Trump, Iran, and Genocide

Below is something I wrote about a week after Trump threatened to destroy the civilization of Iran in early April. 

 

Tom 

 

 

I am glad that President Trump has so far not gone through with his threat to destroy Iran. It is damning of him and his voters that he made the threat and he is guilty of threatening genocide (“Conspiracy to Commit Genocide” and “Direct and Public Incitement to Commit Genocide” are crimes in international law (according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ) and it’s reasonable to assume that Trump’s threat involved planning with high-ranking members of his administration). If there was no conspiracy because it was nothing but a threat, Trump should say so, apologize and acknowledge that even the threat by itself is harmful (and he would still be guilty of the incitement charge)). Although some of his supporters, for various and not-necessarily progressive reasons, have criticized him, the GOP don’t seem to understand how criminal it is to make the threat that he made. Some think that he was just being politically tactical and would never actually do it and therefore it’s okay. It’s so far from OK it is globally considered a crime. It reminds me of a scene in the Denzel Washington film "Training Day" where a cop interrogating college students who just bought drugs threatens to get the young woman in the group gang-raped.

The US should be more sensitive about this sort of thing- not because we have a great history of doing the right thing (we don’t). But because we did the wrong thing when it came to American Indians, because we are more familiar than most countries with the genocide of European Jews, and because we’re more familiar than most countries with the near-genocidal treatment of the Irish during the so-called “Potato Famine.” There are millions of Americans who lost relatives (and not distant ancestors) to Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and/or who are also similarily related to many Jewish people who were lucky to survive Nazi Germany- who would have been killed if not for that luck, Allied sacrifice, and/or their own efforts to escape the Holocaust.

I believe that one way to concisely capture the evil of genocide is that a 100%-successful effort could be described as the cultural equivalent of an animal species going extinct. I worry that putting it that way focuses too much on what other populations lose when the victim is (at least to a moderate degree) exterminated. But it contributes to understanding the severity of this crime.

Genocide is so horrible that it should be universally opposed by all nations. Although I am not a fan of the Islamic Republic, I have opposed Trump’s war since day one, and I have a little factoid relevant to this. Although I believe there is at least a fair amount of anti-Semitism in Iran (and I say that while supporting the Palestinians) in 2007 a TV mini-series was made by and broadcast by official Iranian media- a movie based on a true story of how an Iranian diplomat in Paris during World War II engineered some kind of Oscar Schindler-type effort that saved at least about 500 Jewish lives. The mini-series is called “Zero Degree Turn” and there’s an article that seems fair about it here.

Trump is of course selective, more so than most American politicians, in his opposition to genocide. It’s like his attitude to COVID-19, when he explicitly said that states would get more help from Washington if their governors publicly said nice things about him. It was a politically-indiscriminate PANDEMIC, and he saw it as transactional. He is, almost 100%, sensitive when it comes to the Holocaust, because he wants Jewish votes and Jewish money. When he thinks it will help him, he threatens the misanthropic destruction on an entire civilization.

Trump’s threat might give some nations and other actors the impression that genocide or threatening genocide is okay.

Lastly, Trump’s threat greatly undermines how the rest of the world sees the US. We have lost more moral authority on the global stage and we didn’t have much to begin with. It will increase support for or indifference towards any effort at carrying out another 9/11. We have already taken two steps backwards during Trump’s second administration in terms of conciliation with the Muslim world- supporting Netanyahu’s Gaza War, and the first month of Trump’s Iran War. What Trump has threatened would inflame hatred for us throughout the world.

If Trump were to go through with his threat it would be a nightmare for the Iranian people, a nightmare for the Middle-East, and would guarantee pandemic-level hatred of Americans for decades.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews E

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.

“A Quality of Mercy” Episode Ten, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

This episode has four main political themes that I’ll briefly discuss.

First, it touches on the issue of genetic engineering, which I discussed here, in relation to the LEADERSHIP of StarFleet going after Pike’s second-in-command for being engineered.

War (General)

Second, the issue of war and paranoia and bigotry. Although it’s suggested that had Pike acted a little less like a StarFleet Captain and more like an officer of the US military, it would have prevented war, I don’t think that means the writers, producers, etc. are veering off to the right. The tendency in a Cold War-type context to say “we can’t trust them” (referring to the enemy) is well-illustrated and Pike’s response to that sort of thing is admirable. Especially when you consider that in the possible future he experiences, his attempt at peace-making probably would have gone somewhere if the Romulan ship’s second-in-command hadn’t violated a direct order from his peace-sympathizing superior. To a large degree you also can’t hold it against Pike that that Romulan ship, whose Captain had potential to promote peace, was destroyed as an example to others on the orders of the Romulan Praetor.

We also see some racist hostility towards Spock when it’s learned that Vulcans and Romulans look almost exactly the same. As it’s in the possible future, we probably won’t see it again (especially since that discovery takes place about 8 years later in The Original Series).

Anti-Muslim Bigotry

In the very last paragraph of a SNW review here I wrote about something that puzzlingly comes up in episode 10. In episode three Pike reads five names- people important to his future. One of them is, I THINK, a Muslim name (Google AI sort of confirmed that for me), but now, in episode 10, another name, taken from Pike’s knowledge of his future, is mentioned but wasn’t mentioned in Episode three. That name is, I am almost certain, a Muslim name- Maat Al-Salah. Even if it’s not a reference to a SECOND Islamic-named character prominent in Pike’s future and ST just decided to re-name that character, it is a second mention of a StarFleet cadet whose ancestors were almost certainly Muslims. Also, Maat’s father is a StarFleet officer.

Support Starbucks Strikers and Oppose Racism

UPDATE 11/13/25 Although I could explain why this is less damning of me than most would think, I got it wrong- it's an indefinite strike. BOYCOTT STARBUCKS! 

 

Below is a guest opinion I got published in the Daily Camera Wednesday the 12th. Thursday the 13th is the strike. What they published is here. There is an even longer essay focusing on my theory about unions and racism here.

 Tom

 

On Nov. 13th many Starbucks workers, hopefully thousands, will strike for one day and you can support them by not buying from Starbucks during the strike. Although, nationwide, more than 12,000 workers there are represented by Starbucks Workers United, the company has, for four years now, barely come close to engaging in the legally mandated collective bargaining process where a contract is negotiated.

As the City of Boulder, and to lesser degree Boulder County, become more and more middle-class, it’s unclear how many readers are pro-union. I’m not sure how many readers will be swayed by talk about health care benefits, wages, and respect for unskilled workers on the job, three of the several issues on which unions do great things for the workers they represent. Consider that, to one degree or another unions often play a critical role in getting Democrats elected- not in Boulder, of course, but in more working-class places whose elected Dems contribute, for example, to their leader becoming Speaker of the House. Unions also can play a crucial role in making a workplace more democratic (as you might call it) when it comes to equity for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and religious minorities.

There is one aspect of this issue that I am very passionate about and which I believe will resonate with the more middle-class Boulder liberal readers who think unions do nothing for them. I believe that unions, inside and outside the workplace, help stop or at least slow and reverse the spread of racism in the white working-class. The labor movement overall became very anti-racist with John Sweeney as President of the AFL-CIO from 1995 to 2009 and with subsequent AFL-CIO leadership. I believe that if, after 1995, the unionization rate hadn’t continued it’s long decline and had instead increased, Donald Trump would have been defeated in the Electoral College in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

Although I’m sure there is something similar in the statements of the American labor movement I have rarely heard of them and this theory I have was initially inspired by an analysis of the conflict in Northern Ireland. In a column included in a 1998 collection of his work in previous decades, Northern Ireland journalist Eamonn McCann wrote that the labor movement had the most potential to eradicate religious bigotry in N. Ireland. He wrote: “No other institution brings Catholic and Protestant workers together on a regular basis in pursuit of a common purpose, which is antipathetic to sectarianism.” McCann’s columns have been published by an average of 1-2 professionally staffed and edited publications (magazines or newspapers) at any given time in the last 40 years and he has held senior positions in Ireland’s labor movement in recent decades and he was one of the main leaders of the N. Ireland civil rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 2016 he was elected to the N. Ireland Assembly and in 2019 he was elected (from a very progressive and very working-class urban district) to the local government of Derry and Strabane. He is an expert on fighting sectarianism in N. Ireland and believes that organized labor has a crucial role to play.

Many people believe there are great similarities between the conflict in N. Ireland during The Troubles and the conflict over racism in the United States. This includes people like Angela Y. Davis and, in 1972, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I believe unions here play a role in combating racism and that that can be greater when the unionization rate returns to where it was before it's decline began about five decades ago. If racist working-class whites see multicultural, anti-racist unions negotiating collective bargaining agreements that help them, many will start to question racism.

Unfortunately, many fiscally moderate and conservative Democrats refuse to vote in favor of strengthening unions. I’m sure these Democrats are alarmed at the rise of Donald Trump and at the existence of the Proud Boys. What’s more important to them: protecting capitalism or fighting racism?

Please support the Nov. 13th Starbucks strike.

(I am more a supporter of Sinn Fein than I am a supporter of Eamonn McCann, but he is the one who made that statement) 

Musical Diversity

In the last 33 years I have probably listened to music an average of four hours a day (how is that possible? One factor is that I did about 40 hours a week, for a total of 4 years, at a job that allowed me to listen to music I chose as I was working). There was one period of about 3 years around 2006 where I didn’t listen that much, but in High School and the last 16 years I listened about 6 hours a day on average.

(The value of this post is fairly low- only about 45-55% of it will be political)

Before I get to the best part of it, let me first explain a few minor details and some background to my addiction to music. I pretty much exclusively listened to cassette tapes until some time around 1999. I also have bought very few CDs (my commitment to being a good fan went down at some point in the late 1990s and has pretty much stayed there in terms of buying CDs, etc. instead of mostly just listening to YouTube which is what I’ve done about 4/5 of the time in the last 7-8 years). I have never had an iPod, I don’t listen to streaming music sites (“muve” I believe is one example, or Last FM perhaps). I have been doing almost all of my music-listening the last 16 years on YouTube. About 2/5 of what I listen to is stuff that I paid for earlier when I bought tapes and/or CDs, and with a big chunk of the stuff I DIDN’T ever pay for, I’m very comfortable ethically with that (see “The Music of my Enemy” below).

When I was very young (about 9) I was a fan of Michael Jackson. At 13 or 14 I went to a massive concert which included Vanilla Ice, I BELIEVE MC Hammer, and I THINK En Vogue. I’m almost embarrassed by that, although in the last 35 years there is one En Vogue song that I really like (“Free Your Mind” (the main reason I like it is the moshing in the official music video)). I kind of liked Vanilla Ice and I just learned some stuff about him that is kind of cool. And in a brief spoken word bit on either Home Invasion or Original Gangster Ice-T said something positive about MC Hammer. But I’m still kind of embarrassed about it.  In one, two or three year(s) of Jr. High School I listened to a lot of rap- of the Beastie Boys (“License to Ill”), 2-3 albums by rappers Run DMC (and 1-2 albums by The Fresh Prince, but I think I stopped listening to him in 9th grade and since then I think I’ve listened twice (in the last several years) to two of his hits, just out of curiosity and/or nostalgia).

At the risk of getting a little personal, in 9th grade my two best friends got into Megadeth and some other heavy metal bands. I was sort of open-minded about it, but not very. For various reasons I won’t go into, at the beginning of 10th grade (1991-1992) we had a falling out. I WAS a little guilty in the first 1-2 months after that of suddenly discovering a strong interest in heavy metal and wearing combat boots and that might have been pathetic. But I kept listening to rap, I started listening to more hard-core rap like Public Enemy and Ice-T, and I started listening to miscellaneous stuff that was labeled “alternative.” The bands labelled that way in the 1990s that I still listen to a LOT today include: Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Fishbone, L7, Faith No More, Ministry, and Biohazard (I didn’t listen to  Biohazard until 1993).

Starting in the Summer of 1992 I listened to the punk bands The Dead Kennedys and The Dead Milkmen (just an amusing coincidence). More recently I started listening a lot to a CELTIC punk band called Dropkick Murphys. Some of the bands that I lazily put in the metal category have some major connection to punk music. This includes DRI and Suicidal Tendencies who I enjoy listening to. Biohazard is also kind of a punk band.

Going back to my ex-friends in 1991/1992, I am, in one way and one way only, proud of the fact that when they started listening to Slayer and some death-metal bands I didn’t follow them (the thing is, since I didn’t follow them in that direction, it couldn’t be called pathetic). In early 1993 I bought one Slayer album (Seasons in the Abyss) and bought no more until 2 years later, when I was in college. Around the same time that I bought the Slayer album I bought one Napalm Death tape (From Enslavement to Obliteration) (Napalm Death are death-metal) but that was it for death-metal until about 25 years later.

In High School the main two heavy metal bands I listened to were Megadeth and Metallica. I listened a fair amount to some others including Anthrax, Sepultura, Pantera, Nuclear Assault, Body Count, DRI, and Suicidal Tendencies (unlike every other band I mention in this essay, I no longer listen to Sepultura).

There’s one minor heavy metal band that I listened to a little bit in High School that really should have been part of me transitioning towards being a socialist (a transition that took place in High School), but I don’t think it was. In a few minutes I’ll talk about how in general listening to music contributed to me becoming a socialist. The minor  band I just mentioned is called Sacred Reich, and even though in High School I had been less familiar with this, I’ve known for 1-2 decades now that they were progressive. In HS I had an EP of their’s with four songs. One was totally non-political and about evil or monsters or something. One was a cover of the anti-war Black Sabbath song “War Pigs.” The one I remember listening to was a (1980s) anti-intervention song called “Surf Nicaragua. The fourth song turns out to be a very progressive song, but I only identified it as such in the last 16 years. “One Nation” is anti-war, anti-racist, and even a little critical of economic injustice (there’s a brief reference to “greed”).

I can’t remember which came first, but the first bit of political activity I engaged in MAY have happened after I took a music-connected step towards identifying strongly with the cause of anti-racism. That step was going to the first concert I care to remember. It was in 10th grade and it was an Ice-T and Body Count concert. I saw the first band play and there was moshing which I quickly decided I liked and I saw Ice-T do some rap (which also inspired moshing), and then I had to leave before Body Count played because I had to get home before it was too late (my parents didn’t know I was at a concert and wouldn’t have believed that what I told them I was doing would go that late). (In High School and college I was into relatively non-violent moshing (and I felt very strongly about picking up people who fell down)).

***********

The High School Years: Becoming A Socialist

So, a focus on music and my political development. If I ever get around to typing it, a future post about how I became a socialist will overlap heavily with this post.

One aspect of this that I think about is, why did I come to focus more on racism than other symptoms of capitalism and get an Ethnic Studies degree instead of a Women’s Studies degree? I have no idea how I found myself listening to rap music in Jr. High. I wasn’t watching MTV and my parents were no more than moderately anti-racist. I didn’t have older siblings who listened to rap (actually, I might have been watching a LITTLE MTV because I have memories of watching 1-2 music videos by The Fresh Prince). On one hand, as far as I can remember, the rap I was listening to in Jr. High was non-political and only about 3/4 of it involved Black people, but It probably contributed to how I started listening to Public Enemy and Ice-T in late 1991.

I think that listening to that “Hard Core” rap is a huge part of why I did my first political act (and that may have been AFTER the Ice-T/Body Count concert I went to). In the Spring semester of 10th grade, in early 1992, I walked out of my 4th period class (I think it was 4th period) and joined about 50 of my peers walking around Boulder protesting the not-guilty verdict in a California trial of the racist white police officers who beat Rodney King a year earlier. That night I went to a march and rally for the community in general and/or the CU-Boulder campus and I was actually on the front page of the paper the next day (next to me was someone who later was the first or second person to get an Ethnic Studies degree at CU-Boulder, and there was someone wearing a Primus shirt and one person wearing a Body Count shirt).

This is a little embarrassing because I have heard things here and there indicating they’re not progressive, but I think some political stuff by Megadeth and Metallica nudged me towards the left in High School. Those songs are:

Metallica
“Fight Fire With Fire” is about the need to avoid nuclear war.
“Ride the Lightning” is in opposition to the death penalty.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” could almost be mistaken for an anti-fascist song because it is indirectly inspired by an anti-fascist novel by Ernest Hemingway. The thing is, the MOVIE based on that book retained the anti-war message but not the ANTI-FASCIST message of the book.
“Disposal Heroes” is anti-war.
“Blackened” is about nuclear war.
“…And Justice for All” is basically about politics and power in this country, but I am very unsure about what EXACTLY is it saying. This one may have had no affect on me becoming a socialist.
“One” is anti-war.

Megadeth
“Set The World Afire” is about nuclear war.
“Holy Wars…. The Punishment Due.” The first half I’ve heard might be about international conflicts like Israel and the Palestinians and/or (possibly more specifically) Northern Ireland. Beyond that I’m not sure what to say about it.
“Take No Prisoners” is anti-war.
“Rust in Peace” is about nuclear war.
“Symphony of Destruction” is about politics but I can’t figure out what they’re trying to say.
“Architecture of Aggression” is sort of the same- it probably IS anti-war, but I am less certain than I am when it comes to “Take no Prisoners.” Megadeth just wasn’t consistently and explicitly progressive.
“Foreclosure of a Dream” is I BELIEVE about US federal farm policy in the 1980s. I am just not familiar with farm policy. I DO like the license plates in Colorado that say “No Farms, No Food” but I just don’t know anywhere near enough to comment on this song.

I think that is a pretty complete list of the relevant Megadeth and Metallica songs I listened to in High School that may have nudged me towards the left.

As I have said earlier, the harder rap I listened to, including three Ice-T albums, and 3-4 Public Enemy albums probably had a better effect on me than the Metallica and Megadeth stuff I just referred to. And then there was the Dead Kennedys stuff- some of their songs might not inspire progressive politics but about half of them do. And there was at least a couple that were about economic injustice- “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” and “Kill the Poor.” There were several other political DK songs whose lyrics I’m too lazy to confirm- with the exceptions of “Police Truck” (police brutality), “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” and “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now” (about Ronald Reagan), which I definitely remember (as I was typing this I started listening to the DKs for the first time in about 4-5 years) (I believe that in High School and college I listened to 3/4 or 4/4 of the Jello Biafra DK studio albums).

There were a handful of songs by Suicidal Tendencies that contributed to me becoming   progressive:

“Two Sided Politics” is basically contrasting the life of a rich person with that of a working-class person, and there’ some anti-Reagan stuff, etc. One thing I think is noteworthy is that there’s one line that says “I’m not anti-government, government is anti-me.” I like to think that might be in part an anti-anarchist statement.
“Fascist Pig” could be a little more political (that is, deeper) but Mexican-Americans criticizing the police may have pushed me a bit to the left.
“I Want More” is about the class conflict with some references to the minimum wage.
“Give It Revolution” was a little vague but probably nudged me in the right direction.

There were a handful of songs by a thrash-metal band called Nuclear Assault that pushed me to the left in High School. Although I have listened to their other stuff in recent years, in HS pretty much the only album I listened to was “Handle with Care.”
“New Song” which was a fairly good anti-racist song.
“Critical Mass” is a pretty good environmentalist song.
“Inherited Hell” is also like that.
“When Freedom Dies” Although I’m not sure what it’s saying about US foreign policy during the Cold War, it IS saying that freedom and civil liberties, etc. shouldn’t be weakened in the name of national security.
“Search and Seizure” is sort of similar, but basically about law enforcement harassing metal-heads (I’m not sure whether or how the lyrics-writer would generalize that statement to include punks, hippies, etc.)

Another band that influenced me in High School was a “cross-over” hard-core punk/thrash-metal band called DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). In HS I saw them play live twice and listened to three of their albums.

First there was the album “Definition” which included the following songs:
“Acid Rain” was about the environment.
“The Application” is about multiple forms of employment discrimination and DOES include a line about racism and a line about homophobia, and one about religion and one that is probably about being HIV+.

The album “Thrash Zone” has several political songs.
“Labelled Incurable” might be about AIDS (as far as I can tell DRI were probably anti-homophobic).
“Kill the Words” is sort of generally about censorship and dictatorship but seems to be at least partly if not totally about that sort of thing in the Muslim world; I have no idea if they’re anti-Muslim or just consistently opposing fundamentalism, censorship, and dictatorship (there IS another song where they condemn religious discrimination in employment, so they probably aren’t anti-Muslim)
“Worker Bee” although it’s not written as a socialist song, I think it’s basically about economic justice and is by a band that I’m pretty sure is in favor of social justice as well (I’m suspicious of bands, people, etc. who are economically progressive but not socially liberal).

There was one Soundgarden song about the environment called “Hands All Over.” Although I don’t feel like looking at the lyrics, I believe that there were at least a few L7 songs I liked politically (one example is “Pretend We’re Dead”).

This will require at least one paragraph. Although I’m not real familiar with this, I have gotten the impression that Rage Against The Machine were a bit to my left politically. One social-dem critic told me that the political forces RATM admired either would have told RATM to fuck off, or alternately, should be killed (I think that may have been a reference to the Peruvian leftist army/terror organization called Shining Path). I sort of stumbled onto RATM a little earlier than most of their fans. Somehow I knew that their performance at a small club in Boulder around late 1992 or early 1993 would inspire moshing, so I showed up. I don’t remember thinking about it much but I guess I liked the music enough and the general vibe and bought their album shortly after the show. At some point at least a couple months later they came to Denver with House of Pain and it was great listening and moshing KNOWING that they were promoting dissent in this country. At that concert I learned about Leonard Peltier, and generally drifted towards the Left. (Right before House of Pain came on stage they played the music sans vocals of a song I mention below called “Just Look Around” by Sick of it All). Yes, RATM was alternately politically vague and/or leaning towards the hard-left. But they contributed to me becoming a dissident of some sort and it’s slightly possible that wouldn’t have happened if not for them. And musically they were pretty cool.

***********

The Last 16 Years

This next section will be pretty brief. It’s about what music I have been listening to in the last 16 years.

Between about 1998 and about 2009 I only listened something like 4 hours a day to music. In 2008, for I think the first or almost first time I got on YouTube. Since then I have listened to almost all of the Megadeth and Metallica that I missed, plus the older stuff. I started listening to practically all Slayer and I started listening to a LOT of death metal. The following bands are the death metal bands I listen to: Carcass, Napalm Death (I love their music and I think that if I paid attention to their lyrics I’d agree with a lot of them), Deicide (MUSICALLY I LOVE Deicide, but I assume I would be offended by their lyrics if I read them), Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, and Morbid Angel.

I got caught up on Body Count albums that I missed after Born Dead and also listened to the first two albums. Although I don’t listen to them much I listen some to stuff I missed earlier from Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, and Testament as well as what I listened to earlier. Although I’ve barely looked at the lyrics I some times listen to stuff I missed by Sacred Reich, and I am even more sure than before that they’re progressive politically.

Yes, my very favorite genre is thrash metal (and/or speed metal- at the risk of sounding stupid, I am not sure what differences there are, if any, between speed and thrash).

I listen to the following Suicidal Tendencies albums, both now and in High School: Their first (self-titled) album, How Will I Laugh Tomorrow When I Can’t Even Smile Today, Controlled By Hatred/Feel Like Shit… DeJaVu, Lights! Camera! Revolution! and The Art of Rebellion. I haven’t listened to any ST that I didn’t listen to in High School. On a related note, I would say the same about DRI albums Definition, Crossover, and Thrashzone.

Today and in high school I listen(ed) to three Ice-T albums: The Iceberg, Original Gangster, and Home Invasion.

Until recently I took a 10-15 year break from listening to more than three songs by Public Enemy.

In the last 5 or so years I listened a little bit to Run DMC (albums Tougher Than Leather, Raising Hell, and probably King of Rock) and the Beastie Boys’ License to Ill and Check Your Head. I listen A LOT to the House of Pain song “Jump Around,” but it has been so long since I listened to the entire album.

I have a huge number of YouTube mix-tape playlists. A large chunk of it is miscellaneous 1990s stuff (some mainstream, some not), and another large chunk is some stuff where the theme of the fan-made video was anti-racist skinheads.

I found a massive playlist of mainstream 1980s pop hits and placed the ones I liked (about 58 of them) in my own playlist. To some extent (not a large one) I was exposed to many of those songs as a little kid (I was born in 1975) when watching a 1980s movie or when I occasionally was listening to the radio. I listen to that playlist about once a week. And one of the songs on it I have kind of fallen in love with- the music, the images in the video, but I have not examined the lyrics. It’s Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler.

I also fell in love with a great song by the Dropkick Murphys called “Out of our Heads.” In the last year I have probably listened to it an average of once a day and I listened to their first three albums once as well.

Since the early 1990s I have been a fan of two Tom Petty albums- Full Moon Fever and Into the Great Wide Open.

I was at least kind of exposed to ska starting when I got into Fishbone in High School and I’ve been increasingly curious about it in the last 23 years. Although they might be more accurately called “Ska PUNK,” I do enjoy listening to The Mighty Mighty BossTones for about half an hour a day on average in the last 5 years.

I listen to a small amount of Irish Republican music. I bought an entire album by Black 47 but for some reason, even though I get the impression they’re progressive, all I listen(ed) to were/are the two republican songs (one of which I believe is a Celtic rap song).

In the last several months I’ve started listening to about seven Beach Boys songs, I have fallen in love with the song “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and I like “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” by The Robins.

I have studied (i.e. read articles on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s web-site) skinheads in general and totally opposed Nazi skinheads specifically, and I listen to a fair amount of “Anti-Fascist Oi!” Oi! In general, both fascist and anti-fascist, might bear some resemblance to punk and might be defined by the lyrics (about violence, the working-class, and being a skinhead). The main such band I listen to is The Oppressed.

I listen to a small number of songs by the progressive (largely folk and/or punk) singer-songwriter David Rovics.

In the last 4-5 years I have spent a fair amount of time listening to YouTube playlists of music from the Vietnam era. For some reason I have used that word to find good mix tape playlists of classic rock, including classic rock that I vaguely remember from movies about Vietnam. (I believe that what we did there was wrong and I have evidence from more than just left-wing sources)

Alternative
Rage Against the Machine (the first two albums) Soundgarden (Badmotorfinger and Louder Than Love, and a little bit of some others that I didn’t listen to in High School), Nirvana (all 3 studio albums), Alice in Chains (Dirt and Facelift), Fishbone (Truth and Soul, The Reality of my Surroundings, and Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe), L7 (Smell the Magic, Bricks are Heavy), Faith No More (The Real Thing and Angel Dust from High School, and We Care a Lot in the last several years), Ministry (The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste and ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ), and Biohazard (I didn’t listen to  Biohazard until 1993) (Urban Discipline, State of the World Address, and Mata Leao)

I THINK that covers about 99% of the songs and albums that I should mention here.

**************

The Music of my Enemy

Since late 2008 I have spent probably an hour a day on average listening to Nazi Skinhead music. For multiple reasons, some a little vague, I enjoy listening to the music of my enemy. I stumbled onto it shortly after I first got on YouTube in 2008 and I recognized the name Skrewdriver that I had learned about in 10th grade when researching the racist right for a paper I was writing (primarily about the racist right in this country, but I’m not surprised some of the sources I read mentioned the BRITISH Skrewdriver). Anyway, I liked most of the music (not the lyrics) and just really enjoyed listening to the music of my enemy (yes, I also listen to a small amount of anti-Catholic N. Ireland loyalist music). I also learned a handful of things by studying the lyrics and the imagery in fan-made videos. Crucially, I quickly started to alter the lyrics into anti-fascist poems- in many cases, so that my poems were saying the exact opposite of what the original was saying (when there was a change in topic, there was always at least some conflict between my poems and what the authors of the original lyrics believe (and some times a LOT of conflict- a lot of the N. Ireland poems were based on lyrics by people who supported the British and Unionist causes)). The first poetry post is here.

I wish I could explain in better detail why I enjoy listening to the music of my enemy.

***************

The High School years- the PMRC and “musical intolerance.”

In 11th grade one of my best friends (James, of Portland, OR) and I did a “‘zine” (a very small and unprofessionally written/edited magaZINE). It was kind of political, kind of creative (well, James’ stuff was creative, my stuff less-so but the ‘zine in general (called The Conformist Monthly) seemed pretty popular with our friends and probably about 10% of the BHS students). One thing I did that I am a little embarrassed about is an essay about what I called “musical intolerance.” Although actually typing that and making copies of an issue that contained it is something I probably shouldn’t have done, I DO believe that most of my peers in High School were close-minded about different kinds of music, and at the time I believed that I was better because I listened to metal, rap, alternative, and punk.

Something I wrote for The Conformist Monthly that I AM proud of was an essay about the Parents Music Resource Center. The PMRC was created in the mid-80s, primarily by Al Gore’s wife Tipper Gore, and Susan Baker, the wife of senior GOP leader James Baker. It was largely supported by the religious right and practically no one to the left of Bill Clinton supported it. It’s been decades since I studied it, but the main thing it did was successfully push for an industry agreement to place “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” stickers on certain albums.

I really am not insensitive to the desires of many parents (probably around 95% of them) to keep young children from listening to songs about sex and drugs and songs which use swear words (I believe there is a spectrum between two situations- one involving children under 13, and one involving young adults who are around 15, and at the latter end of the spectrum I’ll be honest I am not sure if I care about parents wanting to keep their teenage kids away from that kind of content). And these stickers were a problem. In the past, MANY music stores wouldn’t sell those albums. In the past MANY of the artists negatively affected were people of color, and in general, many of the albums targeted contained songs with political messages that were liberal or progressive. This country might have been a better place in the 1990s if those songs had been heard by more people.

***************

“There Goes The Neighborhood”

(The title of a Body Count song about their presence in the punk and metal genres)

As I near a conclusion, the climax to this is something I want to talk about that is very special to me. That is the intersection of rock (or at least the heavier and/or faster variants of it) and rap (I’ll be honest, I think I’ve always failed to understand that many fans of rap and/or hip-hop define one as corporate and the other as something closer to the street, and I’m just going to use the term “rap”).

I don’t listen to a lot of music made between 1998 and today, so I’m going to focus almost exclusively on stuff from the 1980s and 1990s. Here is I think a complete survey of that topic up until some point in the mid- or late 90s.

1. In 1986 Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaborated on a new version of the latter’s song “Walk This Way.”
2. In 1989 industrial metal band Ministry did a song with a rapper- the song is called “Test” and is a great combination of rap and industrial.
3. In 1991 Anthrax and Public Enemy collaborated on a new version of the latter’s song “Bring Tha Noise.”
4. Shortly after that, Public Enemy and Anthrax went on a national tour together.
5. Ice-T and his musician friends created Body Count in 1990.
6. In 1991, Rage Against The Machine was formed with music that was sort of heavy and/or sort of fast and vocals that would often be labeled “rap.”
7. I am having some difficulty nailing down the details, but in the early and mid-1990s Biohazard, who were more or less a hard-core punk band, did at least two songs with a rapper (Onyx) and, crucially, did music videos for the two songs that involved Onyx that I can remember (one reason this is VERY significant is that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true that Biohazard had, years earlier, toyed with white supremacy as a marketing tactic in NY City’s competitive music scene, and may have done these 4-5 collaborations (including TWO videos) to make up for that).
8. In 1993 the soundtrack for a movie called “Judgement Night” was entirely devoted to collaborations between rockers and rappers.

I could and probably WILL do a lot of research on this topic in the next year or two and write something very substantial, but I have always had very positive political thoughts about this series of collaborations because I THINK they had some potential to positively affect race relations in this country. IF they HAD that potential it wasn’t something permanent, as 35 years later we are struggling to prevent a white supremacist from occupying the White House. I am not sure what is the status today of that potential- I’m not sure I should be making a big deal about the need for such intersections today, especially because there might be plenty in recent years and/or they are having no impact on American race relations.

When thinking about this topic, I wish I had a better grasp of sociology and psychology.

************

Some miscellaneous thoughts

1. For about 10-15 years until recently, I took a break from being a fan of Public Enemy, although in hind-sight that didn’t involve changing the “Favorite Music” section of my blogger/blogspot profile page. I have listened over the years to about four albums by PE, all of which were either in the 1980s or the very earliest 90s. On one of them, there’s a song that includes two lines I have always found offensive, but which really got me pissed off about 10-15 years ago. One line is applauding homophobic VIOLENCE and another one implies it’s okay for a man to beat his partner if he takes her on vacation around the world. I am still very offended by those lines, but decided to listen to those albums from High School again).
2. In the early 1990s there was one song by the hard-core punk band Sick of it All that I really liked and which I have always really liked. For some reason I have practically never listened to any other SOIA songs. The one I listen to is called “Just Look Around.” The thing is, in 2001 I was at a party for progressives and one person asked the room what is the most progressive hardcore punk band? Part of me DID know that the correct answer was Fugazi, but because of that one SOIA song I said it was SOIA. The guy who asked the initial question said something about a pirate flag and slapping women. For some bizarre reason I didn’t respond. But if you look at the lyrics you’ll see that something like 2/3 of the lyrics are completely acceptable to progressives. The other third is some slightly questionable lines (i.e. mentioning anti-Semitism among blacks when that might not be helpful (for all I know it IS helpful)) and the very worst of the lyrics in that 1/3 is a reference to the “workingman” when “worker” or “working person” would be a lot better (this might be what the guy at the party was talking about when he suggested I wanted to slap women).

In the official music video, when the lyrics refer to “diseases and modern plagues of our times” they flash the “Silence=Death” symbol of the movement calling for a better national response to the AIDS crisis. I guess it could be a negative statement, but I have always assumed it was a positive statement about that symbol, which would probably also mean that SOIA are anti-homophobic. Lastly, another song on that album seems to be about attacking Reagan over Iran/Contra.
3. I organized my first fund-raising show (it was a VERY small venue) in 1995 to support the Left Hand Bookstore (in Boulder) and the college-years ‘zine that James and I did (it was called Subliminal Prison). The opening band was called Sonnus and I don’t have much to say about them. The other two bands were A) a High School band from the Denver area who were probably influenced by punk, and an amazing band called D-Town Brown. The latter’s music I have difficulty describing. I believe it was possibly influenced by rock (at least one of the 2-3 times I saw them playing a regular show there was moshing and 1-2 band members had earlier been involved with a band that was either thrash/speed-metal or death metal)) but I think it was more influenced by some other stuff (mariachi perhaps? (There were 4-5 members in the band and all but one were Chicano (the last member was black)). Although James and I did a publicity campaign in waves, very few people showed up. Not sure why.
4. The second fundraiser I did Involved Sonnus, D-Town Brown and a punk band called Dead Silence. It was for the Colorado Coalition for Single-Payer (the Canadian health-care system) and I gave Denver CCSP a LOT of flyers to put up in Denver (the venue was in Denver, where I didn’t live) and I don’t think any of those flyers were put up anywhere. I’m not saying I was totally blameless, but I do think that most of the blame was CCSP’s. The only reason that a significant amount of money was raised is that the owner of the venue (The Mercury Cafe) took less money than she usually did in that situation.
5. In high school and college, when I went to a show/concert I would dress in the spirit of taking nonconformity as far as I could. If I was at a Dead Milkmen show, I’d wear a Megadeth shirt, if I was at a Primus concert I would wear a Public Enemy shirt, etc.
6. You might like a post I did about whether or not Slayer is racist.

UPDATE 12/25/24 I unintentionally left out a handful of bands I should have mentioned, but with one of them I feel like I really need to do this update. In 10th grade I started listening to the heavy metal band Ugly Kid Joe, and after about two decades I just recently re-discovered them. I started listening to their EP "As Ugly As They Want To Be" (their first release) and their first full length album "America's Least Wanted" in High School. They describe themselves as neither glam nor thrash and I think that's accurate. In a minute I have something more important to say, but first a little story. In the Summer of 1992 there was a tour with (from top to bottom) Ozzy, Slaughter, and Ugly Kid Joe. I have pretty much never liked Slaughter, but I have always had at least some positive thoughts about Ozzy and in the last several years probably 1% of all the music I listen to is Ozzy. The concert was at an amazing venue called Red Rocks and although it doesn't facilitate moshing (I THINK I remember that right) I'm glad I went to a concert there. But I got lost on the way there, so A) I somehow missed almost all of UKJ's set (I think they may have started early??), and B) after I heard ALL of Slaughter's set I had to leave after about 30 minutes of Ozzy because my Mom didn't know where I was I and I was afraid if I got lost again I'd get home so late she would worry. BUT I GOT TO SEE ALL OF SLAUGHTER'S SET!!!!! (The important part of mentioning UKJ is that on the first full-length album there's a fairly good anti-racist song ("Same Side"). It's not militant, it's not angry, but I think it's pretty cool despite that. As I was typing this and listening more and more to the song, I started asking myself some critical questions about the idea that it's an anti-racist song and then I remembered that the vocalist, Whitfield Crane contributed to a special re-recording of the Motorhead song "Born to Raise Hell" where he and ICE-T did some of the vocals and in the official music video they appear together)

************

Conclusion

Although there was one gap that lasted about 3 years where I listened to very little music, it was a huge part of my life in High School and college and in the last 16 years. I find listening to it very enjoyable and it contributed to the several factors that led me to embrace progressive political values, and it generally makes me feel very good. Although I don’t think I’ll be expanding my interest in music any further (I don’t think I’m going to try bluegrass for example) I am (perhaps too) proud of the fact that I have fairly wide-ranging interests in music.

Most of the time I was typing this up I was listening to a song from the very early 1990s by a band called EMF. It’s called “Unbelievable” and I think it’s sort of a dance song but could also inspire moshing. The song, and to a greater degree the video as well, is very energizing and I got so much done with the multiple writing assignments I gave myself.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews LL

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.

“Silent Night, Hateful Night” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

Overall there’s some good stuff about violent bigotry towards religious minorities, although it’s a bit muddled since they had one batch of hate crimes committed by one group (Black teens) and one batch carried out by white fascists. I have mixed feelings about this episode. I’m not saying it’s just generally bad for the show to include stuff about Black-Jewish tension in NYC, but I’m hoping they’ve only addressed it 1-2 other times on the show (out of 500+ episodes), since it should be an incredibly minor theme. In that spirit, there is one very valuable part of this episode. When the team of detectives that includes SVU learn that some of the hate crime violence was carried out by anti-Semitic Blacks, they are reluctant to act publicly on that (by involving the media in their effort to arrest someone) because they worry that it will increase tension between those two groups. They eventually go with pursuing the Black teens for the anti-semitic hate crimes (or at least some of them), but only after a little more investigation.

“Tommy Baker’s Hardest Fight” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

This is about a boxing champ coming out of the closet, coming out as a gay man.

“Video Killed the Radio Star” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

The rape survivor is in an inter-racial relationship.

“Promising Young Gentlemen” Season 23. See this for a plot summary.

One of the SVU detectives says that if the suspects were people of color, the investigation would be a lot more aggressive.

“Once Upon a Time in El Barrio” Season 23. See this for a plot summary. 

This episode includes some statements and actions reflecting the fact that NYC does not help the federal immigration authorities. It’s also about a corrupt NYPD Captain.

Possibly the most valuable part of it politically is when the head of SVU (UPDATE 11/21/22 for a couple days that erroneously said NYPD, but it's correct now) points out that the corrupt cop was saved at one point in the past by something called “qualified immunity.” It basically means that government employees can often avoid lawsuits that are about how they do their job. It’s often cited by campaigners against police brutality as part of the problem.

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.

Proud Boys and Nazi Skinheads

Some of this is at this point widely-known but one part of it isn’t. After Trump’s endorsement of the Proud Boys (which he has kind of walked back) in the first presidential debate, a lot is known about the Proud Boys. A fair amount of background is available here and here.

They’re militant white supremacists but don’t appear to be skinheads. I had gotten the impression that the skinhead population had declined in recent years but was still surprised that there were reports of Antifa fighting the Proud Boys but nothing about them fighting Nazi skinheads. When I read stuff about Trump coddling the Proud Boys I thought it would be better if he were coddling Nazi skinheads because it would be easier to attack him over that.

I recently read a CNN article which said that they wear Fred Perry shirts. The thing is, skinheads, including Nazi skinheads, wear Fred Perry shirts. There seemed to be some connection between the Proud Boys and Nazi skinheads. When I brought this to the attention of several political friends, one of them (Dave Anderson, a columnist for the Boulder Weekly) responded and provided links to the following two stories:

1) Proud Boys and skinheads: MLS faces an incursion from the far-right.

2) Far-right skinheads join Proud Boys in assaulting protesters in New York City following Gavin McInnes event.

They indicate that there ARE connections between the Proud Boys and Nazi skinheads, something that I don’t think has been mentioned by the mainstream media in America.

Another aspect of this is, when did the GOP start believing that political differences should be settled with violence? In my experience they have believed that for a long time.

In 2005 when the Ward Churchill scandal broke, I went a protest at CU-Boulder in support of him. I was wearing an anti-Columbus shirt and a College Republican said that he loves Columbus. I explained about the genocide on Hispanola (when Columbus was governor of the island that is now made up of Haiti and the Dominican Republic at least 99% of the indigenous population was killed) and he said that when he moved into a new apartment he killed off the indigenous population of spiders. Instead of continuing to be patient and explaining how offensive that was, I called him a motherfucker. He asked if I wanted to fight and speculated that I don't believe fighting solves anything- he said it does solve things. I stood next to him but looked straight ahead silently until he was silent for 1-3 minutes and then I left.

Also, in 2003 right before a big anti-war rally I organized, I bumped into three college republicans who were going around covering up the flyers for the rally with their pro-war flyers. When I confronted them about that, one of them, who I think was Iraqi, said he wanted to beat me up. After a short confrontation we parted company.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews G

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.

(Now that I’m getting into some of the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Hate” Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “The team find themselves threading on a thin line when a man (Reynaldo Rosales) murders two Arabs (plus a third while in custody) and claims his genes and biology enforced the hatred and violence in him. However, Detectives Benson and Stabler discover a different reason for his Islamophobia and are determined to discredit his claims of genetic predisposition to violence.”

 

Hate Crime Laws

I’m not going to say anything about the psychology involved, but this is a pretty good episode about hatred. One thing it touches on is the racist theory that the “others” are getting all the economic opportunities. It does suggest a theory that hate crimes laws could be used on, for example, black people that kill KKK members. I think that’s ridiculous, it’s completely different than the other way around. I think hate crime laws are a good idea. Hateful violence is more terroristic towards the community targeted than violence in general and is certainly closer to being genocidal, which is a special crime and deserves special laws (if we’re talking about murder or attempted murder, you could say it’s inching towards being genocidal).

“Ritual” Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “A young boy is killed in a ritualistic manner which Fin identifies as that of Santeria and the detectives question the leader (Barry Shabaka Henley) of a local chapter. Their attention turns elsewhere, however when they learn that the victim was one of many slave children smuggled from Nigeria.”

 

Modern-day Slavery

This has a little to say about modern-day slavery. As far as I can tell it happens outside the world of SEX slavery trafficking, which is the kind of trafficking that the detectives found when they found the killer. It’s very similar to the kind we’ve studied in history books- slaves are separated from their family members and it seems that there is no schooling of slaves who are children, possibly in part to keep them from rebelling. it also appears in this episode to be racial, although there’s at least one other SVU episode about slavery and that one focuses on a different kind, where a white woman is brought to America by a single individual and not a network of criminals. At the end the highest member of the network they get their hands on is a Nigerian and I think it would have been better and perhaps even more realistic if it had been a white American.

“Lowdown” Season 5. Wikipedia summary is: “A prosecutor (Dean Strange) is found dead with HIV in his system. Suspicion points to another attorney (Michael Beach) who was secretly in a sexual relationship with his co-worker. Casey Novak puts her job on the line and involves the suspect's wife (Bethany Butler) to get a confession.”

This episode is about homophobia, especially in the Black community.

Don't Vote GOP: Three New Poems

(this was originally published 4/27/20 but for some reason it stopped showing up, so I am republishing it now)

Here are three more poems. They are all based on offensive lyrics, I explain that here.

For all the poems, you can click on the "lyrics" label the bottom.

1. Stop the Klan. What you think it's about.
2. Irish Citizen Army. The Irish workers' militia of 1913-1916.
3. Don't Vote SDLP. What's wrong with Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party.

“Stop the Ku Klux Klan” based on “Stand Up and Be Counted” by either The Klansmen in the 1980s or the racist assholes who originally wrote it several decades ago. Original lyrics are here.

1. In 2017 or 2018 or 2019 there were reports that caravans of refugees from Central America were traveling through Mexico on their way to the US. Trump used this, probably successfully, to whip up anti-immigrant hatred. These were definitely refugees and they were traveling in caravan for security.
2. I believe that there is a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and I believe that, politically, the US is closer to the democratic end of the spectrum. But my thoughts about how we can make it more democratic politically are here. I worry greatly that Trump is a fascist, literally, and my thoughts about that are in the middle of a post here.

3. Trump is a racist. See this and this. There’s also his comments on the murder of an anti-fascist by a fascist in Charlottesville in 2017. And there’s this, that I published elsewhere on my blog:

[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.

4. The Torah is the main Jewish text.
5. My thoughts about religion are found here, although a lot of those posts are only partly relevant.
6. **58% of this version is me, 42% is the original.

7. I give this poem 3 stars out of 5.

8. UPDATE 6/1/22 I believe there's a spectrum between democratic and undemocratic and I USED to believe we were in the middle but closer to the democratic end of the spectrum. With what the GOP has done in the last couple years I think we might be closer to the UNdemocratic end of the spectrum.

Chorus:
Stand up and be counted, welcome the caravans
Stand up and be counted, and stop the Ku Klux Klan

We are anti-racists and love our democracy true
We always can be counted on, when there's a job to do
We educate our communities day and night, to keep them Klan-free
And proudly display anti-racist bumper-stickers, promoting diversity

Chorus

The Bible’s pretty cool, but so are the Torah and Koran
We believe in gay rights, so fuck the Ku Klux Klan
In search of peace and liberty, with the constitution in hand
We will defeat Trump to save our democratic land

***********

“Irish Citizen Army” based on “Blackshirt and Roses” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is written from the perspective of an Irish Republican in the 1970s, or 1980s or 1990s in Ireland. The Irish Citizen Army was started in 1913 during a general lock-out (where, in response to labor activism, an employer throws their employees out of the factory, etc.) in Dublin. It was formed to protect workers from attacks by the police.  In 1916, when the Easter Rising (an attempt at getting the British out) took place, while most of the moderate Irish Volunteers failed to participate the (admittedly much smaller) ICA participated fully and James Connolly, the leader of the ICA, was the de facto leader of the uprising. Connolly was a Marxist theoretician and union organizer and considered Ireland’s greatest socialist- there is a train station in Dublin named after him.
2. The Starry Plough is basically the flag of republican socialism, although some non-republican socialists use it. At one point about 10-15 years ago, and maybe still today, the youth wing of the Irish Labour Party used it.
3. Connolly was one of the few European socialists to oppose the nationalism of World War I. (The original refers to WWII)
4. Razor’s Edge were/are British and support(ed) the British and Unionist causes in N. Ireland.
5. **54% of this version is me, 46% is the original.

6. I give this poem 4 stars out of 5.

They created the Starry Plough, an emblem of the Irish working-class
And they spread Marxism, patriotic workers struggling en masse.

(Chorus)
Fuck the British Empire
Ireland still recalls
The Irish Citizen Army
Heroes one and all.

Opposed the nationalist war in Europe, they knew the real enemy.
With the European Working-Class, they were in solidarity.

The flame they lit was not extinguished, still burning in our hearts today.
We're carrying on the fight because the ICA led the way.

(Chorus)

Fuck the British Empire
Ireland still recalls
Connolly and the ICA
Heroes one and all.

************

“Don’t Vote SDLP” based on “Freedom” by Razor’s Edge. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is NOT written from my perspective, but the perspective of  the type of person I probably could have collaborated with politically if I had lived in the Nationalist community of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, 80s or 90s (I’m American). It’s from the perspective of someone who lives in a working-class Nationalist area in the 1990s and is sort of pacifist and a left-wing social-dem and doesn’t like Sinn Fein very much because of the violence and doesn’t like the Social Democratic and Labour Party for the reasons I give here (there are some more thoughts about the SDLP here, while discussing the episode “Rising Star”).
The thing is, the British Labour Party hasn’t ever organized in the North and recently had to be taken to court to allow Northerners to join, but they refuse to let the Party run candidates there (which is more of a good thing than a bad thing). There are multiple tendencies in the BLP when it comes to N. Ireland and I think the dominant one is to support their official sister organization the SDLP. I don’t think they ever called for the IRISH Labour Party to organize there and it wasn’t until tension developed between the ILP and the SDLP in 2001, 2002, and 2003 that the ILP started a transitional process of organizing there that was supposed to result in them running candidates as rivals to those of their official sister party. I did an essay/article/post PARTLY about that here.
So, this person has little or no options for voting (even if the BLP had been running candidates there, this person wouldn’t have voted for them (unless they were comparable to Tony Benn or Ken Livingstone)).
2. The red, white, and blue are the colors of the British flag.
3. The SDLP encouraged their supporters to do little more than vote. They were more or less against marching and probably against rallies as well. It’s true that non-SDLP supporters could have become involved and the inevitable friction with the security forces may have been difficult for stewards to control and a riot could have developed. But they still should have tried it, maybe with double the usual number of stewards. If there weren’t enough good stewards in the SDLP, maybe, in the 1970s and 1980s, they could have acquired the help of members and former members of the Official IRA, whose movement the Provisionals (SF and the IRA) had split from, and which was committed to a relatively non-violent path (I just think it would have been great if they HAD organized marches and I wanted to explain that they could have found a way to do it with a low risk of them turning into riots). The failure to offer mass struggle as an alternative to armed struggle weakened the overall effort to advance the interests of the Nationalist population.
4. The SDLP was socially conservative and although they probably did a better job of attracting Protestants than the Provos did, they were also closer to the Catholic Church.
5. Critics sometimes call the SDLP the Stoop Down Low Party.
6. In the 70s and 80s and probably the 90s as swell, I can imagine SDLP canvassers at election time being uncomfortable when whoever they’re talking with informed them that they’re gay. That homophobia is largely gone now, and I don’t think it was all that hateful in the first place, but they were homophobes.
7. They’re in the Socialist International and today maybe the SI almost deserves them, but with their social conservatism and moderate, almost capitalist, economics, they certainly didn’t belong there in the 1990s and 2000s and probably not in the 70s and 80s.
8. My thoughts about what the Provos did are here.
9. Razor’s Edge were/are British and support(ed) the British and Unionist causes in N. Ireland.
10. **66% of this version is me, 34% is the original.

11. This poem gets 5 stars out of 5.

Sell-out politicians always seem confused
They can’t figure out how to eject the red, white and blue
the only time you matter is on Election Day
so they can grab your vote and then tell you to go pray

(Chorus)
Options, no options
For pacifist social-dems in this community
Options, no options
The Stoops offer no mass struggle opportunities

A community defended by heroes but who then go too far
There are too many problems with their repertoire
But the only time you matter to the Stoops is on Election Day
They really want your vote unless you’re lesbian, bi or gay

Chorus

With their moderate instincts, the community gets left behind
if you think they’re helping us, you must be f*cking blind
the only time you matter is on Election Day
They’re in the International, but they’re pro-life and anti-gay

Motherfuckin' Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola (My Thoughts on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit)

("Fin" is played by Ice-T)

I love TV shows, although only about 40% of what I watch is from the last two decades. My top six favorite shows are Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, The Big Bang Theory, Supergirl, Roseanne, and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. There’s a more complete list of shows I like under the “Movies” part of my profile. This is going to be about Law and Order: SVU.

I’m going to assume you are at least sort of familiar with the show, and if you’re not, you can read that wikipedia page.

I have seen every episode (with one exception where I couldn’t fix the disc and Netflix sent another disc that also had the same problem) up to season 18 and in about a month I’ll be done with season 19. I have 6 seasons on DVD in my collection, most of which I got at thrift stores.

Besides the obvious (it’s opposition to sex crimes and child abuse/kidnapping and sexism and misogyny) which is pretty awesome, there’s a lot of other things I like about L&W: SVU.

1) It’s incredibly anti-racist. Not 100% because it is, of course, a little soft on cops. But in general there's a lot of anti-racism. On average, in any episode, something like 25% of the main and recurring characters have been people of color. Of course the population of NYC is much more diverse, but we are talking about the NYPD and I think that 25% is probably a reflection of how diverse the NYPD is, or an appropriately mild exaggeration of how diverse it is. My memory of specific examples is a little fuzzy, but there are a lot of times when the anti-racism gets a little sharper than that.

There is one episode involving a hispanic SVU detective who might qualify as a person of color in a bad fatal  shooting that I think the show could have dealt with more critically- I remember thinking that it was too pro-cop. But there is another episode on almost the same topic that is, overall, much better. Some white non-SVU cops, while helping SVU, fire about 15-30 bullets into an unarmed black man. The (main character) Assistant DA who works with SVU insists on prosecuting the cops and I think the last we hear about that is that he gets an indictment from the Grand Jury. The head of SVU disagrees with him but they don’t have a heated argument and there is no falling out and for about 2 seasons after that episode that character is still the Assistant DA for SVU, and I think it would be totally unrealistic if all the SVU members agreed with the Assistant DA. Unfortunately it DOES end on a fairly racist note. There’s a notice about the fatal shooting of a cop, which is kind of a lame ending for what otherwise is a very good episode. I mean, it’s even worse than saying “All Lives Matter” in response to the statement “Black Lives Matter.” It’s responding with “Police Lives Matter.”

As I mention below, Ice-T has played a main character since season 2 and there are now 21 seasons.

I think that the % of defendants that are people of color is probably a lot less than the % of NYC’s population that is people of color, and I’m almost certain it’s not more.

2) It’s incredibly anti-homophobic. Other than the idea that the Assistant DA in seasons 15-19 is gay (there is a lot of speculation but it’s apparently all wrong and he's actually straight (but played by a bi-sexual man)), I can only think of two examples. First, when an off-duty cop witnesses a sex-related crime (while on a date with another man) and notifies SVU, SVU offers to keep his name out of it to avoid outing him to the “brass” of NYPD. Also, the son of the character played by Ice-T is gay.

3) It’s incredibly anti-transphobic. In one episode, for example, a woman transitioning from being male kills her boyfriend when he sees a penis. I can’t remember exactly what SVU does, but I don’t think they prosecute her or they go easy on her or something. I DO remember the Assistant DA saying that in that situation, when a man learns his girlfriend has a penis or used to be male, he simply kills her. In general it highlights violence against transgender people.

4) It’s pro-immigrant. For example, there’s a two-parter about a witness who is gay and an undocumented immigrant from Syria who will be killed if he is deported. SVU tries to keep ICE from deporting him but fail. It’s as damning of our immigration policy as an innocent person being executed would be damning of the death penalty.

5) There are miscellaneous other liberal-progressive elements like OCCASIONAL negative portrayals of the military or corporations.

6) Since the second season there’s been a character, detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola, played by Ice-T. In the near future I’ll do a post about why I greatly admire Ice-T, but his long-time presence on this show is one reason I like him and his presence on the show is one reason I like the show so much.

7) They infrequently go after other cops.


One thing that I would largely put in the very small negative column is the five or so cross-over episodes with the TV show “Chicago PD.” The main thing is that the senior officer on that show is comfortable with things that at least come close to torture. But it’s not as damning of the creative people behind the show L&O: SVU as you might think because in one of those episodes, the head of SVU criticizes that officer for that, although she focuses exclusively on the impact it’ll have on getting a conviction. It’d be better if she was more principled about it, but A) I think she figured the pragmatic appeal would work better, and B) if I’m wrong about that and she’s not principled about it, that’s disappointing but realistic, and C) it’s better than nothing.

I’ll soon start going through these episodes for the second time and doing “reviews” on this blog of the ones that have something that politically goes beyond the liberal feminism and basic anti-racist stuff that’s dominates the political dimension of the show (when I say “dominates” I mean there are minority tendencies, some progressive and some moderate). (You could say that I'll focus exclusively on highlighting the issues raised that are NOT sex crimes, because of course they have material about that, but they also have stuff about, for example, homophobia or marijuana or homelessness or abortion)

(Mariska Hargitay, who has been on the show since day one (and whose character has been head of SVU for about 6 seasons) and has been a director and producer on L&O: SVU since 2014, founded the Joyful Heart Foundation)

Law and Order

I also watch the original, homicide-focused show. It is overall less liberal-progressive (I think the cops and Assistant DAs are a little more flexible ethically than their SVU counterparts are as far as how they figure out who to arrest and/or get convictions). In an average episode I think that about 25% of the main or recurring characters are women, which isn’t too good considering that of the six main characters, only three are cops. But in an average episode, about 25% are people of color, which isn’t too bad considering that it should be either a reflection of reality or a little more diverse than reality, in my opinion (it’s about the NYPD and the Manhattan DA’s office) (I think that the % of defendants that are people of color is probably a lot less than the % of NYC’s population that is people of color, and I’m almost certain it’s not more). There are some progressive elements here and there, some anti-racism, some anti-homophobia, some stuff where a corporation is the bad guy, etc. (they infrequently go after other cops). At some point in about 2-10 years at the rate I’m going I’ll do the same sort of reviews I mentioned above.


Corporations on both shows

From what I remember, the last thing these shows do is criticize capitalism or express more than infrequent support for labor, but the episodes about corporate people are better than the old TV show Cops which focused exclusively on poor people. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more likely to feature rich criminals than other cop shows, although I wouldn’t know for sure because outside the L&O franchise, I’ve probably watched a total of 30 episodes of cop shows since I became an adult and a socialist (at 18) (I’m 44).

(I should offer my very brief, non-philosophical definition of “liberal.” It’s someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren. More details are here) 

 

(UPDATE 3/18/21 About 1-3 times each episode the detectives and/or prosecutors engage in behavior aimed at determining guilt and/or getting a conviction that I think is somewhere between questionable and bad (but that's only about 10-20% of what they do to charge a suspect and convict them in court; the rest of what they do I am fine with). There’s something else, maybe once a season on average, where they do something else bad (i.e. in one Law and Order episode of the last season to involve the character Assistant DA Ben Stone, Stone says something uncharacteristically racist). Going back to the first sentence, I have mixed feelings about a lot of the tactics I’m referring to and I am almost certain that explaining why I sort of support them or why I almost totally oppose them, etc. would just clutter those posts and people would be less likely to read them. If you’re thinking that I don’t expose this aspect of the two shows because of some kind of white/middle-class/cis-gendered-male/straight/Christian privilege, you’re wrong and I have a bit of evidence. In one episode of SVU when a suspect is brought to the station for questioning he requests not a lawyer, but that his therapist be present and SVU says no. In recent decades I have gotten tons of therapy and have occasionally asked my therapist for a little more help than they usually give and if I were being questioned at a police station I would probably want my therapist present, although I doubt I would actually request it. With these two shows I have a policy I almost never break- I don’t criticize them)

 

ALL THE POSTS WITH THESE REVIEWS CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING ON THE "L&OSVU" LABEL AND THE "LAW & ORDER" LABEL

Fuck George W. Bush: Three New Poems

Below are three more poems. For an explanation of how I write my poems, see this. The last one is based on lyrics I agree with, the others are NOT.

For the rest of the lyrics, click on the "lyrics" label at the bottom.

1. Smash the Klan II. What you think it's about.
2. From Out of the Ashes. The birth of the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland.
3. Surf the Euphrates. About the Iraq War.

“Smash the Klan II” based on “Aryan Pride” by Final War. Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about slightly militant opposition to the KKK among white people. It’s sort of inspired by the time that I joined around 100-300 people in 1995 protesting a “rally” by the Klan in Boulder. At the end we surrounded the building they had rallied in front of and trapped them there for about an hour or two until the police tried something sneaky that involved getting them out in an ambulance.
2. Instead of “crossing the border,” many Mexican-Americans are partly or totally descended from Mexicans who lived in what was Mexico until it became CA, NV and the South-West of the US (and TX).
3. The 54th Mass was the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the segregated Black unit that fought in the American Civil War and whose story is told, accurately or otherwise, in the movie “Glory.”
4. Racists have a greatly exaggerated sense of how much anti-white bigotry there is. In a paragraph more than half-way from the top of this post that starts with “Even without that…” I explain why I think anti-white bigotry is a very small problem.
5. I exaggerate how easy it is for white people to get a job, although if we focus on times when it’s a white person and a person of color, it IS pretty easy for the white person to get the job. Affirmative Action helps a lot, but “Hispanics” and Blacks still have an unemployment rate fairly close to twice that of white people (it’s a bit higher for Blacks than for “Hispanics” and the gap fluctuates a bit, but it’s around twice; see this). Racists think that white people are discriminated against and have more trouble getting a job. Of course, that’s probably because they think that the natural order of things should involve full employment in good jobs for white people and see anything else as unfair.
6. My thoughts about the white identity and European-American ethnic identities are in the first 2/5 of this (you should also read the conclusion, which is the second to last section) (I realize that BEFORE they read that many anti-Klan white people might not like what I say, but I think that after they read it, they will).
7. The St. Patrick Battalion was a group of American soldiers, most Irish and almost all Catholics, who deserted the US Army during the US-Mexico War and joined the Mexican Army. I’m sure it varied from individual to individual, but to one degree or another they thought that what the US was doing to Mexico was unjust (they were also alienated by anti-Catholic bigotry in the US Army (and of course Catholics *used to be* on the Klan’s list as well)).
8. After I started altering stuff, I switched the first verse with the chorus. Also, there were only three verses in the original, and the fourth verse is totally mine.
9. **70% of this poem is me, 30% is the original. I don’t know if the 3rd line of the second verse in the original lyrics I found on-line is what was actually written by the original lyricist.

Many people hate the Klan for spreading prejudice
Gay people, Muslims, and Jews are on their fucking list
Black people aren’t criminals like you see on your TV
The border crossed Mexican-Americans, its a fact of history

Chorus
Brothers and sisters, join together as one.
We’ve got the fucking KKK totally on the run
in memory of the brave 54th Mass soldiers who died
Fuck the Nazis, and fuck the Klan and fuck Aryan Pride!

Racists cry “Black man, yeah Black man full of hate”
Widespread anti-White bigotry is the bullshit story they narrate
Its fucked up how white people can secure any job by race
It’s funny how the Klan deny that that’s totally the case.

Chorus

Our solidarity won't be broken, and we won’t hide from an affray
We will keep on working until we asphyxiate the KKK
Our message will be spread. Our voices loud and clear
Inform the youth, of the truth, the Klan’s greatest fear.

Chorus

We’ll never be proud of being white, it’s an artificial identity
It’s totally steeped in privilege, hate and inequality
We’re proud of being Irish, Scottish and German, Greek, Polish and Italian
We’re in solidarity with the oppressed, just like the St. Pat’s Battalion

*********

“From Out of the Ashes” based on “After the Fire” by Skrewdriver. original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the aftermath of the anti-Catholic pogrom in the Lower Falls Nationalist/Republican area of Belfast in Aug. of 1969 (it wasn’t INCREDIBLY Republican BEFORE that month, but not long afterwards it certainly was). In July, August, and September, and mostly during a period of 2-3 days, in Belfast, 1,505 Catholic families fled their homes (probably something like 18% of Belfast’s Catholic population, probably something like 1.8% of the North’s Catholic population). In one night alone 650 families were burnt, or at least forced, out of their homes.
2. The DUBLIN-BASED LEADERSHIP OF THE IRA had demilitarized it in the years before Aug. 1969 and only a few IRA weapons were available to help defend the area, a defense that was largely unsuccessful.
3. The Civil Rights Movement that started in mid- and late 1968 was overwhelmingly committed to non-violence and had hoped to democratize N. Ireland.
4. Provos refers to what we call in recent decades Sinn Fein and the IRA. They broke off from SF and the IRA (what became known as Official SF and Official IRA) partly because of the leadership’s decision to demilitarize the IRA.
6. Initially the British Army kind of saved the Catholics from police-led loyalist mobs and were welcomed for about 9 months, but they became increasingly like the notorious Black and Tans unit of the British Army that served in Ireland during the War of Independence 1919-1921.
7. Squaddie is a term for British soldier.
8. On the night of June 27th 1970, the Church of an isolated Catholic enclave in East Belfast was attacked by a loyalist mob. The British Army wouldn’t defend the area but members of the PIRA did. It was their first major action.
9. I like calling The Troubles the Second Anglo-Irish War, the first being the War of Independence.
10. There is or was a T-Shirt designed by either SF or their old American support organization Irish Northern Aid, that said: “From Out Of The Ashes Arose The Provisionals.” It was referring to the ashes of the mythical bird, the Phoenix (in this case representing the IRA they split off from (actually, I used to think it was the ashes of the burned out homes, and I kind of prefer that interpretation because there were some good people in the Officials in the early 1970s and I don't believe in speaking positively about the feud between the two groups)).
11. Skrewdriver were British and supported the British and Unionist causes in Northern Ireland.
12. Based on a fairly scientific look, only .3% of the PIRA’s operations resulted in civilian death.
13. **62% of this poem is me, 38% is the original.

The fires burned for hours, it was a time of terror.
Dublin had ordered the IRA disarmed but they were totally in error
Those nights there were burnt out homes, our community was battered
Non-violence had been our people’s hope, but now that hope was shattered

Chorus
After the fire, the ruins there did lay.
After the Provo victory there will come a brand new day.

The Falls stood in misery, and initially welcomed the British Army Man
But increasingly the Squaddies acted just like the old Black and Tans
Then, on the night of June 27th, it was known the Provos had come alive-
Seeds of resistance once sown, now had grown, new life that would not die.

Chorus

The new Anglo-Irish War is approaching, and with the Provos we shall be.
They rose from the ashes of August ’69 and they will fight for you and me.

*************

“Surf the Euphrates” based on “Surf Nicaragua” by Sacred Reich (despite their name, their politics are very progressive- I'm fairly familiar with all of their music and at least some of it is more or less socially liberal and it's also economically progressive and it's anti-war). Original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the Occupation of Iraq.
2. The Euphrates is a major river going through Iraq.
3. One of the MANY reasons Bush had for invading Iraq was that it has a lot of oil.
4. A major argument in favor of invading was that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda. In fact, shortly after the war began a poll found that about 70-75% of Americans thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11. It was such bullshit that Tony Blair didn’t use that argument when trying to convince the British people and Parliament to invade. It’s also been strongly suggested that the % of the anti-US forces that were foreign Islamists was very tiny.
5. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found, and that was predictable based on what the UN weapons inspectors were saying just before the invasion and what former Marine and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter said around 2000.
6. Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense.
7. Based on multiple pieces of anecdotal evidence and the existence of Iraq Veterans Against the War (now, About Face), and how unpopular Bush became shortly after the 2004 election, I imagine a lot of American soldiers who voted for Bush in 2000 or 2004 wished they hadn’t after they did one or more tours there.
8. 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, 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).
9. This poem is not pro-insurgency. It was reasonable and natural that a large majority of Iraqis wanted the US out, but my favorite slogan of the anti-war movement was “Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home.” Also, some group at some point, and they may have been anti-war, was raising money to send men and women serving there body armor, and I would have supported that (it’s different than giving them extra ammunition with which to kill Iraqi civilians). (it’s also not pro-Saddam- it would be great if Saddam had been pushed out of power in a better way, but the methods that the US and UK used were bad)
10. Besides the insurgency, there was other instability caused by the invasion and occupation- Al-Qaeda attacks on Shiite neighborhoods, ethnic cleansing by Shiites and possibly some by Sunnis, and tension between some of the Shiite population and the Occupation forces. At one point it came close to a full-blown Sunni-Shiite Civil War.
11. The Surge was a brief but dramatic increase in the number of soldiers and Marines in Iraq.
12. Between 1991 and 2003 Iraq was frequently bombed by the US and UK.
13. I think that Bush supporters enjoyed the political dimension of the war, where they tangled with anti-war groups. We were in a time of a “New McCarthyism,” where disagreeing with Bush was seen by a lot of people as politically taboo. As I said, at the beginning of the war, the vast majority of Americans blamed Iraq for 9/11.
14. As far as Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq, here is something I included in two posts about anti-Semitism:

Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were many, Israel was a small part of it. There was the opportunity to give lots of money to corporations in multiple ways, the strong desire for using the US military that most GOPers have, the desire to teach the world a lesson in terms of what the US will do to them if they piss off D.C., the desire for oil, the idea of democratizing the Middle-East. I also heard something about it being connected to countering the growing strength of the Euro. It's possible they half believed that stuff about WMDs and Al-Qaeda. Israel was a small part of it.

15. Bush liked the idea of being a popular war-time president the people would rally around.
16. **46% of this version is me, 54% is the original.
17. In a post here I describe what I did to oppose the invasion.

I know a place Where you're all going to go
They'll pay you to kill for oil If You're eighteen years old
First You'll need a haircut And then some new clothes
They'll stick you in Baghdad To play G.I. Joe

CHORUS:
You think you’re fighting Al Qaeda and that you’ll find WMD
But it’s total bullshit, concocted by Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
But now it's too late You're entering Iraq
You voted for Bush, you’ll soon wish you could take it back

What is this we're fighting for and What are our goals
To create a cash cow for US corporations and improve Bush’s polls
Instability  and Sunni resistance grow deeper everyday
The situation worsens, the Surge is on it's the way

CHORUS:

Lessons we have learned Are easy to forget
Hints of Vietnam How soon we all forget
First we used sanctions and bombs, now go in the troops
Another chance for the Right to slander anti-war groups