Voyage of the Damned: Blowing Up Boats and Breaking Down Bullshit

Voyage of the Damned
Blowing Up Boats and Breaking Down Bullshit

Jim Kavanagh

Thug Life

The Trump administration campaign of killing boatmen in the waters near Venezuela, part of its larger project of regime change aggression against the country, breaks, and blatantly defies, the most fundamental principles of American and international law. It’s a crime, and all of its perpetrators, from the grotesque thug Hegseth, to any sub-thug Admiral, to any officer, airmen or seaman who pushes the fatal button, to the ur-thug commander-in-chief who encourages and is responsible for it, should be prosecuted and imprisoned.

Proudly exhibiting videos of small, unarmed, civilian boats far from and unable to reach American waters being blown to bits under the entirely unproven and entirely irrelevant claim that they were transporting drugs, killing at least 87 people so far, including  men who were clearly surrendering with their hands in the air and survivors clinging to wreckage, is not a good look. I hope the families of those killed, some of whose bodies have washed ashore, find a venue through which they can bring criminal charges against and/or sue the shit out of the United States Government and any and all of its personnel involved.

The thuggery here Is so blatant, and its perpetrators so stupid, that it’s elicited unwanted attention and reaction, including explicit discomfort from a Congress that’s for decades been extraordinarily and cowardly reluctant to impinge on Presidential war-making prerogatives. There’s been a congressional viewing of a double-tap video showing “two survivors, shirtless, cl[inging] to the upturned hull” of a wrecked boat before being blown up by a second strike ordered by Adm. Frank M. Bradley. According to the account of “two people with direct knowledge of the operation” cited by the Washington Post (and kinda-sorta challenged by others), Bradley was following a spoken directive by  Pete Hegseth to “kill everybody.” Predictably, Republican congressmen like Tom Cotton found the action “righteous” while Democratic congressmen found it “disturbing” and “troubling,” although they “declined to weigh in” on whether this strike actually “constituted a war crime.”

Speaking for the administration, Vice President J.D. Vance made clear the Trump administration’s contemptuous indifference to any consideration of American actions in relation to “war crime” and other such standards:

War crime, schmor crime. You can’t really think we bother about such things.

Of course, the whole debate about a double-tap second strike avoids and obscures the main point: Any strike on small, unarmed, civilian boats far from and unable to reach American waters is illegitimate on every level. It’s no more legal or ethical to blow up people in boats in the Caribbean you claim are carrying narcotics than it is to shoot down a guy on the street corner you claim has drugs in his pocket. Nobody with a brain takes this seriously. The whole blatantly deceitful boat-strike campaign is pure murder, part of a larger, blatant regime-change campaign against Venezuela that is pure imperialist aggression.

https://x.com/AdHaque110/status/1995816543884542075?s=20

Disobedient Spirits

One of the more contentious moments in all this came with the short video done by six Democratic lawmakers (Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, and Maggie Goodlander), all of whom were military or intelligence officers. Speaking “directly to members of the military and the intelligence community,” they warned them that “this administration is pitting our uniformed military intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” and reminded them that: “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”

This admonition that military and intelligence personnel “can” and “must” refuse illegal order, provoked fury from Trump, who called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” although it’s a well-known, black-letter element of the Uniform Code of Military Justice—as his own Attorney General, Pam Bondi, wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court: “Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders, It would be a crime to do so.” (my emphasis).

Indeed, Pete Hegseth himself knows and has clearly stated this legal standard: “The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders…If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief. There’s a standard. There’s an ethos.”

It’s just one of those standards that, once you get in power, you don’t give a shit about.

Nonetheless, we should recognize that it’s quite radical for sitting lawmakers to make such statements. When soldiers start disobeying orders en masse—which is exactly what the Democratic six are urging US soldiers and sailors to consider doing—things get seriously out of hand. Entire units and missions start to collapse under constant threat of mutiny. The last time mass refusal of orders happened seriously in the U.S. armed forces was in Vietnam, and it inevitably developed into situations where orders were refused with the toss of a grenade.

And that’s exactly the kind of thing you should expect and accept when an illegal order to commit a war crime or crime against humanity is issued, whether for a specific incident or a whole campaign—i.e., an imperialist aggression in Vietnam or Venezuela.

More pointed responses to the Democratic six are along the lines of “What illegal orders are you suggesting our troops have to disobey? Please don’t pretend you’re giving an abstract lesson in civics. You are former military and intelligence officers who obeyed every order you were given without question and have decided now to emphasize the necessity of disobeying illegal orders, in a discourse framed with urgency about what “this administration” is doing. Everybody knows you’ve got something specific in mind. Say it.

Pardon me for suspecting that these CIA and military Dems are not at all ready to accept the radical consequences of what they are advocating. Do all or any of these six want to be a little more concrete and say whether the military—every single member from the Admiral down to button pusher, the mass refusal you need to challenge a criminal military campaign—must refuse orders to blow up small, unarmed, civilian boats far from and unable to reach American waters (a more “completely unlawful and ruthless” order than which it’s hard to imagine)? Or will they continue “declining to weigh in”? Are they interested in encouraging and engaging in urgent, ethical, constitutional action that might actually disrupt a war crime in progress, or in rhetorically demonstrating how ethically, and constitutionally, and impotently cowardly concerned they are in contradistinction to their Republican colleagues? How much of a shit do they actually give?

Alumni Relations

Which brings me to another example of oh-so-concerned “oppositional” discourse that hit closer to home for me: the December 5th NYT op-ed, “What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes,” by Phil Klay. Klay is a former Marine and the winner of the National Book Award for fiction in 2014 for his book of short stories about war, citizenship, and faith. As the LA Times puts it, he’s a Marine who’s “become more of a philosopher.” He is also an alumnus of the high school I went to, and I was alerted to his op-ed through my classmates’ mailing list.

I’ve written about Regis High School before, in my essay on Anthony Fauci, also an alumnus. I’ll repeat a bit here, because it informs Klay’s work and my response. Regis is a unique institution. It is an academically selective, full-scholarship (tuition-free), all-boys Jesuit high school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is widely considered the best Catholic high school (and one of the best overall) in the country. It gives a strong education, in my day literally classical—Homer and Caesar in the original Greek and Latin. It’s an education based on Catholic and Jesuit ethical values (which, of course, have changed over the years), and Klay is definitely engaged in an ongoing meditation on those values. It’s an education that, at its best, lays the foundation for logical and critical thinking, and prepares students for good liberal arts colleges and professional careers. For many middle-strata Catholic kids in New York—like this guy—it has been a life-changing experience. So, its alumni are unusually loyal, and proud and aware of each other’s accomplishments.

I caught a little more of the “critical” edge from that and subsequent education, and, as with Anthoy Fauci, my response to Klay’s column was less uncritical than the responses of my fellow alumni—such as, “Must read—not often do we get St. Augustine's advice in the New York Times!” and “Nothing less than what we should expect from a National Book Award recipient. Now if only the people reveling in Trump-sponsored gladiatorial matches would read it––and somehow internalize it.” 

Using a story from St. Augustine’s Confessions, Klay builds his essay on sharply and aptly analogizing the Trump administration’s “snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up” to the Romans’ “cruel gladiatorial games” that made the spectators “drink in savagery” and “imbibe madness,” turning them into the moral monsters that initially repelled them. This, we must consider, is “what President Trump and his administration are doing to the soul of the nation,” how his “moral shaping of the electorate” will leave us with results “we will still have to reckon with once he is gone.” This, “the Trump administration’s celebration of death” pushes beyond legal and constitutional questions, and “even the Christian morality that would eventually push Augustine to formulate an early version of just-war theory.” It’s a “wounding of the national soul” that Klay finds “hard to watch.”

I’m right there with the “snuff film” critique of the Trump/Hegseth boat attacks; it’s the theologized fluff talk about Trump’s “wounding of the national soul” I find hard to swallow.

It’s fine and necessary to criticize the Trump administration for these crimes. It’s not fine to ignore—to deliberately and determinately fail to address and account for—the fact that, whatever “President Trump and his administration are doing to the soul of the nation,” that “soul” was ruined and damned long before Donald Trump came down the escalator.

George Bush, Dick Cheney, (both now Democratic Party favorites), Barack Obama, Hillary ”We came, we saw, he died. Ha, ha.”) and Bill Clinton, Madeline (*500,000* dead children “worth it”) Albright, Joe (“I am a Zionist”) Biden, etc. “morally shaped the electorate” and “wounded the national soul” to accept at-whim presidential assassinations, including double-taps.

What’s the point, besides demonstrating your theological-philosophical pretension finesse, of pinning the damnation of the American soul on Trump, who has yet to catch up with the body count of any of his forerunners?

I’ve characterized the present American polity a couple of times as a ship of fools. Even so, it was all-ahead-full for quite a while. But for some time now, under a succession of calamitous captains, we’ve been on a true voyage of the damned and, if we’re not blown out of the water (a real possibility), we will sink from the weight of the crimes we’ve committed against others and ourselves. If we even have time, we better figure out the personnel and baggage that got us here—all of it—and throw them overboard.

Klay makes a nice point about the result of 9/11: “Something dangerously seductive. America had found moral purpose again.  We can forget everything else, including why and how it happened, and embark on our purposeful and righteous campaign as the good guys, fighting the War on Terror.  Everyone, Phil Klay first of all, recognizes how disastrous that was. Substitute “Donald Trump” for “Terror” and you’ve got the liberal attitude since 2016, with at least the same level of righteous certitude.  How’s that working out?

Here's a couple of Obama’s extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassinations—aside from the murder of a 16-year-old American boy who “should’ve had a more responsible father”—per Amnesty International: “On a sunny afternoon in October 2012, 68-year-old Mamana Bibi was killed in a drone strike that appears to have been aimed directly at her.” And:2 “Earlier, on 6 July 2012, 18 male laborers, including at least one boy, were killed in a series of US drone strikes in the remote village of Zowi Sidgi. Missiles first struck a tent in which some men had gathered for an evening meal after a hard day’s work, and then struck those who came to help the injured from the first strike. Witnesses described a macabre scene of body parts and blood, panic and terror, as US drones continued to hover overhead.” Et. al. 

But we did not see those assassinations and double taps because, under Obama, “The USA…refuses to release detailed information about individual strikes.”  We didn’t see them because Obama and his “priest”/consigliere John Brennan were not as stupid as Trump and Hegseth to show it and boast about. Not as stupid, but no less culpable.

We didn’t see it because the Democratic-aligned media did not make sure you saw it and did not make a case out of it, but, rather, wrote positive, appreciative stories in Phil-Klay terms about the Augustinian angst of these morally complex protagonists.

The “priest” reference is not flippant. In 2012, the New York Times did a revealing  portrait of Obama and Brennan’s intimate pas de deux executing deadly extrajudicial and extraterritorial drone strikes via their Tuesday Kill List meetings. It was a relationship saturated with the same kind of theological and moral anguish, in exactly the same terms, that Phil Klay embraces. Obama was “A student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.” John Brennan was “a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president’s attempt to apply the ‘just war’ theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict...Guided by Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama …signs off on every [drone] strike.”

Isn’t it so much better, didn’t it leave the soul of the nation unwounded, when, unlike the crude and stupid duo of Trump and Hegseth, the educated, erudite team of Obama and Brennan conjured up a “blessing” from Christian philosophers before blowing up civilians in distant lands? That’s the kind of morally anguished and self-aware leadership we Americans, and the Mamana Bibis and Venezuelan fishermen of the world, are missing.

Of course, with the hectic pace of operations and all, the Obama-Brennan disputationes had to be rather brief, since Obama “approves lethal action without hand-wringing.” Obama, you see, is “a realist who was never carried away by his lies own rhetoric. Instead, he was already putting his lawyerly mind to carving out the maximum amount of maneuvering room to fight terrorism as he saw fit.”

“Lawyerly mind” (or perhaps “Jesuitical”), “carving out [from “just war” theories] maneuvering room.” Isn’t that precious? In other words, all the theologizing moral anguish was bullshit cover for Obama acting as the dedicated, deadly American exceptionalist and imperialist and Zionist (‘cause that’s a huge part of Iraq, et. al.) that he was, that Trump is, and that anyone whom the ruling class permits to become the American president will be. It’s not “the Trump administration” that started imperialist America’s “celebration of death.”

No Favorite

Obama’s extrajudicial, extraterritorial assassination policy indisputably paved the way for Trump’s boat attacks, just as Obama’s 2015 designation of Venezuela as an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" paved the way for Trump’s (or whoever’s) possible military attack.

Here’s what I wrote about this, in a 2013 essay, when Jesuit Fr. Joe McShane, then president of Fordham University—John Brennan’s and my undergraduate alma mater—awarded Brennan an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters against the protest of  otherwise “morally shaped” students and former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, also a Fordham alumnus (OMG, it is a Jesuit conspiracy!):

Because of the precedent Obama and Brennan have set, such decisions are going to continue to be made by one or two persons in a room as they see fit…These two men, that is, have taken a definitive, and probably irreversible, step in transforming the American President into an Emperor. But, of course, as long as he has a priest by his side, that’ll be OK.

Obama set the soul-wounding precedent that Trump is following. Now, the Trump administration is showing Americans their snuff videos of boats being blown up, hoping, as Klay worries, that some of its base will “imbibe the madness.” And some do, though it seems far from a net political benefit. Then, the Obama administration hid their kill shots from Americans, and its base was quite content not to see them, while blithely accepting their deadly result.

In other words, the Obamacan base was being fed not nasty snuff images but a constant stream of supercilious horseshit, and was, by that, “morally shaped” to “give the president his freedom of action…that we will still have to reckon with.” And if members of that base don’t recognize, renounce, and account for what their hero did, and what they did by cosseting that hero in their minds while limiting themselves to statements showing how culturally and morally superior they are to those in the other “base” who haven’t read Augustine and Aquinas, then they are just sad, sanctimonious, and politically debilitating hypocrites.

It's become the dominant, easy strategy of liberal commentators to pick loud, rhetorically crude reactionary targets to demonize, while explicitly or implicitly embracing the pernicious but rhetorically sophisticated liberal imperialists, who end up committing crimes both those liberal commentators and the reactionaries they disdain support.

The only thing different about the Trump administration is its crude, blatant, boasting about its imperialist violence. The Obama administration, like all U.S. imperialist administrations, was the same pig, with better lipstick, and deserves no less contempt for covering its porcine violence with deceitful moral pretensions. You will have no political credibility if you don’t acknowledge this.

Phil Klay, who I can’t say is naive, but who joined the Marine Corps in 2005, “because I thought military service would be an honorable profession,” and thinks that the Trump administration is only now “turn[ing] a noble vocation into mere thuggery” should maybe have relied less on the Christian theologians than the nation’s most-decorated marine, Smedley Butler, who knew over 90 years ago that being a marine meant being “a gangster for capitalism.”  Thinking on all that with my Jesuit training, I gotta wonder if there has been an order that more clearly called for Augustinian disobedience than the order to deploy to Iraq. Isn’t deployment the first order—in relation now to Venezuela, Iran, or Palestine—that we must call on all military personnel to disobey?

Klay is of the school that thinks Trump is “tarnishing” the uniform and “wounding the soul” of the nation by his proud broadcasting of the images of imperialist violence. I’m of the school that thinks it’s a good thing that arrogant crimes and the imperialist soul of the nation are shown to the world in all their naked glory. I think seeing that is more likely to encourage soldiers to refuse orders and the public to support that refusal. This is the beneficial Trump effect I wrote about here:

Trump is diminishing the aura of the presidency, and generally gumming up the works. As Rob Urie puts it: “The most public political tension now playing out is between those who prefer the veil of ‘system’ against the venal vulgarity of that system’s product now visible for all to see. What Mr. Trump’s political opponents appear to be demanding is a better veil.” Not I. The lipstick is off the "presidency" and the whole political beast it sits atop of. Good. Let's have no nostalgia for a time when a smooth operator was picking your pocket with a smile while you were transfixed by his mellifluous patter.

It’s not about Trump or Obama or St. Augustine. It’s about the imperatives of capitalism, imperialism, and Zionism that drive American policy. The last thing we need is theologized, morally anguished commentary that obscures those fundamental forces. The first thing we need is to drop our illusions and figure out how to fight and defeat those forces persistently attacking the citizens of the U.S. and the world from many directions and both American political parties.

Crimes of the boat-attack type have been a standard part of bipartisan American imperialism (that’s the category, not from St. Augustine) for as long as we have lived (You don’t have to go back to Smedley Butler. Has everyone forgotten Vietnam?). Until and unless oh-so-well-educated, philosophically astute Americans renounce their previous favored imperialist heroes who committed those crimes, they should not be surprised when their carefully targeted professions of moral disappointment and superiority will be widely perceived, with reason, as sanctimonious hypocrisy.

Really, please, get how much, and how many, people are put off by this. It doesn’t work!

So, let’s assume everyone’s good-faith desire to do something more than virtue signal by parsing the Constitution and/or the Church Fathers to show how much smarter and nicer one is than Donald Trump. I invite Phil Klay and the six Democratic “seditionists” who boldly and correctly denounce the Trump administration’s aggressions, to join me in explicitly calling for every American military officer or soldier to disobey any order to attack civilian boats, or to participate in any attack or invasion of Venezuela, and to accept, without reservation, whatever wounds to the soul, ego, ships, planes, or personnel of the armed forces of the United States that will necessarily inflict. While we’re at it, let’s also encourage disobedience to any order to participate in the insulting, colonialist, Trumpian ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza/Palestine or in any military action in support of Zionist colonialism.

Let’s all put ourselves on the line with the soldiers we are asking to—saying they must—disobey orders and disrupt the whole of the U.S. imperialist mission in Venezuela and Latin America (and, for good measure, the Middle East) with at least scores, preferably hundreds and thousands, of military resisters. That’s what will gum up the works which Trump, the current captain of the imperialist ship, along with a bipartisan congressional crew, is cooking up in the name of our nation, and that’s exactly what we must want to see, and help make, happen. Let’s, in other words, do what the logic of your purported ethical, constitutionalist position demands: encourage mutiny.

And, with all my Jesuit training, I don’t give a shit what St. Augustine calls it.

______________________________

Trump-Mamdani Bromance

Trump-Mamdani Bromance

Opposites Attract

Jim Kavanagh

The Trump-Mamdani meeting in the Oval Office blew everyone’s mind. Without renouncing the “communist” and “fascist” epithets they’ve thrown at each other—indeed, with Trump good-naturedly accepting his—they had a very friendly exchange.

Islamophobic, anti-communist rightists like Laura Loomer found it “Wild to allow a jihadist communist to stand behind the President’s desk in the Oval Office."  Indeed, it drove Laura to drink—ginger ale, that is: “I had to drink a bottle of ginger ale today after seeing Mamdani in the Oval Office because it physically nauseates me seeing Islamic jihadists infiltrate our government.”

And it didn’t quite go as the rightists expected:

The Israelis also found it confusing:

Of the jihadist communist, Trump said “I feel very confident that he can do a very good job…And we're gonna be helping him, to make everybody's dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York."

Despite Zohran’s sticking to his “fascist” and “genocide” guns, leftists  found his cozying up to the fascist genocidaire billionaire hard to swallow (even with ginger ale), and found most apt Trump’s remark that "I will say there's no difference in party. There's no difference in anything.” Political theater of the capitalist and imperialist duopoly.

Centrists found it a “vision” of new political possibility::

Though somebody has to explain to me how this works. Are the young well-to-do guy and the old billionaire both on the “bottom”? Where’s the “top”? Is Trump engaging in a class-warfare solidarity fest or another kind of buddy hug? We’ll come to that.

Collapse

Collapse

Jim Kavanagh

Can we admit how completely fucked we are?

Donald Trump is destroying the American economy and the American empire. More precisely, the Trump administration is accelerating the demise of the United States, internally and externally, that's been underway for a long time.

We are truly at the end of the road. It’s a road along which we have been alternately force-marched and slow-walked for decades and we’re at the point where our toes are hanging off the edge of the cliff. The abyss beckons. No one is going to pull us back.

This is the culmination of capitalist decline, imperialist defeat, and Zionist fanaticism. It is the American answer to the question: Socialism or barbarism? It is the collapse of the post-WWII U. S.-dominated world order, of the American (and “Western,” Euro-Atlantic) project tout court, and of all pretenses regarding it.

Terms like “democracy,” “human rights,’ “international law,” or “peace and prosperity” are nothing but bad, unfunny jokes.

Donald Trump is an appropriate villain for this last act of the American tragi-comedy, which has always been plagued by a hubris based on ignorance and arrogance. But it’s a world stage, and he is just a crude personification and culmination of the domestic and global forces that have been at play. All the American and Western liberal and conservative actors have played their parts in setting the stage for the tragic dénouement we are living through.

The Trump administration is engineering the final collapse of the American economy and empire using aggressive, simplistic versions of bipartisan policy frameworks that have underlain American politics for a long time.

These have been combined with the exceptional decline in America’s economic infrastructure, the exceptionally sad state of American political consciousness, the exceptionally stubborn attachment to the atavistic Zionist colonial project, and with Trump’s exceptional narcissism, to create a perfect storm of aggressively stupid and self-destructive policies that will lead to a catastrophic collapse of America’s already fragile social economy and standing in the world, as well as all the fictions of exceptional historical and international virtue premised thereupon.

Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango

 Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango

Jim Kavanagh

So, Donald Trump dropped this fierce speech, promising to “reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans,” prompting an ecstatically joyful reaction from Elon Musk and from RFK, Jr.  who says it makes Trump one of “the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln.”

This alone puts DJT in company with the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln. The globalist project has laid siege to democracy and freedom across the globe. The USA is the final redoubt. President Trump just launched freedom’s counterattack. https://t.co/2brXEjTByg

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 9, 2024

 Sorry, it’s a long and necessary quote:

If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country. It's as simple as that. if this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and Liberties will topple just like dominoes. One by one they'll go down.

That's why, today, I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans. And “reclaim” is a very important word in this case, because they've taken it away. In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of Deep-State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital Information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed, and it must happen immediately.

And here is my plan: First, within hours of my inauguration I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, and I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.

Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new unlined censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified—these include possible violations of federal civil-rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law, and antitrust laws, the Hatch Act and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses. To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send preservation letters—and we have to do this right now—to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.

Third, upon my inauguration as president. I will ask Congress to send bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business from now on. Digital platform should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.

Fourth. we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation. The federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project. If any U.S. university has discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal or blacklisting, those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more. We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their first fourth and fifth amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote. And once you lose those elections, and once you lose your borders, like we have, you no longer have a country.  Furthermore, to confront problems of major platforms being infiltrated by legions of former deep-staters and intelligence officials, there should be a seven-year cooling-off period before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, or DOD is allowed to take a job at a company possessing vast quantities of U.S. user data.

Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter. Furthermore, when users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadowbanned, or otherwise restricted—no matter what name they use—they should have the right to be informed that it's happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why. and the right to a timely appeal. In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose. The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America, and for the survival of Western Civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won't be anything left.a By restoring free speech, we’ll begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation. Thank you, and God bless America.

Though I’m dismayed by the idea that they are “left-wing” political actors, I agree that the Biden administration has engaged in an assault on free speech and the unique protection offered to free speech by the First Amendment. It’s arguably the worst such assault since the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-8.[1] I agree that the Biden administration and the bulk of the Democratic Party and its allied media created a public-private “censorship cartel,” much as Trump describes, that  “must be dismantled and destroyed,” much as Trump describes.

Except, just one little thing my Colombo-Spidey senses notice: “We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism,”

Excuse me while I fire up my eighteen-wheeler to drive through that loophole.

Please harken to what President-elect Trump, no free-speech “absolutist,” tells us in the midst of this militant anti-censorship rant: The Trump administration will require platforms—i.e., demand via legal and financial governmental coercion— to increase their suppression of any content “promoting terrorism.”

“Promoting” is a slippery word that was placed in Trump’s speech about free speech quite deliberately. The context of a discussion of social media platforms makes it clear: Trump is not here saying his administration will require suppression of material acts of terrorism but of speech acts promoting terrorism, which he’s defining, along with “child exploitation,” as “unlawful” and outside the realm of free speech.

Is there anybody on planet Earth who does not see exactly what is going to happen? “Promoting terrorism” will replace “misinformation” as the free-speech, First-Amendment exception, the rationale for more government-mandated censorship in the realm of political speech and expression, not less. At least in any of the many corners of the discursive universe where the word “terrorism” might be conjured up. And guess where, above all, that most definitely will be? You have one guess.

Presidential Catastrophe

Presidential Catastrophe

Jim Kavanagh

The United States of America is on the verge of World War III in three different theaters. Its social economy and infrastructure are in tatters. It’s actively engaged in genocidal ethnic cleansing—killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of mainly children and women and spitting on every precept of humanitarian and international law—on behalf of an atavistic settler-colonial project. It is more than ever despised and less than ever feared in a world escaping its control. And in this catastrophic conjuncture, our political and media culture throws up two of the most ridiculous and incompetent figures imaginable to vie for the role of leading us into the abyss.

Our electoral system is insultingly anti-democratic. Built around donor control, a pastiche of opaque voting and tabulating systems including black-box proprietary electronic machines that allow (and therefore make inevitable) undetectable fraud, and, topping it all off, the Electoral College, it is designed to evade the popular will and enable fraud. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are the two most perfectly clownish figures to lead this election circus, which is guaranteed, on purpose, to end up in a fight over the result.

As far as I’m concerned, as I’ve argued before, the proper response to this is an organized public political boycott. A smart left political movement would lead the fight, uniting all dissident factions, to make the electoral system transparent, honest, fair, and democratic as a condition of participating in it. No voting in a rigged system. The ruling class doesn’t care too much about which duopoly clown emcees the circus; the majority of the people not voting, not giving legitimacy to the system, is what the ruling class fears the most.

But no one seems interested in exiting the Big Top, so let’s bring in the clowns.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better, more radical, exposition of who runs the country than this gem:

Take note of which Trump comments provoke controversy, and which don't. Trump said this week that he "gave" the Golan Heights to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, his top funders, who came to the White House "almost more than anybody." Not a peep about this brazen admission of graft pic.twitter.com/MaJLFnH7oi

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 22, 2024

 Just as I promised I recognized Israel's eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there, and they were always after... And as soon as I'd give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I'd give them something, they'd want something else. I said, give me a couple of weeks, will you please?

But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it. You know, for 72 years, they've been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn't have the nerve. But I said: You know what? I said to David Friedman, give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less. on the Golan Heights. And he did. And I said: Let's do it. We got it done in about 15 minutes, right? 

Yup. Even more radical than his notorious answer as a candidate at the Republican debate in 2015:

Weekly Panel on The Critical Hour (10/2/2020)

 What Will Be Political Impact of Trump, First Lady Testing Positive for COVID-19?

The president, who is 74, was diagnosed with the illness hours after it became public knowledge that Trump aide Hope Hicks had tested positive. How will he be treated? How does the revelation impact the political landscape?

"US stocks fell Friday after President Trump said he and the first lady tested positive for coronavirus, but all three major indexes held on to notch gains for the week," the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. What's next?

Weekly Panel on The Critical Hour (9/11/2020)

19 Years Since 9/11: What Lessons Has US Learned, What Has Changed?

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and US President Donald Trump were both set to visit Shanksville on Friday. "Biden’s campaign announced Thursday evening that he would be in New York Friday morning for a ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, before traveling to Shanksville in the afternoon," the Washington Post reported Thursday. Has the US learned from the past?

"The number of people seeking and collecting unemployment benefits has remained at historically high levels in recent weeks, a sign the labor-market recovery is losing steam six months after the pandemic struck the US," the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. How will this play out?

Critical Hour Discussion of DOJ Acting as Trump's Personal Lawyer (9/9/2020)

 Assange Extradition Hearing Seems to Focus on His Political Motivations, Not Legality of His Actions

According to a Wednesday report from Consortium News, "defense witness Prof. Paul Rogers, political scientist at Bradford University, established that Assange is motivated by a political viewpoint that places him as a political opponent of his accusers. On cross examination, the prosecutor, James Lewis QC, hammered Rogers to try to get him to admit he has no basis to testify that the prosecution of Julian Assange is politically motivated. Lewis tried to destroy the witness’ credibility as an expert by saying he did not include a statement by the US prosecutor saying that the charges against Assange are motivated by criminal justice, and not politics." What is going on here?

Payroll Taxes Are the Achilles Heel of Social Security

On August 8^th, Donald Trump took four executive actions on coronavirus relief. One was a memorandum deferring, to the end of the year, payment of the employee portion of the payroll tax for employees making less than $4000 biweekly. (Employer payments had already been deferred in the CARES act.)

He did this, according to the language of the memorandum, because “This modest, targeted action will put money directly in the pockets of American workers, and generate additional incentives for work and employment, right when the money is needed most.”

In an additional Trumpian flourish, he stated: “If victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax…I’m going to make them all permanent,” and: "If I win, I may extend and terminate… I'll extend it beyond the end of the year and terminate the tax."

To that effect, he included this language in the memorandum: “The Secretary of the Treasury shall explore avenues, including legislation, to eliminate the obligation to pay the taxes deferred pursuant to the implementation of this memorandum.”

The “payroll tax” is, of course, the FICA tax—part paid by the employer and part by the employee—that is earmarked for the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. The understanding is that Social Security and Medicare (SS&M) benefits are paid out from these funds. For FDR, that understanding “justified” SS&M in fiscally stringent terms that would make SS&M impervious to challenge from conservative politicians: “We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”

Critical Hour Discussion of Trump and Coronavirus Discourse (4/24/2020)

Iran Launches Military Satellite, Was Prepared to Hit US Targets in January

On this episode of The Critical Hour, Dr. Wilmer Leon is joined by Caleb Maupin, journalist and political analyst who focuses his coverage on US foreign policy and the global system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism.

It's Friday: that means it's panel time!

"After a presentation Thursday that touched on the disinfectants that can kill the novel coronavirus on surfaces and in the air, President Trump pondered whether those chemicals could be used to fight the virus inside the human body," the Washington Post reported Friday. “'I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,' Trump said during Thursday's coronavirus press briefing. 'And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.'” I would be laughing about this, but I am concerned that someone will hear that question and think it’s okay to drink Lysol or bleach or some other disinfectant. It is not. Do not. That is ridiculous and dangerous, if not deadly.

Loud & Clear DIscussion of Diversionary Personalization of Coronavirus Debate (4/22/2020)

Beyond Republican vs. Democrat: The need for systemic change in U.S. healthcare

The U.S. government at all levels is consumed by infighting over how to respond to the Coronavirus pandemic. A right wing mobilization supported by President Trump is demanding that the economy reopen against the guidance of public health experts, but is the Democratic Party’s single-minded focus on the personality of Donald Trump drawing attention away from the systemic changes needed to save lives? Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net, whose latest article in The Polemicist and forthcoming on CounterPunch is “Joe or No,” joins the show.

Listen to "Beyond Republican vs. Democrat: The need for systemic change in U.S. healthcare" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Discussion of Comey & Impeachment on By Any Means Necessary (1/17/2020)

Klansmen, Killers. Christians and Kooks

DOJ investigating James Comey leaks; America's "remain in Mexico policy"; FBI arrests 3 white supremacists ahead of Virginia gun rally.

On this episode of "By Any Means Necessary" hosts Jacquie Luqman and Sean Blackmon are joined by Jim Kavanagh, a political analyst and contributor to Counterpunch and ThePolemicist.net to talk about the Department of Justice looking into years old leaks by former FBI Director James Comey, the lack of political gains by the Democratic Party through impeaching Donald Trump, and Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz joining Trump's impeachment defense team. Read Jim Kavanagh's latest piece “Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?” at Counterpunch and ThePolemicist.net.
[Related articles: Defeat or Impeach? The (Il)Logic of Impeachment; Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit; Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?]

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (12/06/2019)

Will Democrats be Cut by the Same Sword They are Preparing for Trump?

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared President Donald Trump to a despotic tyrant in a press conference Thursday and announced she has asked House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to prepare articles of impeachment," Common Dreams reported. "'The facts are uncontested,' said Pelosi, a California Democrat. 'The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security.'"
[Related articles: Defeat or Impeach? The (Il)Logic of Impeachment,  Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit]

"The proposed Trump administration changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) could strip 3.7 million low-income Americans of their food stamps and slash benefits for millions of others," Business Insider reported Tuesday, citing a November study by the Urban Institute. The institute said of the proposed changes: "Sixteen percent of households with no children, no adults age 60 or older, and no one with a disability would lose eligibility under the proposed changes to the ABAWD [able-bodied adults without disabilities] regulations. Nearly 12 percent of households with an adult age 60 or older would lose eligibility under the proposed changes to broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE). Households that include someone age 60 or older or someone with a disability are most likely to be affected by the proposed changes to the SUAs [standard utility allowances], although a larger absolute number of households with children would be affected than for either of these groups. Non-Hispanic white and Asian households would be somewhat more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to lose eligibility or benefits under the proposed changes to BBCE and SUAs. The estimated likelihood of eligibility loss from the proposed ABAWD changes differs little among racial and ethnic groups."

Defeat or Impeach? The (Il)Logic of Impeachment

Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

I've had the displeasure to watch some hours of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry. It’s an excruciating spectacle, alternately boring, confusing, and infuriating.

Where have the Democrats set the high-crime-and-misdemeanor goalpost today? Is it the “Russian collusion” for which Adam Schiff had “direct evidence” even before the Mueller investigation? How about the “10 different episodes of presidential obstruction of justice” for which Jamie Raskin told us “the evidence is overwhelming”? No, really, they got him on “quid pro quo”!  Or is it “abuse of power”? Wait, it’s “bribery.” Final answer. (They focussed-grouped it!) Bombshells all.

I have no interest in parsing the minutiae of the purported case Schiff is now making against Trump. (I’ll leave that to Aaron Maté, who does it so well.) I’ve said before that I think it’s political folly. Here, I would like those who are enthralled by the ongoing impeachment frenzy to focus for a moment on one glaring contradiction in the logic of the Democrats’ position—a contradiction that reveals that the Democrats are speaking with forked tongue about what they are actually trying to do.

Trump’s Syrian See-Saw: From Pullout to Pillage

thegrayzone.com

To withdraw, or not to withdraw? That is the question Donald Trump, in his own inimitable way, has answered both ways.

First came the withdrawal. It was real, and had a significant effect. Trump ordered the removal of US troops from Kurdish areas, putting an end to the prospect of an independent Kurdish statelet, split off from Syria. Such a partition was always implausible, given the general balance of forces in the region and the specific refusal of NATO-member Turkey to accept any such thing. (Turkey had already invaded Syria in 2016, and the Obama-Biden administration ordered the Kurds to accept it.) It was also a lynchpin of the longstanding Plan B for dismembering the Syrian state. As I argued in a previous article, agreeing with ”the entire spectrum of US-imperialist politics and media,” Trump’s withdrawal decision “marked ‘a major turning point in Syria’s long war’ and has, indeed, ‘upended decades’ of imperialist and Zionist plans for the Middle East.” 

But, as I also noted, Trump is impulsive, shallow, and weak, and “surrounds himself with neocon deep-state actors on whom he depends and who often ignore or actively oppose…his non-interventionist instincts,” and who “may yet get him to reverse that [decision] or over-compensate for it.”

And thus it came to be. Kinda-sorta.

Loud & Clear Discussion on Trump-Zelensky Call (9/25/2019)

Impeachment Fever: What Trump Said to the Ukrainian President

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net.

At least 200 Democrats have now said that they support impeaching President Trump for abuse of power after he apparently pressured Ukrainian President Zelensky to assist in an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. But the White House released what it says is a transcript of that call. And the accusations against Trump are now not so clear.

[Related article: Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit]

Listen to "Impeachment Fever: What Trump Said to the Ukrainian President" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Loud & Clear Discussion on Lesandowski Testimony (9/18/2019)

Addicted to Russiagate, Dems Make Another Huge Blunder with Lewandowski

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net and whose latest article on the subject is “Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit,” on Counterpunch and thepolemicist.net.

President Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, testified before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday in what was a day-long, very heated, event. Lewandowski repeatedly invoked Executive Privilege, even though he has never worked in the White House, refusing to answer most questions put to him by Democrats. But many Democrats came off as angry, loud showboaters, more interested in getting on television than in finding the truth over whether the President committed obstruction of justice. The hearing puts committee chairman Jerry Nadler even further at odds with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  
[Related articles: Investigation Nation: Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics, Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit]

Listen to "Addicted to Russiagate, Dems Make Another Huge Blunder with Lewandowski" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Loud & Clear Discussion on Lawrence O'Donnell's Deutsche Bank Trump Loan Report (8/28/2019)

MSNBC’s Deutsche Bank loan conspiracy theory attempts to revive Russiagate

Deutsche Bank confirmed yesterday that it has a copy of Donald Trump’s tax returns responsive to Congressional subpoenas. But MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell went further than that and made some brash accusations on his show yesterday. He said that other Deutsche Bank loan documents show that Donald Trump’s cosigners are “Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.” O’Donnell repeated the words “if true” multiple times. Even if it’s not true, he and MSNBC are doing what they can to keep the fake Russiagate narrative alive. Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net, whose latest article is “Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit” on Counterpunch and The Polemicist, joins the show.

Listen to "MSNBC’s Deutsche Bank loan conspiracy theory attempts to revive Russiagate" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Dead Man’s Hand: The Impeachment Gambit

nakedcapitalism.com

The two-year Mueller investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged collusion (“largely synonymous with conspiracy”) with Russia is over. Nothingburger.

The 448-page Mueller Report has been published in full, and made into a dramatic hour-and-twenty-minute stage performance adapted by a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright with a cast of Hollywood stars. Yawn.

Then there was the seven hours of Mueller himself testifying before two committees of Congress and the public. Painful, "very, very painful.”

One might expect that the Democratic Party’s #Resistance would abandon its attempt to unseat Donald Trump through litigation, in the face of the glaring fact that this whole Russiagate/Mueller Investigation thing has only been of great political benefit, a “massive gift,” to Donald Trump. Seeing all the chips flow to your opponent, you gotta know when to fold ‘em and play a new hand.

One might think a shrewd and serious #Resistance would perhaps switch to a strategy of frontal political assault that highlights substantive alternatives to reactionary social and foreign policies, where Trump is vulnerable for increasing inequality, social insecurity, and foreign aggression. ‘Cause, you know, as Nathan Robinson puts it: “People are upset because they’re drowning in debt, their rent is too damn high, they can’t afford their health insurance and they are working crappy jobs,” not because Konstantin Kilimnik got some polling data. One might think, with Robinson, that “hopefully we can put this pathetic chapter in American politics behind us.”

Eve of Destruction: Iran Strikes Back

globalvillagespace.com

rusvesna.su

It was a helluva week on the Iran front. It started with attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman on June 13^th and ended with Donald Trump ordering, and then calling off, a military attack on Iran on June 20-21. How we got from beginning to end of that chapter in the ongoing US-Iran saga is worth close consideration.

Studied Ambiguity

Like everyone else who can say “Gulf of Tonkin,” “Remember the Maine,” and “Iraqi WMDs,” my instinctive reaction to the attacks on two tankers, a month after explosions hit four oil tankers in the UAE port of Fujairah, was: “Oh, come on now!” We know the United States, egged on by Israel and Saudi Arabia, has been itching to launch some kind of military attack on Iran, and we are positively jaded by the formula that's always used to produce a justification for such aggression.