Dear CCI Friends,

These times are so perilous and most of our U.S. population is so unaware, that we, who are a bit better informed, need to keep up with “real news” often. We need several points of view, not just those from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and CNN – institutions that always agree with each other.

I recommend *Johnson’s Russia List (JRL)*, which can be scanned daily or when possible. JRL carries multiple points of view in brief, easy-to-absorb, small blocks of text. David Johnson has felt so strongly about this type of news coverage that he has provided this service essentially pro bono for over two decades. It’s free for the asking! Once a year he sends out a note asking for small contributions, but no one is taken off the list, unless requested. He is a real public servant in our midst.

Email David Johnson at davidjohnson@starpower.net and request this essentially free information! Try it for a month or two and see if you would like to become a continuous receiver.

All the best,

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

Dear CCI Friends,

We are not alone––we are actually in the majority!

New polls below show agreement with us on getting out of these endless wars. Why then is militarism and resulting wars between ourselves and other countries so out of control?

Up to now the American media has supported a militaristic mindset––war looks exciting, brave and all-American! But definitely, Americans are beginning to wake up, particularly the younger business and professional class who understand they may have no future at the rate the situation is advancing.

Push with us, educate with us, email this message to friends, colleagues, university students, your business friends, family members and physicians.

Sharon Tennison, President and Founder
Center for Citizen Initiatives

The Nation
January 9, 2018

A New Poll Shows the Public Is Overwhelmingly Opposed to Endless U.S. Military Interventions

There is a wide bipartisan majority that seeks an American foreign policy of realism and restraint.

By James Carden

(Bolding by S.Tennison)

Last week, the Committee for a Responsible Foreign Policy—a bipartisan advocacy group calling for congressional oversight of America’s lengthy list of military interventions abroad—released the results of a survey that show broad public support for Congress to reclaim its constitutional prerogatives in the exercise of foreign policy (see Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) and for fewer U.S. military interventions generally. Undertaken last November by J. Wallin Opinion Research, the new survey revealed “a national voter population that is largely skeptical of the practicality or benefits of military intervention overseas, including both the physical involvement of the U.S. military and also extending to military aid in the form of funds or equipment as well.”

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Dear CCI Friends,

Please educate yourself with this 9-minute TED X Talk. It is a very topical subject these days since our CDC will soon be sharing information with the public about how Americans can survive a nuclear blast. Physicists and physicians tell us a different story.

Dr. Ira Helfund does a magnificent job of describing the reality of nuclear weapons in the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUm82W7B2BY.

It has become fashionable for politicians to discuss nuclear war as though it’s survivable. This is extremely dangerous.

Weapons built today are sometimes 40 times more powerful than those exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki––which left generations of damage. In today’s world there would never be one bomb dropped! There would be thousands dropped in different places. The accumulated atmospheric debris would shortly occlude the sun’s rays––plants and food sources would die. The living would envy the dead.

Thank you for becoming an educator! Send to your friends, colleagues and families.

Let your public officials, your senators, the President know how you feel about such cavalier attitudes toward nuclear weapons.

Sharon Tennison
President and Founder, Center for Citizen Initiatives

Dear Friends,

You have probably seen last week’s announcement from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about preparing Americans for a nuclear detonation somewhere here in the U.S.  If a nuclear detonation ever happens here in the U.S., it will bring about a rapid return of numerous nuclear weapons toward the sender and likely a volley back and forth.  Are we this close to an all-out nuclear exchange and no one is pursuing serious diplomacy?  Are we American citizens perturbed … or are we just moving forward unconsciously like lemmings to the sea?

I suggest we call or write our newspapers, public officials, congress members, and everyone on our e-lists––and say, NO! We need to pursue a radical course of diplomacy, a total reevaluation of the US-North Korea history in order to learn why they are so defensive and paranoid.

Please get a copy of Professor Bruce Cumings’, North Korea: Another Country, written in 2004. Cumings is a noted authority on North Korea. This book is based on “declassified materials” from our U.S. military archives. Reading the pages will break your heart. More napalm was dropped needlessly on North Korea after WWII than on Vietnam. Multiple killing fields were created where the shooting of thousands of North Koreans was carried out systematically by our troops in each of them. Their cities were mercilessly bombed when they were totally helpless. Every current U.S. politician and military officer should be mandated to read this book. It is not make-believe, it’s full of quotes from our generals whose names we know from the 50’s forward. Yes, the North Koreans are terribly paranoid. No wonder they have a warped view of the outside world, particularly of American power.

China and Russia recently created large trilateral projects designed to help North Koreans develop regions in North Korea and in eastern Russia that will be beneficial to all concerned. There are a number of constructive options possible if American policy makers back off of their power trip, which includes conducting huge military operations in North Korea’s immediate vicinity to frighten them. Bring the situation down to our neighborhoods, if we know the man next door to us is paranoid, fearful and angry with us, does it make sense to parade around his property with a battalion of uniformed fighters with hoards of lethal weapons?

It appears we are choosing the latter … and preparing our people for an exchange of nuclear bombs. This is insane!

Please see the article below. If this concerns you also, please pass on to your friends and colleagues.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

STAT
January 4, 2018

CDC plans session on ‘preparing for the unthinkable’: a nuclear detonation

With this week’s bellicose boasting about who has the bigger red button on his desk, an alert Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention felt more than a bit on the nose.

With the prospect of actual nuclear war breaking out between North Korea and the United States seeming ever more real, the CDC is moving to prepare health professionals and others on what the public health response would be to a nuclear detonation.

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The best informed, recently-become “nation-cryer,”  Professor Steve Cohen, America’s top US-Soviet/Russian historian of the past half century, once again amasses the facts available regarding the pseudo-fake news that blames Russia for every ill that Democrats and Republicans have leveled at Putin and his nation. All this in order to cover their own bad judgments and actions. If you have time only to scan the first five paragraphs, please do so. It’s vitally important that as many Americans as possible understand what is going on.

Sharon Tennison

Consortium News
December 15, 2017

The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate

Despite a lack of evidence at its core – and the risk of nuclear conflagration as its by-product – Russia-gate remains the go-to accusation for “getting” the Trump administration, explains Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen.

By Stephen F. Cohen

The foundational accusation of Russia-gate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this “attack on American democracy.”

As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russia-gate without Russia. (An apt formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer James Carden.) Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-lived national-security adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump “adviser,” for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia, except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn.

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