Tidbits - Sept. 27, 2018 - Reader Comments: Rape, Sexual Assault, Power, Kavanaugh; 2018 elections; Climate Change; Healthcare; Police Crimes; Hiroshima; Folk music Announcements; and more.....
Re: #WhyIDidntReport: Sexual Assault Victims React to Trump's Attack on Ford (Carmen Sola)
Re: We Didn't Call it Rape (Geri Rhodes)
Don't Scream -- cartoon by Mike Peters
Hypothetical Judge -- cartoon by Raging Pencils
Re: If Republicans Wanted the Truth, They Would Subpoena Mark Judge (Misty Lizarrag)
Re: Death of a Torturer (Rob Prince; Judyth Hollub)
Re: Grassroots Uprising in Amish Country Begins to Find Meaning in Politics (Peter Hogness)
Re: Progressives Need a Clear Strategy for 2020 and Beyond-Here Are 5 Guidelines (Ken Roseman)
Re: Julia Salazar Overcomes Controversy to Notch Another Victory for Democratic Socialists; New York Politics Changed (Michael Arney)
Re: American Socialism, Then and Now -Part One (Wendi Galczik)
Re: US Isolated: Europe’s Big 3, plus China & Russia Outmaneuver Trump to keep Iran Deal at UN (Dale Jacobson; Howie Leveton; Miriam Thompson)
Re: Shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Is a Disaster for Paleontology (Dan Jordan)
Re: Ex-UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Says US Healthcare System is 'Morally Wrong' (Fred Ryan; Richard Loschinkohl; Sandy Ruiz; Aida Rivera)
Re: Labor’s Right to Strike is Essential (Domingo Soto)
Re: You Can Be Fired for Not Showing Up to Work During a Hurricane (Jeff Varner)
Re: A ToolKit for Evaluating Your Cities Police Policies (Michael Novick)
Re: Discovery of Galileo's Long-Lost Letter Shows He Edited His Heretical Ideas to Fool the Inquisition (Ron G. Davis)
Re: Behind the Attack on Corbyn - Criticism of Israel Now Defined as Anti-Semitism (Stan Nadel)
Housing Crisis #YesOn10 - How You Can Take Action in California (Committee to Save Our Neighborhoods)
Planting for Peace: Hiroshima Ginkgo Bilobas Take Root in Westmount, Montreal (T'Cha Dunlevy - Montreal Gazette)
We've Been Here Before - Poster of the Week (Kate DeCiccio - Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
Announcements:
Energy from Unlikely Sources: Opportunities For New Organizing - New York - October 12 (CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies)
Music, Rebellion, Repression - New York - October 17 (Marxist Education Project)
Re: #WhyIDidntReport: Sexual Assault Victims React to Trump's Attack on Ford
If we always thought there was a war on women, now it has gotten worse . We made strides for years, then along comes Trump and his cronies. They are pushing us back things are going down fast.
Carmen Sola
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
I first heard of the "lineup" when it was called the train."
It didn't just happen in elite schools.
Geri Rhodes
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Don't Scream -- cartoon by Mike Peters
Mike Peters
September 18, 2018
Grimmy.com
[Mike Peters has been interested in cartooning, and particularly political cartooning, since childhood. Born October 9, 1943, Mike was educated in his birthplace of St. Louis, MO, where he graduated from Christian Brothers College High School in 1961. In 1965 he was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University and immediately began his career on the art staff of the Chicago Daily News. The following year he began two years of service with the U.S. Army as an artist for the Seventh Psychological Operations Group in Okinawa. After Vietnam, his mentor, the renowned W.W. II artist Bill Mauldin, helped him find a cartooning position on the Dayton Daily News in 1969. That was the beginning. In 1972, his editorial cartoons became syndicated nationally. In 1981 Mike was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism and in 1984 the award-winning Mother Goose & Grimm comic strip was born -- all with the help of Marian, his wife, best friend and business partner of 35 years.]
Hypothetical Judge -- cartoon by Raging Pencils
Mike Stanfill
September 19, 2018
Raging Pencils
Re: If Republicans Wanted the Truth, They Would Subpoena Mark Judge
Sens. Corker and Flake and Collins and Murkowski might be willing to push for a real investigation if we pressure them
Misty Lizarrag
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Torture techniques learned in Vietnam (taught to American military by French counter-insurgency experts who "perfected" it in Algeria) and applied on people of color in Chicago.
Rob Prince
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Good riddance. Our tax dollars have been paying his pension far too long.
Judyth Hollub
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Grassroots Uprising in Amish Country Begins to Find Meaning in Politics
New Yorkers who'd like to spend a day canvassing for Jess King with Lancaster Stands Up https://business.facebook.com/lancasterstandsup/?hc_location=ufi can join a carpool on October 6, October 20, or November 3. We leave at 7am and get back to NYC around 7pm.
Here's where to sign up to reserve your seat in the carpool:
October 6
October 20
November 3
See the Facebook group Water For Grassroots for details.
Peter Hogness
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Progressives Need a Clear Strategy for 2020 and Beyond-Here Are 5 Guidelines
I fear there is not much time to prevent worst case scenarios, particularly when it comes to preservation of the environment/biosphere. DT, his allies, and enablers must be stopped NOW before they commit any more damage that cannot be undone or reversed.
Ken Roseman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
If I lived in Salazar's district, I would have voted for her, without hesitation. But the "confusion" over her history is baffling and shouldn't be dismissed so flippantly, as the author's clearly do.
The authors make a rather curious statement: "it was hard for anyone in the national press to prove that she had deliberately lied." If she "lied," but not deliberately, what is that? A mistake over one's origins and identity? How does one make a mistake over that?
Why in the world should a candidate say he/she is from somewhere if he/she is not from where (whether "deliberately" or "not deliberately," whatever the hell that means)? I have heard candidates for years boost of their immigrant status, or their parents' immigrant status, or their grandparents' immigrant status-is that really a good reason to vote for them? What if the immigrant politician is worse than his/her opponent who is not an immigrant?
Why say you are from one faith if you really weren't? I don't get that at all. For that matter, shouldn't the Left "deliberately" try like hell to knock faith matters far away from politics? Why should it be part of a "progressive" candidacy? What does that do for atheist or agnostic candidates? Force them to lie, either "deliberately" or "not deliberately"?
Michael Arney
Re: American Socialism, Then and Now (Part One)
Great background stuff for those in the USA who had no idea, that means most of you..I never learned any of this in any US public school...
Wendi Galczik
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: US Isolated: Europe’s Big 3, plus China & Russia Outmaneuver Trump to keep Iran Deal at UN
The rest of the world-- working around the U.S.
Dale Jacobson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Great plan Trump.
Let’s go it alone!
Howie Leveton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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And may be our only chance to stop Trump’s war.
Miriam Thompson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Is a Disaster for Paleontology
I detest, loath, despise, [fill in the blank], Zinke and this Administration for what it is doing to our national monuments. Reprehensible!
Dan Jordan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Ex-UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Says US Healthcare System is 'Morally Wrong'
Thank you for your incredible service.
My comment on the article/interview of the ex-UN chief calling US health care immoral is this:
"Despite astronomical spending on health, millions in the US live entirely outside the health system, uninsured and unable to go to the doctor without incurring hundreds or thousands in debt. Since President Trump was elected, an additional 4 million people have lost health coverage, according to a recent survey by the Commonwealth Fund,"https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2018/first-look-health-insurance-… explains the situation completely if you exchange "Despite" for "Because of".
The complaint becomes the explanation. That's the way more writing should be approached, BTW.
Thanks again.
Fred Ryan
Publisher: West Quebec Post
Gatineau, Quebec
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Nothing new. Ronald Reagan did a propaganda album to tell people about the evils of socialized medicine. Paid to do it by those same powerful interests.
Richard Loschinkohl
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Of course we know...but what can we do...they are the power of the country.
Sandy Ruiz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Prices of life saving medicines in US are incredibly and abusively being raised at astronomical prices and the government DO NOTHING. Who are the only ones benefiting? Foolish who think there is nothing better because there is but propaganda do not let people think straight and our lawmakers thrive on the money they get from the pharmaceuticals industries!
Aida Rivera
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Labor’s Right to Strike is Essential
(posting on Portside Labor)
I support the right for public worker's to strike. Government should respect that right, if not that government becomes a despotic entrepreneur against its workers.
Domingo Soto
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: You Can Be Fired for Not Showing Up to Work During a Hurricane
(posting on Portside Labor)
https://portside.org/2018-09-18/you-can-be-fired-not-showing-work-durin…
In Iowa you can be fired for any reason. They may allow you to get unemployment if it's a bad reason.
Jeff Varner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: A ToolKit for Evaluating Your Cities Police Policies
Regarding the toolkit to evaluate your police, this is a reform-oriented, piecemeal and gradualist approach. It may not speak much to abolitionists or those who seek to delegitimize the fundamentally and systemically racialized inEquality-of-Life policing, enforcing systems of exploitation, that exists today.
The actual "tool", for some reason not given directly in the Portside story. "Reform/transform" is apparently a project or speaking for "Local Progress": Local Progress is the national network for progressive elected officials from cities and counties around the country. Hand-in-hand with community-based organizations and unions committed to advancing a social justice agenda, the elected officials and staff of Local Progress are facilitating genuine "inside/outside" strategy to reforming municipal policy and politics.
From the "how to use" section, the following quote pretty clearly sums up the perspective and the intended audience for the tool kit. Point 2 -- advocating a reliance on the "collection, analysis and citation of data" -- may be especially problematic, given that "data-driven evidence-based" policing is the new buzz word for justifying mass surveillance:
Elected officials must also often play the critical role of making the case as to why policing reforms, like any other area of local improvements, are necessary in their local jurisdictions. Here, elected officials should anchor their arguments in:
1) the demands and experiences of impacted communities and constituents;
2) the collection, analysis, and citation of data (with a particular examination of such data related to marginalized communities); and
3) a reliance on other jurisdictions' experiences and outcomes.
In the context of policing, "evidence" means something else than it does in academic jargon. Evidence in policing is about clues, trace, eyewitness testimony, etc collected in investigating a crime.
But for so-called "evidence-based policing," things are stood on their head, because the term is used to justify "predictive policing," where no crime has taken place.
Instead racially and economically skewed algorithms are used as "evidence" to anticipate or identify certain individuals as likely to commit a crime IN THE FUTURE, or certain neighborhoods or "hot spots" to be the likely scene of a future crime. In regards to which, the killer cop in Dallas, who in an off-duty home invasion, shot Botham Jean dead as he entered his own apartment, had been assigned to the Dallas "hot spot" elite crime "prevention" team.
Let me cite some recent experiences in CA regarding the actual role of elected officials on these issues. They transformed a movement-initiated effort to eliminate cash bail into a "preventive detention" bill based on these same skewed algorithms. It eliminates due process and the presumption of innocence in the decision about "pre-trial" release. "Pre-trial" is a misnomer, since something over 95% of criminal prosecutions in CA are decided WITHOUT a trial, via plea bargaining, for which "pre-trial" detention is the state's main cudgel (along with piling on charges and 'strikes'). The elected mayor of L.A., with presidential stars in his eyes, has been playing musical chairs with people on the police commission, as they fail to pacify the families who have lost loved one to police killings and deaths in custody. He also appointed an actual killer cop as the new police chief. The elected D.A. (a Black woman) has not indicted a single cop for a killing, although law enforcement in the county have been responsible for over 400 deaths during her 5-year tenure, even though some (few) of them were actually found "out of policy" by the rubber-stamp police commission.
Michael Novick
The author of the article missed the interesting play by Brecht which describes as accurately as we can tell that Galileo wrote the discorci while under house arrest and sent it secretly off to the Netherlands to be published He deceived the Church - but he also recanted and the substantive matter is outline in Brecht's play how to advance science for people at the same time avoid the repression by the Church or any Church and or reactionary governments that repress both exposes, ideas that contradict, and whistleblowers that provide evidence..
Read: "The Life of Galileo" by Bertolt Brecht
Ron G. Davis
Re: Behind the Attack on Corbyn - Criticism of Israel Now Defined as Anti-Semitism
"in a recent tweet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Corbyn of honoring Palestinians who took part in the attack on Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics."
Give us a break with this crap. There are photos of Corbyn placing a wreath on their grave so it isn't just an accusation by Netanyahu. Of course Corbyn's and the let's enemies have jumped at the chance to use this against Corbyn and the left, but there are too many cases where the statements emanating from Labour and Momentum people have clearly been about Jews and had absolutely no connection to Israel or Zionism so the repeated denial of any Antisemitism by Corbyn's supporters is simply not credible.
If the same statements had come from Tories or UKIPs the deniers here would have no doubt that it involved Antisemitism. This denial is about choosing sides and not about truth. There has always been an Antisemitic current on the left, just as there have been left wing racists. When Bebel said "Antisemitism is the socialism of fools" he was criticizing leftists, not Antisemites in general. As anti-racists and opponents of bigotry we need to clean our own house if we are to be credible--not engage in protecting Antisemites because they are on our team.
Stan Nadel
Housing Crisis #YesOn10 - How You Can Take Action in California
Amanda speaks proudly of being a productive member of society and of her days as a union member. She is now 69 and retired. She just received a notice raising her rent by nearly $1000 for her small apartment in Glendale where she has lived for 32 years. The new rent exceeds her retirement income. She attended a tenant's rights clinic staffed by the Eviction Defense Network on 9/20/2018 and remains in disbelief that if she does not find a room in a house she will face eviction proceedings. If the rent in LA City goes up an average of 5%, 2000 people join the ranks of the homeless. If Amanda does not find housing she will join the ranks of the homeless.
Please support #YesOn10
Committee to Save Our Neighborhoods
777 S. Figueroa Street, Ste. 4050
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Planting for Peace: Hiroshima Ginkgo Bilobas Take Root in Westmount, Montreal
Representatives of different communities gathered Friday to honour the memory of Hiroshima with a special planting and peace pilgrimage.
By T'Cha Dunlevy
September 21, 2018
Montreal Gazette
Representatives of different communities gathered Friday to honour the memory of Hiroshima with a special planting and peace pilgrimage.
The pouring rain couldn't dampen the spirits of representatives from four different communities who gathered Friday morning, on the International Day of Peace, to honour the memory of Hiroshima with a special planting and peace pilgrimage.
Saplings of a ginkgo biloba tree that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 were planted at Dawson College, Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, Westmount Park United Church and the Unitarian Church of Montreal.
"This is an initiative inspired by (Japan's) Green Legacy Hiroshima project, where the seeds from these trees are sent off to places around the world," said Rev. Neil Whitehouse of Westmount Park United Church.
Montreal was declared a sister city of Hiroshima in 1998. Now, the two cities have one more point of connection, Rev. Whitehouse explained.
"It's moving to appreciate the remarkable story of these trees, that inspired people that life could go on when they were extremely vulnerable and in need of hope. Now we have places to visit for the hope we need in our time to confront the huge challenges for systemic change in the way we live as human beings on the planet."
Rabbi Lisa Grushcow still had her hands dirty from planting one of the fledgling trees outside Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom, the day's second stop.
"It represents both resilience and vulnerability," she said of the project. "And it recognizes that we're all connected - we're all ultimately fragile beings on this fragile earth. At the same time, there's a strength of the human spirit that connects us and helps us work for good. These are big ideas that can sound very trite, but that I think are also deeply true."
[tdunlevy@postmedia.com - twitter.com/TChaDunlevy]
We've Been Here Before - Poster of the Week (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
We've Been Here Before
Kate DeCiccio
Digital Print, 2018
Oakland, CA
Kate DeCiccio did the original portrait of Anita Hill in 2017 when the #MeToo movement exploded, and updated it last week when the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh became public.
In 1991, Anita Hill, an attorney and academic, accused then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Hill was viciously maligned and castigated for daring to speak publicly of her own experience of sexual abuse. Professor Christine Ford is currently being threatened for also speaking out against another Supreme Court nominee. The malicious defamation of Professor Hill, and the escalating aspersions against Professor Ford, send a dangerous message to any woman who might contemplate a sexual harassment complaint.
And if anyone still believes that Joe Biden played a progressive role in the Clarence Thomas hearings, please watch the 2013 documentary "Anita."
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 103
Culver City, CA 90230
310-397-3100
admin@politicalgraphics.org
www.politicalgraphics.org
Energy from Unlikely Sources: Opportunities For New Organizing - New York - October 12
For more than a quarter century, workers and the U.S. labor movement have sustained significant setbacks, including the broad expansion of “right-to-work” conditions; the increasing use by employers of vehicles that enable them to shirk standard employer responsibilities; and the Supreme Court’s tendency to prioritize employers’ property rights over worker rights. Despite these trends, 61 percent of Americans view unions favorably; organizing and unionization among young workers is surging, with three-quarters of new union members in 2017 being under 35 years old; and 2018 saw the largest wildcat strikes in decades, with teacher walkouts in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona challenging wage stagnation and school funding cutbacks. What does this imply about the possibilities and struggles ahead for labor? Which strategic options would enable organized labor to succeed at mass organizing and to join forces with racial and economic justice organizations to become a movement?
Energy From Unlikely Sources: Opportunities for New Organizing
Friday, October 12th
8:30-10:30AM
CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
25 W. 43rd Street, 18th Floor
New York, NY 10036
Speakers Include:
- Lauren Jacobs, Executive Director, The Partnership for Working Families
- Marilyn Sneiderman, Executive Director, Center for Innovation in Worker Organization, Rutgers University
- Larry Cohen, Chair, Board of Directors, Our Revolution; former president of Communications Workers of America (CWA)
- Maritza Silva-Farrell, Executive Director, The Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN)
- Moderated by: Penny Lewis, Professor, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
Murphy Institute, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
25 W 43rd St, 19 Fl
New York, NY 10036
Music, Rebellion, Repression - New York - October 17
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 7 PM - 9 PM
The Peoples Forum
320 West 37th Street
New York City
Two authors and a DJ
"Folksingers and the FBI" by Aaron Leonard
Some of the most prominent folk singers of the 20th Century, Woody Guthrie, `Sis Cunningham, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, etc., were also political activists with various associations with the American Communist Party. As a consequence the FBI, kept meticulous files running many thousands of pages on them. Using music, video selections, news clippings, and records from extensive Freedom of Information Act filings - including never before released material - this presentation will bring to life these artists and the systematic way
"The Explosion of Deferred Dreams" by Mat Callahan
The book's impassioned arguments both expose and reframe the political and social context for the San Francisco Sound and the vibrant subcultural uprisings with which it is associated. Using dozens of original interviews, primary sources, and personal experiences, Callahan shows how the intense interplay of artistic and political movements put San Francisco, briefly, in the forefront of a worldwide revolutionary upsurge. A must-read for anyone who "was there" (or longed to have been).
with DJ Dennis O'Neil
MAT CALLAHAN is a musician and author. Most recently he re-published Songs of Freedom by James Connolly and launched the Songs of Slavery and Emancipation project. He is the author of five books including in 2017 The Explosion of Deferred Dreams and A Critical Guide to Intellectual Property. Callahan resides in Bern Switzerland.
AARON LEONARD is author of Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists, and A Threat of the First Magnitude-FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration: From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union. A regular contributor to Truthout and HNN.us, he lives in Los Angeles.
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