 million Americans of all political stripes have signed on to a
petition calling for Congress to reverse Citizens United. We hope to get to 5
million, so that we can send a powerful message to Capitol Hill later this
month.
Help us reach
our goal of 5 million people saying “enough” to unlimited corporate spending in
our elections: Take action today!
As you know,
this unchecked corporate spending has had huge environmental consequences. For
example, if you look at this outgoing Congress, climate change deniers took an
average of $346,975 from the fossil fuels industry, while members who do
acknowledge climate change took less than a third of that ($96,999).
The evidence is
clear: unless we get big money out of politics, we will never have a fair shake
at protecting people and the planet.
Add your voice:
Tell Congress to overturn Citizens United!
Let’s get money
out and voters in!
In solidarity,
Michelle Chan,
Economic policy
program director,
Friends of the
Earth
Contact us
Friends of the
Earth U.S.
Washington DC
Berkeley CA
1-877-843-8687
Contact us »
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»
Obama’s new patriotism
Greg Jaffe. June 3, 2015
How Obama has used his presidency to redefine ‘American exceptionalism’
NO ONE, LEAST OF ALL PRESIDENT OBAMA, had expected the conversation to take
the turn that it did.
The
president, his speechwriter and a few top aides were supposed to be discussing
Obama’s upcoming speech in Selma, Ala., in early March. Instead, they were
talking about controversial comments made by former New York City mayor Rudolph
W. Giuliani a few days earlier.
“I know this is a horrible thing to say,”
Giuliani told a small group of Republican donors, “but I do not believe that
the president loves America. . . . He wasn’t brought up the way you were
brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”
Obama's remarks in Selma
Obama’s Chief Speechwriter Cody Keenan provided early drafts of
the President's address in Selma, complete with Obama's handwritten notes.
Click on the photo above to see parts of these drafts and to read the full
transcript of the speech. (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Obama was
headed to Selma in a little more than a week for the 50th anniversary of the
Bloody Sunday march, in which Alabama state troopers brutally beat protesters
demanding the right to vote. Giuliani’s remarks had inadvertently goaded Obama
into delivering a speech that would crystallize one of the most provocative
ideas of his presidency.
“How do we
think about the idea of America?” Obama asked, according to notes taken by his
speechwriter. That first question led to others. What made the country that
Obama had led, and sometimes criticized, exceptional? Did the president’s race,
upbringing and time overseas provide a different view of what it meant to love
America?
Today, just
about every Republican presidential candidate is condemning Obama for a failure
to grasp America’s exceptional nature. They say he’s too quick to criticize the
country for its failings at home. When it comes to the exercise of American
power overseas, they contend that he’s too cautious, too skeptical and
insufficiently convinced of America’s unmatched role as a force for good.
Obama has
“demonstrated a disregard for our moral purpose that at times flirted with
disdain,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a May speech at the Council on
Foreign Relations.
The criticism
reflects, in part, Obama’s effort in the seventh year of his presidency to
articulate a new and radical form of American exceptionalism. While American
exceptionalism in recent decades has centered around the exercise of
American power and influence in the world, Obama’s conception is more inwardly
focused. It’s a patriotism that embraces the darker moments in American
history and celebrates the ability of the unsung and the outsiders to challenge
the country’s elite and force change.
MORE http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/06/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism/
www.economist.com/blogs/.../2015/02/presidents-patriotis...The Economist
Feb 20th 2015, 21:49 by W.W. |
CHATTANOOGA ... of America's founding ideals supplies left-leaning Americans
with ample basis for patriotic affection. That said ...
See OMNI’s
newsletters on US exceptionalism, where
you will find an abundance of readings like books by Andrew Bacevich: Bacevich, Andrew. The
Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. 2009. Rev. The
Catholic Worker (Jan./Feb. 2009). Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. 2010. Rev. CW
(May 20ll).
Contents #3 June 14, 2012
OMNI’s National
Days Project
Patriotism for
Citizens of the World
Flag Burning
Nationalism and
the Flag
Patriotism and
the Flag
Contents #4 June 14, 2013
Google June 11,
2013: Patriotic or Commercial Expressions
Dick, President
as Cheerleader
Scahill,
Dirty Wars Book and Film
Obama,
Guantanamo
Here is
the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.
END FLAG DAY
JUNE 14 LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL DAY NEWSLETTER
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