Tidbits - July 27, 2017 - Reader Comments: Trumpcare: Play-by-Play from Planned Parenthood; Attempt to Outlaw BDS; Voter Fraud Bait & Switch; Globalization; If Capitalism Failed; Venezuela; Net Neutrality and Herbert Marcuse; CFPB done in your state?; and

Reader Comments: Trumpcare: What happens when - Play-by-Play from Planned Parenthood; Attempt to Outlaw BDS; Trump's Voter Fraud "Bait & Switch"; Clancy Sigal; Spicer bails; Globalization; If Capitalism Failed (we wish) - Greek workers find solution; Rosa Luxemburg; Yugoslavia's Socialism; Venezuela; Net Neutrality and Herbert Marcuse; High Noon remembered; New Website - What has the CFPB done in your state?

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Tidbits - Reader Comments and Resources - July 27, 2017,Portside
Resources:
 
 
 
 
Here's how things could play out
 
 
Planned Parenthood Action - Monday at 6:34pm
 
 
 
 
 
Let's not infringe on our own rights to defend Israel's government.
 
Carolyn Crabb
 
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"The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech. 43 senators - 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats - want to pass a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of the decades-old occupation of Palestine. The punishment: a minimum civil penalty of $250,000; a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison."
 
 
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The international Right Wing of national parties is going full out in support of Zionist Israel (as opposes Israeli progressive people) and attacking all criticism of Israeli Occupation of Palestine and Zionists' advocacy for the continuation of a single Jewish State of Israel, and then too characterizing all criticism of the American Zionist lobbyists as ANTISEMITIC and hate speech.
 
The sad fact of this complex matter is the very opposite of what these reactionary politicians (AIPIC lobbyists) seek as their goal: A safe, secure, Jewish nation state, a state that is totally free from terrorists assaults and at peace with its disarmed and disempowered former "enemies."
 
The truth of the matter is that other Moslems are the vast majority of targeted victims of these so-called Islamic militant terrorist organizations ISIS/ISIL, A Qaeda, Hama, Hezbollah, etc.), and not "innocent" Israeli Jews and/or Jewish civilians in other nations.
 
However, to is also true that the more oppressive is the Israeli siege of Gaza (cutting off water supplies, turning off the power grid for hours, withholding the importation of vital supplies of food and medicines, and likewise the more expansive are the Jewish (apartheid-like) walled-in settlements in the West Bank, and further, the more the Israeli parliament and national government limit and/or deny Israeli Moslems their basic human rights, the more likely it is that Jewish civilians in France, The UK, Belgium, The Netherlands (and other NATO governments in active coalition with the US Israeli denial of Palestinian rights) will be in fact be targeted by suicidal bombers.
 
Now we have right-wing congressmen attempting to criminalize pro-Palestinian advocacy, protests, and other forms of free speech. What we are seeing is both the accelerated militarization of counter-insurgency, and also these politicians' attempt to normalize the criminalization of the Palestinian struggle for an independent, liberated nation state of Palestine.
 
Larry Aaronson
 
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Maria M Fadli
 
 
 
 
All they have to do is look at the states we know have disenfranchised millions of voters.
 
Mark Binder
 
 
 
 
 
Yesterday was the first meeting of Trump's "Presidential Commission on Election Integrity" -- a convening of voter suppression activists tasked with the mission of uncovering mass illegal voting in the 2016 election. Of course, everyone knows there was no large scale illegal voting -- if any at all -- during the election.  Trump was so livid with continuous media reports of his failure to win the popular vote that he created a "commission" of voter suppression zealots to compile a report that would be used to nullify the votes of persons with similar names as having voted more than once.
 
Because there is no evidence of mass illegal voting in the 2016 presidential election, the true intent of Trump's commission is clearly to come up with ways to suppress voter turnout in future elections. Some of the superstars of the commission are Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Heritage Foundation staffer Hans von Spakovsky, and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, all of who have long supported and implemented different methods of preventing voters from exercising their rights.
 
The commission has met a stone wall in that 45 states and DC refuse to provide names, party affiliation, social security I.Ds., employment, and other personal information on each registered person.  Hiding behind the lack of manipulatable data, Trump will now declare that HRC's vote totals cannot be verified therefore it is he who won both the electoral and popular votes. What a Sicko !! 
 
James E Vann
 
 
 
 
 
A friend with Chicago roots. Glad to have had the opportunity to trade emails and posts these past 20+ years. Remember reading Going Away, when I was going thru similar experiences, a generation later.
 
Jay Schaffner
 
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I remember Clancy well. In fact, I am a character in the novel. I am Sam, whom he visits in San Francisco.
 
Donald Todd
 
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Nice one. He writes that "Going Away" is still in print. I'm surprised, you can't get it in this country.
 
Jemmy Hope
 
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Thanks for posting. To my embarrassment I never ran across any of his writings. Must remedy.
 
Karl-Heinz Schroeder
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Michael Eisenscher
SolidarityInfoServices
4654 Congress Ave.
Oakland, CA 94601
 
 
 
 
 
This article is interesting but neglects some points. Free trade remains appealing. But the current system has allowed the very rich to become the 1%. The multinational companies have too much power and prevent other economies from co-existing in the marketplace. Local and smaller companies are the future. The multi nationals are also crooked. Many such companies don't pay taxes; they plunder the planet. Coca Cola not only uses plastic bottles but only a small percentage of them are from recycled plastic. 
 
The billionaire class is not democratic but will make deals with autocrats.So free trade remains a good idea. But the huge companies with their lack of ethics, environmental irresponsibility and their concentration of wealth need to be confronted at all levels - on the street, in elections and at the international level.
 
Laurel MacDowell
 
 
 
 
 
a person who no-way would be appointed/hired to any position by Trump/'s group, he being smart, knowing stuff, wanting to take care of us...
 
Norma Harrison
 
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Were you involved in the fights against lead poisoning? Herbert Needleman was a front-line hero in those fights and is recognized here for his wonderful work and courage in the face of appalling (and imo, utterly unprincipled) attacks by otherwise serious scientists who were hired by the lead industry. The public health movement has had its share of poison advocates as well as heroes like Dr. Needleman. Thanks to Carrie Arnold for the (overdue as you can read) paean and to Portside for the link. 
 
Daniel Millstone
 
 
 
 
 
In an earlier time. the type of relentlessly crushing debt servitude that many students are being subjected to would have been referred to as "loan sharking".
 
Back in the day, people who perpetrated these types of predatory loans went to prison for this sort of thing.
 
But now, educational loan sharking has become a legally sanctioned, for profit industry, no different than the organized crime syndicate loan sharking of a previous era.
 
Not only should many of these student loan debts be cleared, but the perpetrators of this type of predatory educational loan sharking should be serving serious hard time in prison.
 
What am I missing here?
 
Charles Ostman
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Labor)
 
 
taking control of their own lives with the help of their community. If it can happen there it can happen anywhere
 
Aprl Churchill
 
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great article...alternatives.
 
Kano Ayala
 
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Capitalism failed them so they took control, great example of what can be done
 
Michele Bougie
 
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Culture)
 
 
I made sure, when on the board of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, that we reprinted her "Letters from Prison". It is still available from the Institute -  I think for $2. To order, get in touch with the Institute, A. J. Muste Memorial Institute (ajmuste.org/)
 
David McReynolds
 
 
 
 
 
We have to rethink socialism as the stage of transcending into a different society. I can not use Communist for that - meaning it has for a history of being undemocratic and antidemocratic. We have to change that.
 
Bolivar R. Quiles
 
 
 
 
 
The news we get about Venezuela is extraordinarily distorted in the commercial press. We have had disinformation about all sorts of demonized "enemies" for well more than a century. These "enemies" include striking workers in the U.S. (For example, see 19th century NYT coverage of strikes & unions - and ever since.) We never get honest reporting about any issue involving class conflicts from newspapers which profit from corporate advertising.
 
Diane Laison
 
 
 
 
 
Bravo! at last a crack in the international media anti-Chavista wall which pretends to be anti-Maduro.
 
Nina Udovički
 
 
 
 
 
The many comments on Portside [Tidbits - July 20] were fascinating - and for me especially meaningful. I was also at Peekskill, and every window of our bus was shattered, with luckily no casualties - despite the efforts of the NY State cops. 
 
My experiences of Paul - truly a Renaissance mensch - accompanied me much of my life, at his magnificent Othello on Broadway, at Madison Square Garden and many other rallies, but also during the Henry Wallace campaign in 1948 in Boston. We CP students were being oh so careful never to sound or act too radical and scare off less radical progressives. At the final rally, after Wallace spoke, Paul got up; just seeing that wonderful giant move onto the stage with his benevolently defiant, warm, hearty dignity meant long applause every time. As usual he said a few words before his songs. I recall only one sentence, paraphrased: "Of course all of us progressive Americans dream - some day - of a socialist America!"  
 
There was a sudden silence- that someone really dared say such words openly in 1948 - and then a giant, long, long ovation, showing how many really had that dream, no matter what they otherwise believed on strategy, alignments or other matters. My admiration led me, almost twenty years later, in my ex-pat East Berlin haven from McCarthyism,to start up a Paul and Eslanda Robeson Archive at the GDR Academy of Arts. 
 
But the comments meant lots to me for another reason. As someone who has experienced American capitalism for 24 years, GDR socialism for 38 years, and now German capitalism for 27 years, I have just completed a book summing up my experiences - and trying to frankly express my views for younger Americans - like the Sanders supporters - especially on both the virtues and the problems of socialism, as I experienced them personally. As an amateur historian, I also write, as I did for the East Germans, about progressive and socialist traditions in the USA, Victoria Woodhull,Harriet and Sojourner, Debs, Lucy and Albert Parsons, Mother Jones and Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn to the CIO organizers and people like Paul - and, later Malcolm and Martin Luther King as well. (As well as Woody, Pete, Lee etc.)
 
As I try to explain, I see some form of socialism - despite the problems. I do not conceal - as an increasingly dire necessity, with the 1 percent taking over and leading us to wars, planet devastation and closer to something recalling fascism. The book is in its last phases and searching a publisher but should be on the table before too long - Insha'Allah (if a dyed-in-the-wool atheist may employ this elegant Arab expression for "God willing!").
 
Victor Grossman
Berlin, Germany
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
David Berger
 
 
 
 
 
Herbert Marcuse is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied philosophy with Husserl and Heidegger at the Universities of Freiburg and Berlin. Marcuse's critical social theory ingeniously fuses phenomenology, Freudian thought and Marxist theory; and provides a solid ground for his reputation as the most crucial figure inspiring the social activism and New Left politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The largely unpublished work collected in this volume makes clear the continuing relevance of Marcuse's thought to contemporary issues. The texts published here, dealing with concerns during the period 1942-1951, exhibit penetrating critiques of technology and analyses of the ways that modern technology produces novel forms of society and culture with new modes of social control. The material collected in Technology, War and Fascism provides exemplary attempts to link theory with practice, to develop ideas that can be used to grasp and transform existing social reality.
 
Technology, War and Fascism is the first of six volumes of Herbert Marcuse's Collected Papers to be edited by Douglas Kellner. Each volume is a collection of previously un-published or uncollected essays, unfinished manuscripts and letters by one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
 
"Contrary to the interests of those who control its use, technology tends to disenchant the world. Mass consumption society strips gadgets of any magical value. Similarly, organisation (a technique for handling new techniques) robs new productive forces of their subversive appeal and their power of disruption. Organisation thus stands revealed as nothing but the pure organisation of authority. 
 
Alienated mediations make man weaker as they become indispensable. A social mask disguises people and things. In the present stage of private appropriation, this mask transforms its wearers into dead things, commodities. Nature no longer exists. To rediscover nature means to reinvent it as a worthwhile adversary by constructing new social relationships. With the expansion of material equipment, the old hierarchical society is bursting at the seams "
 
Michael Handelman
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Culture)
 
 
A must read for everyone else except MCA - the Conference for Studio Unions... the great giveaway....
 
 
 
Robert O'Reilly
 
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One of the 25 greatest films of all time!
 
Michael Berkowitz
 
 
 
 
 
These are the "Good Old Days" Trump refers to so often. You all may get to see it first hand under the tiny little hands of Trump the Slum Lord.
 
David Schweers
 
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That's the way it was and will be unless tings change.
 
Pter A. Rolland
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Culture)
 
 

 
 
Martin Pitts
Pter A. Rolland
 
 
 
 
(posting on Portside Culture)
 
 
It wasn't a concern over "dog meat" - which was never mentioned in "The Jungle" - but rather the real concern over the fact that these meat packing conglomerates were known to boast of using "everything but the squeal."
 
There was an instance of a human falling into the lard rendering works, but the book notes indicated that his was the only instance in his "based on true life" novel that Sinclair was never able to verify.
 
Joe Elegua
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
click here
 
We have some big news. Today, Allied Progress launched the CFPB Action Tracker, a new interactive website that tracks, state-by-state, the CFPB's enforcement actions against big banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions that have preyed on consumers. The website is a great resource for elected officials and organization in the states, allowing them to see what the CFPB has done to benefit local consumers and arming them with important information in the fight to protect the CFPB from attacks by Wall Street special interests and their allies in Congress. 
 
We hope you'll check it out and share it with others on your social media if you find the issue as important as we do:
 
Sample Facebook Post: http://aldpr.gs/2uBSoJ0
 
Karl Frisch