Reading the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

                       

 By Reginald Johnson

 

  NEW HAVEN, CT ---- The annual reading of  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s great anti-war speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” will take place tomorrow in City Hall.

  The reading, sponsored by several peace organizations, will be held at 12 noon on the second floor of City Hall, 165 Church Street.

  Wednesday is the anniversary of Dr. King’s birthday. The nation officially observes King’s birthday on Monday, January 20.

 In the speech, given on April 4, 1967 before an audience of 3,000 people at the Riverside Church in New York City, the civil rights leader came out strongly against the war in Vietnam and condemned US militaristic policies around the world. He deplored the fact that the country was spending so much money on war while ignoring crumbling cities and poor people at home.

 “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” he said.

  A number of leaders and pundits at the time denounced King for his criticism of the Vietnam War (in which the US had been fighting communist guerillas for several years resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties) and said that he had ruined his legacy as a civil rights leader by venturing into foreign affairs.

 But in his speech King said memorably, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”

 Exactly one year after King spoke those words, he was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee.

 The public reading of Dr. King’s speech is taking place as the United States is again involved in wars overseas even though these wars are considered so-called “proxy wars” where the United States does not actually have troops on the ground. But the US is still spending hundreds of billions dollars to fund the two countries fighting the wars.

 In Gaza, Israel is waging a genocidal attack on Palestinians and in Ukraine, that nation is locked in a now three-year-old conflict with Russia.

  The war in Gaza, by all accounts, has triggered a humanitarian disaster for civilians. Some 45,000 people have been killed, according to official estimates. But many experts believe that figure is much higher and the real total is over 200,000 deaths. Infrastructure has been devastated with hospitals, schools and residences bombed or burned to the ground.

  Thousands have been displaced and are living in tents. Heavy rains and freezing temperatures have created intolerable living conditions and a number of children have frozen to death. Human rights observers claim Israel has conducted a systematic campaign to wreck Gaza’s health care system with the destruction of medical facilities and doctors and staff shot or abducted.

 Hunger is widespread in Gaza with the Israeli military blocking the entry of aid convoys.

 A flier put out by the organizers of the reading in New Haven said, “On the anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior’s birth, we refuse to stand by and allow tens of thousands of our fellow human beings to be flooded, frozen and burned alive by Israel and the US, as if their lives meant nothing.  We join millions in the US and throughout the world demanding a permanent cease-fire and massive humanitarian aid be allowed to enter Gaza.”

 The Greater New Haven Peace Council, Veterans for Peace, the New Haven Peace Commission and the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition are sponsoring the public reading.

 For more information, email grnhpeacecouncil@gmail.com

 

  

For peace now, impeach now

                             

                   Commentary

           By Reginald Johnson

  I think impeachment is something that has to be talked about vis a vis Joe Biden.

 The unlawful and highly dangerous air strikes on Yemen are the last straw for me.

 Biden has enabled two major wars, one in Ukraine and the other in Gaza/Palestine that are creating massive death tolls and have the potential for becoming catastrophic regional or even world wars.

In so doing, he has endangered the safety not only of all Americans, but everyone in the world.

 He lied repeatedly about growing US involvement in Ukraine and spurned peace agreements. He has failed to get Congressional approval for our near direct involvement in Ukraine and for the Yemen attacks, though the Constitution says Congress, not the Executive Branch, makes war.

 His greenlighting continuous military aid to Israel while that nation carries out a genocide in Gaza, makes the US an accessory to genocide, a violation of the genocide treaty.

 I know people may say, "It's an election year, people can vote him out, so what's the point?" But do we have time to wait?

 Peace now!

The "antisemitism" cudgel

              (Joe Lombardo, the coordinator for the United National Anti-war Coalition, recently posted an excellent piece on Facebook in which he described how the charge of “anti-Semitism” is being used as a weapon to discredit the movement to bring about a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War. He also says that while pro-Palestinian demonstrators are falsely attacked for advocating a genocide against Jews, it is the Palestinians who are suffering from an actual genocide at the hands of Israel. Joe’s full article is reprinted here.)  

   By Joe Lombardo

   The weaponization of antisemitism is simply an attempt to shut us up and allow the genocide to continue.

 The corporate media and western governments have been calling the massive Palestinian solidarity demonstrations “antisemitic,” if they report them at all. In the words of Malcolm X, they “Make the criminal look like the victim and make the victim look like the criminal.”

 On November 25, three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington, VT, while in Chicago a six-year-old Palestinian boy was stabbed 26 times and killed while his mother was also attacked and hospitalized. In California a car tried to run down several Muslim families and Muslim and Palestinian groups have reported a sharp upturn in incidences of attacks on Muslims and Palestinians. Yet there is no outcry from the corporate media or the government about these anti-Palestinian and racist attacks. But “antisemitism” is today a constant theme in the corporate media.

 Last week the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, was forced out of her position because of her support for the right of freedom of speech on her campus. She was asked by right-wing congresswoman, Elise Stefanik if calls for genocide of Jews would be termed harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.

 Magill had to speak carefully to let Stefanik know that she does not support calls for genocide but does support free speech. Similar questions were asked of the presidents of Harvard and MIT. This type of questioning is reminiscent of the McCarthy hearing in the 1950’s.

 It is the Palestinians in Gaza who are facing genocide, not Jews in Israel or the US. Why don’t they ask politicians and others if they support that genocide? If they did, they might get a response such as “I give full support to Israel” and they likely would vote for more money and weapons to Israel to kill more Palestinians. Or they might get an answer like that from Florida State representative Michelle Salzman when asked how many Palestinians should be killed, she answered “all of them.” But she has not been forced to step down.

 Today in the US we find that we not only have to fight for the right of Palestinians to live, but we have to fight for the right to even express that or say we are for a cease fire in Gaza.

 The slogan chanted on every Palestinian solidarity action, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” has especially been criticized as antisemitic by the corporate media and politicians. One wonders what part of Palestine they think should not be free. It should be clear from what is happening in Gaza right now that it is the Israelis who are trying to drive the Palestinian people into the sea or the desert, not the other way around.

 In fact, this slogan was first used by Zionists not Palestinians. It is in the founding document of the Likud Party, the party of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and they have used it in their political campaigns in the form of “between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” I don’t remember the corporate media or the politicians ever criticizing this as anti-Palestinian or racist.

 The campaign to characterize those of us who support Palestinian rights as being antisemitic is simply a campaign to shut us up so they can carry out their genocide against the Palestinian people without hinderance.

 When Palestinians and their supporters say “Palestine will be free,“ the politicians and corporate media try to deny that they are not free. But in their own land there is a separate set of laws for Palestinians and Jews. Palestinians can be arrested without charges and held indefinitely. Many children have been arrested in this manner.

 There are some roads that only Jewish people can drive on or walk on. Palestinian homes are often bulldozed so that illegal settlements for Israeli Jews can be built, or just for punishment. Sometime the Palestinians are only given minutes to leave. There are check points for Palestinians where they sometimes must wait for hours, just to move around in their own land. And there is so much more that can be said about the lack of freedom and equality for Palestinians in their own traditional land.

 Of course, it is far worse in Gaza. There, Israel controls who can leave and who cannot. In most cases people are not allowed to leave. Israel determines what gets into Gaza and what doesn’t. Construction material to rebuild the bombed buildings are often denied. They only allowed a certain amount of food into Gaza, limiting the number of calories per person per day. This they mockingly call the Palestinian diet. This is why Gaza is referred to as an open-air prison. But it is much worse than a prison because prisoners don’t routinely get bombed and shot or have their electricity or water turned off.

  This is why Palestinians want to be free in their own land. “From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free!” That is not antisemitic, it expresses a reality that all Palestine must be free for Palestinians to survive. Those who claim it is antisemitic are only showing their racism and anti-Palestinian sentiment and are themselves being complicit with the genocide against the Palestinians.

Israel’s stated goal in Gaza is to wipe out Hamas. This is impossible. To end resistance from the Palestinians, you must end their repression. Instead, the Israelis are increasing the repression. Even if every member of Hamas was killed, each bomb the Israelis drop and each Palestinian they kill just creates more anger towards the Zionist state and will cause more and more resistance until Zionism is ended. The next generation of Palestinian freedom fighters are being born amid the rubble of Gaza.

 

 

Nov. 22, 1963: A Turning Point for America

    

 (Today marks the 60th anniversary of  one of the nation's darkest days, the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered by government actors in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was a young president who was growing in the job and who aimed to end the Cold War with Russia and create a more peaceful world. But he was cut down before being allowed to finish his program. To this day the government still refuses to follow the law and release all the CIA files that would shed light on who was responsible for this notorious crime. Why is that? The following is the piece I wrote 10 years ago on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination).

By Reginald Johnson

                For a long time, I  believed 9-11 was worst thing that ever happened to the United States. It was awful. Nearly 3,000 people killed in those terror attacks and so many families left grief-stricken.

      And 9-11 set the stage for the brutal (and in one case misguided) wars that followed, in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

          But in the last few weeks, I’ve changed my mind.  When I saw the 50^th anniversary shows on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and saw the old footage, it all came back. As bad as Sept. 11 was, I don’t think anything shook this country as much as the death of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t seem like this country has ever been the same since that day.

     I’ve heard phrases thrown around recently to describe the meaning of that day: “The day we lost our innocence,”  and another, (the title of a blog by Ira Chernus) “The day truth died.”  These are both right. It was such a shattering event.

    Maybe it’s because I was a naive 16-year-old private school student when this happened. Very idealistic, and, like a lot of  people my age at the time, a great fan of JFK. Here was this dashing young president who was both bright and witty and inspiring. He seemed to say and do all the right things: urging young people to get involved,  helping their country and the world with efforts like the Peace Corps; working to help the movement for integration; backing legislation that would eventually become Medicare; signing the nuclear test ban treaty; promoting the space program and sending men into space.

   In those days, we were in a Cold War with Russia, and we were proud when Kennedy stood up to the Soviets over the placement of missiles in Cuba and spoke out for freedom while visiting the Berlin Wall.

   And he came to be president  at a time when the country was booming economically and was the most admired country in the world. Our standard of living was tops and there were plenty of jobs --- particularly manufacturing jobs.

   It seemed like America and our young president could do no wrong.

   It was in that cocoon of innocence that I returned from lunch on Nov. 22, set to go to another class, when I overheard someone say, ‘Kennedy was shot.’   Feeling stunned, I rushed over to this small building where students could socialize and smoke cigarettes. Some of my friends were there listening to the radio. I lit up a cigarette as  the news came over. Minutes later, there was silence. Then a somber voice announced, ‘The president is dead.’ The Star Spangled Banner began playing. I couldn’t believe it.  Just total disbelief.  I was also pissed. I threw down my cigarette, stomped on it and left. I didn’t want to talk with anyone.

   The next several days, I was glum and kept to myself. I missed the 24-7 television coverage, missed alleged perpetrator Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot, missed new President Lyndon Johnson’s announcements and much of Kennedy’s funeral. How could this happen here? The United States?  It took months for me to get over the shock.

 I was able to get over it in part because I was reassured by Johnson’s statements and actions. He pledged to follow the Kennedy program, particularly with civil rights. When the following fall came around, Johnson seemed downright saintly compared to the crackpot Republican candidate for president that year, Barry Goldwater, who had talked about dropping an atomic bomb on Vietnam!  Johnson, meanwhile, said he would not send U.S. troops to Vietnam. Seemed like a good guy.

  But within months, it was clear Johnson was lying. In early ’65,  the U.S. had started bombing North Vietnam. By the spring, the first troops were sent. Within a few years, we had hundreds of thousands of troops there, all in the name of “stopping communism.” Many of our soldiers died. But many, many more Vietnamese died. We pulverized that country with bombing and poisoned it with napalm and Agent Orange. When all was said and done, we had lost 55,000 people; the Vietnamese had lost 3 million.

   And during the Vietnam era, a lot of ugly divisions in our society began to surface, between hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives, hippies and hard hats, religious versus non-religious. A lot of that divisiveness is still out there today.

  After Johnson, we got the corruption of Richard Nixon and Watergate.  A few years later, the downward curve continued with the coming of Ronald Reagan, and his backwards notion that “government is the problem.”  Reagan began the process of chipping away at the safety net and the New Deal, and undermining unions --- more trends we’re still dealing with today.

  More recently we’ve had George W. Bush and his disastrous war on Iraq and two vacillating small ‘d’  democrat presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Their vision of government is almost as limited as the Republicans.

   Maybe I am idealizing the Kennedy years, but things were better then. Since that period there’s been progress only in few areas. Women’s rights are certainly better today than they were in the early ‘60s. Legal and political rights for blacks are better, though the economic struggle for most blacks still goes on.

  But what else? Our middle class has sunk, quality jobs have evaporated, and our nation is constantly at war.

  I think if Jack Kennedy lived, I think the late 1960s would have been better, and that would have provided a good foundation for the future. It is a fact that he signed a memorandum a month before he died that he intended to pull all U.S. advisors out of Vietnam by 1965. Supposing there had been no Vietnam War? And supposing Kennedy had followed up on feelers to bring a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, and end the insane arms race?

   It should be said Kennedy had his failings, and there are certainly a lot of skeptics out there who downplay what he would have done if he had lived. He was a philanderer and dishonest to his wife; though publicly pushing integration he was friendly with southern segregationists for political purposes; and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a boneheaded move.

   But I believe if Kennedy had lived, there would have been no Vietnam War, and he would have achieved lot at home, in the end compiling a domestic record that would have rivaled FDR’s.

   I think it’s definitely fair to say if JFK, his brother Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King had lived, America would be a much better place today.

******************************************************************************  

I’ve always felt there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy.  Lee Harvey Oswald may well have been part of it, but he did not act alone. Too many people heard too many shots that day in Dallas, and eyewitnesses saw some shots come from the front of Kennedy’s motorcade, something the Warren Commission denied happening. (The Warren Commission, charged with investigating the assassination, concluded Oswald acted alone, and shot Kennedy from the rear, firing a rifle from a 6^th-floor window).

 While Kennedy was quite popular in general,  he was hated by some, including right-wingers and anti-Castro Cubans. He also had a lot of detractors in the military and the intelligence agencies, who thought Kennedy was ‘too soft on communism.’  I believe people from the intelligence sector and the military, as well as some anti-communist Cubans, were part of the conspiracy. Oswald was on the fringes. Jack Ruby was sent to shut Oswald up. The fact that Ruby, a nobody, could waltz into the Dallas police station while the most important criminal suspect in American history was being transported, then walk up and shoot Oswald dead, tells you all you need to know about this case. It’s been a total cover-up.

JFK's call for peace should be heeded today

    

By Reginald Johnson

        Commentary  

    It's been 60 years since President John F. Kennedy gave the commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C., calling for peaceful coexistence with Russia. The address has been called one of the most important speeches in US history. Here's a brief excerpt:

"What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children --- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women --- not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."

We can learn from Kennedy's words today. As tensions surrounding the war between Ukraine and Russia mount, it is critical that we find every possible way to bring about a peaceful resolution to this conflict, to avoid the unthinkable. The possibility of nuclear war between the US, which backs Ukraine, and Russia, is not out of the question. As Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia says in an interview about Kennedy's speech and its relevance today, the people who dismiss the possibility of a nuclear war "don't understand the world we live in." Sachs also said that US policies have been "shockingly dangerous" and led to "shocking devastation in Ukraine." Below is the interview with Prof. Sachs:

YOUTUBE.COM

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on how we can make peace with Russia by learning from JFK's example

Watch the full video here: https://youtube.com/live/wRTx6wq

"Christmas Truce" in Ukraine?

 

     By Reginald Johnson

       Commentary

 

    For two wonderful days in December, 1914 during World War I, the guns fell silent and tired soldiers on both sides of the conflict crawled out of their trenches to shake hands with combatants on the other side and celebrate Christmas.

  English, French, and  German soldiers came together in a spontaneous moment to eat dinner, sing Christmas carols and even play soccer.

  The informal cease-fire was dubbed “The Christmas Truce.”

 Though the truce didn’t last long ---  the war resumed and dragged on for another four years --- the Christmas Truce is long remembered as a special moment in history, when the killing stopped and there was a glimmer of hope that a brutal conflict could somehow be brought to an end.

  Now, peace advocates are urging that a “Christmas Truce” be called in the Ukraine War, also a brutal conflict that has left 200,000 Ukrainian and Russian soldiers killed or injured in just nine months.

“The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a symbol of hope and courage, when the people of warring countries organized an armistice on their own authority and joined in a spontaneous act of reconciliation and fraternization,” said a statement by CODE Pink, an anti-war organization.

  “In this same spirit, we ask you to join us in urging President Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and congressional representatives to support the International Peace Bureau’s call for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine,” the statement said. 

“A truce --- a moment of holiday peace --- could pave the way for negotiations to reach a lasting security agreement to end the bloodshed once and for all.”

  A petition has been set up on the CODE Pink website for people to sign and indicate their support. https://www.codepink.org/christmas_truce_in_ukraine_gen

   The peace group and other organizations such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation have also been urging leaders of the faith community and social justice movements to support the campaign.  Dr. Cornel West and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have gotten behind the effort.

 The Ukraine War began in February when Russia invaded Ukraine in what Russia called a “Special Military Operation.”  US and Ukrainian officials called the invasion an act of naked aggression --- completely unjustified and illegal under international law.  Russian officials maintained, however, they acted after a series of provocations by Ukraine and the US-led military alliance, NATO, which has bases in many countries close to Russia.

  The US has supplied over $100 billion in military aid to help Ukraine to fight the war.

 Negotiations to end the war have stalled, with Biden administration officials indicating little interest in peace talks. A tentative plan to end the war last April --- agreed to by Russia and Ukraine --- fell apart after the US rejected the deal.

  The possibility the war could turn nuclear arose after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky suggested preemptive strikes against Russia to prevent the Russians from using nuclear weapons. Russian officials said they interpreted Zelensky's remarks as suggesting that NATO should launch a nuclear first strike against Russia.

. Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country would not fire a nuclear first strike at Ukraine, but said Russia would use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack.

 Noam Chomsky,  the world renown intellectual and long-time foreign policy critic, warned recently that there could be dire consequences for the human race if the war is not brought to a close in the near future.

  Chomsky foresees possible catastrophe in two ways --- first by the possibility of a nuclear war starting in Ukraine; and second, by the environmental consequences of more widespread use of highly-polluting liquid natural gas, as the flow of Russian gas has been stopped. He said the world only has limited time to shut down high-carbon fossil fuel usage and control global warming, and the wider use now of dirty fuel will hasten the arrival of a total climate collapse.

  “Every possible path to a diplomatic settlement should be pursued,” Chomsky told an audience at The Peoples Forum. “There is no time for delay.”

  The International Peace Bureau is calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine for Christmas 2022/2023 from Dec. 25^th to January 7^th  “as a sign of our shared humanity, reconciliation and peace.”  https://www.ipb.org/ipb-christmas-peace-appeal/

To ask for a Christmas Truce in Ukraine, call the White House at 202-456-1111 and your members of Congress, at 202-224-3121.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

'A state beyond insanity'

      

    By Reginald Johnson

     World renown intellectual and social critic Noam Chomsky is warning of catastrophe if the Ukraine War continues.

  The MIT professor emeritus of linguistics and longtime anti-war activist told an audience at the Peoples Forum in New York City recently that the war creates the potential for disaster in two ways – first by triggering a sharp increase in the use of highly polluting fossil fuels at a time when the world has only limited time left to avoid a climate collapse, and second, by creating the real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

 “The longer the war continues the greater will be the toll, reaching very fast perhaps, to the end of organized human life, speak of the vast number of species we are wantonly destroying,” Chomsky said.

 “And that of course is assuming we can ward off the option of destroying ourselves more expeditiously with nuclear war, a possibility that is casually being discussed, as if it were an option – it’s an indescribable descent to a state beyond insanity.”

  “Sorry if these remarks seem hyperbolic. They are not,” Chomsky said. “All of this tells us that every possible path to a diplomatic settlement should be pursued in accord with the wishes of almost the entire world, including the core of Europe… There is no time for delay,” he said.

  Chomsky delivered his sobering message during a panel discussion entitled “The Real Path to Peace in Ukraine.” The event, co-sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, was designed to discuss ways to develop a wider protest movement aimed at stopping the war.

  Among those joining Chomsky was peace activist Medea Benjamin of Code Pink; Dr. Jill Stein, former Green Party presidential candidate and historian and commentator Vijay Prashad.

  The discussion took place as the Ukraine-Russia war is now in its ninth month and shows little signs of letting up. Approximately 100,000 casualties have been reported and there’s been widespread damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure. Leaders of both Ukraine and Russia have said the use of nuclear weapons is not out of the question.

 Meanwhile, the Biden administration has shown no interest in promoting peace talks to end the conflict; in fact, a tentative deal to end the war last April was rejected by the White House.

 Administration officials as well as leaders in both political parties in Congress maintain that continued aid is needed to help Ukraine win back its freedom, resist “Russian aggression” and stop a claimed “threat” posed to the rest of Europe.

  Critics charge however, that the real goal of the United States in funding the war is a geopolitical one: weaken Russia and eventually spark regime change in that country; Ukraine is simply being used in that process.

  So far the United States has given nearly $100 billion --- much of it lethal military hardware --- to help Ukraine fight Russia.

                                                          

The Ukrainian military has gotten billions of dollars in aid from the US to fight Russia.

  “We’re saying ‘no’ to this proxy war, we’re saying ‘no’ to the US government policy of bleeding Russia through the lives of countless Ukrainians,” said Manolo De Los Santos, co-director of the People’s Forum, in introductory remarks.  “We are not going to wait for nuclear war.  We are not going to wait for global famine. We are not going to wait for a further energy crisis…We will not allow them to sacrifice either  Ukrainian or Russian people or better yet we will not allow them to sacrifice the planet for their new war of greed.”

  Benjamin said it will take a broad-based grassroots movement to force a change in US policy on the war, which is supported even by so-called “progressive Democrats” in Congress.

  “It’s important to gather up our forces and to extend them to get the people in the environmental movement to recognize that this war has only led to production of more dirty energy, giving a green light to the oil and gas and coal and nuclear weapons and power producers,” Benjamin said, adding, “we have to get the environmental movement to work with us to say that this war and all wars are so destructive of the environment and they have to stand with us for peace.”

  The Code Pink founder continued, “We also call on the faith-based movement to say war is immoral, all wars are immoral and they need to come with us and call for a ‘Christmas Truce’ like the one that happened during World War I… We are calling on faith-based leaders around the country to join the Pope, who has said we must get all sides to the table.”

Noam Chomsky

     In her remarks, Stein said the war represented “end-stage capitalism” in which only the elites are benefitting from war --- through arms sales and oil profits – while the vast majority of people around the country and the world are seeing a decline in their quality of life.

  “The chickens have come home to roost back here in the seat of the Empire,” she said. “The chickens have come home to roost in the struggles of the poor and the working poor who are growing by the millions in the US and around the world. Hundreds have joined the ranks of the billionaire class while hundreds of millions have joined the ranks of poverty.

  “So the system just doesn’t last,” Stein said. “And we’re all in the crossfire – not just the people of Ukraine who are being set up to the last person, man, woman and child --- their lives are being expended --- we are all part of this vast exercise of unaccountable and abusive power on the part of economic elites. We are saying no more. The buck stops,” she said.

  The 2016 presidential candidate said there is a disconnect between how members of Congress see the nation’s priorities and how regular people see them. She said that Gallup polls indicate that economic priorities --- such as inflation and cost-of-living issues relating to housing and healthcare are at the top of the list of concerns cited by working people.

  Stein said “70,000 people in the United States are dying for lack of health insurance every year and housing is an acute crisis with 11 million people facing eviction.” But Congress is not targeting funding to deal with these problems.

“If you look at Congress it’s very clear and explicit that it’s funding for a new generation of nuclear weapons and more tanks for Ukraine and armaments that is their number one priority,” she said.

  Santos said about the panel discussion, “This is not “a one-off event. This the beginning of a movement to fully challenge NATO and US imperialism.”

  A series of actions and anti-war protests are planned for January, he said.

    

 

 

 

Protests target Ukraine War

By Reginald Johnson 

    Peace activists will take to the streets in the coming days to demand that the Biden administration pursue a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukraine and avert a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

 The United National Anti-war Coalition said more than 40 actions will take place around the country from Oct. 15-21 as  part of a campaign to bring about a cease-fire in Ukraine and end the war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives so far.

 In Connecticut, a protest against the war will take in Middletown on Saturday, October 22. The demonstration will be held at the corner of Main and Washington Streets and run from 12 noon to 2 pm.

  The possibility of the war going nuclear has been growing as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said his nation might be forced at a certain point to use nuclear weapons and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has suggested bluntly that the West should fire nuclear missiles at Russia right now.

  A flier announcing the Middletown protest quotes President Biden’s recent comment that for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, “we have a direct threat of the use of nuclear weapon...there is no ability to use a tactical weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

  But the flier notes, “Yet the US government intends to prolong the war in Ukraine as long as it takes to weaken and ultimately destroy Russia, a country with thousands of nuclear weapons. This is madness!”

  The Middletown action is sponsored by the Connecticut Peace and Solidarity Coalition and the Greater New Haven Peace Council, among others.

  For further information contact Steve in Middletown at  Skrevisky@mxcc.commnet.edu; Alex in Hartford at koskinasa175@gmail.com; or Henry in New Haven at grnhpeacecouncil@gmail.com.

 

 

 

Protestors to Trump: Hands Off Venezuela!

      

 By Reginald Johnson

    

   NEW HAVEN ---- As tensions mount between the United States and Venezuela and a military conflict grows more likely, people rallied around the country last Saturday to  protest President Trump’s threats against the Latin American country.

    One of those rallies took place in New Haven, where about 25 people gathered in chilly temperatures at the corner of Church and Elm streets downtown to protest US policy and demand that their elected representatives stand and be counted.

  Pres. Trump said in response to a question about  possible US military intervention that “all options are on the table” for the United States to achieve its goal of replacing the government of President Nicholas Maduro and install the pro-American Juan Guaido.            .

   Several speakers said that the US needs to keep its hands off Venezuela and respect its sovereignty. They charged that the main reason that the US wants Maduro to step down is because the US wants a more pliable government in Caracas so US corporations can gain control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

   “What is the problem with Venezuela?  It’s just that they decided to be independent from the United States and that is the only thing they are guilty of,” said John Lugo, of Unidad Latina en Accion in Connecticut.

 Lugo also said that “The money that is being spent on Venezuela by the US is money that could be used in this country --- we have a homeless crisis, we have a food crisis in the United States and yet we keep invading and destabilizing countries like Venezuela.”

   Jim Pandaru, a Vietnam veteran, said his experience taught him how wrong war is. “Venezuela.  What’s it going to be tomorrow? Iran? …. We have to stop this madness.”

  Henry Lowendorf, co-chair of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, which sponsored the rally, asked people to sign a petition demanding that US Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3,  speak out against Trump’s harrassment of Venezuela  and support and co-sponsor legislation which would block the US from using its military in that country.

  “We are asking her to speak out because she has been silent as most representatives in Congress have been about Trump’s threats to invade  Venezuela; she has been silent about the deadly sanctions against Venezuela; and she has been silent about the coup,” he said.

  Lowendorf also suggested that people who live in other districts in Connecticut get their congress members to support the legislation, which has been introduced  by U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island.

   At the end of the speeches, the group marched over to DeLauro’s office at 59 Elm Street, chanting  “Stop the War on Venezuela!” Stop the War on Venezuela!”

   DeLauro’s office was closed, but the group said they will be back and present the petitions on Monday.

    Lowendorf said he worries that the United States will create some incident to serve as a justification for intervening in Venezuela.

   “They’re trying to provoke something they can use,” he said.

Reclaiming Armistice Day

    

By Reginald Johnson

                                         

 On Nov. 11, 1918 ---- 100 years ago ---- one of the most savage conflicts in history came to an end.

 Some 30 million people were killed in World War I, called at the time the “War to End All Wars.”  The conflict saw bitter trench warfare, hand-to-hand combat and the use of chemical weapons. Tens of thousands of young men were killed in a single day by machine gun fire or poison gas. Combatants who weren’t killed were often maimed for life, or, like my grandfather, left blind by gas.

  But an Armistice signed at 11 am on Nov. 11, finally brought an end to the horror.

People in the United States and Europe --- where the war was fought --- rejoiced that the four-year nightmare was over.  Peace was finally at hand.

    To observe the end to World War I, an “Armistice Day” was set up in 1920. Parades and public gatherings took place “celebrating the peace that came two years earlier while solemnly remembering those millions who perished during war,” writes Tarik Kauff, a member of Veterans for Peace and an editor for the organization’s newsletter.

   Six years later, Kauff said, Congress passed a resolution which said that the “recurring anniversary of November 11, 1918 should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace between nations.”

  In 1938, Armistice Day was made into a legal federal holiday, “dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

  Armistice Day was observed without interruption until 1954.  But in that year --- one year after the Korean War had ended and eight years after the end of World War II --- political leaders decided that the name of the observance should be changed to Veterans Day.  Under pressure from veterans service organizations, who said veterans from all wars should be honored,  a militaristic Congress and President Dwight Eisenhower approved the name change.

   In making the change, the spirit of the observance was altered from one of both honoring the sacrifice of veterans and building world peace to one of honoring veterans, emphasizing patriotism and implicitly endorsing the need for the wars that the US has fought in the past and ones that will be fought in the future.

  As Kauff wrote in his article “Reclaim Armistice Day” in a recent publication by the same name published by Veterans for Peace, the “powers that be thought it more fitting to honor the living veterans and glorify their sacrifice for country,” rather than stress the need for building world peace.

    And so it has gone over the years on every Veterans Day, which is being observed again today. Veterans who fought in America’s wars are hailed as heroes in thunderous speeches. There is no mention of the fact that some of these wars, such as Vietnam or Iraq, were clearly wrong and that huge numbers of innocent civilians, not to mention many Americans, needlessly perished. It is implied that whatever wars took place --- no matter how much bloodshed there was --- the conflicts were justified in the name of protecting American security. There is no talk about the need to avoid future wars and to build a better structure for peace.

   While it is not the intention of many of the participants, Veterans Day observances serve as a propaganda tool for the government to justify future wars.

  A number of veterans, particularly those associated with Veterans for Peace, are now speaking out about the need to emphasize peace and not just glorify the military and war.  Veterans for Peace in recent years has been actively pushing the idea of reclaiming Armistice Day and bringing back the original concepts behind the day when we honor the sacrifice of veterans.

   “Veterans, many of whom have seen the futility and inhumanity of war and militarism, do not want wars for empire and profit, nor do we need to be glorified, honored, or put on pedestals for killing or be prepared to kill,” writes Kauff, a former Army paratrooper.

  “What we veterans really need is for society to reclaim the spirit of Armistice Day and unite in the common desire of the human spirit for peace,” he said.

  The organization is trying to spread the word for bringing back Armistice Day on social media and contacting elected representatives. They have also urged churches, schools and community centers to ring bells eleven times on November 11 at 11 AM to remember the soldiers and civilians killed or injured by warfare.