CARTOON: Speaking Of Cats...The Cat That Ate America
Unfortunately, as history has proven, unlike the cat on your couch, fascist cats are easy to herd.
Cartoons by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (9/12/24)
Like the proverbial frog brought to a boil in a pot of warming water, Americans are being herded deeper and deeper into fascism. Every day — hell every news cycle — is punched through with new stories on censorship, book bans, peaceful protesters being beaten and cuffed or professors getting fired or another load of bombs being sent to murder kids in Gaza.
The language is being perverted as some words are banned, while others — like ‘Zionism’ — are granted exalted status free from fact and reality.
Below are nine stories I gathered this morning in a casual review of various news sources. They document the acceleration of fascistic values and actions being normalized across a variety of issues in the country. The oldest story is from August 29 and the most recent came out today.
While you may not have the time or interest to read them all, I do encourage you to scroll down through the list to see the headlines and subheads and consider what this indicates about the direction we are being herded.
Unfortunately, unlike the cat on your couch, history has proven fascist cats are easy to herd.
Why Is Our So-Called Democratic Society Suppressing Freedom Of Speech?
We like to think our media landscape today is shaped by subtler forms of control: media monopolies, mass-market pressure, extreme commercialism and digital surveillance. And then there’s Julian Assange.
By Laura Flanders
The Guardian (9/12/24)
Claud Cockburn, my grandfather, knew when it was time to leave Berlin.
A young British journalist, he’d worked as a correspondent for The [London] Times in that city in the 1920s before transferring to New York and Washington DC. Returning to Germany in July 1932, he saw “storm Troopers slashing and smashing up and down the Kurfüerstendamm”, and war propaganda: “huge exhibitions of ‘the Front’, soldier figures standing in a real-life size trench playing with a dummy machine gun”, he wrote.
In a letter to my grandmother, Hope Hale, a US-based journalist just then pregnant with my mother, he described how fascism on the horizon felt: “It’s hard to imagine that this is something one is really seeing.”
Until it wasn’t hard. As Cockburn wrote: “Hitler. He came to power. I was high on the Nazi blacklist. I fled to Vienna.”
Cockburn’s story is retold in a forthcoming book by his son, journalist Patrick Cockburn, due out this fall from Verso. It’s a timely intervention, inviting us to consider how different what Claud called the “Devil’s Decade”, is from our own.
The 1930s saw the press in fascist countries co-opted or suppressed. In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels’ ministry of propaganda saw to it that only state-approved stories were told. Independent journalism was not just discouraged – it was dangerous. Writers were shot. Books were burned. To facilitate the Fuhrer’s dominance, the Third Reich subsidized the production of cheap radio receivers called Volksempfänger, which not only made money for friendly manufacturers but also channeled distraction and Nazi communication directly into people’s homes. In Italy, Mussolini’s regime did much the same, using media as a tool to consolidate power and propagate fascist ideology. …
EXPOSED: US Funding Behind Israeli Soldiers Accused Off Rape & Efforts To Block Aid To Gaza
“While the policy of violence has been ongoing, the Prison Service launched an unprecedented attack on prisoners in all Israeli prisons after October 7, implementing several policies that turned prisons into death traps for Palestinian prisoners.”
By Jennifer Buxbaum
Mint Press News (9/5/24)
Cuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day. Confined to animal pens. Attacked by dogs. This is reportedly the treatment of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Naqab desert. While claims of torture and abuse at the facility began circulating in December, the Israeli military did not open an investigation into the allegations until July 29, when 10 Israeli soldiers were detained on suspicion of sexually abusing a detainee.
In response to the soldiers’ detention, a mob of right-wing extremists stormed Sde Teiman and later broke into the Beit Lid military base, where the detained soldiers were being held. Among those detained were soldiers from the Force 100 unit, which was resurrected at the onset of the war and has been responsible for guarding the detainees at Sde Teiman. Masked soldiers, wearing black shirts emblazoned with the unit’s logo—a snake inside the Jewish Star of David—were seen participating in the protests.
Several Israeli lawmakers took part in the riots, including Otzma Yehudit’s (Jewish Power) Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, Religious Zionism member of parliament, Zvi Sukkot, and parliamentary members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv.
Protests have continued to erupt in support of the soldiers, including, most recently, outside an Israeli High Court hearing on the case on August 7, 2024.
As allegations of torture and sexual abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility escalate and Israeli Military Police prepare to conclude their investigation and file indictments against the suspects, MintPress uncovers the financial and political infrastructure, including from the U.S. and Canada, backing these soldiers through tax-exempt organizations and crowdfunding platforms. This marks a disturbing shift in global support for human rights violations, now extending even to those implicated in the Israeli military’s acts of sexual violence. …
America Learns Nothing: Harris/Trump Debate Demonstrated Why "democracy in America" Is A Sad Myth
Neither pledged to guard the principles that once united America before they were casually discarded in the response to the 9/11 terror attacks.
By Shahid Buttar
Chronicles Of A Dying Empire (9/12/24)
Twenty-three years ago today [9/11], America woke up to a national tragedy. As disturbing as the news was that Tuesday morning, the still-unfolding legacy of that day has grown catastrophically worse in the decades since the 9/11 attacks. After being glued to the television all day with some friends, my housemate, and another grad student who was crashing on our couch at the time, I shaved my head that night, having discovered during a pilgrimage to Mecca the previous summer that doing so was a ritual way for Muslims to shed our worldly attachments.
My alarm at the time may have been driven by any number of things.
I was in law school at the time, and felt painfully aware that the Supreme Court’s 1944 Korematsu decision upheld indefinite military detention during a time of armed conflict. While the Bush administration had no formal authority to detain civilians outside the criminal legal process, the lack of formal authority didn’t ultimately stop it from hatching a continuing mass surveillance scheme, or launching a torture program in violation of international law.
The Court is responsible for guarding the Constitution, and its abdication in Korematsu effectively invited the Bush administration to consider military detention without trial. Ultimately, the administration did precisely that, while locating its detention facilities offshore in locations including Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and CIA “black sites” located in any number of countries. …
'Unhinged and Undemocratic': Florida Cops Question Abortion Petition Signers
"This is pure voter intimidation, just like with the 'election police' in 2022. It's Gestapo tactics."
By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams (9/6/24)
Floridians and reproductive rights advocates responded with alarm on Friday to Tampa Bay Times reporting that Florida law enforcement officers have been sent to the homes of multiple voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights measure on the November ballot.
While Isaac Menasche told the newspaper that he isn't sure which agency the plainclothes officer who came to his home is with, fellow Lee County resident Becky Castellanos said Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officer Gary Negrinelli showed his badge and gave his card.
Both visits were about potential fraud related to the petition for Amendment 4, which would outlaw pre-viability abortion bans in Florida. Menasche was asked if he signed the petition, which he had. Negrinelli inquired about Castellanos' relative, who also signed the petition.
The officer inquiries appear "to be part of a broad—and unusual—effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day," the Times reported.
The Republican governor signed the state's six-week ban that would end if the ballot measure passes. He has also faced criticism for creating an Office of Election Crimes and Security, whose work has led to the arrest of Floridians who believed they were legally allowed to vote following the passage of a referendum that restored voting rights to many people with past felony convictions. …
Atlanta’s Emory University Targeted By Anti-Palestinian Group: ‘It’s scary’
Conservative group funded by the Koch family has posted flyers with photos and names of students and faculty, calling them ‘anti-Israel’.
By Timothy Pratt
The Guardian (9/12/24)
Students and faculty at Atlanta’s Emory University have been targeted by an outside group posting and handing out flyers labeling 14 of their colleagues “anti-Israel”. The flyer, titled “Security Alert”, included the names, ages and mugshot-style photos of each of them, arranged under the word “Arrested”.
Campus Reform, a national group of conservative students, put its logo on the flyer, which refers to arrests made during last April’s protests seeking Emory divestment from Israel. Charges for most of that day’s 28 arrests remain unresolved and awaiting trial, after several faculty leaders have been unsuccessful in efforts to get Emory president Gregory Fenves to ask prosecutors to drop them.
The flyers were distributed on Monday as classes began again and have left several faculty members and 11 students – and others who supported last year’s protests – concerned for their own safety and awaiting a response from the school’s administration, according to interviews with the Guardian.
Campus Reform’s past efforts have led to faculty on campuses across the nation receiving “threats of harm” – including violence or death, according to research by the American Association of University Professors. The Leadership Institute, funded by the Koch family and others, runs the group.
The flyers, which students and the school’s Open Expression team have now removed from campus, appeared only days before the new school year’s first protest on divestment from Israel, part of a nationwide Walkout for Palestine scheduled for Thursday.
One of the students who appears on the flyer spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, due to safety concerns. …
Truth & Reckoning Needed On America’s Genocide
Recognizing the generational harm caused by Native “boarding schools” is just the beginning. True healing must center the Indigenous ways of being that these genocidal institutions tried to extinguish.
By Abaki Beck
Yes! (9/4/24)
When I was in middle school, at a majority-white public school in Montana, I was given an assignment to interview a grandparent about their childhood. The questions were designed to help us better understand what we did and did not have in common with each other.
When I interviewed my maternal grandmother, I asked her whether there was ever a bully at her school. Her answer surprised me; she said she was the bully. “I always had soap in my mouth,” she said, punished for “talking back” to her teachers—and punished for speaking her first language: Blackfeet.
My grandmother was a student at the St. Ignatius Mission and School, a church-run, assimilationist boarding school on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. She told me stories about the horrific punishments she endured simply for being Blackfeet and about her classmates who were buried on the school grounds.
Unfortunately, my grandmother’s story is not an anomaly. Instead, her experience is representative of generations of genocidal federal policy. Beginning in 1801, more than 500 assimilative boarding schools operated across the United States, including 408 government-run schools in operation between 1819 and 1969. During this time, multiple generations of my family attended boarding school, including 12 people I’m directly descended from on my maternal side: my grandmother, all four of my great-grandparents, and seven of my eight great-great-grandparents.
Boarding schools were part of an intentional, genocidal policy aimed at “civilizing” Native people and eradicating our nations, communities, cultures, languages, religions, and family ties. Indigenous families were either forced or coerced to send their children to boarding schools. Families who refused were denied the money or goods paid to them in exchange for land, as designated in treaty agreements. …
Trump’s Debate Message To White Voters Was To Fear People Of Color, Scholar Says
What he is signaling, again, is that crime is related to Blackness. Crime is related to immigrants who are not white. Crime is the thing — it is that dystopian vision that white Americans need to be fearful of all of these folks of color.
By Amy Goodman & Juan Gonzalez
Democracy Now! (9/11/24)
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump had their first and only scheduled debate Tuesday, providing a stark contrast between the two candidates with just eight weeks to go before the November 5 election. Harris repeatedly put Trump on the defensive as they debated abortion, immigration, Israel’s war on Gaza, race, January 6 and other issues.
Trump repeated his false claim that he won the 2020 election and again questioned Harris’s race, painted diverse cities as inherently unsafe, repeated a debunked claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets and more.
Carol Anderson, professor of African American studies at Emory University, says Trump’s basic pitch is that “white Americans need to be fearful” of people of color. “What he is basically saying is, ‘I’m your white savior.’” …
“Outrageous”: Both Biden & Harris Minimize Israel Military Killing Of Aysenur Eygi By Dismissing It As An Accident
“What accountability will there be when we keep supplying the weapons against our own laws?” — Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington)
By Sharon Zang
Truthout (9/11/24)
President Joe Biden sparked outrage on Tuesday after he claimed, without evidence, that Israel’s killing of American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi last week was accidental, despite the circumstances of Eygi’s death and Israel’s history of intentionally killing civilians.
In a statement, Biden acknowledged Israel’s responsibility for the killing and called for “full accountability,” though he did not specify whether the U.S. would take action to enforce that. He also didn’t say anything about the U.S. conducting its own investigation, instead stating that the U.S. has “confidence” in Israel’s investigations into its own wrongdoing.
He then added, in comments to the press: “Apparently, it was an accident. It ricocheted off the ground and — got hit by accident, but we’re working that out now.”
Vice President Kamala Harris also claimed in a statement, echoing Biden’s, that Eygi’s death was an accident, saying: “Israel’s preliminary investigation indicated it was the result of a tragic error for which the [Israeli military] is responsible.”
In reaction to Biden’s remark, Eygi’s partner, Hamid Ali, noted that the Biden administration has not reached out to Eygi’s loved ones about her death. Eygi’s family has called for an independent investigation into Eygi’s death, but the Biden administration appears poised to rely solely on Israel’s word, despite its long history of peddling outright lies.
“For four days, we have waited for President Biden to pick up the phone and do the right thing: To call us, offer his condolences, and let us know that he is ordering an independent investigation of the killing of Aysenur,” said Ali in a statement. “This was no accident and her killers must be held accountable.”
Eygi’s family put out a statement on Wednesday saying that Biden is going back on his word to protect Americans.
“President Biden has said, ‘If you harm an American, we will respond.’ On September 9th, the State Department claimed, ‘when it comes to the protection of our citizens and our personnel and if they are targeted, we of course will take appropriate action,’” her family said.
“President Biden is still calling her killing an accident based only on the Israeli military’s story. This is not only insensitive and false, it is complicity in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American,” they continued.
Testimony about Eygi’s death from witnesses make it clear that it would take an extremely unlikely set of coincidences for Israel to have killed her accidentally. …
Unseen Problem With The Electoral College Tells Bad Guys Where To Target Their Efforts
The system essentially identifies the states where malicious people who want to alter or undermine the election results should focus their energies.
By Barry C. Burden
The Conversation (8/27/24)
Over the past four years, Congress and state governments have worked hard to prevent the aftermath of the 2024 election from descending into the chaos and threats to democracy that occurred around the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
A new federal law cleaned up ambiguities that could allow for election subversion. New state laws have been enacted across the country to protect election workers from threats and harassment. Technology experts are working to confront misinformation campaigns and vulnerabilities in election systems.
But untouched in all of these improvements is the underlying structure of presidential elections – the Electoral College.
Here is a quick refresher about how the system works today:
After citizens vote in the presidential election in November, the Constitution assigns the task of choosing the president and vice president to electors. Electors are allocated based on the number of congressional representatives and senators from each state. The electors meet in their separate state capitals in December to cast their votes. The ballots are then counted by the vice president in front of members of Congress on Jan. 6 to determine which ticket has won a majority.
The widely varied pros and cons of the Electoral College have already been aired and debated extensively. But there is another problem that few have recognized: The Electoral College makes American democracy more vulnerable to people with malicious intent. …
This Amendment 4 Petition Nazi thing is appalling. I realized emailing the Gov's office to express my concern would be pointless, so I just told DeSantis to go fuck himself.
Wow, your first paragraph couldn't have summed it up better. I used to think that the Iranian "Death to America" slogan was excessive until the continuous extent of American amoral disregard for humanity changed my mind otherwise.