After a well earned (and restful) 3 week hiatus from documenting via this site the endless contemporary challenges, contradictions, and crises of the American/ global political, ideological, and cultural dynamics informing the 21st century, I return today more intent than ever on sharing alternative critical perspectives and analyses too often missing or censored on so-called mainstream outlets of “news and information.” The aim as always is actively seeking and telling the truth and demanding genuine justice no matter who “agrees” or “disagrees” with it. As usual stay tuned and as we all approach the election in November don't forget the followig urgent message and pass the word:
DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
Kofi
Joy Reid
MSNBC
August 8, 2024
Project 2025 Exposed: Child labor and decimated unions promised with Trump’s election
Donald Trump took a private flight with the head of Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, The Washington Post reports. Jody Calemine, director of advocacy for the AFL-CIO, joins Joy Reid to discuss the potential, destructive impact of Project 2025 on labor unions and the American worker.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J52NFB1Ejk8
https://www.project2025.org/about/about-project-2025/
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About Project 2025
https://zeteo.com/p/rashida-tlaib-netanyahu-congress-interview
EXCLUSIVE: Rashida Tlaib Speaks to Zeteo on Netanyahu's Visit to D.C.
“It was that moment where, for me, it was like, ‘Oh, no, not on our soil. You will not attack our citizens.’”
by Prem Thakker
July 25, 2024
ZETEO
"My mom got me a whole outfit, but I was like 'Mom, I can't wear that one," Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib told Zeteoon Wednesday. Instead, she wore the outfit's belt – a Palestine-inspired sash – and a similarly-inspired keffiyeh draped around her neck also gifted by her mother.
What could have been a warm gift, a token of culture, was instead a display of existence – a signal that something in the world was askew. On Wednesday, Tlaib spent her birthday surrounded by colleagues applauding and cheering for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the man who has overseen the mass killing of her people.
“I feel like me being there shows we exist – Palestinians exist. We are members of Congress,” said Tlaib, who sat down with Zeteo for a wide-ranging interview not long after Netanyahu’s address to the joint session on Congress. “Our families deserve to grow old. They deserve human rights.”
Dozens of Democrats boycotted the alleged war criminal’s appearance, while a smattering of those who attended projected stony or unconvinced expressions. Others, however, joined Republicans in ceaselessly applauding.
Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, was the lone lawmaker in attendance who sent an explicit message that’s now been seen around the world. "WAR CRIMINAL" and "GUILTY OF GENOCIDE," read a double-sided sign she held up as Netanyahu pressed for more U.S. weapons to "finish the job" in Gaza after more than nine months of war and over 39,000 Palestinians killed.
Tlaib called it her "Cori Bush church fan,” referring to the Missouri representative who has also been steadfast in criticizing the Israeli government’s human rights violations. The pair have held similar signs in the past.
“It’s our way of speaking truth to power,” Tlaib told Zeteo. “But also, the call out for what it is. He's a war criminal,” she said. “It's a war crime to bomb schools. It's a war crime to kill journalists.”
“You Will Not Attack Our Citizens”
One particular moment that prompted Tlaib to lift the sign was when Netanyahu “attacked Americans.”
During the nearly hour-long address, the foreign leader went on a tirade against American anti-war protesters, falsely suggesting they were “Iran’s useful idiots” who know little about history or geography.
Shocked, Tlaib thought to herself: “Oh my God, there [are] American families out there, their families were impacted. There [are] families of hostages out there… These are people that are out there protesting his policies and saying, ‘Enough. Not in our name.’”
Netanyahu, Tlaib said, “was getting so angry at not only the International Criminal Court, but Americans – from doctors and people on the ground who saw it firsthand: bullet holes and … white phosphorus on children's bodies that they've never” seen before.
“These are images being submitted to the United Nations and other institutions that are coming out and proving over and over again, that the Israeli government is committing genocide, they are committing war crimes,” she added. “It was that moment where, for me, it was like, ‘Oh, no, not on our soil. You will not attack our citizens.’” But in the room, Netanyahu’s attacks against protesters energized Republicans and a handful of Democrats, including Michigan Rep. Shri Thanedar and Sens. John Fetterman (Penn.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), and Joe Manchin (W.V.), who all stood to applaud.
Tlaib said she was “really taken aback” that people stood up. “Those are your constituents! Those are your residents! Those are the people we serve!... We allowed a leader of a foreign country to attack fellow Americans,” she said. “They're exercising their right to dissent. That's our democracy.”
But the reaction to Netanyahu’s attacks against the protesters echoes how university administrations — spurred by U.S. officials — have responded to student demonstrations. The pro-Palestinian protests that swept college campuses nationwide routinely met condemnation from politicians and violent police responses.
“[A]ll of the advocates out there, the people that came from all over the country to say, ‘not on our watch.’ They did the most patriotic, most beautiful thing in speaking truth and pushing against an institution that right now is turning a blind eye to a genocide.”
Since being elected in 2018, Tlaib herself has weathered attacks and condemnation from both sides of the aisle for her own speech and acts advocating for the recognition of Palestinian humanity.
https://omar.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-omars-statement-benjamin-netanyahus-address-congress
July 24, 2024
Press Release
WASHINGTON–Today, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) released the following statement on Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress:
“I will not be attending Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
“It is utterly immoral and cruel to the millions of lives impacted by his catastrophic actions to platform him, let alone give him the honor of addressing Congress. He is a war criminal who is actively committing genocide against the Palestinian people while putting the lives of the hostages and the stability of the region in jeopardy. I fully agree with the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice that he should be held accountable for his crimes, not addressing Congress.
“Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are now responsible for the murder of over 38,000 Palestinians and injuring over 88,000. From deliberately withholding food, water, and medicine from innocent civilians to bombing refugee camps and schools–Netanyahu has created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history.
“We should be standing unequivocally and consistently on the side of human rights—today’s joint address runs counter to this. Netanyahu has actively sabotaged hostage deals, which is why my ticket will be going to a family member of an Israeli hostage.
“Not only is this address shameful, it damages our standing at home and abroad. For those reasons, I reiterate my, and millions of Americans, calls to stop using our tax dollars to fund a genocide on our watch.”
Issues:Foreign Policy
Washington DC Office
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Rep. Ilhan Omar represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs.
An experienced Twin Cities policy analyst, organizer, public speaker and advocate, Rep. Omar was sworn into office in January 2019, making her the first African refugee to become a Member of Congress, the first woman of color to represent Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress.
As a legislator, Rep. Omar is committed to fighting for the shared values of the 5th District, values that put people at the center of our democracy. She plans to focus on tackling many of the issues that she hears about most from her constituents, like investing in education and freeing students from the shackles of debt; ensuring a fair wage for a hard day's work; creating a just immigration system and tackling the existential threat of climate change.
Rep. Omar also plans to resist attempts to divide us and push destructive policies that chip away at our rights and freedoms—and to build a more inclusive and compassionate culture, one that will allow our economy to flourish and encourage more Americans to participate in our democracy.
Born in Somalia, Rep. Omar and her family fled the country's civil war when she was eight. The family spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States in 1990s. In 1997, she moved to Minneapolis with her family. As a teenager, Rep. Omar's grandfather inspired her to get involved in politics. Before running for office, she worked as a community educator at the University of Minnesota, was a Policy Fellow at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and served as a Senior Policy Aide for the Minneapolis City Council.
Rep. Omar is the Vice-Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee. She also serves on the House Education and Workforce Committee, where she is a member of the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections and Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, Pensions (HELP).She is the Deputy Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Vice Chair of Medicare For All Caucus. You can find her full list of Caucus memberships here.
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1730 Longworth HOB
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Minneapolis District Office
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Suite 222Minneapolis, MN 55409
Phone: (612) 333-1272
News Analysis
Immigration
Trump Has Whipped Up an Anti-Immigrant Frenzy. Will Anyone Counter It in 2024?
The anti-immigrant fearmongering of both parties replicates tactics that have given rise to fascism throughout history.
by Setareh Ghandehari
July 25, 2024
Truthout
As expected, Republicans put immigration center stage during the Republican National Convention this month, using migrants as scapegoats for all manner of problems that plague U.S. society.
Their extremist scaremongering reached a fever pitch on July 18 when Donald Trump — in formally accepting the Republican presidential nomination — deployed fascist and false rhetoric about an immigrant “invasion.”
“The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump said. “They’re coming from everywhere. They’re coming at levels that we’ve never seen before. … They’re coming from prisons. They’re coming from jails. They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
He went on to promise “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”
The Republicans’ frenzied rhetoric on immigration is a clearly calculated effort to stoke fear about immigration to secure more votes.
Throughout the week, speakers doubled down on calls for mass deportations, completion of the border wall and increased border security, and told straight-up lies about immigrants, perpetuating false narratives that immigration is a public safety issue. The party platform approved at the convention centered and laid the groundwork for unprecedented anti-immigrant policies, as leadership openly touted plans to expand immigration detention and deportation, promising to bring in the National Guard and deploy local police to round up and deport millions of people. This level of militarism opens the door to frightening levels of surveillance across the country, and in particular an unparalleled level of targeting and racially profiling of Black and Brown communities. These types of policies are the real public safety threats that will ultimately hurt all our communities.
As speaker after speaker focused on immigration, the audience chanted, “Send them back,” while waving signs calling for mass deportations now. The racist rhetoric and the immigration policies that were proposed will never make our communities safer. They are grounded in lies designed to create and embolden hate and racism as a divide-and-conquer strategy to evade responsibility for refusing to enact policies that address the challenges of working people in this country. They also portend a much deeper threat of fascism that undermines our humanity and, if not addressed, will upend any semblance of democracy and put all Americans at risk.
Donald Trump and his supporters call for the deportation of millions of people, expansion of open-air detention camps, ideological screenings for visa applicants and revocation of status for millions of documented immigrants, for example by ending Temporary Protected Status and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Meanwhile, the Biden administration has taken some small steps to protect some groups of immigrants. For example, the administration recently announced protections for spouses of U.S. citizens, and last year the administration implemented protections for undocumented workplace whistleblowers. But by and large, Joe Biden’s rhetoric and policies have mirrored the right’s on border security. Biden has enacted policies that shut down the border, severely restricted people’s access to asylum protections, and increased border prosecutions. At the same time, the administration is taking steps to expand the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention system, paving the way for a potential Trump administration to more easily carry out its mass deportation plans.
We already know what havoc Trump can wreak on immigrant communities. As president, he enacted many of the same or similar policies that he is espousing now. Family separation was a flashpoint in his first term, driven by the Trump administration’s policy of criminally prosecuting parents migrating with their children. But in reality, all of the policies implemented by his administration separated families and communities, including large-scale immigration raids, the Muslim and African bans, the Remain in Mexico policy, the Title 42 shutdown of the southern border, and more. Each of these policies had a devastating impact on families and communities in the U.S. and led to a ballooning immigration detention system that detained 50,000 people at its peak.
Trump is now threatening to take a second swing at imparting this terror on immigrant and mixed-status families. He and his advisers have outlined clearly the ways that Trump will recycle some of these same policies and layer on new, more aggressive ones. If he becomes president again, this time, he will have the backing of a corrupt court system that has been stacked by conservatives, and a narrative and legislative path that has been reinforced by President Biden, who has repeatedly invited Trump to join him in lobbying Congress for what he called the “strongest border deal the country has ever seen.”
The fearmongering anti-immigrant agenda carried out by both parties is not new. It’s a replication of clear-cut tactics that have given rise to fascism throughout history. Attacking and scapegoating immigrants pits communities against each other and establishes broad acceptance of increased state power, control and suppression. Normalizing the deployment of law enforcement against immigrant communities and treating them as expendable will in time make it easier for people to accept the erosion of rights on a broader scale. There is no separating attacks on immigrants from attacks on all of us.
We are in a moment that requires bold leadership and a firm commitment to the humanity and dignity of all people, not only to protect immigrant communities who are again the political target in another toxic election cycle, but also to protect us all from the rising tide of fascism and to respond to the real crises that face our country and the world — from climate change and the cost of health care, to the rising cost of housing and ever-widening income inequality. Instead, the Democrats have thus far largely capitulated to the Republicans’ dangerous, racist narrative on immigration, normalizing and legitimizing their crime panic and calls for harsher immigration policies.
Now with Biden stepping aside and new leadership coming to the party, Democrats have an opportunity to change course. To effectively take the wind out of the sails of the right’s hate-filled agenda, we need our leaders to directly address people’s daily struggles and treat all people, no matter where they were born, with dignity and respect. Nobody wins when fear and hate drive policy.
We should follow the lead of communities across the country who are rejecting policies that pit communities against each other and tear families apart and instead are creating a politics of compassion and mutual support. They are fighting to shut down detention centers, creating mutual aid networks to support neighbors and newly arriving immigrants, and working to build local economies that don’t rely on incarceration.
Real safety comes from strong, inclusive and resilient communities with resources to support our collective well-being. People should be welcomed into the United States and allowed to work and contribute to their families and communities. Instead of investing billions every year on law enforcement and incarceration systems that target, surveil, detain and abuse thousands of people, we can invest in health care programs, affordable housing, education, and more to support communities nationwide.
On the national scale, we are exploring strategies to move us away from outsized investment in so-called national security infrastructures and toward policies that lift us all up and address the root causes of our most pressing issues.
To make this future a reality, we need a mainstream movement, media and leaders who refuse to echo the demonizing narratives that have become normalized in the U.S.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Setareh Ghandehari
Setareh Ghandehari is the advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.
He Hates Democracy and Wants To Cheat Death – Meet the Billionaire Investor Who Created J.D. Vance
Donald Trump’s running mate is a dangerous “extension” of right-wing broligarch Peter Thiel.
August 8, 2024
Zeteo
In 2009, the arch-libertarian Cato Institute published an essay from Peter Thiel, an infamously right-wing venture capitalist, in which he confessed to some of his biggest political disappointments. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote, making clear his distaste for elections. Thiel complained that “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women” had been difficult for the libertarian cause. He was also frustrated that an “unthinking demos” – that is, ordinary voters – guided electoral politics. When Thiel was later accused of opposing women’s suffrage, Cato published a response from the author in which he seemed to double down on his desire to somehow escape democracy: “While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.”
It would be one thing if Thiel, with his reactionary, anti-democratic beliefs, were an obscure tech investor with a blogger’s interest in politics. But Thiel is far more than that – he’s a billionaire financier for whom political struggle is the main event. A longtime Republican donor, Thiel praised Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He is singularly responsible for the rise of J.D. Vance, pouring a record $15 million into his Senate campaign. And while some tech elites have lately emerged as vocal Trump backers, Thiel was there first.
Thiel has long expressed irritation that we haven’t achieved a Jetsons-like future of infinite abundance, but he seems even more dissatisfied – bitterly so – with a political system he’s determined to upend. A billionaire who made his initial fortune as the CEO of PayPal, Thiel is now the eminence grise of a powerful network of investors and executives known informally as the ‘PayPal Mafia,’ many of whom support Trump’s bid for a second term. Having soured on democracy, Thiel has spoken of politics – and death, for that matter – as something that can be “escaped,” leading to a utopian place of true freedom. His investments and donations have flowed accordingly, making him one of Silicon Valley’s most influential political operators while blazing a trail for a new crop of tech executives who have embraced the MAGA movement. Thiel invested in explicitly right-wing companies, dined with white nationalists, sponsored far-right writers, and founded startups dedicated to supporting the surveillance state.
He didn’t just speak at the Republican National Convention in 2016, announcing himself as a proud gay Republican. After the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, Thiel also offered a public show of support with a $1.25 million donation. According to Trump, it was Thiel who chose which tech companies were invited to the confab of CEOs at Trump Tower after the 2016 election.
By the time of the 2024 presidential cycle, however, as a liberal activist group began investigating Thiel’s activities, the billionaire decided he wanted out. He expressed disappointment less in Trump’s policies than in the chaos of his shambolic administration. When Trump asked for a multi-million-dollar campaign donation, Thiel said no, reportedly leading to a rift between the two.
In June, Thiel finally said he would vote for Trump… if someone put a gun to his head.
Then everything changed, on July 15, when Trump announced Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate.
“The Most Significant Moment”
Put simply, there is no J.D. Vance without Peter Thiel. In “The Contrarian,” his biography of Thiel, journalist Max Chafkin described both Vance and Blake Masters as “extensions” of Thiel, men who owed their careers and much of their political thinking to the billionaire’s ideological influence – and financial sponsorship. (Masters lost his 2022 Senate election and, more recently, his 2024 House primary race.) Some politicians may be friendly to right-wing Silicon Valley “broligarchs,” but Vance has fashioned himself in Thiel’s image. And now, the billionaire hardliner seems on the verge of getting what he’s long wanted: one of his own in the White House.
Although he made his bones as a tech executive and financier, Thiel has written and lectured about his bugaboos – identity politics, women, democracy, higher education – since he was an undergraduate at Stanford University in the late 1980s, when he founded a conservative student paper, The Stanford Review. Despite denouncing American campus culture and funding a fellowship to pay entrepreneurs to skip college, Thiel remains involved with Stanford as a guest lecturer and as one of its most famous alumni and critics. Over the years, Thiel has hired several alumni of The Stanford Review. And he is still, in the year 2024, giving talks at elite colleges about “the diversity myth” – the title of a book he published in 1995 with his friend David Sacks, who emerged this year as Trump’s top Silicon Valley supporter.
“We’re still in this groundhog day,” Thiel said earlier this year to a conservative student group at Harvard. His book felt “incredibly prophetic,” he said. “We were basically right. Very little I would change on the particulars.” In 2016, when Forbes drew attention to passages from “The Diversity Myth” that minimized rape (“a multicultural rape charge may indicate nothing more than belated regret”), Thiel and Sacks apologized.
If we’re in a groundhog day situation, it may be in part because powerful white men like Thiel can’t let go of certain political obsessions. Thiel has been lamenting the influence of leftist identity politics for more than 30 years. He still complains about being forced to read – in college, 35 years ago – certain academically en vogue books, like Aimé Césaire’s post-colonial retelling of “The Tempest,” and the autobiography of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan Indigenous rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize. But over time, Thiel has found a receptive audience for his grievances. And he’s had no student more loyal than J.D. Vance.
In 2011, Vance was attending Yale Law School when Thiel came to give a talk. At the time, Vance was a Marine veteran and Ohio State graduate who had emerged from meager economic and social circumstances in southern Ohio to attend a top law program that served as a finishing school for future members of the power elite. Vance grew up steeped in evangelical Christianity but in college he drifted into Sam Harris-style atheism – a common enough path for a young man in the place and time. His colleagues saw him as politically conservative but not radically so. That would change.
Thiel’s subject matter was his typical fare. He spoke about the illusory satisfactions of chasing prestige and competing with one’s peers over a limited pot of rewards while the larger society faced technological stagnation and decay. For Vance, whose beliefs were proving to be malleable, it became a formative experience. In attempting to escape his traumatic upbringing, Vance had allowed himself to be driven by the mindless pursuit of academic achievements and professional credentials. Rather than aspiring for a career as a federal judge or a partner at a white-shoe law firm, as so many of his classmates did, he realized that he dreaded his future as a lawyer. Despite being a product of the same milieu that Vance now inhabited, Thiel offered another way. “Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School,” Vance wrote in a widely cited essay in a Catholic magazine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Freelance
journalist and podcaster covering tech, crypto, politics, and
corruption. I'm working on my third book. My website is
www.jacobsilverman.com. |