Strategy and Tactics for the Burgeoning Resistance

by Ted Glick / February 11th, 2025

The wide mix of acts of resistance over the past week have made it clear that there is and will be widespread resistance to the Trump/MAGA regressive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and pro-billionaire plans, There have been actions in the streets in DC and all over the country. Congressional Democrats are speaking up, filibustering and organizing town meetings. Numerous creative social media postings have helped to keep up people’s morale. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC five nights a week is playing an important role as have other TV/podcast/written reports and commentaries. And there have been a number of federal court filings, a few of which have already led to positive, initial judicial decisions.

Here are my thoughts on an overall strategy and the tactics we should be prioritizing as we keep building the mass US resistance movement which has burst into public view during the first week of February.

Strategy: On a national level we are on the defensive; that has to be our starting point. We can win some victories over the next two years, even some big ones, at local and state levels, but it’s unrealistic to expect we can make major advances at the federal level given Trump/MAGA/billionaire dominance of the executive and congressional branches of government and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Our overall strategy must be one of making as many advances as we can on local and state levels while preventing as much damage as possible to the primary MAGA targets: US democracy, human and civil rights, including internationally, organized labor and programs that benefit low- and moderate-income working people, and the natural environment on which all life depends.

Tactics: I see five areas where we as a movement of movements need to be focused during these difficult years: street heat–local/state/federal government—courts—media and publicity—outreach.

Street heat: This is essential. Visibility is needed to strengthen morale and attract others to our resistance movement. Well-organized and/or big demonstrations can also have an impact on elected officials, judges and masses of people, including some who voted for Trump. Some people will be challenged, appreciative or moved to consider the issue(s) being addressed because of street heat and demonstrative actions.

Local/state/federal government: I’m very close to people who are big on calling or emailing elected officials at all levels of government to urge them to do the right thing. Honestly, this isn’t the form of action that I’m really into. However, the Associated Press reported a few days ago that there have been so many calls to Congress that phone systems in individual offices are overwhelmed. WE NEED TO KEEP THIS UP. Just as mass demos/street heat have an impact, there are numerous examples over the years of massive calls to Congress preventing or advancing legislation and motivating Senators and House members to be more outspoken about the immediate issue. This pressure is undoubtedly primarily responsible for Senate and House Democrats stepping it up both in word and action (filibuster, organizing town meetings) this past week.

I’ve put on my calendar for the month of February making at least three calls each day to my Senators and House rep, practicing what I’m preaching.

Courts: Without a judicial system which is charged with upholding the US Constitution (which includes the Bill of Rights and amendments prohibiting slavery, etc.), our chances for winning victories on the way to ultimately isolating and overcoming the MAGA’s would be much less. And that’s still true with the 6-3 dominance of conservatives, not all of them MAGA conservatives, however, on the Supreme Court.

Court cases usually take time, often a lot of it. When you are out of power and on the defensive legislatively and dealing with executive orders, this is helpful. Federal district court and court of appeals rulings are often good ones on many issues. These decisions can have political impacts, strengthen support for the positions our progressive movements are taking. And when the legal and extra-legal repression comes down from the Trumpists and MAGA, as it inevitably will, the courts are critical.

Media and publicity: Elon Musk may have his X, Fox News is what it is, and there are many other ways that the ultra-rightists can connect with each other and try to confuse masses of people about what is true and false, but there’s no question that we have our own ways to communicate and spread the truth. And there are non-electronic ways to communicate, like by mass in-person leafletting, draping banners over major highways or wheat-pasting posters, or doing multi-day or multi-week walks along the side of well-traveled roads and through towns and cities. Groups can organize community teach-ins and public meetings in churches, civic centers, universities, etc. Where there is a will to get out the word, there are definitely ways.

Outreach:  Finally, it is not enough for us to do all of the above with only those who are already critical of Trump (half or a little more of the country, likely to grow as the MAGA policies do their damage). We need to do outreach to and with these many tens of millions, for sure, but we also need to look for opportunities or make specific organizing plans to interact with Trump voters, including in rural areas, and voters who didn’t vote because they’re turned off to both parties. I know from personal experience doing canvassing to defeat Trump last fall in eastern Pennsylvania that many of these folks have strong feelings, for example, about the dominance of the US economy by billionaires and the growing class divide. Another example is the opposition among many conservative landowners to oil, gas and CO2 pipeline companies being allowed by governments to use eminent domain to take their land. And there are other examples.

White male progressives have a particular responsibility to look for ways to have these discussions and interactions. Serious anti-racist/sexist/heterosexist practice must include a willingness/commitment to do this work. In my Burglar for Peace book I wrote about it this way: “It is critical that whites organizing whites take up the economic, health care, education or other issues impacting predominantly white communities, to show that they are concerned about all forms of inequality and want a just society for everyone. A good organizer knows that you need to start with people where they are, make connections on the basis of issues, experiences or other things held in common. As those connections are made, as people get to know and respect the organizer, they are more willing to listen and think about constructive criticism from her/him or ideas other than those they are ordinarily exposed to.” (p. 192)

Our situation is in no way hopeless. Trump is being called out publicly, like in a Wall Street Journal editorial last week, as “dumb,” which he is. His Canada and Mexico tariff proposals were pulled back one day after he made them, not exactly a way of leading that inspires confidence among followers. His insane proposal standing next to Netanyahu to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians was met with open disbelief by numerous Republican Senators. He will continue to say and do things like this for as long as he is President, and it will probably get worse as his advanced age combined with his other mental problems weaken his “governing” facilities going forward.

The independent and progressive movement of movements can give the leadership needed to win this battle. Si, se puede!
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Ted Glick works with Beyond Extreme Energy and is president of 350NJ-Rockland. Past writings and other information, including about Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, two books published by him in 2020 and 2021, can be found at https://tedglick.com. He can be followed on Twitter at twitter.com/jtglick. Read other articles by Ted.

Trump-Musk Coup Leads to Resistance in the Courts and in the Streets

Monday 10 February 2025, by Dan La Botz


President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have been on a rampage, closing government agencies, firing thousands of workers, and pressuring two million federal employees to resign, actions that threaten the well-being of millions of Americans—children, the elderly, the disabled, federal workers, and others who depend on the federal government. Their actions constitute an on-going technocratic coup from the top and from within the government itself, what in Latin America is called an auto-golpe (a coup against one’s own government) as Musk’s techies, mostly young men employed by him, effectively take control by commandeering the state’s computer systems. Trump’s assault has left the country in a state of shock and confusion.

At the same time though, only a month into his second term as president, Trump has galvanized a resistance in both the courts and on the streets. The resistance, still small and inchoate, is beginning to take on the characteristic of a mass popular movement.

Lawsuits brought in the federal courts have at least temporarily stopped Trump from carrying out all of his executive orders. A federal court stopped Trump from freezing billions of dollars in grants and loans. Another stopped Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing Treasury Department records. Yet another court has blocked Trump’s attempt to force federal employees into retirement. A court has also stopped him from ending birth-right citizenship. In some of these cases, Trump and Musk have failed to abide by court orders. Still the number of suits grows as students sue to stop DOGE’s takeover of the Education Department and unions bring suits to protect federal workers’ jobs.

Meanwhile tens of millions of Americans, 1,500 per minute, have been calling their representatives in Congress, completely overwhelming the congressional telephone system. They call to complain that their government jobs are threatened, that they have not received payments to their NGO, their company, or themselves, or calls simply to decry what Trump and Musk are doing to the country.

Out in the streets, tens of thousands protest Trump’s executive orders in cities across the country. Organized by a pop-up movement called 50501, meaning 50 demonstrations in 50 cities on one day. The protests, many of them at the state capitals, took place in at least 40 states, both Republican and Democratic, varying in size from a handful, to hundreds, to thousands and taking up a wide variety of particular issues, but also the big issue of attempt to impose an authoritarian oligarchic government that ignores democratic institutions. In one of the demonstrations a woman carried a sign that read, “This is a coup: Clash, Don’t Collaborate!”

In the largest demonstrations so far, thousands marched in Los Angeles to protest Trump’s deporting of immigrants, blocking streets and briefly paralyzing a major freeway. In New York City, thousands, among them a number of non-binary children and adolescents, gathered in Union Square to protest Trump’s attack on gender affirming care for trans children.

Some of these protests have been led by Democratic Party politicians, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren who headed up a group of legislators, federal employees, and common citizens demonstrating at the Treasury Department. Democratic lawmakers and government employees also led another in Washington, D.C. to protest the closing of USAID, the American aid and development agency.

Protestors of all ages, all genders, and all ethnicities carry signs reading: “Stop Musk.” “Stop Project 2025” (the Republican program) “Stop the Coup” and “Stop Fascism.” Others carried signs that said, “Christians, Love Thy Neighbor.” In some demonstrations protestors flew the American flag, the LGBTQ rainbow flag, the Mexican flag and the Palestinian flag. Will this become a movement of millions?

P.S.


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Dan La Botz

Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.


International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

 

“Quantitative Easing with Chinese Characteristics”

How to Fund an Economic Miracle

by Ellen Brown / February 12th, 2025

China went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in a mere four decades. Currently featured in the news is DeepSeek, the free, open source A.I. built by innovative Chinese entrepreneurs which just pricked the massive U.S. A.I. bubble.

Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, including 26,000 miles of high speed rail, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, 100,000 miles of expressway, the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation train, the world’s largest urban metro network, seven of the world’s 10 busiest ports, and solar and wind power generation accounting for over 35% of global renewable energy capacity. Topping the list is the Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure development program involving 140 countries, through which China has invested in ports, railways, highways and energy projects worldwide.

All that takes money. Where did it come from? Numerous funding sources are named in mainstream references, but the one explored here is a rarely mentioned form of quantitative easing — the central bank just “prints the money.” (That’s the term often used, though printing presses aren’t necessarily involved.)

From 1996 to 2024, the Chinese national money supply increased by a factor of more than 53 or 5300% — from 5.84 billion to 314 billion Chinese yuan (CNY) [see charts below]. How did that happen? Exporters brought the foreign currencies (largely U.S. dollars) they received for their goods to their local banks and traded them for the CNY needed to pay their workers and suppliers. The central bank —the Public Bank of China or PBOC — printed CNY and traded them for the foreign currencies, then kept the foreign currencies as reserves, effectively doubling the national export revenue.

Investopedia confirms that policy, stating:

One major task of the Chinese central bank, the PBOC, is to absorb the large inflows of foreign capital from China’s trade surplus. The PBOC purchases foreign currency from exporters and issues that currency in local yuan. The PBOC is free to publish any amount of local currency and have it exchanged for forex. … The PBOC can print yuan as needed …. [Emphasis added.]

Interestingly, that huge 5300% explosion in local CNY did not trigger runaway inflation. In fact China’s consumer inflation rate, which was as high as 24% in 1994, leveled out after that and averaged 2.5% per year from 1996 to 2023.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/inflation-rate-cpi?form=MG0AV3

How was that achieved? As in the U.S., the central bank engages in “open market operations” (selling federal securities into the open market, withdrawing excess cash). It also imposes price controls on certain essential commodities. According to a report by Nasdaq, China has implemented price controls on iron ore, copper, corn, grain, meat, eggs and vegetables as part of its 14th five-year plan (2021-2025), to ensure food security for the population. Particularly important in maintaining price stability, however, is that the money has gone into manufacturing, production and infrastructure. GDP (supply) has gone up with demand (money), keeping prices stable. [See charts below.]

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

The U.S., too, has serious funding problems today, and we have engaged in quantitative easing (QE) before. Could our central bank also issue the dollars we need without triggering the dreaded scourge of hyperinflation? This article will argue that we can. But first some Chinese economic history.

From Rags to Riches in Four Decades

China’s rise from poverty began in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping introduced market-oriented reforms. Farmers were allowed to sell their surplus produce in the market, doors were opened to foreign investors and private businesses and foreign companies were encouraged to grow. By the 1990s, China had become a major exporter of low-cost manufactured goods. Key factors included cheap labor, infrastructure development and World Trade Organization membership in 2001.

Chinese labor is cheaper than in the U.S. largely because the government funds or subsidizes social needs, reducing the operational costs of Chinese companies and improving workforce productivity. The government invests heavily in public transportation infrastructure, including metros, buses and high-speed rail, making them affordable for workers and reducing the costs of getting manufacturers’ products to market.

The government funds education and vocational training programs, ensuring a steady supply of skilled workers, with government-funded technical schools and universities producing millions of graduates annually. Affordable housing programs are provided for workers, particularly in urban areas.

China’s public health care system, while not free, is heavily subsidized by the government. And a public pension system reduces the need for companies to offer private retirement plans. The Chinese government also provides direct subsidies and incentives to key industries, such as technology, renewable energy and manufacturing.

After it joined the WTO, China’s exports grew rapidly, generating large trade surpluses and an influx of foreign currency, allowing the country to accumulate massive foreign exchange reserves. In 2010, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest exporter. In the following decade, it shifted its focus to high-tech industries, and in 2013 the Belt and Road Initiative was launched. The government directed funds through state-owned banks and enterprises, with an emphasis on infrastructure and industrial development.

Funding Exponential Growth

In the early stages of reform, foreign investment was a key source of capital. Export earnings then generated significant foreign exchange reserves. China’s high savings rate provided a pool of liquidity for investment, and domestic consumption grew. Decentralizing the banking system was also key. According to a lecture by U.K. Prof. Richard Werner:

Deng Xiaoping started with one mono bank. He realized quickly, scrap that; we’re going to have a lot of banks. He created small banks, community banks, savings banks, credit unions, regional banks, provincial banks. Now China has 4,500 banks. That’s the secret to success. That’s what we have to aim for. Then we can have prosperity for the whole world. Developing countries don’t need foreign money. They just need community banks supporting [local business] to have the money to get the latest technology.

China managed to avoid the worst impacts of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It did not devalue its currency; it maintained strict control over capital flows and the PBOC acted as a lender of last resort, providing liquidity to state-controlled banks when needed.

In the 1990s, however, its four major state banks did suffer massive losses, with non-performing loans totaling more than 20% of their assets. Technically, the banks were bankrupt, but the government did not let them go bust. The non-performing loans were moved on to the balance sheets of four major asset management companies (“bad banks”), and the PBOC injected new capital into the “good banks.”

In a January 2024 article titled “The Chinese Economy Is Due a Round of Quantitative Easing,” Prof. Li Wei, Director of the China Economy and Sustainable Development Center, wrote of this policy, “The central bank directly intervened in the economy by creating money. Seen this way, unconventional financing is nothing less than Chinese-style quantitative easing.”

In an August 2024 article titled “China’s 100-billion-yuan Question: Does Rare Government Bond Purchase Alter Policy Course?,” Sylvia Ma wrote of China’s forays into QE:

Purchasing government bonds in the secondary market is allowed under Chinese law, but the central bank is forbidden to subscribe to bonds directly issued by the finance ministry. [Note that this is also true of the U.S. Fed.] Such purchases from traders were tried on a small scale 20 years ago.

However, the monetary authority resorted more to printing money equivalent to soaring foreign exchange reserves from 2001, as the country saw a robust increase in trade surplus following its accession to the World Trade Organization. [Emphasis added.]

This is the covert policy of printing CNY and trading this national currency for the foreign currencies (mostly U.S. dollars) received from exporters.

What does the PBOC do with the dollars? It holds a significant portion as foreign exchange reserves, to stabilize the CNY and manage currency fluctuations; it invests in U.S. Treasury bonds and other dollar-denominated assets to earn a return; and it uses U.S. dollars to facilitate international trade deals, many of which are conducted in dollars.

The PBOC also periodically injects capital into the three “policy banks” through which the federal government implements its five-year plans. These are China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Agricultural Development Bank of China, which provide loans and financing for domestic infrastructure and services as well as for the Belt and Road Initiative. A January 2024 Bloomberg article titled “China Injects $50 Billion Into Policy Banks in Financing Push” notes that the policy banks “are driven by government priorities more than profits,” and that some economists have called the PBOC funding injections “helicopter money” or “Chinese-style quantitative easing.”

Prof. Li argues that with the current insolvency of major real estate developers and the rise in local government debt, China should engage in this overt form of QE today. Other commentators agree, and the government appears to be moving in that direction. Prof. Li writes:

As long as it does not trigger inflation, quantitative easing can quickly and without limit generate sufficient liquidity to resolve debt issues and pump confidence into the market.…

Quantitative easing should be the core of China’s macroeconomic policy, with more than 80% of funds coming from QE…

As the central bank is the only institution in China with the power to create money, it has the ability to create a stable environment for economic growth. [Emphasis added.]

Eighty-percent funding just from money-printing sounds pretty radical, but China’s macroeconomic policy is determined by five-year plans designed to serve the public and the economy, and the policy banks funding the plans are publicly-owned. That means profits are returned to the public purse, avoiding the sort of private financialization and speculative exploitation resulting when the U.S. Fed engaged in QE to bail out the banks after the 2007-08 banking crisis.

The U.S. Too Could Use Another Round of QE — and Some Public Policy Banks

There is no law against governments or their central banks just printing the national currency without borrowing it first. The U.S. Federal Reserve has done it, Abraham Lincoln’s Treasury did it, and it is probably the only way out of our current federal debt crisis. As Prof. Li observes, we can do it “without limit” so long as it does not trigger inflation.

Financial commentator Alex Krainer observes that the total U.S. debt, public and private, comes to more than $101 trillion (citing the St. Louis Fed’s graph titled “All Sectors; Debt Securities and Loans”). But the monetary base — the reserves available to pay that debt — is only $5.6 trillion. That means the debt is 18 times the monetary base. The U.S. economy holds far fewer dollars than we need for economic stability.

The dollar shortfall can be filled debt- and interest-free by the U.S. Treasury, just by printing dollars as Lincoln’s Treasury did (or by issuing them digitally). It can also be done by the Fed, which “monetizes” federal securities by buying them with reserves it issues on its books, then returns the interest to the Treasury and after deducting its costs. If the newly-issued dollars are used for productive purposes, supply will go up with demand, and prices should remain stable.

Note that even social services, which don’t directly produce revenue, can be considered “productive” in that they support the “human capital” necessary for production. Workers need to be healthy and well educated in order to build competitively and well, and the government needs to supplement the social costs borne by companies if they are to compete with China’s subsidized businesses.

Parameters would obviously need to be imposed to circumscribe Congress’s ability to spend “without limit,” backed by a compliant Treasury or Fed. An immediate need is for full transparency in budgeted expenditures. The Pentagon, for example, spends nearly $1 trillion of our taxpayer money annually and has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.

We Sorely Need an Infrastructure Bank

The U.S. is one of the few developed countries without an infrastructure bank. Ironically, it was Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary, who developed the model. Winning freedom from Great Britain left the young country with what appeared to be an unpayable debt. Hamilton traded the debt and a percentage of gold for non-voting shares in the First U.S. Bank, paying a 6% dividend. This capital was then leveraged many times over into credit to be used specifically for infrastructure and development. Based on the same model, the Second U.S. Bank funded the vibrant economic activity of the first decades of the United States.

In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s government pulled the country out of the Great Depression by repurposing a federal agency called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) into a lending machine for development on the Hamiltonian model. Formed under the Hoover administration, the RFC was not actually an infrastructure bank but it acted like one. Like China Development Bank, it obtained its liquidity by issuing bonds.

The primary purchaser of RFC bonds was the federal government, driving up the federal debt; but the debt to GDP ratio evened out over the next four decades, due to the dramatic increase in productivity generated by the RFC’s funding of the New Deal and World War II. That was also true of the federal debt after the American Revolution and the Civil War.

One chart that tells the story of US debt from 1790 to 2011

A pending bill for an infrastructure bank on the Hamiltonian model is HR 4052, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023, which ended 2024 with 48 sponsors and was endorsed by dozens of legislatures, local councils, and organizations. Like the First and Second U.S. Banks, it is intended to be a depository bank capitalized with existing federal securities held by the private sector, for which the bank will pay an additional 2% over the interest paid by the government. The bank will then leverage this capital into roughly 10 times its value in loans, as all depository banks are entitled to do. The bill proposes to fund $5 trillion in infrastructure capitalized over a 10-year period with $500 billion in federal securities exchanged for preferred (non-voting) stock in the bank. Like the RFC, the bank will be a source of off-budget financing, adding no new costs to the federal budget. (For more information, see https://www.nibcoalition.com/.)

Growing Our Way Out of Debt

Rather than trying to kneecap our competitors with sanctions and tariffs, we can grow our way to prosperity by turning on the engines of production. Far more can be achieved through cooperation than through economic warfare. DeepSeek set the tone with its free, open source model. Rather than a heavily guarded secret, its source code is freely available to be shared and built upon by entrepreneurs around the world.

We can pull off our own economic miracle, funded with newly issued dollars backed by the full faith and credit of the government and the people. Contrary to popular belief, “full faith and credit” is valuable collateral, something even Bitcoin and gold do not have. It means the currency will be accepted everywhere – not just at the bank or the coin dealer’s but at the grocer’s and the gas station. If the government directs newly created dollars into new goods and services, supply will grow along with demand and the currency should retain its value. The government can print, pay for workers and materials, and produce its way into an economic renaissance.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Ellen Brown is an attorney, co-chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. Read other articles by Ellen.

 

Exposing Albion’s Rot: Why I Write About Political Corruption

by Barry Harden / February 12th, 2025

Has the world lost its last thread of sanity? Mass media drowns us daily with never-ending cycles of calamities, from cataclysmic global events to political quagmires. These scandals are nothing new, some more egregious than others, but all spark outrage across the political spectrum. It’s tempting to dust off that old protest sign. Sadly, it’s still relevant.

Writers like me craft sociopolitical fiction to explore and process society’s critical issues with the hope that change will follow. But hope implies a futuristic expectation. What can I as a writer do to bring these injustices to light and engage readers who might not seek such information in nonfiction formats?

My novels are rooted in a deep commitment to address issues which I’m passionate about: social inequality, the preservation of nature and wildlife, and society’s power to address the challenges of political corruption. They aim to provoke thought and discussion, to question past indiscretions which continue to plague us. Sidney J. Harris once observed, “History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” [In Clearing the Ground by Sydney J. Harris (page 24).}

Environmental and Political Corruption and Broken Promises

My latest political thrillers, Ada & Eddie and Amanita Virosa: The Destroying Angel, are byproducts of my extreme dissatisfaction with the growing inequality between the rich and poor in the UK, fuelled by greed and lust for power on the one hand and by the government’s indifference and corruption on the other. Disturbing real-life scenarios, like the cases below, provided the backdrop for my hard-hitting political thrillers.

• In 2011, a proposed mine in the North York Moors promised wealth but delivered disaster. The ambitious project, hailed for its potential to generate billions and create jobs, today stands idle due to lack of funding. Stakeholders, many of them locals, lost their investments; 80% of the 1,400 workers face losing their jobs, and the natural habitat of endangered moorland birds, among other wildlife, is woefully marred. Barry Dodd, chair of York, North Yorks, and East Riding Local Enterprise Partnership said the project was a key part of the government’s plan to build a “northern powerhouse.”

• Undeterred by the tenacious objections of conservation advocates, the hunting of wildlife continues in the UK by circumventing or illicitly exploiting “exemptions” to the Hunting Act 2004. These loopholes essentially prevent a ban on certain activities which Parliament did not intend to prohibit in the first place. Lax investigation of violators and enforcement of these laws are major hindrances in holding illegal hunters accountable.

• Allegations of child sexual abuse had been circling Westminster since the late fifties, a simmering scandal which boiled over in the 70s and 80s. Multiple dossiers on paedophiles allegedly associated with the British government, including MPs, House of Lords members, intelligence agents, as well as children’s homes carers, teachers, a prominent child psychiatrist were identified. During this time, several missing young boys were found murdered in the Greater London area. Cover-ups by government officials and police occurred on an unprecedented scale but were investigated in a cursory manner or not at all until years later when the perpetrators were deceased and files mysteriously disappeared. The Paedophile Information Exchange with its high-profile membership operated openly between 1974-84. An investigation into government funds being secretly siphoned to the group eventually led to a dead end. A thorough investigation by the Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse Report in 2022 concluded that “There is ample evidence that individual perpetrators of child sexual abuse have been linked to Westminster. However, there was no evidence of any kind of organised Westminster paedophile network.”

• The systematic genocide of the Romani and Sinti people by Nazi Germany took place between 1939 and 1945. The Nazis viewed them as “asocial” and racial “inferiors,” much as they did the Jewish population. Ripped from their homelands, an estimated 23,000 Roma were sent to the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where they were subjected to torture, gruesome medical experimentation, and death. During the Bosnia War (1992-95), 30,000 Romani people were among those targeted for eviction by Serb nationalists in order to create territories with a Serb majority. Their removal methods included “killing of civilians, rape, torture, destruction of civilian, public, and cultural property, looting and pillaging, and the forcible relocation of civilian populations.” Of particular interest was the role of Romani women as fighters, like Fadila Odžaković Žuta, a member of the 1st Motorized Brigade who was tragically killed at the age of 34. She served as my inspiration for the character of Amanita Virosa.

Crafting Political Thrillers

In writing fact-based political thrillers, my first step is finding a provocative issue which compels me to take a stand. Once I identify particular aspects of society I’m interested in examining, I then clarify my unique perspective on those questions. Meticulous research is done to ensure the details are factual and coherent. Finally, I ask what I want my readers to take away from this story.

Political fiction offers escape, of course, but stories based on true events help us to make sense of the chaos and draw lessons from it, to reaffirm what we stand for. The best stories are more than suspenseful plots. Realistic themes drive them. Empathetic characters and their struggles and values draw us in, and we become their champions when we see some aspects of ourselves in them.

Ordinary Characters who Change the World

Fictional narratives rooted in real events have a unique power to engage readers emotionally, creating a connection to the characters who are enmeshed in these situations that is both personal and profound.

We are often drawn to inspirational movement figures, like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela. But stories of ordinary citizens fighting for change offer a different perspective. We get to walk beside them, experiencing their struggles, emotional journeys, and perils of participating in a social or political movement.

Many of my protagonists are heroic women with strong supporting characters that cut across all ages. In Ada & Eddie, both main characters are middle-aged while some of their cohorts are spirited seniors who sprinkle humour into the plot. Eddie is a simple, homeless man by choice who is tired of the emotional abuse inflicted by humanity throughout his life. He immerses himself in the beauty of the woodlands, correlating his early struggle for survival with that of nature’s wildlife. Ada, a widower and former activist against unjust government policies, becomes Eddie’s source of spiritual strength.

Together they embark on a mission to discover the identity of a brutally murdered young woman he finds in the North York Moors. A connection is made to a plot of land rich in rare minerals, which Eddie stands to inherit from his deceased brother. An unscrupulous, high-level government official also has his eye on the property. Upon learning of the heir, the minister unleashes his ruthless minions on Ada, Eddie, and their confidants. Radicalized, the group sets off on a perilous journey to expose the politician’s illicit activities and the devastating impact they have on the environment and vulnerable communities. The story climaxes with the enemy’s unthinkable retaliation, a response that serves as a grim indictment of human potential for cruelty.

In Amanita Virosa: The Destroying Angel, 1980s London is crumbling under the weight of political corruption while the have-nots are further victimized by unfettered rogue gangs. Children are lured into the dark, lurid chambers of Whitehall, some never to be seen again. Amanita, a courageous Roma fighter who fled the horrors of war-torn Bosnia, sought refuge in the heart of North London only to discover that the spectre of perversion and injustice haunts her adopted home. Forming an alliance with Everard, a young firebrand, and Doris, a feisty pensioner, the group embarks on a daring mission to sever the insidious grip of Whitehall’s exploitation and the violence perpetrated on the innocent.

Loosely based on actual sociopolitical events in eighties London, Amanita Virosa is a warning about the perils of government overreach and the indomitable power of the individual to resist oppression.

Connecting with Readers

Novels have the power to inspire change and serve as a call to action. They can inspire readers to demand accountability, participate in civic life, and push for reforms. With a critical mass of citizens sufficiently alarmed about the world’s trajectory, creative writers are in an ideal position to expose and mitigate change.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Barry Harden is a political thriller author. His upcoming releases are Ada & Eddie and Amanita Virosa: The Destroying Angel. Read other articles by Barry.

 AU CONTRAIRE 

False Savior: Jimmy Carter

by Michael K. Smith / February 13th, 2025

A pious Sunday school teacher confessing to lust in his heart but swearing never to lie, he came to Washington to reestablish public faith in government just when popular disgust at monstrous U.S. crimes in Indochina had reached unprecedented heights. The big business agenda during his term in office (1977-1981) was to roll back the welfare state, break the power of unions, fan the flames of the Cold War to increase military spending, engineer tax breaks for wealthy corporate interests, and repeal government regulation of business. While portraying himself as a peanut-farming populist, Carter delivered the goods for Wall Street.

Having run as a Washington “outsider,” he immediately filled his administration with Trilateral Commission members, hoping that a coterie of Rockefeller internationalists could resurrect the confidence of American leaders and enrich business relations between Japan and the United States.

His Secretary of State was Cyrus Vance, a Wall Street lawyer and former planner of the Vietnam slaughter. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown was Lyndon Johnson’s Air Force Secretary and a leading proponent of saturation bombing in Vietnam. Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal was the standard rich corporation president. Attorney General Griffen Bell was a segregationist judge who disclosed that he would request “inactive” status as a member of Atlanta clubs closed to blacks and Jews [Carter himself stated that housing should be segregated]. Energy coordinator James Schlesinger was a proponent of winnable nuclear war. Transportation Secretary Brock Adams was a staunch proponent of Lockheed’s supersonic transport. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was an anti-Soviet fanatic who said in an interview with the New Yorker that it was “egocentric” to worry that a nuclear war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would entail “the end of the human race.” Since it was unlikely that every last human being would perish in such event, Brzezinski recommended that critics of U.S. nuclear policy abstain from narcissistic concern for the mere hundreds of millions of people who would.

In what William Greider, author of Secrets of the Temple (a study of the Federal Reserve Bank), called his most important appointment, Carter named Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Bank. Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s assistant for domestic affairs said that, “Volcker was selected because he was the candidate of Wall Street.” The Wall Street agenda became clear when Volcker contracted the money supply and declared, “the standard of living of the average American has to decline.”

Wealth was funneled upward and wages and production declined. Unemployment and bankruptcy rose, unions shriveled and disappeared, Pentagon spending soared. For the first time ever American white collar families couldn’t save money. With urban housing costs zooming, workers fled to remote suburbs, but the increased commute expenses tended to cancel out cheaper mortgages. Moonlighting and overtime work increased, but added income disappeared in eating out, second commutes, and hired child care. As the cost of necessities outpaced wage gains, only credit cards could fill the widening gap. Hamburger stands and nursing homes proliferated while well-paid manufacturing jobs fled to the Third World. The workforce of the future was said to be a generation of super-efficient robots.

Carter’s populist assurances simply whetted the public appetite for this kind of dismal anticlimax. While making a few listless gestures towards blacks and the poor, he spent the bulk of his energy promoting corporate profits and building up a huge military machine that drained away public wealth in defense of a far-flung network of repressive “friends” of American business.

The heaviest applause line in his Inaugural Address was his promise “to move this year a step towards our ultimate goal – the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth.” But after his beguiling rhetoric faded away, he embarked on a program of building two to three nuclear bombs every day. Although he had promised to cut military spending by $5 to $7 billion, he decided to increase it after just six months in office, and his 5% proposed spending increases in each of his last two years in office were identical to those first proposed by Ronald Reagan. Furthermore, having pledged to reduce foreign arms sales, he ended up raising them to new highs, and after speaking of helping the needy, he proposed cutbacks in summer youth jobs, child nutrition programs, and other popular projects serving important social needs. Similarly, though he had campaigned as a friend of labor, he refused a request to increase the minimum wage and opposed most of organized labor’s legislative agenda while handing out huge subsidies to big business. He made much ado about “human rights,” but returned Haiti’s fleeing boat people to the tender care of “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and when a member of the American delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission spoke of his “profoundest regrets” for the C.I.A.’s role in General Pinochet’s bloodbath in Chile, Carter scolded him, insisting that the C.I.A.’s actions were “not illegal or improper.”

Carter came to Washington proclaiming his desire for a comprehensive Middle East peace, including a solution to the Palestinian question “in all its aspects.” Yet at Camp David he failed to grasp the root of the problem, let alone propose a mature way of dealing with it. He assumed that Palestinians were anonymous refugees whose nationalist aspirations could be safely ignored. He supposed a peace treaty could be signed in the absence of the PLO, world recognized as the Palestinians’ “sole legitimate representative.” He offered no apologies for negotiating an agreement that failed even to mention Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. He did not protest Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s presentation of the Accords before the Israeli Knesset as a “deal,” one much more favorable to Israel than to “the Arabs.” He pretended not to notice that corralling Palestinians into Bantustans was not simply a tactic of war, but constituted Israel’s boasted final product of “peace”! Finally, his much praised Camp David accords were the death warrant for Lebanon, as Israel, its southern border secure with the removal of Egypt from the Arab military alliance, was freed to concentrate undivided attention on a long-planned invasion across its northern border. It was this invasion (June 1982) that convinced Osama bin Laden that only mass murder of Americans could ever change U.S. foreign policy.

Carter was effusive in his praise and blind support of the Shah of Iran, who was deeply unpopular in his country due to policies of super-militarization, forced modernization, and systematic torture. By the time Carter arrived in the White House the Shah’s throne sat atop a veritable powder keg. Iranian cities were hideously unlivable with fifteen percent of the entire country crowded around Teheran in shanty dwellings lacking sewage or other water facilities. The nation’s incalculable oil wealth reached few hands and a restless student generation had no prospects. The country’s bloated bureaucracy was totally corrupt. While Shiite leaders rallied popular support, the Shah’s secret police threw tens of thousands of Iranians into jail, the economy gagged on billions of dollars of Western arms imports (mostly from Washington), and Amnesty International speculated that Iran had achieved the worst human rights record on the planet. Meanwhile, Carter declared that “human rights is the soul of our foreign policy,” though he added the following day that he thought the Shah might not survive in power, a strange expectation if indeed the U.S. stood for human rights around the world.

After the Shah was overthrown, Carter could not conceive of U.S. responsibility for the actions of enraged Iranian students who seized 66 Americans and held them hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, demanding the return of “the criminal Shah.” (He had admitted the Shah to the U.S. for emergency medical treatment for cancer, thus precipitating the “hostage crisis.”) To Carter, Americans were by definition innocent, outside history, and he dismissed Iranian grievances against the U.S. as ancient history, refusing to discuss them. In his distorted mind, Iranians were terrorists by nature, and Iran had always been a potentially terrorist nation, regardless of what they had suffered at U.S. hands. In short, without the Shah, Carter regarded Iran as a land of swarthy and crazed medievalists, what Washington today calls a “rogue state.”

Having “lost” Iran, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, along with military outposts and electronic eavesdropping stations used against the Soviet Union, the Carter administration began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists, not making an issue of their having kidnapped the American ambassador in Kabul that year (1979), which resulted in his death in a rescue attempt. While U.S. officials condemned Islamic militants in Iran as terrorists, they praised them as freedom fighters in Afghanistan, though both groups drew inspiration from the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was, in the eyes of official Washington, the Devil incarnate. In a 1998 interview Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the U.S. had begun giving military assistance to the Islamic fundamentalist moujahedeen in Afghanistan six months before the U.S.S.R. invaded the country, even though he was convinced – as he told Carter – that “this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.” Among the consequences of that policy were a decade-and-a-half of war that claimed the lives of a million Afghans, moujahedeen torture that U.S. government officials called “indescribable horror,” half the Afghan population either dead, crippled, or homeless, and the creation of thousands of Islamic fundamentalist warriors dedicated to unleashing spectacularly violent attacks in countries throughout the world.

The list of disastrous policies can go on. For example, Carter continued the Ford Administration’s policy of backing Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, which killed tens of thousands of Timorese during Carter’s years in office, and roughly a third of the Timorese population overall between 1975 and 1979. In 1977-1978 while Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction in the form of massive bombardment, wiping out of villages and crops, and relocation of populations to concentration camps, the Carter Administration extended the military and diplomatic support necessary to make it all possible. In late 1977 Washington replenished Indonesia’s depleted supplies with a sharp increase in the flow of military equipment (Jakarta used U.S.-supplied OV-10 Broncos, planes designed for counterinsurgency operations) encouraging the ferocious attacks that reduced East Timor to the level of Pol Pot’s Cambodia. In a 1979 interview with the New York Times Father Leoneto Vieira do Rego, a Portuguese priest who spent three years in the mountains of East Timor between 1976 and 1979, said that “the genocide and starvation was the result of the full-scale incendiary bombing . . . I personally witnessed – while running to protected areas, going from tribe to tribe – the great massacre from bombardment and people dying from starvation.” In May 1980 Brian Eads reported for the London Observer that “malnutrition and disease are still more widespread than in ravaged Cambodia.” Relating the comments of an official recently back from a visit to Cambodia, Eads added that “by the criteria of distended bellies, intestinal disease and brachial parameter – the measurement of the upper arm – the East Timorese are in a worse state than the Khmers.” Another stellar achievement of the “Human Rights” administration.

Furthermore, during Carter’s brief reign he ordered production of the neutron bomb (which his administration praised for “only” destroying people while leaving property intact), endorsed “flexible response” and “limited” nuclear war, lobbied for the radar-evading cruise missile, developed a rapid deployment force for instant intervention anywhere, enacted selective service registration in peacetime, and advocated the construction of first-strike MX missiles for use in a nuclear shell game along an elaborate system of underground railroad tracks proposed for the Utah desert. While lecturing the Soviets on human rights, he escalated state terror in El Salvador, crushed democracy in South Korea, gave full support to Indonesia’s near genocide in East Timor, and maintained or increased funding for the Shah, Somoza, Marcos, Brazil’s neo-Nazi Generals, and the dictatorships of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Zaire. He refused to heed Archbishop Romero’s desperate plea to cut off U.S. aid to the blood drenched Salvadoran junta, and Romero was promptly assassinated. Furthermore, he said nothing at all when the London Sunday Times revealed that the torture of Arabs implicated “all of Israel’s security forces” and was so “systematic that it cannot be dismissed as a handful of ‘rogue cops’ exceeding orders.” And though he presented himself as sympathetic to those who had opposed the Vietnam war, he refused to pay reconstruction aid on the grounds that during the devastating U.S. attack on the tiny country, “the destruction was mutual.” (Try arguing that the Nazi invasion of Poland wasn’t a crime because “destruction was mutual.”)

Carter turned domestic policy over to Wall Street, refusing to increase the minimum wage and telling his Cabinet that increasing social spending “is something we just can’t do.” According to Peter Bourne, special assistant to the president in the Carter White House, he “did not see health care as every citizen’s right,” though every other industrial state in the world except apartheid South Africa disagreed with him. He understood that liberals desired it, but, Bourne notes, “he never really accepted it.” Instead, “he preferred to talk movingly of his deep and genuine empathy for those who suffered for lack of health care, as though the depth of his compassion could be a substitute for a major new and expensive government solution for the problem.” In point of fact, money can be saved under a government funded plan, but Carter was uninterested. He insisted on controlling business costs rather than providing universal coverage, neglecting to note that under Medicare – universal insurance for the elderly – administrative costs were a fraction of those charged under private HMOs.

Carter simply could not comprehend the vast unmet social needs that existed (and exist) in the United States. He thought there was a way to maintain a global military presence, balance the budget, and keep business costs low while adequately meeting social welfare needs via reorganizing programs. When his Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Joe Califano informed him that without increased funding many welfare recipients would be worse off after any reorganization than before, Carter erupted: “Are you telling me that there is no way to improve the present welfare system except by spending billions of dollars? In that case, to hell with it!” In response to a comment that his denial of federal funding for poor people’s abortions was unfair, Carter summed up the political philosophy that rendered him hopelessly unprogressive: “Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cannot.”

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Michael Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire." He co-blogs with Frank Scott at www.legalienate.blogspot.com He co-blogs with Frank Scott at www.legalienate.blogspot.com. Read other articles by Michael.