Those of us who don’t know history are bound to repeat it, and I’m sure those of us who remember history are doomed to stand by and watch. The best we can do is to remember and remind ourselves of history in a valiant attempt to learn from the past.
There are striking parallels between the past and the present; this would be the case whether we remember history or forget history. The important part is whether the history we know is used to our advantage to not continue making the same mistakes over an over, or to improve the future by recognizing the past.
One hundred and six years ago on this date – June 28 – Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated. As an immediate result, World War I (The “Great War,” or the “War to End all Wars”) began. As a concurrent result the lines of Europe and the Middle East were redrawn, and the isolationist policy of the United States ceased to exist.
The Archduke was in Austro-Hungarian province Boznia-Herzegovinia on June 28, 2014. He was sent there as inspector general of the imperial army by his father. The visit, the Brittanica says, was not a popular one. It was on the anniversary of a “black date in Serbian history: it was the anniversary of the Turkish victory over Serbia at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. This fanned the flames of dissent among Serbian nationalists even further.” The neighboring kingdom of Serbia wanted the land of Bosnia.
One can almost hear the parallels between this and Trump’s decision not long ago to schedule a rally in Tulsa that was to happen on June 19 (Juneteenth) – the day that all black American slaves were told they were free. Although Trump surprisingly rescheduled his rally we can only speculate what would have happened if the Archduke had rescheduled or cancelled that visit.
Instead, we know that The War To End All Wars led to the Peace to End All Peace, and that world affairs were forever altered. The Great War and the Peace to End All Peace led to World War II, nuclear weapons, a Cold War, and technology and globalization we would never have experienced in the same way. All because the Archduke was assassinated, which itself was an act of ethnic strife.
History effects the present. Know the history and how we got here so that we can change the course of the present to effect the future in a way that some history does not have to repeat itself.
Although the art and culture beyond my native American (USA!, USA!) culture has always interested me, including art from the Orient and the Middle East, I’ve never paused to consider Iraqi art.
We’ve been at war with with Iraq for most of the last thirty years, I know (and I know some of the root causes and actions that led us to be there), if “being at war” is the term for bombing the living daylights out of a country that doesn’t have the capability to fight back.
The internet interesting is a fascinating place.
Today marks 27 years after Layla Alattar death by the U.S. missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence main building which was just behind her house, ordered by U.S. President Bill Clinton. The building was hit by 24 rockets. pic.twitter.com/YVJz7Wgw8l
— Haider Husseini (@haider_husseini) June 27, 2020
Not only am I not big on Iraqi art, I’ve also never heard of Layla Al-Attar. It is true that she, her husband, and her housekeeper died in a U.S. missile attack in 1993. Al-Attar was the director of the Center for National Art (now the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art), and was one of the most famous artists in Iraq.
With the frequency and intensity of U.S. bombings around the world just imagine how many great artists there no longer are that we never hear about.
It’s been a tough election year. Not just candidates dropping out of the race to endorse Joe Biden, who has previously had to drop out of presidential races due to plagiarism. Not only because the election results for California took a week to show up before Bernie Sanders was declared ahead. Partly because Biden, who’s running against the current administration has bungled the response to a pandemic, is not ahead by triple digits in every national poll and every battleground state. And definitely because this is a moment-in-history that shouldn’t exist.
Today marks 7 years since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.
Since then, states with a history of voter suppression have closed 1,688 polling places throughout the South.
It couldn’t be more blatant: pic.twitter.com/94D5Q9zSGq
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 25, 2020
There’s no longer a Voting Rights Act. Although HR 1 – hoping to remedy this is some way – is sitting on McConnel’s desk he has refused to bring it to the Senate for the vote.
This has partly been a bad election year – a voting year – because of the lines at the polls. The lines where people have had to wait hours to cast their vote in Nevada, Georgia, and Kentucky (among others) weren’t accidents. They were designed to repress the vote and there’s no Voting Rights Act to turn to.
BY JOHN K. WILSON
When Ilana Feldman was appointed interim dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University (GWU) last month, it was an obvious choice. Feldman is a highly respected scholar who was already serving as vice-dean with no complaints about her work. But quickly this became what is probably the most widely attacked appointment of an interim dean in the history of higher education, and there was only one reason: Feldman supports the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement against the Israeli government. …
As a preface, I wrote this piece about a week ago, and sent it in to CommonDreams for submission. I don’t know if they’ve accepted or rejected it; it’s time to publish it here.
Trump has led us right to where we should be as a country. Joining most of the world in the dismay of the devastating but all-to-predictable election of Trump I figured his presidency would lead us to something like this. How and when I didn’t know.
“Something like this” is a woke society that is rebelling against oppression and the status quo. It should surprise nobody that Trump has led the economy into a combination of depression and recession, especially after tax-cuts for the wealthy and more recently stimulus money for large corporations instead of for people.
Something like this is a sustained nonviolent movement to end violence. Propelled by far too much state-sanctioned violence known as “police killings” people are now in the street and they’re in the street until tax dollars are reallocated to fund for people rather than oppress them (also known as “defunding the police”).
The logical conclusion upon the election of Trump was that his policies would allow us to transform bad policies into something better. Something like this is how that done. It takes a sustained nonviolent movement that has convinced several cities to end violent policy tactics, convinced universities to stop cooperation with local police departments, convinced other cities to disband the police and create a community-led public safety system, and renewed calls calls to abolish ICE.
A movement like this allows us to re-envision society and build something that ensures that tax dollars are spend representing the needs of the people rather than the oppression of the people. The only silver lining of a Trump presidency is a movement like this that can transform action into policy that represents that people.
“It was at a retrial for colluding with Hamas yesterday that the Brotherhood leader collapsed in his sound proof box and was transferred to hospital…”
The full atrticle at: Obituary: Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first, democratic president
Not far, geographically, from the only rain forest in the contiguous United States the forests are dying. Through a combination of bugs, wind, drought and fire, trees are dying. The old-growth trees are being logged despite the fact that “To moderate the effects of climate change, foresters need to retain the largest trees, and recruit more by letting forests grow, scientists have found.” (Seattle Times, “Scientists say the last of British Columbia’s old-growth trees will soon be gone, if policies don’t change“)
Throughout the ports on the Puget Sound there are piles of lumber ready to be shipped to China. It doesn’t matter if the foresting companies claim that the trees chopped down are replanted – they’re not, by definition, old-growth. I know we all like to build fences, houses, and furniture with lovely wood products. To mitigate the effects of climate change, something has to change. Stop the flow of timber before it’s too late.
I’m sure we’ve all put stay-in-place orders to good use in a slough of productivity. I’m sure we all have unfinished books sitting nearby and bad artwork we don’t want to put our names to.
In an effort to create the world we want to live in part of my time has been writing to my congressman. I wrote last week about what he will do to prevent Israel’s impending annexation of the West Bank, and today’s writing was about climate change and environmental degradation.
Here’s what I wrote:
Dear Rep. —-
This message is prompted by an article published today (June 13) in the Guardian about how our climate change models may have been off, and we are in a worse climate-induced catastrophe than we thought. (See: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/13/climate-worst-case-scenarios-clouds-scientists-global-heating)
My question for you is whether you have cosponsored H.Res 109 supporting the statement that the government must act on climate change. I hope you have done that and gone further, introducing comprehensive legislation that will mitigate climate change, and have pressured your colleagues to join you.
In appreciation in your efforts to ensure our planet remains livable I thank you always for your representation,
Always remember that we have a representative government. Reach our to your representatives. Hello Mr. Congressman ——-
Always remember to follow the money. Phillip Weiss put out a great piece today about how Sheldon and Miriam are poised to give as much as $200 million to Republican causes this year. He explains why, and here’s part of of it:
Look at it from Trump’s point of view. He doesn’t care about peace in the Middle East or Palestinian human rights. He wants one thing, to win in November, and he needs money.
Think of it from the Adelsons’ point of view. Why should they risk $200 million on a loser? Well, because it’s not a losing cause: they get their payback now. They figure that Israeli annexation is permanent no matter what happens to Trump. “Facts on the ground” is the Israeli way of expansion. The embassy move will never be reversed by a Joe Biden. So let’s annex.
Always follow the money.
It should be noted that I’m writing this in the midst of protests that were sparked by the killing of George Floyd, which help lead me to sources and facts, but this article has been brewing in my mind for some time.
For simplicity’s sake we can say that the United States has been a security state for many years starting with the Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001.
As the ACLU says:
Hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security, the Patriot Act was the first of many changes to surveillance laws that made it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track the activity of innocent Americans on the Internet. While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.
There’s decades of history before the Patriot Act that led to us being a police state. The Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch page said the U.S. began as a national security state in 1947, and over the years it led to the demise of the New Deal state that emphasized social spending, leading instead to a militaristic national security state.
Fast forward to a decade after the Patriot Act. We’d been in unwinnable war in the Middle East for several years and the economy had already tanked at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. With the rent too damn high nonviolent people started the Occupy Wall Street movement, to demand that money was flowing to the people rather than corporations.
A militarized police was sent against U.S. citizens in U.S. cities for the first noticeable time (excluding numerous onslaughts against Native Americans over the centuries). The president was a Democrat – Obama.
The rent stayed too damn high but the Occupy movement went on with life. A few year later, in August 2014 protests began due to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown, an 18 year-old African American was shot by a white officer. Again, the protesters, demanding justice for another unnecessary death by an officer of the peace, were attacked by a militarized police force using rubber bullets and tear gas.
A few years later, from the spring of 2016 to early 2017 a significant movement began protesting oil pipelines being built from Canada that would terminate in Texas – and cross numerous rivers. People (including some Hollywood stars and activists) including the non-indigenous population gathered at Standing Rock on Sioux land to protest the Dakota Access pipeline passing through native American land. The activists were confronted at times by a mercenary force (called a “private security force) that used police dogs, by the National Guard, by pepper spray, by a police force using militarized tanks, water tanks (in subfreezing weather) rubber bullets, and unusual punishment after arrest.
Before we fast forward to now it’s important to summarize SourceWatch’s breakdown of what comprises a security state. This is based on the book “Brave New World Order” by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. There are seven elements that are listed: 1) “The military is the highest authority” that “guarantees the security of the state against all internal and external enemies” and has enough power to determine the overall direction of the society.” 2) The state maintains a semblance of democracy while “political democracy and democratic elections are viewed with suspicion, contempt, or in terms of political expediency.” 3) “The military and related sectors wield substantial political and economic power” under an ideology which stresses that ‘freedom” and ‘development’ and “capital is concentrated in the hands of elites.” 4) “Defending against external and/or internal enemies becomes a leading preoccupation of the state, a distorting factor in the economy, and a major source of national identity and purpose.” 5) The enemies of the state are ruthless and cunning, therefore “any means used to destroy or control these enemies is justified.” 6) A National Security State restricts public debate and limits popular participation through secrecy or intimidation with appeals to phrases such a ‘higher purpose’ and vague appeals to ‘national security.’ 7) “The church is expected to mobilize its financial, ideological, and theological resources in service to the National Security State”
Nelson-Pallmeyer’s work focused on states such as El Salvador. In the summary of the conclusion, though, responses ranged from recognizing that the U.S. contributed to El Salvador being a security state to realization that “there are people who see many of the characteristics of a National Security State operating within the United States.” “Brave New World Order,” from which these observations came, was written in 1992. The observations are just as telling almost thirty years later.
Now we are in 2020 a couple weeks after George Floyd was choked to death by a police officer. The protests resulting from his death are ongoing. Protesters are against facing tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protests while journalists and citizens are arrested for filming the police assaulting people. The First Amendment right to peaceable assemble and the right to a free press are under assault by police and encouraged by the President.
More than 10,000 people have been arrested in the last two weeks of protesting; I would hazard a guess that 90% were acting peacefully and/or were arrested a few minutes after arbitrary curfews cities have enacted the day of a gathering.
Already this year the Democratic-majority House in Congress has reauthorized warrentless searches under the FREEDOM Act (the PATRIOT Act on steroids). We expect the Republican Party to advocate for Law and Order and are not surprised that Republicans like the police and the security state. The Republicans are not alone in advocating for a security state.
Some people have began to remark that we live not in a security state but a police state. According to Merriam-Webster, a police state is “a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures.”
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