The Democratic Party’s National Committee is chaired by Tom Perez. The Deputy Chair is Keith Ellison. It is Ellison tweet on January 3, 2018: ” At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.” that prompts this article because it makes me despair.
He posted a photograph of himself, shown here, holding a book: “Antifa, Anti-Fascist Handbook,” by Mark Gray. I’ve not read the book but have read reviews. I am though familiar with Antifa. They are the people who dress in black, cover their faces with masks, and commit violence against those whose speeches or protests they do not like. It has been reported that “US Security officials have classified the left-wing group Antifa as “domestic terrorists.” Yet here we have the second in command of the Democratic Party’s base operation and a member of Congress endorsing that group.
According to Wikipedia, “The principal feature of antifa groups is their opposition to fascism through the use of direct action.” Direct action is another way anarchist groups define violence. The Urban Dictionary defines antifa as: “Short for militant leftists, or occasionally far leftists and radical leftists, often used as a generalization of people who commit to acts of violence against those on the Right side of the political spectrum” The justification for their violence is that those they oppose are fascists. That recalls the statement made by Huey Long from Louisiana a long time ago in 1935. He said: “When fascism comes to America, it will come under the guise of “anti-fascism.”
Antifa is just another anarchist group that sticks its ugly face into the democratic process from time to time. Since its arrival in America as far back as the late 19th century it has been rejected by Americans. It has never been nor in my opinion ever will be the type of group welcome in America by most Americans. You can be sure Ellison’s support of Antifa is already being made part of the Republican future attack on Democrats.
The chairman of the party won election to that post beating out Ellison by a few votes. The voters showed substantial support for the ideas of Ellison. In Perez, who appointed Ellison Deputy, they also put in charge of the party a man I suggest is out of step with most Americans. For one thing, his unkempt appearance as if he needs a shave seems to me will be a big turnoff to many voters.
Among Perez’s other first action aside from appointing Ellison was to do a unity tour. His fellow traveler was Bernie Sanders who is not a Democrat but a Socialist. Perez’s idea was that going around with Bernie would allow the Democrats to bridge the gap between the Clinton wing and Sanders’ progressive wing. Just thinking that was possible showed Perez’s naiveté. The only way Socialists bridge anything is if you come over to their side which is the Ellison/Antifa side, a group opposed to the capitalistic system.
A New Republic article noted during the unity tour Sanders said he did not consider himself a Democrat. It noted a news article that said, “So much for unity: the Democrats are falling apart on the ‘come together’ tour.” It pointed out Sanders “made clear that he doesn’t care about Democratic unity so much as transforming the party in his progressive image.” Harry Jaffe who wrote a biography of Sanders said: “I think the oddity here is to get your head around the fact that Democrats think he’s on their side.”
If the Democratic Party lets candidate Sanders who isn’t a Democrat into its tent and into its primary then it is doomed. If it continues to be led by obtuse leaders who believe the future of the Democratic Party is with Sanders or Antifa it is likewise doomed. Sadly, it looks like the Democratic Party is on the road to self-destruction. It’s only hope is to clear the Ellisons and Perez type people and come back to its traditional moderate base. Other than that the Trump clown show will continue until America is a shadow of its former self.
Wa-llahi! Bernie is a Fabian Socialist, at best. The revolution needs to seize all major aggregations of private capital. That will require a Bolshevik. Don’t sweat it. There’d be room for petit-bourgeois aspirations. We’d have our NEP-men., but, no banksters, or, hedge-fund traitors.
The Center-Left traditional Dem party is complicit in contributing to the level of economic inequality that we haven’t seen since the early 1900s. If we have $1.5 trillion to hand out to corporations and $800 billion or so to increase military spending, couldn’t we put that money to social programs like student debt relief, free college, universal healthcare, or anything else? Why does the US never have money when it comes to helping those who need it, but always finds a way to provide lots of $$ to those who don’t need it. We need new leaders, not the same old Democratic way of thinking, that is how we got stuck with this nincompoop. If Bernie won the primary, we’d be a lot better off.
Wa-llahi! If old lady Clinton hadn’t been such a power hungry old bitch we wouldn’t have Trump. Ditch all the rich creeps who came into the Dem Party under the Clintons. A rich Democrat is no different than a Republican fat cat. To the firing wall with all of them. Down with the capitalist roaders of any stripe.
All praise to Red-neck Revolt (I like the idea of John Brown Gun Clubs). All power to the dialectic!
in other newes
https://www.media.mit.edu/posts/reflections-on-the-disobedience-award/
Announcing the winners of the Media Lab Disobedience Award
MIT Media Lab
One year ago, Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, encouraged us to explore the idea of a Disobedience Award, providing $250,000 to fund a prize for responsible, ethical disobedience.
We called for nominations in March, not knowing what to expect, but hopeful for a few hundred candidates. Within six weeks, we had passed the 7,800+ mark, with candidates from six continents. The sheer volume wasn’t the only challenge. We needed to define responsible and ethical disobedience, and to select a winner for whom the award would be both an appropriate recognition of their work and fuel for increasing impact.
As the submissions came in, we recruited a team of 10 judges to join the two of us—Farai Chideya, George Church, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Jesse Dylan, Jerome Friedman, Marshall Ganz, Andrew “bunnie” Huang, Alaa Murabit, Jamila Raqib, and Maria Zuber—with expertise in the fields where we expected the most nominees: activism, journalism, science, and the arts. Our fellow committee members are distinguished, smart, and very busy people, unlikely to have time to read 7,800 submissions, so we whittled down the duplicates and identified the strongest candidates. At our first meeting, we had 220 finalists to evaluate.
Ultimately, the two winners we selected for this year’s Disobedience Award are people whose work reflects the hopes that led to the prize in the first place: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha and Professor Marc Edwards. Both are scientists who became activists, using rigorous research to investigate the concerns of citizens in Flint, Michigan to unravel a mystery that many in positions of power would have preferred to keep under wraps. Both faced harassment and ridicule for their work and risked academic sanctions for defying conventions of peer review as they sought to bring attention to Flint’s water crisis before more people were affected. Their work shows that science and scholarship are as powerful tools for social change as art and protest, and it challenges those of us in academia to use our powers for good.
At the start of the selection process, we didn’t intend to offer honorable mentions, but the strength of our candidates compelled us to distinguish several. Reid generously offered to fund an additional $10,000 for each of the following: Professor James Hansen, the Water Protectors of Standing Rock, and the founders of Freedom University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Jim Hansen is widely recognized as a pioneer of climate change research. At NASA, he faced substantial pushback as he made bold, data-backed predictions in climate science. His work from within a powerful institution defended what is right in defiance of pressure. For this, the committee decided it was important to honor his many contributions.
The Water Protectors of Standing Rock brought together the largest gathering of Native Tribes in more than a century to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Members of the movement like LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, Phyllis Young, Jasilyn Charger, and Joseph White Eyes held a prayer vigil in defiance, drawing an historic gathering of tribes, allies, and people from all walks of life standing in solidarity.
Freedom University Georgia, which offers free classes on Sundays, was founded by Professors Betina Kaplan, Lorgia García Peña, Pamela Voekel, and Bethany Moreton at the University of Georgia. They were outraged that undocumented students had to pay out-of-state tuition to attend state schools. Students in the program have gone on to universities in other states where laws are more flexible and just.
Many of the nominations were expected, and came in by the dozens or even hundreds. Other nominees we strongly considered were put forth by just one or two people. All received due deliberation. These include Rafael Marques de Morais, the Angolan journalist who risks his life to shed light on closed societies around the globe; Omar Barghouti of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) nonviolent movement to end Israeli occupation of Palestine; and Alexandra Elbakyan, the Kazakhstani graduate student who has deeply challenged the scholarly publishing industry by using academic credentials to “unlock” millions of copyrighted research papers.
And finally, a note about Aaron Swartz, about whom we received many questions. We both knew Aaron, and hosted a memorial at the Media Lab for him shortly after his death. While an award in Aaron’s memory would have been a fitting recognition of Aaron’s principled and disobedient activism, we felt it was important that the award go to a recipient who could leverage both the award and its visibility to advance the issues they work on. While we chose not to award him posthumously, we can report that Aaron was very much on our minds as we chose honorees.
With this first Disobedience Award, the selection committee realizes that we must refine our process, but we are proud of the results. Our deliberations sparked deep conversations and—at times—disagreement on how best to organize and award such a public prize. But seldom are we given the opportunity at this scale to witness and congratulate such selflessness and dedication. It was a hopeful experience. We look forward to next year.
The last time I met Andrew Vachss was when
I traveled from Maine to meet him at his
NY City law office in the mid 1980’s.
I asked him what I should do about the
FBI tapping my home phone.
http://www.vachss.com/av_articles/independent_goodbye_burke_hello_andrew.html
Goodbye Burke, hello Andrew
By Ian O’Doherty
Originally published by Independent.ie, January 19, 2009
He has been described as “excessively dark and excessively brutal,” but for Andrew Vachss, the best and most under-acknowledged author of the last 20 years, this is not so much an insult as a recognition that the world he inhabits and, in turn, the world inhabited by his iconic literary creation, Burke, is one that most regular citizens simply cannot fathom.
Over the course of 18 novels and 24 years, this lawyer, child protection activist, rescuer of dogs and keen social commentator has been shining a torch into the darkest areas of human depravity.
And, in Burke, he has created the perfect avenging, fallen angel.
And now, it’s all come to an end.
The last Burke novel, Another Life, has just been released and Vachss, much to the dismay of his often scarily devoted fans, has insisted that this is the end of the line.
When he writes, it’s of a New York we never see, even though anyone familiar with Chinatown and the Bowery will recognise plenty of the streets and buildings he mentions.
But Burke inhabits a different dimension; one slightly out of phase with the one the rest of us walk in, but no less real for that.
Vachss has also worked as a labour union organiser, and ran a sex-offenders wing for violent juvenile criminals.
But undoubtedly one of the most defining experiences of his life came when he went to Biafra and tried to organise air lifts of food after the Nigerian government closed all land and sea access, kicking off one the worst famines of the 20th Century.
So why did he volunteer? “The Vietnam war was on at the time and there had developed this prejudice that anyone who was against the war was a coward who was afraid of combat.
“Well, I was extremely against the war, but I was no coward, either. And, it should be pointed out, I was extremely young and stupid.
“I developed malaria, picked up other injuries and saw some of the most sickening atrocities you could imagine. And it all accomplished nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
If Vachss sounds bitter, it’s because he still is.
He admits to still being woken by his wife Alice (she started the Special Victims Bureau in Queens, New York, before she was sacked for refusing to make deals with sexual predators) in the middle of the night because of his nightmares and the experience also left him with a visceral loathing of the UN. “They did the same thing in Rwanda all over again years later. They should turn that f***ing UN building into apartments; they are worse than useless.”
But it’s his work on child protection that has really brought him to attention.
An orphan and ward of the State, Burke, modern literature’s finest anti-hero, finally develops his own family; a collection of battered and bruised souls with one thing in common — their deep love for each other and a burning hatred for predators.
It’s an unconventional family, for sure, but then Vachss isn’t a blind supporter of the traditional nuclear family anyway, saying: “If you break into a stranger’s house and rape their 10-year-old daughter, you’ll get 10 years. If you walk up your own stairs and rape your daughter, you get therapy.”
Vachss and Oprah Winfrey made rather unusual bedfellows when they joined forces to change the ‘Incest laws’ which gave more protections to predators than it did the victims, but the pair eventually fell out.
The television host had picked Vachss as one of her “American Heroes” and a show was dedicated to him.
To her horror, it didn’t go according to plan: “She started going on about the importance of the victim forgiving their rapist and that is just bullshit,” he says. “It’s the kind of nonsense that psychiatrists and sociologists come out with, but what it actually does is place the burden of guilt back at the victim’s feet.
“After all, when you tell someone that they can’t heal themselves until they have forgiven the person, what happens to them when they can’t forgive? They feel that there’s something wrong with them and not the scum who committed the crime.”
Vachss has been described as the noirest of noire, and he’s undoubtedly hard boiled to the tensile strength of tungsten.
In fact, his books don’t read so much like thrillers as war reports despatched from a battlefield nobody would ever volunteer for — he drags the reader by the scruff of the neck and takes them over to edge of the abyss, forcing them look at things they would otherwise shy away from.
But it’s not all stomach-churning horror; one of the most overlooked aspects of the Burke series is the compassion which flows through the characters for each other — both human and canine.
An obsessive defender of dogs, he sees in them what he sees in children: “You get what you raise. People say, for instance, that Dobermans are vicious. They’re just hard-wired not to take any shit. So, if you get some idiot who gets a puppy and decides to show it who is boss, he’s going to stomp on the dog.
“Then, one day, when the dog is big enough, the guy tries it and the dog says enough is enough. Then what? The dog gets destroyed and the fool gets to tell people how his dog was just vicious. And it’s the same with people.”
Vachss specialises in placing specially trained rescue dogs with damaged and abused children, particularly when they have to go to trial.
“A child can trust a dog, particularly a big dog, more than it can most humans; the dog can give them the strength they need and both dog and child get to find themselves again.”
Burke may be gone, but Vachss remains, and given his promise not to stop writing, his fans will be waiting eagerly for the next chapter in his extraordinary life.
Personally, I’ve had Another Life for some months now, but I’m just not ready to read the last chapters — after nearly 20 years of vicariously walking with Burke, I’m just not yet ready to wave goodbye.
But you should say hello.
Trump being incompetent would mean, that, practically speaking, the nation is controlled by a military junta working in tandem with the most fascistic elements of the Republican Party.
Wa-llahi! If you don’t like antifa, wait until the cadres from Rojava hit the scene. You ain’t seen nothing, yet. Those folks have been tempered by the flame. They got something for ya.
“They are the people who dress in black, cover their faces with masks, and commit violence against those whose speeches or protests they do not like. ” And they have the fulsome support of mainstream Democrat officeholders. The Democrat mayor of Charlottesville did not enforce the anti-masking law. A woman died and he should have prevented the circumstances that led to it. Did Marty Walsh enforce the law in Boston at a subsequent rally? They are morally culpable for the criminal excesses of antifa by reason of nonfeasance.
The communist rot in the Democrat party is deeper than most are aware of. Antifa is not on the fringe. It has willing and knowing partners in City Halls, State Houses and Congress. They are all partisan Democrats.
That task Matt hopes for makes cleaning the Augean Stables look like child’s play. A shovel will not do it. He is going to need a snowblower* or a back hoe at the minimum. Best of luck.
*Snowblower on the brain at the moment.
It seems today’s politics have fractured us to the extent that we have the far right, with White Supremacy and far left, with Anti-fa. How has this happened?
Recent article by Thomas B Edsall tries to explain it, by saying when we go too far either direction, it spurs these militant groups that don’t listen or hear each other.
Elizabeth Warren was a registered Republican at one time, before her Harvard days, but once encouraged to run for office, she became liberal, and since being elected, has moved to socialism.
The Dems need to find candidates that will work for the “middle”, but doubt they will by the next election.
This liberal agrees, Matt. One Trump is enough. No more nuts!
Liquidate the banksters and hedge-funds traitors. Nationalize Wall St. Instead of half the people owning stock, we all could have a share.
Social-Democrats vs. bourgeois Democrats? Bring it on! Wealthy Democrats are, as, much, the social enemy, as rich Republicans. Things are just beginning to swing left. Enjoy the ride. Don’t worry, too much. The Social-Democrats are, rather, mild leftists.
All praise to Keith Ellison. All power to the dialectic.
Matt: I agree with my lifelong friend Hutch who sometimes posts here: He identifies himself as a Hubert Humphrey democrat . . .as a young man I admired the idealism of JFK and RFK and liked Teddy a lot, until he went soft on pro-life issues and moved a bit too far too the left.
We know you don’t like Trump . . . that’s O.K . . . he’s controversial . . . but remember “hating takes too much out of us” . . . it’s best to grin and bear it . . .
Me? I’ll stick to my conservative independent mindset, pro-life, anti-Big Government, anti-Imperialism, anti-interventionism, but recognizing we need a strong military and good workers at all levels of government, federal state local.
So, yes: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ellison, and Perez are the faces of a decadent Democratic Party . . . . there are new faces on the horizon, moderates, who can envigorate Democrats, Republicans and Independents . . . who’s that woman Congressman from Hawaii, who was a colonel or major in the Army, who served in the MIddle East, Iraq or Afghanistan, very well spoken . . .
and why don’t the Dems get rid of the radical feminists and radical libs, and I’ll help you help the Republicans get rid of the Neocons and Nativists
Me, I’m an American-Firster, but recognize we are a global super power with responsibillities to help the less fortunate around the world and to deter encroaching fascists.
I call myself a compassionate conservative and a traditionalist. I like Trump’s policies, not his too flippant crass tongue, which sometimes he uses too often in minor spats.
But I do believe much of the liberal Media is fake news . . . have thought so since Bob Quinn ran for governor in about 1974-8 (?) and the Boston Globe tried to destroy him with a cartoon.
Peace, fight the good fight, do good and fear no man, and listen to Hutchy!