The Anti-Muslim Attack In San Diego

Below is something I submitted to the daily Camera a week ago about the 5/18 attack on a San Diego mosque. It probably won't be published at this point. You should read a CNN.COM article here. It basically says that an effort was made to deny mosques DHS funding for security about a year ago.

 

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For decades I have been worried about anti-Muslim bigotry in this country, especially since 9/11. I’m not sure how often I have done something really significant about it- unless expressing support for the Palestinians counts, in which case I have done a lot (including at least one very visible effort). I think that yesterday’s attack in San Diego might be the first fatal attack on a mosque here. There have been many other manifestations of anti-Muslim bigotry in America, including some deadly violence. Trump has done a lot to fuel that bigotry here, especially with his first-term Muslim travel ban and his second-term suggestions that it would be appropriate to get Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently and that it would be appropriate to destroy, as in commit genocide against, the Iranian nation-state. And there’s been tons of smaller stuff as well.

I’ll be honest, in the same spirit of saying that all white people are at least a tiny bit racist, as a Christian I have had occasional anti-Muslim thoughts. It’s so minor it’s barely worth mentioning, but since I am writing this, I should say that I think that in recent years I may have slightly or significantly discounted the progress made in the Muslim world when it comes to how women are treated by men and male-dominated institutions. In the last few years I have been pleasantly surprised by how many news articles quote Gaza women (for example)- to be honest, I DID think they would be discouraged by men and other women from speaking to the media. People who are much worse than flawed Christian allies of America’s Muslim population should consider that Sharia has been mentioned enough already.

I’m embarrassed by that oversight of mine for at least a few reasons and one of them is that I have read, at least once, the argument that anti-Muslim bigotry in America today resembles the anti-Catholic bigotry that occasionally surged and retreated in this country over the decades until about the 1940s (I think it has surged a little bit since then in terms of left-wing ignorance about Catholic politics). I used to be Catholic (I’ve sort of started converting to the Episcopalian Church) and I experienced anti-Catholic bigotry in this country at least two or three times (I also kind of experienced it in Northern Ireland twice).

I could be better equipped to do this- although I set out to read the Koran about 6 and 1/2 years ago, I only read about 5% of it and then the pandemic distracted me. The part I read didn’t contain anything I found offensive. I get the impression there’s a fair amount of politically good stuff in that book, just like there is in the Bible. We need to remember a handful of facts- Muslims believe that Christ was an important prophet and the Angel Gabriel appears in both books. Many people use the term “Abrahamic” to refer to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and I believe strongly that we all pray to the same God.

Would I say that non-Muslims should never criticize certain tendencies (sexism and homophobia) in the Muslim world in order to avoid encouraging religious bigotry? No. But we should blend critical statements about them with positive ones about Islam and the Muslim community. We should make more efforts to build bridges in every sphere of life with Muslims. We should understand that the Palestinians have very legitimate national grievances and aspirations and reject the Israel lobby’s demonization of them. We should ask the US military if they would act the way they did in Iraq 2003-2008 if they found themselves policing a rocky Peace Process in N. Ireland.

We need to stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters at this time and in general and whenever hatred for them raises it’s ugly head.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews NN

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Debatable” Season 24. See this for a plot summary.
Racism/Homophobia

There are two minor items to mention.

1. A Black man (whose son is cleared of the crime SVU are investigating shortly after his Dad’s statement) says something brief but pretty powerful about how Blacks get treated by the police. He says: “give me one good reason why any black man should trust the cops.”
2. One of the detectives says a witness is a total homophobe, and although we already know that that detective is anti-homophobic, it’s good of the show to remind viewers how the people involved in making the show feel about homophobia.

“Truth Embargo” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.
Racism/Criminal Justice System

This is an interesting episode. Towards the end I thought I detected a significant political shift towards the center, but I think I was wrong.

First, the woman, Natalie, who gets raped is a white woman married to another white woman.

Natalie seems pretty uncomfortable with the whole process of helping the police find her attacker. Pretty early we know that the police suspect a black youth. When the charged individual is on trial Natalie testifies and after answering some questions about what happened,  she is asked to identify her attacker, with the defendant seated in the courtroom. She doesn’t answer and after several seconds there’s a recess in the trial. As we learn a few minutes later, she IS certain the defendant raped her and that kind of complicates one part of this that I found politically pleasing.

A few minutes before Natalie testifies Benson (the woman who is head of SVU) speaks briefly with Natalie’s wife, Brook. We learn from Brook that she and Natalie are “acutely“ aware of racist problems in the criminal justice system and worry that the defendant won’t get a fair trial (I could see how even though they were certain of his guilt, good White allies like them would still worry about that). During the recess Natalie tells Benson and the Assistant DA that when she was growing up she had an adopted brother who was Black. One day at a store when they were about 12yo she dared him to steal something. He got caught (apparently she was implicated by the police) and while she got to go home with a warning, her adopted brother spent the night in jail and got a criminal record, something which had a very negative effect on his life.

It emerges in all of this that the main thing which motivates Natalie’s failure to identify her rapist is her belief that once someone gets convicted, that can affect the rest of their life in many ways that are detrimental. There’s a brief discussion about rehabilitation. I am far from an expert on rehabilitation but I recently wrote that a lot of people in prison don’t need rehabilitation. Although in general it would be really nice if rehabilitation was an outcome of going to prison, I get the impression that it often or usually isn’t, and that having a record and experiencing the nightmare of prison must make it difficult to survive once released.

At one point, I thought this episode was going to be a hatchet job on progressives, suggesting that we believe that racial justice requires that all guilty people of color be acquitted and that there is something wrong with cooperating with the police when a white woman has been raped by a black man.

I have a little more to say about this episode’s place on the political spectrum, but first I want to say this. I imagine it’s difficult to be an anti-racist white person victimized by a crime committed by a person of color. More specifically I imagine that anti-racist tendencies in the feminist movement experience a lot of stress when a White woman accuses a Black man of rape.

My conclusion? There’s a fair amount of dialogue involving Benson agreeing (at least to some degree) with Natalie and Brook. Natalie not only identifies her rapist in court, she pushes back when the defense attorney suggests that she is lying about his client.

“Duty to Report” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.
Police Corruption

I am not sure I should be reviewing this one. There are two incidents where a VERY senior NYPD officer commits a very serious crime against a civilian and Benson (the head of SVU) enlists the Internal Affairs Bureau (which investigates corruption, etc. in the police) in her investigation of a crime that involves her superior’s daughter. Benson apparently gets along pretty well with at least one senior IAB officer- a Black woman who Benson was investigated by a few years earlier. At the end, that IAB leader and Benson agree that she will join SVU. Assuming it lasts at least the rest of this brief season, it’s significant in that it’s only the third time there’s been a woman of color in the squad (there was one in the first season, and then in season 24 there was a RECURRING character in the squad matching that description). 

In general it’s a pretty solid endorsement of IAB which I think is either probably a good thing or definitely a VERY good thing.

Benson does, while laughing, say that together they might even break some rules. At the risk of going too easy on them, I think it might either be an insignificant line that goes nowhere or maybe there are some rules they can break that are bad and that are not foci of IAB. In general I am very happy with this episode.

“Third Man Syndrome” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.
Homophobia

This is a very political episode, as I define that, but there’s nothing very special about it. It’s about a gay bashing that seemed like a possible sex crime (which is why SVU gets it). There’s some confusing dialogue about the gay bashers possibly also being anti-immigrant and I think the fact that one of them appears Latino doesn’t rule that out- weird stuff like that happens, at least in TV and movies and real life. The victim, who is straight but presumed gay by his attackers, is a visitor and future resident from Columbia. His cousin, who’s with him, is an undocumented resident- SVU doesn’t do anything in relation to that.

It’s overall a pretty good anti-homophobic episode.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews D

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“The Serene Squall” Episode Seven, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

There are three political themes to mention.

They/Them/Theirs (LGBTQ+)

Although it could possibly be construed as hostile to non-binary people because the character who makes some good statements about being yourself turns out to be the bad guy, it’s actually pro-LGBTQ+ because the prominent doctor she is impersonating IS non-binary and a good guy. This (the pro-LGBTQ+ statement made by the existence of a character who is a popular Federation doctor and is non-binary) gets a little sharper when there is some talk about how Spock, who is half human and half Vulcan, doesn’t need to choose between being Vulcan and being human:

ASPEN: Spock, you know, all species put things into boxes. It’s like you’re either this or you’re that and sometimes we act a certain way to fit people’s expectations, but that’s not necessarily who we are. And sometimes, like on the bridge just now, it can limit us.
SPOCK: You are proposing I better balance my human and Vulcan natures.
ASPEN: I’m saying maybe you’re neither.
SPOCK: That is nonsensical. If I am not human or Vulcan, what am I?
ASPEN: That’s not my question to answer.

First of all, I think this episode counts as pro-LGBTQ+ and I think that “Dr. Aspen’s” statements above are pretty well written.

I am going to use this as an opportunity to get a little long-winded and also a little personal. On one hand, I have been a fairly good or very good ally of what I call the LGB, since 11th grade. On the other hand, for some reason I have been kind of slow to see what I call the TQ+ as important. I go into a little more detail here when discussing the “Broken Rhymes” episode. This is the first time I have commented on the non-binary part of the population (I have watched every season of Discovery an average of three times (including the last three seasons that include a non-binary main character) but I have yet to do “reviews” of that show- something I’ll do in about a year).

First, if “Dr. Aspen” is talking about Spock identifying as equally human and Vulcan, that seems like a better idea than identifying 100% one way or the other. In The Original Series I believe that Spock identified mostly or overwhelmingly as Vulcan. If “Dr. Aspen” meant creating some kind of brand new identity I have tried to grasp what that would be and it has slipped through my fingers or has been as ethereal as smoke, dispersing into nothingness as I try to grasp it. There’s a good chance I am overthinking this and/or I need to get a firmer grip on the LGBTQ+ identities, so I think I will just move on very soon. The good news is that I think that in the process of typing this I DID improve my grasp of the LGBTQ+ identities.

A Clockwork Red??? (Rehabilitation of Convicts)

(Although I was a fan of “A Clockwork Orange” in 9th grade I don’t think I have watched it since then. Wikipedia’s explanation of the term “clockwork orange” doesn’t help, but it sounds like what some assortment of society and government leaders want people to be upon leaving prison, and I believe we need a progressive view of rehabilitation of convicts)

There’s a brief part of the episode that’s about criminal rehabilitation on Vulcan. It sounds pretty good. When I think of that issue in reality in America, I think it’s probably a really good thing, although it must have some short-comings. Although therapy and vocational opportunities and education and such in prison CAN help with some of what’s wrong in our society, I think that a huge majority of convicts wouldn’t be there if they weren’t poor and I would add a similar statement about an overlapping large minority of convicts who wouldn’t be there if they weren’t people of color. In the next three paragraphs I will offer an abridged explanation of exactly what I mean by that.

I simply assume that there are innocent people in prison- and I mean completely innocent- I will say something about the others soon. This belief is partly just a vague one based on being engaged with American liberalism and progressivism for roughly 35 years. It’s also influenced by a work of non-fiction (The Innocent Man) and at least two works of fiction (The Confession and The Guardians) by the author John Grisham. Although I don’t look for this, about once a year I stumble on to a story about someone being declared innocent years after their conviction- I assume that for every such case I hear about there’s probably something like 100 I don’t hear about. There was at least one statement by a main character in the TV show Law and Order: SVU about there being innocent people in prison. And then there’s the people who are sort of guilty but don’t deserve to be convicted - i.e. abused women who killed their abuser, 18yos who had sex with a 17yo in some of the nation’s states, the character Carl Lee Hailey in Grisham’s A Time To Kill, etc.

To a large degree the majority of inmates who wouldn’t be there if they weren’t poor don’t need rehabilitation. Many are completely innocent and would have been acquitted if they hadn’t been represented by an over-worked, under-resourced Public Defender. Many more wouldn’t have committed a crime if not for one or more poverty-related factors that drove their criminal behavior (i.e. they wouldn’t have stolen a loaf of bread for their family if they weren’t penniless, or they wouldn’t have gotten work selling marijuana if they had been able to afford college). In general, POVERTY, not bad morals or a lack of civic values, is why they committed a crime.

To a large degree the majority of those inmates who wouldn’t be there if they weren’t people of color don’t need rehabilitation. They’re there because a racist cop framed them, and a jury fell for it, or they’re guilty but it’s because the racist nature of this society alienated them from trying to work within the system, because the people criticizing crime were the same ones brutalizing their community economically, physically, institutionally, etc. What I’m talking about is well illustrated in the 1996 non-documentary film “Set It Off” starring Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith. One of the four Black women turns to crime partly because her racist bank employers fire her after a man from her neighborhood tries to rob the bank. Another of the four women turns to crime after her brother, an innocent and unarmed man, is killed by police. There is of course the aforementioned overlap between the population of non-white convicts and the population of poor convicts.

It’s likely that some or most of the convicts I write about above could benefit from therapy and/or vocational and/or educational opportunities while in prison. Ideally there may, in theory, be some way for that to be progressive- i.e. if convicts get therapy and/or college degrees in prison, is the education or therapy compatible with their experiences as (for example) working-class Black Americans? I also wonder how radical books collected by progressives and donated to prison libraries fare when they’re examined by whatever prison official looks at them. When I think about this stuff I worry that at this point, with increasing politicalization outside prisons because of George W. Bush and now Donald Trump, prisons are not creating opportunities for progressive values to be learned or explored or weaponized (depending on which prisoners we’re talking about).

Spartacus (Slavery)

Although it turns out to be a red herring deployed by the bad guy, at one point the crew of the Enterprise thinks that they’re going after slave traffickers. It would be a good story if there WAS an ST episode about going after such scum. About 3-6 years ago I watched the movie “The Birth of a Nation,” which is based on a true story of a major slave rebellion in the American South, and it is a really good movie. I also watched, about 6 years ago, the movie “Harriet” about the Underground Railroad, and I have it in my collection. ST has reminded us of the issue of slavery several times in it’s life, but an episode just about fighting slavery would be great- one story possibility would be a StarFleet crew helping maintain a sci-fi version of the Underground Railroad. About 33 years ago I read a The Next Generation novel called “Spartacus” about the Enterprise encountering a ship adrift with a bunch of android slaves.

Anti-Semitism In Student Protests Is A Problem, But Not As Much As You Might Think

Below is an essay which, after some editing, was published as a guest opinion in the Boulder Weekly here.

Tom

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As I write this I am having trouble staying on top of what is happening at this or that university campus- it’s wonderful that so much protesting is going on. Although, as I’ll explain below, I am concerned about the likely fact that there is at least SOME anti-Semitism among American progressives supporting the Palestinians, I recently decided that it is probably a smaller problem than what I thought most of the last seven months. What prompts me to say that? A 4/23/24 video on CNN’s web-site (not some far-left web-site) about how the Columbia encampment included a Passover meal.

 

I believe that there IS a substantial amount of anti-Semitism in the sense that these activists are probably not condemning Oct. 7th. I believe most American progressives supporting the Palestinians don’t understand that intentionally killing civilians in war is wrong. I believe that they also don’t understand that Hamas is not a progressive organization. The military wing of Hamas are religiously fundamentalist socially conservative mass murderers.

 

On the other hand, so many Americans, including a dwindling percentage of the Democratic Party, just don’t understand what the Palestinians have gone through- as horrible and unjustified as it was, Oct. 7th did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinians did experience, to various degrees depending on what part of Israel/Palestine they live in, some pretty serious injustice for decades BEFORE Oct. 7th. A very good source about that is the blog of an expert on the Middle-East who has written negatively about Oct. 7th but generally supports the Palestinians. His name is Juan Cole and his blog is at- https://www.juancole.com/ . If you want something less partisan, there’s an online Israeli newspaper called The Times of Israel, at- https://www.timesofisrael.com/ .

 

The problem of anti-Semitism among progressives might be greatly exaggerated by allies of Israel, but it is a problem. And I believe that Oct. 7th was anti-Semitic. You had an organization like Hamas targeting only Jews and mostly Jewish civilians. I am not sure what has happened recently in the investigation of the alleged use of rape as a weapon of war on Oct. 7th, but I read a handful of things in the last several months, from non-Zionist sources, making me think that it happened (see “UN: 'Convincing information' sexual violence committed against hostages in Gaza” BBC 3/52024). Even without this I am comfortable calling Hamas anti-Semitic, but if there was organized rape of Jewish women, that says something about the acute HATE that Hamas had for their victims.

 

I think that a lot of progressive supporters of the Palestinians need to seriously consider that Hamas doesn’t deserve their support and they need to take the threat of anti-Semitism more seriously. They need to understand that it will be easier to refute accusations of anti-Semitism if they DO condemn Oct. 7th. I think that American supporters of Israel (although the Jewish zionists are a small part of the Israel lobby, this is aimed more at them than at the MUCH larger population of conservative Christian zionists (who are less likely to care about justice)) need to think more critically about Israel and consider that it is impossible for a state to be based on religion and ethnicity and to simultaneously be democratic. There is a lot of material on my blog about these issues, at- https://theblackandthegreen3.blogspot.com/ .

 

I am concluding with a quote from the hard-working opponents of organized hate, right-wing politics and economic injustice at the Southern Poverty Law Center. In one of the articles in the Fall 2008 issue of their publication, they wrote the following (it’s a statement by the author of that article):

 

“College campuses are particularly susceptible to anti-Semitism that originates in certain sectors of the far left. This source of anti-Jewish sentiment often begins with condemnation of Israeli policies and devolves into derogatory statements about all Jewish people. Although criticism of Israel does not typically amount to anti-Semitism — and many critics of the Jewish state are unfairly accused of bigotry — in some cases those who denounce Israel also cross the line into denigration of Jews as a group.” (My emphasis)

 

The most important part is the last sentence. Both opponents and supporters of Israel need to think about that seriously.

 

My Review of Larry Bond's 1991 Anti-Apartheid Novel "Vortex"

In a book report (it wasn’t very analytical) I did in 2022 about a sort of sci-fi/sort of techno-thriller novel with a left-wing message, I admitted that a big chunk of the fiction I read is by Tom Clancy or authors like Tom Clancy (1989-2009 it was about 70% and since 2009 it’s been about 25% (hopefully I won’t go to Socialist Hell)). As far as I can tell, the author of the book I just referred to (David Mace) is progressive. If you look at the books I’ve read in the Tom Clancy genre there’s a handful with some stuff that is liberal or even progressive. It’s usually a small island of progressive viewpoints (by characters you’re supposed to like) with an ocean of center/center-right politics. There is one book which is written by someone much more right-wing than left-wing but which can nonetheless be greatly enjoyed politically by progressives, if you think about it the right way. I’m talking about Larry Bond’s 1991 novel “Vortex.”

“Vortex” is about Apartheid South Africa, and a “last gasp” attempt by hardliners to maintain Apartheid and Afrikaner colonialism. I believe the story starts in May of 1992, although it’s not clear what the year is. I am not sure how much or how little progress was made in the Peace Process between Mandela’s release and May of 1992 (in reality). Towards the very beginning of the book the President of SA talks about significant progress being made, which prompts the main villain (Karl Vorster, a Cabinet member) to carry out something which is basically a coup, but which appears to be the ANC’s military wing (MK) assassinating the rest of the cabinet (although this is known by almost no one until the last 1/3 of the book, the MK operation was manipulated by Vorster and the Intelligence agency he runs). He then reverses the small number of reforms that had been made to Apartheid, invades neighboring Namibia, and turns the security forces loose against Blacks and any dissent by whites.

The situation becomes chaotic. The leader of the Zulu population (who, in reality, may not have been as militant as the ANC was during the anti-Apartheid struggle) calls for the rest of the world to take action against the new regime and his people take up armed struggle. A large chunk of the military in Cape Town refuses to massacre white civilian protestors and rebels against the government.

Things also start to fall apart for Vorster in Namibia, whose government asks the Cuban Army in Angola to help repel the invasion. Although this is more complicated, to one extent or another during most of the book you can root for the Cuban Army. The head of the Cuban Army in Africa (General Antonio Vega) convinces Castro that Cuba should resolve the conflict by invading South Africa and overthrowing Apartheid. With some help from other “anti-Imperialist” countries (including three Libyan units probably the size of battalions) three columns (probably around 2,000-3,000 men in each) enter SA from the east, north and west. Because the Cubans hid their preparations for the invasion the SA military is still focused on Namibia and rapid progress is made, especially the column approaching Pretoria from the West. Because it is a desert and a sparely populated area (and because he is psychotic) Vorster eradicates that column with a nuclear bomb. SA is on the verge of using two more nukes to attack strategic targets when the US military captures them and removes them from the country in a massive airborne operation. Shortly after that the US military lands something like a division on the east coast of SA (at Durban) and starts fighting the SA Army on it’s way to Pretoria. Naval aircraft start attacking the East column of Cubans.

As you might guess, the US military stops the Cubans from reaching Pretoria until they (the US) can get there first. The aftermath of this victory for the US is largely a GOP fantasy. Because of some significant friction with the Cubans (see below), the ANC abandons it’s commitment to socialism. There IS something about recognition of the trade-unions, something proposed by the occupying US military, but I think we’re talking about something that is probably engineered to foster a pretty centrist labor movement.

There are two large aspects of this story relevant to how close it is to being a progressive book.

First, the US government moves very slowly at each stage of the crisis and are usually far behind Cuba. And they (characters who are officials of the US government) are pretty honest about why they are initially very slow and behind Cuba, and they’re also very honest about why they DO send their own invasion force after Cuba invades- they don’t want Cuba to get credit for overthrowing Apartheid. I will add a lot of details to this in about a year when I read this book (for the 6th or 7th time) and take some notes, but in general, Cuba looks better than the US government.

On the other hand, there are some things Bond has the Cubans do that A) usually involve quite a bit of imagination on Bond’s part and B) make Cuba look bad. After one of his columns is wiped out by a nuke, Vega decides to compensate for that by using chemical weapons. In all fairness to Vega and in all fairness to Bond who was probably tempted to really slander Cuba at this point, they use NON-PERSISTENT chemical weapons which become impotent pretty quickly after they are released into the air. This means they’re not quite as indiscriminate as they would be if they were persistent. We don’t know how many battles involved Cuban chemical weapons, but there was at least one. And some small part of the nearby black population was affected, with some deaths.

Those black deaths contribute to the erosion of congeniality between the Cuban Army and the ANC’s military wing, Spear of the Nation. There is one bizarre incident that was a pretty good example of Bond trying to reassure most of his readers that he did not go commie while writing this book. The Cubans ask the black population in one town to help them make an airfield they took over functional again. There weren’t enough volunteers so a small number of Blacks were forced to help. This of course contributes to the conflict developing between the Cubans and the ANC. Bond does sort zig-zag a bit and quotes Vega’s thoughts, pointing out that he has Black officers on his staff- who he describes as brave and competent.

There is something I really need to say about Bond. Vortex is his second book. His first and third books are politically fairly centrist overall. His fourth and fifth books, I thought were racist towards Muslims and I will never read them again and I haven’t read anything he wrote after book five. (see this and this (and look for my name)). (I lost track of those two novels in my collection for several years but in the end I made a decision about 5 years ago to throw them away instead of taking them to a thrift store (I’m not totally okay with that, because it resembles book burning, but throwing them away was probably the right thing to do))

There is one last thing I need to get out of the way. In the very first sentence of the book, in a section that includes maybe 500 words, it sounds like Bond is saying that rural, uneducated Zimbabweans think that helicopters flying at night are “demons.”  There’s a bit more to that short first section, and I also think after I explain this next part, progressive readers will feel comfortable assuming that Bond is not racist towards Black people. In his first book (about a second Korean War), one of the main characters is an Air Force pilot who gets shot down behind enemy lines, and is rescued at night by a helicopter. This character does say that the helicopter appears like a demon.

It’s a massive book- 896 pages in paperback. If you’re not totally against anything military and you hate Apartheid, you will probably like this book. In about a year I will probably read it again and take some notes and have more to say.

More on the Hamas Offensive

Below is an LTE I might not actually submit to a newspaper, but it says some things that I need to say. The first post I did on this theme is here.

I have been a supporter of the Palestinians since somewhere around 12th grade. I have protested in support of them here in America, and also in Belfast, N. Ireland. In 2002 I convinced the other members of a CU-Boulder group (Students for Justice in Northern Ireland) that we should endorse the campus Coalition for Justice in Palestine. In the last 15 years one of the main topics on my blog is supporting the Palestinians. But an even bigger part of my blog is about opposing anti-Semitism, and I’m proud to say that those two parts of my blog overlap heavily.

I know that there are many progressives who are not anti-Semitic but who have failed to condemn Hamas’ early October offensive. Although that failure is not necessarily bigoted, what Hamas has done IS bigoted. They are religious fundamentalists and overwhelmingly went after civilian life, and it was Jews they were targeting. As someone who looks back and supports almost everything the IRA did in The Troubles, I would not condemn a Palestinian effort that resembled the IRA’s campaign- targeting the military and (using methods that almost always prevent civilian death) destroying government and commercial property.

I say that because the Palestinians have very serious and legitimate grievances. Those who are Israeli citizens experience a fair amount of inequality (the State is officially Jewish, it cannot be simultaneously democratic). Those in the West Bank have it even worse (they are state-less (they have no citizenship, and thus no civil rights)). And those in  the Gaza Strip live in the world’s largest open-air prison.

They have every reason to be furious at the Israeli state and Israel’s Jewish population. But intentionally killing civilians in war is, to one degree or another, wrong, and in this case bigoted.

Tom Shelley

Movie Reviews A

This is a new part of my blog. I’m going to start typing up some thoughts about the movies I watch.

Hidden Figures (IMDB Wikipedia)

I don’t know historically accurate it is, but it is a good story. I’m a little surprised that as long ago as the early 1960s black women were allowed to contribute that much to NASA but apparently they were and it’s so inspiring that these three women overcame the barriers of racism and sexism to such a degree that they succeeded as much as they did. I also love this movie because I love stories about space exploration, whether it’s Star Trek, Star Wars, Aliens or stuff like Apollo 13 and this movie.

I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Foxfire (IMDB Wikipedia)

I found this at a video store in 1997 and watched it a few times. I think it’s an independent film that did very well in the theaters. It’s basically about friendship among a group of high school girls who fight back against a sexually abusive teacher and get suspended. They encounter more sexism among their male peers.

I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

On the Basis of Sex (IMDB Wikipedia)

I don’t know historically accurate it is, but it is a good story. This is about the early career of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court Justice. It’s one of the best and most inspiring movies I have ever seen. I didn’t appreciate her as much as I should have when she was still alive. I got the impression her husband wasn’t as progressive as she was, but he still seemed like a cool guy, giving her some help with her first attempt at changing this country in a progressive direction. And her daughter also seemed pretty awesome- she verbally fought back as construction workers were harassing her, and earlier she ditches class to go to a rally that Gloria Steinem spoke at. In 10th grade I walked out of my 3rd period class to join other students protesting the 1992 Rodney King verdict (King was brutally assaulted by LAPD officers in 1991 and the officers were acquitted, sparking protests and rioting).

I give it 5 stars out of five.

The US, Afghanistan and the War on Terror

 Before he lost the 2020 election, Trump was close to ending the US military presence in Afghanistan. He had promised to do so, referring to it as an endless war. I had mixed feelings about it. In the first two years after 9/11 I supported our presence there, even while I actively and solidly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq (I describe that work here).          

I was influenced by a minority statement from members of the national leadership of the Young Democratic Socialists and believed that it was a time, like WWII, when the progressive thing to do was to support an American-led multi-lateral effort against fascist forces who were a threat to justice and peace in the world. 9/11 was largely about killing as many Americans as possible and it’s easier to kill civilians than it is to kill members of the military, so Al-Qaeda primarily went after civilians. Even the plane that DID target the military had civilians on board. And, not everyone working in the World Trade Center was a “little Eichman” as Ward Churchill said (Ward was my faculty advisor and in general I am proud of that, but he was wrong about somewhere around 99% of the people who were working in the WTC). Although it would have been a crucial part of successfully defeating Al-Qaeda, I don’t think that changing America’s foreign policy to address the complaints of Al-Qaeda would have been enough by itself to stop them. A successful and progressive war on terror would have involved an armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and that’s partly because America’s imperialistic foreign policy (and crucially it’s support for Israel) is not the only thing that motivates Al-Qaeda and it’s supporters to want conflict with the US. It’s relevant that we are a relatively liberal society and they are religious fundamentalists who see most Americans as infidels. In short, Al-Qaeda are religious fundamentalist fascist terrorists who had carried out an attack aimed at killing as many American civilians as possible and who were sheltered by the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

I believe that if we had done the following, we would have been victorious against Al-Qaeda:
1. Changed American foreign policy, especially when it comes to the Middle-East. Looking beyond the Middle-East, I think that a lot of progressive and non-aligned/independent people and groups and nations in this world would have been more interested in helping America defeat Al-Qaeda if we were pursuing a better foreign policy aimed at reversing the transfer of wealth between the global “North” and the global “South” and democratizing the global economy and generally pursuing global justice. Looking at the Mid-East specifically, we shouldn’t be supporting Israel for a whole range of reasons that have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda (I make a pretty good argument against Zionism here) but forcing Israel to negotiate seriously and respectfully with the Palestinians would also dry up a lot of Al-Qaeda’s support in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
2. Made the War on Terror very multi-lateral. Although I’ll concede that NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan hasn’t seemed to help, the effort against Al-Qaeda would have been even less successful if it were just the US. In the very early months after 9/11 Germany offered ground forces and the US declined the offer. It would have been more multi-lateral and if other things on this list had happened there would have also been some Muslim nations prominently involved in Afghanistan.
3. The US had purged itself of bigotry towards muslims. Instead we had popular commentators and politicians spewing anti-muslim bigotry which affected how the Muslim world reacted to 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan.
4. Had a better set of domestic policies. Going back to part of #2, we would have had more allies globally if American DOMESTIC policy was better. A lot of progressive and non-aligned/independent individuals and groups and nations aren’t enthusiastic about helping the US government when they consider how much poverty and inequality there is in America.
5. Stayed out of Iraq. They had nothing to do with 9/11 and Saddam was hostile to Al-Qaeda. The invasion meant shifting resources from Afghanistan to Iraq and angered a large part of the Muslim world.
6. Treated Al-Qaeda and Taliban members captured in Afghanistan as POWs. We would have been doing the right thing and we wouldn’t have been heavily criticized as we were by almost the entire world. I’m obviously not a fan of either group but I believe strongly that when combatants are captured, they should be treated as POWs. Whether they were allied airmen during WWII, or IRA members in N. Ireland, or American pilots in Vietnam, or the German SS or Islamic State members, they deserve(d) to be treated as POWs.
7. Abstained from torture. We not only tortured, many American politicians like Peter King of NY, praised the Bush administration for it’s use of torture (I’m thinking primarily of waterboarding and what happened at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; see this). This turned a huge chunk of the world’s population against us.

So, that’s pretty much why the War on Terror has not been won and why we briefly faced something close to a state (in the north of Syria) based on a version of Islam even worse than the one that Al-Qaeda embraces.

Returning to Trump’s idea of pulling out of Afghanistan, a large chunk of the US military and many civilian commentators don’t believe the Taliban has been following through on their part of the peace deal they agreed with Washington. It seems likely that they will continue with their war against Kabul and when the US and NATO are gone, they will probably win. And they will probably be a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. And one or both of those two will attack America at some point. I doubt that America will change its Israel policy anytime soon. In general I don’t think Biden will have a consistently progressive foreign policy.

Although I have difficulty saying this, I am more in favor of than against us withdrawing from Afghanistan. What do I think we should do when we leave, the Taliban win, and there’s an Al-Qaeda or IS attack on America? What I referred to positively in the list above, and once that’s done, a multi-national invasion of Afghanistan (unless the Taliban hand Al-Qaeda and IS over to some appropriate authority (possibly the US, possibly someone else)).

(one last thing is that there needs to be a change in the US military (especially the Army and Marines), where they make more effort to avoid civilian casualties. It’s estimated that in Iraq tens of, or a couple hundred thousand(s) of Iraqi civilians were killed by the US military. I learned from an interview on the radio of a political acquaintance that when his son was being trained for deployment to Iraq with the US Army Corps of Engineers, he was told to fire at gunmen even if there were civilians in the way who could easily be shot by accident. The US military needs to understand that when they do stuff like that, they are not increasing their odds of surviving the war, because the relatives and friends of civilians killed by the US military are likely to support or become anti-US combatants)

 

(UPDATE 5/9/21 I forgot to mention something. About a week before I wrote this post I wrote a brief note on the same subject in a post of reviews of Law and Order: SVU:

I’m going to keep this pretty brief. Sometime around 2000 I signed at least one if not two email petitions criticizing the Taliban BEFORE 9/11. The first two years of the US invasion of Afghanistan I supported it, partly because of how offensive the Taliban are. I got the impression that Afghan women didn’t support the invasion, but I also supported it because of 9/11 (Al-Qaeda was based there), so it wasn’t just the misogyny of the Taliban (which, by itself wouldn’t justify an invasion considering the opposition of the Afghan feminists). After two years I realized that under George W. Bush’s leadership the War on Terror was a disaster and in that context the war in Afghanistan was not going to help and was just going to make things worse. But I also can’t imagine a successful War on Terror that doesn’t include defeating Al-Qaeda. I’ll take that thought a little further in another post that I’ll work on soon and publish soon.

 

I AM concerned about what a Taliban victory would mean for girls and women in Afghanistan. An article sort of about that is here) 

********

UPDATE 10/24/23 A little more on why a progressive and successful response to 9/11 would have involved taking down Al Qaeda. In 1998, a few months after the Good Friday peace agreement in N. Ireland was ratified by the voters, a splinter group from the IRA detonated a bomb in Omagh, N. Ireland, and killed 29 civilians. The thing is, at that time maybe about 1% of the Catholic population supported armed struggle, and yet the splinter group (the "Real IRA") was able to carry out attacks. Even if all seven things on that list above were done, it would not have 100% ended Al Qaeda's willingness and ability to carry out attacks on western targets.

********

 

UPDATE 7/3/24 I believe that there are a bunch of progressives who seem to think that the American civilian population just has to take hit after hit after hit until they stop voting for ass-holes. I don't think American civilians deserve to die.

Two New Poems: "Mass Incarceration" and "Iraq"

 I wrote two new poems. For more about my poetry, see this. Both of these are based on songs I don't like.

You can see all the poems by clicking on the "lyrics" label at the bottom.

“Mass Incarceration” based on “Justice” by Skrewdriver. Original lyrics are here.

0. I THINK that when I first typed this about 5 years ago, I was thinking of the 1990s, and assumed that things in recent years were a little less obscene. I could be wrong about that, and even if it's less bad now, it's still bad.
1. This is about the mass incarceration of Blacks in America. It was the result of “law and order” laws like the 1994 Crime Bill and racist cops, DAs, judges, witnesses, jurors, and the poverty that prevents many black people from getting a good lawyer instead of an over-worked, underfunded public defender. I am not saying that all cops, judgers, jurors, etc. are racist, but many of them are
2. I am not a fan of the kind of gangs that are based in communities of color, but I know that in the past there was a lot of guilt-by-association involved with how law enforcement decide who to arrest. Also, in the movie “Set It Off” a working-class black bank-teller is suspected of being the inside-woman in a robbery because she sort of knows one of the robbers.
3. I think this has changed in the last 10-20 years, but for a long time crack convictions came with a longer sentence than cocaine convictions, and to a large extent cocaine was more popular with whites than blacks and crack was more popular with blacks than whites.
4. I can’t remember the figures and they varied over time, but Blacks were much more likely to be in prison than whites were. Blacks were more likely to be in prison than in college. The rate of incarceration for blacks was very high and America’s general rate of incarceration is very high compared to other countries, maybe all of them, I can’t remember.
5. 44% of this version is me, 56% is the original.

6. I give this poem 2 stars out of 5.

Their knees feel weak as they’re dragged from the court


Convicted because of with whom they consort


One by one, the judge locks them all away


Trumped up charges is the game the DA plays
 


Chorus:


Call that justice, well it just ain't fair,


How much longer before we care


Call that justice from a racist judge


The cop’s testimony was a total fudge

 

Stripped in a cell, they’re shackled in chains


Lost all their dignity, but trying to keep sane


A longer sentence if you happen to be black


their excuse is that instead of coke it was crack


(Repeat Chorus)


Call this a democracy and “the land of free”


They say there’s equality and meritocracy 


Here's the reality, a racist state


Warehousing Black people behind prison gates

**********

“Iraq” based on “They Stand Alone” by No Remorse. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the occupation of Iraq.
2. I think another reason for invading Iraq is that it provided multiple opportunities to give money to corporations. Besides arms contractors and those doing privatized work for the military (security, laundry, food, interrogations, etc.), corporations getting money for reconstruction spent about half of what they got doing actual reconstruction (often a contractor would keep half and give the rest to a subcontractor and sometimes THAT corporation would keep half and give the rest to another subcontractor).
3. Black gold is another term for oil.
4. There was a lot of corruption in the Iraqi government.
5. Haliburton was a company that Dick Cheney had been a leader of before he became VP. It got a lot of US Gov’t contracts to do stuff in Iraq.
6. Laos was bombed as part of the Vietnam War.
7. Although the original is supportive of the Palestinians and sometimes fascists are anti-intervention, this is basically in conflict with what the authors of the original lyrics believe because a lot of American Nazi skinheads joined the US military during the Occupation of Iraq and volunteered to go there and because I think that a lot of white supremacists and fascists in America were pro-war during the Vietnam War.
8. 59% of this version is me, and 41% is the original.

9. I give this poem 2 stars out of 5.

A tank rolls out on the sun bright sand.
Gunfire's heard in an occupied land.
People run, scared for their lives
The sounds of death, sounds of screaming wives

chorus
US Army man, you must go.
Your humvees and your CEOs
Iraqis you must make a stand.
You must work to free your land

A nation, full of black gold
In the minds of American oil companies, it’s already sold
Propped up by pillars, of corruption and graft
An occupation supported by ground attack aircraft

Millions for Haliburton, while Iraqis die.
World-wide news media frequently ask why.
Headquarters of Satan, in the Bush White House
It's an imperialist project, just like the bombing of Laos

An Example of Irish-American Anti-Racism

For about 10 years now I have been linking from this blog to a group called the Irish American Unity Conference. I was vaguely or fairly familiar with them about 20-23 years ago when I believe they were a moderate version of Irish Northern Aid, who were basically supporters of Sinn Fein and the IRA. Now they seem to primarily support SF. Although their links list contains nothing radical that isn’t also Irish (i.e. SF’s web-site), they surprised me when I found a June statement in response to Black Lives Matter activism that was taking place at the time. I am reproducing their statement below but you can find it here.

“We, the Officers of the Irish American Unity Conference, express our outrage at the ongoing, deep-seated, brutal racism that is destroying the fabric of our country. We condemn in particular the recent cold-blooded murders of African-American fellow citizens, including children, in Minnesota, Georgia, Texas, Florida, New York City, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, East St. Louis, and Louisville. We stand in solidarity with our African-American sisters and brothers not only in this time of crisis but at all times. There are disturbing parallels between America’s racism and the state-sponsored political and religious discrimination and violence imposed for over eight hundred years on native Irish people in the north of Ireland. It is not a coincidence that the Northern Ireland Civil Rights movement took its inspiration and strategies from the Civil Rights movement in the United States to fight for justice and an end to oppression. We are painfully aware that recent racist events in this country are not an anomaly or aberration, but rather are a continuation of the violence perpetrated against people of color for hundreds of years, often state-sanctioned, to intimidate and deny equal citizenship to a significant segment of our society. We declare our resolve that the United States must once and for all acknowledge and stop its endemic racism or fail its founding principles of equality and justice for all. None of us can be silent, for if we are not part of the solution then we are part of the problem."

Peter Kissel, President


George Trainor, Vice-President


Kevin Barry, Treasurer


Sarah McAuliffe-Bellin, Secretary

********

It’s really good. Although it’s common for SF supporters to refer to how Black Americans inspired the N. Ireland Civil Rights Movement and we get something out of that, it’s still worth pointing out that every time it’s mentioned, there’s potential for it to get some racist or semi-racist Irish-Americans who care about N. Ireland to change their thinking about race. And this statement goes well beyond simply mentioning the two Civil Rights Movements. I have occasionally suggested to SF members and leaders that they should be in solidarity more with people of color in America and although I have no reason to believe it’s connected to my work, I’m really glad to see that the leadership of the IAUC have done that.

My blog is largely dedicated to the intersection of N. Ireland and fighting racism in America. One of the top three individuals who represent that intersection (along with Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey and Angela Y. Davis) is Bill Fletcher Jr. Bill is a long-time advocate for Justice and Equality on a range of topics. He has held MANY positions, some very senior, in America’s Labor Movement. From about 1995 to about 2001 he was Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO (John Sweeney). He was "national organizer" for the Black Radical Congress and part of the coordinating committee from 1998-2003., a coalition of Black people and organizations on the broad Left in America. For about two years starting in 2001 he was the President of TransAfrica Forum. An example of his Irish Republican activity is here.

After reading the IAUC statement he commented on the similarities between British Imperialism in Ireland and white supremacy in America: “When the English conquered Ireland they instituted a racial-colonial domination over the indigenous population.  They, in fact, constructed a settler state, the legacy of which is Northern Ireland.  The English introduced this system when they invaded the Western Hemisphere, constructed racial slavery for Africans and succeeded in beginning the expulsion of the First Nations."

The posts on my blog that are at least partly about that intersection, what some call “the black and the green,” are here.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Reviews A

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

The first episode is a two-parter, the first called “Man Up” and the second part called 
“Man Down.” The wikipedia summaries are:

“The Special Victims Unit is called in after a fifteen-year-old boy (Bryce Romero) is sexually assaulted. Despite having evidence, he is too scared to name his attacker (Dylan Walsh), making things complicated for the detectives. When the identity of the attacker is discovered, the detectives do their best to protect the teenager from being abused again. Meanwhile, Rollins talks things through with her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with an escort and also confides in Benson that she is pregnant for a second time. Benson expresses concern to Tutuola that she is not as strong or fast as she used to be.”

and

“The case involving a teenager who was sexually assaulted continues and Stone takes the rapist to court. However, an unexpected verdict comes back, shocking everyone involved. The victim ends up making a tragic decision which results in several people dead and injured and the Special Victims Unit must charge the victim. An upset Stone along with the rest of the squad decide to try their best to charge the boy's rapist as well in order to get justice for all the victims who were killed or injured in the attack. Meanwhile, Rollins starts having doubts about her pregnancy.”

 

Feminism

There are two feminist aspects of this. Overall it’s slightly about taking the idea of pushing someone to “man up” to a point where it becomes sexist. There’s also a moment when Benson says to Rollins about abortion: “This is your decision to make, alone, and I will defend to the death your right to make it, but regret is an awful thing to live with.”

 

Gun Control and Politics

The main element of the second half is a school shooting and this brings up the issue of gun control, something I largely support. I was in college when the Columbine incident took place in 1999 and I think if the “gun show loophole” had been closed it might not have happened. I was surprised to learn recently that in recent years increasingly law enforcement opposes gun control, which seems to me to mean that more than usual they have a double standard and want guns out of the hands of some of the population but are fine with conservatives having guns. They continue to introduce people of color, disproportionately, to the criminal justice system, which seems to usually have a negative effect on your second amendment rights, and search Black people for weapons more than white people, and shoot Black people who don’t even have a gun, but generally are okay with “open-carry” and more specifically treat white people who pose an armed threat to the State with kid gloves while they call for Antifa to be declared a terrorist organization (Antifa and it’s predecessor, the Anti-Racist Action Network, without arms focuses(d) on grassroots fascists (in the past that usually meant Nazi skinheads), not cops).

 

Homophobia

There’s also two bits about homophobia. First, in the first half, the father suggests that if someone is gay they need counseling. In the second half the son is interviewed by a psychiatrist who refers to her wife and the son just says he isn’t gay, but without any hostility, like he rejects his dad’s homophobia.

“Zero Tolerance” Season 20. Wikipedia summary is: “A nine-year-old girl (Scarlett Lopez) is taken from her mother at the U.S.–Mexico border and ends up in a child sex trafficking ring in New York, which quickly comes to the attention of the Special Victims Unit. Benson and Stone try their hardest to reunite the girl with her family within the court system but meet many obstacles along the way. Eventually, Stone decides to ask for help from an old friend. Meanwhile, Rollins decides to give her rocky relationship with Pollack another chance.”

 

Immigration

Even before the main story about immigrants kicks in, there is one minor pro-immigrant thing. Probably an average of 5 times a season, the detectives make it clear that they’re not “la migra” (immigration) when seeking witnesses, and that sort of thing happened here. It just occurred to me that it would be good if about 20-30% of the time that involved white immigrants who are undocumented because it wouldn’t hurt if white people understood that amnesty would benefit, for example, undocumented Irish.

The main story is about separating undocumented children from their undocumented parents, something that became a hall-mark of Trump immigration policy in recent years. The show is extremely critical of that. When someone from the Office of Refugee Resettlement comes to take the girl back to a camp, he is identified as the one who took her from her mother’s arms and Benson has him arrested for kidnapping. It doesn’t survive the courts of course, but it’s still a powerful statement.

As usual there is some probably realistic disagreement among the detectives about the issue. The Black detective (“Finn”) is less than totally pro-immigrant and unfortunately when the “we’re all the descendants of immigrants” argument is made, he (kind of reasonably) describes Black history. I think that when it comes from pro-immigrant black people, it’s a reasonable response to a flawed pro-immigrant argument, but otherwise it’s a bullshit response to a flawed pro-immigrant argument. He DOES make a good point about how Black people are treated today (but again, it really has nothing to do with a less-than-totally pro-immigrant position). (a colleague refers to immigrants “yearning to breathe free” and then Finn says “I still can’t breathe free,” likely a reference to the last words of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed in a chokehold by the NYPD)

“Exile” Season 20. Wikipedia summary is: “The Special Victims Unit is called in to investigate the sexual assault of a young homeless woman (Aimée Spring Fortier). The squad soon realizes that the woman has a dual personality which makes things complicated. However, when she goes missing, the squad becomes challenged to not only uncover her whereabouts but also her real identity. The detectives later discover that someone from her past may be responsible and that the assault may have happened a long time ago. However, the squad meet a dead end in their investigation and Benson makes a generous decision to help the victim recover from her ordeal.”

There are two main aspects of this that are abnormal (normal being about sex crimes).

 

Homelessness

First, it touches on homelessness. Like almost everyone I’m concerned about homelessness. I have done very little to help the homeless compared to what I’ve done to help those who just have food insecurity (the last 8-10 years I have spent an average of about 4-6 hours a week volunteering at a food-bank) but about 1% of that work was for the benefit of homeless people and probably a lot of food bank clients would become homeless if not for the food bank, and then the resources available for homeless people would have to be shared by a lot more people than is currently the case- i.e. there would be more competition for beds in shelters.

It also touches a little on the subject of homeless people with mental illness. I think that’s a major cause of homelessness- even moderate (let alone severe) mental illness makes it difficult to function and work and pay bills and stuff. Without Social Security disability programs SSI and SSDI there would be even more homelessness. Also, mental illness can be made worse by anxiety, stress and depression and I’m sure gets worse with becoming homeless. (I describe my mental illness here)

 

Marijuana Legalization

The subject of legal marijuana comes up, and the show expresses support for this when Finn buys a legal marijuana snack. I can’t believe that there are still states where even medical marijuana remains illegal. And when it comes to recreational marijuana, I believe there are still federal obstacles for businesses, especially when it comes to banking. Marijuana is much less deadly than alcohol or tobacco and I believe it is less addictive, although driving stoned is probably as stupid as driving drunk. In general I fully support medical and recreational marijuana, especially the former. I can’t believe how many people our nation sentenced to the hell that prison must be for marijuana-only non-violent “crimes.” It’s sick.

Lastly, the gay or bi-sexual psychiatrist working with the DA’s office has a brief appearance.

The Black Lives Matter Protests and the Trunp Administration

Although I have been following developments and reading commentary about the Black Lives Matters protests like crazy, I have not attended any protests. For MULTIPLE reasons, taking part in protests would cause me the kind of anxiety and stress that would make my mental disabilities much worse than they are.

But, even though I currently am not getting a lot of visitors to this blog (I’m getting some and will soon get more), here are my thoughts about the issues thrown up by the protests.

Many people (like Trump) don’t understand this, but this is not about George Floyd. This is about hundreds of years of black lives being valued less than white lives in this country, including an apparent surge in the murders of unarmed Black people by police in the last several years, as well as some modern-day lynchings that more or less don’t involve the police. I was told at a BLM protest march around 2015 that in a 365-day period ending shortly before that day about 200 black people, armed or unarmed, had been killed by American police. I’m sure some of them were armed, but A) I’m very open-minded about allegations that cops plant guns and B) around that time there were SEVERAL highly publicized cases where undeniably unarmed Black people were killed by police. Police are practically never convicted, or even prosecuted (and rarely fired) for such deaths. Although there isn’t solidly comprehensive information about how often unarmed black people are killed by police here like there’s information about the security forces killing Catholic civilians in Northern Ireland’s Troubles, one reason I believe it’s a widespread and serious problem is that both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, two organizations that generally get along with police, have expressed support for BLM. That’s here and here. They are making these statements because even though they are sort of pro-cop, they are even more anti-racist and anti-injustice and anti-inequality. And that’s the agenda they see in BLM. (And in the case of the ADL, their support for BLM is also despite the fact that BLM has expressed criticism of Israel)

Trump claims to be sensitive to the death of Floyd, but he clearly isn’t beyond the death of that one individual. He isn’t sensitive to what Floyd’s death symbolizes. His National Security Advisor has said “No, I don't think there's systemic racism. I think 99.9% of our law enforcement officers are great Americans.” Based on multiple facts, a lot more than .1% of police are racist. That’s based on simple common sense, but also the following:

1) What I wrote about the SPLC and the ADL and BLM.
2) In 1992, when the controversy over the Body Count (Ice-T’s heavy metal band) song Cop Killer broke, the (then- 35,000 member) National Black Police Association kind of backed Ice-T. According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel:

The 35,000-member National Black Police Association says it won't join the boycott. Police should try to get at the root of black discontent and try to change it, said Ronald Hampton, the group's executive director.

"Where were these police groups when the police beat up Rodney King?" Hampton asked. "Why were they not appalled by the actions of their brothers? It rings of hypocrisy.”

3) From what I’ve heard, some massive majority of cops are registered to vote GOP and for the following reasons I believe that is a racist party.

A) Not only do they get no more than about 10% of the Black vote, and only around 25% of the Latino vote (and that would be lower if (more or less) white Latinos were excluded from the calculations), they also get no more than around 25% of the Asian-American vote. That last fact is crucial. Even though Asian-Americans as a group do at least as well financially as white people do as a group, and even though there is the history of FDR and Internment, Asian-Americanss look at the GOP and see it as even less attractive than the Dems.
B) There ’s also the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s Segregationist Democrats migrated to the GOP because the Dems became a civil rights party. In 2005 the GOP ADMITTED (and in all fairness apologized for) using the “Southern Strategy” of 1968 where they appealed to segregationist southerners in order to elect Nixon.
C) As I’ll explain further down, Trump is a racist.

There’s also the fact that, according to HuffPost, the Trump Justice Department ignored police brutality:

“Since President Donald Trump took office, his appointees at the Justice Department have all but eliminated the federal government’s police reform work. The Civil Rights Division’s police practices group has shrunk by half, and it hasn’t opened any major pattern-or-practice investigations that could rein in police departments that regularly violate constitutional rights.”

(Also, see this).

(There’s a lot of things I will gloss over because there’s so much attention on them anyway, like Trump’s use of the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” or what happened to facilitate his photo-op with the Bible)

Trump is a racist. Here’s some of the most solid evidence:

1) A few years ago was the first time Trump called Antifa a terrorist organization. It was after Antifa members had done what they’re defined by, and that’s not actually or allegedly rioting. They were fighting people clearly identifiable as fascists, and no, I don’t believe that cops are clearly identifiable as fascists. They were fighting FASCISTS.
2) On a similar note, when an anti-fascist was killed in 2017 in Charlottesville by a fascist, Trump said there were “fine” people on both sides.
3) There’s his attitude to the exonerated victims of a racial miscarriage of justice.
4) When asked about David Duke endorsing him, his response in an interview was:

Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. OK? I don't know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don't know. I don’t know, did he endorse me or what’s going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.

5) There’s his opinion that Lincoln screwed up dealing with what led to the Civil War. Trump thinks that if the then-late former President Andrew Jackson had been President in 1861 the Civil War would have been avoided. Since Jackson was a slave owner and an opponent of abolitionism, that would have involved, at best, a compromise friendly to the South that would have barely affected the life-span and geographic scope of slavery or the treatment of slaves. There’s information about that here and here.
6) His Veterans Affairs Secretary is a neo-confederate.

(As far as those last two, I should explain two facts about the Confederacy. First, they considered ending slavery so they could get military support from Europe and win the war, but decided not to- slavery was more important to them than independence. Also, when Black Union soldiers were captured, they were treated differently than White POWs and in at least one case were simply executed instead of taken to POW camps. The Confederacy was about slavery and racism)

I recently had a bit of a breakthrough on what needs to be done to make significant progress on ridding this country of racism. In addition to everything else people are doing, we need more unions. That’s based on the following:

1. Union households are more likely to vote Democratic than non-union households, and many of the organizers and staff in the labor movement are people of color and most of the whites are anti-racist and most union supporters are people of color or anti-racist whites.
2. In 2000 in a discussion on the email list of the Young Democratic Socialists (now YDSA) a member who was organizing workers in Indiana said that his competition was the Klan (UPDATE 1/26/22 That is, competition for the hearts and minds of the workers).
3. Eammon McCann is a socialist and anti-Unionist activist in Northern Ireland. He was one of the main leaders of the N. Ireland Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s (he was one of the speakers at the rally/march that was attacked by the British Army on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, and he was an organizer of the second Civil Rights march, the one in Derry in Oct. of 1968). He has held several different senior and very senior positions in the Northern Irish TRADE-union movement in the last 40 years. In 2016 he was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly and in 2017 he would have been but they reduced the number of seats returned from each constituency form 6 to 5 so he was basically runner-up. As far as I can tell, in the last 40 years at any given time two mainstream or professional news publications have been publishing his columns. He is an expert on sectarianism in N. Ireland. In a column written in the 1980s or 1990s and included in the 1998 anthology of his columns “McCann: War and Peace in Northern Ireland” he wrote:

The trade union movement is better placed than any other to purge the politics of this island of sectarianism. No other institution brings Catholic and Protestant workers together on a regular basis in pursuit of a common purpose which is antipathetic to sectarianism

(Mark Langhammer, who was the leader of the Northern Ireland part of the Irish Labour Party for several years around 2010, told me in 2005 that he agrees with McCann)

I think you could easily say the same thing about racism in this country.

Unfortunately, in recent decades, as the labor movement has become more and more anti-racist, it has gotten smaller and smaller, thanks to the GOP, corporations, and moderate Democrats.

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In conclusion, although I’m concerned the protests will result in the spread of COVID-19 and I have been unable to take part in them, I am glad that the protests are happening. They seem likely to be successful in multiple ways and have exposed more than usual the fact that our society is racist and that Trump is a racist.


A new mural in Belfast, N. Ireland.

A Letter to Bernie Sanders About Mental Health Care and Stigma

Below is a message I sent to Bernie Sanders. UPDATE 11/18/20 I sent an almost identical letter to my congressperson, Joe Neguse. His response is below my signature at the end of the letter to Sanders.

Senator Bernie Sanders,

I am not a constituent but I voted for you in the 2016 CO caucus and also this year. My blog doesn’t get much traffic which is a problem I am working on, but I link to your campaign web-site and also Our Revolution. I used to be a DSA member and between 1994 and 2004 I did a ton of activism. Since then I haven’t done much activism, partly because of my disabilities but since 2008 I have done a political blog which until 2018 got a lot of visitors and in the last 3 months I got a lot of visitors because I include the URL for my blog when I leave progressive comments on Politico. In the last 8-10 years I have volunteered 4-6 hours a week on average at a food bank. I left DSA for a hybrid of personal and political reasons but I am a fellow traveler and link to them in 2-4 ways in my blog’s links list. In 2002 I represented the Anti-Racism Commission of DSA at the National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth in Galway, Ireland. My blog is at- https://theblackandthegreen3.blogspot.com/

I am emailing you instead of my own Senator because I’m more familiar with you, because you’re a national leader, because I know you feel strongly about funding mental health care and because I can imagine the likely thoughts that Bennet and/or his staff will have when they read about a mentally ill progressive. I appreciate what you have done- we need more funding for mental health care. Although I’m very slightly middle-class, I qualify for SSI and SSDI and am part of what you might call the low-income part of the mental health care system. The mental health center I go to is fairly well-funded (it serves two counties in Colorado, one being Boulder), but sometimes they have to ration therapy. Sometimes I have only gotten therapy every other week and at one point they were talking about me taking a break from getting therapy. For a lot of us therapy is very helpful.

But in addition to funding, we also need to address what is called stigma. As the National Alliance on Mental Illness said several months ago in ads seen in movie theaters, stigma can result in people not getting help. I think there is a major problem with stigma in our society. When I have a good reason to, I mention that I am mentally ill. I don’t hide it. But recently when I mentioned it to 4 progressive activists in an email, 2-3 of them didn’t respond (it’s a little complicated).

I usually think of things this way. As individuals and as a society, we should do whatever is reasonable so that people with disabilities can participate as much as possible in our society. But I think a lot of people have a double standard between physical disabilities and mental disabilities.

I have had for roughly 25-30 years, Depression, Tourrette’s Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Although I would have said in the past that they floated between mild and moderate, now they hover around moderate, and the ADD is a little worse than that. To give you a better idea of what I mean by “moderate,” let me give you two examples: With the ADD, if I watch a two hour movie by myself, on average I have to stop and rewind about 10 times before I’m done, just because of the ADD. One aspect of the OCD that can be measured is that, after I make sure my car or bedroom door is locked, I go back 2.5 times on average to make sure it’s locked. I suffered a brain injury in 2010. It affects my hearing, my immediate/working memory, and my ability to organize my thoughts. It MIGHT have made my short-term memory a little flawed, but my long-term memory is still really good. At the risk of putting down other mentally ill people, I have a firm grip on reality.

After my ADD got really bad in 2007 and the 2010 brain injury there was an insurmountable barrier to me doing activism. I have since gone to an occasional event or protest and I don’t refuse to have face to face conversations with people about politics but I don’t look for trouble by going to weekly or monthly meetings where events are planned and there are discussions about goals, tactics, vision, and strategy. I do my blog, I volunteer at the food bank and I go to events as an audience member.

So I understand that there are some things mentally disabled people can’t do. But I think there are a lot of times when stigma keeps mentally disabled people from participating in our society as much as they really can.

I’ll be honest, I’m not real familiar with what they do because I haven’t needed their help, but I like to think that if I encounter stigma in one form or another, if it were serious enough I could turn to the local or state or national office of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But I am sure they could use some more money. If someone encounters bias against them because they’re physically disabled, they get plenty of help. If someone is mentally disabled and less able to deal with bias against the mentally ill, I don’t think they get much help. I would ask you to look into NAMI and when appropriate promote them.

Thanks for your time and everything you’ve done for progressive causes. I don’t expect a personal response, but if someone working for you could let me know that this message was received I would appreciate it. If I don’t get such a response, I will try to contact you via your Senate office web-site, and after that I will drop it.

Tom Shelley
Boulder, CO 

 

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Below the asterisks is the response I got from my congressperson. He doesn't address the issue of stigma, but he does seem fairly concerned about mental illness in a positive way.

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October 23, 2020
 

Mr. Tom Shelley

(I deleted my address)

Dear Mr. Shelley:

Thank you for contacting me with your support for mental health services. I appreciate hearing from you because it enables me to better represent the beliefs and values of our district, and I agree with you that Congress must do more to help individuals who are suffering with mental illness access the resources they need.

There are millions of Americans living with undiagnosed mental illness, and millions more who have received their diagnoses but aren't receiving the care they need to properly manage their health and wellbeing. I believe that every American has the right to high-quality, affordable healthcare, which includes mental health treatment. Too many individuals are forced to prioritize other aspects of their lives over taking care of their mental health, and too often there are not enough resources available for them to get the help they need. Mental health and substance abuse treatment facilities lack the funds they require to serve their communities, caregivers lack adequate support to assist their loved ones, and far too many people dealing with mental illness end up in prison, which only exacerbates their struggles. To that end, I am a cosponsor on H.R. 945, The Mental Health Access Improvement Act of 2019. This bill would provide coverage for marriage and family therapist services and mental health counseling under Medicare.

In addition, Colorado has one of the highest suicide rates in the country, especially for children and young adults ages 10-24. We need to be taking care of our children and youth populations and increasing resources that are available to prevent many of these tragic deaths. I am proud to cosponsor H.R. 4194, the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2019, to designate the number 988 as the national suicide hotline and provide support to those in need. I also joined several of my colleagues in asking for increased funding for the National Institutes of Mental Health, Community Mental Health Services Block Grants, and other programs in the Fiscal Year 2020 appropriations process, and voted in favor of amendments to the Labor, Health, and Human Services Appropriations Bill that passed the House on June 19, 2019 to add additional funding for mental health programs to the Fiscal Year 2020 budget.

As your Representative, providing accessible mental health resources is something that I care deeply about. Should other legislation regarding mental health services come before the full House of Representatives for a vote, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.

I appreciate that you took the time to contact me, it is one of my priorities that the constituents of the Second District of Colorado have their voices heard. I encourage you to continue contacting me about the issues that are important to you. Please visit my website at https://neguse.house.gov/ to sign up for my e-newsletter and receive periodic updates on my activities as your representative in Washington.
 

Sincerely,

Joe Neguse
Member of Congress