"They have the wealth. They have all the money in the world. They have the power [and] the media. [But] we've got 20,000 people here in Tucson and we got 100's of millions of people all across the country." --Bernie Sanders

Back in the good old days when Election Day was a folksy occasion in small towns and the eighty-year-old ballet school owner who'd lived there for years got all dressed up to come to the polls, sporting blue eye shadow, I leafletted in front of the fire station with four or five activists as a steady stream of voters passed by, some accepting our offerings, some not.

I was closest to the entrance. There was one other Democrat, a Libertarian, and others. I stood opposite a Republican lady a few years older than me, and we soon took to chatting to pass the time-- all about anything but politics. She didn't interfere when I exhorted passers-by to help bring our boys home from Iraq-- no opposing words. The weather was nice and we were in a good mood.

Things got warmer and friendlier. We were happy about the number of people who came to vote. No one tried to intimidate voters-- that was the farthest possibility from our minds.

The Democrats prevailed in this left-leaning borough but the right certainly showed up.

That's what we need today. Dialogue, not hostility and threats of violence. And across the country Republicans are showing up in droves to town meetings their co-partisan Representatives have been advised to avoid and are avoiding. They have nothing to answer to their voters. They are as reticent as most Democrats in office are to this horrendous turn to the extreme right and capsizing of beloved institutions: support of our veterans, National Weather Service, USPS. the Consumer Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, let alone Social Security, Medicaid, and predictably Medicare when they get around to it. 

Mr. Trump had promised not to touch Social Security. Now they're raping it.

Indeed, the progressives within the Democratic Party suffer from differences that hinder their effectiveness in carrying out vital projects. They need to coalesce and think outside the box to one of their favorite slogans: THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED. How many times have I joined heartily in this chant, marching, protesting, rallying?

We need to join forces with everyone suffering from radical changes that are seeping their way to more and more of us. Our court system is fighting back remarkably but we must join in-- they are fighting for us and suffering from threats of violence to their loved ones but none that I know of has backed down.

What exactly will it take to accomplish our goal of perpetuating our historic and precedent-shaping democracy? Certainly there was a lot to protest before Election 2024, but we must preserve our right to maintain what's good about it and demand the necessary changes once Project 2025 is stopped in its tracks.

What can we accomplish nonviolently? I have a 2002 calendar entitled "52 True Stories of Nonviolent Success." Unfortunately, among these events untold numbers of lives were lost. Our challenge is for nonviolent methods to succeed with minimal bloodshed [lives have already been lost]. The Project 2025 implementers call their activities a new American revolution. Their violence has already cost lives and is claiming more daily. 

Beyond elections, which in this country experts have proved have been tampered with, large-scale, again and again, there are the voters taking to the streets. They will be the agents of change and violence will not work.

We must fight precedents and succeed.

A livable future is possible if we unite against climate change and the nuclear threat before the world self-immolates, Noam Chomsky** asserts. That's the stark either-or underlying many of the interviews in this newly published volume (Haymarket Books, 2024), conducted by C. J. Polychroniou of Truthout.org. This is the fourth volume comprising such interviews of this world's greatest living public intellectual and most cited living scholar. Some of the interviews in this volume include the economist and environmental expert Robert Pollin. Most were previously published by Truthout.

The interviews encompass the years 2022 and 2023, in reverse order, encompassing global crises such asclimate change, the consequences of the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the rising nuclear risk, while exploring at the same time neo-fascism here and abroad and the harm already done by global warming and Biden's foreign policy, arming Ukraine and Israel with dangerous weaponry.

"Optimism over despair" has always been one of Noam Chomsky's mottos, and thus he contends that humanity can avert a climate catastrophe and a nuclear holocaust, the two looming existential threats to the continued existence of the world we have created and are now destroying-- the two most important issues in world history." 

The destructiveness of climate change is our "exuberant race to destruction "Marx's exuberant script of capitalism gone berserk." 

How can we possibly make a difference at this point? "The distribution of power can be changed by an aroused public with its own very different priorities. The current masters can be controlled on a path toward elimination of their illegitimate authority. The rules of the game can be changed, in the short term modified sufficiently to enable humankind to adopt the means that have been spelled out in detail to step back from the abyss-- The alternatives are too grim to contemplate."

However, this optimism, such as it is, which appears more than once among the interviews, seems quixotic given Chomsky's judgment that "[W]e may be on the verge of the dawn of an anti-Enlightenment era, with capitalism and irrationality having gone berserk."

Before descending into world affairs, the interviews' chief focus, we must all want to know this most-quoted public intellectual's take on the future of AI. In a word, he says that "the genie is out of the bottle." In other words, AI has been shown already to surpass human performance-- to take one example, in a game of chess. In fact, "there is no Great Chain of Being with humans at the top." For years, calculators have far exceeded our relevant capabilities. Even desert ants "far exceed human navigational capacities," as do sea turtles and birds, who can migrate thousands of miles from a given point and then return to the exact place. Some aboriginal tribes among the Polynesians use wind, currents, and stars to navigate--techniques still beyond others' understanding. These skills are also topics of research. 

Language acquisition and thought among humans, though, are unique among species. Production of language "involve[es] properties that remain as mysterious to us today as when they were regarded with awe and amazement by Galileo and his contemporaries at the dawn of modern science-- we still for the most part lack understanding of [t]he internal processes that are the core objects into the nature of language, its acquisition, and use." Obstructing research are "corporate campaigns to encourage disdain for science-- first of all those whose products are murderous-- and profitable to them [--among them many neo-fascists]. Right now such processes are leading to destruction of human life worldwide."

As to human capabilities, which Chomsky distinguishes from human performance, AI engineering projects in the future will "match and even surpass human capacity to act and [perform], as have automatic calculators and insects with microscopic brains." In that AI lacks a moral faculty, "AI engineering can pose severe threats." Malicious actors "can probably find ways to avoid safeguards." We must work to find safeguards and exercise vigilance.

----------------------------- 

The other interviews detail our descent into other forms of berserk depravity: Neo-fascist trends in US modeled on Orban's actions in Hungary (more on this below); the Ukraine war draining resources that must be channeled into combatting climate change. The goal of the US is to weaken Russia into complete compliance with its goals, "down to the last Ukrainian "and to a degree considerably harsher than the treatment of Germany at Versailles a century ago," though Chomsky predicts descent into the next level of Russian offense if this happens, a further step toward midnight on the Doomsday Clock. 

A consistent theme among the interviews is US imperialism: "Why is the US so uniquely bad? It hasn't always been so." We have 800 military bases worldwide, "which, along with their very prominent role in 'defense' (aka imperial domination), enable hundreds of 'low-profile proxy wars' in Africa, the greater Middle East, and Asia." One justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine was violation of a promise made to Gorbachev when the USSR collapsed, to deter the threatening expansion of NATO beyond the nations that already comprised it. US flouting of international law is condoned, in favor of what Chomsky calls the "the rules-based international order [controlling] the effective political sovereignty of other countries, a belief in imperial benevolence and the economics of comparative advantage." Since policy planners and media commentators cannot bring themselves to say "empire," the "rules-based international order" serves as [a] euphemism which, according to Clinton Fernandes, "involves control of the effective political sovereignty of other countries, a belief in imperial benevolence and the economics of comparative advantage." This rules-based order in many ways flouts the "UN-based international order...The United Kingdom, a lieutenant with nuclear weapons and far-flung territories, supports the United States. So do subimperial powers like Australia and Israel." Moreover, the US also flouts Article VI of the Constitution, which requires compliance with all treaties made; and "If, unimaginably, the question of observing the Constitution ever reached the Supreme Court, it would be dismissed as a 'political question.'"

China is a growing threat to US hegemony, which is forcing an alliance with Russia:"That the US can split US-induced Russian and Chinese cooperation is a fantasy. Russia has scientific brilliance, abundant energy, rich rare minerals and metals, while global warming will increase the agricultural potential of Siberia. China has the capital, the markets, and the manpower to contribute to what becomes a natural partnership across Eurasia." China's Belt and Road initiative is a huge threat to the US and has so far successfully barred Europe from "perhaps the most ambitious economic and geopolitical project in world history," which runs right through Russia and "is already linking China with Europe by rail and sea. . . .now extending to Africa and even Latin America."

When the Ukraine war ends, Europe will seriously reconsider "the benefits of propping up Washington's desperate bid to maintain its global hegemony." Another huge threat to US hegemony is the integrated production system in Europe, based in Germany, which extends from the Netherlands to Russia's former Warsaw Pact countries. "[It] has become the most successful economic system in the world. It relies heavily on the huge export market and investment opportunities in China, and on Russia's rich natural resources, even including metals needed for transition to renewable energy."

Few are the places on Earth that the interviews at least don't touch upon: Turkey, India, and Pakistan (the latter two in possession of nuclear armaments), Kashmir, the harsh sanctions on Iran that aggravate suffering and abuse of innocent people; Latin America, Rwanda, the Arctic Circle, become contentious due to its yielding much-desired resources as a result of thawing caused by climate change. The global south bears minimal responsibility for the climate change and yet is suffering from its deleteriousness and "is mostly standing aloof, not joining in sanctions against Russia or breaking commercial and other relations." 

Led by the US, NATO is reaching out to several Indo-Pacific island nations off the coast of China, including Australia, New Zealand, S. Korea, and Japan-- having invited them to attend a NATO summit. The US-run Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India) is intended to play a principal role in the encirclement of China, but "one effect might be to increase the incentive for China to attack Taiwan in order to break out of the encirclement and have open access to the oceans." India, for one, is a reluctant partner [in the Quad], unwilling to fully adopt the auxiliary role. Unlike the other members of the Quad, it joins the rest of the global south in refusing to become involved in what they call the "US-Russia proxy war" in Ukraine. India cannot afford to alienate the US, a natural ally within the emerging GOP-centered alliance of reactionary states, including Hungary along with Israel and its Abraham Accord partners. That's aside from the brutal repression of Kashmir, "reportedly the most militarized territory in the world and the scene of harsh repression." This occupation further qualifies India for association with the Abraham Accords, which includes "the other two cases of criminal annexation and occupation, Israel and Morocco."

On the rise of neo-fascism in the world, there is a "radical increase in inequality in much of the world as a consequence of the neoliberal policies emanating from the US and UK and spreading beyond in various ways." A Rand Corporation study estimated almost $50 trillion in wealth taken from workers and the middle class-- the lower 90 percent of income-- and transferred to the top 1 percent during the neoliberal years. Things had gone well during "the postwar boom, [when] we actually had decreasing inequality and very limited income going to the top income brackets. For the whole period from the 1940s to the end of the 1970s, the top 1 percent of earners received 9-10 percent of total income, no more. But in the short period since 1980, their share, that is the share of the top 1 percent, has gone up to 25 percent, while the bottom 80 percent have made virtually no gains."

Public education is also under sharp attack-- an educated public is primary defense against class war. The neoliberals want the population to be passive and obedient and atomized, as well as resentful, a perfect target for demagogues. As for the underclasses themselves, next to no prioritization is attached to the nuclear threat: In France, the Yellow Vest slogan was "You privileged people are worried about the end of the world, we're worried about the end of the month": "When people are concerned about how to survive in their precarious lives, there's not much use telling them that scientists, whom they distrust anyway, are predicting dire consequences down the road." 

That has many consequences: "[I]nequality is a prime factor in the breakdown of social order. Latin America suffered two lost decades under destructive structural adjustment policies. In Yugoslavia and Rwanda such policies in the eighties sharply exacerbated social tensions, contributing to the horrors that followed." It's sometimes argued that the neoliberal policies were a grand success, pointing to the fastest reduction in global poverty in history-- which fails to add that these remarkable achievements were in China and other countries that firmly rejected the prescribed neoliberal principles. Furthermore, it wasn't the "Washington consensus" that induced US investors to relocate production to countries with much cheaper labor and limited labor rights or environmental constraints, "thereby deindustrializing America with well-known consequences for working people. Reagan and Thatcher attacked unions, leading to attacks on labor, often illegal." 

The worst crime since World War II was the long US war against Indochina. No country could even contemplate condemning the US or even discussing the issue. The offending country would be "dismantled" by the US. "The West righteously condemns Putin's annexations and calls for punishment of this reincarnation of Hitler, but scarcely dares to utter a chirp of protest when the US authorizes Israel's illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Greater Jerusalem, and Morocco's illegal annexation of Western Sahara."

Continuing on the Mideast: "[T]he region continues to be the global center for heating the world to the brink of survivability and soon beyond. And while Israel and Lebanon may soon be sinking into the sea, they are squabbling about which will have the honor of virtually destroying both of them by producing the fossil fuels at their maritime borders, acts of lunacy duplicated around the world."

On Iran: The US government has warned for a long time that Iranian nuclear programs are one of the gravest threats to world peace. Israeli has asserted time and again that it will not tolerate this danger. "The US and Israel have acted violently to overcome this grave threat: cyberwar and sabotage (which the Pentagon regards as aggression that merits violence in self-defense), numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists, constant threats of use of force ('all options are open') in violation of international law (and if anyone were to care, the US Constitution)."

On Israel: A NWFZ (nuclear weapons-free zone) in the Middle East would be the solution BUT the US will not allow the enormous Israeli nuclear arsenal, the only one in the region, to be subject to international inspection. In fact, the US won't even officially recognize that Israel's possession of nukes. "The reason, presumably, is that to do so would invoke US law, which, arguably, would render the massive US aid flow to Israel illegal." 

Chomsky refers to the Palestinians, among other peoples as "unpeople": "Israel has annexed their land, along with that of Sahrawis and Druze, in violation of the unanimous orders of the Security Council, now endorsed by the US." Moreover: "It's an open question how much domestic capital Biden will win with his expected professions of eternal love for Israel. That stance has become less popular among his liberal base than it used to be as Israel's criminal behavior becomes harder to gloss over. All-out support for Israel has shifted to Evangelicals and the right, sectors of which believe Biden is not the elected president and a substantial contingent of which believes Biden and other top Democrats are grooming children for sexual abuse. But there will still probably be some domestic gains. And it will show the hawkish elements that run foreign policy that he's committed to containment of Iran by an Israel-Saudi alliance, to borrow prevailing doctrine."

In June of 2022 at the G20 conference, many nations followed the example of the West in treating the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov "like a skunk at the tropical resort party." But others welcomed him, including the Indonesian hosts and China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Argentina, and others-- "[t]hat raises once again the question of just who is being isolated in the new world order that is taking shape."

To repeat: "Optimism over despair" has always been one of Noam Chomsky's mottos, and thus he contends that humanity can avert a climate catastrophe and a nuclear holocaust, "the two looming existential threats to the continued existence of the world we have created and are now destroying-- the two most important issues in world history." 

The world order as it stands is in grim condition, moving daily toward more and more neo-fascism. A new world order is in progress, Chomsky tells us-- the indirect illusion is to one of the mottos on the back of the US dollar bill, novus ordo seclorum (a new order of the ages [is born])--ironically, which originally dates back to a line from the Roman poet Virgil's indirect allusion to Octavian, soon to become Caesar Augustus, emperor over a Roman empire, which the poet anticipates in another context as "imperium sine fine," "an empire without boundaries." 

We can maintain what must be the senex [old] ordo, only with prompt action against climate change and the specter of nuclear annihilation. Can this "old order" otherwise improve, once nukes and climate change are off the table? Ask Chomsky. He's pretty critical. But rest assured, he'd once again attempt optimism, if possible (see below).

---------------------------------------------------

**Chomsky suffered a massive stroke in June 2023 (even though a few interviews are dated later than that). I was unable to find information about his current condition. The stroke paralyzed his right side and damaged his ability to speak. The Rozenberg Quarterly reported: "In June 2024 I was listening to Noam Chomsky (recorded) trying to make sense with extremely good poise to a Times journalist to think outside western propaganda bubble." (Click Here) He is completely alert, following events in Gaza, and raises his left arm in anger when the subject is raised. 

When in the US last year medical authorities told him and his Brazilian wife Valeria that there was nothing more they could do for him, she moved them to Brazil where he made rapid progress. Among the interviews, Chomsky praises Lula da Silva and laments that, at that time Lula was surrounded with adversaries in the other government branches. [There was a recent (2024) coup d'etat attempt by Bolsonaro there.] Lula did come to visit Chomsky last year and told him that "You are one of the most influential people in my life."

I'm speechless really.

Greg Palast has released his latest film, "Vigilantes Inc.: America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen," which warns of the killer effect of this latest incarnation of the KKK across the country, reactionary Republicans who are determined to keep Blacks from voting [Democratic] especially come Election 2024, by any and every means possible and "necessary." Today 40,000 Vigilantes work in 43 states. By August of this year, 851,000 votes had been challenged. Palast's film is a voyage through several swing states-- Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, and Michigan-- but centered in Georgia, epicenter of the Old South and election corruption, to which the filmmaker/author continually returns.

[You can stream the film for free by visiting www.gregpalast.com and downloading it from there]

A scene in Georgia of a militia in training on a grassy plain, complete with gunfire, in full Civil War regalia appears soon after the film begins. Jocular Palast approaches one Vigilante and finds out that the war never ended and will be won: The South will rise again--helped by the new "necessary" state actions that will block Blacks' registration and voting in every conceivable way. "When? Next Thursday?" he asks as the combatant chortles. 

Necessary to violate the fundamental right of every Black and other BIPOC American over 18 in this country, with Georgia as radius since 2016? Young people are another chief target as likely Democratic voters. 

And speaking of Georgia, the only passage in the original Declaration of Independence censored out was Thomas Jefferson's* paragraph on the evils of the slave trade. Who censored it? The Continental Congress at the demand of the GEORGIA delegation. Jefferson penned this draft in the home of a friend, James Habersham, first governor of Georgia, who transformed agriculture by importing the first shiploads of Black slaves from Africa. 

"Vigilantes Inc." traces Habersham's lineage to the present governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, the latest kingpin of voter suppression. And Palast pinpoints Georgia as the linchpin of a massacre of BIPOC (Black/Indigenous/People of color), especially Black, voting rights, throughout Georgia's and American history, in stunning detail. The depth of research is in itself monumental and the details devastating. Trump threatens to expunge such truths from history books as a "merciless campaign to erase our history!" 

Palast's genealogy of Black oppression intricately involves Kemp's forebears-- Kemp who when he first campaigned for political office claimed to have originated humbly. The "humble" cabin foregrounded was actually his residence on his father's sprawling estate. When he graduated from college, he already owned a construction company. Today he owns $2 mn worth of wooded acreage that supplies pulp for toilet paper manufactured by the Koch brothers. Along with multiple other holdings. 

In addition to Habersham, another Kemp ancestor spearheaded the largest auction of humans [slaves] in world history. Slaveowner and purveyor Roswell Kent presided over what the Blacks call "Weeping Time." 

It is weeping time for all of us, who become "conspiracy experts" [Palast's answer to the derogatory "conspiracy theorists"] as we review the heinous violence against Blacks as they sought to vote again and again. In 1918 Mary Turner, a Black woman nine months pregnant, was lynched-- burned and mutilated, her womb punctured and the fetus's head crushed into the ground, a day after her husband had been lynched and she dared to speak out against it. The plaque commemorating her was riddled with bullet holes so many times it had to be taken down. 

Right after the Civil War, the KKK**, a wing of the Democratic Party, formed to suppress Black votes, often violently or threatening violence. Jump to1876 when a compromise deal violating the voters' presidential choice, Samuel Tilden, gutted the Reconstruction reforms and protections against racism, such as they were. And from there jump to 1946, when KKK strategist Eugene Talmadge, nemesis of FDR and the FBI, a governor drunk "2/3 of the time," warned Blacks away from registration and going to the polls, threatening and implementing violence via his henchmen, named Vigilantes Inc. as the latest incarnation of the KKK, and formed specifically to eliminate every Black from the voter rolls. Blacks resumed registration the minute he succumbed to his addiction. 

The "Civil War Part 2," or "Jim Crow 2.0," saw daylight in 2016, when Kemp was elected as secretary of state of Georgia, part of which entails control of elections. Palast was drawn into Kemp's racist activism as Kemp collaborated with the notorious Kansas SoS Kris ("KKK") Kobach (now attorney general of Kansas) to cross-check voter rolls from multiple states to eliminate "double voters-- "those with common names like James Brown and Jose Garcia who appear in the hundreds. Their middle initials may have varied, but who cared? They were kept from voting. Caught trying to vote while Black or Latino. In 2018 Kemp's new hitlist removed half a million voters who had supposedly moved from their listed addresses. Via Amazon and Google databases, Palast's investigators found that 340,000 had not left the addresses they had registered under. 

True the Vote, a racist vote-snatching organization begun in 2009 in Texas, the "true danger to democracy in 2024," released a modern-day equivalent of the bigoted 1915 film "Birth of a Nation," which showed a Black voter sneaking an extra vote into a ballot box. In a videotaped clip repeated throughout, "2,000 Mules" (2022) documented a Black man depositing multiple mail-in votes into a ballot box, even though a Peachtree State law encourages voters to bring their families' ballots in this fashion, presumably to avoid unnecessary crowding. The filmmakers claimed to have 27 different videotapes of similar "voter fraud" incidents, but where were they? This "most impactful film of our time" [according to Trump], claiming massive voter fraud in Election 2020, enjoyed considerable success "for a political documentary," though later its credibility was debunked. 

The day after the Georgia miracle that created a Democratic majority in the Senate, with the simultaneous victories of a Black man (Rafael Warnock) and a Jewish man (Jon Ossoff), January 5, 2021, came the Trump-incited Capitol Riot, a heinous reply. Another swift reply was Georgia's SB 202, a lengthy law that works in every way possible to disenfranchise Black voters, eliminating voting on the Sunday before Election Day, when throughout the country the Souls to the Polls program buses Blacks to voting places after church services--where this particular Sunday hasn't been eliminated as an early voting day. SB 202 also initiates the right of anyone to challenge as many voters as possible, marking them on registration rolls as ineligible to vote unless they prove otherwise by documentation that they live at the addresses listed. SB 202 also makes it a felony to bring water or food to voters forced to stand in line for hours on end, typically Blacks since polls in White neighborhoods tend to run far more smoothly. And there is more repression, hundreds of pages more. 

A case in point of vote challenging is in Vigilantes Inc.'s first clip, a scene of Palast interviewing red-clad Republican operative Pamela Reardon, who challenged 32,379 Georgia voters, as newly allowed by SB 202. After acknowledging that she doesn't know any of her victims, nor details of the law, she ends up throwing him out with the invective "a**hole!" as he asks her if she still resides at her address, in case anyone might challenge her. Her well-appointed upscale home features a rifle next to the front door and bullet rounds on the mantlepiece-- certain incentive for Palast's obliging exit. A tragicomic cameo to draw us into the steady stream of racist outrages that keep us riveted throughout the film, incredulous. 

Following the Reardon scenario are the stories of Major Gamaliel Turner, temporarily stationed in California, whose vote is challenged two or three days before Election Day, and Christine Jordan, a civil rights activist and cousin of MLK, 92 years old, who hasn't missed an election in her life and voted at the same location for 50 years, also turned away from the polls. Turner's father, Joe Turner, helped found the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, working side by side with MLK and Ralph Abernathy. And so there are Black pedigrees in counterpoint to Kemp's lily-white ones, one of many bladed dualities that pervade the film where white is evil and Black is martyrdom, reversing the traditional stereotype. 

Voter fraud en masse, the reactionaries call it. Actual documented cases of voter fraud, "voting more than once in an election," are rarer than hens' teeth. Palast's example involves three convicted Republicans. 

*****

These are but few of the many anecdotes, incredible but true, hugely tragic but some with a wry edge of humor--Palast's trademark that in the retelling just as quickly draws horrified amazement: to what depths can human nature descend? "Vigilantes Inc." begins with a gun bookmarking a Bible, a Christian nationalist trope, and ends with vigorous optimism backgrounded by the Negro spiritual "Wade in the Water" with relevant updated verses. "There's a new South rising"; "We are a new generation," exclaim young Blacks. Maj. Turner has lived through passage of the Voting Rights Act as well as the rank repression and violence pinpointed repeatedly in "Vigilantes Inc." "There are those that resent all this," he says. 

"As a nation, we are stronger and better than all of that."

--------------- 

 

*Jefferson was no angel. Another paragraph he penned, calling the American Indians "savages," wasn't censored. He himself owned slaves and fathered any number of hybrid Black/white descendants. His will freed his slaves, however. 

**Ironically, the "KKK Act" passed by Congress in 1871, outlawed voter intimidation as a criminal offense.

 

 

 

"Vigilantes Inc." debuted in theaters in Hollywood this week and will travel to Oakland on September 25. As of this Friday, September 13, in anticipation of National Voter Registration Day on September 17, it will be released for nationwide distribution free of charge in coordination with Rainbow/PUSH, NAACP, Black Voters Matter, and ACLU SoCal.

An organization of professional indexers I belong to is in the midst of a public service-- indexing a document of more than 900 pages, reminiscent of a similar gesture not long ago, an index created for Barbra Streisand's autobiography. Many will agree that, particularly in the case of nonfiction publications, indexes are very helpful. A broad dissemination of the index will encourage more readership and more analytical readership, I'm sure.

The document being indexed is the 2025 Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, aka Project 2025, recently published online by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. 

Enough has been published about the document, and many analyses in book form, that I need do no more than reiterate how scary it is for the future of our country and how destructive to the elements of democracy we enjoy, admittedly far from an ideal democracy, but hugely preferable to this proffered alternative. I'm all for the "lesser of two evils" this election cycle.

In this article I explore what I've so far culled on the subject of elections. In the section on the Federal Election Commission, which handles issues relevant to US government electoral campaign financing, pp. 861-66, endnotes on p. 867, I found what seems to my editorial eye to be an error. Six commissioners are named, with their year of tenure completion specified. The text reads: "In 2025, when a new President assumes office, the term of five of the current FEC commissioners will have either expired or be about to expire." Note that there is not an assumption here about who the president will be-- not here anyway. 

But the six-year terms of four out of six commissioners have already expired: Mr. Cooksey's in 2021, Ms. Broussard's in 2023, Mr. Trainor's in 2023, and Ms. Weintraub's in 2007. That leaves two commissioners, Mr. Dickerson and Ms. Lindenbaum, holding unexpired tenures, 2025 and 2027, respectively. No reason is given why the four commissioners are serving beyond their tenure dates, but Wikipedia states that they will step aside once replaced, though they're free to resign at any time. Presumably the powers that be in the Senate cannot agree on new nominees [by the president].

Also, FEC is not a priority for recent presidents; only one of the commissioners, Dickerson, is a Trump appointee. Lindenbaum was appointed by President Biden. The history of the FEC is fractious and the three to three ratio of parties represented guarantees that few issues will be agreed upon unanimously and many will be gridlocked by a tie vote. This indeed is the case, though I don't have the relevant details for this article.

And this leads me to my last point: the authors of Project 2025 insist that the current partisan distribution, three to three, is essential, though the law that established the FEC in 1974 specifies only that a president can "scramble partisan orthodoxy and appoint independents or Libertarians to the commission--federal law only mandates that the commission feature no more than three members from any one political party." (Click Here)

Project 2025 doesn't consider any other possibility than the presence of the two dominant political parties. In detail, in defending the present balance [gridlock?], it states: "The President should vigorously oppose all efforts, as proposed, for example, in Section 6002 of the "For the People Act of 2021," to change the structure of the FEC to reduce the number of commissioners from six to five or another odd number. The current requirement of four votes to authorize an enforcement action, provide an advisory opinion, or issue regulations, ensures that there is bipartisan agreement before any action is taken and protects against the FEC being used as a political weapon. [italics mine]

"With only five commissioners, three members of the same political party could control the enforcement process of the agency, raising the potential of a powerful [?] federal agency enforcing the law on a partisan basis against the members of the opposition political party. [italics mine] Efforts to impose a "nonpartisan" or so-called "independent" chair are impractical; the chair will inevitably be aligned with his or her appointing party, at least as a matter of perception."

The logic of the above assertions certainly argues well for appointing an even number of Republicans and Democrats to other government entities, such as the Supreme Court--to avoid partisan bias. Is gridlock preferable to partisan control, especially in the negative direction that has most recently assailed the country? The decisive power might revert to decisions issued by lower courts before they were appealed to the "highest authorities."

As far as "enforcing the law on a partisan basis against the members of the opposition political party," what's going on in SCOTUS if not that?

I guess I have a woke look about me, I guess especially when I wear a bright blue shirt. Yesterday I attended a light lunch featuring the mayor of Pindrop, PA, a nondescript but sprawling suburb of Philadelphia. He was there to speak about the future of Pindrop, which intrigued me.

We don't have a quaint, evocative town centre like many boroughs in this scenic county. I knew better than to complain about the municipal buildings, all contemporary brick rectangles spread on a road in the midst of residential subdivisions. At least they're close together, though you can't see the post office from the road until you've passed by. I always end up pulling into the wrong place and then sighting it from a distance.

A first-world issue when most of the rest of the world is in harm's way for one reason or another.

Anyway, the mean age of the mean audience at the light lunch was about 80, so I felt young-- the only people younger was one man at my table, someone's son brought along for the light lunch and to spend time with his parents, I guess. Also, the mayor's assistant and the mayor himself, bordering on old age but certainly not the spry 87 he claimed to be.

I say "mean audience" because the minute I sat down with my light lunch (sandwich, Doritos, and a bottle of water), a woman at the other end of the table introduced herself without a smile and promptly complained under her breath about a commercial by Biden claiming that he was handsome-- afterwards once he'd listed his accomplishments of course (my note-- I saw the commercial last night). Then, to no one in particular she stated flatly that she was for Trump. I sat there benignly. I didn't have to add that I was woke and had different inclinations.

The others, men, introduced themselves in a more friendly fashion. We ate and then the mayor was introduced by someone standing on the wrong side of the room, scarcely audible.

Then the polished pol said some appeasing words or other, about how long he'd been in office, nearly 30 years, and his lively assistant added that she'd been working for him nearly that long. Stability. He made some general remarks about how safe we were and what a diverse community Pindrop is-- Muslims, mosques, temples, churches--he specified several denominations and rolled his eyes around and his assistant clarified synagogues loudly. Then followed words about how few immigrants there were, even in the City (that's Philadelphia), a good thing. I looked around the room for people of color and there were none, though we have a few in my apartment community, including a defiant black woman next door to me who will say nothing beyond "hi" to any of us, overly cheery. For a time she had a "Black Lives Matter" banner on her balcony and after Christmas for some reason hung a wreath on her front door--every day is Christmas? 

A Q&A followed: too many potholes in the road, the nearby moribund and depressing mall where a gym and a church will relocate now that it's in new hands. The gas station right outside my complex that's been closed since I moved here in 2020 just ahead of Covid-- a depressing sight that puts off people coming to visit, in search of more scenic views on this most scenic road in Pindrop. There's an ice vendor next to it that's open 24/7.

More conversation including much interpersonally despite the mayor's presence among the tables. The audience was stimulated. I had to sit with my back to my table to see the mayor and apologized to the man sitting next to me who said something like "Honey, it's fine--you'll face me when I become mayor!" 

I left immediately after amid a roomful of animated people chatting away even though the mayor tried to block my path, having mumbled about liking people even if they're politically opposed. Mumbled in passing.

So why was I in such a good mood? I went home and emailed a neighbor who is one of few here who agrees with my politics. She promptly called me to thank me for the laughs and told me she never attends "these things."

So why was I in such a good mood? I needed to get out, sunk past my knees in an impossible freelancing project. But more than that, as Simon and Garfunkel sang so many years, I realized that I'd gone to look for America and found it, happy in the small-townish folksiness, used to sticking out like a sore thumb among groups. Despite the politics and being a Martian yesterday, I'd found what I'd gone to find, a folksy down-home pol and likemindedness and community.

Need I add that in 2020, the minute that Trump lost, defeated by absentee votes from our City, you could hear a pin drop in this community? Then a lone young man had the nerve to stand in my courtyard and cheer. I had turned on Schubert's Ave Maria and listened to it in a daze for an hour, well aware of the conflagration that would follow but stealing an hour to breathe free, the daughter of immigrants on all four sides, stealing an oasis from these hard times, harder and harder by the hour, the Doomsday Clock ticking closer and closer to 12.

Nothing like escaping for an hour, every once in a while.

Escaping for an hour.

I am the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust refugees, including a paternal grandfather who spent three months at Dachau before a relative bribed the Nazis to release him. My maternal grandmother emigrated here from Poland to avoid the fate of one younger sister who with her family was taken to Auschwitz, all murdered, after she refused to leave her schtetl in Poland, claiming that the antisemitic plague would pass over.

My father escaped Vienna before Krystallnacht. A professional engineer with $6 in his pocket, sponsored by a well-established relative in Brooklyn, a radiologist, he refused all monetary assistance and got a job as a hospital orderly. After working that job for two years, he raised enough money to bring what was left of his family here. He had lost a grandmother and aunt to Auschwitz. He brought over two sisters and his parents, one unrecognizable from his time spent at Dachau, who lived another fifteen years smoking himself to death with emphysema, prison camp numbers tattooed on one of his wrists that he never discussed.

My father found wealthy Jewish sponsors in Trenton, where he settled. They introduced him to my mother and together they had three children. I was raised in an extremely xenophobic and racist environment. My grandparents and parents became ardent Zionist activists and wanted to send me to Israel for summers when I was in high school, which I flatly refused. It took me a lifetime to shed the prejudices that ran in my bloodstream—including several years off and on attending Quaker meetings and socializing with liberal Muslims in interfaith groups—to finally travel to Israel on an ecumenical ten-day tour in 2018. I met relatives and childhood friends there, all Jewish, all anxious to coexist in peace with Palestinians—Israelis and others. The atmosphere was tense there. Military weren’t evident, but in Tel Aviv, where I met one friend, we dined outdoors alone. The restaurants were almost empty. No music played. I so enjoyed the reunions that I didn’t think about dangers but realized later why we dined alone. The atmosphere in Jerusalem was more normal.

With all of this baggage and resistance to it, what do I make of the October 7 massacres and the carnage that follows? With such a worldwide display of opposition to Israeli requitals, I hope that the resultant anti-Semitism might give way to a larger conclusion—the horrors of decimating innocent civilians that must stop: the conviction that has bloodied history time after devastating time that war is the answer to political conflicts activated by political powers.

Like most of us, I want peaceful solutions. Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values, wrote Vachel Lindsay. Hamas claims that all of its attempted nonviolent gestures to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians have failed, and violence was their only recourse. Another axiom comes to mind at a mundane level: how many traffic lights have been installed at unsafe locations only after death occurs? When will gun control take effect in this country in the wake of so much violence? Who knows? What will it take?

What must be undone is this foundation of patriarchal culture that abets violence as solutions to conflict at every level, from domestic abuse to world wars. Human nature must evolve. An eye for an eye turns the whole world blind, said Gandhi. Jesus reiterated the Mosaic commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and advocated turning the other cheek if one is hit, even while prophesying war at the end of times. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he also preached, “because they will be called sons of God.”

Why all the violence condoned by God as Joshua and Caleb plundered Canaanites to establish Israel and Judea as the Hebrew homeland? A God who ruled “Thou shalt not kill”? The Canaanites were all called evil, justifying the slaughter. I imagine that Netanyahu sees himself as reiterating this calling toward violence, even as his activities in the preceding few years diminished the border security of Israel in favor of other objectives. I have read that he stopped worrying about Hamas, funneling millions to them via Qatar, hence secure that he could concentrate on the West Bank, condoning Jewish settlement on Palestinian properties there. 

The blockaded entry points into Israel for Palestinians who worked there were set up to prevent suicide bombers from entering. And indeed suicide bombing virtually ended once these checkpoints were set up, but at least when I visited, the atmosphere was tense, at least in Tel Aviv, as I said.

It’s not right for innocent people to have to suffer for the sins of violent aggressors. A basic tenet of “civilization” must be overturned. War is not the answer. Human nature must evolve—seemingly an impossible solution but one I pursue, standing on the shoulders of giants, the peace activists of the world. I have a book of examples of peaceful solutions to conflicts throughout history., “52 True Stories of Nonviolent Success,” which includes the defeat of Apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chile ousting Pinochet, the Montgomery bus boycott, and more, all the way back to the ancient Roman plebeian strike in 260 CE, the year that Valerian was succeeded by his son Galienus, and the Jewish nonviolent resistance against the raising of a statue of Caligula in the Temple of Jerusalem in 41 CE.

Instances of “successful” (?) wars far outnumber these amazing exceptions. What of the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, ending the decimation and slaughter of Jews, six million of whom were already dead? Some peace activist justify it as an exception, others don’t.

“How many deaths will it take til ["man"] knows/ that too many people have died?” asked Bob Dylan. The number of deaths is already beyond infinite, the number of ruined lives. 

Jews and Palestinians must peacefully share Israel. The violence must end. I don’t know how. We must fight an ultimate war, against that part of human nature that demands war as a solution. A war of peace.

 

When a special counsel heads up a commission to investigate the findings of a previous commission, with negative and politicized motivations blatant, what can the outcome be but a waste of time and taxpayer money and hugely destructive outcomes for untold numbers of innocent people? The report in question takes up 306 pages, and this is a large-type version, and approximately 159,000 words. Headed up by Special Counsel John H. Durham, it is entitled "Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns." It has been described as "a Trump-friendly probe that weaponized law enforcement against Trump's opponents and absolved Trump supporters from their collusion with Russia to tilt the 2016 U.S. presidential election their way." Alternet reports that "The investigation concluded last May with underwhelming results: A single guilty plea from a little-known FBI lawyer, resulting in probation, and two acquittals at trial by juries." 

Andrew Kreig, attorney, activist, and well-known investigator, has been following the less-than-brilliant career of special counsel Durham, former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Connecticut, for more than a decade. He is not surprised that in the course of Durham's investigation, "[F]our federal judges have vacated on grounds of prosecution misconduct convictions that had been won by Durham and his close colleagues." 

In his newly published The Completely Annotated Durham "Russiagate" Report: A Corrupt, Cruel Fraud, Andrew dissects Durham's 175,000 words with an introduction that gives the complete background of Durham and his crass motivations, adds the complete, unedited, annotated report itself, and follows up with an appendix that includes a bibliography of all publications and official reports at all related to Durham's activities as well as thumbnail bios of all figures involved, including Steve Bannon, James A. Baker, Christopher Steele, Michael D. Cohen, James B. Comey Jr., Marc Elias, Michael T. Flynn, and many others. Notable among them, and included right after the first thumbnail, of Trump, is former Attorney General Bill Barr, chief instigator and supporter of Durham's thoroughly destructive efforts that possibly wrought untold damage to this country, including Trump's election.* 

In one summary of his blockbuster revelations, Andrew's findings "show that his [Durham's] zeal to protect his Trump patrons and smear Hillary Clinton leads him to keep scapegoating targets absolved by juries. Worse, [Durham] cherry-picks evidence to avoid documenting serious threats to U.S. elections from Russians and their nefarious U.S. allies." 

Andrew leaves nothing to the imagination. Durham's performance at the recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on his report was evasive and ill-informed at best, lacking credibility and hugely disappointing fellow partisans who had hoped for refutation of the Mueller committee's findings. The conclusion was supposed to be that "a Clinton 'Plan' hoked-up a false 'Russiagate' scandal whereby Trump and Russia were falsely accused of collusion or other improper activities regarding the 2016 election and beyond." 

Why has the public not been better informed about this outrage sooner? Andrew has meticulously documented all MSM and other coverage of all related events as another section of his voluminous appendix. But more than that, as he writes, the sweeping takeover of the media by a few billionaire conglomerates has eliminated many vehicles that would have reached far more of the reading public--for example, small-town publications like the Marion County Record, recently invaded by police in a blatant violation of its First Amendment rights. 

A judicious reading of the book and all the references it supplies is a sine qua non. Reading Andrew's full opus is a PhD program in areas the MSM has neglected or concealed from the public in journalism, politics, ethics, and history that must be disseminated. His passionate pursuit of justice and integrity is updated daily at his website justice-integrity.org and most evident in his previous books Presidential Puppetry and Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America's Oldest Newspaper. 

Will Andrew's encyclopedic and heroic efforts to reach more people succeed with this publication? That's up to all of us. Get the word out. It's available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0988672871. 

 

*It is noteworthy that Nora Dannehy, a deputy to Durham, stepped down from her position in the DOJ in 2020, conscience-stricken, she said, to be associated with former Attorney General Bill Barr's handling of the Trump-Russia report. Barr had helped lead the Department of Justice in efforts to "press her and Durham to act in the service of Trump's reelection," according to the Connecticut Mirror. Dannehy has since been "fast-tracked" by Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont to become a justice of that state's supreme court and been approved by a committee of the General Assembly. This despite her work "whitewashing the US attorney firing scandal of 2006 that left in place those who prosecuted Siegelman and so many other progressives," according to Kreig.

The book's updated hardcover launch is planned for an Oct. 4 dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, where the author serves on its Freedom of the Press Committee, featuring speakers describing the global importance of well-functioning justice and media.

To read a clear and comprehensive account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that began on April 19, 1943, Passover eve that year, go to https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising.

I visited the monument in Warsaw years ago, in the wake of WWII, when the city was largely in ruins, though the historic Old Town had been rebuilt and a newly erected “birthday cake”-style concrete government building, the Palace of Culture, loomed high. My father took my family of five—mother, two brothers, and me—along for two months there while he worked for the United Nations as an engineering consultant for the Communist government.

It was grim. We were instructed to keep our mouths shut about the virtues of democracy or the dearth of food supplies compared with our bounty in the United States. People walked down the streets with visible war injuries: missing limbs, facial features. Some would stop us wanting to change their zlotys into dollars and others would vociferously complain about the constant procession of wars in their country and yes, about the current governmental system. I admired their courage.

We visited the museum at Auschwitz. I remember more details than those at the Ghetto monument: a sign “Work leads to freedom” (Arbeit macht frei) at the entrance; a gallows; glass cases filled with shoes and other personal effects; a large, hollow gas chamber.

Here are some fragments of a poem I wrote about that experience:

Thin dry wind,

Sun burning, aching, glaring;

Barbed-wire fence

—the power’s off now, the power’s off now, the power’s off now.

Barbed-wire fence, the power’s off now;

Handful of visitors,

Quiet.

 

Arbeit macht frei!

Welcome to prisons

and concrete chambers with smokestacks!

Smoke that was people met air that was clear.

Met air that was clear, met air that was clear!

Smoke that was people met air that was clear.

Handful of visitors, 

Quiet.

 

Museum of millions

A handful now bear—

 

I was there.

 

My paternal great-grandmother and great aunt were killed at Auschwitz, as were my maternal great grandparents and one of their daughters with her husband and three children.

In the latter case, my great uncle went to the tiny village outside of Bialystock, Poland, to plead with them to migrate to the US as he had along with another sibling, my grandmother—the youngest sister had gone to Israel. They dismissed his warnings, sure that the toxic prejudices would pass.

My paternal grandfather was kidnapped by Nazis on Krystallnacht and taken to Dachau for forcedlabor. Some wealthy British relatives bribed the Nazis to release him after three months. There is a photo of him emaciated after that ordeal. He survived for another fifteen years, brought to the US by my father along with his two daughters and wife, all of whom migrated to Los Angeles after afew years in Trenton, NJ.

Details of life in Nazi-ruled Vienna handed down to me were few. No one wanted to take about them,understandably. My father did tell us of days when his mother would wake them up with the news that there would be nothing to eat for the day. He also warned us children that we might feel secure—just as he did growing up in Vienna freely among Gentiles—he and his eldest sister were both romantically Involved with Christians when they were forced to emigrate.

Beyond that, my father was grateful for the tolerance in this country and considered it a privilege to pay taxes every year. Sitting comfortably at the head of the dinner table, he would from time to time remind us how lucky we were. He was proud of his meteoric career success here—from hospital orderly when he first emigrated to Brooklyn, sponsored by a well-established relative who’d become a successful radiologist--to world-class HVAC engineer with 29 patented inventions.

Growing up among first-generation refugees was largely in a xenophobic minor key and I purposely assimilated--though as a teenager haunted with my father’s warnings beseeched close Christian friends to shelter me in the event of a Holocaust. I married a Christian and had a daughter with him. I wanted to dilute, not suppress the painful legacy for her while gently teaching her about her heritage from my side of the family.

She is fully assimilated and at the same time proud of her immigrant roots and passing them on to her two young daughters. 

To know how many Holocaust deniers there are and that the numbers are growing; that Trumpism has unearthed latent Nazism into society is disquieting.  I live each day to the fullest and hope for the best. I can’t predict the future but if one thing is clear, it is that lessons from the past are forgotten and buried like the bones of slaughtered Jews and all others who have perished as a result of holocausts and other manmade violence all over the world.

live .taticflikr.com "End of the Day" VD 177707

“Marta, you look so sad, as if the world were coming to an end,” said Mom many times when I was young.

Young? At least I had a future. And the sun had billions of years to endure before imploding, and by that time we’d have invented ways to survive beyond that.

These days, “The future” as we think of it could easily end in less than a decade.

It evolved for the youngest generations already, because for the first time in a long time the quality of their lifestyles will not equal or surpass their parents’. In other words, the American Dream is dead for most of them, victims of the economy and their college debt, if they chose to invest in a future that now entails drudgery rather than inspiring pursuits. 

Education as a ladder? Oh well. Literacy is eroding as is the value placed on it. Illiterate people are being chosen to govern us.

And so Enlightenment values, the basis of the founding of this country, are eroding. The consequences of that also assail us.

Nature and culture alike are on the skids.

If the Biden government were to “effectively” respond to the UN Committee report released this week, the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)  (a summary of its contents for policymakers is at https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf), they would publicize a list of immediate actions we all must take to extend our existence beyond the next few years, after which the Earth is predicted to become uninhabitably warm. But politics intervenes even though the End of the World is surely something more exigent. At this crucial point, with the economy reeling and conservative extremism challenging moderate politics-as-usual, declaring a climate emergency would alienate voters of all stripes but especially conservative ones. 

But there is a crucial climate emergency, Joe & co. Each one of our lifestyles should drastically change, from corporate to individual. Turn off the heat and the smokestacks. Writ large, drastic change must sacrifice the present to the Future. The advent of the omniscient Bot won’t change things, even with its store of Everything We Know, even with all of Its suggested syntheses, brilliant or not.

An immediate to-do list must be generated and followed, no kidding. Austerity for all of us, even billionaires, in every way. 

Otherwise, the Future is caput.

If I were young, I’d be very, very mad.

 

Blyth, Ss Mary & Martin's church - Doom painting
(Image by Jules & Jenny)   Details   DMCA

I went to ChatGPT to ask where to go and what to do to escape the UN committee's prophecy about the overheating of the Earth in less than 10 years--if we don't take drastic measures immediately. The window was temporarily out of service, but it occurs to me that so many will acquire answers to the same question that the refuge--New Zealand?--will be overloaded in no time, so that my question is well-nigh useless.

Who wants to live in the luxurious safe havens being built by and for billionaires? They won't survive the imploding ecosystem for long. In less than ten years, will Elon Musk's forays to Mars have resulted in hospitable new homes for a few billionaires there? Or further trips to the Moon post haste? I'd wager not.

I wish "they'd" apply all that energy and acquired knowledge to saving the world for all of us instead of a few tycoons. Who really deserves to survive? Where are the Noahs? Saving the world? It's already imploding with earthquakes and climate change. A gradual process to read about in the headlines before experiencing it ourselves. I wonder if some sources are sending out eschatological witnessing in space capsules? 

"Here's the way the world was: blind to the truth. Here's what happened before we perished": fill in the blank in 25 words or less: "Most of the world was starving, diseased, perishing altogether, and way underserved. Some religious souls prophesied that God ordained the End and would save believers." Add another 25? "Science and technology taught us so much about reality! Many truths but no other Truth--where do we really come from and does God exist?"

What else might this sort of time capsule witness? Write an old-fashioned Britannica- or Wikipedia-style history of Earth's reality. How would you sum it up succinctly? Maybe there's one word. I know there are millions. Maybe the right words will lead to a right conclusion how to save our own lives? Kevin Marley's great OEN-headlined article "Moonshot: Ten Ideas to Save This Frickin' World" (Click Here) proposes ingenious solutions but we need them much sooner, if the UN committee report is accurate.