They Were There First: Election Denialism, the Democratic Way

by Binoy Kampmark / November 13th, 2024

The scene is memorable enough.  November 2016.  The Twin Peaks Tavern, Castro District.  Men gathered, beside themselves.  “It’s shocking how those people voted him in,” splutters one over a Martini.  “Yes,” says a companion, bristling in anger at the election of Donald J. Trump, sex pest, dubious businessman, orange haired monster and reality television star. “Why were they ever given the vote?”  History had come full circle, the claim now being that tens of millions of voters in the 2016 US presidential election should have been disenfranchised.  In their mind, this bloc was to be abominated as Hillary Clinton’s designated “deplorables”, a monstrous collective needing to be pushed into the sea.

In November 2024, we see similar tremors of doubt and consternation, though the official stance, as expressed by President Joe Biden, is to “accept the choice the country made.”  In the vast, noisy hinterland of social media speculation lie unproven claims that some 20 million votes have gone missing, necessitating a recount.  Ditto problems with failing voting machines.  In a statement of cool dismissive confidence, Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is adamant: “we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security and integrity of our election infrastructure.”

2016 might have given the Democrats meditative pause as to why Trump was elected.  Even more significantly, why Trump’s election was more apotheosis rather than gnarly distortion.  Instead of vanishing as aberrant over the Biden years, Trumpism has come home to roost in winning, not only the Electoral College but the majority vote by convincing margins.

Much is made of Trump’s pathological campaign against the legitimacy of his loss in 2020, as well as it might.  Less is made, certainly from the centre left and Democratic quarters, of the conspiratorial webbing that served to excuse an appalling electoral performance on behalf of the donkey party and their chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton.  Doing so shifted any coherent analysis about loss and misjudgement to plot and the sorcery of disruption – the very sorts of things that Trump would use to such effect after 2020.  Indeed, the seeds of election denialism were already sown in 2016 by the Democrats.  Trump would draw on this shoddy model with vengeful enthusiasm in 2020.

In Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes make the point that the Clinton team took a matter of hours to concoct “the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up… Already, Russian hacking was the centrepiece of the argument.”

In declassified notes provided in September 2020 by the then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the picture of pre-emptive delegitimization becomes vivid.  Clinton, in late July 2016, “had approved a campaign plan to stir a scandal against US Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”  Then Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan “subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’”

Since her loss, Clinton has been impervious to the notion that she lacked sufficient appeal in the electoral race.  Trump was, she has continued to insist, never a legitimate president to begin with.

Other Democrat worthies never deviated from the narrative.  The late Californian Senator Dianne Feinstein was certain in January 2017 that the change in fortunes in the Clinton camp had much to do with the announcement the previous October that the FBI would be investigating Clinton’s private email server.  Typically, the issue of what was exposed was less relevant than the fact of exposure.  The former was irrelevant; the latter, Russian, unpardonable, causal and fundamental.

In June 2019, former President Jimmy Carter went even further, showing that the Democrats would remain indifferent to Trump as a serious electoral phenomenon.  “I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016,” he stated on a panel hosted by the Carter Center at Leesburg, Virginia.  “He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”  This execrable nonsense was fanned, fed and nurtured by media servitors, to such a degree as to prompt Gerard Baker, currently editor-at-large for the Wall Street Journal, to remark that it was mostly “among the most disturbing, dishonest, and tendentious I’ve ever seen.”

An odd analysis in Politico by David Faris about the latest election suggests that Democrats “have the advantage of introspection” while the Republicans, after losing in 2020, “chose not to look inward and instead descended into a conspiratorial morass of denial and rage that prevented them, at least publicly, from addressing the sources of their defeat.”

Faris misses the mark in one fundamental respect.  The Democrats were, fascinatingly enough, the proto-election denialists.  They did not storm the Capitol in patriotic, costumed moodiness, but they did try to eliminate Trump as an electoral force.  In doing so, they failed to see Trumpland take root under their noses.  His stunning and conclusive return to office demands something far more substantive in response than the amateurish, foamy undergraduate rage that has become the hallmark of a distinct monomania.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

The End of Liberalism

Trump Regains the Presidency

by Dan Lieberman / November 13th, 2024

Newsweek forecasted Donald Trump’s eventual victory. Its Nov 05, 2024 at 12:06 PM EST headline, “Kamala Harris Predicted to Win By Nearly Every Major Forecaster,” told the story.

As polls open, Vice President Kamala Harris is predicted to win the election by almost every major forecaster. Nate Silver’s latest forecast now gives Harris a slight edge in the Electoral College, projecting her with a 50 percent chance of victory compared to former President Donald Trump’s 49.6 percent. The model shows Harris securing 271 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 267.

Other aggregators echo the close race but similarly give Harris a small advantage. FiveThirtyEight currently projects her with a 50 percent chance of winning, forecasting 270 Electoral College votes for Harris to Trump’s 268.

Meanwhile, U.K. newspaper The Economist predicts that Harris will win 276 votes to Trump’s 262—a scenario also reflected by forecaster Larry Sabato, whose Race to the White House predicts she will win 275 electoral votes.

Just factor in that the polls, which also showed the race would be one of the closest in modern history, have been consistently wrong. After two previous elections, those reading the tea leaves should know that a portion of Trump supporters will not publicly admit they are goings to vote for the once convicted, twice impeached, and three times remaining defendant?

Plenty of afterthoughts of why Harris lost the election. Blame Biden for leaving the race too late. Blame inflation. Blame Harris remaining attached to Biden. Blame Harris remaining unknown. There is nobody to blame, and it’s best to look elsewhere. Caring, clean living, and people loving Vice President Harris had no chance against an electorate disillusioned with an outdated liberalism, and to the rough and tumble campaign of a notorious truth disabler.

The resurrected President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump, was the perfect candidate for a new Republican Party. The GOP drew voters who felt the Democrats had given excessive attention to  identity politics and issues that did not favor the white working class — welfare state, international trade agreements, foreign interventions,  human rights, minority rights, LGBT rights, immigration rights, gun rights, climate change, export of democracy, and diverse civil society. The caring programs of the Democrat Party no longer sat well with a non-caring public. Programs had become a repetitious sounding for attracting identity politics constituents, while offering no solutions to the problems. Despite the promises and the rhetoric, Fentanyl distribution, gun proliferation, and climate change continue and remain killers. African-American rights, LJBT rights and immigrant rights remain significant problems. The contrast between Democratic Party strong rhetoric and weak accomplishment bothered voters and left them with an impression of Democrats being hypocrites. Candidate Harris’ flipping on several issues, especially fracking, strengthened the hypocrisy charge.

The Republicans combined the marginal and disaffected voters with a candidate who favored Republican agendas of low taxes, deregulation, corporate protection, and increased isolation from foreign interventions. Mostly, they had a candidate who knew the American pulse and knew how to win.  Together with Trump and his cohorts, Republicans established a political arrangement that was poised for victory.  Salivating and exhilarating, they needed to find a few more votes to assure triumph ─ ballots signed by an uncommitted electorate that usually voted Democrat. The solution came from the Democrat strategists who championed Kamala Harris for Vice President in the 2020 election. By not considering the probability that Joe Biden would be unable to finish his term or stand for reelection, the Democrats failed to recognize they needed a vice-president who had more credentials and name recognition than Kamala Harris, and had the ability to serve as an heir to Joe Biden. Nor is it a coincidence that Trump defeated women candidates and not male candidates in his three election experiences. The sexist electorate is still not willing to have a female defeat a New York cowboy.

Remaining for all to ponder is, “How much did administration subservience to Israel and its military assistance that enabled the genocide contribute to the Democrat defeat? Accompanying the hypocrisy of liberal policies that promised everything and never fulfilled their purposes were larger hypocrisies that infuriated a part of the electorate.

• While urging gun control, the Democratic administration sent deadly military equipment to Israel to enhance the killings of Palestinians.
• While posing peace, the Democratic administration supported Israel’s war against the Palestinians.
• While preaching democracy, the Democratic administration did not oppose Israel’s silencing of its protesting citizens and murder of reporters who exposed Israel’s crimes.
• While clamoring for human rights, the Democratic administration made certain the Israelis denied Gazans the most human right ─ the right to live.
• While proclaiming guardianship of a universal “rules based order,” the Democratic administration brought disorder to the Middle East and subsidized violations of all rules in its “rules based order.”

The United States faces a political system in which its major political Party has lost much of its reason to exist and much of its constituency to maintain its existence. U.S. citizens face a government that is poised to operate from personal directives and eschew the trappings of government. The American people are faced with larger challenges, — demonstrating humanity and remaining human while their government protects the inhuman Israelis and allows them to destroy human existence in Gaza. How much longer will nationalist Americans permit a foreign Zionist lobby to control the mechanisms of their government?  How much longer will humane Americans permit its government to sponsor genocide?

Chillingly, the 2024 Democratic Party resembles the Social Democratic Party of the Weimar Republic, which clung to government power until replaced by the Nazi Party in 1933.Email

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politic at substack.com.  He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.

 

The Very Definition of Tyranny: A Dictatorship Disguised as Democracy

by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / November 13th, 2024

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

—James Madison

Power corrupts.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom, but concentrated power across all three branches is the very definition of tyranny: a dictatorship disguised as democracy.

When one party dominates all three branches of government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—there is even more reason to worry.

There’s no point debating which political party would be more dangerous with these powers.

This is true no matter which party is in power.

This is particularly true in the wake of the 2024 election.

Already, Donald Trump, who promised to be a dictator on “day one,” is advancing plans to further undermine the nation’s already vulnerable system of checks and balances.

To be fair, this is not a state of affairs that can be blamed exclusively on Trump.

America’s founders intended our system of checks and balances to serve as a bulwark against centralized power being abused.

As constitutional scholar Linda Monk explains, “Within the separation of powers, each of the three branches of government has ‘checks and balances’ over the other two. For instance, Congress makes the laws, but the President can veto them, and the Supreme Court can declare them unconstitutional. The President enforces the law, but Congress must approve executive appointments and the Supreme Court rules whether executive action is constitutional. The Supreme Court can strike down actions by both the legislative and executive branches, but the President nominates Supreme Court justices, and the Senate confirms or denies their nominations.”

Unfortunately, our system of checks and balances has been strained to the breaking point for years now, helped along by those across the political spectrum who, in marching in lockstep with the Deep State, have conspired to advance the government’s agenda at the expense of the citizenry’s constitutional rights.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the farce that is the highly partisan, two-party, bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separate and shares power between three co-equal branches.

Yet as law professor William P. Marshall concludes, “The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance. The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”

The outcome of the 2024 elections is not a revolutionary bid to recalibrate a government run amok. Rather, this is a Deep State coup to stay in power, and Donald Trump is the vehicle by which it will do so.

Watch and see.

Remember, it was the Trump Administration that asked Congress to allow it to suspend parts of the Constitution whenever it deemed it necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic and “other” emergencies.

In fact, during Trump’s first term, the Department of Justice quietly trotted out and tested a long laundry list of terrifying powers to override the Constitution. We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die…

Bear in mind, however, that these powers the Trump Administration, acting on orders from the police state, officially asked Congress to recognize and authorize barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has unilaterally claimed for itself.

Unofficially, the police state has been riding roughshod over the rule of law for years now without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts, the president, or the citizenry.

This is why the Constitution’s system of checks and balances is so critical.

Those who wrote our Constitution sought to ensure our freedoms by creating a document that protects our God-given rights at all times, even when we are engaged in war, whether that is a so-called war on terrorism, a so-called war on drugs, a so-called war on illegal immigration, or a so-called war on disease.

The attempts by each successive presidential administration to rule by fiat merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

In this way, we have arrived at the dystopian future depicted in the film V for Vendetta, which is no future at all.

Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta (written and produced by the Wachowskis) provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which a totalitarian government that knows all, sees all, controls everything, and promises safety and security above all comes to power by capitalizing on the people’s fear.

Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) are established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.

In V for Vendetta, as in my novel The Erik Blair Diaries, the subtext is that authoritarian regimes—through a vicious cycle of manipulation, oppression and fear-mongering—foment violence, manufacture crises, and breed terrorists, thereby giving rise to a recurring cycle of blowback and violence.

Only when the government itself becomes synonymous with the terrorism wreaking havoc in their lives do the people to finally mobilize and stand up to the government’s tyranny.

V, a bold, charismatic freedom fighter, urges the British people to rise up and resist the government. In Vendetta, V the film’s masked crusader blows up the seat of government on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, ironically enough the same day that Trump won his landslide return to the White House.

Yet there the comparison ends.

So, while we are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs, this year’s electoral victory for Republicans was no win for the Constitution.

Rather, it was a win for the very entrenched, hawkish, establishment power structure that has exhibited no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Deep State works best through imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—who rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

John W. Whitehead, constitutional attorney and author, is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He wrote the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015). He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Read other articles by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

 

Are Israeli Soldiers’ Lives Really Worth More than Gaza Kids?

by Yves Engler / November 14th, 2024

Elizabeth May believes the memory of Jews killed in Europe eight decades ago is more important than living Palestinians. The Canadian Green leader’s Jewish supremacism is a stain on her legacy, the party and Canadian left.

Last week supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv FC yelled racist slogans, ripped Palestinian flags, destroyed taxis and beat individuals before their team’s match in Amsterdam. The night before the game 10 Israelis were arrested and “local police and authorities considered calling off the Ajax v Maccabi Tel Aviv match because of violence the night before.” Anti-Zionist Dutch Jewish organization Erev Rav cancelled its commemoration of Kristallnacht — the night in which Nazi thugs attacked Jews as a prelude to the extermination of European Jewry — out of fear Maccabi hooligans would disrupt it. In March, Maccabi supporters beat a pro-Palestinian Arab man unconscious in Athens when their team played Olympiakos.

Multiple Maccabi supporters in Amsterdam have been fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. According to the Jerusalem Post, Mossad agents accompanied the Maccabi supporters to Amsterdam, likely to participate in framing the (expected) violence.

In response to Israeli claims that Amsterdam inhabitants beating a handful of football ultras was a “pogrom”, May posted to X, “On behalf of Canadian Greens I am horrified by anti-semitic attack on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam. We condemn such hate. Ironically learned of it while attending event commemorating Kristallnacht horror of 86 years ago. Never Again.”

While she attends a Kristallnacht event promoting genocidal football hooligans, I couldn’t find any instance of May attending a rally or march over the past 13 months against Israel’s holocaust in Gaza (there have been weekly protests in the city she represents in parliament as well as regular marches in Ottawa).

However, on October 7, May attended an Ottawa event put on by Israel’s embassy and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs to promote Israel’s holocaust in Gaza and terror in Lebanon. Simultaneously she released an explicitly supremacist statement to be read at a commemorative event in Victoria for what May labeled “the worst act of senseless violence against Jews since the Shoah.” The statement called the violence perpetrated by Palestinian militants who broke free of the Gaza cage to attack a half dozen Israeli military bases as “horrific”, “savage” and “barbaric”. But May doesn’t employ those terms to describe Israel’s far worse crimes against an occupied population, labeling the horrors befalling Palestinians over the past year as “additional grief”. May concludes, “Every life is precious. All this pain and grief has taken its toll. We are all in this global human family traumatized by October 7 and its aftermath. But the bell that tolls the loudest is for those souls lost in the diabolical attacks of October 7.”

Why does the bell toll louder for the 313 Israeli soldiers killed that day, who enforced an illegal occupation of Palestinian land, than for innocent children in Gaza?

May has made explicitly philosemitic/Jewish supremacist statements before. In 2015, May responded to a Canadian Jewish News request to make her pitch to Canadian Jewish voters by saying “you have been the heart and soul and conscience of Canada on many issues for a very long time… I would urge you to look at the Green party’s policies and platform and see if you don’t see yourself there. If you don’t, let me know, I certainly would apologize if we are not meeting the aspirations of Canadians who have done so much for this country.”

Paradoxically, May’s Jewish supremacism is partly rooted in her Christianity. Her October 7 statement concludes with a Christian Zionist Psalm that mentions Israel three times. May studied to be a priest in an Anglican church with a long history of Zionism, as I detailed eight years ago. In an expression with Christian Zionist echoes, May praised the colonial Jewish National Fund for “the great work that’s done in making the desert bloom.” May’s 2013 comment erased the existence of the indigenous Palestinians and promoted an explicitly racist institution that has Judaized historically Arab areas and continues to discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in its land use policies.

Christian Zionism, philosemitism and deference to power has led May to promote anti-Palestinian positions antithetical to Green members’ and party interests. In 2016 May threatened to resign as leader if the party didn’t organize a special convention immediately after members strongly backed a partial Boycott Divestment and Sanctions resolution in a pre-convention online poll, convention caucus and full convention vote. In response she forced the party to spend over $100,000 to organize a special convention five months later in a bid to overturn a single resolution. As part of her stunningly undemocratic bid to reverse members’ BDS vote, May fired the sponsor of the resolution, Dmitri Lascaris, and two other shadow critics who defended the members vote.

While May expected the backers of the BDS resolution to give up in the face of her control of the party apparatus, Palestine supporters out organized May in the lead-up to the special convention. As such, May was forced into agreeing with a resolution that deepened the boycott call but withdrew the BDS formulation. But through her control of the party’s megaphone May spun a false narrative of the consensus resolution, claiming the party did not support BDS. In 2019 May told the Canadian Jewish News “We have nothing to do with BDS. We repealed it. We are not a party that condones BDS. We would never tolerate anybody in our party who violates our core values, who are anti-Semitic.”

On multiple occasions May has insinuated that pro-Palestinian members, notably Lascaris, were antisemitic and during the 2020 Green Party leadership race she smeared Lascaris. It was part of why Lascaris was barred from running (he ultimately overturned the ban).

As she worked to undermine anti-apartheid voices, May threw her weight behind the little known Annamie Paul, securing her victory in the leadership race. Deeply anti-Palestinian, Paul destroyed her leadership and severely damaged the Green Party by pushing racist positions during Israel’s 2021 slaughter in Gaza.

Even as Israel commits a holocaust in Gaza and wages incredible violence across the region the Green Party leader’s bell tolls loudest for the apartheid state. Based on the evidence, Elizabeth May seems to be an anti-Palestinian bigot.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A eople's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

 

CONSPIRACY THEORIES NES PAS

A Bizarre Kind of Executive Action: The Suppression of Epochal Documentaries

by Edward Curtin / November 14th, 2024

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est /Pro patria mori
(It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country”)

– Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est“

Yes, it seems fitting that I am writing these words on November 11, Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, a day that began as Armistice Day to celebrate the ending of World War I, the “war to end all wars.”

That phrase has become a sardonic joke in the century that has followed as wars have piled up upon wars to create a permanent condition, and the censorship and propaganda that became acute with WW I have been exacerbated a hundredfold today. The number of dead soldiers and civilians in the century since numbs a mind intent on counting numbers, as courage, love, and innocence wails from skeletons sleeping deep in dirt everywhere. The minds of the living are ravished at the thought of so much death.

Almost a year ago I reviewed a film – Four Died Trying – about four American men who were assassinated by the U.S. government because they opposed the wars upon which their country had come to rely: President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. I wrote of this documentary film, directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, that it was powerful, riveting, and masterful, the opening 58 minute prologue to a film series meant to be released at intervals over a few years. This prologue was released at the end of 2023 to great applause.
I wrote of it:

Today we are living the consequences of the CIA/national security state’s 1960s takeover of the country. Their message then and now: We, the national security state, rule, we have the guns, the media, and the power to dominate you. We control the stories you are meant to hear. If you get uppity, well-known, and dare challenge us, we will buy you off, denigrate you, or, if neither works, we will kill you. You are helpless, they reiterate endlessly. Bang. Bang. Bang.

But they lie, and this series of films, beginning with its first installment, will tell you why. It will show why understanding the past is essential for transforming the present. It will profoundly inspire you to see and hear these four bold and courageous men refuse to back down to the evil forces that shot them down. It will open your eyes to the parallel spiritual paths they walked and the similarity of the messages they talked about – peace, justice, racism, colonialism, human rights, and the need for economic equality – not just in the U.S.A. but across the world, for the fate of all people was then, and is now, linked to the need to transform the U.S. warfare state into a country of peace and human reconciliation, just as these four men radically underwent deep transformations in the last year of their brief lives.

This 58 minute prologue touches on many of themes that will follow in the months ahead. Season One will be divided into chapters that cover the four assassinations together with background material covering “the world as it was” in the 1950s with its Cold War propaganda, McCarthyism, the rise of the military-industrial complex, the CIA, red-baiting, and the ever present fear of nuclear war. Season Two will be devoted to the government and media coverups, citizen investigations, and the intelligence agencies’ and their media mouthpieces’ mind control operations aimed at the American people that continue today.

Then in March of this year I wrote about the second film in the series, The World As It Was, that explores the very disturbing history of the 1950s in the U.S.A., a decade that lay the foundation of fear upon which the horrors of the 1960s were built, and from which we now are reaping the flowers of evil that have sprung up everywhere we look because the evils of those decades have never been adequately addressed.

But I was hopeful that if enough people got see to see these illuminating and brilliantly done films, built on more than one hundred and twenty interviews over six years with key historical figures, including many family members of the four men, change was possible because more people would demand accountability. That the movies were also entertaining, despite their profoundly serious content, boded well for their reaching a wide audience.

Just recently, I was again asked by the filmmakers, as were others, to preview the third film, Jack Joins the Revolution, about John F. Kennedy, from his youth to the hope he inspired when he entered politics in 1947 until his death on November 22, 1963 and the shock and despair that overtook the nation and the world. This third film matched the brilliance of the first two, but I did wonder why there had been a lapse of more than six months between this one and the previous.

It seemed to me that this was the perfect time for these films to be released in quick succession to have a profound effect.

But having watched this third film, I discovered to my great surprise that it has not been released, nor, even more shockingly, has the second one that I previewed eight months ago. Why?  I do not know, but it is very odd, to put it mildly. I do know that by not releasing them now a significant opportunity is being lost. These films would be of great help to the country, because they depict what a truly populist presidency looks like and the malign forces that oppose him.  But alas, for reasons that are hard to fathom, the films are being suppressed by someone.  We can only hope that the filmmakers will be successful in their efforts to free the films in time for them to be of value at this crucial moment in our history.

It is well known that JFK was a naval war hero in WW II, but less well known that his war experience turned him fiercely against war, that to end all wars was a fundamental theme of his for the rest of his life.

Jack Joins the Revolution explores this and reminds the viewer that Kennedy was well acquainted with death, having almost died eight times before he was assassinated, something he knew was coming. He was courageous in the extreme. Thus my earlier reference to Veterans Day, for JFK was a veteran of exceptional courage who not only saved his comrades when their PT boat was sunk by the Japanese in the south Pacific, but tried to the end to save his country and the world from the madness of the endless wars that have followed his death at the hands of the CIA and the U.S. warfare state.

This film clearly shows why he became such an obstacle to the imperial war machine and the CIA that to this very day have a huge stake in suppressing the truth about the man. If the film (and the others) is not released, these forces will have been successful. It will be another posthumous assassination.

For what is most striking about this episode is the light it sheds on John Kennedy’s forceful, long-standing anti-colonial and anti-imperial convictions for which he was attacked by politicians of both parties. It is suggested, and I think rightly, that this grew out of his Irish roots, for Ireland’s long fight for independence from British colonial occupation was dear to his heart and also a fundamental inspiration in the following decades for anti-colonial freedom fighters everywhere. It still is.

To listen to the film’s clips of his speeches on these topics is a revelation for those unfamiliar, not only with his radical views for a politician, but to his passionate eloquence that is sorely missing today. Attacking the policies of support for dictators and the coups against foreign leaders under the Eisenhower administration and the CIA led by Allen Dulles, JFK called for freedom and independence for people’s everywhere and the end of colonialism supported by the U.S. and other nations. Algeria, Iran, Cuba, Latin America, Africa – it’s a long list.

Even before he became president, in 1957, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech in the U.S. Senate that sent shock waves throughout Washington, D.C. and around the world. He came out in support of Algerian independence from France and African liberation generally, and against colonial imperialism.

As chair of the Senate’s African Subcommittee in 1959, he urged sympathy for African and Asian independence movements as part of American foreign policy. He believed that continued support of colonial policies would only end in more bloodshed because the voices of independence would not be denied, nor should they be.

That speech caused an international uproar, and in the U.S.A. Kennedy was harshly criticized by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even members of the Democratic party, such as Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson. But it was applauded in Africa and the Third World.

Yet JFK continued throughout his 1960 presidential campaign to raise his voice against colonialism throughout the world and for free and independent African nations. Such views were anathema to the foreign policy establishment, including the CIA and the burgeoning military industrial complex that President Eisenhower belatedly warned against in his Farewell Address, delivered nine months after approving the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in March 1960; this juxtaposition revealed the hold the Pentagon and CIA had and has on sitting presidents, as the pressure for war became structurally systematized and Kennedy was removed through a public execution for al the world to see.

Many voices speak to this and other issues in the film: Oliver Stone, James W. Douglass, RFK, Jr., Robert Dallek, Monica Wiesak, his niece Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Peter Dale Scott, James Galbraith, his nephew Stephen Smith, David Talbot, Peter Janney, and others.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks about the 1953 U.S. coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddegh of Iran and of the approximately 72 CIA-led known coups the United States engineered between 1947 and 1989; author Stephen Schlesinger of the Dulles brothers’ work for the United Fruit Company and their subsequent involvement in the 1954 coup d’état against the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz who was instituting land reform that threatened United Fruit’s hold on so much of the country. In both cases, and many others, the U.S. supported vicious dictators and decades of terrible bloodshed and civil wars. We see a clip of JFK himself condemn the U.S. support of the Cuban dictator Batista, who was finally overthrow by Fidel Castro and his rebel compatriots, the Cuban Revolution that Kennedy understood and sympathized with.

All this just leading up to Kennedy’s presidency, which will be covered in the next film.

Watching this riveting documentary, one cannot but be deeply impressed with a side of John Kennedy few know – his hatred of oppression, colonialism, imperialism, war, and his love of freedom for all people. One comes away from the film knowing full well why the CIA had branded him an arch-enemy even before he took office, and then when in office he rattled their cage so much more in the cause of peace.

And one is left asking: why then has this film (and its predecessor about the right-wing witch hunt and crackdown on dissent in the 1950s) not been released to the public at a time when nothing could be more timely?

It is a very strange kind of executive action, considering the brilliance and importance of these films for today – this very moment in history.FacebookTwitteRedditEmail

Edward Curtin writes and his work appears widely. He is the author of Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies. Read other articles by Edward, or visit Edward's website.

 

Why Trump? It Was About Saying “Fuck You” to the Establishment

by Gary Olson / November 14th, 2024

I have no blindingly insightful analysis to offer about Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party and the establishment portion of the Republican Party but here’s my tentative take: The presidential election wasn’t a vote for fascism or even a vote for Trump. My sense is that a sizable number of voters were saying “I don’t like Trump and I know my life won’t be better under him — but I’m voting for him or not voting at all.”

White folks in rural Iowa, Black voters in Detroit and Puerto Ricans in nearly Allentown found an opportunity to, in the words of Professor Keeanga-Yamantta Taylor, to “give the finger, to thumb your nose at the status quo…” Even NYTimes David Brooks surprised me with his op-ed “Voters to Elite: Do You See Me Now?” And in a PBS interview, Brooks acknowledged that race and gender had receded in salience as class was on the rise.

It’s hard to say what part foreign policy played in the election but a pollster cited by Gabriel Winant in Dissent, found that younger voters believe that America is “a dying empire led by bad people.” We do know that if Harris had been elected we’d simply have a female face fronting the US role in genocide. This would not be unlike the female Golda “Palestinians Are Cockroaches” Meir leading the colonial setter state of Israel. And Harris would have continued the conflict in Ukraine, the U.S. proxy war provoked against Russia that could have been avoided. As of mid-September 2024, it’s estimated the one million people have have been killed or wounded in this war. This affirms what Mike Parenti once argued that what matters is not what’s between the loins but between the ears.

To be sure, the vote was not transactional but it was evidence that the poor and working class have simply stopped believing the mainstream media lies and have only contempt for politicians who hector and patronize them, calling them “deployables” and “garbage.” This disdain extends to the institutions of government that have lost their legitimacy. For Blacks, it includes the Black misleadership class like the condescending Obamas and the sell-outs in Congress like Clyburn and Jeffries who “go along to get along.” In Philadelphia, where over 50 percent of Black people are living in poverty, the Black mayor confidently predicted that 680,000 votes would be cast for Kamala Harris. She received 547,000.

Nationwide, some half of those of eligible voting age abstained from the process. Here I think that the astute political analyst Garland Nixon is on to something when he suggests that pollsters not only include “likely” voters but also “unlikely” ones. I’d wager that we’d find tens of millions of people who’ve given up on politics because they know it has nothing to offer them. I mention this because these data would not only honestly flesh out the national narrative but highlight the grievances of a segment of the population that could potentially alter the country’s future.

Those pulling the puppet strings of our duopoly fear rule by the people and because their first allegiance is to maintaining the capitalist system — the ultimate cause of our crisis — they have no answers, only more misdirection. After the tone-deaf, reality-denying Democrats finish their ritualistic circular firing squad, the DNC will begin looking to 2028. Perhaps this time they’ll settle on a Gavin Newsom or a Josh Shapiro. We can hope so because that will prefigure the final death knell of the Democratic Party.

We are entering an immensely dangerous period with the moral monsters of late-stage capitalism thrashing about in our midst. But this is also a time of great opportunity to begin creating a mass working class party. We can’t squander the chance

Gary Olson is Professor Emeritus at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA. Contact: garylolson416@gmail.com. Per usual, thanks to Kathleen Kelly, my in-house ed. Read other articles by Gary.

 

It’s Revolution or Death

Part One: Short Term Investments

by subMedia / November 14th, 2024

Just in time for the COP29 summit, where a group of self-congratulatory world leaders will meet in Baku, Azerbaijan for photo-ops, catered meals, and of course discussion of climate goals that they don’t intend to meet, subMedia, in collaboration with Peter Gelderloos, is pleased to release part one of a three part series: It’s Revolution or Death.

The first installment of the series takes a look at the push for green capitalism, and questions the common-sense assumptions of its cheerleaders. Bolstered by unwavering, uncritical support from NGO’s, energy corporations portray themselves as cutting edge innovators in green energy technology while hedging their bets and maintaining diversified portfolios – packed with fossil fuel investments.

The coming two installments will discuss Indigenous and anarchist struggles for land and autonomy and how local communities can get organized to build resiliency in the face of worsening climate catastrophe.

The effects of runaway climate change are already here. If the past 50 years of gas-lighting have made one thing abundantly clear, it’s that the politicians and entrepreneurs leading the charge for green energy will never prioritize the interests of life on earth in their pursuit of profits. So what are we going to do about it?

For more of Peter Gelderloos’ work check out They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us and The Solutions are Already Here. Both from Pluto Books.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

SubMedia is directed and produced by Frank Lopez. Read other articles by subMedia, or visit subMedia's website.

Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars at auction with help from Sandy Hook families


FILE - Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks to the media after arriving at the federal courthouse for a hearing in front of a bankruptcy judge, Friday, June 14, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

BY DAVE COLLINS
 November 14, 2024

The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.

“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers.

The Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platform’s website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive. The sale price was not immediately disclosed. The Onion said its “exclusive launch advertiser” will be the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety.

“Everytown will continue to raise awareness on InfoWars’ channels about gun violence prevention and present actual solutions to our nation’s gun violence crisis, including bipartisan, common-sense measures and public safety initiatives backed by Everytown,” The Onion said in a statement Thursday.
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Jones confirmed The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars in a social media video Thursday and said he planned to file legal challenges to stop it.

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“Last broadcast now live from Infowars studios. They are in the building. Are ordering shutdown without court approval,” Jones said on the social platform X.

Jones was broadcasting live from the Infowars studio Thursday morning and appeared distraught, putting his head in his hand at his desk.

Sealed bids for the private auction were opened Wednesday. Both supporters and detractors of Jones had expressed interest in buying Infowars. The other bidders have not been disclosed.

The Onion, a satirical site that manages to persuade people to believe the absurd, bills itself as “the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events” and says it has 4.3 trillion daily readers.

Jones has been saying on his show that if his detractors bought Infowars, he would move his daily broadcasts and product sales to a new studio, websites and social media accounts that he has already set up. He also said that if his supporters won the bidding, he could stay on the Infowars platforms.

Relatives of many of the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting Jones and his company for defamation and emotional distress for repeatedly saying on his show that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control. Parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ conspiracies and threats by his followers.

The lawsuits were filed in Connecticut and Texas. Lawyers for the families in the Connecticut lawsuit said they worked with The Onion to try to acquire Infowars.

South African government says it won’t help thousands of illegal miners inside a closed mine

BY MOGOMOTSI MAGOME
November 14, 2024

An aerial view of a mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov.13, 2024. (AP Photo)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s government says it will not help an estimated 4,000 illegal miners inside a closed mine in the country’s North West province who have been denied access to basic supplies as part of an official strategy against illegal mining.

The miners in the mineshaft in Stilfontein are believed to be suffering from a lack of food, water and other basic necessities after police closed off the entrances used to transport their supplies underground.

It is part of the police’s Vala Umgodi, or Close the Hole, operation, which includes cutting off miners’ supplies to force them to return to the surface and be arrested.

North West police spokesperson Sabata Mokgwabone said information received from those who recently helped bring three miners to the surface indicated that as many as 4,000 miners may be underground. Police have not provided an official estimate.

In the past few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in North West province, with many reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.

Police continue on Thursday to guard areas around the mine to catch all those appearing from underground.



Police say 10 people are dead and an unknown number are missing after a mine collapse in Zambia

8 miners are dead and 1 is missing after a mine collapse in Zambia

Cabinet Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners because they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped. We didn’t send them there,” Ntshavheni said.

Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.

The illegal miners are often from neighboring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.


Their presence in closed mines have also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.

Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.

Rescue workers, left, remove a body from a reformed mineshaft where illegal miners are trapped inside a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov.14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


Rescue workers, bottom left, remove a body from a reformed mineshaft where illegal miners are trapped inside a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov.14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov.14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Volunteer rescue workers and community members leave a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Police patrol at a mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov.13, 2024. (AP Photo)

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where an estimated 4000 illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Wednesday, Nov.13, 2024. (AP Photo)

Relatives of miners and community members wait at a mine shaft where illegal miners are trapped in a disused mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)