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“If You’ve Got Dough, You Don’t Have to Go”

Episode 4 – Doubt

The Vietnam War

Directed by Ken Burn and Lyn Novick

Film Review

Maori TV showed Episode 4 of the Vietnam War series this week. 1966, Lyndon Johnson’s second year in office, saw a massive escalation of US forces in Vietnam – increasing from 200,000 in January to 500,000 in June 1967. Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and South Korea also sent troops to serve in Vietnam. Because both Australia and New Zealand had compulsory conscription until the early 1970s, there was a sizeable anti-Vietnam War movement in both countries.

The UK and Europe, in contrast, opposed the Vietnam War and called for the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Johnson also substantially escalated bombing campaigns against North Korea, Laos and Cambodia (the North Vietnamese used a network of jungle roads in Laos and Cambodia to transport arms and personnel to South Vietnam). North Vietnamese civilians, most of them women, worked day and night restoring the so-called “Ho Chi Minh trail following US bombing raids.

Because the US was incapable of gaining territory in Vietnam, it used body counts to measure its success. The latter frequently included civilians and were always exaggerated. The US goal was to reach a “crossover point” – where the US killed more North Vietnamese soldiers than North Vietnam could replace. This never happened.

In May 1966, the US puppet government in South Vietnam nearly collapsed owing to mass demonstrations in Saigon demanding representative democracy and a negotiated settlement to the war.

As US forces swelled in Vietnam, the Pentagon was forced to begin drafting college students, which massively fueled the antiwar movement. It was common for well-to-do families (like the Bushes) to arrange deferments tor their kids. As the saying went, “If you’ve got dough, you don’t have to go.”

In Vietnam, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, a disproportionate number of draftees and casualties were African American.

Trump’s Trade War – or De-Globalization?

By Peter Koenig

President Trump’s bold ‘protectionist’ move of introducing import duties of 25% and 10% for steel and aluminum, respectively – and possibly more to come – may be more than just ‘populism’ and fulfilling a campaign promise. And why is the term ‘populism’ always used with a derogative slant? As if it was way below the intellect of those who deride it as addressing the thoughtless and primitive behavior by the people? Aren’t politicians supposed to work for the people? Educate them with the truth instead of ridiculing them; giving them real news instead of ‘fake news’ – and giving them jobs and decent livelihood? – Is that addressing “populism”?

President Trump, or whoever directs him, may have noticed the steady decline of the American economy into a hollow war and service machine, with rising unemployment at the tune of more than 20% (though the fake statistics pretend otherwise, putting it below 5%); a country gradually choking on junk consumption, anti-Russia propaganda and a rapidly deterioration physical infrastructure and civil society.

This unexpected protectionist decision may also be a genuine move against globalization – which, as we know, is controlled by neoliberal economics and has in fact nothing to do with real economics. It is sheer criminalizing of economics. It has done enormous harm to the 99.9 % and benefitted only the 0.1% (or less). “Make America Great Again” is supposed to address this fallacy. Bring production and jobs back, primarily for the domestic market and second only, for international trade, for trade that doesn’t harm the local economy. This is a recipe which would also suit many European countries – Greece is a case in point, but Spain, Italy, Ireland and even France would fall into the same category. “Local production for local markets” is indeed the model that helped rescuing the US from the depression of the 30’s and Europe, in particular Germany, after WWII.

The so-called Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and multi country Trade Agreements like, NAFTA, TTIP, and TPP – the former being renegotiated and the latter two suspended – are quite different from “local production for local markets”. They all, without fault, favor US corporations’ maximizing profit objective, but not the United States local economy. Insofar Trump is right, when he says that all these trade deals have been bad for its countries. They were and are a bonanza for US corporations, but indeed bad for the US national economy, because they are incentives for more and more outsourcing of production and services into low labor cost countries.

By granting corporations tax breaks and incentives to invest at home rather than in low-wage countries, and by levying import duties, President Trump is taking a decisive step – maybe willy-nilly – to rehabilitate a faltering US economy. Will it work? It might. It’s too early to say. Economics is no precise science, but rather the result of the dynamic interaction between different at times unpredictable elements. True economics are certainly not based on a set of blueprints; they are not black and white, as neoliberal theories would like us to believe. Real economics do not fit today’s most popular teachings of ‘modelling’ – a complex linear approach of algorithm which produces desired results for propagating neoliberal ideas – that depart from reality by a long shot. The fact of reestablishing trust in local labor, may have power way beyond that of capital investments.

Trump capitalizes on this momentum and, simultaneously, may set a signal for the rest of the world to follow – and for the end of globalization. Interestingly, he said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in January this year, that all the American partner countries should think, “Make my country great again”. Isn’t this a slap in the face of globalization?

Of course, there will be noises of ‘retaliation’ by Europe, China, Japan – so what? – Steps of retaliation may actually trigger a political rethinking of globalized WTO propagated trade. It may reveal who are the winners and losers.

It may have taken 30 years to realize that the winners are an ever-smaller corporate elite, while the bedrock of national economies, local labor, is the big loser. That is precisely the direction into which the neofascist West is moving – towards selling the national economy out to corporate profits. The people are understandably unhappy.

The so-called Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and multi country Trade Agreements like, NAFTA, TTIP, and TPP – the former being renegotiated and the latter two suspended – are quite different from “local production for local markets”. They all, without fault, favor US corporations’ maximizing profit objective, but not the United States local economy. Insofar Trump is right, when he says that all these trade deals have been bad for its countries. They were and are a bonanza for US corporations, but indeed bad for the US national economy, because they are incentives for more and more outsourcing of production and services into low labor cost countries.

Today’s economists are in shock, whenever somebody dares questioning the mainstream globalized economic models, depicting a linear right or wrong vision of the world. Remember George Bush – “you are either for us or against us”; the phrase that set the eternal war on terror in motion; the war that brought death to millions, intimidation to hundreds of millions and billions of profits to the war industry.

Yet, we were and are still indoctrinated with the neoliberal norm, which consists of open-border trade, limitless cross-border transfer of capital – but very restricted transfer of labor. And worst of all, today and for the last 100 years, is our (western) dollar-based monetary system (born from the Federal Reserve Act of 1913) that shapes and manipulates the western boom – bust economy. Logic would rather dictate a reverse monetary system, where a nation’s economic output is the basis for its monetary system, not the other way around.

This monetary anomaly has been driven to extremes with the US-dollar’s offspring, the euro, which has zero connection with the European economy, let alone with the economy of each member country. The western monetary system on which international trade is based is a fraud, a mere house of cards, a Ponzi scheme, the collapse of which is inevitable. . .

Environmental Racism: Black Americans Three Times More Likely to Die from Pollution

Without a touch of irony, the EPA celebrated Black History Month by publishing a report that finds black communities face dangerously high levels of pollution. African Americans are more likely to live near landfills and industrial plants that pollute water and air and erode quality of life. Because of this, more than half of the 9 million people living near hazardous waste sites are people of color, and black Americans are three times more likely to die from exposure to air pollutants than their white counterparts. . .

 

via Environmental racism has left black Americans three times more likely to die from pollution — Quartz

Hey Google, Who Should the US Government Kill Today?

ZeroHedge · by Billy the Poet – Thu, 03/08/2018 – 02:00

Authored by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org,

Only months after it was disclosed that the Pentagon was using artificial intelligence (AI) to hunt for terrorists, officials have now acknowledged that Google has been collaborating with the Department of Defense to use AI in analyzing drone footage. The disclosure comes amid an uproar among Google employees who aren’t happy to be assisting in the development of military applications.

While Google has had controversial contracts with the government before — most notably with the NSA — this is its “pilot” project with Project Maven, which is itself the Pentagon’s own flagship weaponized AI program. The purpose of Project Maven is to implement Big Data and machine learning into the U.S. military, which officials say is currently in a new AI arms race with China and Russia. According to information from an internal mailing list, Google will now join this arms race and assist the DoD with storing and analyzing the massive troves of data from aerial drones.

When multiple anonymous Google employees expressed outrage over the disclosure, as Gizmodo first reported, a company spokesman issued the following statement:

“We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions. This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense, to provide open source TensorFlow APIs that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data,”the spokesperson said. “The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only. Military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns. We’re actively discussing this important topic internally and with others as we continue to develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine learning technologies.”

Google’s military contract with the DoD has thus far shielded its collaboration with Project Maven by housing it in ECS Federal, a North Virginia technology staffing company. Their specific tasks have included gathering data from a fleet of 1,100 drones to help the Pentagon better identify terrorists. Google’s deep learning algorithms can help in object identification, differentiating people from vehicles in order to maximize the effects of military strikes against ISIS.

Flirtations between Silicon Valley and the government have gone on for a while in the age of privatized surveillance during the War on Terror. However, this may be the first time a tech giant like Google, which also wields inordinate control over online information, has been openly integrated into military operations.

via Hey Google! Who Should The US Government Kill Today?

2018 Fracking Report: Increased Risks of Asthma, Birth Defects and Cancer

2018 Fracking Report details Increased Risks of Asthma, Birth Defects and Cancer

The 2018 edition of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking updates the rapidly expanding evidence indicating harm to health from fracking and methane infrastructure.

The most authoritative study of its kind reveals how hydraulic fracturing is contaminating the air and water – and imperiling the health of millions.

Conclusion

All together, findings to date from scientific, medical, and journalistic investigations combine to demonstrate that fracking poses significant threats to air, water, health, public safety, climate stability, seismic stability, community cohesion, and long-term economic vitality. Emerging data from a rapidly expanding body of evidence continue to reveal a plethora of recurring problems and harms that cannot be sufficiently averted through regulatory frameworks. There is no evidence that fracking can operate without threatening public health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which public health depends. . .

via How Fracking is Contaminating our Air and Water, and Imperiling the Health of Millions — DES Daughter Network

Google’s alliance with the military: The ruling class responds to social unrest in America

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By Andre Damon

wsws.org

Last week, Google confirmed that it has provided artificial intelligence software to assist the United States military and intelligence apparatus in analyzing data as part of its drone war and assassination program in the Middle East and beyond.The website Gizmodo, which first broke the story, reported that the military program using Google is called Project Maven. A military report announcing the project last year said it “focuses on computer vision—an aspect of machine learning and deep learning—that autonomously extracts objects of interest from moving or still imagery.”

Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, identified as the “chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Operations Directorate-Warfare Support,” said at the time that the US is “in an AI arms race,” and noted that “Eric Schmidt [executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet] is calling Google an AI company.”

The revelations directly implicate Google in the criminal activities of the US government all over the world. They also further expose the intimate relationship between the giant internet and telecommunications companies and the repressive apparatus of the state.

A revolving door has been established between the workforces of the technology monopolies and military and intelligence agencies. At a hearing in January, a spokesman for Facebook bragged that, in doubling its army of censors, which will hit 20,000 at the end of this year, the company is prioritizing hiring “former intelligence and law-enforcement officials” who had previously “worked in the area of counterterrorism.”

Schmidt himself has become an advisor to the Pentagon and the chair of its Defense Innovation Advisory Board. A private/military joint partnership called the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) has been established just minutes from Google’s main headquarters.

These developments have the most far-reaching and sinister implications for democratic rights within the United States. Imperialist war and domestic repression are two sides of the same ruling class policy.

Over the course of the past two years, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies, in close coordination with the government, have moved extremely rapidly to censor content online through the manipulation of search results and news feeds. Carried out within the CIA-Democratic Party’s campaign over “fake news” and “Russian meddling,” the purpose of these measures is to silence, suppress and criminalize domestic opposition.

Google’s chief honcho, corporate fascist Eric Schmidt, 11 times a billionaire, at home with a regime that screws the ordinary people. What do guys like these care, anyway? One of the problems of allowing a society to create such disparities in wealth and power, inevitable in a plutocracy like the US. is that these people live in a bubble of privilege that rejects reality.Google’s censorship of its search algorithms, first unveiled last April, was followed by alterations in Facebook’s news feed to promote “trusted” news outlets—such as the New York Times—over independent news organizations that advance “alternative viewpoints.” More aggressive measures are being planned and implemented.

The World Socialist Web Site has been a principal target of a campaign that has affected a wide array of left-wing, anti-war and progressive web sites.

The corporate and financial elite is terrified of the growth of working class struggle, which poses the greatest threat to its drive to control the world and its preparations for a global conflict with large powers, including Russia and China.

This mortal threat is evident in the spreading wave of social unrest in the United States, which is beginning to break free of the institutions of the capitalist state—including the trade unions. The strike by West Virginia teachers, which took the form of an incipient rebellion against the unions, has been followed by demands for strike action from teachers and other sections of the working class throughout the country.

Social media is playing a critical role in allowing workers to communicate with each other within the United States and beyond its borders. The corporate media is taking note. The New York Times commented worriedly earlier this week that “West Virginia teachers found ways to organize and act outside the usual parameters of traditional unionism. Teachers and service workers across the state aired their frustrations in an enormous Facebook group.”

The Los Angeles Times warned of “social media’s influence on the labor unrest,” pointing to the fact that teachers throughout the country, from West Virginia to Oklahoma, were using Facebook to coordinate their struggles. . .

 

Source: Google’s alliance with the military: The ruling class responds to social unrest in America

Young Republicans: GOP is Losing us Over Climate Change

As the Republican Party struggles to find its footing with the next generation of voters, several conservative college groups have banded together to champion something anathema to the party: a carbon tax.

Climate Denial Crock of the Week

CNBC:

The Republican Party is alienating an entire generation of young conservative voters by continuing to downplay climate science and sidestep solutions.

Among the many internal battles over the heart and soul of the GOP, the most overlooked yet consequential may center on energy and environmental policy. Here, party leaders risk driving away the millennial generation that is the future of both parties, and already the largest voting bloc.

As the presidents of the College Republican groups at Harvard and Yale, we have witnessed this play out on our campuses, where climate change and clean energy have become defining issues that often stymie our recruitment efforts. Environmental issues significantly influence the voting patterns of most millennials, and polling indicatesthat nearly three-quarters of young conservatives support addressing climate change. It should come as little surprise, then, that 23 percent of Republicans under 30 switched to the Democratic Party in the…

View original post 1,188 more words

Syria Finds Chemical Weapons Workshop in Ghouta

According to Press TV, the Syrian military has found a workshop used by foreign-backed militants to make chemical weapons, Russian media say.

The workshop was discovered in a recently-liberated area in Eastern Ghouta where Syrian troops are fighting foreign-backed extremists and Takfiri terrorists, Russian news agencies reported Monday, citing a field commander.

The militants holed up in Eastern Ghouta have been raining rockets on the Syrian capital, killing and injuring many civilians over the past weeks.

Most recently, the official Syrian Arab News Agency said terrorists based in the area had attacked the capital’s al-Kabbas neighborhood with rockets, killing two civilians.

The US and its western and regional allies have often pointed their fingers at the Syrian government for chemical attacks, which Damascus has consistently denied.

The US, along with Britain and France, has threatened military action against the Syrian government if allegations of chemical attacks are proven.

On Sunday, though, US Defense Secretary James Mattis repeated Washington and its allies’ allegations against the Syrian government, warning that it would be “very unwise” for it to use chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta and elsewhere.

Syria surrendered its chemical stockpiles in 2014 under the supervision of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The discovery of the workshop is yet another revelation in a prolonged debate on who used chemical weapons in Syria. . .

Source: Syria Chemical Factory Ghouta

Gun Control and the True Historic Purpose of the Second Amendment

[image error] Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz

City Lights (2018)

Book Review

According to Dunbar-Ortiz, the main function of the Second Amendment, is to enshrine the voluntary militias used by white settlers to dispossess Native Americans of their land and compulsory slave patrols to hunt down and capture runaway slaves.

She disagrees with gun control advocates on many fronts:

First she disagrees that the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” relates only to their use in a “well-regulated militia.” She maintains that it clearly refers to an individual right, like the other guarantees in the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment is modeled on various state constitutions (which were already in effect) that guarantee gun possession as an individual right. Moreover the right to form state militias is already covered in Article 1 of the Constitution.

Second citing other countries like Switzerland and Canada (which rarely experience gun violence) with few or no gun control laws, she disagrees that more gun control laws will reduce gun violence in the US.

Third she disputes Democratic Party claims that blames opposition to gun control on NRA lobbying. Noting that American gun culture precedes the NRA by more than a century, she argues the organization spends far less on lobbying than Big Oil or Big Pharma.

Dunbar-Ortiz contends that US gun culture is deeply rooted in the racist, white nationalist, God-ordained nature of the virulent capitalism sanctified by the US Constitution. She reminds us of the real issue that triggered the Revolutionary War: namely the British ban on illegal settlement on unceded Indian land west of the Appalachians. George Washington and our other founding fathers derived most of their wealth from illegal surveying and speculation in Native land.

Thus when the US finally won independence in 1791, a massive escalation of “savage war” was unleashed against the indigenous nations that had civilized North America. “Savage war,” aka “irregular warfare,” refers to deliberate violence directed against women, children and the elderly, along with the infrastructure that supports their survival. Although the US government gives lip service to the Geneva Convention, which prohibits acts of war against civilians, their wars have always mercilessly targeted civilians. Prime examples are the 1846 Mexican-American War, the war against Cuba (1898-1900) and the Philippines (1898-1948) and numerous undeclared wars of the 20th century (the Korean War, Vietnam War, Central American War (1981-89), Afghan War, Iraq War, Libya War, Syria War, etc)

The most surprising part of the book is the introduction, in which Dunbar-Ortiz describes becoming a gun owner and joining the NRA when an activist group she belonged to was spied on and stalked by police and intelligence operatives.

Putin Calls for Investigation into Civilian Air Strikes in Syria

RT | March 10, 2018

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said there should be an investigation into the massive airstrikes on residential areas in Syria’s Raqqa. Putin pointed out that the dead are still unburied and corpses are lying in the ruins.

“As for crimes, go back to Raqqa and at least bury the dead bodies, which are still lying amid the ruins after the air strikes on residential neighborhoods – and investigate these attacks,” the Russian leader said as he sat down for an “at times combative” interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly. Putin also raised the point that the battle for Iraq’s Mosul involving the US-led forces left the city “razed to the ground.”

The interview heated up when the two were speaking about Syria, when the anchor asked about alleged chemical attacks, for which the West blames the Syrian government. Those claims were rebuffed as “fake news” by the Russian leader. Putin stressed that Damascus destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons long ago, and the militants aimed “to simulate chemical attacks” which were then blamed on the Syrian army.

“All the attempts that have been made repeatedly in the recent past, and all the accusations were used to consolidate the efforts against Assad,” Putin told the journalist. As Kelly continued to ask about alleged chemical attacks that led to civilian deaths, Putin noted that there had been no thorough investigation into what had happened in Syria.

“Russia is for a full-scale investigation. If you do not know this, I am telling you this now. It is not true that we are against an objective investigation. That is a lie.”

via Putin calls for investigation into strikes on civilians in Syria