Congressman John Lewis Viciously Beaten as SNCC Leader
A Pivotal Event in the Struggle Against White Supremacy in America
On March 7, 1965, 54 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, John Lewis of SNCC – now a venerable Democratic Congressman – and other Civil Rights leaders led a March from Selma Alabama to the state capitol of Montgomery to protest the horrible system of white supremacy. Although it was a peaceful march based on the philosophy of “passive resistance, the marchers were viciously attacked by violent white racist!
However the violence of the crazed rednecks back fired because the entire episode was captured on film by the Television networks and broadcast around the world. This was a seminal even in the history of the struggle to dismantle the evil oppressive system of racial caste oppression in the US because it exposed the truth about the bogus claim that America is “the home of the brave and land of the free” where “All men are created equal.”
This was no picayune matter, because the US was locked in an intense ideological struggle with the powerful Soviet Union of Russia to recruit the hundreds of millions of people in the Third World nations of Africa, Asia, South America and the islands of the seas. Most of these millions were living in African and Asian countries that were just throwing of the oppressive yoke of European colonialism in the aftermath of World War II, when European world order had collapsed due to the cost in blood and treasure extracted by the second great war in a generation. And the US government’s oppression of it’s on citizen’s of color alienated them from America.
There are studies which show the great anxiety of the US government when US Ambassadors, and other diplomats, were accosted by reporters and citizens around the world. For instance, historian Mary L. Dudziak tells us in her path breaking book Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy: “Within this context, racial discrimination, especially when it was broadcast to international audiences, became problematic to the Cold War effort itself.” Representatives of the American government were barraged with questions about the hypocrisy of US claims to being the bastion of freedom and equality, yet keep millions of their citizens in a state of tyrannical oppression that exceeded ANYTHING the US was self-righteously protesting in the communist world!!!
The US government had no answer for this that was not viewed with ridicule, as the masses of African and Asia increasingly either allied themselves with the Communist camp or adopted a non-aligned position that viewed both sides based on how the supported our struggles. They had no permanent friends or enemies…just permanent interests!
It was this response of the Third world community that served as a major impetus for the US government to act dramatically to eradicate the racial caste system whether by law or or tradition. This march in Alabama 54 years ago was a pivotal event in ending this evil racist system in the United states; 100 years after the end of the Civil War that abolished Afro-American slavery in Alabama and throughout the American south. It also ended the dominance of The Southern Christian Leadership Conferences’ vision of the Southern struggle.
On the next march – which attracted a vast and diverse gathering and the US government was forced to protect them from violent attacks by white racist terrorists because the eyes of the world were focused like lasers on the march – Stokely Carmichael and H. “Rap” Brown of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, introduced “Black Power”as the slogan, for their Black Panther political party in Lowndes County / Selma Alabama, where courageous young college students were mobilizing Afro-American citizens to exercise their right to vote. The introduction of the concept of Black Power and organizing the Black Panther Party qualitatively changed the course of the black liberation movement in the United States.
Watch NBC’s report on the march and hear critical interviews with Dr. King and others who give in-depth analysis of the struggle against racism at the time. This is a priceless, a living archive of the times, whose sense of immediacy is preserved by the miracle of the moving image with sound. Relive this critical event, and feel the tenor of the times at:
Like the unrepentant charlatan that he is, Donald Trump began his speech announcing a “new” policy in Afghanistan with a syrupy sweet call for peace and unity on the home front that was a paragon of duplicity, since he is the main cause of the growing internecine conflict that is engulfing America. After all, Trump has just recently threatened to throw many men and women that are honorably serving in our armed forces because of their sexual orientation…a matter that has already been settled!
In his shameful amoral refusal to show any sign that he is even able to recognize right from wrong, fascist from anti-fascist, those who stand for freedom and those who would destroy it, his speech sound leaden, phony and unconvincing. Imagine how the many active duty servicemen, many of whom may have already served in a combat zones, must have felt being forced to listen to this pompous, narcissistic, draft dodging dunce.
In this regard, Donald Trump is dramatically different from what we have come to expect from US presidents since the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930’s. Indeed, Donald Trump, morally depraved ignoramus that he continually demonstrates himself to be, must look like a comic figure, a double-talking buffoon, to the young men in the Islamic world whose hearts and minds he must win in order to turn them away for the Jihadist movement and end the conflicts that presently ravage the middle East. Yet the most potent weapon in this fight to convince the pool of angry young men on the “Arab street,” who are the primary source for Jihadi militants, is to offer a superior vision of a future which America can help them to realize.
Alas there was nothing in this speech, stiffly delivered from a script written by aides – the sound of which suggest it was authored in the Pentagon rather than the dangerously understaffed State Department – that offers hope for peace any time soon. On the contrary it sounds like a prescription for perpetual war concocted by the Marine Corps Generals in whose hands he has placed the power to make policy. From where I sit peering into the corridors of power from the outside, it looks like a military coup with the military command lifting a finger. Which, given Trump’s near total ignorance of the structure and function of the vast governmental apparatus that he is expected to preside over, should surprise no one. For clearly this clueless dude is dancing in the dark.
By word and deed Donnie Dimwit constantly reminds those who are paying attention and is not part of the untutored mob that comprises the bulk of his base, that he knows next to nothing of American history, and is too intellectually lazy to try and bone up. He does not even understand that the reason why the architects of the US Constitution placed the military under civilization control is precisely because they did not want a military caste making foreign policy and deciding on matters of war and peace. This is what the venerable Republican intellectual, ideologue and able apologist for their right-wing excesses George Will means when he says Donald Trump’s problem is that: “he doesn’t know what it is to know something.”
That role of deciding where and when the America’s armed forces will be deployed was expressly given to the President in the Constitution, who is named “Commander-In-Chief. But the drafters of the Constitution were men of the 18th century that could not imagine either the vast military machine America has at her command, the size complexity of the United States, nor a President who is as unread, ignorant and incompetent as Trump. Plus the added handicap of an untutored electorate which is incapable of demanding that Congress put him in check.
Due to his inability to govern, which is evidenced by his cavalier decimation of the State Department and his suspicion of congressional power and intentions, Trump is overly relying on military men. That’s why he made this announcement while Congress is on vacation and has made no attempt to seek Congressional counsel or approval for his escalation of the war in Afghanistan – a complex country that has dragged several imperial powers from the Romans, to the British, to the Russians, and now us into a quagmire of frustration and defeat. It would be no exaggeration to say that the dangerous combination of ignorance and belligerence that characterized Trump’s speech is troubling example of what the late Senator Fulbright meant by “The Arrogance of power.”
Trump delivered the speech as if he were a ventriloquists’ dummy, admitting that he had suddenly changed his mind about the position he had repeatedly taken over several years regarding the Afghan war – going from a passionate opponent to an enthusiastic proponent with nary a sign of doubt. It was a stunning, albeit unintentional, confession of that his head is an empty vessel to be filled with whatever content those who has access to him choose to fill it with. How else are we to understand the following statement in light of his vociferous and relentless condemnation of American policy in Afghanistan over much of the last decade?
“My original instinct was to pull out,” Said Trump, “and, historically, I like following my instincts. But all my life I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office; in other words, when you’re President of the United States. After many meetings, over many months, we held our final meeting last Friday at Camp David, with my Cabinet and generals, to complete our strategy.”
For those who have been paying attention to Trump’s public pronouncements it is all too obvious that there are two distinct characters wrapped up in one body: The scripted and unscripted. The real Donald and the great pretender. And for a person with no deep moral principles or serious intellectual convictions the role of political chameleon is fairly easy to negotiate. Hence, I don’t believe his paradoxical political positions or moral contradictions causes him to lose sleep. This fundamental amorality explains Trump he can fudge the issues raised by neo-Nazi’s bearing torches parading through a southern American city by night shouting Nazi slogans and calling for “white supremacy” – i.e. domination of the master race by law – conjuring up horrific memories of the German genocide against the Jews and the centuries old-tradition of murdering innocent black people in America!
Thus, his attempts to rally the American people around the flag with patriotic platitudes rang hollow:
“By following the heroic example of those who fought to preserve our republic, we can find the inspiration our country needs to unify to heal, and to remain one nation under God…They transcend every line of race, ethnicity, creed, and color to serve together — and sacrifice together — in absolutely perfect cohesion. That is because all service members are brothers and sisters. They’re all part of the same family; it’s called the American family.”
Since millions of Americans regard such sentiments from Trump as empty rhetoric, if not blasphemy, he avoided hecklers by choosing to speak before a captive military audience, who were ordered to be there and show deference to their Commander-in-Chief. But a few choice words at a stage-managed event cannot begin to erase all the hatred and division he has sown among the American people. One of the consequences of playing to the cheap seats all the time is that you begin to underestimate your audience. And that was boldly on display as Trump delivered his simplistic saccharine sentiments to the nation via television.
Not only were his professions of brotherly love unconvincing, but his “new policy” on Afghanistan was even less so. This is because there is nothing that Trump has ever uttered which convinces me that he has thought seriously about complex policy matters for a nanosecond. So, he came across like an actor putting on a show, interpreting a script authored by someone else for the occasion. Hence Trump was merely a vehicle for conveying ideas crafted by the Republican national security establishment – to which the airhead President contributed not a single important idea.
It does not require a rigorous examination in order to see that these ideas offer nothing new, they are little more than old wine in new bottles. When we look between the hyperbolic rhetorical flourishes, we find the same old hackneyed clichés that has informed the foreign policy follies of the past: Korea, Vietnam, Iran and Iraq comes most immediately to mind. One need only consider the following passage from Trump’s synthetic spiel in order to see where we are headed in Afghanistan:
First, our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives. The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory. They deserve the tools they need, and the trust they have earned, to fight and win.”
The obvious question, which has gone unaddressed, is what does victory mean in the Afghanistan theater, that graveyard of empires? Listening to this surreal prattle, the thoughtful observer is forced to ask: “Where has this guy been for the last 16 years?” He sounds as if he’s had his head stuck up his ass, a kind of anal Rip Van Winkle who slept through the events of the last decade and a half. It would be hard to concoct a formula for failure even if one were dedicated to the task. If doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result is the definition of madness: Then America has gone mad…because this is the same old shit!
All the Morons who say the referee should not have intervened to stop the Welter-Weight bout between Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor in Vegas need a reality check about what can happen in a boxing ring when a fighter’s head becomes a punching bag for a world champion boxer. Nothing is more annoying to this writer, and avid boxing fan, than listening to the armchair tough guys who argue that the Referee stopped the fight too soon on Saturday.
And why do they say this? Well they point out that Conor feels that he still had a chance to win it! Duh? Conor had caught so may of Floyd’s straight right hands upside his dome he didn’t even know where tha fuck he was! Consequently he was unable to defend himself against Floyd’s flurry of power punches…Conor had become little more than a punching bag. Virtually all fighters who are on their feet feel that they can continue the fight; no referee who is worth a shit will listen to them!
The Referee is the more objective observer of the action in the ring and has a trained eye for signs that a fighter is in trouble and no longer able to mount a defense. Furthermore, the referee in this fight is in the Boxing Hall of Fame! Aside from the verbosity of these armchair tough guys, who have identified their own sense of manhood with the exploits of these heroic ring warriors to an unhealthy degree, they are actually willing to risk permanent injury or the death of the fighter on the odds that they can still win. The cling to this position even after it becomes obvious that the fighter has too chances at victory: Slim and None!
I think that’s some really sick stuff! Boxing at its best is a thing of manly beauty. It requires strength, courage, exquisite cardio-vascular conditioning, and the smarts to think in terms of strategy and tactics…plus the judgement to be able to distinguish between the two and understand their application to the fight. Which requires the victorious fighter to be swift on the cap!
However, amidst the excitement and confusion of this martial drama the referee has a clear purpose: To prevent chaos by policing the contest and making sure the fighters obey the rules… which, after all, are designed for their safety! Preventing serious injuries and death in the ring is their paramount objective!! Hence for a bunch of poot-butt cream puffs in the peanut gallery to argue that the Ref should have stood idly by while Mayweather administered overhand rights and left hooks to Conor’s head at will is some real callous bullshit.
A lotta these guys would bitch-up and break down faster than Hop-along Cassidy could draw his guns if you smacked them in the face! Yet they are anxious to see two prize fighters fight to the death for their amusement. That is beyond shameful….it is sinful. Although I am an atheist I recognize sinful behavior when I see it, and if goading men to bloody murder for your amusement ain’t a sin…then there is no such thing. These MOFOs should have been around during the days of the Circus Maximus in ancient Rome.
Connor was Clearly in Danger of Serious Injury
There was No Coming Back from This!
However, those who wanted the fight to continue will argue that Conor is a really tough guy and was in no danger of injury or death had he fought on. Alas, either these people know little of boxing history or they are suffering from willful amnesia. Yet those of us who were boxing fans in 1961, remember all too well witnessing a slaughter in the boxing ring live on television!
It is impossible for those who saw it to ever forget when Emile Griffith, a five time World Middle-Weight Champion, who was a deeply closeted gay man, beat his Cuban challenger Benny “Kid” Paret to death! It was a grudge match provoked by the fact during the weigh-in Paret – a colorful fighter who used to dance the Mambo in the ring before a match, much like the NFL receiver Victor Cruz does after scoring a touchdown – had shouted “COCK SUCKER!”
In effect, Paret outed Emile and insulted him before all the fight crowd and the press, because he was saying Emile wasn’t a man and he would pay for that indiscretion with his life, when Emile decided to show The Kid who the REAL FAGGOT WAS! Here is the actual video of that slaughter! I watched this execution in real time. And I say to the doubting Thomas’ who are second guessing the decision of the ref to stop the fight, parroting Conor’s self-serving excuse that he should have been allowed to continue because he was still on his feet, to Please note that BENNY “KID” PARET WAS STANDING UP TOO!
***************
Witness the Ring Death of Benny “Kid” Paret – 1961
He says his Success is due to his Superior German Blood
What Does the Evidence Suggest?
After meeting him Truman Smith remarked: “This is a marvelous demagogue who can really inspire people.” And Paul Von Wiegard, a foreign correspondent for the Hearst newspapers marveled at his ability to whip crowds into a frenzy during his speeches at political rallies. This is as succinct an assessment of Donald Trump as I could imagine; a poignant unvarnished portrait. The problem for Americans is that the man they were describing is Adolph Hitler!
We learn these cautionary facts from a revealing article, titled “Early Warnings: How American Journalist Reported the Rise of Hitler, published in the venerable Atlantic Magazine, by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, an editor there. The book under review is Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, by Andrew Nargorsky.
I was drawn to this essay because of its title, thinking that it might offer some insight on the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency. I have already noted some striking similarities in the political style of Trump and Hitler in an article I published several months ago during the heat of the election campaign titled “Is Donald Trump a Uniquely American Fascist?”
Not only did this essay offer some unique insights, it was pregnant with useful revelations. For instance, we learn:
“After the Great Depression hit, suddenly the Nazi Party became a major contender for power. Yet you had Americans meeting Hitler and saying, “This guy is a clown. He’s like a caricature of himself.” And a lot of them went through this whole litany about how even if Hitler got into a position of power, other German politicians would somehow be able to control him. A lot of German politicians believed this themselves.”
Anyone who is paying attention to the American political scene just now will have heard shockingly similar conversations regarding President Trump. The careful listener can even discern some of the same descriptive language. For instance, the insightful journalist Matt Taibbi has written a book based on his coverage of the Trump presidential campaign titled “Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus.” In a recent interview on the Seth Meyers Show, Taibbi said of Trump’s rise to power: “On the one hand, it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to this country. On the other hand it’s potentially the end of civilization.“
Taibbi’s troubling observations bring several critical issues immediately to mind. First I am reminded of why brilliant men of humane vision like Drs. Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and the swing dancing George Kwiatkowski agreed to work on a horrendous weapon like the Atomic Bomb. Although they later expressed regret for bringing this doomsday weapon into the world; they did it because they were terrified that Hitler might get it first…and they had no doubt that he would use it. The scientists’ concerns about Hitler are echoed in the Bill now being put forth by US Congressmen Ted W, Lieu and Senator Edward Markey, to restrain the danger of a bombastic, thin skinned, socio-path like President Trump launching a nuclear attack on some nation during a temper tantrum.
Upon introducing the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017” H.R. 669 and S. 200, Congressman Lieu, a Democrat from California, was clear on the danger the world faces from the fact that Donald Trump – a delusional megalomaniac whose mental stability has been called into question by several psychiatrist analyzing his public behavior – now has the Nuclear football and the Launch Codes that gives him the power to destroy the world! :
“It is a frightening reality that the US now has a Commander-in-Chief who has demonstrated ignorance of the nuclear triad, stated his desire to be ‘unpredictable’ with nuclear weapons, and as president-elect was making sweeping statements about US nuclear policy over Twitter. Congress must act to preserve global stability by restricting the circumstances under which the US would be the first nation to use a nuclear weapon. Our Founders created a system of checks and balances, and it is essential for that standard to be applied to the potentially civilization-ending threat of nuclear war.”
Even the Five Blind Boys can see that these legislators clearly do not trust temperament or judgement of the pugnacious martinet that presently commands America’s doomsday nuclear arsenal.
Far too few Americans understand how the Nuclear Triad works. Reduced to its simplest terms, it is enough to say that the US Strategic Command cab launch thousands of hydrogen bombs anywhere on the globe with pin point accuracy in less than an hour from three different platforms: Land based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles; dropped from Strato-bombers of the US Strategic Air Command, and naval vessels steaming on the ocean’s surface or beneath the sea. As things presently stands, this awesome power resides completely in the hands of Donald Trump, who alone can give the command to launch without consulting ANYONE!!!!!! That’s why the Lieu-Markey Bill is the most important piece of legislation in history.
Herr Hitler!
He also believes his German blood was “superior”
As I have shown elsewhere, Trump, like Hitler, views the fate of the nation and his personal fate as one. You could easily see this based on his response to the Mexican president’s cancellation of a state visit to Washington to meet with Trump. The new President was quick to label the Mexican President’s snub of him with disrespect for the United States. Trump’s feeling that he personifies the nation arises from the source as Hitler’s, he won the election base on his pesonality, which transcended the Republican party. An insightful article in the distinguished German newspaper Der Spiegal, explains the role of the personality cult in Hitler’s Rise to the pinnacle of political power:
” …there were one or two tantalizing hints that Hitler’s personal appeal outstripped that of the Nazi regime itself, and even more so of the Party. “For Adolf Hitler yes, but a thousand times no to the brown big-wigs” was scribbled on one ballot-paper in Potsdam. The same sentiment could be heard elsewhere.”
And just as Hitler used the Versailles Treaty, as evidence of other nation’s taking advantage of a weak Germany, Trump has used trade agreements like NAFTRA – North American Free Trade Agreement, and the proposed TPP – Trans Pacific Partnership – which Trump recently scrapped with an Executive Order – to label the negotiators at best as “incompetent political hacks” or “stupid” and economic traitors at worst – enemies of the America people. And just like Hitler, he uses these treaties to whip up the anger of impassioned mobs untutored in the vagaries of political subterfuge or the complexities of international trade.
Also like Hitler, many people fail to recognize how dangerously unstable Trump’s mental state is. Listening to him argue ad nauseam with reporters about the size of the crowd that turned out to witness what he evidently thinks was his coronation, even inviting them to compare aerial photographs of the crowds that attended his and Barack Obama’s swearing in Ceremony made by the Park Service, we have to seriously worry about whether this guy is all there.
This is crazy stuff, especially when you look at the pictures. Anybody with good eyesight can see that it’s not even close; Barack’s crowd dwarfs Trump’s. His servile staff, who he probably views as the Kings courtiers whose proper posture is lips to his posterior, dare not tell him the unpleasant truth. They remind me of the court in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
This obsession with size – which earlier manifested itself when he felt in necessary to explain that his small hands didn’t mean that he also suffered from pant worm…this clarification was so important to him that he issued a plea for understanding from the podium during his presidential campaign – is a sign that the New US president is something of an extreme narcissist; a mythomaniac who suffers from delusions of grandeur. Just like Adolph!
Trump’s insecurity about size is also revealed in his constant talk of building up the American military, although the US has the largest, best funded, destructive military forces in the world. As President Obama said: “It ain’t even close!” Obsession with building military might was also a defining characteristic of Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Also like Hitler, Trump benefitted from a split on the left, where some voted for third parties and others stayed home, certain that an obviously incompetent clown like “The Donald” could not possibly win the presidency. It reminds me of the comments from the great Hollywood film maker Frank Capra, who explained the difficulty of making anti-fascist propaganda films from the war department during the Second World War, because Hitler and Mussolini looked like clowns and it was hard to get people to feel hostile or scared watching their antics. The main impulse of viewers was to bust out laughing!
Alas, notwithstanding the ludicrous buffoon Trump reveals himself to be on a daily basis, he is no laughing matter! Speaking of Hitler’s position in German politics a year after he became Chancellor, Ian Kershaw writes the following in the same Der Spiegal article, titled “The Fuerer Myth:”
“Today Hitler Is All of Germany.” The newspaper headline on Aug. 4, 1934 reflected the vital shift in power that had just taken place. Two days earlier, on the death of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler had lost no time in abolishing the Reich Presidency and having the army swear a personal oath of unconditional obedience to him as “the Führer of the German Reich and People.”
“He was now head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces, as well as head of government and of the monopoly party, the NSDAP. Hitler had total power in Germany, unrestricted by any constitutional constraints. The headline implied even more, however, than the major change in the constellation of power. It suggested an identity of Hitler and the country he ruled, signifying a complete bond between the German people and Hitler”
To recognize the gravitas of the crisis in contemporary American politics, it is quite enough to acknowledge that all the powers that Hitler had in 1934 Germany Trump has now, with one exception. Trump is checked by “constitutional restraints,” but they are not worth the parchment they are written on if the members of his party refuse to stand up to him. And thus far, possibly intimidated by his twitter attacks, they are behaving like a school of spineless Jelly fish.
Although at different Times and Places
A Hysterical Woman at a Hitler Rally
It’s the Same Class of Phenomenon whether in Germany or the US
Like all authoritarian leaders and wannabe tyrants, both Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump, brothers of the blood, despise the free press. Hitler destroyed the free press in Nazi Germany, and I have no doubt that Trump would do the same in the US if he could. Restrained by the First Amendment to our constitution, Herr Drumpf has resorted to a campaign of vicious slanders and invective against the press in general – his acolytes shouting the old Nazi epithet “lougen presser!” – lying press – at the reporters covering his rallies.
Furthermore, Trump’s senior advisor Steve Bannon rivals Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, on employing the principle of the “Big Lie.” This strategy is based on the idea that if you repeat a lie to a mass audience often enough, even if it is outrageous, a certain number of them will believe it. That’s how hitler won the hearts and minds of the most educated ppulace on earth and convinced them to murder six million of their neighbors!
Bannon is well schooled in this practice having run Brietart, a far right wing propaganda blog spinning “alternative” facts infested with neo-Nazi views, before moving into the White House. In a show of hostility and contempt for the major media heretofore unseen in a top advisor to an American President, Brannon, whom rumor has it is “Trump’s brain,” just called the newspapers of record – New York Times, Washington Post, et al – the “opposition party” and told them to “shut up!”
Trump’s open hostility to the working press, well trained professional journalist trying to inform the American people about the critical issues and the policies elected officials, whom we employ, are promoting. Thomas Jefferson, the wisest of the American Founding Fathers, held the free press in such high esteem he once said “If I had a choice between a government and no free press, or a free press and no government, I would take the free press and no government.”
If Jefferson’s position reveals a deep commitment to democratic government, Trump’s attitude toward the press exposes an authoritarian personality with fundamentally anti-democratic instincts. One obvious source of this difference in their approach to the exercise of power is that Thomas Jefferson was a widely read intellectual and statesman who devoted his life to public service; trying to build a great nation was the motivating force in his life.
Trump has spent his adult life as the CEO of a private corporation devoted to no higher goal than making money and personal enrichment for ostentatious display. The power structure of a corporation is by nature a pure dictatorship; you carry out the CEO’s commands or you get fired! Just like on Trump’s reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
In the most generous and flattering interpretation of Donald Trump, I’d say he aspires to be a benevolent dictator! Trump’s aggressive nationalism, like that of Hitler, imperils the peace and security of the world. Where Hitler and Trump are most unlike, is the fact that Hitler was a fanatic deeply committed to an ideology he believed would build a “Thousand Year Reich” that would rule the world ….and as near as anybody can tell Trump believes in nothing beyond “winning.
Furthermore Hitler also fought bravely in combat for his country in World War I, whereas Donald Trump is a draft dodger who shriked his duty while other young men his age marched off to war in Vietnam! Although he loves to brag about his “militaristic” nature, Trump is all blow and no go! His sole experience with military matters is a stint he spent in an expensive military high school; yet he is such a shameless braggart that he actually cited his highschool eperience as evidence of his having served in the military. Which is further evidence that he simply cannot control his compulsion to lie!
Another great difference between the the two men is that Hitler was determined to conquer Russia, and launched an attack with genocidal intent! The sole political virtue of President Trump, that I can clearly identify, is his refusal to be stampeded into promoting the growing anti-Russian hysteria that has been embracd by Democrats and Republicans with varying degrees of passion. Let us hope that Trump holds his course on US-Russian relations. For if there was ever a situation where his pigheadness could be a positive asset it is his attitude toward US-Russian relations. Yet given all the forces at work to undermine it alas, who knows what the future will hold.
Given Trump’s bellicose approach to foreign relations, which is already antagonizing a nuclear armed China, should we get into a conflict with Russia it is anybody’s guess how Trump will react. Perhaps the most telling sign of the danger Trump’s presidency poses is that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist just moved the hands on their “DOOMSDAY CLOCK,” which warns us how close the world is to nuclear destruction, CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT!
A Clear and Present Danger!
Ten Scary Facts about Nuclear War!
HOW DOOMSDAY WILL HAPPEN!
This is why Congress Must Pass the Lieu-Markey Bill
Mankind must Destroy the Bombs or the Bombs will Destroy Us!
Witnessing Donald Trump present his inaugural Address was like watching a nightmare come true. Although he no doubt thought his scripted remarks – written by some right-wing wag and probably edited by white nationalist ideologue Steve Bannon – now his personal advisor – were profound, they were SOS: the Same Old Stuff. It was bombastic, jingoistic, and devoid of the poetry, soaring eloquence and magnanimity that we have come to expect from Barack Obama.
The speech was false to history, false to the present, and unworthy of the occasion. Try as he might to sound presidential, something he has evidently only become concerned with in the last 24 hours – judging by the things he said just yesterday – “The Donald” sounded much more like a New York real estate huckster than a great statesman charged with leading the world’s most powerful nation. I suppose you really can’t teach an old dog new tricks….and at 70 years of age he is a very old dog indeed!
The new president’s vision was grim – whether describing the condition of the US or his view of America’s relations with the rest of the world! It did nothing to win friends or influence enemies to think the better of the USA. It was what he is: Pugnacious, ignorant, dishonest, filled with hyperbole, graceless, and given to fascist sloganeering!
“Make America Great Again” was filched from Benito Mousilini, the Italian distator and self- proclaimed “Father of Fascism,” whose slogan was “Make Italy Great Again!” And “America First” was the slogan of pro-fascist Americans, such as the aviator and Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindburg, during World War II. When it was pointed out that a quote he used was coined by Musolini he said he didn’t care “I just lkie good slogans.” The thoughtful observor is forced to wonder if they are birds of a feather. For an extended discussion of this question see: “Is Donald Trump A Uniquely American Fascist” on this blog.
While Black elected members of Congress MUST meet with the President on GOVERNMENT BUSINESS and thus understandably will meet with Trump; Steve Harvey has no official business with Trump,so what was he doing in Trump Tower? Steve says that they talked “about golf and people we knew in common.” And then they got down to business. Which is a mystery because he also says, as you will hear in the video below, that he doesn’t “know much about politics.” Steve seems easily impressed because he assured us Trump “is a great Guy.” He looked and sounded ridiculous! The first question Steve should have asked Trump is: “Why me?”
The fact that the only black people Trump has met with before him is a former football player, a psychotic rapper, and his old gangster crony and mentor from his days in the boxing game Don King, should have made him suspicious of Trump’s motives. The fact that Trump’s only black cabinet appointment – amidst a group of reactionary right-wing white folks whose agenda is hostile to the aspirations of the black community – is a demented doctor who is totally unqualified to direct the vast resources of the Housing and Urban Development Agency, should surely have given Big Stevie cause for pause. But this joker – who, as you will see in the video embedded below, can’t even pronounce the name of the agency, tells us that he and Dr, Carson are going to work together to bring about changes in the inner-city: THIS IS A CLAASSIC CASE OF THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND!!!!!!
Alas, lest we forget, Stevie a PROFESSIONAL FOOL….which is the definition of a COMEDIAN!!!!! In medieval times they were known as professional fools. However there is an important difference between the European court Jester and the American Sambo i.e. “coon.” The Jester was allowed to display wisdom and the coon – which was a racist caricature of black personality. style and character created by WHITE MINSTRELS IN BLACKFACE MASKS – is ONLY A FOOL! Sigmund Freud, the father of psycho-analysis offered this observation about the unique role of the comedian: “Throughout history whenever powerless men spoke truth to power they donned the fool’s mask.”
What Steve Harvey should have done during his audience with Trump is present him with a list of THE names of black experts, serious policy wonks, who have studied these problems for years and have REAL POLICY OPTIONS THAT ARE READY TO GO!!!!! People like Dr. Bernard Anderson, Professor of Economics at the prestigious Wharton School, in the University of Pennsylvania – the school from which Trump got the undergraduate degree that he constantly brags about.
As the principal author of the Economic Section of the annual Urban League State of Black America Report, Dr. Anderson is the foremost authority in the world on the economic problems facing Afro-Americans. And Dr. William J. Wilson, Professor of Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, is unquestionably the World’s foremost authority on the condition of African Americans in America’s cities. His books on the subject are as authoritative as the BIBLE on matters of Christian teaching! To learn more of these scholar and their works see, https://commentariesonthetimes.me/…/less-preachers-and-mor…/
Dr. William Julius Wilson: Harvard Sociologist
The World’s Foremost Authority on Blacks in Urban America
Dr. Bernard Anderson: Economist at Wharton
The Reigning Authority on blacks in the American Economy
These scholars should be at the top of the list, and if Trump didn’t call the people Steve recommended Stevie should make a clever comedy routine about it the way he did about Cornel West! It should go something like this:
“Watcha call me in fo boss? I’se jest a clown….you need to talk with some black folks that really got somethin to say and kin speak on it wit de wisdom of King Solomon in de bible,” then scratch his bald head, roll his eyes and get a good laugh while putting that bullshit artist in his place! Instead he allowed “The Donald” to get some free and positive pub, he was USED BY TRUMP!!!
Alas Stevie – probably overwhelmed that he got the call for counsel from The Donald that Cornel West hungered for but NEVER got from Barack Obama – and instead of a proud and unbought black man…a clown who spoke truth to power, we get a sheepish looking Harvey trying to explain why he met with Trump while not being able to cite a single thing we gained from it…not even a specific promise. Political tactics 101 – you NEVER go to a meeting with people who have REAL POWER with NO DEMANDS!!!!
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To watch Steve Harvey at Trump Tower click on link
God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign/No more water/The Fire Next Time!
This is an exceedingly strange political season where the bizarre has become common place. For instance a New York real estate huckster and transparent con man with no experience in government is threatening to defeat the most qualified candidate in US history for the presidency. Yet the fact that there is no serious mention, let alone discussion, of the unique horrors of nuclear weapons and the growing probability of an accidental nuclear war is the strangest thing of all.
For despite the false sense of security most Americans enjoy, believing the end of Communism and the Cold War with what was Soviet Russia has removed the danger of nuclear holocaust, it ain’t necissarily so. It is a comforting but dangerous illusion that could lead to a catastrophe which would put an immediate end to human civilization and eventually all life on this planet.
Far from being hallucinations hatched in the fevered imaginations of nervous Nellies, the danger of nuclear war is as probable today as it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the Early 1960’s; the most volotile nuclear confrontation since the introduction of atomic weapons into modern warfare with the bombing of Japan during World War II.
Anyone who doubts how close the US and Russia came to destroying the world in their fight for Spheres of Influence – portions of the globe located close to the territory of major powers that claim them as being under their influence – should see Robert McNamara’s film The Fog of War. McNamara was the US Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the US Navy put a blockade around Cuba and challenged the Soviet fleet on the high seas to prevent them from delivering nuclear missiles to that small Island, which had been attacked by the US in a CIA led a covert action intended to overthrow the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro known as the “Bay of Pigs Invasion.” As a result of this US aggression against Cuba to prevent them from establishing a socialist economy they formed a military alliance with Russia and requested the missiles for protection.
Robert McNamara
He Presided over the Missisle Crisis
The world came so close to destruction by nuclear war as a result of the confrontation the blockade provoked with the Soviet Union that even a half century later Robert McNamara had not come to terms with the part he played in this near catastrophe for mankind. In his documentary film McNamara tells us how he was ready to engage the Soviet Union in an all-out nuclear war and was obsessed with finding out if his counterparts on the other side were also ready to engage. When they told him that they were also prepared to launch their nukes McNamara was profoundly shaken and contemplates the madness of it all. The thing that perplexed him the most was the fact that highly educated sane and rational men were prepared to destroy the world!
The relevance of this frightening tale for us today is that we are on the verge of provoking a similar crisis with Russia through our insane policy of NATO expansion in Eastern Europe; even though the Cold War is officially over and the Communist Party has been banned in Russia. As I write President Obama is giving his final speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations extolling the end of wars between major nations. Yet despite his lofty rhetoric, soaring eloquence, impeccable logic and Solomonic wisdom the reality of US-Russian relations do not match his heroic optimism.
Even as the President speaks the US and Russia have thousands of Nuclear missiles targeted at the other’s cities and towns, each armed with warheads over 50 times more powerful than the devastating bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima – the only time such a weapon was deployed in the history of the world. To just stockpile such weapons is an unspeakable horror, but the fact that they are armed and on high alert – which is to say that they are on line and can be fired by computers – is a monstrous crime against humanity.
General James Cartwright
Warning against the danger of accidental Nuclear War
When we consider the claim made by General James Cartwright, the former head of the US Strategic Command, which has responsibility for deploying our nuclear forces, that attempts by hostile forces to hack into our nuclear weapons system average ten million a day, our present nuclear strategy of keeping our land based Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles – ICBMs – armed and on high alert can only be considered a manifestation of collective madness. Since the hackers only have to get it right once!
This is why General Cartwright has been vociferously advocating disarming them and taking them off alert, pointing out that we are no longer in a cold war footing with Russia, where instant response from these missiles are necessary. The General, who knows what he is talking about, considers this policy dangerous folly that could instantly become fatal for the earth. Alas, the fact that there is no discussion of this clear and present danger is irrefutable evidence of a flaw in human character that could well lead to the extinction of our species.
Thus the CBSSixty Minutes feature story of October 18th, “The New Cold War, should be viewed as a revelation; a final Wake-Up call to pull back from the brink of extinction; to turn away from the path to doomsday that we are presently trudging. Done in the grand style of fact based reportage that has characterized the journalistic product of Sixty Minutes, the report provides us an unprecedented look into the command structure of America’s nuclear forces. It is at once enlightening and frightening, for it allows a look into the abyss and see how the world could end in a bang.
The report begins by taking us aboard the USS Kentucky, an Ohio Class American nuclear submarine, the most destructive weapon in the history of the world. The Kentucky is twice the length of a football field and is armed with 200 independently targeted nuclear warheads – enough to destroy every major city in the US and Europe!
If it were an independent nation it would have more weapons than Great Britain – which has 160 operational warheads – and only 100 less than France, which is reducing its stockpile. Canada, our neighbor to the north has none; it dismantled its stockpile in 1984 and repudiated their use in a treaty signed in 1998. And China has around 260 warheads. However the US has 14 Nuclear armed subs in the “Trident” class such as the Kentucky.
Alas, the Trident submarines are but one leg of the US Nuclear “Triad” which includes intercontinental bombers and land based ICBMs: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Altogether the US arsenal stockpiles 6, 970 nuclear warheads and is second only to Russia, which maintains 7, 300 warheads. Yet because of their explosive power the US arsenal is the most destructive force on earth.
In the Sixty Minutes report Captain Brian Freck, Commander of the Kentucky, explains the protocols under which he would launch his doomsday weapons, and he leaves no doubt that if these conditions were met he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot his deadly load. Viewers of this report should pay close attention to the casual way in which Commander Freck talks about taking an action that would set in motion a chain of events that would surely destroy civilization.
Commander-In-Chief
Recieving big love from the troops in Iraq
Admiral Cecil Haney
Commander of the US Nuclear Triad
When we leave the Submarine and are ushered into the super-secret operations center of the US Strategic Command, where we are introduced to Admiral Cecil Haney, a very powerful man that virtually no one has ever hear of, including myself, despite the fact that I served in the old Strategic Air Command with a Top Secret security clearance under General Curtis Lemay, back in the day when the B 52 Strato-bombers were the heart of the US nuclear strike force, and I have been studying and writing about the dangers of nuclear war for years…..often alone among American pundits. By virtue of my Top Secret clearance I was privy to the war fighting plans of SAC, and serving under General Lemay –whose colleagues on the Joint Chiefs nicknamed him “The Mad Bomber”- during the heat of the Cold War, a hot war seemed a real possibility.
Cast from a different mold than the burly, crude, bombastic Lemay, Admiral Haney is an Afro-American officer and gentleman who is soft spoken, slight of stature, and elegant of style and manner. Yet he is the supreme commander of the entire nuclear Triad, a far more destructive force, and answers only to President Obama; who appointed him to his Command. Like the President, the Admiral has a very impressive academic record.
Haney grew up in Washington D. C. and graduated from the Naval Academy – which is harder to get in and out of than Harvard – and rose through the ranks based upon brilliant performance. Although he says that President Obama would invite his advice in the few minutes he would have before ordering a nuclear attack, should they disagree he would have no hesitation in carrying out the president’s orders. “I am a soldier and I will carry out the orders of my Commander-In-Chief,” said Admiral Haney. After listening to these men who would be tasked with giving the order to incinerate millions of men, women and children discuss their mission with a near cavalier attitude I was reminded of the philosopher Hanna Arendt’s intriguing thesis about “the banality of evil.”
If America’s doomsday weapons were launched today it will be a decision made by two elegant, brilliant, Afro-American gentlemen: President Obama and Admiral Haney. The irony here is thick and obvious. For most of my life we were told “It’s a white man’s world,” but at this moment in time the fate of the earth resides in the hands of two very wise black men! It is a dubious honor and a supreme irony that a society still so rife with racism that a morally deformed, intellectually lightweight charlatan and buffoon like Donald Trump could become a serious pretender to the presidency, buoyed on a wave of white racist resentment, could have invested such awesome power in these black men.
It is a power one associates with the Gods. And what this Sixty Minutes report makes clear is that it is a power only the God’s should possess….no mortal – especially one as fatally flawed as Herr Trump – should hold the power to destroy the world. Hence the paramount problem urgently facing mankind as I write, is ridding the earth of all nuclear weapons…putting the atomic genie back in the fuckin bottle!
In his acceptance lecture upon winning the Nobel Prize for literature William Faulkner assured us that whatever happens, come what may, mankind will endure. This faith was echoed on the other side of the globe in a different tongue, by the great Chinese revolutionary poet and philosopher Mao Tse Tung, who led the mass movement that transformed China from a feudal to a modern society. The Great Helmsman dismissed atomic weapons as “paper tigers” and declared “The Bomb will not destroy man; man will destroy the bomb.” I hope they are right, and if I were a religious man I would pray. But being a prisoner to reason and an ardent student of human history….I am not so sure they are right alas.
What I am absolutely certain of is that the mere existence of atomic weapons impeirls our continued existence…and if we do not soon put an end to them they will surely put an end to us! As things stand at this hour the preeminent experts on the question of nuclear annihilation at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist have their Doomsday Clock set at three minutes to midnight! Which means the end of the world is closer than you think.
The Most Destructive Weapon in the World
A waste of wealth and technological
Double Click on link to see video and Transcript of CBS Report
