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Helsinki Summit: Looking Beyond “Partisan Fixations”

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With the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki just days away, The Nation has published “Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security,” which the magazine describes as “a rare open letter cosigned by over 20 prominent cultural and political figures — Democratic Party loyalists and former Republican politicos alike — imploring public officials to implement a pronounced shift in the U.S.’s approach to Russia.”

The letter warns that “the U.S. and Russian governments show numerous signs of being on a collision course.” Serious tensions “are festering between two nations with large quantities of nuclear weapons on virtual hair-trigger alert; yet the current partisan fixations in Washington are ignoring the dangers to global stability and, ultimately, human survival.”

Among the signers of the open letter are Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, writer and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem, former UN ambassador Gov. Bill Richardson, political analyst Noam Chomsky, former covert CIA operations officer Valerie Plame, activist leader Rev. Dr. William Barber II, filmmaker Michael Moore, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, former U.S. ambassador to the USSR Jack F. Matlock Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Alice Walker and Viet Thanh Nguyen, former longtime House Armed Services Committee member Patricia Schroeder and former senator Adlai Stevenson III.

Signers of the open letter are available for interviews, including:

PHYLLIS BENNIS, pbennis at ips-dc.org
Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Her most recent book is Understanding ISIS & the New Global War on Terror.

She said today: “Whatever role Russia may have played in the past, the most important threat to our elections right now comes from the increasing campaigns of voter suppression underway across this country. The Helsinki summit won’t help that — but it does provide an opportunity to significantly de-escalate the rising threat of U.S.-Russian tensions turning into an even more dangerous — potentially even military — confrontation. Reducing the threat of new wars abroad will allow us to focus on rebuilding our democracy at home.”

NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com
Solomon is national coordinator of the online activist group RootsAction.org, which has joined with five other organizations to cosponsor a nationwide petition campaign in support of the open letter. The petition gathered 10,000 signers during the first 24 hours after its launch on Wednesday and passed the 15,000 mark this afternoon.

He said today: “The petition campaign behind the open letter aims to build grassroots support for rejection of the false choice between protecting the digital security of U.S. elections and reducing tensions with Russia that boost the chances of nuclear apocalypse. We need a major shift in the U.S. approach toward Russia. Clearly the needed shift won’t be initiated by the Republican or Democratic leaders in Congress — it must come from Americans who make their voices heard in favor of a more rational approach to U.S.-Russian relations. The lives — and even existence — of future generations are at stake in the relationship between Washington and Moscow.”

Along with RootsAction, the other sponsors of the petition are The Nation, Just Foreign Policy, World Beyond War, Progressive Democrats of America, and Peace Action.

Solomon is IPA’s executive director.

New Turn in “Russiagate” Debate

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Controversies over “Russiagate” and U.S.-Russian relations took a new and possibly historic turn today as The Nation magazine published a rare open letter from an array of prominent Americans calling for “concrete steps … to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers.”

Titled “Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security,” the open letter was signed by writer and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Alice Walker and Viet Thanh Nguyen; Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams; political analyst Noam Chomsky; former New Mexico governor and ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson; TV public-affairs pioneer Phil Donahue; former White House counsel John DeanThe Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel; and more than a dozen others.

We must reach common ground,” the letter says, “to safeguard common interests — taking steps to protect the nation’s elections and to prevent war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.”

The open letter declares: “No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange.”

The full text of the open letter and the list of signers are below. The letter is posted on The Nation‘s website.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, press at thenation.com, @KatrinaNation
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation magazine.

ANDREW BACEVICH, bacevich at bu.edu
Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. His books include America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.

THOMAS DRAKE, tadrake at earthlink.net, @Thomas_Drake1
Drake is a former NSA senior executive and whistle-blower.

Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security

An open letter by Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, John Dean, Governor Bill Richardson, Walter Mosley, Valerie Plame, and others.

Many Americans remain deeply concerned about reports of Russian interference with the 2016 election. Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest and most dangerous point in several decades. For the sake of democracy at home and true national security, we must reach common ground to safeguard common interests—taking steps to protect the nation’s elections and to prevent war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

Whatever the truth of varied charges that Russia interfered with the election, there should be no doubt that America’s digital-age infrastructure for the electoral process is in urgent need of protection. The overarching fact remains that the system is vulnerable to would-be hackers based anywhere. Solutions will require a much higher level of security for everything from voter-registration records to tabulation of ballots with verifiable paper trails. As a nation, we must fortify our election system against unlawful intrusions as well as official policies of voter suppression.

At the same time, the U.S. and Russian governments show numerous signs of being on a collision course. Diplomacy has given way to hostility and reciprocal consular expulsions, along with dozens of near-miss military encounters in Syria and in skies above Europe. Both sides are plunging ahead with major new weapons development programs. In contrast to prior eras, there is now an alarming lack of standard procedures to keep the armed forces of both countries in sufficient communication to prevent an escalation that could lead to conventional or even nuclear attack. These tensions are festering between two nations with large quantities of nuclear weapons on virtual hair-trigger alert; yet the current partisan fixations in Washington are ignoring the dangers to global stability and, ultimately, human survival.

The United States should implement a pronounced shift in approach toward Russia. No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange. The tacit pretense that the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations does not worsen the odds of survival for the next generations is profoundly false. Concrete steps can and must be taken to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers.

 

Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus, Boston University

Phyllis Bennis, Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies

Noam Chomsky, Professor, Author, and Activist

Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics, NYU and Princeton University, and Board Member, American Committee for East-West Accord

John Dean, Former Nixon White House Counsel

Phil Donahue, Journalist and Talk-Show Pioneer

Thomas Drake, Former NSA Senior Executive and Whistle-blower

Daniel Ellsberg, Activist, “Pentagon Papers” Whistle-blower, and Author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

Jack F. Matlock Jr., Former US Ambassador to the USSR and Board Member, American Committee for East-West Accord

Walter Mosley, Writer and Screenwriter

John Nichols, National Affairs Correspondent, The Nation

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–Winning Novelist

Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, CUNY Graduate School

Valerie Plame, Former Covert CIA Operations Officer and Author

Adolph Reed Jr., Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Bill Richardson, Former Governor of New Mexico

Patricia Schroeder, Former Congresswoman

Norman Solomon, National Coordinator, RootsAction.org

Gloria Steinem, Writer and Feminist Organizer

Adlai Stevenson III, Former US Senator and Chairman, Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Alice Walker, Writer, Poet, and Activist

Jody Williams, Professor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

James Zogby, President, Arab American Institute

 

Signers have endorsed this Open Letter as individuals and not on behalf of any organization.

Trump-Putin Summit: How the New Cold War is More Dangerous Than the Last

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Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet in Helsinki on Monday, July 16. Beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be among the participants of the NATO summit. See accuracy.org/calendar for upcoming events.

STEPHEN F. COHEN, via Caitlin Graf, press@thenation.com
Available for a very limited number of interviews, Cohen is professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, from Columbia University Press, is Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.

See his recent pieces and interviews in The Nation, including “Who’s Afraid of a Trump-Putin Summit?” “Russiagate’s ‘Core Narrative’ Has Always Lacked Actual Evidence” and “The Necessity of a Trump-Putin Summit,” which states: “U.S.-Russian military relations are especially tense today in the Baltic region, where a large-scale NATO buildup is under way, and in Ukraine, where a U.S.-Russian proxy war is intensifying. The ‘Soviet Bloc’ that once served as a buffer between NATO and Russia no longer exists. And many imaginable incidents on the West’s new Eastern Front, intentional or unintentional, could easily trigger actual war between the United States and Russia. What brought about this unprecedented situation on Russia’s borders — at least since the Nazi German invasion in 1941 — was, of course, the exceedingly unwise decision, in the late 1990s, to expand NATO eastward. Done in the name of ‘security,’ it has made all the states involved only more insecure. …

“Today’s U.S.-Russian proxy wars are different [than the Cold War], located in the center of geopolitics and accompanied by too many American and Russian trainers, minders, and possibly fighters. Two have already erupted: in Georgia in 2008, where Russian forces fought a Georgian army financed, trained, and minded by American funds and personnel; and in Syria, where in February scores of Russians were killed by U.S.-backed anti-Assad forces. Moscow did not retaliate, but it has pledged to do so if there is ‘a next time,’ as there very well may be. If so, this would in effect be war directly between Russia and America. Meanwhile, the risk of such a direct conflict continues to grow in Ukraine, where the country’s U.S.-backed but politically failing President Petro Poroshenko seems increasingly tempted to launch another all-out military assault on rebel-controlled Donbass, backed by Moscow.”

Kavanaugh and the Federalist Society

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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh claimed Monday night: “No president has ever consulted more widely or talked to more people from more backgrounds to seek input for a Supreme Court nomination.”

FRANCIS BOYLE,  fboyle at illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is a longtime critic of the Federalist Society. See this in-depth piece on the group in Emerge magazine, “Hijacking Justice.”

He said today: “Brett Kavanaugh was chosen off a list of possibilities put to Trump by Leonard Leo, who is ‘on leave‘ as executive vice president of the Federalist Society.

“Kavanaugh drafted portions of the Starr report, a political hit job. Perhaps more importantly, he drafted parts of the Ken Starr ‘referral’ to the U.S. Congress recommending that Bill Clinton be impeached for a blowjob and lying about a blowjob.

“Kavanaugh worked for then-Republican nominee George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore, which effectively robbed the American people of the presidency.

“Kavanaugh amusingly invoked the name of Elena Kagan in his remarks last night, as if her hiring him at Harvard made him some kind of moderate. But it was Kagan who said ‘I love the Federalist Society.’

“The fact that if Kavanaugh gets through, the entire Supreme Court will have gone to Harvard or Yale is terrible for the country. And I say that as having graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law.

“Trump acknowledged Edwin Meese last night, which is fitting because in addition to being Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, he was a leading founder of the Federalist Society. The Independent Counsel in the Iran-Contra Scandal Judge Lawrence Walsh found that Meese was the architect of its cover-up by the Reagan administration.

“Almost all of the Bush administration lawyers responsible for its war and torture memos are members of the Federalist Society. Many members of the Federalist Society say that Brown v. Board of Education [which struck down ‘separate but equal’] was decided wrongly and practice to overturn it at the United States Supreme Court.”

Boyle said in a recent interview with The Real News “Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Retirement: End of Roe v. Wade?” that since the Robert Bork nomination “all these nominees have learned that lesson, and they will present their narrative, their script, and they will stick to it to the end. … And the Democrats aren’t going to call them. They didn’t really call Gorsuch on anything. So this is all about raw power politics.”

Boyle added: “I first received the ire of the Federalist Society when they had a meeting about how to stop me from helping expose them, when I passed around a quote from Lawrence Walsh about the group. He, a lifelong Republican, wrote: ‘I was concerned about the continuing political allegiance of Republican judges as manifested in the Federalist Society. Although the organization was not openly partisan, its dogma was political. It reminded me of the communist front groups of the 1940s and 1950s, whose members were committed to the communist cause and subject to communist direction but were not card-carrying members of the Communist Party. In calling for the narrow construction of constitutional grants of government power, the Federalist Society seemed to speak for right-wing Republicans. I was especially troubled that one of White House Counsel Boyden Gray’s assistants had openly declared that no one who was not a member of the Federalist Society had received a judicial appointment from President Bush.'”

“Congress Welcomes an Actual Fascist as Nazi Violence Rages in Ukraine”

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MAX BLUMENTHAL, maxjblumenthal at gmail.com, @MaxBlumenthal
Blumenthal is senior editor of the Grayzone Project. He just wrote the piece “Congress welcomes an actual fascist as Nazi violence rages in Ukraine,” which includes video of his questioning and background information.

Blumenthal writes: “While racist violence raged through Ukraine, punctuated by a wave of attacks on Roma encampments by the state-funded C14 neo-Nazi militia, Congress played host to an actual Ukrainian fascist. He was Andriy Parubiy, and besides being the proud founder of two Nazi-like parties — the Social-National Party and the Patriot of Ukraine — he was the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament.

“During a meeting hosted by the American Foreign Policy Society inside the Senate, I seized the chance to ask Parubiy’s hosts why they were welcoming a figure who was so central to the extremism overtaking Ukrainian society. I also put the question to Michael Carpenter, a former Pentagon official who helped deepen the U.S. relationship with post-coup Ukraine during the Obama administration.

“The responses I received reflected a semi-official policy of denying the very existence of Ukraine’s far-right plague in order to turn the heat up on Moscow.

“The Ukrainian lawmaker appeared on a panel alongside fellow speakers of Eastern European parliaments eager to join the U.S.-NATO crusade against Russia in exchange for handsome aid packages. At the top of the agenda was stopping the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, a project viewed in Washington as an existential threat to U.S. economic leverage over Europe.

“Earlier in the day, Parubiy held private discussions with the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan and enjoyed what Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Andrea Thomson described as an ‘excellent meeting’ with a ‘proactive’ leader.”

Is NATO Obsolete? Does it Destabilize?

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DAVID GIBBS, dgibbs at  email.arizona.edu
Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona, and author of the 2009 book First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, published by Vanderbilt University Press.

He writes: “Donald Trump is raising legitimate concerns about the security value of the NATO alliance, given the very high expense of maintaining this alliance, borne in part by the U.S. public. By any reasonable standard, NATO lost its function in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since then it has functioned as a make-work program for a series of vested interests, while it has generated global insecurity and destabilization. The NATO-directed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, for example, destabilized Libya and the whole of northern Africa, generating new sources of terrorism. While foreign policy specialists are rightly suspicious of anything Trump says, in this particular case, his statements have a measure of truth.”

 

If Catholic Anti-Nuclear Weapons Activists in North Korea or Iran Were Jailed

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On Monday, attorneys filed motions to dismiss all criminal charges against the Kings Bay Plowshares in federal court in Brunswick, Georgia. The seven Catholic defendants are “charged with three federal felonies and one misdemeanor for their actions in going onto the Naval Base at Kings Bay Georgia and symbolically disarming the massive amount of nuclear weapons at that base.” The group states that their actions are “to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to ‘beat swords into plowshares.’” The seven are: Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly, Patrick O’Neill, Carmen Trotta and Elizabeth McAlister (the widow of Philip Berrigan). See legal update on the case: KingsBayPlowshares7.org/impact.

The request to dismiss ends the supporting memorandum with the following paragraph: “If the defendants took their actions in North Korea or Iran, the U.S. government would hail their actions. The same U.S. government cannot be allowed to criminally prosecute them at home. The charges should be dismissed.” …

The group states: “The Motion to Dismiss is supplemented by four important declarations…

“Professor Francis Boyle, a renowned Harvard Law graduate and professor of law at the Illinois College of Law, advised the court that nuclear weapons are flatly illegal and the actions of defendants are in full compliance with the law.

“Captain Thomas Rogers, a retired career Navy commander of nuclear armed submarines, told the court that nuclear weapons violate the principles of the laws of war and are both illegal and immoral.

“Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton declared that the actions of the Kings Bay Plowshares are totally consistent with and supported by Catholic social teaching that any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is totally immoral.

“Jeffery Carter, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, explained to the court the fact that his organization and the American Medical Association condemn any use of nuclear weapons because of the horrific impact upon millions, perhaps even billions, of people.

“The Kings Bay Naval Station is home to at least six nuclear ballistic missile submarines. Each submarine carries 20 Trident II D 5 MIRV thermonuclear weapons. Each of these individual Trident thermonuclear weapons contains four or more individual nuclear weapons ranging in destructive power from a 100 kilotons to 475 kilotons. To understand the massive destructive power of these weapons remember that the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a 15 kiloton bomb.”

For interviews and more information, see KingsBayPlowshares7.org and contact:

JESSICA STEWART, (207) 266-0919, PAUL MAGNO, kingsbayplowshares at gmail.com

Also, see coverage of Plowshares movement in the National Catholic Reporter.

Left Populist Wins in Mexico

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, overwhelmingly won the Mexican presidential election Sunday.

GUADALUPE CORREA-CABRERA, gcorreac at gmu.edu, @gcorreacabrera
She is an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Her newest book is titled Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico.

MARGARITA FAVELA, dfavelag at unam.mx
Favela is a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

MARK WEISBROT, ALEXANDER MAIN, REBECCA WATTS, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net, @ceprdc
Weisbrot, Main and Watts are with the Center for Economic and Policy Research. See the group’s statement: “Mexico Votes Overwhelmingly for ‘Change’ by Electing López Obrador President,” which highlights problems of disinformation, low wages, inequality, crime and corruption.

CHRISTY THORNTON, christy.thornton at jhu.edu, @llchristyll
She is an assistant professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. She was an election observer for the Scholar and Citizen Network for Democracy. She is currently writing a book about Mexican economic history. She appeared on “Democracy Now” today and among other things, traced the political history of López Obrador. Contrary to the comparisons between him and Trump, Thornton said he is a populist but “is really something more like a Bernie Sanders.”

MANUEL PÉREZ-ROCHA, manuel at ips-dc.org, @ManuelPerezIPS
Just back in the U.S. from Central America, Pérez-Rocha is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is from Mexico and has written extensively about U.S.-Mexican relations, especially regarding NAFTA. See his recent commentary “Failed U.S. Economic Policy Contributed to Asylum Seekers.”

Ocasio-Cortez Victory: * Socialism * Democratizing the Democratic Party

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory over Joe Crowley, who was high in the Democratic Party leadership, has drawn attention in part because she calls herself a democratic socialist. It has also highlighted the tensions within the Democratic Party, especially given the recent changes on superdelegates.

VICTOR WALLIS, zendive at aol.com
Wallis is author of the new book Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism. He was just recently on an Institute for Public Accuracy news release on ecosocialism.

Norman Solomon (who is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy) just wrote the piece “What Joe Crowley’s Defeat Has to Do With Democratic Party Superdelegates“: “In a simple and symbolic twist of fate, the stunning defeat of Crowley came a day before the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic Party voted on what to do about superdelegates. … [It] approved a proposal to prevent superdelegates from voting on the presidential nominee during the first ballot at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.”

RICHARD ESKOW, rjeskow at gmail.com, @rjeskow
Eskow is senior advisor, health and economic justice, for Social Security Works and is the host of The Zero Hour on Free Speech TV. His previous pieces include “Democrats Need More Democracy, Not Less.”

He just wrote the piece “How to Cover a Political Revolution“: “Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of Crowley shows that the organizer’s approach to electoral politics can work. While Crowley raked in money from deep corporate coffers — after years spent trimming his political opinions to optimize donor cash flow — Ocasio-Cortez eschewed the party establishment’s model of raising money for costly media buys and expensive consultants. Instead, she relied on small-dollar donors and an activist-based, community-centered ground game that carried the day. …

“Ocasio-Cortez’s candidacy puts the lie to the party establishment’s claim that there is a conflict between class and identity politics. A millennial Latina woman, she campaigned on a working-class platform of social — and socialist — change.”

Janus Decision: Why Does Labor Keep Losing?

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New York Times reports: “Supreme Court Ruling Delivers a Sharp Blow to Labor Unions.”

RICHARD D. WOLFF, rdwolff@att.net, @profwolff
Wolff is professor of economics emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and currently visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. His most recent book is Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown. He is a contributing author to Living in a Socialist USA.

He said today: “The Janus decision is the latest in a long 50-year series of blows against organized labor. Organized labor agreed after World War II to play by the rules of a capitalist system that gave lip service to the right of workers to organize to improve their bargaining position with capitalists. But beneath the lip service was an endless program to weaken and destroy organized labor by direct legislative attack and by a massive, ongoing program of celebrating capital and capitalists (‘entrepreneurship’ ‘job-givers’ etc.) while demonizing labor unions. Organized labor could have met and defeated that program, but that would have required a close, working alliance between labor and the left (as exists in other countries) and advocacy of basic social change toward an economic system that prioritizes labor. To date, and with few exceptions, organized labor in the U.S. has avoided such an alliance and such advocacy. That avoidance was and remains a losing strategy as the Janus decision illustrates yet again.”

Wolff is host of the program “Economic Update” and founder of Democracy at Work.

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