You Know In Your Heart That the Day of Real Resistance Is Coming

You know in your hearts that only a #SixtiesStyleMovement will address this situation.

You know in your hearts that electeds are impotent or bought, and elections alone will never be enough.

You know in your hearts that the day of Real Resistance is coming.

How about now? https://t.co/eRo0V3Nnna

— Thomas Neuburger's errant politics (@Gaius_Publius) August 26, 2020

by Thomas Neuburger

A general strike counts as real resistance.
—Yours truly

The next horrific murders are upon us. In the bland reporting of the New York Times:

Arrest in Overnight Shooting During Unrest in Kenosha, Wis.

An Illinois resident was arrested in violence that occurred during a confrontation between demonstrators and a group of men armed with guns as protests continued over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

KENOSHA, Wis. — An Illinois resident has been arrested in connection to a shooting that left two people dead and another person wounded during a chaotic night of demonstrations over the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., officials said on Wednesday.

A court document from Lake County, Ill., shows that Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested in Antioch, Ill., on Wednesday morning after being charged with first degree intentional homicide in the fatal shooting that took place only hours earlier. (emphasis added)

The Times report portrays the event as "chaotic," and it's filled with details like this: "Tuesday evening was spent in a shifting, hourslong standoff between the police and protesters. Protesters assembled outside a newly erected metal barrier protecting the courthouse and threw water bottles, rocks and fireworks at the police."

As we'll see, the event was a lot less chaotic than it was reported to be. The order behind the chaos was cops appearing to work with the right-wing thugs to suppress the actual protesters.

Kyle Rittenhouse

This brings us to the shooter, Kyle Rittenhouse.

According to the Huffington Post report of the incident, "Police are investigating a group of men with guns who were lined up outside businesses a few blocks down the road from the courthouse, according to The New York Times. Ostensibly, the vigilantes were there to “protect” businesses from fires that had been set during previous nights of demonstrations. Though Rittenhouse’s connection to vigilante groups is unclear, he was quoted before the shooting saying that he considers himself a militiaman and was willing to use his rifle to “protect” people and property."

And Rittenhouse was very pro-cop. "A now-deleted Facebook page that appears to belong to Rittenhouse featured almost exclusively pro-police imagery and photos of the suspect carrying guns. At some point, he changed his profile image to a “Blue Lives Matter” sign and held a fundraiser for a police nonprofit called “Humanizing The Badge." 

Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha (source)

"We're going to push them down by you, 'cause you can deal with them, and then we're going to leave"

What's missing from these reports, both of which whitewash police actions, are details like these:

Cell phone video shows Kenosha Wisconsin police officers in an military vehicle telling armed White militia members they "appreciate them being there" and giving them bottled water; while in the background cops can be heard ordering protestors to disperse. pic.twitter.com/73SsfCUYWj

— Rebecca Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) August 26, 2020

and these (click through to the video to hear, "cops told us, we're going to push them down by you, 'cause you can deal with them"):

Here, a militia member says cops told them they would "push" the protestors towards them because they knew they could handle them. pic.twitter.com/S6lzmJfOJe

— Rebecca Kavanagh (@DrRJKavanagh) August 26, 2020

and these:

Heard with my own ears on the scanner in Kenosha last night: "I can't tell if those are protestors or our guys" - says a cop as a group of 100 or so people was moving from one area to another. He was referring to the armed vigilantes "our guys" of course. #DefundThePolice

— The Bern Report (@TheBernReport) August 26, 2020

Even Rashida Tlaib understands what happened:

Look at him roaming freely while protestors are met with military war like equipment and tear gas. https://t.co/Va7wkf9X8l

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) August 26, 2020

There are more reports like these, which, of course, will either go viral, or go unreported by the media most people read and listen to.

Systemic Change by Non-Systemic Means

It's more than obvious by now that cops are siding with right-wing thugs, using them even, against whoever stands with the protesters. When will this end?

It will never end by ordinary, electoral means...

...until those elections are backed by the kind of organized, 1960s-style movement... 

Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, speaks to assembled students on December 7, 1964. (AP Photo / Robert W. Klein)

...that adds the critical mass of the people, chaotic and unruly, to the orderly exercise of power by elected officials who, frankly, with cops, also want the real left to lose.

The nation may not be to that point yet, but it's not far away. That's why big-media outlets like the New York Times want to paint these protests, all of them, as either "chaotic" or left-wing-violent only, and why they hide the state violence that incites and encourages those violent responses. A real left-wing movement — a 1960s-style revolt, a real rising of the people — is the stuff of nightmares for editors at the Times, and many of its readers as well.

Yet ... what will make a change that makes real change? Electing more Democrats? If they're the right ones, yes, that's needed but not enough.

Will the eighteenth protest after the thirtieth police murder of the hundredth or two-hundredth victim, black, brown or poor, of state-enforced austerity and racism — will that finally make a difference?

We've seen this movie. Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012. How are things different today? What has America done since that sad day to make lives better and safer for the victims of our police — and the victims of the economic system that creates police victims?

I'll say it again:

You know in your hearts that the day of Real Resistance is coming.

How about now? 

A strike counts as resistance; AOC understands that. A general strike counts as real resistance. Will it take a general strike to make real change? If so, when should that start?
  

Het Meisje Met Het Rode Haar-- The Girl With The Red Hair-- plus Newt Gingrich And Kyrsten Sinema

This morning when I woke up I found an email from my old friend Toon in Amsterdam. He had heard about the fires ravaging L.A. and he wanted to make sure I was ok. Then he started going on about how Trump and Boris Johnson are ruining the world. That led him in two directions-- were Bernie and Elizabeth too old to get the job done-- I assured him they weren't and that either could-- and then he started writing about how during World War II, "A lot of Dutchmen were completely indifferent about German occupation. A lot of Dutchmen were completely pro or opportunistic." There were not many like our friend (RIP) Hilda van Norden or Hannie Schaft. Hannie Schaft? I didn't know the name. So I took a few moments off from the impeachment news and looked her up. There were dozens of YouTubes... all in Dutch, like one above.

Jannetje Johanna Schaft (Hannie's actual name) was born in 1920. Twenty-four years later, she was arrested at a Nazi checkpoint in Haarlem, her hometown, tortured for a month and shot by Dutch Nazis 3 weeks before the end of the war. 7 months later she was reburied in a state funeral. Queen Whilhelmina called Schaft "the symbol of the Resistance."

As the impeachment trap closes on Trump, will he try a coup? Who's to stop him? If he does, who will be our own Hannie Schaft? You?

Hannie was in law school in 1943 when the Germans occupied the country. University students were required to sign a declaration of allegiance to the occupation authorities. Like 80% of students, Schaft refused to sign and was expelled. Would you sign?

After leaving school and Amsterdam and moving back in with her parents, she joined the Council of Resistance. Eventually she became an assassin and began carrying out attacks on Germans and on Dutch collaborators. She learned to speak German fluently and became involved with German soldiers. She was recognizable by her red hair and wound up on the Nazis "most wanted" list. Eventually, she died her hair black. She was identified by her red roots after she was arrested.

Hannie Schaft, murdered by Dutch Nazis, symbol of The Resistance

I also found an e-mail from Newt Gingrich this morning. "Friend," he wrote, "If you refuse to fight for President Trump... then don't read this email. But don't come complaining to me when anti-Trump socialist fanatics take over!

Sorry to be so blunt, but Democrats have decided to impeach President Trump and we have an urgent deadline to stop them: We're rallying as many Loyal American Patriots as we can for the next 24 hours -- and we've activated 5x-matching for you.

You've already received emails from Steve Scalise, Liz Cheney, Darin LaHood, Drew Ferguson and others...

They ALL want you to know this is the most important request we have EVER made of you. If we fall short now, we will ALL suffer the consequences.

Stand with President Trump, who has been FALSELY accused!

Hannie was offered an opportunity to be a courier when she joined the resistance to the fascists. She wanted the job of killing fascists. At what point is shooting someone like Newt Gingrich the right thing to do? Now? Never? Not 'til they've overthrown democracy entirely? Oh... and speaking of collaborators, as opposed to full on fascists like Newt, Politico ran a piece by Burgess Everett yesterday on putative Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, the mentally impaired and deranged freak from Arizona who Schumer decided to make a senator last year. That she, in Everett's words, "hobnobs with Republicans at least as much as she does with her own caucus," is hardly the problem. She started as a socialist, became a Green, then a liberal Democrat, then a conservative Democrat, then the chair of the House Blue Dogs and will soon enough join the GOP and go further right than Marsha Blackburn. "Sinema," wrote Everett, "doesn’t really fit in with her fellow Senate Democrats. Don’t even ask her whether she watches the Democratic presidential debates." She's more into physical fitness-- a regular fräulein of the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen. Her voting record isn't, as Everett claims, "on par with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s." It's worse. Sinema's ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote score is much closer to Susan Collins' than to Manchin's:

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)- 52.45
• Doug Jones (D-AL)- 45.21
• Kyrsten Sinema (Freak-AZ)- 34.18
• Susan Collins (R-ME)- 24.97
• Rand Paul (R-KY)- 13.76

Sinema's support for the fascists that Trump nominated-- like Attorney General William Barr-- "and her lack of zeal for impeachment are part of a political profile drawing blowback from progressives and cheers from the GOP. Yet Sinema is also setting herself up to be a pivotal vote the next time the Democrats are in power. And her radical breed of centrism could be a headache for the party. Take the liberal drive to bust down age-old Senate rules in order to pass Medicare for All or a Green New Deal. Sinema not only opposes getting rid of the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation, she wants to restore the supermajority requirement for presidential nominees that has been weakened by both parties." Exactly what Schumer wanted when he selected her as Arizona's senator.

“They will not get my vote on [nuking the filibuster],” Sinema said in her office, outfitted with shiny leather and translucent chairs and boasting a vivid shade of purple that pops from the walls. “In fact, whether I’m in the majority or the minority I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority… It is the right thing for the country.

Senate allies

Sinema isn’t actively trying to reshape the party. Though she captured a state that Democrats would love to seize in the 2020 campaign, she’s utterly uninterested in using her perch as senator to do cable TV hits, speak to the Capitol Hill press corps or offer general guidance to Democrats ahead of a crucial election cycle.

Yet her record speaks for itself. She voted for Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and opposed attempts to roll back the Trump administration’s coal deregulation regime earlier this month.

It’s an approach that has the potential to revive the Senate’s moribund middle but has left her something of a mystery to her Democratic colleagues, even fellow moderates.

“Haven’t had a lot of interaction with her. She’s kind of doing her own thing,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), a centrist senator with a more liberal voting record than Sinema’s.

Unlike any of her colleagues, she snubbed sitting Sen. Ed Markey and endorsed Rep. Joe Kennedy, an old House colleague and close friend, in the hotly contested Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary. That earned a rejoinder from Manchin: “I would never do that … made no sense to me at all.”

And she is criticizing senators in both parties for “highly partisan” statements on impeachment and is declining to endorse the House impeachment inquiry: “That’s not my job, that’s not my role.”

For all her distance from the establishment, Sinema also seems to have come to an understanding with Schumer, whom she [fake-]opposed as Democratic leader during her 2018 campaign.

Like every member of the caucus, she gets random calls from Schumer frequently enough that she can easily break into a raspy New York accent while doing a brief impression of the minority leader: “‘Sinema! What’s new?’”

But when push comes to shove on important votes, she has a warning for party honchos: Leave her alone.

“Everyone knows that I am very independent-minded,” she said. “And that it’s not super useful to try and convince me otherwise.”

Sinema isn’t especially close with either Trump or Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (neither has her phone number, she said), but she doesn’t light into them the way most Democrats do. She’s working with McConnell to whip votes for repealing Obamacare’s medical device tax and said the president “certainly” knows who she is.

And observers watching her on the Senate floor during a vote would be forgiven for thinking she’s a Republican, considering her chats with GOP senators like Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota.

She spends at least as much time on the Republican side of the chamber as the Democratic half and lists Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas as an ally atop the Commerce Committee’s Aviation and Space subcommittee. Cruz returned the favor by declining to lump the Arizona Democrat in with what he sees as an increasingly socialist Democratic Party.

“I said to her one time: Why aren’t you a Republican? … she said: ‘I just couldn’t be,’” Cramer recounted.

Cramer and Sinema came into the House together in 2013, and then arrived in the Senate this year. They are close friends but couldn’t be more different. In fact, there are few like Sinema, the youngest Democrat at 43 who’s trying to figure out how to teach a spin class in the archaic Senate gym and boasts a sense of style that stands out in the tradition-bound Senate.

“I’m sort of a prude and she’s very exotic,” Cramer explained of their contrasting demeanor. “She was very hard on President Obama. So she’s quite feisty.”

There’s one Republican who’s still at arm’s length from Sinema: Martha McSally, whom Sinema defeated in 2018 but was then quickly appointed to fill the seat of the late Sen. John McCain. McSally said that the two “left it all out there on the field during the campaign” and Sinema said their staffs work together.

But after a race in which McSally accused Sinema of saying “It’s OK to commit treason,” and Sinema said McSally was spreading "smears," there’s been no real attempt to put the past behind them.

“There hasn’t been that conversation,” Sinema said flatly.

Sinema isn’t out for revenge, either. She’s currently uncommitted in McSally’s campaign against Democrat Mark Kelly and has no plans to weigh in. She said her constituents “don’t care” about endorsements.

That neutral stance might buy her goodwill with her Republican colleagues, who are in the majority, after all. But it’s another reminder that her moderate stance doesn’t play well with all Democrats. The state Democratic Party put off a censure vote against her this year, but could revive it next year.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a progressive Democrat from Arizona, said Democrats were “a little thrown back” by her vote for Barr and warned her not to forget her state’s increasingly young, diverse voting population as she navigates the tricky politics of being from a swing state.

“She runs her own thing. It worked for her getting elected. In terms of effectiveness, we’ll see,” Grijalva said. “I would be more concerned about not reflecting where the demographics in Arizona are going. And they’re going Democratic and they’re going more progressive.”

Sinema is unmoved and might even see a censure as a badge of honor after McCain received one from the state GOP. Sinema won’t fight the effort and won’t change her positions. And if the censure resolution comes back up next year? “I don’t know. Also, don’t care.”

Sinema’s attempt to be above the political fray is central to her identity and her goal of building relationships with as many colleagues as possible.

Party leaders’ whip counts? Not her problem. Using her platform as senator to regularly promote her views to a national audience? Not interested. Skipping caucus lunches almost everyone else attends? She’ll be there when it matters for Arizona.

And missing votes on the EPA chief for an Ironman race?

“Ironman’s pretty badass. It’s awesome,” she responded when asked if she got any criticism for skipping town for New Zealand just two months into her term.

Less awesome, in her view, is the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. And with her party fixated on beating both McSally and Trump in Arizona, Sinema’s endorsement or even guidance for candidates about how to win there could be key.

But that’s not something she’s interested in, either. She even said it’s “premature” to commit to supporting her own party’s nominee at this point and indicated it could be months before she tunes into a debate.

“Eventually it would be wonderful to have a candidate that shares the values of the majority of Americans,” Sinema said cryptically. “Let’s winnow the field below like, 20 or something, and then maybe it gets easier. Like, when it’s enough for two basketball teams, it’s too much.”

When Kevin Cramer distanced himself from her by saying "I’m sort of a prude and she’s very exotic," he meant she's a lascivious, licentious bisexual. One of her former colleagues in the House, a happily married man who told me she tried seducing him several times, finds her "the strangest member of Congress... a duck out of water... It makes as much sense that she's in the Senate as it does that Trump is in the White House."

Orlando progressive Democrat Alan Grayson also used to serve with Sinema in the House. Yesterday, during a discussion of the Politico article, he told me that "There are a lot of observers who see 'unprincipled' and think 'independent,' or they see 'betrayal' and they think 'moderate.'  No matter how long such 'independent moderates' are in office, the only thing they can ever look back on is being elected. They can’t answer the question, 'what have you done for The People?'"

She used to serve on the same board as I did-- before she was elected to Congress. After a short time I realized she was insane and soon after I realized she was dangerously insane. I always made sure to sit outside of her line of vision... just in case she was carrying a pistol in her handbag and decided to go postal. I'm not joking.

Another Side Effect Of Trumpism: Americans Are Losing Their Religion-- Rapidly

The latest Gallup poll concludes that Christianity is rapidly declining in the U.S.. "The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share... The share of U.S. adults who are white born-again or evangelical Protestants now stands at 16%, down from 19% a decade ago."

Are Trump and his satanic bagmen, disguised as religious leaders, driving people away from Christianity? If you know anyone who's losing their religion-- or their faith-- suggest they start reading, a progressive pastor's blog: John Pavlovitz's Stuff That Needs To Be Said-- for a refreshing and reinvigorating perspective on faith.





Yesterday's post, I Resist Because I'm A Christian starts with the words evangelical leaders have moved far away from in their twisted decision to worship Trump. "As a Christian," wrote Pavlovitz, "I take the words of Jesus seriously. They matter to me. I don’t think they’re theoretical ideas meant to be uttered for an hour on Sunday or kept locked in stained glass museums or contained solely in memorized prayers or resigned to live only in Twitter bios-- I think they’re supposed to propel me out of privilege and prejudice, and into the places where grieving, hopeless, hungry, tired people are so that I can give comfort and be a help. I think they’re supposed to cause trouble for the powerful and be good news for the poor. I think they’re supposed to bring peace and justice and equity-- even if they put me in harm’s way. I don’t think I can call myself a Christian without living the words."

[I]t is because of the words of Jesus and my commitment to trying to emulate his character in the world, that I resist right now.

It is not a political affiliation that moves me, but a moral conviction, a spiritual agitation.

My faith compels me to push back.

I resist this Administration’s bigotry, because I see Jesus celebrating Samaritans and dining with prostitutes and touching the lepers and welcoming outsiders.

I resist its callousness, because I see Jesus embracing the grieving and healing the sick and defending the oppressed.


I resist the bloated arrogance and spitting malice and unrepentant cruelty of this Presidency, because I hear Jesus say that the peacemakers and the meek and the pure in heart, walk the path that good people are called to humbly walk.

I resist all of this because the Jesus I find in the gospels first resisted it. He opposed power, hatred, greed, and contempt for difference. That was the whole story: loving loudly and being willing to suffer and die on behalf of someone else.

Jesus lived a life fueled by compassion for hurting people, one fiercely devoted to bringing equity and letting more people come to the table. He dismantled the walls between people, leveled the ground that separated them, showed their inherent worth.

He wouldn’t be abiding white nationalism or gun-waving hubris or the bullying of gay couples or the defending of Confederate monuments. He wouldn’t be tolerating  religious people making their beds with dictators or a Church that cowered to hateful power.

These would be the very tables he would be turning over, so I too am upending them.

Resistance isn’t a hashtag or a catch phrase or a bumper sticker slogan and it has nothing to do with a party or a President.

It’s the most sincere prayer I can utter, the most tangible expression of belief I can offer, the clearest declaration of my faith that I can make in these moments.

Resistance to hatred is continuing the work of Jesus and so I do this work-- so help me God.

This morning the New Yorker published an essay by Eliza Griswald, Teaching Democrats To Speak Evangelical, about the role Vote Common Good is playing in make a space for evangelicals turned off by Trump's nature and by his excesses. A few weeks ago, at the invitation of Ted Lieu, Vote Common Good founder Doug Pagitt and VCG political director, Robb Ryerse, both pastors, explained the group's work to progressives in Congress. "Trying to memorize John 3:16 in the car on your way to the event and then quote that is probably not the best way to connect with faith-based voters,” said Ryerse. "He had seen a candidate try this trick on the way to a rally in Kansas and then struggle to remember the phrase onstage."

The exodus of religious voters from the Democratic Party over the past several decades is typically explained by the culture wars, most notably over abortion. As the historian of religion Randall Balmer notes in his book Thy Kingdom Come, in the sixties and seventies, the Democratic Party had a large Catholic contingent and mostly opposed abortion. By contrast, many prominent Republicans-- including Nelson Rockefeller; Ronald Reagan, during his time as the governor of California; and Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion in Roe v. Wade-- affirmed and expanded abortion rights. But, beginning in the early seventies, evangelical preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson worked with Republican strategists to press the Party to more vigorously oppose abortion. At the same time, the second-wave feminist movement pushed the Democratic Party to defend women’s reproductive rights. As a result, pro-life Democrats, most notably religious voters, began defecting from the Party.

Pagitt believes that this history is overly simplistic. He points out that a large percentage of Democratic voters--sixty-seven per cent, according to a Pew poll from 2018--still claim a religious affiliation. He believes that many moderate evangelicals would be happy to vote for Democrats, but that the Party often overlooks them during campaigns. In 2008, Barack Obama courted evangelicals, along with Catholics, mainstream Protestants, and Jewish voters, by asking religious leaders to appear as campaign surrogates and to take part in a regular conference call. Pagitt worked on behalf of the campaign, approaching conservative leaders and calling evangelicals who had voted for George W. Bush in 2004. “It wasn’t just me; they kept calling hundreds of leaders and asking if we could spare one more weekend,” Pagitt said. Obama succeeded in taking a large number of white evangelical and Catholic Bush voters.

But, in 2016, Hillary Clinton failed to woo these voters: between 2008 and 2016, the percentage of people who voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate declined among voters in every religious affiliation, and the dropoff was especially sharp among evangelicals. Pagitt pointed out that, though Clinton is a devout Methodist and received daily devotional readings during the campaign, she almost never spoke about her faith in public. “I don’t even know what her favorite Bible passage was,” he said. “I thought, Well, her polling numbers must tell her she doesn’t need religious voters.”

Pagitt describes himself as an evangelical, though he thinks of this as more of a sociological term than a strict theological one. “It’s like saying I’m Midwestern,” he told me. “It locates me.” He grew up near Minneapolis, in a non-religious family, and converted as a teen-ager. He spent eleven years as a pastor at Wooddale, an evangelical megachurch in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. In 1999, he planted a progressive, nondenominational church in Minneapolis called Solomon’s Porch. But, in 2018, feeling disappointed by Clinton’s loss, he founded Vote Common Good to target the voters that Clinton had overlooked. In the leadup to the midterm elections, he and fourteen other members held religious revivals in support of candidates across the country. The events featured beer on tap and thumping music from dirty-gospel acts, including Reverend Vince Anderson and Meah Pace. The family-friendly party atmosphere was modelled on revivals that the conservative evangelist Franklin Graham was holding for Donald Trump and other Republicans. “The larger goals were loving your neighbor and creating a check on power,” Diana Butler Bass, a prominent progressive theologian who joined Pagitt’s tour, told me.

Pagitt felt hopeful after the votes were cast. In 2016, eighty-one per cent of white evangelicals voted for Trump; last year, in the midterm elections, seventy-five per cent of white evangelicals voted Republican. Pagitt and the other members of Vote Common Good saw this small decline as a sign of progress: in ones and twos, evangelicals were becoming disenchanted with Trump--especially with his overt racism and misogyny, which some saw as against their values. “I don’t think it’s a silent majority,” Ryerse, Vote Common Good’s political director, told me, “but I think there’s a significant silent percentage.”

Katie Paris, a media trainer with Vote Common Good, discussed campaign tactics with the representatives. She noted that, during the midterms, Republicans had contacted religious leaders district by district to shore up their support, and often remained in close touch with them between election seasons. “You need to make it more difficult for the right to organize against you,” she said. She suggested that the representatives also reach out to religious leaders to introduce themselves. They didn’t have to fake piety, she said, but they should acknowledge that these communities were important to their constituencies. She also felt that Democrats had become afraid to mention religion at campaign events, which ceded faith to the right. She urged the representatives to discuss spirituality “wherever your values come from”--whether or not they were believers. The important thing was to make it clear that they took religion seriously and didn’t look down on the devout.

...After the meeting in Washington, Pagitt decided that the group would do more good advising candidates in the field and decided to take it back on the road. Since then, Vote Common Good has run several training seminars in New York City and around the country for Democratic congressional candidates. “In all five boroughs, there are evangelicals and other religiously motivated candidates,” he told me recently, while in New York. “We give candidates a breakdown by religious affiliation in their districts, and it’s shocking how many religious voters there are.” Last week, they launched a love-in-politics pledge, which is based on I Corinthians 13:4-7 (“Love is patient, love is kind . . .”) and calls on politicians to hold others to a standard of decency and compassion. “We’re skeptical of Mike Pence’s willingness to be swayed,” he said, of the Vice-President. “But we’re helping religiously motivated voters to have the rationale and support to change their votes.” The group is also planning a forum in Iowa, in January, where Democratic Presidential candidates could reflect on their vision of faith. Pagitt says that the major campaigns have indicated interest, though none has committed. “I think they should take religiously motivated voters seriously,” he told me. “If they don’t, it’s at their own peril.”

Film "Official Secrets" Points to a Mammoth Iceberg

by Sam Husseini

Two-time Oscar nominee Keira Knightley is known for being in "period pieces" such as Pride and Prejudice, so her playing the lead in the new film Official Secrets, scheduled to be release in the U.S. this Friday, may seem odd at first. That is until one considers that the time span being depicted-- the early 2003 run-up to the invasion of Iraq-- is one of the most dramatic and consequential periods of modern human history.

It is also one of the most poorly understood, in part because the story of Katharine Gun, played by Knightley, is so little known. I should say from the outset that having followed this story from the start, I find this film to be, by Hollywood standards, a remarkably accurate account of what has happened to date. "To date" because the wider story still isn't really over.

Katharine Gun worked as an analyst for Government Communications Headquarters, the British equivalent of the secretive U.S. National Security Agency. She tried to stop the impending invasion of Iraq in early 2003 by exposing the deceit of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in their claims about Iraq. She was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act-- a juiced up version of the U.S. Espionage Act, which has in recent years been used repeatedly by the Obama administration against whistleblowers and now by the Trump administration against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange.

Gun was charged for exposing-- around the time of Colin Powell's infamous testimony to the UN about Iraq's alleged WMDs-- a top secret U.S. government memo showing it was mounting an illegal spying “surge” against other U.N. Security Council delegations in an effort to force approval for an Iraq invasion resolution. The U.S. and Britain had successfully forced through a trumped up resolution, 1441 in November 2002. In early 2003, they were poised to threaten, bribe or blackmail their way to actual United Nations authorization for the invasion. See recent interview with Gun.

The leaked memo, published by the British Observer, was big news in parts of the world, especially the targeted countries on the Security Council, and effectively prevented Bush and Blair from getting a second UN Security Council resolution they said they wanted.

U.S. government started the invasion anyway of course-- without Security Council authorization-- by telling the UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq and issuing a unilateral demand that Saddam Hussein leave Iraq in 48 hours-- and then saying the invasion would commence regardless.

It was the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work (accuracy.org), Norman Solomon, as well as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg who in the U.S. most immediately saw the importance of what Gun did. Dan would later comment: “No one else-- including myself -- has ever done what Katharine Gun did: Tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it. Hers was the most important-- and courageous-- leak I’ve ever seen, more timely and potentially more effective than the Pentagon Papers.”

Of course, we didn't know her name at the time. After the Observer broke the story on March 1, 2003, we at accuracy.org put out a series of news releases on it and organized a sadly sparsely attended news conference with Dan on March 11, 2003 at the National Press Club, focusing on Gun's revelations and Dan calling for more such truth telling to stop the impending invasion.

Even though I followed this case for years, I didn't realize until recently that our work helped compel Gun to expose the document. I didn't know till a recent D.C. showing of Official Secrets that Gun had read a book co-authored by Norman, published in January 2003 which included material from accuracy.org as well as the media watch group FAIR that debunked many of the falsehoods for war and was published in January of 2003.

Said Gun about the period just before she disclosed the document: "I went to the local bookshop, and I went into the political section. I found two books, which had apparently been rushed into publication, one was by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, and it was called Target Iraq. And the other one was by Milan Rai. It was called War Plan Iraq. And I bought both of them. And I read them cover to cover that weekend, and it basically convinced me that there was no real evidence for this war. So I think from that point onward, I was very critical and scrutinizing everything that was being said in the media."

Thus, we see Gun shouting at the TV to Tony Blair that he's not entitled to make up facts, so the film may be jarring to some consumers of major media who might think that Trump invented lying in 2017.

But Gun's immediate action after reading critiques of U.S. policy and media coverage is a remarkable case for trying to reach government workers, handing out fliers, books, having billboards outside government offices, to encourage them to be more critically minded.

I honestly didn't fully appreciate the value of the exposure as much as Dan and Norman did at the time. To my mind, the lies were obvious, We debunked Bush administration propaganda in real time-- see an overview of our work that I wrote to Rob Reiner when I learned of his then-upcoming film, Shock and Awe. But Gun's revelation showed that the U.S. and British governments were not only lying to get to invade Iraq, they were engaging in outright violations of international law to blackmail whole countries to get in line.

It's funny to read mainstream reviews of Official Secrets now-- they seem to still not fully grasp the importance of what they just saw. The trendy AV Club review leads: "Virtually everyone now agrees that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a colossal mistake based on faulty (at best) or fabricated (at worst) intelligence." Well, "mistake" is a serious understatement even with "colossal" attached to it for something so fervently pursued and you just saw a movie about the diabolical, illegal lengths to which the U.S. and British governments went to get everyone in line for it. So, no "fabricated" is not the "worst" it is.

Gun's revelations showed before the invasion that people on the inside, whose livelihood depends on following the party line, were willing to risk jail time to out the lies and threats.

Other than Gun herself, the film focuses on a dramatization of what happened at her work; as well as her relationship with her husband, who happens to be a Kurdish gentleman from Turkey-- with the British government attempting to get at Gun by moving to deport him. The other key focuses in the film are her able legal team at Liberty and the drama at The Observer, which published the NSA document after much debate.

Observer reporter Martin Bright, whose stellar work on the original Gun story was strangely followed by things like predictably ill fated stints at organizations like the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, has recently noted that very little additional work has been done on this key case. We know virtually nothing about the apparent author of the NSA document-- one "Frank Koza." How prevalent is this sort of blackmail? How exactly is it leveraged? If the U.S. government does this sort of thing, why would they wait till the last minute? Does it fit in with allegations made by former NSA analyst Russ Tice about the NSA having massive files on political people?

Observer reporter Ed Vulliamy is energetically depicted getting tips from former CIA man Mel Goodman. There do seem to be subtle but potentially serious deviations from reality in the film. In the movie, Vulliamy is depicted as actually speaking with "Frank Koza," but that's not what he originally reported: "The NSA main switchboard put The Observer through to extension 6727 at the agency which was answered by an assistant, who confirmed it was Koza's office. However, when The Observer asked to talk to Koza about the surveillance of diplomatic missions at the United Nations, it was then told 'You have reached the wrong number'. On protesting that the assistant had just said this was Koza's extension, the assistant repeated that it was an erroneous extension, and hung up."

There must doubtlessly be many aspects of the film that have been simplified or altered regarding Gun's personal experience; notably absent from the film are the roles played by her parents, which I believe are considerable. A memoir from her would be a valuable historical document. A compelling part of the film-- apparently fictitious or exaggerated-- is the apparatchik of GCHQ security questioning Gun to see if she was the source, recounting her ethical and educational background, particularly that she was raised largely outside of Britain.

One similarity between this and Knightley's other work is its distinct Anglocentrism. Gun's revelation had the biggest impact on several non-permanent members of the Security Council members, in all likelihood, especially Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Pakistan, Mexico and Chile. I've seen very little about what exactly happened in those countries and in those delegations. The most is probably know about Mexico, which was represented by Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. After the invasion, he spoke in blunt terms about U.S. bullying-- saying it viewed Mexico as its patio trasero, or back yard-- and was compelled to resign by Vicente Fox. He then, in 2004, gave details about some aspects of U.S. surveillance sabotaging the efforts of the other members of the Security Council to hammer out a compromise to avert the invasion of Iraq, saying the U.S. was "violating the U.N. headquarters covenant.” In 2005, he tragically died in a car crash.

Official Secrets director Gavin Hood is perhaps more right than he realizes when he says that his depiction of the Gun case is like the "tip of an iceberg," pointing to other deceits surrounding the Iraq war. His record with political films has been uneven till now. Peace activist David Swanson derided his film on drones, Eye in the Sky. In a showing of Official Secrets in D.C., Hood depicted those who backed the Iraq war as now having been discredited. But that's simply untrue. Now leading presidential candidate Joe Biden-- who not only voted for the Iraq invasion, but presided over rigged hearings on it 2002-- has recently repeatedly falsified his record on Iraq at presidential debates with hardly a murmur. Nor is he alone, those refusing to be held accountable for their Iraq war lies include not just Bush and Cheney, but John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi. Biden has actually faulted Bush for not doing enough to get United Nations approval for the Iraq invasion. In fact, as the Gun case helps show, the legitimate case for invasion was non-existent and the Bush administration had done virtually everything both legal and illegal to get United Nations authorization.

Most everyone attempts to distance themselves from the Iraq invasion, but it has effectively enveloped our culture. The wars it spawned, as in Syria, and Iraq itself, and arguably elsewhere, continue with minimal attention or protest. The U.S. regularly threatens Iran, Venezuela and other countries. The journalists who pushed and propagandized in favor of the Iraq invasion are prosperous and atop major news organizations-- the editor who argued most strongly against publication of the NSA document at The Observer, Kamal Ahmed, is now editorial director of BBC News. After the U.S. and Britain failed to get a second resolution before the invasion, they got a resolution after the invasion effectively accepting the U.S. as the Occupying Power in Iraq (UNSCR 1472) on March 28, 2003; see accuracy.org news release on the same day-- "U.N.-- Accessory After the Fact?"

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2016 boasted of how the NSA “during the wind-up to the Iraq War ‘played a critical role’ in the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolutions. The work with that customer was a resounding success.” The relevant document specifically cites resolutions 1441 and 1472 and quotes John Negroponte, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: “I can’t imagine better intelligence support for a diplomatic mission.” (Notably, The Intercept has never published a word on "Katharine Gun.")

Nor were the UN Security Council members the only ones on the U.S. hit list to pave the way for the Iraq invasion. Brazilian Jose Bustani, the director-general of the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. was ousted in an effective coup by John Bolton in April of 2002. Bolton of course is now National Security Adviser.

The British government-- unlike the U.S. government-- did ultimately produce a study ostensibly around the decision-making leading to the invasion of Iraq, the Chilcot Report in 2016. But that report-- called "devastating" by the New York Times-- incredibly made no mention of the Gun case. See accuracy.org release from 2016: "Chilcot Report Avoids Smoking Gun."

Thus, Official Secrets refers not only to the Official Secrets Act, but also to the actions of so many who revere officialdom and abide by the decorum of not acknowledging clear truths that would show the brutal face of the authorities.

Spoiler: After Katharine Gun's identity became known, we at the Institute for Public Accuracy brought on Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR, to work with Hollie Ainbinder to get prominent individuals to support Gun. The film-- quite plausibly-- depicts the charges being dropped against Gun for the simple reason that the British government feared that a high profile proceeding would effectively put the war on trial, which to them would be nightmare.

Some have said that what Gun did was ineffectual, that it didn't stop the invasion. Some have said the same about the quasi-global Feb. 15, 2003 protests against the invasion. It's an absurd, rotten notion. The solution to some truth telling not being enough to stop the war, as Dan Ellsberg would put it, is more truth telling. The solution to some powerful protests not being enough to stop the war is more effective protests. Had there been coordinated global protests beginning in September 2002 for example, rather than February 2003, that could well have made all the difference. If other numerous government officials had done what Gun did, and spoken the truth when it mattered most, that could have made the difference.

And, as these wars and lies continue, it still may.

When Is It Time For Resistance? And How Do You Know? Trump Has Concentration Camps... And Pelosi Is Funding Them

This evening I got a nice e-mail from a publicist for a book publisher. She wrote:

Dear Howie,

Last year an obituary in the Washington Post exploded, drawing almost 700 comments and a firestorm on social media: Freddie Oversteegen, Dutch Resistance fighter who killed Nazis through seduction, dies at 92. There’s an incredibly controversial story here of three teenage Dutch Resistance fighters who did what they did "because it had to be done." They learned to shoot, to seduce and liquidate targeted Nazis and their collaborators, to attack and bomb railways and other strategic places, to gather information, to help Jews and children find safe places to hide, and to steal identification papers for them. Remarkably, Dutch lecturer and author, Sophie Poldermans personally knew sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen for over 20 years and worked with them for over a decade as a board member of the National Hannie Schaft Foundation. Poldermans tells their harrowing story and that of Hannie Schaft’s in her new book, Seducing and Killing Nazis-- Hannie, Truus, and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII [SWW Press, August 2019].

In Seducing and Killing Nazis, Poldermans answers and provides:

• Her personal relationships with Freddie and Truus over the last 20 years, and how they survived the burden of their past
• Knowing the Oversteegen sisters personally and the story of Hannie, what drove these young women/girls to the armed resistance? What is it that made them take up arms in order to fight the enemy?
• What specific action of resistance made the three young women, Hannie Schaft and the sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, famous?
• A full historical account and objective research, including witness interviews, around the lives and resistance work of these three women
• The political aftermath and fight for recognition after the war in detail, and why this story is important today
• Archived photos and precise maps that accompany the history, including liquidation spots

Interested in a review copy or interview/Feature with Sophie Poldermans?

I was interested-- very interested-- and decided to respond by sending this old post and asking the publicist to read the final paragraph.

I lived in Amsterdam for nearly 4 years back in the 1970s. One of my closest friends, Eveline Pommier, had a French father and Dutch mother, Hilda Pommier Van Norden, a decorated heroine of the Dutch Resistance. Among our friendship circle in Amsterdam, I was the only one with a car at the time and we used to visit her mother in Paris frequently. Besides being a resistance hero, her mother was a talented painter and very easy to bond with. We developed a friendship over the years. Her daughter, my friend Eveline, was still in her early twenties when she took a trip to India. She died there. It was emotionally devastating for Hilda, for me and for my closest friend in Amsterdam, Toon, her old boyfriend, and for all of our friends.

As the years and decades passed by I always made a point of visiting Paris as often as I could and always visited Hilda when I was in Paris. I always wanted to tape her stories about fighting the Nazis as a young woman in her twenties, the age of Eveline when I knew her. But, regrettably, I never got it together.

A couple of years ago I was in Paris for a little holiday but Hilda wasn't there. She was 95 and fragile of mind and body and was back in Amsterdam being looked after by her family. Toon kept me up on her condition and I was thinking of making a quick side trip to Amsterdam to say hello. He said she wouldn't recognize me. I didn't go and while we were in Paris she passed away, peacefully in her bed. She blew up a Nazi troop train when she was 23 years old. I don't know anyone else who ever did that. THAT'S Resistance-- a 23 year old Dutch girl and her 2 brothers going out into the country with a plan... and pulling it off. I hope it never comes to that here. Oh, I really, really do. Please, God, don't let it come to that here. What would I do? What would you do? The Dutch government gave her a medal and a pension for what she did.

This is a self-portrait of Eveline. I have a print of it in my house and I see it everyday...

GOP Lame Duck Legislative Moves In Wisconsin And Michigan Will Cost Trump Both States-- And More House Seats

The outgoing Michigan congressional delegation has 9 Republicans and 5 Democrats. Starting in January it will be 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans-- and that despite gerrymandering. Starting in January every constitutional officer will be a Democrat as the state GOP enters the wilderness-- except for the shockingly gerrymandered state legislature where a 52-47% popular vote advantage for Democrats only gave them 47% of the seats. But even there Democrats managed to pick up 6 seats in the House and break the GOP supermajority in both chambers. Next cycle looks even more deadly for the Republicans, especially in terms of Congress. At least 3 more Republicans are on shaky ground for reelection. Fred Upton, for example, only drew 50.2% of the vote last month, despite outspending his opponent nearly 3 to 1 and despite the DCCC virtually ignoring the race (with a pitiful expenditure of just $241,270-- compared to, for example, the $2,033,044 they spent to replace Mike Bishop with New Dem Elissa Slotkin). This session is likely to be Upton's last in Congress.

Paul Clements, a Climate Change and Democratic Party activist who ran against Upton in 2016 told us today that "The games Republicans are playing in the Michigan legislature are so openly contemptuous of the will of the people-- and the media are paying attention-- it will only help to build Democratic momentum towards 2020. Democrats in Michigan are pumped. And many independents and people who stayed home in 2016 are ruing the day Trump became president. After the Democratic sweep of our state's highest offices, the energy is only intensifying to turf Trump and his enablers out of office in 2020."

There's been a steady drumbeat in southwest Michigan for state Rep Jon Hoadley to take on Upton next cycle. Hoadley, a member of the LGBT community, was first elected in 2014 and he represents the entire city of Kalamazoo with some of the suburbs. He's won reelection with huge majorities.

Asked about his priorities in the legislature this cycle, this is how he responded:

Invest in education for today and tomorrow: Let's invest more in our students, give teachers the freedom to teach to the individual students-- not the test, reduce class size, lower or eliminate student debt, and help us compete globally with the best trained talent and skilled labor.

Build an economy that works for everyone: Let's make sure more people are benefiting when productivity and the economy improve. It's time to stop giving away our tax dollars to the most profitable companies through tax breaks that aren't creating new jobs. Let's strengthen unions, raise the minimum wage, and help rebuild the middle class.

Champion social justice and protecting the environment: Let's prohibit discrimination in Michigan based on sexual orientation and gender identity by expanding the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, protect a women's right to choose, end mass incarceration and reform the criminal justice system, promote a caring economy to deal with issues related to long-term care, earn paid sick and family leave time, and make our hospitals safer by improving our laws related to nursing and healthcare. Let's work together to protect our drinking water from lead, PFAS, and other contaminants, while tackling global warming.

Unrig our Democracy: Let's end gerrymandering, improve access to the ballot, end the legislator-to-lobbyist pipeline caused by term-limits, and reduce the role of money in politics.

...I am running for office because I believe in a Michigan that invest in people. I fundamentally believe that government has the power to do good in the world when good people power the government. Coming from a family of teachers, I have work to continue fighting for education for today and tomorrow, lowering class size, and reducing student debt.

As a small business owner, I know we need to do more to raise wages, make sure economic improvements reach the pockets of working people, and end giveaways to the most profitable companies. Finally, we need to protect the environment, promote social justice, and unrig our democracy. There's a lot of work to do, but together we can get it done.

This morning, Daniel Strauss, reporting for Politico wrote that Republican legislators in Wisconsin and Michigan have reignited Democratic energy since the midterms in two narrow Trump states, their power grab pouring gas on the resistance. "Republican efforts to weaken incoming Democratic governors in Michigan and Wisconsin," he asserted, "have reignited the grass-roots fervor that flipped both states in November, turning the typically sleepy post-election period into a key organizing moment ahead of the 2020 presidential election."

Liberal groups in both states are organizing demonstrations filling the capitols in both states to oppose GOP legislators stripping power from the governor’s offices before new Democratic governors take their posts. Local chapters of Indivisible, the national “resistance” group founded after President Donald Trump’s 2016 win, reactivated their members weeks after the election to protest the legislation, while MoveOn.org has texted members in key Wisconsin state Senate districts urging them to contact Republican politicians to complain. And Wisconsin Gov.-elect Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Democratic Party have raked in money with online fundraising appeals highlighting the fight over the past two weeks.

...The furor is a “great bridge for the energy from the midterm into Trump reelect,” said Tom Russell, a veteran Democratic strategist in Wisconsin. “I think it’s going to be a very good tool for Democrats to keep the energy up, keep people focused, keep people engaged.”

In Wisconsin, the controversy stems from legislation in the final days of Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s term to limit the window for early voting and weaken Gov.-elect Tony Evers, the Democrat who bested Walker in November. In Michigan, Republican lawmakers are trying to reduce the power of the governor, the attorney general and the secretary of state. The GOP had controlled the latter two for over a decade and the governorship for eight years, but Democrats won all three offices in this year’s midterms.

Democrats also won the majority of votes cast for state legislature in both states. But they will still be in the minority next year in both legislative chambers in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Republicans drew the political maps at the beginning of the decade. That means Democrats won’t have the numbers in 2019 to reverse legislation passed in the waning days of this year.

...The GOP’s legislative actions could stay in the news for a while; the National Democratic Redistricting Committee is monitoring both states and considering whether it could take legal action if Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder sign the measures into law. Protracted court battles could spur the activists for months, up to or potentially through a state Supreme Court race early next year-- the type of off-year race at which the Republican Party excelled during the Walker years.

“Progressives have to defend a Supreme Court seat in April of 2019-- this will help them do that,” said Scot Ross, the executive director of One Wisconsin Now, a liberal outside group.

Liberals will then have the chance to take the majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court in 2020, as Trump tries to keep the state in his column in the fall’s presidential race.

In Michigan, there’s also more than executive power at stake for the new governor. State legislative Republicans have also taken steps to undo initiatives to raise the state minimum wage and paid sick leave in the state.

Both initiatives were set to be on the ballot this November before Republican lawmakers short-circuited the process by passing the language-- before altering it during the lame-duck legislative session.

“Democrats and progressives both in and out of the party are really concerned about this and they’re really energized by it,” said Liano Sharon, a Democratic organizer in Michigan.

Democratic Gov.-elect Gretchen Whitmer has condemned the lawmakers, while promoting hopes of bipartisanship.

“This legislation needlessly divides and won’t deliver results. It won’t clean up our water. It won’t improve literacy or fix the roads. Instead of working to undermine the very leaders Michigan residents have chosen to get this job done, let's instead respect the voices of voters who have spoken clearly and decisively, and get back to building bridges.”

Whitmer’s power may be limited during her first years in office thanks to Republicans’ enduring legislative majorities. But in the meantime, activists could push to put new liberal initiatives on the ballot, including a more aggressive minimum wage hike. It could even push them toward contention to flip a state legislative chamber or more in 2020.

“I think the Democrats were energized in November, and now they’re going crazy,” said Barry Goodman, a Democratic National Committeeman from Michigan.