trump has said that he wants to either send flag burners to jail for a year, or to take away their citizenship. I say he should be denied citizenship in the human race.
Trump Threatens Flag Burners... A Challenge to All Who Will Stand with HUMANITY
November 30, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On November 29, Donald Trump threatened: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences—perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Make no mistake: This is part of a whole fascist assault on people’s rights, and the rule of law, shredding established constitutional rights, and imposing open violent repression against dissent.
Joey Johnson and the RNC 16 did the right thing when they burned the American flag in Cleveland outside the arena where Trump was being nominated. Joey Johnson and other flag-burners were violently assaulted by pro-Trump thugs associated with Alex Jones and InfoWars, and police. Now Joey Johnson and others—the RNC 16—face serious criminal charges. Others who have burned the flag did the right thing as well, including students at Pitt, at Hampshire College, and protesters outside the White House when Trump was elected.
Burning the American flag is constitutionally protected free speech. In 1984, Joey Johnson burned the American flag outside the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas as Ronald Reagan was being renominated for a second term. He was arrested for “desecration of a venerated object,” jailed, tried, convicted, sentenced to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine. Joey Johnson appealed the conviction and fought for five years to the U.S. Supreme Court. And he fought in the court of public opinion against forced patriotism. The support built outside the court, combined with the legal strategy of his legal team (including William Kunstler) led to a Supreme Court decision that burning the American flag is constitutionally protected free speech.
But now the president-elect of the United States, the next commander in chief, just decreed—without any legal justification—that this act of dissent and free speech should result in people going to jail, or even becoming stateless people without citizenship, without any legal protections at all. Trump’s threat smacks of the Nazi legislation—and the Nazi mentality—that made it a crime to “profane” the swastika. This is deadly serious. It is a hint, along with so many other outrages, of the kind of fascist regime that Trump intends to impose. It is yet another reason why people cannot normalize this, but must actually undertake unprecedented resistance to prevent Trump from consolidating his regime.
In response to Trump’s threat, the Revolution Club, NYC burned the American flag outside Trump’s hotel, and challenged others to do the same.
People SHOULD TAKE UP THAT CHALLENGE!
Because the United States was founded on slavery, Black people still have no rights this white supremacist system is bound to respect, and there is an epidemic of unpunished murder by police.
Because the U.S.A. was built on and continues to carry out genocide of the native peoples.
Because America was created by stealing half of Mexico’s land in a war of conquest, rape and plunder in 1846-48.
Because in America a woman is raped every two minutes and a woman is battered every nine seconds—violence fueled by a culture of porn and patriarchy.
Because the U.S. massacred over 200,000 innocent civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, with nuclear bombs and is the only country that’s ever used them.
Because the U.S. murdered three million people during the Vietnam War and has killed over 1.3 million in the Middle East since 9/11.
Because America imprisons two million people, mostly Black and Latino—more than any country on earth.
Because the U.S. terrorizes and demonizes immigrants, deporting 1.7 million in the last five years alone.
Because America’s wealth comes from exploiting and enslaving millions of people here and around the world, including children, from Mexico to China to Congo to Bangladesh.
Because America has done more to destroy the planet’s environment than any other country on earth—the U.S. military is the single greatest institutional polluter in the world.
For all those reasons and a million more, and because people need to stand up to and defy Trump’s move to impose fascism...
And because if Trump gets away with silencing and intimidating people with this threat, coming on the heels of appointing fascists to his cabinet, that will be one more big step in imposing fascist terror against all dissent...
And here’s the most important thing: The world does NOT have to be this way. And because of the work, and leadership of Bob Avakian, there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal.
So right now, there is an urgent need for people to do two things. First, to confront the threat on so many fronts posed by Trump’s fascism and carry out unprecedented resistance to prevent him from consolidating this. Second, to dig deeply the nature of this system, what it does to people here and around the world, and to dig into and get with the movement for revolution that is organizing to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time.
The genocide continues, as the imperialist motherfuckers show once again that profit is far more important than human lives, and greed is their driving force. Fuck them. They will lose.
ALERT! North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple Signs Executive Order for Mandatory Evacuation of Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock, Effective Immediately! RESPONSE: We Aren't Going Anywhere!
November 28, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From revcom.us correspondents at Standing Rock:
In a further escalation of the outrageous eviction of water protectors from Oceti Sakowin camp, the main camp here at Standing Rock, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple just gave an executive order, effective immediately, to evacuate the camp, under threat of arrest. Dalrymple sites the reason behind this order to be 'public safety concerns'.
The Governor of North Dakota, who gave the green light to Morton County Sheriff's department spraying water cannons at water protectors in below freezing temperatures, is now concerned with public safety?
Just let that sink in for a minute...
This order is so THICK with gross hypocrisy, it is hard to even know where to start.
First of all, if Dalrymple had ANY concern for the safety of the public, he would not be letting the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) go through, as it an actual danger to the health and safety of the Native people, and to millions more who depend on the Missouri River as their main water source.
He would not be unleashing his pigs to brutalize people, set their dogs on people, shoot rubber bullets at people, spray freezing cold water at people in freezing temperatures, seriously injure people with concussion grenades, spray people in the face point blank with mace and pepper spray.
In the order, Dalrymple states:
"Any action or inaction taken by any party which encourages persons to enter, reenter, or remain in the evacuation area will be subject to penalties as defined in law."
In other words, free speech has just been criminalized and any call for people to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux, to stand up against DAPL, and to oppose this outrageous escalation in this struggle will be subject to "penalties as defined in law." And in addition to this, notice the wording, "or inaction taken." This could very well lead to tribal leaders coming under attack for not actively leading people to comply with this order.
He also states:
"I direct state agencies, emergency service officials, and nongovernmental organizations to reduce threats to public safety by not guaranteeing the provision of emergency and other governmental and nongovernmental services in the evacuation area, unless otherwise approved on a case by case basis by the Morton County Sheriff or Superintendent of the Highway Patrol."
This amounts to a big FUCK YOU to the water protectors, whom he has just deemed “criminals” with the swipe of a pen, and he is saying: unless and until you vacate this land, you will not be allowed any emergency services. Hundreds of water protectors have been injured at the hands of the Sheriff's deputies and state police. Dalrymple is saying when his thugs, now, brutalize people as they did when they almost blew off the arm of Sophia Wilansky with a concussion grenade, they will be denied medical emergency aid by the very police that brutalized them!
Hey Dalrymple...
If you are reading this, it seems to me like YOU are the threat to public safety in this case. YOU are the one calling for this escalation, not the water protectors. You have no idea how determined the people are, and how capable we are of getting through this brutal winter. And do you want to know why? Because the Native Americans and everyone who has come to stand up here are the ones who are actually concerned with the health and safety of the public, not just here at Standing Rock, but throughout the country, and the planet as a whole. We are protecting the water from people like you, who viciously resort to brutal and deadly force to enforce a system that can do no other than destroy the environment and continue to commit genocide against Native and other oppressed peoples. You don't give a damn about humanity or the environment.
Just when you think you have a lot of information about relevant topics, and a good general outline of what it means to live in a lying imperialist country, some book or documentary comes along to blast you out of complacency. 13th is just that sort of film. I watched it last night, and you should see it NOW !
Okay assholes, here's the true meaning of thanksgiving, both in the u.s. and here.....
Case #77: Christopher Columbus Brought Genocide and Slavery to the "New World," and America Celebrates Him for It
October 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Bob Avakian recently wrote that one of three things that has “to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this.” (See “3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.”)
In that light, and in that spirit, “American Crime” is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.
Spaniards killing women and children and feeding their remains to dogs. Illustration based on eyewitness account by Bartolomé de las Casas, in his book published in the 16th century.
THE CRIME: On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailing for Spain, landed on what is now the Bermuda Islands. Columbus is celebrated in the U.S. as the person who first “discovered” the “New World,” making it possible for those who came after him, through hard work, to create the greatest global power in the world today, as the official declaration of “Columbus Day” as a national holiday would have you believe.
Columbus did not “discover” the Americas—they had been inhabited by many different indigenous peoples for some 13,000 years. But he did bring conquest and enslavement, and launched one of the most massive, horrific genocides in human history.
Columbus was searching for a shorter route to the East Indies (South and Southeast Asia), in pursuit of gold and new peoples to exploit and convert to Christianity, and initially thought that's what he'd found. He and his crew were first met by the indigenous Arawaks, who swam out to welcome them. At the time, it’s estimated that roughly 250,000 Arawaks inhabited the nearby island Columbus named “Hispaniola”—today's Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. The Arawaks lived in communal, agricultural villages, without horses, iron implements—or prisons or prisoners. Columbus wrote they “are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone....”
But Columbus was making his own calculations from the moment he encountered them: “They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them.... They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
There is a semi-official narrative about the history and the “greatness” of America, which says that this greatness of America lies in the freedom and ingenuity of its people, and above all in a system that gives encouragement and reward to these qualities. Now, in opposition to this semi-official narrative about the greatness of America, the reality is that—to return to one fundamental aspect of all this—slavery has been an indispensable part of the foundation for the “freedom and prosperity” of the USA. The combination of freedom and prosperity is, as we know, still today, and in some ways today more than ever, proclaimed as the unique quality and the special destiny and mission of the United States and its role in the world. And this stands in stark contradiction to the fact that without slavery, none of this—not even the bourgeois-democratic freedoms, let alone the prosperity—would have been possible, not only in the southern United States but in the North as well, in the country as a whole and in its development and emergence as a world economic and military power.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:8
He immediately took several Arawaks captive, demanding they lead him to the source of the gold on the tiny ornaments they wore. Discovering gold was the reason the Spanish king and queen had backed his voyage. In return, Columbus was to receive 10 percent of all the wealth he brought back, and be appointed governor over the colonized territories. Columbus soon sailed to Cuba and then to nearby Hispaniola where, “bits of visible gold in the rivers, and a gold mask presented to Columbus by a local Indian chief, led to wild visions of gold fields,” Howard Zinn wrote in A People’s History of the United States.
On Hispaniola, the Spanish built a fort (the 39 sailors left to find gold were later killed by the Arawaks). Meanwhile, Columbus took 15 captured Arawak Indians back to Spain. He presented them to the king and queen as evidence, along with exaggerated claims of massive gold mines, that he should be given backing to return with more vessels and troops. Columbus promised he would bring back “as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask.”
Based on these promises, in 1493 Columbus went back to the Caribbean islands with 17 ships and over 1,200 men. From his base on Hispaniola, Columbus sent out expeditions from island to island, capturing Indians and searching for gold fields. Finding none, and needing to fill their ships for the return voyage, in 1495 Columbus sent an expedition that, as Zinn writes, “went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships.” Two hundred died crossing the ocean; those who survived were sold in Spain to be used by artisans and as domestics.
In the Criminals’ Own Words:
“Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.”
―Columbus, writing of his enslavement of the native people
“Gold is the most excellent; gold is treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world.”
—Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1503, after his final voyage
But with too many slaves dying in captivity, and having to make good on his promise of gold to the Crown and the Church, in Haiti all persons 14 years or older were forced to work in gold mines until exhausted. It’s estimated that within eight months, nearly a third died. Each had to collect at least a thimble of gold dust every three months. This was a nearly impossible task: the only gold to be found were bits visible in some rivers. As many as 10,000 had their hands cut off and tied around their necks while they bled to death for failing to meet their quota. Others fled and were hunted down with dogs and killed.
Once the Spaniards figured out there were no gold fields, they forced the indigenous people into slave labor on huge feudal agricultural estates called encomiendas, where they were worked to death.
The Arawaks tried to organize resistance, but were no match for the Spanish armaments. Those captured were hanged or burned to death, triggering the start of mass suicides among the Arawaks, including babies deliberately poisoned by their mothers rather than see them tortured. In two years, half of the 250,000 indigenous people in Haiti were dead. By 1515, only 50,000 Arawaks remained; by 1550, there were 500. And this was just the beginning of the massive genocide of native peoples in the Americas by European powers and their colonial settlers, set in motion by Christopher Columbus and his “discovery.”
The atrocities committed by the Spaniards were so gruesome they’re hard to imagine. Bartolomé de las Casas, a former slave owner who became bishop of Chiapas, described some of what he witnessed in his book History of the Indies.The Spanish “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices of them to test the sharpness of their blades.... Two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.” Las Casa concluded: “Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel. My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature that now I tremble as I write.”
The Criminals:
Christopher Columbus: Columbus made four voyages to the West Indies, and he was the first to engage in savagery, slavery, and to commit genocide in the New World. Among his many crimes, Columbus supervised the selling of native girls—the ages nine and 10 were most desired by his men—into sexual slavery. He forced the native peoples to work in the gold mines until they died of exhaustion, killing anyone who resisted. Catholic law forbade enslaving Christians; so Columbus refused to baptize the people of Hispaniola. If the Spaniards ran short of meat for their dogs, Arawak babies were killed for dog food.
On his third voyage in 1498, Columbus landed on the island of Trinidad and explored the area off the north coast of South America, before returning to the Spanish colony in Hispaniola. Columbus’s reputation, and that of his two brothers, was so horrific that they were arrested by the governor and shipped back to Spain in chains in 1500. But because of his great assistance to the Crown, Columbus was pardoned by the King and Queen of Spain and let go.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain: By continually financing the crimes of Columbus, they enabled the brutality, exploitation, and enslavement to expand continually. For them this was a profitable investment, but not only that. It served the goals of the Catholic Church, which were to expand the conversion of souls to Christianity—in opposition to Islam—around the world.
Pope Alexander VI and the Catholic Church: In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a Papal Bull (or decree)—Inter caetera—which declared the full backing of the Catholic Church to Columbus and the Spanish king and queen and all they were doing in the New World. Inter caetera granted official ownership of the New World—“dominion”—to Ferdinand and Isabella. It instructed them to “civilize” every “savage” they encountered. In 1515, an ultimatum was issued by the Spanish conquerors to all indigenous people they encountered in the New World to accept “the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world” or else:
We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command, and we shall take away your goods, and shall do all the mischief and damage that we can.
The Alibi:
The Spanish expeditions to the “New World” were justified by Spain’s rulers and the Catholic Church as expressions of the “will of god”—to convert “savages” to Christianity. As Columbus described it: “Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities.”
The Actual Motive:
The goal of the expeditions to the Americas was to find new sources of wealth, especially gold, and people who could be enslaved to produce products for an emerging market. In competition with the Ottoman Turks, who had blocked access to Asia, the Catholic Church and the European powers under their influence were searching for access to new markets, and new sources of gold and other wealth. Columbus offered the promise that there was a way to those riches by crossing the ocean to the west. Finding a continent of people not yet discovered by other rival powers, who could be conquered, dominated, exploited, and converted to Christianity, was the answer to a prayer.
Repeat Offenders:
The Spanish empire eventually expanded across the Caribbean Islands, half of South America, most of Central America, and much of Mexico and North America. Meanwhile, in 1501-1502, a Portuguese colonizing expedition sailed along the coast of South America, including the bay of present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From these origins and foundations, and later British and French colonization, what would become the United States of America arose, developed, and carried forward what was begun by Columbus. The genocide of Native Americans began before and continued after the official founding of this country. So did the enslavement and murder of millions and millions of African people, who were first brought to Virginia in 1619, and on whose backs the wealth of this country, and many other parts of the world, was built.
Sources:
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Harper & Row, 1980 (first edition)
Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies, written 1527-1561, published by Harper & Row, 1971
Eric Kasem, “Columbus Day? True Legacy: Cruelty and Slavery,” Huffington Post, October 15, 2015
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Vintage Books, 2006
Police turn water cannons on Dakota Access Pipeline protesters.
This year’s commemoration of the 47th National Day of Mourning on Nov. 24 in Plymouth, Mass., is dedicated to the heroic #NoDAPL Water Protectors at Standing Rock, N.D., and to the struggle for recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
The day’s events will once again honor Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier, a fighter for the rights of Indigenous and other oppressed peoples. The ailing 72-year-old hero has been unjustly imprisoned for 40 years, and is now in Florida far from his nation, the Turtle Mountain Band in North Dakota. His supporters worldwide are calling for President Obama to grant clemency and free Peltier now.
The so-called “Thanksgiving” holiday starkly recalls the centuries of atrocities committed against Native peoples, first by European colonizers and then by U.S. administrations. Indigenous lands stolen; cultures and languages under siege; bigotry, injustice and genocidal violence aimed at this country’s original inhabitants are the real U.S. history, not the myths.
Workers World is in solidarity with Indigenous nations in their ongoing struggles in the U.S. and throughout the Americas for political, economic and social rights. We recognize the right to self-determination of Indigenous people everywhere and support their efforts for decolonization and sovereignty. We condemn racist discrimination, oppression and corporate exploitation that continue against these communities, resulting in economic devastation and impoverishment.
The U.S. government has broken every treaty ever signed with Native nations in order to steal their lands, displace their peoples and back greedy corporations in search of oil, gas, minerals — and superprofits. We applaud Native peoples worldwide who boldly resist capitalists’ pillaging of the earth with total disregard for the planet and the life on it.
Indigenous peoples are taking leadership in the struggle to stop environmental genocide in the U.S. and across the globe. Heroic Native activists waged a victorious, militant, seven-year struggle with non-Native allies to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline. Native peoples actively oppose “climate injustice” — whereby poor countries and peoples are harmed by climate-made disasters caused by carbon emissions, fracking, hazardous pipelines and environmental racism.
Workers World stands in solidarity with Indigenous peoples worldwide who are fighting back against the capitalists’ escalating destruction of the planet. We assert that their struggles and righteous demands for reparations from corporate polluters for ecological damage must be supported.
‘Water is life’
The courageous months-long struggle by the Standing Rock Sioux nation to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline’s construction has inspired thousands of people to join with them in solidarity and garnered international support. In addition to destroying sacred land, the DAPL would pollute the Missouri River, affecting the water supply for millions of people. This is a fight for sovereignty, land, water and the lives of future generations.
Three hundred Indigenous nations and their supporters have opposed the building of the DAPL, which is being unlawfully constructed on stolen land without the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s permission. These brave, unarmed protesters have blocked bulldozers and faced down corporate mercenaries and militarized police who wield pepper spray, rubber bullets and tear gas. Water protectors have been beaten, bitten by attack dogs, arrested, strip-searched, numbered and kept in dog kennels.
Native nations are demanding that the U.S. government honor the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation), which recognized that this land belongs to them. By law, so does the water. The North Dakota police and U.S. National Guard are violating federal treaty rights as they act to protect the interests of oil profiteer Energy Transfer Partners.
Workers World wholeheartedly supports Native water protectors and their allies at Standing Rock. We, along with hundreds of organizations, sent a delegation to their encampment to show our solidarity, and we encourage other groups and individuals to travel there and/or show support in whatever ways they can.
Workers World raises high the banner of solidarity with all Indigenous peoples on this National Day of Mourning. We join with millions of people worldwide in loudly proclaiming, “No DAPL” and “Free Leonard Peltier!”
If Dave Chappelle and other moronic celebrities still want to " give trump a chance", read this fucking thing.
Trump Installs His Fascist Team
November 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Editor's note: Trump's team so far includes:
The Fascist Resumé of Trump's Chief Strategist Steve Bannon
One of Donald Trump's first decisions as president-elect was to name Steve Bannon his chief strategist and senior counselor. Bannon managed Trump's campaign. Before that he was the owner and hands-on force behind the website Breitbart News Network. Mainstream news and Bannon himself call Bannon's politics "conservative," "alt-right," or "white nationalist." It's worse than that.
"Hoist the Confederate Flag"
On June 17, 2015, Charleston, South Carolina: nine people at a Bible study class in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were murdered by white racist Dylann Roof. Roof said he carried out the massacre to start a "race war" to turn America back to the days of open segregation. He posed online with pro-Hitler symbols and a confederate flag. Part of the response, very broadly throughout society, was an eruption of outrage against the confederate flags, flags of slavery and lynching.
Breitbart's response: an article headlined "Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage." Steve Bannon ran Breitbart when this article was published. He signed off on it, and as a hands-on editor likely instigated it....
Trump’s National Security Adviser: Lt. General Mike Flynn—“At War with Islam”
This week Trump named Lt. General Mike Flynn to be his National Security Adviser, one of the most powerful foreign policy positions in the government. The National Security Advisor is generally the president’s main foreign policy advisor and key coordinator of implementing his decisions. Flynn is seen as one of Trump’s closest and most rabid advisors. (During the Republican National Convention, he joined in the anti-Hillary Clinton chants of "Lock her up!")
Flynn, a retired three-star Army general and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA, the Pentagon’s spying arm), claims the U.S. is in a global war, not just against Islamic jihadists but against Islam itself. It’s not really a religion, Flynn argues, but a dangerous political ideology. Flynn has called Islam a "cancer" and said "fear of Muslims is rational." In April 2015 he told Fox News, “I've been at war with Islam, or a component of Islam, for the last decade.”
Flynn vitriolically argues that the U.S. shouldn’t be restrained by human rights, international law, rules of engagement, or other forms of “political correctness” but should ruthlessly fight this “existential enemy.” (This stance and his open criticism of the Obama administration’s “softness” toward and “lying” about Islamic fundamentalists probably led to his 2014 firing as head of the DIA.)
Trump's CIA Pick: Mike Pompeo—Advocate of Torture & Tearing Up Rule of Law
Mike Pompeo wants to expand the government’s ability to spy on millions. He advocates legalizing and carrying out torture. He champions gutting fundamental civil rights. Now Trump has named this Congressman and former Army officer to head the Central Intelligence Agency—the CIA—one of the most powerful and deadly arms of the U.S. government’s repressive apparatus.
Pompeo opposed ending the ability of the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect phone records, or metadata, in bulk. Instead, he called for Congress to expandspying and “pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database. Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.” (Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2016)
Mike Pence: A Christian Fascist Who’s a Heartbeat Away from the U.S. Presidency
The United States will now have a vice president who wants to ban all abortions, overturn laws barring discrimination against LGBT people, fully unleash the police to stop and frisk Black and other oppressed people, and carry out other extreme steps that will lead to horrible new leaps in repression. Mike Pence cites Bible verses to back up such ugly policy stands. He is a Christian fascist who will be #2 in the White House.
One of Trump’s sons reportedly said before the election that his father’s vice president will be “the most powerful vice president in history,” in charge of domestic and foreign policy while Trump concentrates on “making America great.” Trump’s people denied the report—but, in any case, Pence will wield enormous sway. He is already playing a major role, including choosing cabinet and other officials. He met top Republicans in the House of Representatives and told them to “buckle up” to move quickly, making clear he’ll play a leading role in pushing fascist laws through Congress. As writer Jeremy Scahill put it (in an article at TheIntercept.com), “Mike Pence will be the most powerful Christian supremacist in U.S. history.”
Pence is part of a Christian fascist movement that aims to impose on society a government, laws, and dominant morality based on strict interpretations of the Bible. According to a Slate.com article, when Pence was a congressman from Indiana, “Aides and other politicians often saw him reading his Bible, and Pence would cite specific verses to justify policy arguments. ‘These have stood the test of time,’ he told one staffer. ‘They have eternal value.’” He made an anti-evolution speech on the floor of the House saying he believes in “intelligent design” (an unscientific claim that life is too complex to have evolved and must be the work of God) and arguing that it be taught in schools.
Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions: An Enforcer of White Supremacy and Extreme Patriarchy
This week Donald Trump selected the longtime Alabama white supremacist (and U.S. senator) Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to be the next Attorney General of the U.S.
Sessions first gained national attention in 1986, when he was nominated for a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan. In his confirmation hearings, it was exposed that in 1984 when he was a U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions led the prosecution of three Black civil rights workers for attempting to register Black people to vote in areas of Alabama where virtually no Black people had been able to vote—near the infamous town of Selma. They faced 100 years in jail. The three were acquitted by a jury in four hours.
In his confirmation hearing, an associate testified that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases.
A Black former assistant US attorney, testified that Sessions “stated that he believed the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation PUSH and the National Council of Churches were all un-American organizations teaching anti-American values.” And that Sessions said he believed the Ku Klux Klan was OK until he learned its members smoked marijuana, something the former U.S. attorney testified was not a joke, but something he took as “a serious statement” of Sessions' views. Sessions made this contemptible statement about the KKK in the aftermath of a trial of two Klansmen for slitting the throat of a Black man in Mobile, Alabama.
And this motherfucker lowlife fucking pig worked in fucking "counterterrorism" ?! What the fuck was he doing to his own kid, if not fucking terrorism ? He deserves nothing but slow, torturous pain.
A former Ottawa Mountie has been found guilty in the severe, long-term abuse of his son after a judge rejected his defence on Monday morning.
The 44-year-old suspended counter-terrorism officer, who can’t be identified to protect his son’s identity, had claimed that he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder from being sexually assaulted as a boy.
The Mountie and the boy’s stepmother were charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, failing to provide the necessaries of life and assault with a weapon in February, 2013. The man was also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm. They both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Justice Robert Maranger said he didn’t believe the officer’s argument that he was dealing with PTSD during the time of the abuse. The boy’s stepmother was found guilty of assault and failing to provide the necessaries of life. The couple sat expressionless as the judge read out the verdict. Maranger called the trial “very difficult.”
"That a parent would do the things that were done to (this boy) is gut-wrenching,” the judge said.
Maranger also commended the young boy for having the courage to testify on his own behalf at the trial.
“That being said, however, the fact that this half-starved, burned and battered 11-year-old could somehow summon the strength to escape his cruel captivity and later seemingly rise above it, is a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit,” Maranger said.
The case made national headlines after a neighbour discovered the emaciated 11-year-old boy in February 2013. The judge described the abuse the child endured as “disturbing” when he delivered his verdict. The boy had been starved, chained in the basement and burned with a barbecue lighter.
Last year, the courtroom was shown graphic videos taken from the father’s cellphone that showed some of the long-term abuse the boy experienced in the basement. Ottawa police have described the mistreatment as one of the worst cases of abuse they had seen.
In a 2013 police interview, the father admitted he had tied his son to a wall or a pole in the basement. His son had developed cuts on his wrists from the chains or plastic zip ties that were used to restrain him. In the fall of 2015, a doctor who examined the boy in hospital told the court that the child only weighed 50 pounds and appeared emaciated.
In April 2016, the Mountie, who has been suspended without pay since he was charged, told the court that he experienced nightmares stemming from his childhood in war-torn Lebanon. He claimed he was sexually assaulted multiple times as a child and that he felt ashamed.
“I grew up asking why am I being targeted,” the man told the courtroom. “I lived with the guilt, shame and anger inside of me for the whole time."
The RCMP officer said he still suffered from PTSD and nightmares related to the assaults and bombings in Lebanon, and testified that background shaped his relationship with his son. The Mountie said he believed his son displayed sexually predatory behaviour, that he was “out of control,” and that the “devil lived” in his son.
The man also spoke about his tumultuous relationship with his first wife, the boy’s mother, his difficulty caring for a newborn while working, and his ongoing battle with depression.
Maranger revoked bail for the RCMP officer and the boy’s stepmother after the verdict was read. They were both led away in handcuffs and will remain in custody until their sentencing. The woman will face a sentencing hearing on Dec. 2. There was no date set for the man’s sentencing.
