Kash
Patel’s comments during a September 2023 appearance on self-proclaimed
"prophet" Julie Green's podcast are deeply troubling and raise serious
concerns about his potential fitness to serve as FBI director. Patel’s
remarks, dripping with partisan animosity, paint a picture of someone
far more concerned with loyalty to Donald Trump than with impartiality,
justice, or uniting Americans under the banner of fairness.
Patel,
speaking alongside conspiracy theorist Clay Clark, attacked supporters
of GOP primary candidates like Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Mike
Pence, implying they were traitors to Trump. Patel referred to DeSantis
as “Tater Tot Ron” and delivered a pointed warning to Republicans who
might dare to support a candidate other than Trump:
In
the book’s appendix, the 44-year-old former federal prosecutor details a
60-name roster of current and former government officials whom he
calls “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.”
So who makes the cut?
Some familiar names appear on the docket, which has been seized on more widely after being shared on X by Tim Miller, host of “The Bulwark Podcast” and MSNBC analyst.
Trump’s opponents during his three presidential bids ― President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and 2016 Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton – are there. So too are high-profile names in the current administration, such as Attorney General Merrick Garland, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin andNational Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
[. . .]
Here are some other standout names:
John Brennan – Former CIA director under President Barack Obama
John Carlin – Former Justice Department national security division head under Trump
Mark Esper – Former defense secretary under Trump
Stephanie Grisham – Ex-White House press secretary under Trump
Gina Haspel – Former CIA director under Trump
Fiona Hill – Former National Security Council senior director
Cassidy Hutchinson – Former assistant to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
Retired Gen. Mark Milley – Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Robert Mueller – Former FBI director and Russia election interference special counsel
John Podesta – Former Obama adviser
Susan Rice – Former Obama national security adviser
Rod Rosenstein – Former deputy attorney general under Trump
Adam Schiff – Democrat Senator and former House Intelligence Committee chairman
Kamala
warned you. She told you she'd start her first day as president with a
to do list and that Trump would start his with an enemies list. Idiots
got what they voted for.
Wednesday, December 4, 2024. An actual analysis of the 2024 election
takes place, MAGA hate abounds, behind the scenes with COMMON DREAMS and
me (don't threaten me in an e-mail), and much more.
Starting with last night.
That's
the African American Policy Forum's "Views from the 92%: Black Women
Reflect on 2024 Election and Road Ahead." "Conversations are going
forward with us being relegated to a time out space." Exactly. Black
women were largely silenced before the election and this has continued.
Now when it came to trashing the first Black woman to seriously run for
president, DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES,
COMMON DREAMS, etc. The participants include law professor Kimberle
Crenshaw, THE
WASHINGTON POST's Karen Attiah, iONE DIGITAL's Kirsten West Savali,
Black Voters Matter Fund's LaTosha Brown, the National Coalition on
Black Civic Participation and Convener of Black Women's Roundtable's
Melanie Campbell, the National Council of Negro Women's Shavon
Arline-Bradley, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Atlanta Alumnae
Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta's Fran Phillips-Calhoun and Higher Heights'
Glynda Carr.
Kimberle
Crenshaw: Black women are disproportionately working class. So any
argument that foregrounds that Harris lost because she had no class
analysis completely ignores Black women who voted overwhelmingly for
her. And any analysis that fails to ask why the many policies she did
offer that benefited the working class while the GOP's policies like
tariffs, tax cuts, and attacks on workers that would harm them failed to
dislodge White voters from Trump. This is an alibi cloaking, covering
up of the identity politics that underscores the MAGA nation. In short,
why do so many people believe that the economy is the standard
explanation for the election out come as a race neutral one as opposed
to an explanation that is racially loaded? These are the frustrating
details that too many of us are talking about with our friends, our
loved ones and colleagues. This is the tumor in the post-mortem that
analysts unskilled in diagnosing the condition of the body politic that
cannot address. So, in typical fashion, we've got to do it for
ourselves.
You need to ask
yourself about the media you consume because no one is addressing this.
Yes, there are racists like Katrina vanden Heuvel (part owner of THE
NATION) and Amy Goodman (DEMOCRACY NOW!) -- White women who can't see a
Black woman as anything other than a Maid or a Mammy. The 'left' media
-- THE NATION, DN!, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, COMMON DREAMS,
TRUTHOUT OUT -- isn't having this conversation. They aren't even
acknowledging it. But you make a donation and they'll acknowledge your
money with an empty thank you. They will gladly take your money and
then happily ignore you.
But expand beyond that.
Sam Seder and his MAJORITY REPORT have repeatedly ignored this. THE HUMANIST has ignored it. SECULAR TALK has ignored it.
These
outlets are more than happy to repeat Bernie Sanders' racist analysis
-- an analysis they're too stupid to grasp -- and they'll platform any
other White person.
But they won't platform Black women and they do not want to discuss racism and sexism.
TABITH SPEAKS, Danielle Moodie's programs and Olay's program can and have discussed this.
What's the common thread between those three and the others on YOUTUBE addressing this?
They are Black women.
THE
NATION and the rest have made it very clear that Black women are not
welcome and they can't call out the racist and sexist attacks on Kamala
because they were making them -- these 'left' outlets were part of these
attacks.
COMMON DREAMS? Check their archives. A man runs for president for the Democratic Party?
They're
not offering multiple daily attacks on what the candidate's
representing or telling him how to word it or telling him what to focus
on. They're not doing that. But when COMMON DREAMS wasn't outright
attacking Kamala, they were still attacking her with their never ending
implication that no Black woman was going to be able to decide. No,
they were going to order the Black woman around, they were going to
disrespect her daily and trash her daily.
This
is not a one day thing -- our noting the video above or our noting this
issue. Please stream it, we will talk about it more in Thursday and
Friday's snapshot.
And when you follow this
topic, follow it beyond the election. Follow the nonsense of these
White speakers trying to use the election 'results' to sell out trans
people, or gay people, or immigrants -- because these people don't want
to work for votes and they don't want to work for voters.
'Results'?
I believe the Dems picked up two seats in the House. I know that
Donald Trump did not have a landslide or a mandate. He barely won the
popular vote.
With almost all the states reporting at at least 99% of the votes counted, AP finds:
Harris: 74,898,009 votes (48.4%)
Satan: 77,193,105 votes (49.9%
More than anyone else, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has led on combatting the lie that Donald received a mandate. At THE GUARDIAN, Mehdi Hasan takes on the lie in a column:
In 2024, we have a new post-election lie from the Republican party. Trump didn’t just win, they say, but he won big. He won a landslide. He won an historic mandate for his “Maga” agenda.
And it was Trump himself, of course, on election night, who was the first to push this grandiose and self-serving falsehood, calling
his win “a political victory that our country has never seen before”
and claiming “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful
mandate”.
Republican
politicians, masters of message discipline, quickly followed suit. The
representative Elise Stefanik called his win a “historic landslide” while the senator John Barrasso called Trump’s a “huge landslide”. “On November 5 voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it,” wrote the “Doge” co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Wall Street Journal on 20 November.
None of this is true. Yes, Trump won the popular vote and the electoral
college. Yes, Republicans won the Senate and the House. But, contrary to
both Republican talking points and breathless headlines and hot takes
from leading media outlets (“resounding”, “rout”, “runaway win”), there was really nothing at all historic or huge about the margin of victory.
Repeat after me: there was no “landslide”. There was no “blowout”. There was no “sweeping” mandate given to Trump by the electorate. The numbers don’t lie.
First,
consider the popular vote. Yes, Trump became the first Republican for
two decades to win the popular vote. However, per results from CNN, the Cook Political Report, and the New York Times,
he did not win a majority of the vote. Barack Obama did in both 2008
and 2012. Joe Biden did in 2020. But Donald Trump failed to do so in
2024.
And
the former president’s margin of victory over Harris is a miniscule 1.6
percentage points, “smaller than that of every winning president since
1888 other than two: John F Kennedy in 1960 and Richard M. Nixon in
1968”, as an analysis in the New York Times noted last month. In fact, in the 55 presidential elections in which the popular vote winner became president, 49 of them were won with a margin bigger than Trump’s in 2024.
In
2004, we were apparently smarter on the left. Following that election
and Bully Boy Bush's lie that he had a mandate didn't fly. We
collectively pushed back on that lie. And when the cowards came forward
to attack this group or that group and insist that the Dems had to drop
support for abortion or for equality or for this or for that, we pushed
back.
Well.
Stop me from lying.
Some of us pushed back.
Sam
Seder didn't push back. He platformed Simon Rosenberg (DLC baby) and
let Simon lie non-stop on THE MAJORITY REPORT which then aired on AIR
AMERICA RADIO. He was rightly savaged in the comments on the AIR AMERIA
RADIO blog.
But most of us, not Sam, were able to push back.
Today, it's one effort to gaslight after the other.
And we need to get it together if we're fighting right now.
If?
The
topics addressed in the video above? Many Black women are on vacation
right now. You refused to stand with us so you've given us no reason to
stand with you.
Hatred
is all around. MAGA spreads it like the flu. And we can't count on
the jokes like Seth Moulton to defend the people because cowards never
do anything but advance themselves. Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports:
A far-right
state lawmaker in Michigan called for the abolition of same-sex
marriage on Monday immediately after returning from the holidays — and
caught significant backlash on social media.
State Rep. Josh Schriver, who previously filed a lawsuit to restrict voting rights in Michigan and was stripped of his committee assignment after
posting content promoting the white supremacist "great replacement
theory," posted on X, "Make gay marriage illegal again. This is not
remotely controversial, nor extreme."
He followed up with a second post reading,
"20 years ago, Barack Obama was more conservative on marriage than many
Republicans today. America only 'accepted' gay marriage after it was
thrusted into her by a perverted Supreme Court ruling. America 2124
doesn’t have to be as dysfunctional as America 2024."
"Thrusted"?
Thrust works better but how effete of you, Josh, to reach for some
archaic usage. Thrust is the term your home schooled brain is
struggling for. Save us from the stupid.
And heaven save us from the closeted.
"Gay
face" is a term describes facial features that call to mind stereotypes
of what someone gay looks like. Some may, many more do not. And
having "gay face" doesn't mean the person's gay. That said . . . If
you look up "gay face" in the dictionary, this is what you find.
That's Josh Schriver and if he looks a little strange, it's probably because he doesn't have anything to wrap his lips around.
Again,
he reads gay. He may be gay, he may not be, but he reads gay. So is
this for real or is he just a MAGA sub trying to tick off a dom so he
can get some rough action?
I have no idea but I will not be surprised when he gets arrested for some public incident. Not surprised one bit.
In
response to Schriver, Michigan's Democratic attorney general Dana
Nessel posted to X, saying: "Please explain how dissolving my marriage,
or that of the hundreds of thousands of other same-sex couples living in
America, provides a benefit to your constituents or anyone else. You're
not interested in helping Michiganders. You want only to hurt those you
hate. Shame on you."
Newsweek has emailed Schriver for comment.
This is not the first time that Schiver has sparked conversation after posting on social media. Earlier this year, Schriver posted about "the great replacement," a racist conspiracy theory,
to his social media, resulting in him being removed from the House
Natural Resources, Environment, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation
committee as a punishment.
Schriver's
post on X, which was originally created by right wing figure Jack
Posobiec, showed a map of the world featuring white human figures over
the U.S., Europe and Australia and black human figures across the rest
of the map with the text "The great replacement!"
MAGA subs are garbage and they're all over Twitter.
Oh, COMMON DREAMS!
This
will get attention -- the wrong kind for COMMON DREAMS -- and let's
deal with it today in the hope of more eyeballs streaming last night's
video.
I
heard of their latest e-mail to the public account and was thinking,
"Do I respond?" Yeah, actually it makes sense to do so right here.
Ava
and I noted a lot that COMMON DREAMS was getting wrong. And it hurt
some little feelings. One COMMON DREAMer insisted I was hurting and
that's why I was slamming them "We ignored you."
Uhm,
no, but we can certainly talk about it if you need us to. In June of
2023, CD contacted me about something I'd written here and wanted some
of the stuff I had. I was busy and doing chemo. I dictated a response
to Martha and told her to pull some URLs. She sent it out. I'm
remembering six total e-mails from CD. I believe each one got answered.
They never did anything with it that I know.
I
didn't do anything here with either. I would've assumed that they had
the same issue I did. There were attempts to move the piece over to
THIRD. Betty and my objection to it was were we promoting it?
Dona
was concerned about how we did the visuals. We could put black lines
over some of the stuff, or black bars as needed. But when we attempted
to do a similar feature -- with the same censored type photos -- a
decade before, it left us with nothing but problems -- including
Blogger/Blogspot censorship.
In the case with CD, Twitter had a number of things they shouldn't have.
Remember Target getting targeted by MAGA nuts?
Some
people thought I wasn't hard enough on Target. Target removed the
LGBTQ+ merchandise to a degree. Some stores completely, some just moved
it around. And, as I pointed out, I didn't approve of any of that but I
also didn't approve of threats.
Those threats still posted. Punk ass White boys threatening to shoot up Target over the LGBTQ+ displays.
So that was some of it but the bulk of it was what was supposed to be Glenn Greenwald's browsing history.
I believe it was his.
He's
into shame and humiliation by straight men. Or "straight" men. MAGA
men generally aren't straight. They pretend to be and part of that
pretense requires them hating who they really are.
So
those URLs were the most vile and disgusting things you could imagine.
Naked women being beaten up, naked women being cut up. The most racist
images of Black men you could ever imagine with captions conveying just
how scared and impotent MAGA truly is when around a Black man. It was
vile and it was disgusting.
The
world is disgusting enough -- Betty and my point. We were fine with
writing about it but weren't fine with giving URLs in article or Twitter
Names because we didn't want to popularize these hate sites.
Again, if CD did nothing with it, that's something for them to answer to.
Betty,
Ava and I took it to the community newsletters and that's why, as a
community, we knew so much better than others just what a threat MAGA
was and how it really works and the reality of just how many closet
cases are in MAGA -- and want to be outed and stripped of their
rights.
And to be clear,
MAGA subs exist but so do MAGA tops and, as we've noted here before,
they tend to be obsessed with Hasan Piker and the notion of forcing him
into submission (including sexual).
MAGA is really just a bunch of flamers waiting for the match to strike.
That
is Donald Trump's crowd and part of this in the community included
bringing in a friend who had been an FBI profiler for a roundtable where
he shared what he'd put together from the URLs.
But
again, I have no idea if CD followed up or didn't. I honestly didn't
care. As noted, that was when I was going through chemo and if hadn't
been CD, I would've ignored it because it was the nautious phase where I
was throwing up constantly, could not retain body warmth and was
constantly shivering (again, this was in June of last year) and just
struggled to get through every day. But it was COMMON DREAMS and I
respected the work they did so I tried to pass on what I could in the
limited amount of time I had.
From
the e-mail that was sent accusing me of being upset that they didn't
write about it -- I'm guessing they did nothing with it. Again, had no
idea, I wasn't traipsing around the net, I was just trying to survive
cancer. Had a bit more on my mind.
It's
a shame they did nothing with it. We get it, this community, because
we addressed it in the newsletters. We get the depth of the hatred MAGA
carries and we get how far they will go.
I am surprised CD didn't even follow up regarding the posted threats by White MAGA males to shoot up Target.
At
any rate, it really has no bearing on why I am demanding that CD
practice actual journalism. But if CD thinks it's why I'm criticizing
them, I've put this up here and I can certainly go into much more detail
if I have to. None of it makes me look bad -- surprising, no? I have
long noted that I pass things on to friends who are journalists,
producers, etc. We covered the Christus nonsense in newsletters and I
noted it here last week but that's something I tried to set up with two
different friends. Texas wasn't seen as big enough of a story. I'm not
friends with COMMON DREAMS -- I never initiated contact with them --
like Anthony Arnove, they came running to me.
If
it makes CD to feel better they can pretend I am angry that they
ignored the story -- and that I knew they'd ignored it before they
e-mailed. But all I'm doing is saying DO YOUR DAMN JOB. You take
people's money and you pretend you're doing journalism. So do it.
I'm
not going to name the person who initiated that year ago conversation.
I'm assuming he told at least one person at COMMON DREAMS about it
since another CDer is writing and insisting I'm angry and -- get this --
hiding something.
You can tell the story, I
don't think I come off badly. And, again, it's known I actively shop
around stories to friends in the media. It's known that in the past, I
would help any campaign that read something in a snapshot where I was
reporting on a Congressional hearing I attended and they needed help
finding it. So if I didn't remember, I would consult my notes and reply
back, that the exchange took place in the second round of questioning,
for example. Now when these campaigns then wanted me to stream a
hearing online and find that exact moment for them? That's when I
stopped helping because I don't work for you and if you're too lazy to
stream a hearing yourself, there's no need for you in Congress.
But by all means, COMMON DREAMS," come at me, bro."
The
reason you're getting criticized by me is because you're doing horrible
journalism. That was the whole point of what Ava and I wrote earlier
this week in "Media: Journalistic Malpractice:"
Now let's wind down with, you guessed it, COMMON DREAMS. Yes, them again. Yes, Jake Johnson again. The article is entitled "Is Bernie Sanders Launching a Third Party? 'Not Right Now, No'."
One thing you have to understand about COMMON DREAMS is that they have
no common sense when it comes to Senator Bernie Sanders. They lust
after him so, we're surprised that they have yet to feature Bernie in a
tasteful nude pictorial.
There's never
a moment of Bernie that COMMON DREAMS doesn't rush to celebrate -- not a
single moment in Bernie's long list of one non-accomplishment after
another. He's on the verge of serving his 34th year in Congress and yet
there are current members of the Congress who will be starting their
third year next month and can point to actual accomplishments.
That
some idiot thought an 83-year-old man was going to start a new
political party was bad enough but that they thought it would be
do-nothing Bernie is much, much worse.
And
while it would be great if COMMON DREAMS could stop acting like TMZ and
also stop pretending Bernie was Drake, that's not the worst of it.
This is:
The senator said the upstart campaign of Independent Dan Osborn—a union steamfitter who launched an unexpectedly close challenge to two-term Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) while shunning the state's Democratic establishment—"should be looked at as a model for the future."
"He took on the corporate world," Sanders continued. "He ran as a
strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent,
he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an
extraordinary campaign, and it tells me that the American people are
sick and tired of seeing the rich getting richer. They think
billionaires dominate both political parties. They want real change, and
Dan's campaign raised those issues in a very significant way."
Wow.
At last, a path forward for the party! At last, no faux nonsense
that's really an attempt to push the Dems to the right.
Oh.
Wait.
That's exactly what Bernie's doing (yet again) and what COMMON DREAMS is enabling them.
Who's
the moron from Nebraska? We don't know. We're not Bernie groupies.
So we looked him up. And found one unimpressive detail after another as
well as the fact that Bernie's yet again lying. We could provide
multiple examples but we think Jacob Crosse, at WSWS, did it better than we ever could:
Sanders presents Osborn as a champion of the working class in
opposition to both the Democrats and Republicans, when the reality is
the opposite. Prior to running for Senate, Osborn was the president of
Local 50G of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain
Millers International Union (BCTGM) in Omaha, Nebraska. Throughout his
Senate campaign, Osborn touted his stint as a union bureaucrat to
posture as a friend of the working class.
However, Osborn used his
role not to fight for the workers against the corporation, but to
strangle their struggle and impose a pro-company sellout. During the
2021 Kellogg’s strike, Osborn waged a national chauvinist campaign to
keep striking workers in the US isolated from their class brothers and
sisters internationally.
In a broadside against Mexican workers, Osborn said in an interview at the time:
A
lot of Americans probably don’t have too much issue with the Nike or
Under Armor hats being made elsewhere, or even our vehicles, but when
they start manufacturing our food down where they are out of the FDA
control and OSHA control, I have a huge problem with that.
In a preview of his anti-immigrant Senate run, he campaigned for a boycott of “made-in-Mexico Nabisco products.”
After
the workers had struck for 77 days, Osborn helped Kellogg’s push
through a contract betrayal that expanded the hated “two-tier” wage and
benefits system and led to the closure of the Omaha plant and destruction of 550 jobs.
The
Democrats failed to field a candidate and Osborn only narrowly lost his
Senate race against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer. In the course of
his campaign, Osborn never once pointed out Trump’s fascist politics or
condemned him for having tried to overturn the 2020 election. Instead,
Osborn solidarized himself with Trump and claimed “Fischer stabbed Donald Trump in the back” for calling on Trump to drop out of the presidential race in 2016.
During
and following his campaign, Osborn pledged to work with Trump to
“secure the border,” including through the completion of Trump’s border
wall.
[. . .]
In addition to Sanders, those endorsing Osborn’s anti-communist, anti-immigrant, pro-bureaucracy campaign include Jacobin
founder Bhaskar Sunkara and elements of the trade union bureaucracy,
such as United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and Dustin Guastella,
director of operations for Teamsters Local 623.
In a November 22 article published in the Guardian,
Sunkara and Guastella praised “Osborn’s ideas” and his “class
background,” which, they wrote, “was key to his being able to deliver a
credible populist appeal.”
Sunkara and Guastella called on the
nationalist labor bureaucracies to recruit “talented candidates” and
work with “organizations like Osborn’s to get these candidates the funds
they need to win elections.”
The “organization” to
which Sunkara
and Guastella were referring is Osborn’s political action committee
(PAC), known as the “Working Class Heroes Fund.” The PAC, which allows
anonymous donors, raised nearly $8 million by mid-October, according to
the Nebraska Examiner, which noted that Osborn “benefited from roughly
$20 million in outside spending on his behalf” during the campaign.
The “about”
section on the Working Class Heroes Fund website explains that the
purpose of the PAC is provide money for politicians to get elected and
unite “the working class across party lines.” In other words, to forge
pro-imperialist “national unity.”
Get it?
We're
being tricked and lied to over and over by a left media that wants our
money, that wants us to donate to them. A left media that rightly calls
out Mika and Joe but we'll never, ever own up to their own mistakes.
Congratulations to MEDIASTOUCH NEWS which is setting new streaming
records and to other YOUTUBERS such as TABITHA SPEAKS, COACH D and
Danielle Moodie who are increasing their subscribers due to strong and
important work. But the bulk of left media is being produced by idiots
who, forget actual research, can't even carry out a basic GOOGLE
search. It has to stop and, if it doesn't, maybe it's time for
Americans to join together in a class action lawsuit against this
continued journalistic malpractice.
You need to stop your Bernie worship. That's the first way you improve the quality of your journalism.
We're going to wind down with this joint-press release from Senators Elizaveth Warren and Richard Blumenthal:
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote a letter to President
Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, urging them to issue a
policy directive prohibiting the mobilization of active duty military or
federalizing National Guard personnel to be deployed against Americans
unless specifically authorized.
This comes after President-elect Trump recently indicated that he
could invoke the Insurrection Act “on his first day in office.” He has
called his political opponents “the enemy from within” and said they
“should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or
if really necessary, by the military.” When asked to clarify these
remarks in late October, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance reiterated that
President-elect Trump would use force against Americans.
The senators asked for the directive to state the Insurrection Act should
be narrowly applied and that the President must consult with Congress
to the maximum extent practicable. The senators also point out the
urgent need for this policy directive given questions raised by the U.S.
Supreme Court’s Trump v. United States decision, which significantly expanded presidential immunity for official acts.
“Given the disagreement amongst scholars on the serious implications
of the recent Supreme Court decision, it is reasonable to assume that
service members, other DoD personnel, and the broader military community
may not be aware of or fully understand their rights and
responsibilities,” wrote the senators. “If
unaddressed, any ambiguity on the lawful use of military force, coupled
with President-elect Trump’s demonstrated intent to utilize the military
in such dangerous and unprecedented ways, may prove to be devastating.”
Specifically, the senators are urging President Biden to issue a policy directive that includes that:
The narrow application of the Insurrection Act should be
limited to instances when State or local authorities are so overwhelmed
and that the chief executive of the State requests assistance or attacks
against the U.S. government overwhelm State or local authorities;
In instances when federal forces are necessary to protect or prevent
violations of individuals’ civil liberties, federal forces should only
be authorized when state, local, or federal civilian law enforcement
personnel are unable, fail, or refuse to protect their rights;
Any armed forces employed must operate under the Standing Rules for
the Use of Force and cannot violate the writ of habeas corpus, federal
law, or where applicable, federal or state law;
The President must consult with Congress to the maximum extent
practicable before exercising this authority, as well as transmit to the
Federal Register the legal authorities.
“As many of us wrote previously, ‘it is antithetical to what those in
uniform have sworn to protect and defend, and a serious threat to our
democratic system’ to weaponize the military to advance the president’s
political interests,” wrote the senators.
On
the first day of his criminal trial, prosecutors told a federal judge
that former D.C. Metropolitan Police Lieutenant Shane Lamond, who
exchanged hundreds of text messages with Proud Boys leader Henry
“Enrique” Tarrio, essentially worked as a “double agent” for the
extremist group before Jan. 6 and when pressed about that contact, lied
to investigators.
Lamond, 48, was first indicted in
2023 on four counts including felony obstruction of justice as well as
making false statements. His case is not about the attack on the
Capitol. Rather, Lamond’s charges involve his alleged sharing of insider
information about a police probe into the Proud Boys and the
destruction of a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a historic Black
church on Dec. 12, 2020.
Tarrio
repeatedly took credit for the destruction of the banner online, once
writing on the social media site Parler that he was “damn proud I did
it.” He even briefly changed his Parler handle to “Fiery Tarrio.”
Tarrio
was arrested on Jan. 4, 2021, for the banner burning charge and
formally ordered out of Washington, D.C., within 24 hours. He pleaded
guilty to destroying the banner as well as to a charge of possessing two
high-capacity magazines found on him during his arrest. When Tarrio was
on trial with fellow Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy and a number
of other Jan. 6-related charges last year, federal prosecutors said
Tarrio used his Jan. 4 arrest as a neatly timed alibi for his
whereabouts on Jan. 6. (Tarrio was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but
watching from a hotel room in Maryland and texting with fellow Proud
Boys. He is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence.)
Prosecutors
say Lamond told Tarrio about the probe into the banner roughly a week
after it happened and disclosed that police were weighing whether it
should be charged as a hate crime. Lamond even went so far as to tell
Tarrio he would check to see if MPD criminal investigators had footage
of Tarrio burning the banner, prosecutors said. In another text message
that emerged at the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial, Lamond allegedly warned Tarrio that
the FBI and U.S. Secret Service were “all spun up” after Tarrio went on
the now-defunct InfoWars site and stated that Proud Boys would show up
at public events pretending to be supporters of President Joe Biden.
He
needs to be in prison. For a long, long time. He betrayed the people
he served on the force with, he betrayed the country.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024. The sad and pathetic go after Joe Biden,
Jill Stein declared victory prematurely on election night, THE ATLANTIC
pretends to explore Kamala's campaign, a ZOOM tonight will actually
explore the race, Trump's already declaring war on Palestinians in Gaza,
and much more.
Have the cucks and capons exhausted
themselves humping their inflatable mattresses while muttering "Hunter
Biden! Hunter Biden!" yet?
Oh, that wasn't an insult
to MAGA. We may get to those idiots this snapshot, we may not. I'm
referring to Jon Stewart, Jared Polis and all the other nutless men of
the left slamming Joe Biden for pardoning Hunter.
Don't you love the nutless boys, we haven't really seen them -- at least not embarrassing themselves so much -- since 1988.
Oh, look, it's the cuck and capon all in one with Michael Dukakis.
That's
what they want from Joe. And that's why they're the joke right now.
I'm not laughing with you, Jon, I'm laughing at you and your ridiculous
DAILY SHOW moment that tried to both-sides it -- and failed.
Joe
Biden protected his son from Donald Trump's vengeance. Most people can
grasp that and most people would have done the same. Jon, Jared,
Michael and the rest of you? You don't look smart, you don't come off
funny, you look like detached idiots without any emotions or human
connections -- in other words, you look like Michael Dukakis discussing
his own wife's what-if rape and murder with icy detachment.
While
they're striking poses and going for chuckles, the rest of us are stuck
in the real world. And noting how few others are here with us.
THE ATLANTIC's Ronald Brownstein files a 6223
word article about Kamala Harris' three month campaign for the
presidency of the United States. He spoke with David Plouffe (senior
adviser on the campaign), Jennifer O'Malley Dillon (campaign chair),
Quentin Fulks (deputy campaign manager) and Rob Flaherty (deputy
campaign manager). It's a very frustrating article for a number of
reasons.
In terms of Ronald Brownstein, this exchange is outrageous:
How much did Harris’s race or gender affect the outcome? Can a woman win the presidency in today’s America?
Plouffe: I’m
really eager for political scientists and researchers to try to get an
answer to this, because we certainly picked up some headwinds. Maybe
statistically this will be disproven, but I think, given the ’16
experience and this experience, it’s probably a bigger burden to be
elected president running as a woman than as a person of color.
I
think America is ready to elect a woman president. Running for
president and winning is an indescribably hard obstacle course. This
throws another obstacle into the field. And that makes me incredibly sad
to say that.
Kamala Harris is a Black woman. She is the first Black woman to run for president of a major party.
That single question and response is woefully inadequate.
Tonight, there's a ZOOM
-- registration may have closed -- The African American Policy Forum is
sponsoring it, Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election
and Road Ahead. It will be on The African American Policy Forum's YOUTUBE channel and
participants will include law professor Kimberle Crenshaw, THE
WASHINGTON POST's Karen Attiah, iONE DIGITAL's Kirsten West Savali,
Black Voters Matter Fund's LaTosha Brown, the National Coalition on
Black Civic Participation and Convener of Black Women's Roundtable's
Melanie Campbell, the National Council of Negro Women's Shavon
Arline-Bradley, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Atlanta Alumnae
Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta's Fran Phillips-Calhoun and Higher Heights'
Glynda Carr.
That's a lot of
informative speakers. Hopefully, they can address the reality of the
2024 election with regards to race and gender. In fact, they will.
Kimberle Crenshaw has made the interaction of race and gender her life's
work and every woman listed knows what actually went down even if a
number of White people want to pretend otherwise -- often so they can
ignore their own sexism and racism.
But
for now, just grasp that a 6223 word article about the run of the first
Black woman to be the presidential candidate on the ticket of a real
national party felt 115 words -- out of 6223 -- covered the two issues
and the intersection between the two. Grasp that and grasp what that
tells you about both the author and the respondent -- both White men.
The author, of course, was born in 1958 -- as the Stones said back in
the sixties, "Sing the song now."
The second part from the article that we'll note:
This
year marked a clear turning point as both campaigns shifted their
attention from mainstream outlets to niche media sources aimed at more
narrow segments of the electorate. How did these new dynamics shape the
campaign, and what do they mean for elections going forward?
Fulks: Republicans
have a very good echo chamber regarding how they get their information
out. Democrats will need to loosen up and take advantage of a changing
media environment.
Flaherty: Trump
did 30 podcasts to one audience. We did podcasts to a bunch of
different audiences, which meant we never really got that frequency. The
other lesson is that the nature of attention is fleeting, particularly
in this media ecosystem. That is one of the things we struggled with. We
were an attention machine for the first four weeks, then it was an open
[competition] for attention—and that’s a cage fight with a guy whose
entire life has been about getting attention for himself.
We
clean up with the most politically engaged people. For folks who don’t
have time to engage in politics, or folks who are just receiving a
little bit of information here and there, usually from friends and
family, the information environment is much more difficult, much more
competitive, and much more tied to culture. If we Democrats want to win,
particularly nationally, that’s the space that we’ve got to figure out,
and quick.
Plouffe: If
you had said two years ago Harris will be the nominee and she’ll do as
well with seniors as she did, you might have said no. The reason is
[that] those tend to be larger consumers of information. They also
tended to be the voters who understood the stakes of the second Trump
term more. The threat, whether it was abortion or democracy or rule of
law, mattered more to them than younger parts of the electorate.
Let's
stop there. We'll come back. But as someone who frequently felt like
very few gave a damn about seniors in this election, I
do have a few things to say. When Kamala was becoming the nominee, I
noted that she had to win seniors. Democrats don't. When I raised to
Kamala's campaign the senior issue, I was told they weren't important. I
was told they'd gone to Donald Trump in 2020 by such a huge margin,
they weren't a focus.
Well,
I didn't do any work on the 2020 campaign. I hadn't done work on a
presidential campaign since 2004. It appears Trump maintained his 52%
of older voters -- he had the same number in 2020. But Kamala appears
to have gotten 47% which would mean she got 2% more than Joe did in
2020. Imagine if the campaign had prioritized seniors.
I
noted over and over that they didn't. I believe the last time I
complained about it here, I was noting how the website was not helpful to
seniors who were visiting the website. First off, we get that a
campaign needs money -- but does the campaign get that seniors are on a
fixed income? And they have additional issues so your big on the screen
-- large -- beg for money that isn't easy for seniors to figure out how
to close? Not helpful. And that discouraged them from visiting
again. But when they did visit, they were looking for policy papers,
for where the candidate stands on the issues.
As
I noted here, Ava and I made up issue papers. We based it on facts.
We pulled things from speeches and interviews. Because there was no way
we
could speak to seniors without position papers. They grew up with
those, they want something they can review. I don't have friends in
Alaska from any campaign or anti-war work. But the other 49 states, Ava
and I activated chapters. That's what Ava and I worked on and we
weren't alone. Joining us and doing the same outreach was a friend with
John Kerry's presidential campaign, a friend
since Rev Jesse Jackson's first presidential campaign and a friend who
donates and grassroots worked on getting out the senior vote. Ava and I
and those three ran four national programs to get out the vote and we
did this
on our own, we strategized and we planned and we had no help from
Kamala's campaign staff because the staff wrote off seniors. Marcia
was brand new to this and she did an outstanding job in her city and in
cities around her -- Marcia and her wife did a great job. And it did
make a difference. That's because that's where I started as a high
schooler, too young to vote in an election, I'd be old enough the next
year. So to do my part, I phone banked and did everything after
school. And I got asked to debate a seniors' home. I did. Didn't
think I did well at all -- it had rained, I was soaked, my hair was
soaking wet and I was shivering. But the word back to our Dem Party
headquarter was that the seniors loved me. So I was then dispatched to
every retirement home in our area. And watching how others interacted
with seniors (GOPers, for example), I got why I was popular -- it's
called kindness. And that segment became my designated group for years
and years and years. Marcia is a natural at it the same way I was.
And, again, in 49 states, we worked over and over with no help from the
DNC -- no money, no position papers, nothing. Because the DNC wrote
this voting group off. This was one of the few groups where Kamala got a
larger percentage of voters than Joe had in 2020.
So
F**K you, DNC, and F**K you experts from the campaign who knew
everything and didn't need to focus on seniors. If you had focused, imagine her
getting even one more percent of the votes. You didn't just let her
down, you let seniors down. And that's called reality -- unlike the
crap you get on YOUTUBE. Quoting from Ava and my "Media: Journalistic Malpractice:"
Sam Seder is a comic. Not a particularly funny one. He's never had a
stand-up career that really paid off. The DSA is the Democratic
Socialists of America. They aren't Democrats. They're from a fringe
group that, if you go back far enough, were spending the early seventies
defending the US war on Vietnam. DSA comes from that rancid ground.
Today,
JACOBIN is the bible of the DSA. That would be the same JACOBIN that
allowed a podcaster doing a podcast for them to attack Katie Halper.
Katie's got 101 problems and we won't pretend she doesn't. However,
there was no reason for her to be attacked in that segment. And
rational people grasped that. JACOBIN did not. They went with the host
attacking Katie. A host who is no longer with JACOBIN and is now known
as the grifter she actually always was. Anahit Misak
Kasparian is this century's Jeane Kirkpatrick -- the woman raised
Socialist who turned on the Democratic Party to become a neocon and
advise Ronald Reagan. Ana Kasparian's right-wing grift was evident long
before she began attacking transgender people, trafficking in racism
and become a defender (and member) of MAGA.
Last
week, idiot met idiot on THE MAJORITY REPORT's segment "Harris Campaign
Had Volunteers 'Knocking On Republican Doors' During Wisconsin
Campaign." What happens when a self-identified DSA idiot calls in?
Journalistic malpractice.
Sam
-- and Emma -- let the idiot spout his crazy. He had been block
walking -- he didn't use the term and we're pretty sure he's never heard
of it -- in Wisconsin ahead of the election. Kamala Harris' campaign,
he whined, sent him to Republican areas!!!!
Emma and Sam tried to console him.
With
no adults in the room, the viewers were left with the impression
something awful had happened -- that this was proof of bad campaign
tactics on the part of Kamala's campaign.
No.
You're a stupid idiot if you bought that crap.
Block
walking. A campaign and/or political party depends upon volunteers to
block walk. We have both done that many times over the years. Has
Sam? Emma?
Sometimes,
unions will transport people to block walk and actually pay them for
it. (We have never been paid for block walking and one of us, C.I.,
back in college refused the payment the union was attempting to offer at
the end of the day.)
With
block walking, you're going through a neighborhood. It takes several
hours. You go door to door, you explain you're canvasing for whatever
candidate or candidates or party. You ask if the person has a few
minutes to talk? Some people will say no. Some people will slam their
doors in your face. Some will want to talk. Some who do support your
candidate, some who do are not supporters of your candidate but are
interested in politics and want to have an exchange.
That's block walking.
DSA moron couldn't believe that Kamala's team 'wasted' time and money on this effort.
It's
one of the more effective tools, first off. Second, it was a general
election. Not every Democrat is going to vote for the Democrat in the
race (Jeane Kirkpatrick never voted for a Democrat again after Jimmy
Carter beat Scoop Jackson in the 1976 Democratic Party primary) not
every Republican is going to vote for a Republican candidate and a lot
of people are undecided ahead of an election.
Block walking is a means to try to connect with voters face to face, one-on-one.
You need to down every street in every state.
But even more to the point, Wisconsin? It's an open primary state.
We
doubt the DSA idiot or Sam or Emma grasps what that means since they
all refused to mention -- let alone address -- that reality.
An
open primary state? Anyone can vote in the Democratic Party primary or
the Republican Party primary. States with closed primaries? You have
to be a registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. you have
to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary.
Meaning? Ohio political parties have no concrete information on who is what.
There's no "We have 98% registered Republicans in this neighborhood."
You
could try extrapolating from who they voted into office in a district.
But that would be a lot of guess work. And many, many streets make up a
district.
The DSA idiot is a moron whining about a problem that he basically invented. Learn politics, you damn fool.
And that goes double for Emma and Sam.
They presented misinformation and signed off on it. Because they're idiots.
Stop talking and/or writing about things you are ignorant of.
Your bad media is not helping the left. You advancing lies are actually harming us all.
Back to the main topic of THE ATLANTIC excerpt, let's finish it out:
Do Republicans have a systematic advantage in reaching lower-propensity voters?
Flaherty: There’s
the conservative ecosystem, which is Fox, Ben Shapiro, [Sean] Hannity,
Newsmax—all these folks that are politically and ideologically aligned
with Donald Trump and the work of electing conservatives. They built and
cultivated that ecosystem. They also built and cultivated an ecosystem
that was less political but more cultural. You can call it the
“manosphere,” but I don’t think the manosphere is inherently partisan.
Joe Rogan talked about politics, but that’s not his whole thing. That
was an audience that [Republicans] viewed as key to mobilizing, and so
they did a lot of work to migrate information, values, and Trump himself
between the conservative ecosystem and this culturally aligned
ecosystem.
There’s
just not an analogous system on the left. It doesn’t exist because our
voters don’t have the same demand signal for alternative media to the
mainstream press. There just isn’t the same kind of profit incentive for
alternative media.
That
nonsense goes right along with what the self-proclaimed
expert on what it is to be Black has been saying -- yes, I'm referring
to White man Tim Wise -- self-proclaimed Black expert -- who's been
saying that if
Kamala avoided Joe Rogan, that was wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
In his mind, maybe. Doesn't make it right.
I
consider Jane Fonda a friend of many years. Doesn't mean I don't call
her out when needed. Jane just went on Bill Maher's hideous YOUTUBE
program. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. He's a
transphobe, he's a sexist pig, he's anti-Arab, go down the list. I have
no idea what stupidity was suffocating Jane's brain when she made the
decision to do that nonsense interview. I consider it a horrible,
horrible thing to do. And there are many who would feel the same about
Joe Rogan (who used to be so interesting and I bet I'm not the only one
getting tired biting my tongue over the reality of Joe -- a reality that
would decimate his MAGA audience numbers). I'm sick of this nonsense.
Howard Stern was going to save us, Keith Olbermann was going to save
us, there's always some man who is going to save us and then doesn't. I
can remember when people wrongly thought Phil Donahue was going to save
the Democrats -- by supporting Ralph Nader's 2000 run?
I'm tired of the garbage and the liars.
I'm
tired of THE ATLANTIC and everyone else. We don't need a Joe Rogan.
We do need an effective media system. I'm not talking corporate media,
I'm talking independent media. If Democrats try to take over PACIFICA
RADIO -- as they've been accused of doing in the past -- I'm honestly
all for it. I'm tired of the ones who take our money -- our big money
that can go elsewhere and really help people -- who turn around and stab
us in the back. And they did this go round. Kamala wasn't pure enough
for them. She didn't agree with them on this or that issue.
You
know John Kerry was 'for the Iraq War before I was against it' and ran
with no real plan on Iraq but they supported him. They didn't work day
after day trying to destroy him. Iraqis and Americans (and a lot of
other people) were dying in Iraq.
Barack
Obama they lied for because his Iraq War plan wasn't what people
thought it was -- and Samantha Power told the BBC that 'whatever
promise' he might make on the campaign trail didn't matter because you
had to figure stuff like that out after you got into the White House.
They buried that information. Tom Hayden was among those burying it and
then wanted my help when Barack was further backtracking on Iraq to the
point that Tom was finally acknowledging the remarks from March 2008 on
the . . . July 4th weekend. And I was supposed to give him credit for
that and support him -- he told me over the phone.
Really?
He knew about it back in March -- because we spoke of it and I told him
he was both a whore and a coward because he'd decided not to say a word
about it.
But then, months
later (and after the Democratic Party primary was over), he wants to
note it and, on top of that, to lie. He blamed it on Hillary Clinton's
campaign. He blamed his silence on Hillary. If her campaign had raised
the issue back in March? He would have known it! Liar on two counts.
First, he did know about it in March -- and I believe this was where he
went off on Wally because Wally noted the phone call Tom and I had over
this issue in March -- and, second, Hillary's campaign did raise the
issue. They did a press release, they brought it up in press conference
with reporters (David Corn dismissed the story in the press conference
and actually attacked the campaign for bringing it up).
But
suddenly Gaza became the issue. And let's all ignore that Michael
Flynn visited the Gaza Freaks in Michigan. In fact, Flynn began reaching
out on Trump's behalf ahead of the October 6, 2023 incident. He was
there the month before and, among others, met with "Democratic" Mayor Amer
Ghalib -- a detail that Beggar Media concealed -- along with subsequent
visits. Money exchanged hands, promises were made and Muslim
leadership in Dearborn and Hamtramck got in bed with Donald Trump.
And then, just by chance, you understand, the trashing on Kamala began.
She was for genocide! She didn't care about the Palestinians!
That's
what they said. On our 'independent' media. The money had already
bought their attacks on President Joe Biden. Then he dropped out and
they moved the attack over to Kamala.
This
depressed and suppressed turnout. And that didn't bother Amy Goodman
of DEMOCRACY NOW!, or THE NATION or THE PROGESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES or .
. .
Medhi
Hassan confronted Jill Stein -- who received pro bono support -- an
in-kind donation -- on the fact that all she did was attack Kamala
Harris, not Donald Trump. But we weren't supposed to notice that these
holy truth tellers from Michigan were not in fact pure or particularly
honest. Kamala wasn't president but we were going to hold her
accountable for Joe's actions.
And we were going to refute and attack everything she said.
Independent media amplified those attacks.
No
one -- MOTHER JONES, this includes you -- wanted to deal with reality
so they didn't tell you about the vast homophobia in Dearborn and
Hamtramck that emerges only after the Gaza Freaks take control of the
cities. Flynn reached an agreement with Amer Ghalib in September of
2023. And even when Amer endorsed Donald Trump for president, DEMOCRACY
NOW! and all the other fake asses wouldn't tell you reality.
The
beggar media had never -- not even in 2000 -- attacked the Democratic
Party's presidential nominee so repeatedly over and over on a daily
basis.
No. I don't think
the answer is to flood these beggars with more money. I think the only
real answer is to cut them off. To send a message that we're not going
to ever again accept this. You beg us for money, we give it to you and
then you try to destroy the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. If
they'd just treated her fairly, I don't think we would have such a
problem. But there is a problem now. And why did this happen? Why
did, for example, Amy Goodman decide, in 2024, that she would spend
every broadcast attacking Kamala Harris day after day, week after
week?
Racism and sexism.
Kamala was the first Black woman. And they were going to attack her
daily. COMMON DREAMS sometimes had four columns on their main page
attacking Kamala and insisting what she needed to do instead. Read
those columns and grasp that they never did this to a male Democratic
Party presidential candidate. And they did something similar during the
Democratic Party primary to Hillary Clinton in 2007 and 2008 led by the
elderly gals of CODE PINK. But not even in 2016 did they do this to
Hillary.
No, this was very
different as White people and people of color made clear that they
weren't going to take anything from a Black woman.
They didn't want a Black woman to be in charge of the country.
They made that clear just as they made their racism and sexism clear.
Some
people are whining and insisting that Arabs are being scapegoated. No,
they aren't. Not every Arab American attacked Kamala, many voted for
her. But in Michigan, racists Arabs and Muslims worked to defeat Kamala
because they're racists. The homophobia's easy to track in both
cities. And it's reported on by the corporate media. But no one wanted
to touch the war on Black history led by Amer Ghalib and others.
Yeah,
you liars in Beggar Media missed that story. Didn't report on it
once. Amer even has a video online -- or did -- where he and Flynn
speak and they're both attacking Black history.
When
Governor Ron DeFailure does that, we rightly call it racism but, for
some reason, when Arabs do it we don't. As one of the few sites in the
US to actually cover the treatment of Black Iraqis in Iraq, I'm not
surprised that an often oppressed people could also be racist towards
others. Basra was an important port in the slave trade, for example.
Yet Blacks in Iraq continue to be targeted with racism to this day.
Dearborn
and Hamtramck went for Trump and Stein. They're very proud of it --
we've gotten three press releases on it so far at the public account and
how they celebrated election night with grifter Jill Stein who was in
Dearborn for that celebration.
They really showed Kamala, right?
No,
they showed and sported their stupidity. As Betty notes, Satan Trump
has announced that the Israeli hostages better be released immediately
or there will be "hell to pay." For Satan, it's all Hamas in Gaza. He
doesn't distinguish. At THE INTELLIGENCER, Ed Kilgore worries how far Satan's prepared to go.
It's
what the Gaza Freaks should have been worried about. But they didn't
truly care about the people of Palestine -- even while insisting it was
their relatives!!!!!!
Well if the Palestinians mattered to you, then you vote for who's going to help, not for who's going to destroy.
Clyde
Shabazz and Jill Stein did an online segment "Kamala Harris Is Killing
Palestinian Children." Facts be damned, right? Well the two losers
were celebrating their 'victory.' Clyde tried to get into the US
Congress. And he's proud that he almost got 8,000 votes in that
election. That's 1.8% of the vote in that election. He lost and he
lost big time.
Do you know
what grifter Jill Stein said on election night in Dearborn? I do
because, again, they keep sending their press releases to the public
account.
Jill declared, "We live to fight another day and we come out stronger than ever."
Really, Jill?
Who's we?
Are
the Palestinians in Gaza that we all suspect Trump's going to start
bombing his first day back in the White House if the Israeli hostages
aren't release -- are they going to live to fight another day?
I
don't have time for these crazies. Jill's a grifter and so are the
people who promoted her and encouraged her. You all have blood on your
hands.
I mentioned the treatment of Blacks in Iraq so let's note two things on that before we wind down.
Black
Iraqis are the descendants of immigrants and enslaved people from
Sub-Saharan and East Africa. Their presence in Iraq dates back to
the Abbasid empire, starting from the ninth century when some newcomers
came to the region as sailors, workers, captured slaves, or enslaved
soldiers. They largely originated from the coast of modern-day Kenya,
Tanzania, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, and other African countries. In the absence of formal statistics, their community leaders estimate their numbers today to be as high as
1.5 to 2 million inhabitants. Black Iraqis are scattered across diverse
regions of the country, concentrating in the governorates of Basra,
Maysan, and Dhi Qar. There are also a few families in Baghdad, Wassit,
and other cities. However, the largest community resides on the
outskirts of the cities of Basra and Zubair.
Despite slavery being officially abolished in the nineteenth century and
supported by Article 14 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, which
stipulates “equality without racial-based discrimination,” Black Iraqis
still endure systematic discrimination, marginalization, and structural
racism embedded in historical stigmas and xenophobia against black
people in the Arab world,
according to activists I spoke to. Iraq is a melting pot of other
ethnic, religious, and cultural communities. Yet, many of these groups
are “invisible” and can easily fade in the crowd due to similar physical
features. In contrast, Black Iraqis are the “visible others” who
cannot be unseen or concealed. Hundreds of invisible cultural and
social lines segregate the two communities, ostracize Black Iraqis, and
reaffirm their otherness in urban design, tribal allegiances, and
marriage arrangements.
One
intriguing conversation I had with a group of non-black Iraqi
academics, opened my eyes to the extent of denial most people feel about
the subject. I was told repetitively, “We don’t have black and white in
Iraq. We are all equal,” and was asked to drop the appellation black
Iraqis or Afro-Iraqis and replace it with asmar or abu samra,
which means tanned or brown in Arabic. Little did they know how
offensive it is to deny the community its blackness and attempt to
dilute it with a drop of whiteness. In contrast, the Black Iraqis I have
been working with, including Dr. Thawra Yousif, Dr. Abdulkareem Aboud,
and Dr. Abdel-Zahra Sami Farag, all influential figures in their
community, proudly claim their blackness and celebrate it.
Structural
racism and the absence of a tribal umbrella have relegated most black
Iraqis to the margins of the economy and locked them into a number of
small manual jobs as domestic help or performers. According to their
representatives, the population also suffers from low educational
attainment rates, unemployment, and poverty. Additionally, there is not a
single Black Iraqi holding a high-ranking position in
the government, nor do they have any political representation.
Recently, human rights activists from the community have suffered assassination attempts and violence to oppress their demands, according to international reports.
With
the ensuing development of an Iraqi civil society after 2003, Jalal
Diab Thijeel, an Iraqi-Africans, founded the Free Iraqi Movement in 2007
to represent his community of approximately two million, primarily located in Basra province.
The
movement seeks to overcome their marginalisation, advocating civil
rights, government recognition of the community, and anti-discrimination
laws to address the racism they endure.
When
it was founded, no one from their community served as a cabinet level
minister, MP in parliament, or even in a municipal council. The state’s
recognition as a minority would entitle them to government-mandated
quotas for elected positions.
The
2008 election of Barack Obama served as an inspiration for their
community, and Thijeel hung a photo of the president in his classroom,
where he taught courses on black Iraqi history, and fostered an Iraqi
hip-hop scene to protest endemic discrimination.
On April 26, 2013, Thijeel was assassinated,
most likely by political factions opposed to his attempt to run for
office. Nonetheless, the Movement survived the death of its founder, and
found a renewed rallying point again stemming from the US. While the
election of Obama to America’s highest executive post in 2008 served as
an inspiration for Iraqi-Africans, so did the grassroots initiatives of
the Black Lives Matter movement.
