Tidbits – Jan.2 – Reader Comments: MAGA Divide – Round One to the Plutocracy; GOP Plan To Dismantle Pro-Palestinian Movement; Chanukah Is Choice Between Life and Death; Resource – World-Changing Impact of Vaccines; Cartoons; and More…

Reader Comments: MAGA Divide - Round One to The Plutocracy; GOP Plan To Dismantle Pro-Palestinian Movement; Chanukah Is Choice Between Life and Death; Resource - World-Changing Impact Of Vaccines; Cartoons; and more....

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, AND cartoons - Jan.2, 2025,Portside

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If You're Going to Talk About Bad Presidents...  --  Cartoon by Clay Jones
 

Clay Jones
December 31, 2024
Claytoonz

 

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Re: MAGA Civil War Erupts
 

A war between High Tech Corporate leaders and the anti-immigrant MAGA base.

Jose Luis Medina
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: The Plutocracy Wins Another Round Against MAGA Nation
 

Elon Musk emerged victorious in Trumpworld’s first fight over foreign-born tech workers. But underneath Laura Loomer’s hateful rhetoric lies a legitimate concern.

Mary-Alice Strom
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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More infighting please.

Arthur Weil
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: How a US President and JP Morgan Made Panama and Turned It Into a Tax Haven
 

In 1903 the US bullied Colombia into giving up the province that became Panama. The plan was to create a nation to serve the interests of Wall Street

Sancocho Nuyorquino
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Think Biden’s Unpopular? Check Out His Fellow Leaders.
 

If floundering leaders and ineffectual democracies are the new norm, we’re in a very dangerous time. 

Silvia Brandon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Returns  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Nick Anderson

 

Trump isn't even president yet, and democracy is already under threat. Trump is undermining the First Amendment with his frivolous suits against media companies, and it's working. ABC quickly caved quickly. Jeff Bezos caved preemptively. And more suits are coming. Just wait until he weaponizes the Justice Department and FCC.

Nick Anderson
December 27, 2024
Counterpoint

 

Re: How Trump and the GOP Plan To Dismantle the U.S. Pro-Palestinian Movement
 

Aggressively anti-Palestinian appointees, who tend to describe all campus protesters as Hamas supporters, will soon steer both foreign and domestic policy, creating a Trump administration united in seeking a crackdown on the pro-Palestinian movement in the U.S. despite any other differences.

Jay Schaffner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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From this article:

"Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was motivated by antisemitism.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the act earlier this year, despite concerns on the left that criticism of Israel would be conflated with antisemitism and on the right that the bill had dramatic implications on freedom of speech."

Also from this article:

"Rep. Brian Mast has been slated to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Trump advocated on his behalf. The Florida congressman has long been considered the U.S. lawmaker most hostile to the Palestinians. He has decried efforts to bolster humanitarian aid for Gaza and dismissed the notion of innocent Palestinian civilians."

Anti-Biden voters in Michigan take note. This is what some of you voted for, and what some of you refused to vote against.

Judyth Hollub
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Share this with those attacked “Genocide Joe” and refused to support Harris. This is what they achieved.

Fred C Schaffner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Chanukah Is a Choice Between Life and Death: Choose Life
 

We need not surrender Chanukah to Zionism’s dark vision. We can reclaim, redeem, and rededicate our tradition. Our forebears celebrated this as a festival of light, and it is upon us to honor them by celebrating it as well. We can celebrate in a way that embodies truth: Just as the rabbis refocused Chanukah more than a millennium ago, we can focus on bringing light into darkness; we can honor the instruction in Deuteronomy, “. . . I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life . . . .”

We can choose life. We can choose to live our lives with light. We can choose – as did the rabbis who wrote the Talmud – to reject narratives that lead us into the shadow of death. We can choose to reject triumphalist but ultimately doomed nationalist/fundamentalist narratives that separate our lives from the lives of others.

We can choose to live Jewish lives joined with Palestinian lives. We can recognize that every Palestinian life is a victory over oppression, is a light that overcomes the darkness of Zionism. When we light the candles of the menorah, we will join our light to Palestinian light.

Mark C. Rosenzweig
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The conflict in the Middle East is complex. Terrorist attacks like October 7th and the terrorists organizations in Gaza who use the civilian population as human shields are despicable, as is the Israeli response, which has little regard for civilian casualties. Because of the unrelenting posts like this one, which oversimplifies the conflict and paints this conflict as good vs. evil (instead of evil vs. evil), the U.S. has Donald Trump as the incoming President. Was the election of this amoral human being really the goal? Literally - the frying pan into the fire.

David Boim
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: 2024 Word of the Year: Genocide (As In, Gaza)
 

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.

Indiana Center for Middle East Peace, Inc.
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Article America’s Health Insurance Grinches
 

This is absolutely the best article I have read on this subject and I had already advised friends and relatives against insuring with Medicare Advantage Plans.  I recognized them immediately as scams without fully knowing all the ins and outs.  When something is too good to be true, it usually is!  Thank you for this article.  I am sharing it, although for many it may be too late.

Velva Spriggs

 

House for Sale  --  Cartoon by Pat Bagley

 

Pat Bagley
December 27, 2024
The Salt Lake Tribune

 

Re: Whistleblower Karen Silkwood’s Urgent Message for Us
 

Karen Silkwood died in 1974 while trying to expose dangerous conditions in her workplace. Her death — and the smear campaign that followed — highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.

Irene Jacobson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Ecuador Hands Over Galapagos Islands To Build U.S. Military Base
 

The decision of the Noboa government to hand over these islands goes against what the Ecuadorian people decided in the referendum to approve the Constitution in 2008 regarding military bases.

Lynn Hamilton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Weaponization of the DOJ  --  Cartoon by John Darkow

 

John Darkow
December 12, 2024
Columbia Missourian

 

Re: Dispatches From the Culture Wars – December 31, 2024

 

image - Dispatches_Dec_31
https://external.fagc3-2.fna.fbcdn.net/emg1/v/t13/11462678459406974521?…

Cold culture wars heating up

Ethan Young
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

This Graphic Shows The Incredible, World-Changing Impact Of Vaccines

 

Leon Farrant, CC BY-NC-ND

The Conversation, June 16, 2015

Lauren F Friedman
April 07, 2014
Business Insider India

Unsubstantiated fear about vaccines has led to increased rates of unvaccinated children in some surprising corners of the United States, like exclusive New York City private schools.

But parents would probably not be so quick to leave their children unvaccinated if they remembered what life was like before vaccines, when hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. - many of them children - died each year from diseases like measles that are now nearly obsolete. Even varicella, better-known as chicken pox, used to be a significant threat.

Graphic designer Leon Farrant used data from the CDC and JAMA to illustrate that the public health importance of vaccines cannot be overstated. Has other medical care improved since the pre-vaccine era? Of course.

But no one who has suffered through measles or mumps would choose illness and the very real risk of death over vaccines, which are an almost perfect solution to some of the greatest health crises humanity has ever known.

 

Arise and Resist: Organizing for Peace and Justice Under Repression  --  Boston  --  January 19  ( Massachusetts Peace Action, Boston Democratic Socialists of America, Northshore for Palestine, Our Revolution Massachusetts, Doctors Against Genocide, Communist Party of Massachusetts, and Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment)

 

Arise and Resist: Organizing for Peace and Justice Under Repression

January 19, 2025, 9:30am – 5:00 pm
Roxbury Community College, Media Arts Center, 1234 Columbus Ave., Boston, MA 02119

Register   

The purpose of this conference is to bring together a mass movement and situate ourselves in our political reality of repression in the US, genocide in Palestine, expanding US-Israeli war in West Asia, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impending US confrontation with China. We must work in alliance with each other to build a society based on solidarity, peace, and justice. Our work here in Massachusetts will be shaped by national and international developments.  We are holding this conference before the inauguration so we can prepare for the crises we will face after January 20.

We aim to take meaningful steps toward creating a vigorous alliance of organizations, unions, houses of worship, and other groups and individuals who pursue peace, protection of the earth, the well-being of working families, gender, sexual and reproductive rights, economic justice, and indigenous sovereignty, and oppose U.S. imperialism, militarism, genocide, racism, and other forms of oppression.

Over the past 15+ months, we have watched a live-streamed holocaust in Gaza, the acceleration of the ethnic cleansing and annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, the decimation of Southern Lebanon, the bombings of Yemeni ports, and the invasion and further occupation of Syria. With the complicity of U.S. cultural, academic, and other public institutions, a frontal assault on our civil liberties has begun: many speaking up against genocide have lost jobs, and university students have been brutalized on campus, suspended, and expelled. In Congress, a pending bill would give the incoming Trump administration the power to arbitrarily revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations, another would crack down on criticism of Israel. The tightly interwoven national security and surveillance programs of the U.S. and Israel used to surveil and exterminate Palestinians are already being deployed against our people at the border or in urban ghettos.

These challenges will intensify once Trump takes office. His top priorities include the mass deportation of up to 11 million immigrants which will require police state methods and concentration camps. The “Muslim ban” is once again on the horizon. Project 2025, once translated into policy, threatens civil liberties, public funding for education, and the rights of sexual and gender minorities. 

Trump’s commitment to the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels presents the climate movement with its greatest challenge yet to reverse the increasingly deadly attacks on life on Earth. The transfer of wealth from the working class to the capitalist oligarchy will accelerate through more tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-wealthy and the slashing of public funding for healthcare, public education, and housing. Attacks on academic freedom and dissenting media will only increase.

These threats call for a more coordinated and strategic anti-war and pro-justice effort. We will likely face more overt repression than in most of our lifetimes. Yet this new landscape presents new openings and opportunities to build a more effective and lasting movement to create the world we envision. This is our moment to redouble our commitment to solidarity and defend ourselves, protect vulnerable groups, reach the disengaged and discouraged and expand our organizing to build broader constituencies and develop flexible strategies needed to survive and succeed. We must seize these opportunities together. Now!

On January 19, we will hear from national and local speakers, go deep into issues in breakouts, brainstorm solutions, and peruse literature tables.

The conference will be in person only.   Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action, Boston Democratic Socialists of America, Northshore for Palestine, Our Revolution Massachusetts, Doctors Against Genocide, Communist Party of Massachusetts, and Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment.   Cosponsored by American Friends Service Committee, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine, CD8 for Palestine, Extinction Rebellion Boston, Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution, Jewish Voice for Peace Boston, Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, and Green-Rainbow Party (list in formation).

Massachusetts progressive organizations are invited to sponsor or cosponsor the conference, help plan it, or to set up literature tables; organizations sign up here to do so.

Register   

Speakers:

  • Dr. Lara Jirmanus, press coordinator of the Vote No Preference MA campaign and a leading voice for solidarity with Palestine as well as an innovative health organizer.   A Palestinian/Lebanese-American, she is an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a practicing primary care physician, community organizer and public health researcher.  She co-founded the Health and Law Immigrant Solidarity Network, and during COVID, the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity.
  • Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle is a pediatric neurologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, where she focuses on epilepsy and brain injury. Her clinical research centers on improving healthcare outcomes for refugee communities around the world, with a special interest in addressing the impact of social determinants like racism. She co-founded Doctors Against Genocide, an organization dedicated to mobilizing the medical community to respond to and prevent genocide and severe human rights abuses worldwide.
  • Rami G. Khouri is a Palestinian-American academic and journalist whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Arab Center Washington, D.C.  During his 50-year career in journalism across the Middle East he was Editor of the Jordan Times and the Daily Star (Beirut) newspapers, and contributed reporting and opinion pieces from the Middle East to the Financial Times, NPR, BBC radio, and other outlets.
  • Jamie McGonagill, media coordinator for Extinction Rebellion Boston
  • Khury Petersen-Smith, Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow and Co-Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. He researches U.S. empire, borders, and migration and strategizes with activists to work against the violence that the U.S. carries out and supports around the world. Khury focuses especially on U.S. militarism in the Middle East and in the Pacific, and movements that resist it. He graduated from the Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Massachusetts, after completing a dissertation on U.S. military bases in the Pacific. He is one of the co-authors and organizers of the 2023 Black Voices for Ceasefire
  • Harris Gruman is executive director of the Massachusetts State Council of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s second largest labor union; co-leader of the Raise Up Massachusetts Coalition, and former executive director of Neighbor to Neighbor MA Education Fund.

Breakouts

Attendees will join one of seven breakout groups:

  • Civil rights and repression
  • The genocide in Gaza
  • Federal, State and municipal electoral politics
  • The labor movement
  • Climate change
  • Great power rivalry and nuclear war danger
  • Budget cuts and tax cuts

Venue: The Media Arts Center, also called building 1, at Roxbury Community College features a 460-seat modern auditorium with a number of classrooms that we will use for breakouts.

The Media Arts Center is directly across Columbus Ave. from the Roxbury Crossing station on the MBTA Orange Line.  There is ample free parking in RCC’s lot on Cedar St. near the corner of Columbus Ave.

Conference registration includes morning coffee and a Palestinian style lunch.   Register to attend.

Massachusetts Peace Action  
1991 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-354-2169
info@masspeaceaction.org