Disclosure: as a Communist, a former competitive shooter, an honorably discharged Regular Army veteran (active duty 1959-1962) and a veteran of the Civil Rights, Alternative Press, Anti-Vietnam-War and Back-to-the-Land movements, I remain firmly committed to the Second Amendment right of armed self defense, especially now with the Trump-emboldened JesuNazis and their fascist allies running amok, frequently with police protection. Nevertheless...
AT ITS EXISTENTIAL CORE, the ongoing U.S. protest against the legal availability of firearms notoriously favored by mass murderers is the nation's first genuinely widespread outcry against the imperial death cult of kamikaze Capitalism.
The protest's potential significance therefore goes far beyond its immediate demands because it includes a definitively revolutionary potential few dare acknowledge. Henry Giroux does so indirectly by noting in a new essay that such "momentary protests" could "become broad-based movements." However, as I write these lines (26 March 2018), most other Left-leaning commentators and public intellectuals have remained curiously silent on this matter. In all probability they see the protest's potential as clearly as I do -- indeed how could they not? But they are no doubt terrified to silence by the professional and socioeconomic consequences of violating the ever-more-ruthlessly enforced taboo against acknowledging, even obliquely, that revolution is our only alternative -- that if we are to survive as a viable species on a livable planet, we must overthrow Capitalism before it murders us all.
We as socialists and particularly as Marxists should therefore be asking whether the legitimate fear and fury U.S. high school students are expressing in response to their repeated victimization by mass murderers might evolve into the class consciousness that is prerequisite to such a revolution. It is obvious to us as enemies of Capitalism that if these students are to eliminate the root cause of the atrocities against which they mobilize -- specifically the deadly combination of unyielding hopelessness, murderous rage and conditioned moral imbecility that is Capitalism's unique legacy -- it is Capitalism against which these students and their international comrades must ultimately arise and do battle.
This is not to ignore or downplay the other important issues raised by the form and content of the students' campaign. These include the campaign's limited focus, specifically the fact the students' are apparently unable or unwilling to recognize that school shootings -- like the murders of unarmed suspects by the Empire's militarized local police -- are domestic manifestations of the endlessly repeated atrocities that have become the defining reality of life and death anywhere the Imperial United States has its boots on the ground. A corollary issue is thus the fact the majority of student protestors seem to be children of the One Percent's white Ruling Class vassalage or at least of the white petite bourgeoisie. This of course puts the primary focus on mostly white upscale victims -- which some of the protestors themselves admit is one of the primary reasons their activism has been gifted with such lavishly affirmative publicity by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. The other reason for the outpouring of favorable publicity is the strategically timely boost the protest is giving to -- and in return getting substantial support from -- the decades-long Ruling Class campaign for forcible proletarian* disarmament, for details of which click on the foregoing link and scroll down to the text's final dozen paragraphs.
Obviously the protestors are prime targets for co-optation, an effort Time magazine's disclosures tell us is already well underway. (See again the report accessed by the preceding link.)
Meanwhile two of the world's most influential journals of women's fashion have awarded protest leader Emma González the coveted laurels of international celebrity. Teen Vogue -- a publication for fashion-minded girls with unlimited allowances -- has published "Why We March," an articulate manifesto by Ms. González that implicitly testifies to the top-drawer quality of public education available to the (mostly white) children of the Ruling Class and petite bourgeoisie. True to Teen Vogue's Mainstream Media propaganda function, its special "gun control issue" not only features Ms. González's essay but includes enough photographs of people of color to create the false impression the student protest is far more multi-racial than it actually is: anything to downplay the white-supremacist empire's ever-more-blatant Nazism. Not to be outdone, Vogue's perpetual rival Harper's Bazaar also showcases Ms. González, prominently publishing her equally articulate but much more autobiographical reflection on her emergence as a personification of the protest and backing it up with a well-conceived photo essay that tells us a lot about Ms. González's person and personality. Both of Ms. González's pieces are well worth reading, though I prefer the more conversational tone of her Harper's Bazaar essay. Indeed I suspect she would be an interesting conversationalist even without her involvement in the protest.
Nevertheless we should not overlook the critical role of these two journals of high fashion in making the protests themselves fashionable -- another example not only of the prelude to and process of co-optation, but of the strategy and tactics of the forcible disarmament movement -- the response of our overlords to the potential of increasing Working Class rebelliousness precipitated by the ever-intensifying savagery of Capitalism.
Before proceeding any further with this analysis I should probably make it clear I am well aware of the apparent contradiction implicit in the competing hypotheses of a Ruling Class bent on forcibly disarming the U.S. Working Class versus a Ruling Class intent on maximizing Working Class armament and thereby maximizing the profits of the international arms industry. However, the apparent contradiction disappears when we acknowledge the fact that what we are witnessing are merely two competing strategies by the two dominant factions of the One Percent and its vassalage. One faction views the Working Class as irremediably hostile and seeks its forcible disarmament accordingly; the other views the Working Class -- particularly the white Working Class -- as a vital ally, the source of the military and para-military personnel who defend Capitalism. This faction therefore regards the availability of firearms as essential precursors to military and police functions equivalent to those performed by the Nazi German Wehrmacht, the SS and the Gestapo. Note that German youth under Hitler, once their Aryan ancestry was certified, were trained in marksmanship from about age 10 onward. Note too that both factions of the U.S. One Percent have, beyond their seemingly antithetical strategies, the same long-term purpose as the Nazis under Hitler (scroll down to "Hitler in a somewhat cynical mood..."). This purpose is the reduction of the Working Class to the modern, politically predictable, militarily dependable equivalents of serfdom and slavery in a manner that, quoting Hitler himself, guarantees "they will never be free again as long as they live."
The Empire's methods of domestic oppression are of course infinitely more sophisticated than those that were employed by the Nazis. One method, deceptive ideological tokenism, is exemplified by the tolerance accorded pseudo-revolutionary individuals such as Noam Chomsky and pseudo-revolutionary publications such as The Nation. While the German Nazis brutally suppressed any such deviance from the Hitlerian gospel, their USian counterparts are cunning enough to recognize that such persons or publications are (A)--rendered powerless by a population already thoroughly conditioned to Ayn Rand moral imbecility and (B)--are superbly useful as stage props in the Empire's charade of "democracy." More elaborate charades of democratic process -- precisely the medium within which Emma González and her comrades are operating -- foster even greater "this-is-what-democracy-looks-like" deceptions. These deceptions conceal, often with formidable effectiveness, the fact that Capitalism cannot function without the protection provided by tyrannical governance, and that U.S. "democracy" is therefore the deadliest, most oppressive and most potentially apocalyptic Big Lie our species has ever inflicted on itself and our planetary motherland.
Returning to our initial question -- whether the high school students' dramatically compelling protests against the availability of firearms that facilitate mass murder might evolve into a revolutionary movement that recognizes school shootings as but one kind of atrocity amidst the infinity of atrocities inflicted on us by imperial Capitalism's apocalyptic deadliness -- as of today (28 March 2018), a few commentators on the Left are now predicting it will do just that. Perhaps the most compellingly articulate of these optimists is Truthout's William Rivers Pitt, who writes of the protestors in prose the power of which is reminiscent of epic poetry: "Generations of violence, racism, greed and indifference have conspired to make diamonds forged by the crushing weight of failure and fear. These student activists are now in the headlines because of gun violence in schools and the availability of war weapons, but they seek much more. In their whole lives, many have never known one minute of peace. They are determined that this will change. They are hard, they are strong, they are the ones they've been waiting for, and like springtime, they are finally here." As always in this darkest of all human eras, I am profoundly skeptical of optimism, but there is much to support Pitt's hopefulness, especially the professional pollsters' oft-repeated findings of increasing hostility toward Capitalism. Nevertheless three factors will ultimately determine the protestors' revolutionary potential: how well they are able resist co-optation (that is, the extent to which they are able to preserve their operational and ideological independence from groups such as the forcible disarmament advocates and organizations such as the Democratic [sic] Party); whether they will allow themselves to be seduced by success into accepting as truth the monstrous Big Lie of U.S. "democracy"; and -- most of all -- whether they can evolve the ideological clarity to recognize that their ultimate adversary is Capitalism itself. But where are the teachers knowledgeable enough in socialist theory to facilitate the essential learning process?
Meanwhile Emma González, already viciously attacked by the Right, has proven herself the student protest movement's La Pasionaria. I trust she has also acquired sufficient political sophistication to recognizes the subtle insult implicit in how the same issue of Harper's Bazaar that celebrates the student movement and her leadership also runs a prominently positioned, decidedly Ivanka Trumpish piece entitled "Don't Shame Women for Spending Money" followed by a "Read Next" entitled "How to Know When You're Ready to Start Investing." Clearly the editor is dutifully brandishing Mainstream Media's unalterable commitment to preserving Capitalism whatever the cost -- and simultaneously assuring the One Percenters of a firm conviction that Ms. González's passion can be safely channeled in exclusively pro-Capitalist directions. Obviously I don't know Ms. González; I have never looked her in the eye during an interview or sat across from her in the sort of bohemian cafe where people of all ages might comfortably open their souls to one another. But based on the videos I have seen and the texts I have read, I rather suspect she has acquired wisdom and personhood well beyond what her calendar years might suggest. I therefore dearly hope she has also learned how to recognize and avoid entrapment -- especially by those who would betray her quest for liberation by transforming it, as the United States itself has been transformed, into yet another of Capitalism's deadly weapons.
__________________
*"Proletarian" rather than "civilian" because (A)--the One Percenters and their Ruling Class political, professional and executive vassals will always be allowed unlimited possession of firearms and (B)--because the Capitalists and their vassals have reduced all but about ten percent of us to permanent serfdom.
***
Don't Let the Democrats Pervert the Protest: Three Black Agenda Report Writers
Analyze the Dangers and Opportunities Implicit in This New Student Movement
"Unfortunately, for the young people who sincerely want to understand and confront gun violence, the opportunism of the Democrats made these students and their pain easy targets to advance the agenda of the Democrat Party that sees this issue as an issue that will advance their electoral agenda."
***
"The trick for Democrats will be to keep the public anger high, but the discussion shallow, limited, and ahistorical...Democrats will have to blame mental illness or some other made-up cause for mass shooters. Their media and academics will have to keep discussion away from what the steps might look like to disarming the police, away from reducing the level of violence in society as a whole, and shutting down the nation’s world-leading arms industry."
***
"While hundreds of thousands recently marched to protest gun violence committed by individuals, the state’s victims were forgotten, those at home and around the world...(these deaths) make a mockery of the Marching for Our Lives charade. No one marches for black people’s lives except black people, and even we can fall short unless all of the stars are aligned."
***
Anti-Killer-Cop Protests Resume in Sacramento
"Over the last week, hundreds of people in Sacramento, California have participated in demonstrations protesting the police murder of Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old African American man who was unarmed when he was shot 20 times in his grandparent’s backyard...The eruption of renewed protests against police violence is part of the reemergence of social opposition in the US, including a wave of strikes and demonstrations by teachers and the March for Our Lives protests that involved more than one million students and youth last weekend."
***
The Right's "Lone Gunmen" Revealed as Members of an Internet Death Cult
“They're reading the same websites, talking to each other, and killing the same targets. The lone wolves (of white terrorism) are actually a pack...part of a systematic campaign to terrorize and divide Americans. What's worse, it's working.”
***
Meanwhile Let Us Never Forget the Lesson Taught Us by Fannie Lou Hamer
"Fannie Lou Hamer, legendary founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party...(said)...'I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won’t write his mama again,'...(Now as during the Civil Rights Movement), left-wing self-defense...is likely the only hope of making (the country) safer...The only question is will those of us who value an egalitarian internationalist community survive (the fascist onslaught)."
***** ***** *****
Pence and JesuNazi Hatemongers Wrote Trump's Military Transgender Ban
"Defense Secretary Jim Mattis...recommended in February that Trump allow transgender people to (continue to) serve...(but) Vice President Pence (with the help of) some of the country’s most prominent anti-LGBTQ activists...'effectively overruled' him." Comment: Christianity in action, bolstered by the regime's theocrats, who with Trump's mental and political deterioration are becoming ever more powerful. (Those who consider my criticism too harsh are urged to read this.)
*****
Ohio Exemplifies How JesuNazis Are Now Directly Targeting Roe v. Wade
"The anti-abortion movement has been trying to pass pre-viability abortion bans, like the Ohio bill, hoping that efforts to overturn them would lead to a challenge of Roe v. Wade that would end with the 45-year-old decision’s reversal in the Supreme Court." Comment: More Christianity in action. Face it -- with the Trump/Pence Regime in the White House, Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and the JesuNazis goose-stepping to power nearly everywhere in the nation, Roe v. Wade is as doomed as the Bill of Rights itself.
*****
Anti-Abortion Candidates Exemplify How the Democrats Betray Women
"Why is Democratic support of anti-choice politicians an urgent concern? Because we need all hands on deck to defeat attacks on access to reproductive health care at the state and federal level...I find it insulting and unacceptable that party leaders treat support for access to reproductive health care and abortion like throwaway wedge issues even as they talk a good game about fighting for everyday Americans. There can be no economic justice without reproductive justice...And abortion access and reproductive health care are winning issues." Comment: again, Christianity in action, this time in the Democrats' treacherous willingness to hurl women under the proverbial bus. Also an aside to the essay's author Pamela Merritt, who nullified her own political efforts when she joined the Democratic (sic) Party. Ms. Merritt needs to wake up to three facts: (1)--that there is no such thing as "economic justice" under Capitalism; (2)--that no matter how much the Democrats claim to be for "economic justice," the fact theirs is as much a Capitalist party as its Republican counterpart proves all those claims to be Big Lies; (3)--that if "economic justice" is what she truly seeks, her only alternative is socialism...or better yet Marxism.
*****
Prosecutorial Misconduct: in the U.S., Courtroom Crime Now Pays Big Time
"...prosecutorial misconduct is endemic to nearly all jurisdictions of the American legal system. According to some observers...(such) misconduct...has reached epidemic proportions."
*****
Drug Costs Skyrocket as Manufacturers Profit Obscenely from Genocide by Price
"...older Americans are getting hit by soaring drug prices while the pharmaceutical industry rakes in billions...A CDC report from 2015 found that almost 7.8 percent of U.S. adults—roughly 25 million people—did not take their medication as prescribed, either skipping doses or not refilling prescriptions, in order to save money. Among those aged 65 and over, the percentage was 4.4 percent—over 14 million Americans." Comment: one nation under the Christian god and his (anointed) prescription drug lords.
*****
U.S. Censorship Intensifies: PayPal Declares War on Socialism
"The American payment-processing corporation PayPal has blocked sales of the World Socialist Web Site pamphlet, The Struggle Against Imperialism and for Workers’ Power in Iran. The effective banning of the sale of a book represents a dangerous new stage in the ongoing campaign to criminalize political expression and censor freedom of speech on the Internet."
*****
University Aids Feds in Training, Recruiting U.S. Spies and Secret Police
“(Tuesday's) all day symposium on the Rutgers University campus co-sponsored by the “Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience” and by the Office of Rutgers President Barchi...is actually a US intelligence program sponsored by a $2M grant from the Defense Intelligence Agency...also a recruitment operation for these agencies, using faculty members, administrators and even students as recruitment agents...(for) DIA, NSA (National Security Agency), CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), DHS (Department of Homeland Security), ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation).” Comment: obviously some agents are recruited in their teens. As we on the Real Left are discovering, the infiltrators are getting younger and more convincing every year. Thus it behooves us to remember Leon Trotsky's observation: "in every gathering of three revolutionaries there is at least one agent of the Okhrana."
***** ***** *****
Note: Originally -- my news editor's instincts as compelling now as they were during the late 1960s, when that job was actually mine -- I felt I should lead this week's Dispatches with the latest reports on how the Trump/Pence Regime is methodically fulfilling Hillary's Goldwater-Girl plan for thermonuclear apocalypse: thereby reducing Earth to a bug planet and forever ending the environmental crisis. But then it occurred to me that if our thermonuclear extinction is truly inevitable -- and I now believe it is -- we at least deserve the widest possible recognition of our efforts against Kamikaze Capitalism and its sundry death cults at home and abroad. Hence I rejected my instincts, led with the protests, and moved the following four stories to the equivalent of inside pages. Perhaps millions of years from now the descendants of cockroaches will learn to read. /LB
Trump, the Voice of JesuNazi Nation, Tells the World to Fuck Off and Die
"The president's embrace of the death penalty for drug dealers is but one example of his across-the-board scorn for human rights as he buddies up with the world's most notorious autocrats and directs the Pentagon to ensure that ongoing human rights catastrophes around the world grow even worse."
*****
No Resistance from "The Resistance" as Trump Builds War Cabinet
"What’s most interesting and extremely disturbing about the Pompeo and Haspel appointments, is the lack of resistance from 'the resistance'...an unholy alliance of neocon/neoliberal war hawks, intelligence agencies and the mass media. The...entire purpose of this psyops of a movement is to ensure Trump continues with the insane imperial policies of his predecessors. Trump’s about to deliver in spades, and you can thank 'the resistance' for paving the way for this administration’s upcoming belligerence."
*****
Target-Rich U.S. Has No Defense against Random Attacks
"The Austin bomber offered a frightening reminder how vulnerable the U.S. is to asymmetrical attacks – something that should be kept in mind as U.S. leaders exacerbate tensions with Russia and other targeted regimes."
*****
What It Costs You When Your Town's Only Industry Is the Imperial War Machine
"Altogether, over the period 2010 and 2021, these invisible costs to Island County (imposed by the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station) will be about $122 million. While the Navy understandably wants to discount or dismiss these costs, state and local decision-makers would be remiss not to give them serious consideration. Public officials should seek to minimize them by pressing the Navy: to begin serious conversion planning; to pay the County at least $5.7 million per year in 'payments in lieu of taxes'..." Comment: fat chance the imperial war machine can ever be compelled to relieve us of its costs. Moreover, Whidbey NAS is one of five bases – not to mention the enormous concentration of Boeing and other defense industries – that make the Tacoma-Seattle area the most target-rich environment on the planet. Therefore – once the Trump/Pence Biblical Doomsday Regime gets their intended global war – we'll be Target Number One for an apocalypse-sized cluster of a dozen or more thermonuclear bombs, with the explosions wiping out most if not all life in the Puget Sound area and the radioactive fallout devastating British Columbia and Alaska. The death toll will be in millions: at least 4,269,349 women, children and men vaporized in the Puget Sound area; at least another 2,820,000 million women, children and men dead in the Vancouver and Victoria areas after suffering the burning-to-death-slowly agony of radiation poisoning; and -- depending on the intensity of the fallout -- still more casualties in Alaska. Truly, the Trump/Pence Regime -- its warmongering now indistinguishable from Hillary's -- is forcing us to think the unthinkable.
***** ***** *****
Essential History I: When the U.S. Routinely Sterilized "Unfit" Humans
"In the first half of the 20th century, approximately 60,000 people were sterilized under US eugenics programs. Eugenic laws in 32 states empowered government officials in public health, social work and state institutions to render people they deemed 'unfit' infertile."
*****
Essential History II: a Preview of the Regime's Looming War on Marijuana Users
"A review of some of the sentences over the past few decades -- punishments that plague individuals for decades, even after release -- reveals the injustice of the drug war. Here's a rundown of the people who received the harshest penalties handed down for pot in recent history." Comment: remember, these injustices were inflicted by the Obama Regime. What then will happen when the Trump/Pence Regime expands the imperial war machine enough to mobilize it for mass arrests in states where pot is legal?
***** ***** *****
Book Review: Ivanka Trump as Patronizingly Patriarchal Pedagogue
"Ivanka Trump has written a book about female empowerment, and it is about as feminist as a swastika-shaped bikini wax... Women Who Work (Portfolio: 2017) is an unholy screed of late-stage patriarchal capitalist soothsayings masquerading as a blush-pink self-help manual...The worst thing is that this is not just a dross self-help book...The stores are full of such things, but few of them are actively fascist, unless you have a particularly rigorous attitude to the cult of self-help as a means of diverting the anxiety of the atomized individual from social change. No, this is a...manifesto for aspirational capitalist self-actualization with the gall to call itself empowering, a prosperity gospel for post-Trump patriarchy chewed up and regurgitated as a set of smirking pull-quotes and suggested hashtags...all slimy socialite salmon and sterile beige." Comment: this is hands down the most enjoyable book review I have ever read. I discovered it while researching the (growing) recognition of of Capitalism as a death cult. Its caustically articulate author Laurie Penny, whose works I had never before encountered, even mentions "kamikaze Capitalism," a term I had (mistakenly) believed was the product of my own dystopic creativity, but which I now know Ms. Penny coined last year. Thus I most emphatically recommend you read her review -- not just for its informative and contemplative values, but for its delightful acerbic potency.
***** ***** *****
Last Words: Rewire Editor's Impassioned Plea for a Humanitarian Renaissance
"We are the root cause of the problems we are facing...Instead of taking account of the lack of care and the lack of broader social compassion and the lack of investment in services for those who are disconnected or suffering, we make it worse. Instead of building a national foundation for mental health, for inclusion, for acceptance, for belonging, for love, we disown people with mental health problems...And instead of addressing the root causes, politicians are using these issues for political gain: our own president and his party are stoking fear, stoking hatred, stoking racism, stoking toxic masculinity, and all the while cutting funds for social services for youth, for education, for mental health." Comment: Jodi Jacobson's points are profoundly compelling, and I wholeheartedly agree with nearly everything she says in this deeply moving essay. Even so, I cannot but wonder when she and her colleagues will awaken to the fact the only way we will ever throw off the deadly shackles of Ayn Rand moral imbecility and achieve a society that embraces "the lost people" is by overthrowing patriarchy and its genocidal offspring Capitalism. Only then, and only by the redemptive power of revolution, can we remake the world into a place where life -- not just human life but all life -- is truly respected: from each of us according to our ability; to each of us according to our need.
LB/29 March 2018
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New Scientific Study Proves Capitalism's Apocalyptic Deadliness
"Human destruction of nature is rapidly eroding the world’s capacity to provide food, water and security to billions of people, according to the most comprehensive biodiversity study in more than a decade." Comment: our Capitalist overlords' murderous exploitation of the environment and contempt for our Motherland Planet Earth also proves their moral imbecility. Obviously their attitude is rape the world now while they can and fuck the future because by the time the apocalypse peaks, they'll already be dead. Which suggests a new name for what is destroying us: Kamikaze Capitalism.
***
Bolton's Appointment Could Mean Thermonuclear Apocalypse Is Inescapable
"Eighteen years after the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision and 15 years after Bush's invasion of Iraq, too much of the world is what John Bolton and his PNAC friends have made it: a smoldering crater stinking of permanent war, surrounded by refugees and choking on austerity to pay the butcher's bill." See also: "Bolton is expected to take a hardline stance against...Cuba and Venezuela and Nicaragua..." And especially this: "...the Empire can now either fold or double down. If it decides to fold, war will be averted and meaningful negotiations finally entered into. If it doubles down, something the Neocons always do, then this means war with Russia." Comment: it also means war with China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Vietnam, ultimately with most of the rest of the world. Thus the de facto Fourth Reich of the Empire will either be mercilessly (and often vengefully) crushed as was its Third Reich forefather or -- far more likely given the Empire's Christian belief in destruction as salvation -- it will deliberately nuke Earth into a bug planet.
*****
Christian Theocrats Again Prove Their Hatred of Women
Mississippi Now Has Worst Anti-Abortion Law in "One Nation Under God"
"Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed into law the United States’ most stringent abortion restrictions...the starkest example of how...attacks on reproductive rights are growing in both number and stringency throughout the United States."
***
Ohio Seeks Death Penalty for Abortion Doctors, Patients
"(Ohio Republicans are pushing legislation) that would allow physicians and those who undergo (abortions) to be charged with murder, which is punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty."
***
Nebraska Law Would Deny Impoverished People Family Planning
"...a (Republican) proposal denying Title X funds to any health center that performs, counsels about, or refers for abortion services...would block access to care for nearly 28,000 Nebraskans who rely on Title X for family planning and reproductive health care.
*****
Border Patrol Nullifying Constitutional Rights of 66% of U.S. Population
“...100 miles into the interior, across the entire perimeter of the country...(an area) home to two-thirds of the U.S. population...(the Border Patrol has unlimited)...authority to board and search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant and (demand) occupants to prove their legal status in this country.” Comment: normally I won't link to Yes Magazine because its obnoxious and often deliberately misleading optimism is clearly a defense of Capitalism and the socioeconomic status quo. But very occasionally, perhaps by accident, its editors set aside their vacuously smiley-faced Horatio Alger ideology and attempt some real journalism, as here in this badly written but nevertheless vital report on how the Border Patrol, like all other federal police agencies, are becoming ever more Gestapo-like, especially in their brutality toward U.S. citizens who are obviously members of minority groups.
*****
Fascist Judges Have Whittled Away Most Protections for Elderly Employees
"...the federal law that seeks to protect older American workers from age bias has been enfeebled by court decisions that have widened loopholes for employers and narrowed the ways employees can seek redress." Comment: another of the innumerable examples that prove Capitalism cannot be reformed but must instead be overthrown and forever outlawed.
*****
Lawsuit Charges Trump Regime Now Indefinitely Imprisoning Asylum Seekers
"...a lawsuit filed by...pro-immigrant groups...alleges that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices are denying parole or bond to immigrants asking for asylum and holding them in detention centers until they are granted hearings in chronically backlogged immigration courts...a process may take months or even years...(and is intended) to deter them from coming to the United States."
*****
Police Killing of Unarmed Suspect Triggers Effectively Disruptive Protests
"The release of footage showing the brutal police murder of 22-year-old Stephon Clark has sparked two days of protests in Sacramento, the capital of California, once again revealing the immense social tensions latent within American society."
*****
Another Leftist Dead in Columbia
"The Colombian city of Puerto Valdivia is mourning the loss of another social leader, Jose Herrera, whose body was found Thursday in Antioquia after he was reported missing two days ago."
*****
JesuNazi DeVos Denounced by Unionists and Education Department Colleagues
"The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) recently filed a complaint against...(Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’) department accusing (it) of unfair labor practices and failing to negotiate 'in good faith' with the union..." See also: "DeVos had been withholding from lawmakers information about her spending plans..."
*****
History I: How the JesuNazis Conquered the Imperial United States
"The deplorable, dollar-drenched Democrats (the 4D party) seated moronic mogul Donald Trump in the Oval Office in at least ten key ways:..." See also: "Hillary was still making excuses for why she lost... She believes the rich are dynamic and forward thinking and that the poor are...backward and ignorant...(and) that there is something inherently wrong with an election that is decided by poor people." And don't miss this: "Pence might actually be worse than Trump...(but) he would almost certainly be less likely than the current Commander-in-Chief to succumb to fits of pique that could cause him to wreak havoc at home and abroad, to start or escalate wars, or, worst of all, to ignite a nuclear holocaust."
*****
History II: Killing for Capitalism, the Empire and Its Allies Destroy Yugoslavia
"Nineteen years ago in the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing of the federal republic of Yugoslavia."
*****
In Memoriam: a New Photograph of Marielle Franco
"It is almost immaterial whether Marielle Franco was killed by the military or civilian police, or other henchmen; she was cut down by a white supremacist Brazilian state that is even more lethally racist than its counterpart in the northern hemisphere." Comment: yes, I know I linked to this story in the preceding issue of Dispatches. But the accompanying photograph chosen by Truthdig is new, at least to my eyes, which are the eyes of both a photographer and award-winning daily newspaper photo editor. Moreover I have yet to see an image that portrays the power and magnificence of the late Ms. Franco as vividly as this picture by Wikimedia's Media Ninja. Besides which, the text itself is surely worth a second read, because, precisely as its author says, "Her death is an occasion for serious examination of the similarities and differences in the Black condition in Brazil and the United States, especially regarding police."
LB/24 March 2018
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This image feels as relevant now as it did when I made it in 1971. (Photo by Loren Bliss © 1971, 2018)
*****
AN EXPATRIATE NEW YORKER acutely aware (as many New Yorkers are) of the multiple connections that link organized crime (Cosa Nostra, the Irish mob, the Russian mob, etc. ad nauseam) to the construction industry, the political establishment and capitalism in general, I cannot but wonder if the so-called "Russiagate" investigation is perhaps a red herring to distract from an infinitely more disturbing story of homegrown corruption and malfeasance.
Something of this sort is indeed implied by Coleen Rowley's thought-provoking Consortiumnews.com essay "McCabe: a War on (or in) the FBI," especially her reminder that "both presidential campaigns (were) under under serious criminal investigation in the weeks before the 2016 election."
Certainly both candidates have been linked to organized crime in ways that -- including even the Democratic (sic) Party's Geraldine Ferraro fiasco in 1984* -- have no precedent in my lifetime, which began in 1940 and includes 30 years on daily and weekly newspapers and monthly international trade journals.
For a revealing trip through a genuinely astounding number of under-reported or suppressed stories, merely Google, without the quotation marks here grammatically mandated for clarity, "trump mafia connections"; "clinton mafia connections"; and "clinton dixie mafia connections."
The Trump material contains a BillMoyers.com report by Todd Gitlin that questions why allegations of Trump's criminal connections are so often suppressed or at best downplayed. This Google anthology also includes a wealth of other damning reports.
While the Clinton material is mostly from rightist sources -- which means it should be carefully fact-checked rather than discarded out of hand -- I found three bits of gold amidst the dross. One was published by The Progressive Review on 17 December 2017, "The Clinton stories the media didn't cover" (caps and lower case as in original). The second appeared in The (NY) Daily News of 30 October 2016, "Bill and Hillary Clinton lead diabolical, influence-peddling organized crime syndicate, FBI's former NYC boss says" (caps and lc as in original). The third, a sort of overview of the Empire as a global crime syndicate, is "The Bush-Clinton Mafia," in Counterpunch on 16 March 2015.
Thus my "Russiagate" conjecture: that it is a fake scandal behind which is concealed what is perhaps the most diabolical, most terrifying, most potentially apocalyptic scandal in our species' history -- that of an entire empire become nothing more than the loot-collector (aka "bag man") for organized crime.
Indeed the application of Occam's Razor suggests this is the one most likely explanation of the myriad horrors that have befallen us all.
__________________
*Note also Ferraro's son's involvement in the cocaine trade on a level that probably would not have been possible without mob connections.
*****
Internet Censorship Partly Driven By Mainstream Media Profiteering
"Google announced Wednesday that it is partnering with The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times and other major news outlets to reinforce their monopoly over news coverage by blocking independent news organizations...the latest step in a protracted campaign on the part of the major technology companies, working with the Democratic Party and the US intelligence agencies, to censor the Internet."
*****
Death for Drug Dealing: Sessions Makes It Official
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed states in a memo released Wednesday to pursue the death penalty in certain drug-related cases as an answer to the opioid epidemic—a plan President Trump first announced this week in New Hampshire."
*****
Supreme Court Will Determine if Christians Can Legally Lie to Women
"As the U.S. Supreme Court begins hearing NIFLA v. Becerra on Tuesday, we need to remember what is at stake. This is a case that could redefine accountability regarding providing false medical information and misleading women about their reproductive health choices, all in the name of religious freedom."
*****
Hypocritical Christians Gleefully Forgive Trump's Boasts of Sin
"With the sexual harassment allegations against Trump covered regularly in the news, the question is why 'values voters' are now willing to disregard character when it formerly held center stage in their proclamations and voting decisions...what is (now) more important than Trump's personal life and personality are his...anti-abortion stances, his promotion of a white Christian nation, his rabid anti-immigration position and his anti-Islamic fervor." Comment: once again, in the JesuNazi U.S. as in Nazi Germany, we see that fanatical bigots will follow their Führer no matter how monstrous his behavior.
*****
Will Wisconsin's Newest Attack on Impoverished People Go Nationwide?
"Critics and supporters of Wisconsin's new policies (targeting low income people) agree that they could have implications outside of the state, especially now that Walker's politics are reflected in the White House."
*****
Naomi Klein at "Democracy Now" on Puerto Rico's Escalating Class War
"Six months since Hurricane Maria battered the island of Puerto Rico, the island is the site of a pitched battle between wealthy investors -- particularly from the technology industry -- and everyday Puerto Ricans fighting for a place in their island's future." Comment: Klein dare not say it, lest she be openly persecuted as an enemy of the state, but perhaps -- due to this clash of clearly defined, irremediably hostile ideologies (Ayn Rand moral imbecility versus community-based socialism) -- the Second American Revolution will start in Puerto Rico.
*****
Fascists Recapturing El Salvador Via Elections
"Already beset by an antagonistic judiciary, a right-wing majority in the legislature, and a hostile corporate media, the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) enter the 2019 presidential campaign with a discontented base and an invigorated opposition as right-wing elites reclaim power throughout the region...(with all FMLN's gains) imperiled and as-yet-unrealized parts of their program, like the partial decriminalization of abortion...set back by years."
*****
More on the Murder of Marielle Franco and Why It Is Internationally Significant
"The assassination of Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman Marielle Franco sent huge crowds of outraged mourners into the streets of Brazil, the western hemisphere’s “blackest” nation, where more than half of the 210 million inhabitants describe themselves as preto (black) or pardo (partly African). The 38 year-old member of the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) and her driver were ambushed by hit men firing police-issued (ammunition). See also: "The fact is that, consistent with its ugly history, Brazil maintains a regime of racial terror that does not differ from the (U.S. and South African) past and present system of racial domination." And this: "By murdering activists who were striving to cross into mainstream politics, the assassins send a message that...landless people should avoid becoming leaders." Comment: I cannot but wonder to what extent these murders are encouraged -- and perhaps even ordered -- by U.S. imperial authorities.
*****
Though Europe Seems to March Rightward, It's Not (Yet) Goose-Stepping
"Center-left parties all over Europe bailed out banks and financial speculators, while inflicting ruinous austerity measures on their own populations to pay for it. It became difficult for most people to distinguish between the policies of the center-right and the center-left."
*****
Sanders, in Major Turnabout, Condemns U.S. Imperialism and War-Mongering
"In a wide-ranging speech viewed by more than 11,000 people from over 30 countries, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on (18 March) commemorated the 15th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq by highlighting its devastating consequences and issuing an urgent call for a global agenda that pursues 'peace, not war' and 'development, not destruction.'" Comment: This appears to be a substantial turn-about for Sanders, who has been repeatedly (and legitimately) criticized by the Real Left for his support of U.S. imperialism and warmongering. If the turn-about is genuine, it could mark the beginning of a new age in U.S. politics. That's why it's reported here. See also: "The Sanders 'hope'...is so fierce because Capitalism has become a hopeless place."
*****
At Last, the AIPAC Sacred Cow is No Longer Sacred
“...criticisms (of AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) are finally showing up in the mainstream press...Notable among them is a report in The Washington Post...saying that AIPAC was born to rally American Jews to stand shoulder to shoulder behind Israeli “lies” about a massacre of Palestinians, back in 1953. And two angry pieces in the Jewish press decrying AIPAC’s blackout policy on coverage of its gatherings.”
*****
As Predicted, Democrats Betray, Abandon DACA Immigrants
"Congressional Democratic leaders have decided that there will be no protection for DACA recipients—the young undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children—in the omnibus budget bill that must pass the House and Senate by midnight Friday night." Comment: Once again the Democratic (sic) Party reveals itself as nothing more than a band of betrayers.
*****
How the Democrats Betrayed New Jersey's Teachers
"The struggle of Jersey City teachers exposes the role of the Democratic Party, which supports the assault on teachers and public education no less than the Republicans. At issue is a bill, known as Chapter 78, which forces public employees to pay up to 35 percent of their medical insurance premiums and eliminates fully funded pensions for future teachers. It was passed with the backing of the Democratic-controlled state legislature in 2011."
*****
Trump's EPA Is as Genocidally Racist as the Rest of His Regime
"The case of the Arrowhead Landfill in Uniontown (Alabama) is tragically just one of countless examples of environmental racism: the tendency for Black, Latinx and Native communities to face disproportionate amounts of pollution and hazardous conditions."
*****
New Details On Our Subjugation by the Big Lie of U.S. "Democracy"
"In what was fated by the Great Recession and by the wealth- and power-serving performance of the centrist, arch-neoliberal Obama administration to be an anti-establishment election, the PPC (Permanent Political Class) Democrats’ strategy was a formula for the installation of a malignant and moronic white-nationalist atop the world’s most powerful nation."
*****
Hospital Refuses Dying Man Treatment, Has Him Arrested for Trespassing
"'With a heart rate of 116 and complaining of an excruciating headache, my nephew, Marconia Kessee, was turned away from the hospital and arrested by the Norman Police Department for trespassing,” Michael Washington said. “Two hours later my nephew laid upon the cold concrete floor naked and dead.'" Comment: once more we see how U.S. healthcare as a privilege of wealth, depicted here in genocidal action. The same thing might have happened to me in 1963 at the hands of the Ayn Rand Christians who run the Oak Ridge (Tenn.) Hospital of the Methodist Church: I was dying of pneumonia -- temperature 105F and delerious -- but the hospital refused to admit me because I did not have written proof of insurance. However my then-girlfriend saved my life by contacting my editor, who forcefully intervened on my behalf and compelled the hospital to admit and treat me. Point being, what was done to Mr. Kessee is not an anomaly. It is in fact the U.S. norm -- and the Ruling Class will do everything in its power to keep it that way, not the least because it's (another) post-deathcamp method for getting rid of "surplus people."
*****
Authorities Say Austin Bomber's Motives Remain Unclear
"...without more information about (the Austin package bomber's) motive...it’s impossible to know how (his home-schooled, evangelical white Christian) background influenced his violence, if it was an influence at all." See also: "It is well known by now that 'terrorism' is often used by American officials as a dog whistle to refer to acts of political violence carried out by Muslims or by minorities, and that typically white violence of a terroristic sort is characterized by other adjectives (the poor things often seem to be off their meds or at most involved in 'hate crimes.') Comment: lack of information on the bomber's motives is thus hardly surprising.
*****
Tacoma Approves Defense Fund for Undocumented Immigrants
"In response to growing community concerns about Tacoma residents facing deportation, the Tacoma City Council authorized the creation of a Deportation Defense Fund to assist with their legal defense services...(and) the City of Tacoma made an initial allocation of $50,000...(while) local community efforts (have raised) an additional $2,000." Comment: as sometimes happens, Tacoma, Washington walks the walk as well as talks the talk.
*****
Social Worker Says Biggest Challenge Is Now Saving Seniors from Homelessness
"(Seattle) social worker Denise Malm’s newest agenda is keeping her elderly clients out of homelessness." Comment: when you're old and poor, gentrification is just another word for genocide.
*****
An Interesting and Informative Report on Cuban Self-Government
"Voting on March 11 for Cuba’s National Assembly was newsworthy mostly because the body, which convenes on April 19, is charged with selecting a new Cuban President. Current President Raul Castro has served the two five-year terms he is allowed. The new president will be Cuba’s first with no personal participation in struggles leading to the victory of Cuba’s 1959 revolution. Castro’s departure signifies a generational transfer of political leadership." Comment: now, as the Empire escalates its efforts to re-enslave Cuba, is when we will learn whether Cuban socialism is strong enough to withstand the onslaught.
*****
Approaching the Apocalypse I: Flirting with Thermonuclear Extinction
"if some extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of Homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NWE (the nuclear weapons era). The latter era, of course, opened on August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but — so the evidence suggests — not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts." Comment: I am no fan of Chomsky, the Empire's token socialist, but in this essay he is right on.
*****
Approaching the Apocalypse II: The Democrats Won't Save Us
"It is obvious that the Democrats will provide some relief to a disturbed populace. This relief will be largely symbolic, but not wholly...If the world was to run as is with Democrats in place of Republicans we would still become extinct in the near future. If not by nuclear annihilation, then by climate change. Inequality would continue to grow. War, police and prisons would continue to increase. Millions of refugees would still be left to die. Our entire ecosystem and our means to live would still crumble. The other animals within this ecosystem would still be defined by the profit they can create for the human race. We all know this. Every best selling novel these days is about the apocalypse or the post-apocalypse..."
*****
Busting the Myths: Early American History We Need to Know
"...in 1763, at the close of the French and Indian War, the vast majority of colonists saw themselves as Englishmen and Englishwomen, invested in and proud of their British Empire. "How did (at least some) North American colonists evolve from a proud celebration of empire into (a) riotous, rebellious mob?...It’s an important question, actually, and it deals with an issue hardly mentioned in standard textbooks."
*****
White Supremacy Nullified: Some Early Britons Were Probably Dark Skinned
"A new genetic analysis of DNA from the Cheddar Man fossil, excavated in 1903 from Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England, suggests that at least some of the early modern human inhabitants of the British Isles had a mixture of traits different from later populations...includ(ing) dark skin, curly dark brown hair, and blue or green eyes...(These findings are) is consistent with other recent research which indicates...(skin color) is actually controlled by a multiplicity of genes, leading to a wide range of phenotypic expressions, and that simplistic racial classifications based on skin tone are scientifically invalid. See also: "...racial conceptions regarding skin color and its supposed marking of distinct groupings of human beings have no scientific foundation." Comment: yet another reason the JesuNazis despise science and hate scientists.
LB/18-22 March 2018
-30-
"The Republicans and Democrats alike ignore the underlying causes of school violence—unprecedented social inequality, unending war, the consequences of the militarization of society and the defunding of education and social programs—because a serious examination of the roots of this social phenomenon would expose their own role in creating the social crisis out of which it has developed." Comment: a vital, thought-provoking socio-ecomomic analysis that (correctly) blames Capitalism for USian savagery whether abroad or at home.
*****
"I have never spoken with a school shooter, but I’ve talked with many teenage boys and young men who—though behaviorally nonviolent themselves—emotionally connect with the anger, alienation, and hopelessness of school shooters. Regardless of whether they received poor or excellent grades, these teenage boys and young men all tell me that high school was an oppressive experience...Cynical about virtually all societal institutions, these young people... (see) the conservatives’ religion and militarized society and liberals’ schools and shrinks (as) different faces of the same oppressive box...they have no hope that school shootings will decrease because all they hear in the news are authorities’ ideas about how better to control them." Comment: an essay by a psychologist, vital because it that expands on and thereby authenticates the socio-economic analysis in the preceding essay.
*****
"While seldom acknowledged, students have a right to engage in political dissent and, more significantly, the entitlement to an education that nurtures their ability to do so." But more importantly see: "There is no way anyone could object to something so necessary and relevant. Unless, of course, Black people do it." Comment: as noted before, the racism and class warfare implicit in the wildly varying coverage given school shootings is as revealing as the atrocities themselves.
*****
"Farm worker parents of six children die in car crash while fleeing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents...The future of the children remains uncertain."
*****
"The (Denver) Post is just the most recent outlet owned by 'vulture' hedge fund Alden Global Capital to face the ax. Alden controls Digital First Media, the country’s second largest newspaper chain, which has a pattern of gutting newsrooms and selling off valuable office space to squeeze profit from the industry." Comment: given the deadliness that defines the U.S. economy, the forthcoming layoffs will send many of its victims to their graves.
*****
"Teachers in Puerto Rico are planning a one-day strike on Monday, 19 March, to protest school deform legislation that..would open up the island's 1,100 public schools to be turned into charter schools...(and) institute a voucher system, under which families could get public school money to pay tuition at private schools."
*****
"Marielle died because of her struggle, because she was Black, because she was a woman, because she came from the Rio favela called Maré, because she dared to confront the system that oppresses and kills her people." See also: "A massive outpouring of grief and anger filled the streets of Rio de Janeiro and other cities...as Brazilians reacted to the execution-style murder of a promising young leader in the struggle for the rights of women, LGBT people, and Brazilians of African descent." Plus a revealing update: "The 9mm (ammunition) that killed Marielle Franco (was) part of a lot bought by federal police."
*****
"...don’t just look at the record body count attached to the slaughter at (My Lai), and imagine you have a true picture of American crimes in that war. Count the day to day toll of Vietnamese civilian deaths..." See also: "Vietnam veterans tell me that there were scores, maybe hundreds, of (such atrocities)...The only unusual thing about the My Lai Massacre was that it was eventually found out. " Comment: here we witness white bourgeois exceptionalism -- the exact U.S. equivalent of the Nazis' Aryan ubermenschen or divinely ordained 'Master Race' -- in action from Wounded Knee to My Lai and thence to the endless atrocities in the Middle East and in the Imperial Homeland.
*****
"Now, as we approach the 15th anniversary of Bush's Iraq invasion, two notorious torturers are poised to assume positions of enormous power within the federal government." See also: "Haspel, the CIA’s current deputy director, now stands to become the agency’s first female director, despite the fact that she previously supervised a CIA black site where detainees were tortured...(moreover) her confirmation would also represent the culmination of the Democrats’ failure to categorically oppose torture."
*****
"Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter announced a plan to begin using nitrogen gas as a method of carrying out executions, which would make the state the first in the country to do so."
*****
"U.S. Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar defended Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Director Scott Lloyd...for...'violating young immigrant women’s privacy, their right to medical care, and in some cases, their safety, and blocking them from accessing safe and legal abortions.'" Comment: JesuNazi theocracy in action despite the Democratic (sic) Party's belated, enfeebled and therefore doomed efforts to defend us against it.
*****
"As the strike by 1,400 Frontier Communications workers in West Virginia and Virginia enters its third week...the company has... hired agents from the notorious Pinkerton “consulting” firm, as well as Securitas USA, to monitor and intimidate the striking workers."
*****
"Six people, including one student, have been confirmed dead so far in the collapse of a pedestrian bridge under construction at Florida International University (FIU) in the Miami area Thursday afternoon...Meanwhile, as rescue crews continue to dig through the rubble of the 950-ton bridge span that fell on motorists, new information has emerged showing a history of safety violations by the two companies responsible for its construction." Comment: this is precisely the sort of malfeasance and ineptitude I will always believe brought about the collapse of the World Trade Center, particularly given the rumors of bribed inspectors and inferior materials that accompanied its construction. See for example here (scroll down to my comments) and here. Alas, Moron Nation would rather believe in conspiracy theories than acknowledge its accelerating incompetence and omnipresent corruption.
*****
"In the latest (and woefully unpublicized) attack on internet freedom, the US Senate is expected to pass legislation as early as next week that, in the name of combating online sex trafficking, will further increase the powers of the state to censor the internet."
*****
"Sadly, today's corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about the poverty and inequality that drove the (potato) famine than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants...(the same sort of genocidal Capitalism and colonialism) that are starving and uprooting people today." Comment: obviously what terrifies our One Percent masters and their vassals is that we the people -- students and adults alike -- will recognize how famine then and famine now have the same source in the truly bottomless evil of Capitalism.
*****
"In a move widely seen as political retaliation that came straight from President Donald Trump, former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday night, but the ousted law enforcement official immediately struck back by stating his removal was clear retaliation directly related to last year's firing of FBI director James Comey." Comment: normally I leave this sort of inside-the-Ruling-Class story to the Mainstream Media propaganda machine, but the fact Common Dreams is covering it so thoroughly prompts me to link to its report. Also to wonder if -- or when -- the Trump/Pence Regime's ongoing feud with the federal secret-police-and-intelligence apparatus will trigger a retaliatory coup.
*****
"What has pushed the (U.S. Postal Service) into insolvency is an oppressive congressional mandate...in the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), which requires the USPS to prefund health care for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding multiple generations of employees yet unborn...(a requirement) so blatantly unreasonable as to raise suspicions that the nation’s largest publicly owned industry has been intentionally targeted for (privatization)."
*****
"...this year’s...session of the Washington (state) Legislature, (was) marked by a few environmental firsts but also some significant losses for the greens on climate change that go beyond their inability to pass a carbon tax." Comment: again we witness the profiteering function of the One Party of Two Names: how its Democratic (sic) Party faction is as hostile to Mother Nature -- and driven by the same ecocidal greed -- as is its Republican faction.
*****
"The scapegoating of Russia has taken on an air of bigotry and ugliness, based largely on Cold War-era stereotypes...but Natylie Baldwin counters this intolerance with some of her positive impressions having traveled the country extensively."
*****
"Buried for millennia in the rear of a rock-shelter in the Lapedo Valley 85 miles north of Lisbon, Portugal, archaeologists uncovered the bones of a four-year-old child...(with the) chin and lower arms of a human, but the jaw and build of a Neanderthal, suggesting that he was a hybrid, the result of interbreeding between the two species." See also: "Given the importance of the find...it was decided, for exhibition purposes, to make a replica of the burial...(including) facial reconstruction (of the dead infant)." Comment: this wonderfully enlightening discovery is a perfect example of how science again proves the truth of evolution and so fights the ignorance mandated by the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). In response, the JesuNazis and the other Bible-thumpers ever-more-fanatically reject evolution -- precisely the usually denied, often suppressed reason the study of science in the increasingly theocratic United States dwindles with every passing year. (With thanks to TigerLille1 for the Lapedo link.)
*****
And Now -- to End This Otherwise Dismal Anthology on an Encouraging Note -- a Festival of Poetry and Science: Inspirational Gifts from Our Planetary Motherland
"When power corrupts, poetry cleanses,” John F. Kennedy famously wrote. Half a century later, with art, science and the humanities under assault from the government, this intersection of science and poetry, truth and beauty, is an uncommon kind of protest and a singularly fertile frontier of resistance." Comment: an uplifting film of last year's The Universe in Verse is an evening of poetry celebrating great scientists and scientific discoveries, hosted by Maria Popova, Janna Levin and the Academy of American Poets.
LB/17 March 2018
-30-
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Trump-Pests Blaring: More on JesuNazi Infestation in Tacoma Area
Rocky Place of Patriot Front at work on a JesuNazi Banner. (Photo courtesy of Unicorn Riot)
*
By Ryley Knowles
WASHINGTON FRONT TWEETED on 4 March that Patriot Front had once again been in Seattle, sometime late at night on 3 March. Washington Front posted two photographs that show five Patriot Front members holding up a blue banner that reads “Reclaim America” while waving four highway-safety flares.
This “Reclaim America” flash demo marks the fourth time Patriot Front has been active in Seattle. Assuming there was a sixth unseen person who took the photograph, we can say there are at least six active Patriot Front members in Washington state.
On 5 March, The (Tacoma) News Tribune reported that Patriot Front posters were found on the campus of Tacoma Community College, Tacoma, Washington. On the same day stickers for Identity Evropa, another white nationalist organization, were found in University of Washington, Tacoma. Patriot Front’s postering of downtown Tacoma and the surrounding area had occurred two weeks earlier.
Both Washington Front and Patriot Front Tweeted about the hit on Tacoma Community College. However, Patriot Front did not mention the Seattle flash demo on it’s official Twitter.
In 2017, Patriot Front was active every few months in Washington state. In 2018, Patriot Front seems to aiming for the rate of at least two propaganda attacks per month.
Also on 5 March, Unicorn Riot released an in-depth report on Patriot Front, which included leaked online chat logs and audio recordings. The chat logs and audio were taken from Patriot Front’s Front and Center server on Discord, a voice and text chat service for gamers.
On Front and Center, two users, Goodest_Boy and Rocky Place mention Washington, Gig Harbor, Tacoma, and Port Orchard, with pictures from posterings in Gig Harbor and at Olympic College in Bremerton. In addition, they posted pictures showing them creating the banner used during the banner hangings in Gig Harbor and Bellevue.
Goodest_Boy shared a picture of himself, hiding his face behind one of his propaganda posters.
Rocky Place identifies as a Christian, is rabidly anti-Semitic, and mentions work as a substitute teacher. Connor MA expresses hope to become a full time teacher and use that position to spread fascist ideas.
On 10 November 2017, Rocky Place wrote, “I'm showing the most kiked movie I've ever seen to a bunch of middle schoolers and I hate it...it is very depressing. But I hope as real teacher I will have more power to change to the curriculum.”
*****
Elsewhere, Frantic Fascists Fanatically Flay Freedom (i.e., U.S. Politics as Usual)
"U.S. ruling class politics under late stage capitalism and imperial decline...have nothing to offer the masses of people except unrelenting austerity at home and endless wars abroad...(which is why) We will have to fight to keep them from blowing us all up in rich man's despair."
*****
"President Trump’s nomination of CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to be the new director returns the country to the bad old days of torture and secret prisons." See also: "Placing herself firmly on the far-right end of this spectrum on Tuesday was Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.), daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney...tweeted a proud defense of the CIA's euphemistically-named torture program."
*****
"...the central purpose of the campaign by the tech giants, the US government and the mass media to censor the Internet...is the suppression of...the way workers have used the Internet to organize their struggles..."
*****
"If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state...Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced."
*****
'"President Trump now seeks to activate (the Secret Service), one of our federal government's most secretive law enforcement agencies to depress and discourage minority voter participation in our midterm elections'...(mobilizing his potential modern-day Gestapo by a) 'provision quietly inserted in a Homeland Security Department reauthorization bill.'" See also: "More than a dozen top election officials across the country are raising concerns about a provision in a Homeland Security Department reauthorization bill that would allow President Trump to dispatch Secret Service agents to polling places." And this: "to have federal agents showing up in largely Hispanic areas...The potential for mischief...is enormous."
*****
"Raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have increased drastically since Donald Trump moved into the White House (and)... A number of these high-profile arrests are particularly despicable, from news that ICE seized a woman after she reported her husband for domestic abuse, to the arrest of a handicapped girl just out of surgery." Comment: a pogrom by any other name.
*****
"Escalating the attack on immigrant communities and anyone who would stand with the undocumented, the Trump administration announced in March that it would sue the state of California for providing legal sanctuary to undocumented immigrants."
*****
"President Donald Trump's recent threats to execute drug dealers are reportedly materializing in his final plan to combat the opioid addiction epidemic...thereby (escalating the regime's policy of) targeting low-income and black communities." Comment: we cannot but wonder if this foretells the regime's intended policy toward licensed dealers in legal marijuana states.
*****
Is It a Coup -- or Just a Foul Nesting-Place for Wanton Warbirds?
"..in this millennial moment of encroaching authoritarianism, the mindset and language of the coup is...being employed from inside the White House..." Comment: is there any difference between de facto rule by a cabal of generals and a military coup? A vital analysis of present-day Imperial politics.
*****
"President Trump('s)...generals – Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster – are all hyper-interventionists bent on perpetual American exceptionalist hegemony...(who see) only two countries standing in the way of a new Pax Americana: China and Russia."
*****
"Change We Can Believe In": the Democrats Out-Warmonger the Republicans
"...as soon as the announcement (of talks between Trump and North Korea's Kim) was made...Hillary Clinton, whose miscalculations and hubris put Trump in the White House...whose miscalculations and hubris put Trump in the White House...warned of danger should Trump speak to Kim. She was joined by Democratic hawk pundit Rachel Maddow who sputtered her disapproval of a possible rapprochement...Elizabeth Warren, another faux progressive, added her disapproval...(Clinton and fellow Democrats are) motivated by fear of a Trump success but...(like the Republicans are) also firm believers in American imperialism."
*****
"The root cause of the unending string of mass violence in America lies in the capitalist system and the nightmarish world that it has created"...(that's why) protests addressed to the Democratic and Republican Parties will fall on deaf ears." Comment: an excellent, thought-provoking analysis.
*****
Genocide by Poisoned Water: After Flint, Is Standing Rock Next?
"...preliminary hearings continue to expose the basic truth that a massive social crime was perpetrated against the population of Flint, carried out by both political parties and significant sections of the corporate and financial elite...to enrich private contractors and wealthy bondholders." Comment: white-supremacist Capitalism in genocidal action, whether Democratic (sic) or Republican.
*****
"The Standing Rock Tribe argues in a report that thousands of barrels of oil a day could leak into the Missouri River and not be detected by the company's equipment... (thereby poisoning the tribe's) water supply." Comment: the unspoken genocidal intent in the pipeline's route thus becomes undeniable.
*****
Capitalism: Why There's No "Care" in U.S. "Healthcare"
"...with $700 billion per year now being pumped into the Pentagon by U.S. taxpayers, military spending consumes 54 of the federal discretionary budget...(and) the military’s share will surge to 65 percent by fiscal 2023...(which) with the huge budget deficits that will be produced by the GOP tax cuts for the wealthy...will almost certainly lead to devastating slashes in federal spending for education, healthcare, parks and recreation facilities, food distribution, jobs, infrastructure, and other public programs." Comment: the fact this is in sneering defiance of the "2 out of 3" USians who "Oppose Increasing U.S. Military Spending" is merely more proof the whole notion of USian "democracy" is the biggest Big Lie in human history.
*****
"...current pharmaceutical pricing agreements between insurers and drug manufacturers have saddled people living with serious or long-term illnesses (such as diabetes) with the cost of keeping premiums lower for everyone else." Comment: post-deathcamp genocide for those of us who are sick, big discounts for those who are healthy -- another manifestation of Capitalism's healthcare as a privilege of wealth rather than socialism's assertion it is a universal human right.
*****
"Medicare households spend a higher proportion of their incomes on health care coverage, services, and drugs than non-Medicare households...nearly 60 million older adults and people with disabilities each year...the vast majority (of whom) cannot afford to pay more for care. In 2016, half of all beneficiaries had incomes below $26,200, and one-quarter had incomes below $15,250."
*****
"For the general population, the flu represents a serious health concern. But for (homeless people) -- who deal with higher rates of chronic illness, fewer resources and crowded conditions in shelters -- catching the flu can be a matter of life or death." Comment: Need I say "genocide" one more time?
*****
And Lest We Delude Ourselves "It Cannot Happen Here"...
"In 1944, Eva Mozes Kor and her family were transported by cattle car to the Auschwitz concentration camp...torn away from her parents and all but one of her siblings, whom she never saw again...Eva and her twin sister Miriam were...transferred to the hands of Joseph Mengele, the notorious doctor of Auschwitz." (With thanks to TigerLille1.) Two comments: this is why Israel's present-day brutality. though unforgivable, is also understandable; it is also why, any time our fellow USians try to soothe themselves with the master-race dogma of exceptionalism, we should forcefully remind them of the Tuskegee Experiment.
*****
Dystopian Miscellany: Racism, Corruption, Death and Doom
"Since 1968, the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has collected...Data on disparities in discipline...(proving) Black students are twice as likely to be expelled...(as) white children...also twice as likely as white students to be disciplined by law enforcement." Comment: anyone who doubts the malicious magnitude of USian white supremacy need only look at how Black children are methodically victimized by the nation's schools, where 80 percent of the teachers are white and -- assuming statistics from the 2016 elections hold true -- nearly two-thirds of whom are conscious racists.
*****
"Under Mayor Rudy Guiliani, (fines for jaywalking) went up from $2 to $50 and, under current Mayor Bill de Blasio, went up to $250...disproportionately target(ing) people of color."
*****
"A Truthout investigation points toward powerful forces in the (Washington) state government actively collaborating with the Department of Defense." See also: earlier Truthout story linked in January (scroll down to "Urgent: Olympia Democrats Consider Granting Imperial Military Commanders Absolute Authority Over State's Land Use Policies.") Comment: that is why we are literally the most target-rich environment in the imperial homeland – and why millions of us will die, instantly if we are lucky, slowly and horribly by radiation poisoning if we are not, in any nuclear exchange.
*****
"More information has emerged in recent days shedding light on the man accused of shooting three employees of a nonprofit after taking them hostage at a veterans home in the affluent Napa Valley town of Yountville, in Northern California on Friday."
*****
"Humans must leave Earth in the next 200 years if we want to survive...(warned) Professor Stephen Hawking in the months before his death...(Hawking) believed that life on Earth could be wiped out by a disaster such as an asteroid strike, AI (artificial intelligence) or an alien invasion." (With thanks to TigerLille1.) See also: "in addition to being brilliant, Hawking was funny."
*****
A Global Sisterhood Mobilizes to Save Us from Ourselves
Women May Have Birthed the First Civilizations; Now -- with Patriarchy and Capitalism Threatening Our Existence -- Women May Be Mothering Our Future
Precisely as one would expect under patriarchy and its misogynistic descendants -- among them Abrahamic Religion, Capitalism, fascism, Nazism and JesuNazism -- to hypothesize that the original face of human society was female is to invite condemnation as a heretic by academics and men of god alike. But we heretics nevertheless persist, bolstered by increasingly supportive evidence, which provides an optimistic context for the events reported in the following post-International-Women's-Day anthology:
"Thousands of women met in Zapatista territory (to organize) against capitalist and patriarchal society." For more details, see: "the meeting was open to 'all rebellious women around the world' who 'struggle against the patriarchal and chauvinist capitalist system.'"
*****
"Drawing on...(the example of) Latin American feminist movements, we should ask how the abuses of power identified by #MeToo are part of a larger constellation of violence and coercion...(and) would it be possible to find a common cause between low wage, mostly Black and migrant, university housekeepers facing an abusive and violent manager and female students on the same campus facing high rates of sexual assault?"
*****
"Let’s take #MeToo where it hasn’t gone: to speak for the girls, boys, women, and men raped due to US Wars..."
*****
"More than 5 million workers have taken part in Spain’s first nationwide 'feminist strike..."
*****
"We’ve done better with our daughters but still find ourselves right here, where male puberty opens a lifelong season of sexual aggression, and girls struggle for the voice to call it off...the enlightened new pope...says he’s sorry, but women still can’t lead his church, or control our reproduction. In heterosexual weddings, religious or secular, the patriarch routinely 'gives' his daughter to the groom, after which she’s presented to the audience as 'Mrs New Patriarch,' to joyous applause...(as) most modern brides still embrace the ritual erasure of their identities, taking the legal name of a new male head of household, as enslaved people used to do when they came to a new plantation owner." Comment: Heartfelt applause and a clinched-fist salute to Ms. Kingsolver for her recognition of the patriarchal savagery at the very core of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), and therefore at the very core of Capitalism and its apocalyptic assault on our Mother Earth.
*****
"When superstorms make landfall, they often exacerbate existing inequities...(forcing women to)...pay a higher price during a storm and in its aftermath, with their lives and then with their labor." Comment: more to the point, such disasters bring out the worst aspects of patriarchy and -- by the courage and resilience of women -- demonstrate for us the best aspects of matriarchy and underscore the evidence that supports the hypothesis women mothered the first civilizations.
*****
"Never before in German history have two governing parties been led by women. The country's political stability will now hinge on the relationship between Andrea Nahles and Angela Merkel. Comment: Will these women adopt the malicious savagery of patriarchy, as Hillary Clinton has so obviously done? Or will their partnership energize, however subtly, a transformation of German society? We should watch carefully what obtains...
******
And, Yes, Beyond the Women's Realm, a Few Candles Do Flicker
"Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) is suing several U.S. energy trading firms for allegedly bribing corrupt officials and rigging bid proceedings, the corporation's defense lawyer has announced."
*****
“The (Koch Brothers') event was one big bait and switch...gospel music, then...praise (for) the everlasting goodness of oil and gas...exploiting the ignorance many communities have about climate change...(But some Black Christians liken) that gospel concert to the Biblical story of Judas accepting 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus...(and for them) environmentalism has become a biblical mission.” Comment: even in church, our Black comrades lead the way.
*****
"Ultimately, efforts like Fight for $15 will be successful (only) to the extent that they shed the ideology of reform and the misconception that justice can be achieved solely by working within the existing political and economic system." Comment: now even the bourgeois pseudo-Left has begun to recognize the need for revolution.
*****
"While gun control was a major focus...some of the...most spirited walkout organizing came from youth who were more concerned with the conditions that incubate intra-community violence, and how those conditions are maintained and enforced by the state." Comment: thus are minds opened to the necessity for socialist revolution.
*****
"While the Parkland shooting (at a wealthy, mostly white high school) has dominated national headlines...far less coverage was (provided by unmistakably racist media) to the death of (an African-American student named) Courtlin Arrington." Comment: racism in the Mainstream Media propaganda machine is as oppressive as racism every else in the white supremacist United States -- precisely why the foregoing alternative media coverage is so vital, and precisely why it is being targeted not just by the regime but by the regime's Capitalism owners.
*****
"Implicit in the First Amendment is a fundamental belief that the governed are far more capable than the government of distinguishing truth from falsehood..." Comment: vital history we all need to know.
*****
Book Review
"In Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press: 2017)...Shane Burley offers examples of successful intersectional movements to counter the growing scourge...(in the following excerpt, focusing) on two counter-fascist campaigns, one in Oregon and one in Wyoming."
LB/15 March 2018
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***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Growing 99% Militance Terrifies the 1% and Its Ruling Class Vassals
(Important Notice: given the reawakening of U.S. Working Class consciousness and the increasing violence of the JesuNazi/fascist response, I am once again going to attempt publishing Dispatches on a twice-weekly basis, with projected publication days late Thursday (to accommodate the newest material from Black Agenda Report) and late Saturday (to include material withheld until late Friday in the regime's hope of it being obscured by weekend distractions). I don't know if I will be able to continue this schedule, as when I attempted it last year, it was constantly interrupted by other obligations. However, the most time-consuming of those obligations is no more. This was the editing, writing, photographing and designing of a monthly newsletter for the senior housing complex where I live, but the newsletter has since been killed by lack of printing funds, which in effect gains me all those days to work on Dispatches -- enough time, I hope, to make this twice-weekly schedule permanent.--LB.)
*****
"In the wake of the unions’ shutting down of a nine-day strike by 33,000 West Virginia public school employees on 6 March, there are growing calls for strikes and protests by teachers and other sections of the Working Class throughout the United States, which are threatening to break free from the control of the trade unions...placing (workers) in direct conflict with the entire Ruling Class and the Democratic (sic) and Republican parties." Comment: the question -- ultimately the only question in terms of the revolutionary potential of U.S. workers' new-found militance -- is whether the Ruling Class and their political allies (who include the JesuNazis and the fascists in general), will be able to resurrect an identity politics toxic enough to head off the 99 Percenters' evolving solidarity.
*****
"American 'progressives' are divided over the politics of class and identity...(but) can the demands of class warfare and identity politics be reconciled into a common political program that speaks to the vast majority of Americans?" Comment: as I said in the foregoing.
*****
Fukushima Continues to Poison the Oceans and Ultimately the Whole World
The (Fukushima) crisis is ongoing...radioactively contaminated water is still pouring into the Pacific Ocean (permanently contaminating and altering sea life which bio-accumulates and bio-concentrates the radioactivity)...two principle government and corporate lies demonstrate how bad faith brought about the worst reactor accident in history. Comment: Capitalism in (typically apocalyptic) action. And just for starters, why we should never again dare eat seafood.
*****
Meanwhile, the JesuNazi Onslaught Continues Unabated
"(with) the most far-reaching and sinister implications for democratic rights within the United States...Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies, in close coordination with the government, have moved extremely rapidly to censor content online through the manipulation of search results and news feeds." Comment: thus -- in response to our increasing solidarity and militance -- the One Percenters impose on us a regimen of zero-tolerance oppression so savage it will make all previous tyrannies seem mild in comparison. Wake up, people; just as I have argued for decades, the Internet was never the electronic freedom road it was portrayed as being. Indeed it is only now fulfilling its always-intended purpose of sustaining Capitalism by total surveillance and total censorship.
*****
"Trump is giving (the Christian theocracy movement) what it wants, so they are willing to overlook his many moral flaws and reckless behavior." Comment: informative reading, though as always the liberals underestimate the magnitude of the JesuNazi threat.
*****
"God Wills It...The US may be sinking ever deeper into the moral morass of the Trump era, but if you think the (theological) malevolence of this period began with him, think again."
*****
"The (federal) Title X program, which has provided family planning services to low-income Americans since 1970, is under threat from the Trump administration...(which is) funding...unscientific and ineffective family planning programs."
*****
"Reproductive justice activist Alejandra Pablos has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in what immigrant rights advocates are calling an act of 'retaliation' for protesting in Virginia earlier this year."
*****
"A recently leaked trove of internal communications among white supremacists show that many believed members of the police and military are on their side."
*****
"Hillary Clinton’s favorite think tank is still trying to make sure single payer health care never happens...(unveiling) their counterfeit, sound-alike health care plan, dubbed 'Medicare Extra for All,' whose sole purpose is to distract and confuse a public that is demonstrably 'ready' for single payer." Comment: this is the best analysis I've yet seen on the Democratic (sic) Party's newest Big Lie.
*****
"So it stands, in 2018, that instead of a sensible 'go home' option, America’s generals and civilian policymakers have handed us the worst of all worlds...Forever war."
*****
And Once Again, "Forever War" Brings Its Deadly Consequences Home
"A hostage situation (at a veterans' home) in Northern California ended Friday evening with the discovery of four people dead...the gunman and (his) three women...hostages."
*****
Some Fascists Leaving Congress; Is It Just More "Change We Can Believe In"?
"Congress will be a very different place in 2018, no matter what the Democrats manage to accomplish, due to the departures of several seemingly eternal conservatives."
*****
Book Review: How Fascists Use Music to Seduce Ignorant White Youth
"Nancy Love's 2016 book Trendy Fascism (State University of New York)...(is) an important work to make sense of how today's fascists have made significant use of song and lyric to attract youth. Comment: as is so often the case with such vital analytical tools, the book is censored by price: $85 for a hard-cover volume, $22.95 for the paperback.
*****
Relevant History: the Inspiring Example of Edward R. Murrow
"'We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,' said Edward R. Murrow as he denounced Sen. Joseph McCarthy on CBS television. 'We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.' Today, with unreason having a time of it...we need Murrow more than ever." Comment: the URL includes a total replay of Morrow's breathtakingly courageous, history-making broadcast, a pivotal event I urge us all to witness.
LB/9-10 March 2018.
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*** *** *** *** ***
JesuNazis Blighting Tacoma-Seattle Area Since Trump/Pence Victory
MAP KEY: (1)-Vanguard America posters, Bellevue College, Bellevue, 13 March 2017 (2)-Vanguard America posters, statue of Lenin, Seattle, 1 June 2017; (3)-Vanguard America posters, newspaper honor boxes in Seattle, 17 June 2017; (4)-Matthew S. Holland recruits for Vanguard America and harasses customers and security, Kitsap Mall, Silverdale. 9 Sept.2017; (5)-Patriot Front posters, Olympic College, Bremerton, 6.October 2017; (6)-Patriot Front posters, Port Orchard City Hall, Port Orchard, 8 Nov. 2017; (7)-Patriot Front banner hanging, I-90 overpass, Bellevue, 16 Nov. 2017; (8)-Patriot Front posters, Gig Harbor, 17 Nov. 2017; (9)-Patriot Front posters, statue of Lenin, Seattle; 3 Dec. 2017; (10)-Patriot Front posters, University of Washington, Seattle, 4 Dec. 2017; (11)-Patriot Front posters, Gig Harbor 30 Jan. 2018; (12)-Patriot Front posters, Gig Harbor, 08 Feb. 2018; (13)-Patriot Front posters, Tacoma, 19 Feb. 2018. (Map annotations and key by Ryley Knowles)
By Ryley Knowles
AT THE END of February the white Christian nationalist group Patriot Front posted their propaganda in Tacoma, Washington, but this was only the most recent of an ongoing series of incidents in Western Washington that began roughly a year ago -- not long after the Trump/Pence victory brought fascists of all sorts scurrying like roaches from under the proverbial woodwork. Here's a chronology:
Washington Front, Patriot Front’s Washington-based twitter, was launched on November 2016. The group's Twitter profile contains a link to Patriot Front’s website http://bloodandsoil.com/.
On 13 March 2017, Vanguard America (the original group that Patriot Front splintered off from) left posters at Bellevue College, Bellevue.
On 1 June 2017, the statue of Lenin in Seattle was papered with Vanguard America posters.
On 17 June 2017, Seattle was hit a second time. Vanguard America posters were left in the honor boxes of The Stranger, a liberal Seattle-based alternative newspaper.
On 9 Sept. 2017 at the Kitsap Mall in Silverdale, Washington, a 28 year old man named Matthew S. Holland was arrested for harassing a female customer about her “green card” and threatening to kill a security guard. Holland told police he was a white supremacist and recruiting for Vanguard America (misreported in one source as “Vanguard National”). Holland is currently on trial in Kitsap County for two counts of malicious harassment. For more details, go here, here and here.
By 6 Oct. 2017, Vanguard America had officially changed their name to Patriot Front. The new Patriot Front posters were pasted up around the campus of Olympic College, Bremerton.
On 8 Nov. 2017, Patriot Front posters were put up in Port Orchard City Hall, in Port Orchard, Washington.
On 16 Nov. 2017, Patriot Front members hung a banner advertising their website bloodandsoil.com on the I-90 overpass in Bellevue, Washington.
On 17 Nov. 2017, Patriot Front posters were found in Gig Harbor, Washington.
On 3 Dec. 2017, Seattle’s statue of Lenin was postered for the second time in 2017, this time with Patriot Front’s new colors.
On 4 Dec. 2017, Seattle’s University of Washington was hit with Patriot Front posters.
On 30 Jan. 2018, Patriot Front targeted Gig Harbor again, postering a parking garage.
On 8 Feb. 2018, Patriot Front hit Gig Harbor a third time. Neither Washington Front nor the Patriot Front boasted on Twitter about this incident, but it was reported and photographed by a concerned Gig Harbor citizen.
Around this same time, due to some unspecified terms-of-use violation, Twitter suspended Patriot Front's account. Patriot Front then deleted their Twitter @FrontPatriot and made a new Twitter @PatriotFront_.
*****
More on the Looming JesuNazi Threat and the Response of Targeted People
"California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists in an effort to identify counter-protesters...sought the prosecution of activists with 'anti-racist' beliefs,' court documents show...also (revealing) officers expressing sympathy with white supremacists and trying to protect a neo-Nazi organizer’s identity," (With thanks to TigerLille1)
*****
"Since Trump took office, Black citizens have been increasingly arming themselves, a practice rooted in the long Black radical tradition of armed self defense and articulated in Robert F. Williams’s Negroes With Guns (Wayne State University Press: 1998)." Comment: here's the real reason so many closeted white-supremacist USians support forcible civilian disarmament. Once again, let us all follow the leadership of our Black comrades.
*****
The Origin of Neoliberalism as the Newest Brand of Fascism
"In a short span of time in the 1970s, dozens of think tanks were established across the western world and billions of dollars were spent proselytizing the tenets of the Powell Memo in 1971, which galvanized a counter-revolution to the liberal upswing of the Sixties...to eliminate democratic government by downsizing, privatizing, and deregulating it. Proponents of neoliberalism recognize that the state is the last bulwark of protection for the common people against the predations of capital. Remove the state and they’ll be left defenseless."
*****
How Neoliberalism -- as Intended -- Hastens Capitalism's Transition to Fascism
"...the corporate-owned Democrats have furthered and supported Donald Trump every step of the way...(trying to) act like the “Resistance,” but...trying desperately to prop him up, make him stronger, give him every power a unitary executive can have. See also, "...House Democrats were urged to ignore Medicare for All as a viable solution to the nation’s healthcare woes." Comment: more proof (if indeed any is needed) the Democratic (sic) Party -- in Nazi-like obedience to its Capitalist masters -- has truly become the party of the Big Lie, the role it has played since Obama's "change we can believe in," the biggest, most injurious Big Lie in USian political history.
*****
"...the FBI uses Geek Squad employees to flag illegal material when people pay Best Buy to repair their computers...potentially circumvent(ing) computer owners' Fourth Amendment rights."
*****
"With respect to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration, America has failed to deliver any progress for African Americans over the last five decades." Comment: Capitalism -- another synonym for white supremacy -- in malevolent action.
*****
Have the Russians Saved Our Species and Our Mother Earth?
"(Putin's) speech must be sending chills and panic through the Pentagon, neocons, intelligence agencies and all those involved in military and foreign policy in the United States...(he revealed that) Russia, while spending ten percent of what the US spends on the military...(has developed) new weapons systems that the US military cannot defend against...(and urged) the United States (to) stop the threats, stop the exceptionalism and get serious about creating a world where people work together for sustainable human development." See also: "...the (Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty defiantly abandoned by the Bush II regime had) introduced a significant degree of stability for 30 years." And this: "Putin has opened the door for the two countries to negotiate...Now it is up to the U.S. to respond." Comment: to repeat what the first report states,"checkmate" indeed, an example of what happens when an aggressively anti-intellectual nation whose national sport is (snore) baseball foolishly declares itself the enemy of a much older, passionately intellectual nation whose national sport is chess. That said, the Russians' apparent resurrection of MAD -- Mutually Assured Destruction -- may force the U.S. to cooperate with the rest of the world rather than nuke and/or pollute us all death. If so, history will no doubt judge it was Mother Russia saved our species and Mother Earth, which most assuredly prompts the psycho-metaphysical question, could the implicit sisterhood of two such mothers be mere coincidence?
*****
"In talks between top-level South Korean officials and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Monday, North Korea reportedly indicated its readiness to engage in negotiations over denuclearisation and the termination of its nuclear weapons programs." See also: "...a grassroots coalition of more than 200 anti-war organizations and activists sent an open letter (pdf) to President Donald Trump on Thursday calling on his administration to... (cancel) planned U.S.-South Korea military exercises." Comment: I cannot but wonder if these developments anticipate positive consequences from what might be termed "the Putin effect" on the United States.
*****
"More than seven weeks after a devastating report from the media watch group FAIR, top executives and prime-time anchors at MSNBC still refuse to discuss how the network's obsession with Russia has thrown minimal journalistic standards out the window...continually piling up the dry tinder of hostility toward Russia...(thereby intensifying) the odds of a cataclysmic blowup between the world's two nuclear superpowers." Comment: as the report strongly implies but does not dare say outright, the network is speaking with the vengeful, infinitely malicious tongue of Hillary Clinton, who had she been elected president, would already be attempting to fulfill her apocalyptic, thermonuclear Goldwater Girl fantasy of being the first-ever conqueror of Russia,
*****
"Mexico’s leftist candidate in the upcoming presidential elections in July, is leading the polls as other candidates face accusations of corruption and voters are fed up with establishment politics."
*****
Dystopian Miscellany: Horrors on Sea and Land, in Medicine and Family Law
"(Sailors aboard the) USS Ronald Reagan...the American Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier whose crew pitched in to help victims of the March 11, 2011 Tsunami and earthquake in Japan, then found themselves under the radioactive plume from the stricken coastal nuclear reactors at Fukushima...have come down with unexplained illnesses. Some have died. And many are suing."
*****
"With the opioid crisis growing ever more dire, what is the significance of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) recent decision to ban the herb Kratom... a generally safe, cheap and effective alternative (pain killer) in comparison to the treatments offered by the pharmaceutical industry."
*****
"Insys Therapeutics, a major pharmaceutical company, has spent over $500,000 fueling the opposition to marijuana legalization in the United States...(but) has received preliminary approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration for Syndros, a synthetic marijuana drug."
*****
"...almost 20 years to the day after President Clinton signed the Adoption and Safe Families Act into law...(which) put America first in the world in the legal destruction of families...the only country in the world that routinely pays people to adopt children whose birth parents want desperately to raise them...and turn thousands of children who will never be adopted into legal orphans, dooming them to remain in foster care until they come of age." See also: "the practice of separating families has now become an unstated, yet critical, part of the Trump administration’s immigration policy."
*****
"Iowa Senate Republicans on Wednesday advanced what amounts to a total abortion ban—a bill the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa called unconstitutional."
*****
"Congressional Republicans could further empower Trump official Valerie Huber to...turn the nation's affordable birth control program into a bastion of abstinence."
*****
HR 620, the ADA Education and Reform Act...will change key provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), shifting the burden of accessibility from businesses to people with disabilities." Comment: another (entirely predictable) expression of Capitalism's genocidal malice toward disabled people.
*****
"...anthropogenic – really Capitalogenic – climate change (CCC) has clearly emerged as the biggest issue of our or any other time in human history and Donald Trump and the Republican Party have shown themselves to be militantly dedicated to the Greenhouse Gassing-to-death of life on Earth – a crime that promises to surpass all others in the ruling classes’ long rap sheet." Comment: this is no doubt why the Mainstream Media propaganda machine -- the One Percenters' for-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda -- consistently downplays the urgency of the threat and the corollary fact the Capitalists are, in every sense of the word, traitors to our species who are profiting obscenely from their betrayal of our Mother Earth.
*****
"The recent Oxfam scandal duplicates the corruption and abuse replete in (international 'relief') organizations...Look busy, but get as little done as possible. Ensure that donor money keeps pouring in. And continue to prop up a system that ensures that international elites live in colonial style---luxurious homes with large pools on the mountain overlooking the slums of Port-au-Prince---with 'third world' faces as their exotic backdrops. It's colonialism through and through, with the cellophane wrapping of 'relief aid' stamped upon it."
*****
"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has revealed that there are thousands of still-unreleased government files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Back in December, NARA claimed that only 86 files had yet to be made public."
*****
"...billionaire West Virginia Governor Jim Justice signed into law a bipartisan agreement announced earlier in the day by legislators to end the nine-day strike by teachers and other public school employees across the state...(though the) agreement, which the unions endorsed and are claiming as a victory, is a betrayal of the courageous struggle by 33,000 school workers." See also: "...the deal reached to end the strike... does nothing to address teachers’ central demand—an end to escalating health care costs through the Public Employee Insurance Agency (PEIA) that effectively wipe out any pay raises...(which) will be funded by deep cuts to social programs.
*****
Why the JesuNazis (and all other Capitalists) Despise Public Education
"To be sure, the story of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students is a story about the benefits of being a relatively wealthy school district at a moment in which public education is being vivisected without remorse or mercy."
*****
But at Least There's Some Heartening News from the Soviet of Washington*
"(Seattle) Mayor Jenny Durkan...said “statements and actions that were alleged to be made by (Sound Transit) CEO (Peter Rogoff) raise the issue of racial bias and insensitivity as well as other workplace harassment issues...other board members said they remained confident in his overall leadership and his ability to address the concerns...(but)...Durkan and Seattle City Councilmember Rob Johnson voted against (him).
*****
"Washington has become the first state to enact a law to enforce net neutrality protections following a federal rollback late last year...(but the action is largely symbolic because) the FCC's vote in December approved a provision that prohibits states from enacting their own net neutrality rules." Comment: the campaign to restore net neutrality is at its core a campaign against Capitalist censorship. Hence, given JesuNazi control of the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidency, the campaign will almost certainly fail, but its magnitude proves beyond argument the extent to which USian "democracy" is among history's biggest Big Lies.
*****
"(Washington state) Governor Jay Inslee...vetoed a bill that would’ve shielded the emails, text message, calendars and other records of legislators from public scrutiny...(acting in response to) widespread public pressure against the legislation, which lawmakers ramrodded through both (legislative) houses." Comment: rumor has it the vetoed measure was intended to protect legislators against sexual harassment accusations (scroll down to "And If There's a Hereafter..."). Meanwhile Inslee's veto exemplifies the fact that in a very few of the 50 U.S. states, there remain functional elements of democratic process. Thus the question is whether these vestiges will provide the platform for successful anti-Capitalist rebellion before the JesuNazis (aka Republicans) and their Democratic (sic) Party enablers complete their state-level destruction of what they have already obliterated nationally.
__________________
*The name "Soviet of Washington" was hung on the Evergreen State by its high-ranking federal detractors in response to its Harry Bridges and IWW radicalism during the first half of the 20th Century including the general strike in Seattle 6-11 Feb. 1919.
*****
Useful, Informative Analysis for Medicare Recipients
"New Medicare Rights Analysis: what the recent budget deal means for people on Medicare." Comment: good news and bad news, more of the former than the latter, but the latter including the likelihood of higher prices and fees.
*****
Relevant History: International Women's Day, Spanish Civil War
"Women at the turn of the 20th century were not only seeking to address gender inequity but social class inequality as well...(International Womens' Day) grew out of the need for better working conditions for women in industrially developing countries who were entering the job market in unprecedented numbers." See also: "...the U.S. government doesn't...recognize (International Women's Day) as an official holiday, unlike 26 nations that include Afghanistan, Cuba, Laos, Russia and Uganda." Comment: lest we forget, IWD is the day the Russian Revolution began, started by the 5000 women of Petrograd's Lesnoy Textile Works, who walked off the job in a wildcat strike to protest the firing of their union organizers.
*****
"Frances Perkins was an American sociologist and workers-rights advocate...the first woman cabinet member in the nation’s history...as Secretary of Labor, she championed many groundbreaking government policies...that helped bring the country out of the Great Depression." Comment: a history well worth reading.
*****
"Captured or Killed: the Irish Anti-Fascist Fighters at the Aragon Front." Comment: let us learn from their example.
*****
Book Reviews
"The Trump administration’s assault...is growing more fierce, both in Washington, D.C., and on the streets...Into this maelstrom stepped Victor Narro and his book, Living Peace, Connecting Your Spirituality With Your Work for Justice (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform: 2014)...a guide, an inspiration and a reminder that rights organizations’ tough daily tasks have a higher purpose.” Comment: while such a work may be psychologically useful in helping us cope with the stresses relentlessly inflicted by the literally unspeakable horrors of the looming apocalypse, any lingering notion there is a benevolent personal god is proven utterly absurd by the very circumstances that precipitate our trauma. If indeed there is any sort of deity at all, he (or more likely she) has unquestionably turned against humanity. damning us to extinction and reducing our Mother Earth to a bug planet, no doubt in retribution for the planet having dared spawn such an irredeemably murderous, ultimately self-destructive species as ourselves. Significantly, the book is also censored by price: Amazon lists it, a paperback, at $ 37.78 new, $35.25 used – surely one of the most prohibitively expensive paperbacks in publishing history, and yet another smirking message that even such imaginary solace as it might provide is greedily denied us by Neoliberal (i.e., implicitly fascist) Capitalism.
*****
"Every kid has a childhood story of a creepy old neighbor next door...imagine that that neighbor is Adolf Hitler...Edgar Feuchtwanger...5 years old when he first laid eyes on the future führer...chronicles his 10 years of living across the street from a man who would become the modern definition of evil in his new memoir, Hitler, My Neighbor: Memoirs of a Jewish Childhood, 1929-1939 (Other Press, New York: 2017)." Comment: Liesl Bradner's review is itself worth reading, especially for its cautionary history of perpetually resurgent U.S. Nazism.
LB/8 March 2018
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To provide more complete coverage of several breaking stories, this week's Dispatches will be available tonight or very early Friday. My apology for any inconvenience
LB/8 March 2018
Eviction notice and abandoned possessions at a former camp of homeless people in Tacoma's Irving Park after the camp's residents were forcibly evicted by local authorities who refused to allow them enough time to gather their few belongings. Tacoma claims to be supportive of those victimized by homelessness, but as always under Capitalism, the truth is somewhat different. (Photo by KD © 2018)
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Editor's Note: the portions of the following text that are both italicized and enclosed by quotation marks are passages taken directly from their hyperlinked URLs. Each passage is a brief but accurate summary of the linked material, chosen to enable readers to decide whether to read the item in greater detail. These summaries are limited to less than 200 words in compliance with present U.S. copyright law.)
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Unbelievably Inept Reporting Ignores How a Supreme Court Ruling Proves the JesuNazis Have Already Conquered the United States
“On Tuesday (27 February 2018), the Supreme Court ruled that US immigration officials can detain immigrants within the US indefinitely, without offering periodic bond hearings...yet another victory in the (Obama and Trump regimes') xenophobic crusade against immigrants.” Comment: by far the most important, most thoroughly suppressed message implicit in this Supreme Court ruling and its judicial history is that because the Republicans and their Democratic (sic) Party collaborators have packed the court with fascists and JesuNazis, there is now absolutely nothing -- say again, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING -- in the extant system of U.S. governance to prevent the Trump/Pence Regime from eventually fulfilling the One Percenters' ultimate purpose of imprisoning the United States in zero-tolerance white-supremacist Christian theocracy. Indeed the only logical reason the transition is proceeding relatively slowly is the regime is not yet able to carry out the mass arrests and mass murder essential to finalize the JesuNazi victory-- a campaign of ethnic, political and religious "cleansing" that will undoubtedly claim millions more victims than the German Nazis' Final Solution. The Big Lie of USian "democracy" meanwhile stands revealed by the ever-more-brazen emergence of tyranny -- a tyranny that can only grow more hideously obvious in the months and years ahead.
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JesuNazism, Fascism and the Regime in Ever-More-Predatory Action
Encrypted chat logs obtained by ProPublica — some 250,000 messages spanning more than six months — offer a rare window into Atomwaffen Division that goes well beyond what has surfaced elsewhere about a group whose members have been implicated in a string of violent crimes...(including) five murders...(With) members in 23 states and Canada...(it's) largest chapters are based in Virginia, Texas and Washington."
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"The number of U.S. hate groups increased for the third year in a row, the Southern Poverty Law Center said Wednesday, warning that neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups saw the most expansion last year under the presidency of Donald Trump, who is seen as sympathetic and tolerant toward their actions..." See also "The U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights division saw a significant increase in the number of complaints it received regarding racial harassment in schools." Comment: as the Nazis behaved in Hitler's Germany, so do they now behave in the United States.
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"All over the country, women who (Google) for 'abortion clinic near me' are shown ads for what appears to be abortion clinics, but are actually so-called 'crisis pregnancy centers' (CPCs)--fake clinics run by right-wing extremists who lure women then manipulate or harass them out of getting an abortion." See also "The United States government, in the closest collaboration with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other powerful information technology corporations, is implementing massive restrictions on Internet access to socialist, antiwar and progressive websites." Comment: exactly as I have anticipated for at least two decades, Capitalist internet providers and social media are now revealing their ultimate purpose, not only functioning as a key part of the Ruling Class surveillance and censorship apparatus but actively participating in the JesuNazification of the Empire.
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"Black mothers die at three to four times the rate of white mothers due to pregnancy-related complications...one recent study found that racism is a major driver of the gap." Comment: yet another example of the post-deathcamp methodology of genocide.
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"An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and The Guardian found 'shockingly high' levels of foodborne illness in the U.S." Comment: and another.
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"More than 170 million Americans, or around 52 percent of the entire population, may be at risk of radiation exposure through their drinking water, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), one of the country's leading water testing organizations." Comment: Tacoma is not included in the genocidal nuke-yourself-with-water list, but some surrounding communities are.
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"The Trump administration wants to widen access to plans that deny coverage for preexisting conditions and discriminate against women." Comment: need I say more?
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"ICE (targeted) an immigrant activist for deportation after she spoke with the press." See also: "...20 to 30 times a month Ithe Washington State Department of Licensing) has been giving residents’ personal information...used to arrest and deport people in keeping with the president’s policies." Comment: One of Trump's Gestapo-type agencies again reaches out its white-supremacist claws to silence dissent. Note too how DOL's deputy director, a former career cop (and therefore possibly a JesuNazi sympathizer), defends the practice, which was in open defiance of Gov. Jay Inslee's sanctuary orders.
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"Last summer, white nationalists infamously descended on Charlottesville, Va., holding an armed march and rally where neo-nazi James Fields Jr. allegedly killed anti-racist demonstrator Heather Heyer with a vehicle. Months later, black counter-protesters continue to be arrested on charges connected to the rally, even though it was the racists who unleashed violence on the town." Comment: Yet more evidence of the collaboration between state and local cops, federal secret police agencies and JesuNazi storm-trooper organizations. How many times must it be said: welcome to the Fourth Reich.
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"Should the (Supreme Court) rule against the public sector unions – as many fear it will – they stand to suffer a decline in their 7.2 million-strong membership, and with it the withering of their political strength." Comment: given the fascist/JesuNazi majority on the court, the anti-union ruling is inevitable. It will destroy -- probably forever -- the last vestige of USian organized labor and thereby shut down the only remaining primary source of funding for the reformist Left.
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"Ever since the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council (FRC) a hate group, the FRC began a concerted effort to delegitimize the organization...'alerting families, Christians, and other concerned citizens about their destructive activities...(including) 'putting a militant LGBT curriculum in every single public school classroom in America.'" Comment: JesuNazism in (predictable) action.
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"Sessions' irrational fear of drugs and overzealous love of police have combined to create a Department of Justice eager to fill the populations of state prisons across the country -- especially with people of color and those in poverty." Comment: more JesuNazism in (predictable) action.
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"The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)...mission statement...no longer describes the United States as a 'nation of immigrants' and now features language...more aligned with the (exclusionary) policies touted by the Trump administration." Comment: as I said in the foregoing item.
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"An obscure State Department policy change is likely to send immigrants... back to their home countries to be tortured or killed." Comment: need I say it again?
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Oddly enough, in this time of alternative news media's greatest need and relevance, many of its major outlets are facing seemingly inexplicable fund-raising crises. As Truthout emailed on Tuesday, "We have less than 48 hours to raise the $19,000 Truthout still urgently needs." The same day, Common Dreams emailed an equally urgent plea: "Our Winter fundraising campaign...still must raise $27,000 to make our bare-bones budget goal." And Reader Supported News pleaded that it's "fundraising numbers are down fully one-third from one year ago. That’s really bad...So far for February: 712,639 readers, 464 donations, tells the whole story...(that RSN, as of Tuesday, had raised only $19,700 of the $33,000 it needs to fund its monthly operations.)” Comment: Since these fundraising problems began shortly after the victory of the Trump/Pence Regime and the now-obvious triumph of JesuNazism, I strongly suspect the withholding of donations is a product of the same nationally defining syndrome of cowardice and Ayn Rand fascism that allowed destruction of the New Deal -- specifically that too many readers are fearful their contributions will draw the attention of one or more of the Empire's 17 secret police agencies, resulting in eventual internment and possible execution.
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Why Revolution Is Our Only Path to National Improved Medicare for All
"The Center for American Progress (CAP), a Washington-based Democratic Party think tank funded by Wall Street, including private health insurers and their lobbying group, unveiled (Medicare Extra for All) designed to confuse supporters of (National Improved Medicare for All) and protect private health insurance profits." See also "While it might be more politically palatable to members of Congress because they can appear to be supportive of Medicare for All while protecting the profits of the health industries that fund their campaigns, it...will fail to solve the healthcare crisis." Comment: firstly, anyone who is not in psycho-neurotic denial about USian political reality understands the Empire's pretense of "democracy" ended forever on 22 November 1963; (see also "The elimination of Kennedy was...the transition of US ruling class domestic policy from social reform and relative class compromise to class war and political reaction." This means, secondly, that regardless of how many of us support National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA), the only way it will ever become reality is as a consequence of revolution. Thirdly, any competent political consultant knows the one absolutely certain, 100-per-cent-effective tactic for defeating an USian ballot proposal is to confuse the electorate. Fourthly, while this tactic can succeed anywhere on this planet, its success in the imperial homeland -- even were it not emphatically supported by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine -- is guaranteed by the aggressive, often violent anti-intellectualism and pridefully malicious ignorance that are among the primary defining characteristics of the USian population. Lastly, what this means is that until Capitalism is overthrown by genuine revolution, USian healthcare will remain what it is today, a privilege of wealth, rather than what NIMA advocates are trying to make it, the human right universally recognized in the civilized world. Nevertheless we as socialists should enthusiastically support all such obviously doomed liberal reform efforts precisely because their inevitable failure might eventually force the USian majority -- assuming the (doubtful premise) it is capable of any real learning -- to realize that revolution is essential, the only antidote for the ever-intensifying Capitalist threat to our planetary motherland and thus to human survival. In which context, note it was the devastating failures of liberals and liberalism that precipitated the Bolshevik revolution.
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And If There's a Hereafter, 5 More Reasons Josef Goebbels Is Dancing with Glee
The goal of vilifying (Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein) is to clear the field for a rightwing Democrat in 2020 and to silence all dissent."
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"A progressive candidate for office is being attacked and maligned...(but) it's her own party that is funding the attack ads." Comment: once again -- predictably -- the Democratic (sic) Party bares its closet-fascist fangs.
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In the latest step in the drive by the US ruling class to censor the Internet, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) on Thursday published its order abolishing Internet neutrality in the governmental Federal Register, initiating a 60-day countdown for the law to come into force." See also "Online censorship will predominate."
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"In a brazen attempt to suppress public access to existing records of legislators’ activities, the Washington state Senate and House overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 6617 on Friday, February 23, hardly two days after it had been introduced." Comment: the linked report implies the measure is the legislature's response to recent public disclosures about sexual harassment by legislators. Nevertheless 6617 was approved by a huge majority of female legislators from both Capitalist parties See also the roll call votes on the bill in the Senate and House.
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"In introducing the ambitious platform—which has already earned the backing of more than 70 prominent progressives, including author Naomi Klein and Our Revolution president Nina Turner— (the Campaign for America's Future) is looking to chart a path that reaches far beyond the centrist and incrementalist approach favored by the current Democratic leadership." Comment: the platform's 11 points make interesting reading, but their refusal to identify Capitalism as the source of our ever-intensifying wretchedness proves them to be nothing more than reformist, anything-to-save-Capitalism bullshit, the latest variant on the Big Lie of "change we can believe in."
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U.S. Imperialism as War and Fascism
"U.S. and Allies Look to Military Intervention in Venezuela." The headline tells the story. See also "In every part of the world, the United States is engaged in maniacal, criminal assaults on democracy, basic human decency and common sense."
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"In South America, at present, only three progressive governments remain: Venezuela; Bolivia; and Uruguay. The eternal powers that have always dominated Latin America and that plunged it into backwardness, inequality, and underdevelopment, return with a thirst for revenge, after more than a decade of continuous defeats." Comment: where is the Red Army now that we so desperately need it?
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Dystopian Miscellany
“(In defiance of the U.S. Constitution and Army Regulations)...Maj. Gen. Steven Cray... has inserted himself inappropriately and dishonestly into a political process, using his military authority and position to influence voters in a civilian matter...(by opposing a ballot item)...asking (Burlington, Vermont) voters whether or not they want the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter based in a neighboring town, at an airport owned by Burlington.” Comment: another example of how the Trump/Pence Regime edges ever closer to unabashed military dictatorship. The question is whether Gen. Cray will be punished. My guess is he will not be.
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The Koch political network has funneled money and organizing into state politics for some time, contributing to huge state legislative gains by Republicans over the last decade."
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"A Texas school district has threatened to punish students for protesting gun violence," warning that the ban extends to any and all forms of protest.
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Wave of home foreclosures expected to hit Puerto Rico." The headline tells the story. Comment: another aspect -- methodically suppressed by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine -- of the Trump/Pence Regime's racist, genocide-minded abandonment of the island's population.
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"The vicious violence against non-Jewish African refugees in Israel follows years in which Israeli political leaders and religious officials regularly whipped up racist sentiments against them...because they are not Jews." Comment: a colleague, covering a 1965 open-housing hearing in Manhattan, witnessed the then-astounding spectacle of Holocaust survivors, their tattooed concentration-camp numbers plainly visible on their arms, clamoring like crazed Ku Kluxers against policies that would enable "the Schvartza" -- African Americans -- to rent apartments or purchase houses in their neighborhoods. From that moment on I have assumed Jewish whites are as susceptible to racial and religious hatred as any other Caucasians -- a conclusion certainly borne out by present-day Israeli policies, which increasingly mimic those of the Jim Crow South. In which context note that 24 percent of the USian Jews voted for Trump.
*****
And Now, at Last, for Some (Relatively) Good News
...in the wake of the 2008 crash...one argument is gaining traction: capitalism is not the means to realize economic equality and democracy, it is rather the great obstacle to their realization."
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"The state-wide strike by more than 30,000 West Virginia teachers and school employees is continuing Thursday, with workers rejecting an agreement announced Tuesday by the trade unions and the state’s billionaire governor, Jim Justice." For more details, see "Over the past four decades, the unions have worked systematically to suppress any organized opposition to the social counterrevolution carried out by the American ruling class."
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"In late January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement approached Seattle City Light with an administrative subpoena, demanding information on a particular customer location, including phone numbers and information on related accounts...(but) City Loght's legal counsel, Mary Doherty, declined to comply, citing a Washington State law that law enforcement must have belief the utility records could help solve a crime."
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"Students at Loyola University in Chicago are protesting the racial profiling and assault of two students of color by campus police following a demonstration on February 24...demanding that the university be held accountable for the actions of its officers and the (white supremacist) climate that led to the brutality."
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"Conflict between the opinion section and hard news divisions at a newspaper isn’t unusual, but the open sniping currently going on at The (New York) Times is notable in its intensity...(because) the newsroom feels embarrassed.” Comment: despite the ever-more-brazenly fascist content of The Times' editorial pages, there remain on its news staff some reporters and editors who are neither fascists nor JesuNazis and are therefore sorely troubled by the paper's gradual but now obvious abandonment of its former bourgeois liberalism, a process that began with its justifiably notorious sacking of Sydney Schanberg at the behest of the Manhattan real estate barons in 1985.
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And Five Thought-Provoking, Implicitly Positive Reads
"Traditional Knowledge has today become a highly valued source of information for (some) archaeologists, ecologists, biologists, ethnobotanists, climatologists and others... but when Traditional Knowledge is seen to challenge scientific “truths” — then...(it's) dismissed as myth." Comment: the linked material represents a major conceptual breakthrough and is therefore decidedly worthwhile reading. Nevertheless it fails to contrast the basis of Traditional Knowledge (caps as in original), which is always observed phenomenon, with the basis of “scientific truth,” which is always -- save for a few notable exceptions in the former Soviet Union – based on the ultimate preconception at the core of patriarchal religious doctrine. This is asexual -- or more accurately misogynistic and therefore anti-sexual -- creation of the universe by a male divinity. It is this genuinely unnatural act – indeed the original unnatural act – that even after its restatement in (allegedly) non-religious forms reduces our living Motherland the Earth to a collection of “dead” atoms forever conceptually divorced from our physical and psychological selves. Thus the conflict between Traditional Knowledge and "scientific truth" is ultimately a conflict between a wholistic (and often implicitly matriarchal) view of the universe versus the patriarchal (invariably misogynistic and often implicitly racist) view of the universe mandated by Capitalism.
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"Please note eight things you will not hear from the Russia-mad Democrats and their many media allies at places like The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and MSDNC:"
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"...when used cynically, as a political weapon, a simplistic view of identity can allow people of a particular political faction to wrongly imply that they speak for all members of their racial or gender group." See also: "Why Claudia Jones Will Always Be More Relevant than Ta-Nehisi Coates."
*****
"I’ve come a long way in my journey from faith to doubt and find myself now an apostate resident in the military monastery." Comment: the poignantly sorrowful testimony of a professional soldier -- a West Point graduate -- who has witnessed firsthand the savagery of the Empire.
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Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America (Stephen J. Ross; Bloomsbury USA: 2017), exposes a dark and carefully hidden chapter of USian history that is especially relevant today. "The Nazi and fascist presence in Greater Los Angeles at the time was huge...local Nazis and fascists even harbored ideas about overthrowing the United States government itself and installing a 'Christian America,' modeled presumably on the Third Reich."
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A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History (Jeanne Theoharis; Beacon Press: 2018 ), describes how white supremacists co-opted the Civil Rights Movement, despite the fact "that in 1966 a Gallup poll found that 72 percent of white Americans had an unfavorable opinion of (Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.)." Comment: more of the damning evidence about three-fourths of USian whites are either overt white supremacists or are at least sympathetic to JesuNazi and fascist racism. (scroll down to "Moron Nation Governance.")
*****
Close-Ups of Our Motherland the Planet Earth
"Ultraviolet light reveals alien-like colors and fairy sparkles in seemingly normal plants." Comment: a brief celebration of the beauty of our planetary Motherland. Given the breathtakingly ancient connections between plants and what patriarchy teaches us to belittle as "magical thinking" and thus dismiss as "superstition," I cannot but wonder if our pre-patriarchal forebears saw a broader spectrum of light than we see today -- perhaps one of the reasons Cro-Magnon skulls had on the average about 20 percent more brain capacity than ours. (With thanks to TigerLille1 for the link.)
*****
Use of Color as Expressions of Folklore
Anti-haint blue: doors and porch ceilings painted blue as barriers against demons and vengeful ghosts. Comment: the linked text describes this as southern folklore, adopted by whites from much older Black traditions, and having (involuntarily) spent two-thirds of my boyhood and early manhood in the South, I can attest to the accuracy of the linked text. But the practice is much more widespread in today's United States. And though I cannot point to a source, it seems I have read -- perhaps in Carlos Castanada -- it is also commonplace in Hispanic cultures. Moreover, if memory serves me correctly, a late friend who was a Holocaust survivor said there is a similar tradition in Eastern Europe. Anyone who has more information on this topic please feel free to contact me here at Dispatches; mythology and folklore are among my major interests. (With thanks to KD for the link.)
LB/28 February 2018
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