Where is Antifa?

Calling all Antifa members: Your government needs you. President Trump, the ring leader of the January 6, 2021 insurgency against Congress, has issued an executive order labeling Antifa as a "domestic terrorist organization." 

In order for this order to stick, Trump altered the charge of "using fireworks" to "using explosives." He also labeled local organizers as "Antifa cells." The only problem was that these diabolical cells are so secretive as to be almost invisible. 

Why can't Antifa play by the book? When Trump sent his thousands of armed and masked Christian Nationalists into Congress to overthrow our democracy, they didn't try to be sneaky about it. There are photos and videos galore on what this right wing mob was up to. They crashed through the windows and doors of our Capital building. They vandalized lawmakers offices, destroyed historic paintings and statues, and illegally broke into classified computer files. 

In all, Trump's fascist thugs caused the death of five people, including a Capital Police officer. They injured 174 additional officers and caused $30 million in damages during this hours long assault on our nation's Capital. It was the worst attack on Congress in US history. 

But where is Antifa now that our president wants to do something about controlling violence in our country? Could it be that Antifa is a figment of our president's imagination? He can attack protesters at will by calling them terrorists while never owning up to his own violent efforts to steal a presidential election. 

Ceasing To Be a State

People have a right to exist, but the countries they live in do not. Should a country betray all measures of law or humanity, why their leaders should be arrested and all its institutional structures erased.

We have the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials as a template. At the end of the Second World War, the victors decided to remake Germany and Japan by locking up their former leaders and shredding their social structures. These weren't perfect trials, but they did create an expectation that such horrendous war crimes would never be allowed again. 

Two million people are being starved to death in Gaza. There are no hospitals, schools, or residential buildings left. There is no water that is fit to drink, nor sewage systems to keep the population safe. There is nothing left but the bombs, missiles and drones that eat up everyone's families. And the killing goes on, night and day. At least the Nazis tried to keep their mass slaughter secret, something that doesn't seem to worry the Israeli Defense Force. The pro Israel Lobby has spent tens of millions bribing Congress and the president to look the other way.

So when Israel falls because the rest of the world finally cuts it off, we know who should go to jail and what societal structures should be destroyed. Racial apartheid must come to an end, as should all the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land. Israel, that failed colony of Western imperialism and racism, must cease to be a state.

Fred Nagel

Roger Waters & Mona Miari

Roger Waters: 

"Comfortably Numb":

Roger Waters & Mona Miari – Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined (Official Music Video)

A new interpretation of “Comfortably Numb”, a collaboration between Roger Waters and Palestinian artist Mona Miari. Featuring newly written verses in English and Arabic, the work re-frames the song through themes of displacement, memory, loss, and the enduring pursuit of justice and human dignity.

Thucydides' Trap

Thucydides was a historian as well as a successful general of ancient Athens. His writings have surfaced again, this time in a question posed by President Xi Jinping to our would be US emperor, Donald Trump. Are China and the US destined to go to war because they are the two most powerful nations on earth?

Most of Thucydides' writing on the ancient war between Athens and Sparta has to do with the ill fated invasion of Syracuse. Athens had poured almost all of its wealth and power in trying to capture Sparta's colony in present day Sicily. Incompetent generals and greedy politicians had cost Athens its magnificent fleet as well as tens of thousands of its warriors.

Were Thucydides alive today, he would be building a bomb shelter. A war between the US and China would almost certainly be a nuclear one. Like members of our billionaire class today, the Greek historian would probably recognize the signs of disaster all around him. He would be joining the filthy rich in building bomb shelters in New Zealand, or surveying missile-silo conversions in the American midwest. Maybe he would be blasting off to a safer place in the universe with Elon Musk.

Are the rest of us, the 99.9 percent, destined to be left behind in a dying world? The billionaires and their class are crazy with the same hubris that has led to world wars in the past. Only this war will be our last.

Fred Nagel
 

Cuba Si

I admit it; I am a lover of Cuba. It is not so much for its universal healthcare, free college tuition, or  99.67% literacy rate. All are accomplishments achieved despite 67 years of US military attacks, assassination plots and crushing blockades. It is not so much for its doctors that it sends to needy nations around the world. Or the courage that the Cuban people, who through all these years still demand their freedom and national sovereignty.

No, I love Cuba because they had their revolution against US supported dictatorships and never looked back. Instead of being run by thoughtless billionaires, Cuba has directed its efforts to the betterment of its people. The nation is an egalitarian dream come true. 

Cuba, only 90 miles away from our society of unlimited greed, born again lunatics, and golf courses for international grifters, is especially dangerous. If the people of the United States ever realized how corrupt our system really is, Trump's new ballroom might become the setting for a gilded age guillotine.

"Government of the people, by the people, and for the people," a quote from Abraham Lincoln's famous speech, is a reality in Cuba. There is no billionaire class on the island, nor any right wing Bible thumpers. And Cuba's crooks end up in jail rather than in the presidency. 

No, Cuba is not perfect. But compared to the hopelessly corrupt government we have now in our country, it is a haven of justice and humanity. 

Fred Nagel

 

Death Star in the Middle East

There we go again. Slaughtering civilians in a country that presents absolutely no danger to our ourselves, our military bases, or our international hegemony. It is hard not to think about what a bully our nation has become. We obey no international rules about killing women and children, or destroying any number of hospitals and colleges. We are the Death Star home of Darth Vader, that ominous murderer of peace on earth. 

For people like me who always cheer for the underdog, disliking one's own country has become inescapable. I think about those 20,000 children killed by US bombs and drones. Or about the hundreds of reporters assassinated. I think about how racist and criminally insane our one true friend in the world really is. The people of the earth understand what we have become. In fact we have been coming to that conclusion ourselves. 

Can we disarm Israel, and end its 75 years of Palestinian extermination? Would that be enough to regain our basic humanity? Would our grandchildren forgive us when pictures of starving children came up in their Social Studies books? Will their beloved nation ultimately do the right thing? Or will we as a people join the dark side, and take our place with the monsters of the Death Star?

We can start with shaming any member of Congress who takes Israeli bribes. How about Pat Ryan, who talks about human rights but received a quarter of a million in Death Star funds last year?
 

The Last Chapter

No matter where a Social Studies curriculum starts, it always ends up in the same place. It can begin with Athens and Sparta, or the fall of the Roman Empire. It can explore the Industrial Revolution, the Renaissance or the Holocaust. But no matter where these courses start, they all culminate in the ascendence of the United States. At the end, students and teachers join in  hoping that the mass murders of history will somehow melt away under our country's benevolent world order. 

In the spirit of human advancement, students explore the end of slavery, but not the 100 years of Jim Crow that followed. They celebrate the American flag on Iwo Jima, but not the two nuclear explosions that wiped out hundreds of thousands. We can all agree that the barbarism of the past will certainly give way to the American dream of human rights and world peace. Our Judeo-Christian leaders fill us with thoughts of a better world. 

Except that Israel and the US are perpetrators of the worst genocide of the twenty first century. Hundreds of thousands are being slaughtered, a godless crime against humanity. Is this the Judeo-Christian alliance we are urged to glorify? The empire makes the bombs, and the colony drops them on its helpless victims. The empire manufactures the bullets that the Israel Defense Force shoots through the heads of Palestinian reporters, doctors, and ambulance drivers. And through the heads of the children. Perhaps Moloch, the ancient deity of child sacrifice, is really the last chapter of our curriculum.