Category: News / Information
Peace & Justice History for 11/2:
November 2, 1920 Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs received nearly one million votes for President though he was serving a prison sentence at the time for his criticism of World War I and his encouraging resistance to the draft. More on Debs |
| November 2, 1982 Voters in nine general elections passed statewide referenda supporting a freeze on testing of nuclear weapons. Only Arizona turned it down.  Dr. Randall Forsberg, a key person behind the Freeze movement Dr. Randall Forsberg |
November 2, 1983 A bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (to be observed on the third Monday of January) was signed by President Ronald Reagan. King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience of the laws that enforced racial segregation. The history of Martin Luther King Day (pdf) |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november2
‘I had to get out’: the US military officers filing for conscientious objector status over Gaza
Disillusioned members of the US military have turned to Vietnam war-era policy to terminate their service because of religious or moral convictions
For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.
But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.
“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.
“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”
As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.
There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.
The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.
The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)
But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.
Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.
The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.
“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’” (snip-MORE)
Lots of links here;
I’ve read 5 of them. One I clicked in particular is most excellent, and easy to read. Link below; there are fine pieces on Ten Bears’s page.
Taking Filosofa’s Advice, and
and reblogging this one from Keith. I hate giving the Don any time at all, but the bottom line of this is that the young people are seeing this, some for the first time, as they were in middle and high school in 2016.
Update on “It Needs To Be Known”
because we do need accuracy. This doesn’t change anything, for me, because it never says what the president actually said, it only throws light on a change. I’ve transcribed many a court hearing, and in such situations, it’s understood that everything is processed phonetically. (Clarification took place in a court hearing if need be.) In this situation, that would bring us back to “supporters,” rather than “supporter’s,” the president’s intent regardless. However, all the clarifications by the appropriate people still state the comment was “supporter’s.” I don’t know why we shouldn’t believe the current president, who has little to nothing to lose by either statement, but everybody has to make their own decision on it. Since there is more maybe-news that the AP feels it has to feature, again without equal coverage of the other side, I have to put it here, since I’ve already made a post. So, to see what AP believes it has found, simply click below:
Peace & Justice History for 11/1:
November 1, 1872 Susan B. Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set up in a barbershop. They were part of a group of fifty women Anthony had organized to register in her home town of Rochester. Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would later testify, “demanded that we register them as voters.” The election inspectors refused, but she persisted, quoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship provision and the article from the New York Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. She persisted: “If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages!” The inspectors sought the advice of the Supervisor of elections: “Young men,” he said, “do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register these names?” Registering the women, the registrars were advised, “would put the entire onus of the affair on them.” The inspectors voted to allow Anthony and her three sisters to register. In all, fourteen Rochester women successfully registered that day. But the Rochester Union and Advertiser editorialized: “Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon . . . if these women in the Eighth Ward offer to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”  |
| November 1, 1929 Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training. |
| November 1, 1954 A war of independence to end French colonial rule over the north African nation of Algeria began when 60 bombs were set off on this day in Algiers, the capital. Over the next eight years 1.5 million Algerians would die, along with about 30,000 French. The French had dominated the country since 1830.  French troops clash with Algerian civilians Read more |
| November 1, 1954 The U.S. produced the biggest ever man-made explosion in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. The hydrogen bomb, equivalent of 20 million tons of TNT was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. One of the atolls was totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide, dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fallout. |
| November 1, 1961 50,000-100,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to the founding of Women Strike for Peace. Their slogan: “End the Arms Race – Not the Human Race.” See Photos from Swarthmore College Peace Collection  “Women’s Strike for Peace” storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam.  Bella Abzug demonstrating with WSP photo: Dorothy Marder |
| November 1, 1970 Detroit’s Common Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Vietnam. |
| November 1, 1983 A senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz about intelligence reports that showed Iraqi troops resorting to “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president’s recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld. |
| November 1, 1990 As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. nor Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of U.S. federal law. More on the Law of the Sea |
| November 1, 2003 The Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”Yitzhak was right, and his path just,” said Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace accords with Mr Rabin. “His views today are clear and enduring. There will be no retreat; we will continue.”  Read more |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november1
Musk, Bezos need just 90 minutes to match your lifetime carbon footprint, says Oxfam
Between jets, yachts and investments in destructive companies, billionaires are speed running the apocalypse
Brandon Vigliarolo Wed 30 Oct 2024 // 10:30 UTC
Despite their self-professed environmental bona fides, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the their ilk are responsible for so much carbon emissions that the average person would need a lifetime to match the amount one of them spews in 90 minutes.
That’s the claim from international nonprofit Oxfam, which yesterday published what it said is the first-ever study looking at the luxury transport (i.e., private jets and yachts) and investment emissions of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires.
“Oxfam’s research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger and – make no mistake – threatening lives,” Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar said of the findings. “It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future – it’s lethal.”
Private jets, one of the most visible and publicized ways the ultra-rich get around, are significant polluters but still pale in comparison to the impact of their other indulgences. Billionaires are “treating our planet like their personal playground [and] setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit,” in Behar’s words.
Oxfam was able to identify private jets belonging to 23 of the billionaires it looked at for its report, and found that they flew an average of 184 times in a 12-month period, spending around 425 hours in the air during the period. Those jets emitted an average of 2,074 tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to what the average person would emit in 300 years, or what someone in the global poorest 50 percent would emit if they lived for two millennia.
Musk and Bezos were called out for particularly egregious emissions, with Musk’s fleet of two (known) private jets responsible for 5,497 tons of CO2 over the course of a year (equivalent to 834 years of emissions from the average Earthling), and Bezos’ two-jet fleet emitting around 2,908 tons of carbon.
Once a darling of environmentalists for his work on electric vehicles, Musk has had no shortage of negative coverage for his excessive use of private jets, including for incredibly brief flights instead of a surface commute.
Yachts are even worse, with the average seafaring billionaire pleasure boat responsible for nearly three times as much carbon emission as the average private jet.
Along with looking at jet and yacht emissions, Oxfam also examined the stakes that various billionaires have in corporations and their publicly stated emissions, and the findings are stark.
Of the 50 billionaires studied, around 40 percent of their investments were in high-polluting industries like oil, mining, and shipping, with few having significant renewable energy investments. That means the average billionaire’s investment portfolio is responsible for 340 times the emissions of private jets and yachts – combined.
But don’t forget to recycle
While the billionaires in the study might be raking in the cash for themselves, Oxfam said that its findings suggest their voluminous carbon footprints are causing far more losses around the globe. (snip-More)
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/30/tech_billionaires_carbon_footprint/
It Needs to be Known
Pres. Biden did not call Trump supporters garbage. He called the the rhetoric from the comic supporter on stage at MSG garbage. I’ve read about this, and seen the WH transcript, but somehow, the other story keeps being disseminated, even though Pres. Biden is not running for President, so I feel this should be addressed. I looked around for the most mainstream media outlet that told the full story at the beginning where people can see it, rather than writing it up as a did-he-or-didn’t-he, or worse, as a he-did with a later tiny retraction that will remain unseen. It wouldn’t hurt to mention this if the subject arises out there in the world. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal when the same media outlets don’t bother informing the country about any of the stuff the Republicans say about their political oppo, on the regular.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bidens-response-to-garbage-joke-about-puerto-rico/
President Biden reinserted himself into the contentious campaign to succeed him, appearing to call former President Donald Trump’s supporters “garbage” on a video call with Latino activists Tuesday evening. Republicans seized on the comments, while the White House offered a different explanation of what Mr. Biden said.
The president was responding to a joke made at a Trump rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, in which Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
In the video clip obtained by CBS News, it sounded like Mr. Biden, who was speaking by video to left-leaning group Voto Latino, might be denouncing Trump supporters as “garbage.”
“The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” he seemed to say. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable.”
But the White House denied that the president had said this about Trump supporters and released a transcript with a statement noting that “supporters” was in fact “supporter’s,” and Mr. Biden was referring to Hinchcliffe and his joke.
A White House transcript says this is what Mr. Biden said: “And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know —or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr— in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
“The President referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage,'” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. (snip-More, but it’s mostly Republican commentary about it with no ownership of what they’ve actually said.)
