[pjw] REPORT BACK: Norman Solomon livestream event highly educational!

[Peace and Justice Works]

Hello Iraq Affinity Group supporters

Last night's presentation by Norman Solomon, "The Hidden Human Toll of 
Iraq and Other US Wars," was highly informative and engaging! The bulk of 
the first hour was kind of an extension of the June 22 KBOO show, as Lisa 
Loving asked questions to prompt Mr. Solomon to address various issues 
raised in his book "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll 
of Its Military Machine." This was followed by a Q&A period.

In addition to talking about how the media is complicit in hiding the 
human suffering caused by the US war machine, Solomon also discussed the 
contrast between how warfare is covered by corporate reporters. For 
instance, how the deaths of Ukrainians at the hands of Russians is 
accompanied by moral outrage, when similar (and far more deadly) massacres 
perpetrated by the US are met with a shrug. He also noted how the racial 
dynamic of most US wars is not discussed, and in that context compared 
police violence to military violence (hmm... hope that sounds familiar to 
PJW supporters who also follow our Portland Copwatch project group!!).

Solomon showed his encyclopedic knowledge of other authors and activists 
by citing people from George Orwell to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Daniel 
Ellsberg, and encouraged people to keep organizing because that's what 
makes a difference. He reported that one of the groups he's in, 
RootsAction.org, was founded because other organizations doing online 
activism were not consistent about being antiwar depending on who was in 
the White House. Solomon is not shy about calling out both Republicans and 
Democrats as war criminals.

OK so now a nerdy explanation of how to watch the video: For technical 
reasons, there were five minutes of silence before the actual event got 
going. When I cut out those five minutes, instead of simply updating the 
live video (which YouTube used to do), it turned it into a NEW video, 
which had (as of this morning) many fewer views than the original. But I'm 
counting on all of you to help turn that around by sharing this link with 
people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_eOLIkJMl8

We had captions turned on in Zoom, so there's open captioning on the video 
(albeit auto-generated so, imperfect).

We expect Flying Focus Video Collective will be editing this down from 90 
minutes to about an hour sometime in the next 2 months, so watch for that 
too.

Thanks to all who helped make this event happen, all those who watched it 
live, and to all who will watch it in the future.

peace
dan handelman
peace and justice works iraq affinity group