China beating up on 76 year old Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai

 

from PEN Canada member email today #FreeJimmyLai His trial resumes tomorrow in Hong Kong. Jimmy Lai, a journalist, writer, media publisher, and pro-democracy activist, has been in solitary confinement since December 2020.   PEN believes that Lai’s ongoing detention is emblematic of the devastating impact the 2020 National Security Law (NSL) has had on freedom of expression across Hong Kong. His case is illustrative of the government’s willingness to use the legal system to silence dissent. Tomorrow his trial resumes. The charges he faces—including two under the NSL—could result in life imprisonment.  Madeleine Thien writes to Jimmy Lai Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, most recently Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Folio Prize, and won the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, among other honours. For PEN's Day of the Imprisoned Writer campaign, she wrote a letter to Lai. It reads in part:    "You became what the government called, with all the force of its contempt and violence, a troublemaker. We both know that, in China, as in many other places today, a troublemaker must be publicly shamed and paraded so that others will choose silence; so that others will, out of fear, relinquish the moral world within themselves. This moral life is their only true possession, for it is their character, their selfhood, and their legacy; to lose it is to denude oneself."   HER FULL LETTER TO LAI Write your own letter Take action for these four imprisoned writers. A letter of solidarity encourages their spirit, reconnects them with the outside world, and is often long-remembered after release.  PEN will send the letter on your behalf. You have until November 29 to write alongside us. Take inspiration from these letters from renowned authors and PEN members:  Margaret Atwood to Jimmy Lai Viv Groskop to Alaa Abd el-Fattah Gioconda Belli to Jose Rubén Zamora Marroquín Elif Shafak to Kaciaryna Andrejeva SUBMIT YOUR LETTER HERE Join the call to #FreeJimmyLai Time is not on our side: Lai is 76 years old, in solitary confinement, diabetic, and will face trial tomorrow.  Spread the word on socials (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn) using the hashtag #FreeJimmyLai alongside this image:  NEW: UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention finds Jimmy Lai is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and calls for his immediate release Last week, the UNWGAD concluded, in relation to all of the cases Mr. Lai has faced since August 2020, and continues to face, Mr. Lai’s detention is unlawful and arbitrary.   Accordingly, the Working Group calls on the Hong Kong government to: immediately release Mr. Lai; take steps to remedy Mr. Lai’s situation without delay; accord Mr. Lai an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations; and conduct a full and independent investigation into Mr. Lai’s arbitrary and unlawful detention and take appropriate measures against those responsible for the violation of his rights. MORE ON THE FINDING ICYMI: Son of imprisoned Jimmy Lai pleads with Canada to put pressure on Hong Kong to show mercy STORY IN NATIONAL POST SUPPORT PEN JOIN PEN Copyright © 2024 PEN Canada, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up for the PEN Canada mailing list and/or are a member of PEN Canada. Thank you! Our mailing address is: PEN Canada 401 Richmond St W Suite 244 Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Canada Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Support New Ojibway National Urban Park

 

Dear Chris,  We are almost there, thanks to you.   Already, with your support:   Parks Canada has acquired Ojibway Shores Funding for the new park is over $36 million. The City of Windsor and the Province of Ontario remain committed to contributing lands.    Caldwell First Nation is working towards co-governance Parks Canada launched the planning phase of public consultations.    Now, the private member’s Bill C-248 to establish legal protection for Ojibway awaits final Senate approval.  It has already received all-party support in the House.     It’s crunch time! Protection for Canada’s most endangered ecosystem, the tall grass prairie is so close. The final Senate vote is coming up and there are no guarantees Ojibway will ever be established if Bill C-248 isn’t passed during this Parliamentary Session.    We need just one last push. 🤞   We need to keep the momentum up. Support permanent legal protection for Ojibway now!   Sign the petition Thank you for your support! Dave Pearce Senior Forest Conservation Manager Copyright (C) 2024 Wildlands League. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website, campaigns, or other communications. Contact Us: Wildlands League 371-401 Richmond St W Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 Canada 416-971-WILD (9453) Toll free:1-866-510-WILD e-mail: info@wildlandsleague.org Our registered charity number is 11878 2317 RR0001 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe

A Levitation with Ed Sanders

 from World BEYOND War

Podcast: A Levitation With Ed Sanders

• Culture of Peace, Immorality, Nonviolent Activism, Podcasts, Poetry, Technology, World BEYOND War Podcast

By Marc Eliot Stein, World BEYOND War, October 28, 2024

“Out demons out!” On October 21, 1967, poet, activist, singer and DIY publisher Ed Sanders led an exorcism of the Pentagon in USA’s capital city to protest the disaster in Vietnam. Purely by coincidence, or perhaps due to the contrivance of mysterious spirits, we were honored to be joined by Ed Sanders from his home in Woodstock for a conversation on the World BEYOND War podcast on the same morning 57 years later.

How much has changed between 1967 and 2024? We talked about nuclear madness and humanity’s self-destructive nihilism, Sanders’s youthful protests and arrest for attacking a nuclear submarine, Herman Kahn’s depressing 1960 book “On Thermonuclear War” and how President Lyndon B. Johnson’s hopes for a progressive presidency were destroyed by war. We talked about the deep state, the absurdities of USA’s looming Harris vs. Trump election, Africom, Chernobyl, Elon Musk, the current disasters in Ukraine and Gaza. “It all leads in one direction: World War Three”.

Ed Sanders is a hero and inspiration to me and many others for his joyful and eclectic spirit of protest, and for his brilliant early innovations as a do-it-yourself publisher who used a mimeograph machine to self-produce a groundbreaking poetry journal that could not be censored and ended up publishing some of the best poets of the 1960s. “When in doubt, publish!” Sanders says. He found his first mimeograph machine while volunteering at Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker in New York City, and tells the story of how he eventually made up with Dorothy Day for once using her machine without permission.

A lot of today’s interview is about other great pacifist souls like Dorothy Day who influenced and inspired Ed Sanders (and, still, many of us today): Allen Ginsberg, Bradford Lyttle, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Abbie Hoffman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and Judith Malina.

Ed Sanders with Phil Ochs

Ed Sanders, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and other protestors against the US war against Vietnam

For me as a podcast host and member of the confused generation that came after the hippie era, it was an absolute thrill to talk to a cultural figure who inspired me tremendously in my own formative years. The most moving parts of this interview for me were when we talked about the need for humor, balance and moderation in a lifetime of furious protest.

As our conversation ranged from William F. Buckley to Jack Kerouac to Caryl Chessman to Muammar Gaddafi to Vladimir Putin, I only regret that we forgot to shout out Sanders’s fellow Fug Tuli Kupferberg, even though the episode begins with the 1968 song “Dover Beach” by the Fugs, featuring the final verse of Matthew Arnold’s poem. The episode ends with a recording of the 1967 exorcism and attempted levitation of USA’s military headquarters from the Fugs album “Tenderness Junction”. Thanks to Ed Sanders for talking to us on the World BEYOND War podcast!

The World BEYOND War Podcast page is here. All episodes are free and permanently available. Please subscribe and give us a good rating at any of the services below:

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The Tyranny of the Majority: Alexis de Tocqueville

 from EDSITEment

by Joe Phelan

2015 

My apologies if I'm breaking any copyrights by posting from EDSITEment. This article just seems such a timely and appropriate analysis of the causes and dangers of the Trump election. 

In 1831, an ambitious and unusually perceptive twenty-five-year-old French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States. His nine-month sojourn led to the writing of Democracy in America, universally regarded as one of the most influential books ever written.

The book is influential both for its study of American society in the Jacksonian period and for its analysis of democracy. In his introduction, Tocqueville writes: “In America, I saw more than America… I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions. I wanted to know democracy, if only to know at least what we must hope or fear from it.”  

A complex informational text such as this poses an invigorating challenge to high school students. With this challenge in mind, we have developed a new unit that focuses on one of the most famous and controversial of Tocqueville’s arguments. 

Democracy’s greatest danger

Equipped with a deep understanding of the achievements and failures of European civilization and an equally deep passion for liberty and human dignity, Tocqueville was able to bring his complex perspective to bear on his subject. In America, he saw and praised a people who enjoyed an unprecedented equality of conditions and political and civil liberty without endangering order or prosperity. But he also saw and criticized the way white majorities supported the institution of slavery and the unjust treatment of free blacks and Native Americans. In fact, the greatest danger Americans faced was inherent in their treatment of unpopular minorities.

From the founding period to the time of his visit, Americans had become increasingly more egalitarian and democratic. The notion that the people can do no wrong became widely held. Tocqueville, in the light of his “new political science,” calls this an “impious and detestable maxim.” In Volume 2, Part 2, Chapter 7, “Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United States and Its Effects,” he lays out his argument against this view.

The power of the democratic majority arises from the fact that every individual is assumed to be competent to guide his own life and is politically the equal of every other individual. In this situation, the greatest legitimate power will always be with the majority.

In Europe, with its complex hierarchical societies, the majority has little or no power. It is rather the aristocracy, the clergy, the legal profession, and the rising merchant class—the independent centers of powers—that will resist and even oppose the sovereign. Some of these groups do exist in democracies, but they have little or no independent legitimacy.

According to Tocqueville, these “intermediary” institutions that exist in aristocracies serve as a “dike” against the force of dominant political power and a vital protection for human dignity and liberty. Because American democracy lacks such intermediary institutions, it has “no lasting obstacles” in the way of the opinions, prejudices, interests, and momentary passions of the majority and tends towards an unthinking despotism over unpopular minorities.

Tocqueville does not mean that the majority in a democracy will always act tyrannically, only that nothing can prevent it from so doing. He further argues that tendency to acquiesce in the rightness of majority opinion has negative long-term consequences on national character and culture.

one way to start trumping trumpism

 Is trumpism the final stage in the decline of the amerikan empire? Remember that hitler was also first elected. 

Dear friends, It's a gut punch. Trump. Again.  And this time, with no limits. Only his deepest loyalists working for him. The Senate, and likely the whole of Congress, under his control. Handpicked judges on the Supreme Court.   We're about to face an onslaught against everything we stand for -- like nothing we've seen before. The future we dream of is hanging by a thread. But this is the moment Avaaz was made for.  We have less than 100 days before Trump takes power. We have to be ready -- bigger, stronger, and faster than ever.   This is an emergency fundraiser to give us the resources we need to supercharge these critical resistance campaigns, which will be crucial in the months ahead: Launch a new people's movement for peace in Palestine. We're working in communities across Palestine to create the first Freedom Charter, building foundations to end the Israeli occupation. This work has started, but needs more funding.  Fund landmark legal cases to block anti-environmental measures, joining forces with allies to challenge rollbacks on emissions standards, endangered species protections, and public health safeguards. Enable a 24/7 Response Team to track and counteract harmful executive orders and actions, ensuring our movement is prepared to launch targeted campaigns that defend hard-won rights and global progress at every turn. Establish an emergency fund to respond to Trump’s attacks on minorities, enabling rapid campaigns that defend human rights and stand with vulnerable communities wherever they're targeted. There are millions of us around the world, and everything Avaaz does is 100% funded by people like you. If we all come together, if we all commit to playing our part in the resistance, we can turn this darkest of days into a turning point. It starts now. Please donate what you can: I'LL DONATE $10 I'LL DONATE $15 I'LL DONATE $25 I'LL DONATE $38 I'LL DONATE $63 OTHER AMOUNT Some are hoping that it won’t be that bad. But we can’t take the chance. Trump has been clear about his plans -- turn the military on his opponents, trash climate action, deport millions of migrants, strip women of sovereignty over their bodies. We need a global response, and we need it fast. That means rethinking how we campaign, strengthening our community, and scaling our impact. And to do that we urgently need funds. Avaaz doesn't accept any corporate or government funding -- everything we do is thanks to small donations, pooled from around the world. Today we need your support. Lives around the world depend on whether and how Trump can be resisted. Chip in now with a small donation -- every dollar we raise will be spent on supercharging campaigns to protect the world from Trump’s threat. I'LL DONATE $10 I'LL DONATE $15 I'LL DONATE $25 I'LL DONATE $38 I'LL DONATE $63 OTHER AMOUNT We've spent nearly two decades building our community and delivering real impact. We've faced dark times before -- but never anything like this. If we don’t rise now, we may never have the chance again. In resolute determination in the face of this threat, Bert, Jon, Kaitlin, Mike and the rest of the Avaaz team More information: America Makes a Perilous Choice (The New York Times) Five ways a Trump presidency would be disastrous for the climate (The Guardian) What Trump’s Win Means for U.S. Foreign Policy (Foreign Policy)

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