The Coup d’État Has Begun

Michael Moore

Feb 06, 2025

Friends,

The actual Coup in DC is underway. I don’t want to waste much time writing this when most of you already know that, and because every hour right now is precious.

It is Day 18 of the Coup. If you had been waiting for confirmation of that, there’s no need to wait for the ref to look at the instant replay or make a call to the front office. None of what’s happened in these past 18 days is surprising, as I — like many of you — have been watching all of this unfold since the day he and his spouse rode down the “golden” escalator on June 16, 2015 to the cheers of the hundred or so SAG extras he had hired for the event. This was almost ten years ago.

And none of Trump’s actions since January 20th have surprised me. He is the most “honest” President we’ve had in our lifetime. He has announced over and over what he was going to do should the American people let him back into the White House. He is transparency on steroids. He hasn’t just given us the facts and the blueprint of his long-promised coup, he has done the most audacious thing any autocrat in history has attempted — he has openly BRAGGED about exactly how he was going to pull it off. The more he performed his schtick, the more people thought either “I can’t wait for him to shut down the FBI, the CIA, the Deep State and AOC” or “Everybody should calm down, it’s just Trump! Haha!”

Haha?

You mean, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

It’s just a big joke.

Well the joke is on all of us.

His latest announcement of the newest country that he intends to take over — “Gaza, we will own it” — has already shocked the Palestinian people, the entire Arab world, most of Europe, and numerous Jewish peace groups. He has much more up his sleeve.

Trump believes that this is actually his country and can do whatever the fuck he wants to it. Like Gaza, he owns it. What he doesn’t know is that there are literally thousands of us working right now to stop him. We have numerous ways to do that — through the courts, in Congress, mass actions of civil disobedience, police and district attorneys refusing to break the law and joining with us to block the only person the Supreme Court has declared can break the law.

Our work, though, is enormous. But not insurmountable.

Yes, the daily roundup of Brown people from mostly Catholic countries has begun. He hopes to arrest upwards of 3,000 people per day to be sent to Guantanamo or to be deported to other nations. By the end of the year he will have removed 1-2 million people from the US. He will claim that another 3-4 million people will have “self-deported.”

He has also announced his desire to defund and shut down the United Nations. He hopes to exit NATO. He has already removed the United States from the World Health Organization. Let me be very clear about this one. A worldwide bird flu epidemic seems to have begun. To remove ourselves from the World Health Organization, and for him to refuse to let the CDC tell us how many Americans are contracting this deadly virus, these are the actions of a lunatic and the results will be the potential deaths of millions of people. Every one of those people will have family and friends who are grieving. At some point, Mr. Trump, the people will rise up against you.

Now, his U.S. attorney, Edward R. Martin Jr., and the DOJ have announced they will begin arresting anyone who “threatens” actions against this Administration, especially anyone who bears ill will toward Elon Musk. Do not misunderstand the above paragraph as in any way denigrating to Mr. Musk. As is the duty of any society, we must protect our best and brightest.

I, as you can imagine, am already busy on what you would expect me to be doing. There’s no need to send me to Guantanamo yet. Also, what I’m cooking up is not only legal and safe, it is being kept at room temperature per the terms and conditions that I have agreed to sign. (Note to NSA person who reads my mail: According to my lawyer, there’s nothing to worry about as long as the Constitution is being strictly adhered to. Meanwhile, I’ll just be catching up on past seasons of “Below Deck” on Bravo.)

Finally, I want to encourage all of you to read yesterday’s column from Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University and one of the stars of my film Fahrenheit 11/9.

-Michael.

Of course it’s a coup

Miss the obvious, lose your republic

TIMOTHY SNYDER

FEB 05, 2025

Imagine if it had gone like this.

Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”

Historically, that is what coups looked like. The center of power was a physical place. Occupying it, and driving out the people who held office, was to claim control. So if a cohort of armed men with odd symbols had stormed government buildings, Americans would have recognized that as a coup attempt.

And that sort of coup attempt would have failed.

Now imagine that, instead, the scene goes like this.

A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.

That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.

In the third decade of the twenty first century, power is more digital than physical. The buildings and the human beings are there to protect the workings of the computers, and thus the workings of the government as a whole, in our case an (in principle) democratic government which is organized and bounded by a notion of individual rights.

The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights.

In gaining data about us all, Musk has trampled on any notion of privacy and dignity, as well as on the explicit and implicit agreements made with our government when we pay our taxes or our student loans. And the possession of that data enables blackmail and further crimes.

In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.

Resistance to the coup is the defense of the human against the digital and the democratic against the oligarchic. If Musk controls these digital systems, Republican elected officials will be just as helpless as Democratic ones. The institutions that they voted to create can also be “deleted,” as Musk puts it.

President Trump, for that matter, will also perform at Musk’s pleasure. There is not much he can do without the use of the federal government’s computers. No one will explain this to Trump or to his supporters, of course.

A coup is underway, against Americans as possessors of human rights and dignities, and against Americans as citizens of a democratic republic. Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely.

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J.D. Vance As Trump’s VP: “A Corporate CEO’s Dream And A Worker’s Nightmare”

For years, The Lever has exposed the Ohio senator’s hypocrisies and what they mean for the American people.

THE LEVER

Former President Donald Trump just named Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate, and the country’s largest labor federation is already using The Lever’s coverage of Vance to declare the move “A corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.”

For years, we have been pointing out Vance’s hypocrisies and what they mean for the American people.

Vance authored the 2016 blockbuster memoir Hillbilly Elegy and fashioned himself as a “conservative outsider” fighting for everyday people. But during his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, we revealed that the one-time venture capitalist counted himself among the elite few able to take advantage of a notorious carried-interest tax loophole that allows private equity and hedge fund moguls to pay a fraction of what they’d otherwise owe on their income.

In 2023, following our coverage of lax railroad safety regulations and the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Vance co-authored the Railway Safety Act, designed to quickly improve the poor rail conditions that contributed to the disaster in his home state.

“Through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again,” Vance said at the time.

But three months later, we exposed that Vance had since quietly amended his own legislation to delay the safety reforms at the request of rail and chemical industry lobbyists.

In its statement on Trump’s running-mate announcement, the AFL-CIO labor federation cited our coverage on Vance to argue that the senator would be “nothing more than a rubber stamp for [Trump’s] anti-worker vision” and would help usher in “a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare.”

Before he became a rabid Trump supporter, Vance wrote in The Atlantic that instead of believing Trump’s false promises to help the country, “I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other.”

We agree. Together, we have the power to hold Vance and his cohorts accountable. That fight starts now.

https://www.levernews.com/j-d-vances-wall-street-tax-dodge/

https://www.levernews.com/j-d-vance-helped-lobbyists-weaken-his-rail-safety-

July 16, 2024 0

GOP Congressman calls for Gaza genocide: “It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima: Get it over Quick”

JUAN COLE 03/31/2024

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – US Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI), a former pastor, called this week for a genocide, the Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem..

Michigan’s 5th congressional district stretches across the far bottom of the state, encompassing cities such as Albion and Jackson and abutting Ohio and Indiana. I don’t have any reason to think that the district is full of merciless psychopaths and mass murderers. Jackson has a famous ice cream shop, The Parlour, where the portions are to say the least generous, and which is pleasant to visit on a hot summer day. The district has a population of 768,000 and a median household income of $64,000 (for the US as a whole it is $74,580). It is about 85% white, with Hispanics, African Americans and mixed-race persons making up most of the other 15%. It has voted for a Democratic president in every election in this century and even favored Hilary Clinton over Trump. That Walberg represents this district demonstrates the axiom that Americans buy peanut butter more intelligently than they vote.

That is, the district is represented in Congress by a cruel would-be mass murderer. His soul lacks any hint of the milk of human kindness. Walberg, a fundamentalist former Christian pastor, once ran the homophobic, far right Moody Bible Institute in Chicago while supposedly representing a Michigan district, Walberg is against everything— a woman’s right to choose, the Affordable Care Act, gay marriage, and any attempt to counter the climate crisis. He went to Uganda to voice support for that country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, which prescribes executions for gay people.

So genocidal tendencies were already apparent. Some 14 million American adults identify as LGBT in polling and apparently Rep. Walberg would happily see them all murdered. It should be remembered that some 90,000 gay men were rounded up in Nazi Germany, with as many as 15,000 sent to death camps, where perhaps 60% were killed. The only difference between Walberg and Heinrich Himmler, who created the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion, is that Walberg hasn’t yet found a way to implement his sadistic dreams.

At a meeting in Dundee with constituents on March 25, Walberg said that President Biden had spoken of our need to get aid into Gaza. He said, “I don’t think we should. I don’t think any of our aid that goes to Israel, to support our greatest ally, arguably maybe in the world, to the feet of Hamas, and Iran, and Russia. Probably North Korea is in there and China, too — with them, helping Hamas. We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.”

“Nuking Gaza,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream / Dreamland v. 3 / IbisPaint, 2024.

Unfortunately for Walberg, who likely talks like this all the time with his inner circle of fellow sociopaths, his remarks were recorded.

It is worth noting the bizarre conspiracy theory that any US aid money sent to Gaza would somehow benefit Russia, China and North Korea or that those three countries back Hamas. I might once have called such paranoid fever dreams abnormal, but I see them and their like normalized all around me these days.

The 2.2 million Gaza noncombatants cannot be blamed for the actions of a small Hamas guerrilla group. These civilians are in imminent danger of mass starvation and some are already dying of hunger. Half of them are children. Most of the rest are women and noncombatant men. Some 70% of them are in Gaza because Zionist gangs chased them out of their homes in 1948 in what became southern Israel, and made them stateless refugees. Now they are being killed on a scale unseen in any conflict in this century.

And, again, mass starvation was a key Nazi technique of war.

March 31, 2024 0

US Ambassador Chas Freeman:There is nothing for US to learn from Israel other than bombing civilians

March 23, 2024 1

Jaw dropping

No fan of Sacha but this is unbelievable !

July 16, 2018 0

How will US Jerusalem move affect Israel’s far right?

by Jonathan Cook

Trump’s seal of approval for Israel’s takeover of Jerusalem is likely to intensify the city’s religious symbolism for Jews – and the importance of Israeli sovereignty over al-Aqsa Mosque compound [Ronny Hartmann/Photothek via Getty Images]

www.aljazeera.com

Analysts fear Trump’s rubber-stamping of the right’s political goals will further radicalise both sides of the divide.

Jerusalem – Trump’s recognition this week of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, overturning seven decades of US policy in the region and effectively ending hopes of a two-state solution, has provoked dire warnings.

But the focus by commentators on Palestinian reactions, rather than the effect on the Israeli public and leadership, might have underestimated the longer-term fallout from Trump’s move, analysts say.

Predictions have included the threat of renewed violence – even an uprising – from Palestinians; the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians’ government-in-waiting, and its diplomatic strategy for two states; and the demise of Washington’s claim to be serving as a credible peacemaker.

But according to analysts, more far-reaching – and disruptive – undercurrents will likely be set in motion by Trump’s decision.

Few have factored in the likely effect of Trump’s new Jerusalem policy on the Israeli public, which has been shifting steadily to the right for most of the past two decades. The city and its contested holy sites have gained an increasingly powerful religious and national symbolism for many Israeli Jews.

The fear is that Trump’s effective rubber-stamping of the right’s political goals in Jerusalem will further radicalise both sides of the divide – and accelerate processes that have been turning a long-standing national conflict into a more openly religious one.

‘Tipping point’

“We may remember this date as the tipping point, as the moment when a new consensus emerged in Israel behind the idea of total Jewish supremacy,” journalist David Sheen, an expert on Israel’s far-right movements, told Al Jazeera.

Similar concerns were expressed by Yousef Jabareen, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament.

“We can expect to see a move rightwards across Israeli society,” he told Al Jazeera. “The centre-left parties were already tacking much closer to the right. They will now want to align themselves with Trump’s position. Meanwhile, the right will be encouraged to move to the extreme right.”

Both noted that Avi Gabbay – the recently elected leader of the Zionist Union, the official opposition and the party that was once the backbone of the Israeli peace camp – had begun espousing positions little different from those of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Last week, Gabbay backed Trump’s announcement, saying that recognition of Jerusalem was more important than a peace deal with the Palestinians.


WATCH: ‘Dangerous and unacceptable’ – Arab League condemns US move

Sheen said that traditionally, the centre-left had been restrained in its political positions by concerns about alienating the United States: “Netanyahu has shown that he can bring the US round to his way of thinking by staying the course. In many Israelis’ eyes, he has now been proved right. The centrists may decide it is time to come onboard. Allying with the Republican right and the Christian evangelicals in the US may now look like a much safer bet.”

The possible effects of Trump’s announcement on Israelis have been largely overlooked, even though previous turning points in the conflict have consistently resulted in dramatic lurches rightwards by the Israeli public.

Given Israel’s power over the Palestinians, these changes have played a decisive role in leading to the current impasse between Israel and the Palestinians, analysts note.

Most obviously, Israel’s seemingly “miraculous” victory in the 1967 war, defeating the armies of neighbouring Arab states in six days, unleashed a wave of Messianic Judaism that spawned the settler movement.

A new religious nationalism swept parts of the Israeli public, driving them into the occupied Palestinian territories to claim a supposed Biblical birthright.

Other major events have had a decisive effect too. Unexpectedly, the Oslo peace process, launched in the mid-1990s, persuaded many non-religious Israeli Jews to move into settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, doubling the numbers there in a few years.

Into the arms of the far right

Alan Baker, a legal adviser to the Israeli foreign ministry in that period, explained Israelis’ peculiar reading of the Oslo Accords. In their view, Oslo meant Israel was “present in the territories with their [the Palestinians’] consent and subject to the outcome of negotiations”.

In other words, many Israelis believed that the Oslo process had conferred an international legitimacy on the settlements.

Later, in 2000, after the Camp David summit collapsed without the sides agreeing to a two-state solution, Ehud Barak, Israel’s then-prime minister, blamed Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. He said they were “no partner” for peace.

As a result, Israelis deserted the peace camp and drifted into the arms of the right and far-right. Netanyahu has reaped the benefits, leading a series of ultra-nationalist governments since 2009.

Now Trump’s decision on Jerusalem effectively gives Washington’s blessing to Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and five decades of creating facts on the ground there, said Jabareen.

“Trump has legitimised the far-right’s argument that Israel can control all of Jerusalem by sheer force, by denying Palestinians their rights and by creating facts on the ground,” he said.

With their policy of aggressive unilateralism now paying dividends in the US, the settlers and the ultra-nationalists were unlikely to be satisfied with that success alone, he added. “The danger is that the religious right’s narrative will now seem persuasive at other sites in the occupied territories they demand, such as Hebron and Nablus.”

Since Trump’s election a year ago, Naftali Bennett, the Israeli education minister and the leader of the main settler party, has begun calling for Israel to seize the opportunity to annex West Bank settlements.

Pressure is likely now to mount rapidly on Netanyahu to shift even further to the right.

On the 972 website, Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli analyst, observed that Trump’s declaration had boosted the settlers’ position that “in the long run ‘facts on the ground’ are more important than diplomacy and politics, and that Israel will eventually win legitimacy for its actions”.

Effects in Jerusalem

The most immediate effects, according to Ir Amim, an IsraeIi human rights organisation, will be felt in Jerusalem itself. Government ministers have already drafted legislation to bring large West Bank settlements under Jerusalem’s municipal authority, as a way covertly to annex them.

There are also plans to strip large numbers of Palestinians of their Israeli-issued Jerusalem residency papers because they live outside the separation wall Israel built through the city more than a decade ago. That would cement a new, unassailable right-wing Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

Last week, Ir Amim warned in a statement that Trump’s move would be certain to “embolden” such actions by the Israeli right and provide a “tailwind” to those determined to pre-empt a two-state solution.

Assad Ghanem, a politics professor at Haifa University, told Al Jazeera: “Trump has given a legitimacy to the right’s Messianic agenda. He has adopted the language of the extreme right on Jerusalem – that it is Israel’s eternal, united capital. The far-right will declare this a victory.”

In parallel, Trump’s seal of approval for Israel’s takeover of Jerusalem is likely to intensify the city’s religious symbolism for Jews – and the importance of Israeli sovereignty over al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Ghanem noted.

In recent years, a growing number of rabbis have been overturning a centuries-old consensus that al-Aqsa compound is off-limits to Jews because it was not known where the ruins of an earlier Jewish temple lay. In Jewish tradition, it is forbidden to walk over an inner sanctum, known as the Holy of Holies.

Today, Jews regularly enter the compound and some even pray there. Settler rabbis and far-right government ministers have called for dividing the compound between Israelis and Palestinians, creating huge tensions with Palestinians.

Temple movements

Meanwhile, a once-fringe movement of Jewish supporters who wish to destroy the mosque to rebuild the ancient Jewish temple in its place, are gradually moving into the mainstream. Trump’s move will be a shot in the arm to their ambitions and their credibility, said Sheen, who has studied the temple movements.

He pointed out that immediately after Trump’s declaration, these groups had uploaded a cartoon of Trump standing in al-Aqsa compound, in front of the golden-topped Dome of the Rock, imagining the Jewish temple in its place. Trump is shown saying in Hebrew: “This is the perfect spot!”

Sheen said: “This will be treated as a call to arms by these groups.”


WATCH: Trump’s Jerusalem move roundly condemned at UN

Will the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital have similarly dramatic long-term effect on Palestinians’ public opinion? Analysts believe it will. The lack of an outpouring of significant anger – even after Palestinian leaders called for three days of rage last week – could be deceptive.

Israeli analysts have suggested that there is often what they term an “incubation period” – a delay between a major change in Israel’s favour and a popular reaction from Palestinians. That was true of the second Intifada, which came months after the collapse of the Camp David summit.

An expectation of knee-jerk anger to Trump’s decision may be misplaced, say analysts. The decision may result in a slower and much deeper process of adjustment to the new reality.

“Palestinians will now have to abandon the old tools of national struggle, because they have been shown to be ineffective. We need new tools of resistance, and that will require a grassroots struggle. We need a return to mass protests,” Jabareen said.

Ghanem noted the danger that, with the likely growth of a Jewish religious extremism in Israel and among the settlers, some Palestinians might drift towards violence.

But he expected that a more significant trend would be Palestinians reassessing the end goal of their struggle and opting for mass civil disobedience.

“The two-state solution is obviously now finished, and that is likely to mobilise a new generation to struggle for a single state,” he said. “Activists and the leadership will need to rebuild Palestinian nationalism.”

December 10, 2017 0

Republicans on Rape

www.snopes.com

A list purportedly offers controversial and embarrassing statements about rape made by Republican politicians.

CLAIM

A list collects statements about rape made by Republican politicians.

RATING

TRUE

ORIGIN

A “Republicans on Rape” graphic widely circulated online since 2014 collects various comments about that crime supposedly made by GOP politicians in recent years:

The remarks collected in that graphic were indeed all uttered by the persons to whom they have been attributed; below we offer the context in which those statements were made and any clarifying remarks subsequently offered by their speakers.

“Rape is kinda like the weather. If it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

On 24 March 1990, Texas oilman Clayton Williams, the Republican nominee in the Lone Star State’s upcoming gubernatorial election, was preparing for a cattle roundup at his West Texas ranch while undesirable weather conditions threatened to spoil the event. As he sat around a campfire with ranch hands, campaign workers, and reporters, Williams likened that day’s cold, foggy weather to rape, saying, “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.”

Later that day Williams asserted that his comment had been a joke, and a few days later his campaign offered an apologetic statement about it:

Mr. Williams said it was merely a joke and apologized “if anyone’s offended.”

“That’s not a Republican women’s club that we were having this morning,” he said. “It’s a working cow camp, a tough world where you can get kicked in the testicles if you’re not careful.”

Asked if some people might be offended, Mr. Williams said: “I’m not going to give you a serious answer. It wasn’t a serious deal. It wasn’t a serious statement.”

But his campaign issued a statement in which Mr. Williams said: “I feel just terrible about this. I had no intention in my heart to hurt anyone, especially those women who have been traumatized by rape.

“Looking back, I realize it was insensitive and had no place at the campfire or in any setting.”

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that thing down.”

On 19 August 2012, U.S. Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a Republican who was challenging incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill for her seat in the U.S. Senate, was interviewed by St. Louis television station KTVI. During that interview, Akin was asked whether he believed abortion was justified in cases of rape, and he responded by asserting that “legitimate rapes” rarely resulted in pregnancy: “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

After his words touched off widespread outrage, Akin then issued a statement maintaining that his remarks were “off-the-cuff” and that he “misspoke in this interview”:

As a member of Congress, I believe that working to protect the most vulnerable in our society is one of my most important responsibilities, and that includes protecting both the unborn and victims of sexual assault. In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve.

I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action. I also recognize that there are those who, like my opponent, support abortion and I understand I may not have their support in this election.

Two years later, while appearing in another television interview with MSNBC to promote his new book Firing Back, Akin asserted that “legitimate rape” was a law enforcement term and that his original remark had been “intentionally misunderstood”:

“Legitimate rape is a law enforcement term, it’s an abbreviation for ‘legitimate case of rape,’” he told Chuck Todd. “A woman calls a police station, the police investigate, she says ‘I’ve been raped,’ they investigate that. So before any of the facts are in, they call it a legitimate case of rape,” explained Aiken.

Akin believes that everyone took what he said out of context. “This was intentionally misunderstood and twisted for political purposes. It doesn’t make any sense to say ‘a conservative is saying that rape is legitimate,’ that doesn’t even add up.”

Time magazine noted that they were unable to find a law enforcement official familiar with the term “legitimate rape”:

But is “legitimate rape” really a law enforcement term? We asked some experts.

“I’ve taught police officers, and worked with police officers on every continent in the world, and that’s something I’ve never heard in my 50 years in law enforcement,” says Dr. James A. Williams, former Chief of Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces for the U.S Department of Justice, who also worked in municipal law enforcement in New Jersey. “I’ve never heard of that. Never.”

Richard Lichten, a veteran of the LA County Sheriff’s Department and expert on sexual assault investigations agrees:

“I have 30 years of experience, I’m qualified to testify in federal court on the way to investigate sexual assault crimes, and I’ve never heard of that,” said Lichten. “In all my life I’ve never heard of that.”

“Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation.”

On 20 January 2012, Rick Santorum, a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania who was then campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight program and was asked by that show’s host about his stance on abortion and whether he believed abortion was wrong even in cases of incest and rape. Santorum responded by saying that although a pregnancy resulting from a rape might be “horrible,” it was nonetheless a “gift of human life” and that “we have to make the best out of a bad situation”:

MORGAN: On abortion, you did harden your position on that as you got older. Why was that?

SANTORUM: Life. You know, when I decided to run for public life, I was informed very quickly people wanted to know what my position on that was. So I went through the process of trying to better understand the facts.

It became very clear to me that life begins at conception and persons are covered by the Constitution and since life — people, a human life is the same as a person, to me it was a pretty simple deduction to make. That’s what the Constitution clearly intended to protect.

MORGAN: But do you really — do you really — let me ask you this. Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that — I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest — and you’ve got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped.

SANTORUM: Yes.

MORGAN: And was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father?

SANTORUM: I would do what every father must do, is to try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing.

MORGAN: And they are looking at their daughter, saying, how can I deal with this, because if I make her have this baby, isn’t it going to just ruin her life?

SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.

As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

“Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

On 23 October 2012, Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for one of Indiana’s U.S. Senate seats, was engaged in a debate with his Democratic and Libertarian rivals when he expressed his view that “life begins at conception” and that he would only allow abortions in circumstances in which the mother’s life was in danger:

I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

After the debate, Mourdock explained that when he said “it is something that God intended to happen,” he was referring to the creation of life and not the act of rape itself:

Mourdock, seeking to clarify his comments in a press conference following the debate, said he had intended to say that “God creates life,” and that any interpretation of his comments to mean God “pre-ordained rape” were “sick” and “twisted.”

“What I said was, in answering the question form my position of faith, I said I believe that God creates life. I believe that as wholly and as fully as I can believe it. That God creates life,” Mourdock said. “Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think that God pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that. That’s sick. Twisted. That’s not even close to what I said. What I said is that God creates life.”

“In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out.”

On 23 June 2013, Jodie Laubenberg, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives, was debating a measure she had introduced to the House that included a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. When Rep. Senfronia Thompson proposed an exemption for victims of rape and incest, Laubenberg argued against that exemption, saying that when a victim seeks medical care after a rape, “they have what’s called rape kits, that the woman can get cleaned out, basically like” [a procedure known as D and C that is often performed after a miscarriage]. She also noted that emergency contraception is available.

A few days later, after she was mocked over her remark, Laubenberg said she was “confused by Democrats’ questions and misspoke” and meant to say that rape victims could “obtain emergency contraception and other treatment” at medical facilities:

Rape kits are used to collect evidence in hopes of prosecuting the perpetrator. They play no role in preventing pregnancy or serving as an abortion.

Laubenberg was widely mocked on social media, and opponents of the bill called her comments evidence of the misguided science behind Laubenberg’s proposal.

Laubenberg told North Texas talk radio host Mark Davis that she was momentarily confused by Democrats’ questions and misspoke. “What I was trying to say is, when a woman goes to the hospital, that they have the procedures there” to help her obtain emergency contraception and other treatment, she said. “No, rape kits do not cause an abortion.” As for the reaction, Laubenberg added: “If that’s the worst that you can complain about me, go ahead.”

“If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”

In February 2014, the Maine Democratic Party called for the resignation of Lawrence Lockman, a Republican member of the Maine House of Representatives, when a liberal activist made a blog post detailing negative public statements about gays, abortion and rape that Lockman had made years earlier:

The post by Maine People’s Alliance activist Mike Tipping mined press clippings to unearth several offensive comments. In one, Lockman implied that HIV and AIDS could be spread by bed sheets and mosquitoes. In another, he said that the progressive movement assisted the AIDS epidemic by assuring “the public that the practice of sodomy is a legitimate alternative lifestyle, rather than a perverted and depraved crime against humanity.” In a 1995 letter in the Sun Journal in Lewiston, a reader quoted a press statement by Lockman, then part of the Pro Life Education Association, saying, “If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”

Lockman responded to the controversy by issuing a statement affirming that he regretted his previous remarks:

Most of the comments were made during the 1980s and 1990s, but Maine Democratic Party chairman Ben Grant issued a statement calling for Lockman’s resignation. Grant said the comments were “hateful, vicious and offensive” and he called Lockman a “disturbed individual who holds some of the most abhorrent beliefs ever heard from a public official in Maine.”

Lockman released a written statement.

“I have always been passionate about my beliefs, and years ago I said things that I regret. I hold no animosity toward anyone by virtue of their gender or sexual orientation, and today I am focused on ensuring freedom and economic prosperity for all Mainers,” he said.

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December 8, 2017 0

When I Filmed Sheriff Joe Arpaio, He Was Cooperative and Horrifying

www.thedailybeast.com |

MARIANNE SCHAEFER TRENCH
09.01.17 1:00 AM ET

When Marianne Schaefer Trench shot a documentary about Sheriff Joe Arpaio, her crew wanted to quit, and her audience thought they were watching a mockumentary.

In 2001, I made a documentary film for German TV about the man who called himself “The Toughest Sheriff in America.” Ten years after I witnessed Joe Arpaio in action, a judge ordered him to stop detaining people based solely on racial profiling. Yet Arpaio continued to flout the law, and he faced up to six months in prison for criminal contempt of law. Before Arpaio was sentenced, President Trump pardoned him.

When I proposed the Arpaio documentary to my German clients, they were skeptical. They had trouble believing that his kind of law-enforcement abuse was really happening, and, if so, they weren’t confident I would able to capture it on camera. In the end, my clients were intrigued enough, because deep in the German unconscious there is still the image of the U.S. as the Wild West, a place where the toughest guy with the fastest gun will determine what Law and Order means. Sheriff Joe represented the essence of the evil cliché Germans remember from these fictional old Westerns. In my film, Arpaio even compared himself to these old movies, saying if he would ever have to retire, he would not exactly vanish by riding into the sunset, but he would vanish because he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

There was no problem getting the man to cooperate. He craved the spotlight and behaved obnoxiously to satisfy the camera. Despite his cooperation, the filming became more difficult by the day because my crew developed such disgust and hatred for the man that I feared they would turn violent. We all started to feel dirty because we realized in some sick way we were feeding his oversized ego.

When I told Arpaio I needed a good beginning for my film, some kind of “bang,” he took it literally. He owned a tank he liked to ride in parades, and while we were filming in the courtyard of the jail, the tank appeared and fired its cannon. It was indeed a very loud “bang.”

Already back then Arpaio was in legal trouble. He had a website with a live feed showing people getting booked. The website came with a warning that one might witness violence or even sexually explicit content, which of course drew many viewers.

Surveillance cameras also captured unruly detainees getting strapped into a chair and then tortured with stun guns. One inmate, Scott Norberg, died in the restraining chair. The Phoenix New Times compared the video material to watching a snuff film.

Maricopa County and the sheriff’s office had to pay an $8.25 million settlement for the Norberg case alone. At least 60 people died in Arpaio’s county jail and many more got injured. Richard Post, a paraplegic, was pulled out of his wheelchair and cinched violently into a restraint chair, causing permanent damage to his neck and shoulders. At the time of my film project there were already hundreds of lawsuits against all of the sheriff’s divisions, and the department had amassed to a total of $14.7 million in settlements in the previous five years. Yet the majority of Maricopa County residents kept voting for Arpaio and supplied millions of dollars to his campaign efforts.

When I asked him about human rights, Arpaio said, “Human rights violations? Amnesty International? They should all go back where they came from—to Iraq—instead of telling me how to do my job.”

He bragged about his prison tents because, in his opinion, detainees don’t deserve air conditioning during the scorching hot summer months or heat in the cold Arizona winters. His prisoners had to wear striped prison suits and pink underwear. In 2001, brunch was a new fad and Arpaio decided he should imitate the trend and cut down the three rotten daily prison meals to two. The women in the tent cities told me horrifying stories about the lack of medical attention. One woman in a tent claimed she had a miscarriage in her fifth month of pregnancy, without ever getting medical help.

I witnessed the brutality of it all. Arpaio said he believed in equal rights for women, so women were also put into striped suits and chain gangs. I took my mutinous crew and accompanied the women to their workplace—an empty, windswept stretch of desert, the paupers’ graveyard. Their duty was to dig graves. As they were shoveling dirt onto a coffin, all the women cried. They told me they were afraid that one day they would end up just like this. One woman sobbed harder than the others. She told me she had buried her own father in one of these graves.

The filming became downright surreal when I interviewed Arpaio’s bleached-blond wife, Ava. “My husband is just a big teddy bear,” she said. “He has a good heart. He loves his prisoners, it’s just a kind of tough love. For him prisoners are like little children who have to be punished. When kids do something bad, you also send them to bed without dinner. He thinks the prisoners have to be disciplined because they never learned any discipline.”

Even spookier than Arpaio himself was his “posse”—thousands of deputies who were nothing but geezers with guns. This posse would become infamous during the Obama administration because they were all “birthers” and worked hard to prove the lie that the president was not a natural-born citizen of the United States. Maricopa County is the land of gated communities for retirees. Many of these old people told me they were bored with their daily golf or macramé classes, and that’s why they joined the “posse.” It was like a hobby to them. All they had to do was buy a gun, a uniform, and a car. Then Arpaio slapped a sheriff star on their chests and off they went, enforcing law and order. At the time I was filming, Arpaio’s posse was 3,600-people strong, and many of them seemed too old to even drive a car. Yet they patrolled the streets, frequently singling out Hispanics.

When my film, The Toughest Sheriff in America, aired on German TV, so many Germans flooded Arpaio’s website to vent their outrage that the site crashed. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a major German newspaper, wrote: “Wherever he finds an audience he becomes the horse-mounted guardian for law and order, an image taken straight out of a tattered fictional children’s book or a movie. In his mind the golden dreamed-up past is still alive, and because he is the sheriff he has the power to turn it into reality.” Viewers wrote angry emails to the TV station, asking for more information on why and how this is allowed to keep going on in a First World country. Germans wanted to have Arpaio tried in The Hague, and they were convinced that his behavior was unconstitutional. Some even suspected that the film was staged, a fictional mockumentary about the U.S.

Arpaio was sheriff for 24 years before he was voted out of office last November. It wasn’t until July 31 of this year that he was finally convicted of a crime—and then only for a contempt-of-court misdemeanor, not for the vicious and deadly abuse of law-enforcement power.

For the abuse, the racial discrimination, the killings and mistreatment of prisoners, Maricopa County was held responsible—never the sheriff himself. The county and its insurers had to pay the multimillion-dollar settlements. Most of the people whose rights Arpaio violated never sought justice in a court.

It’s not surprising that Arpaio is Trump’s soul mate. In my mind, the real scandal is that I met this man 16 years ago and knew he was evil to the bone. Yet he stayed in office and was able to flout the law, the Constitution, and basic human rights for 24 years. And he doesn’t have to pay for any of it.

September 2, 2017 0

Salt Lake’s Dem Mayor Goes Undercover As A Homeless Man For Three Days. Pledges Vital Assistance.

www.dailykos.com |

This story has a ‘Brubaker’ feel to it.

It happened over four months ago, and until recently, was known by only a small handful of people.

Last March, Democratic Mayor Ben McAdams put into play something he long felt compelled to do. Due to a state law, he had to select possible sites for three new homeless centers/shelters. Two for men and one for women and children. Regardless of the choices, it would prove highly unpopular in the neighborhoods. Each perspective area arose in fury at the idea. But it had to be done. He needed a more personal perspective. And it was this catalyst that solidified his decision.

McAdams left work on a Friday with Patrick Reimherr, the Director of Government Affairs. They both wore three-day growth. No wallets, money, or I.D.’s They were dressed in their oldest jeans, sneakers, sweatshirts and hoodies.

Each had a small bag with some clothes, a blue tarp and cheap disposable phones.

And they walked the miles from City Hall to Salt Lake City’s most troubled neighborhood, Rio Grande. They disappeared amongst the thousands of homeless persons in the city. And they immersed themselves with that population.

The first night, they slept in the street. They found a spot amongst hundreds in the area against a building. They wrapped themselves with their tarps.

“I didn’t feel safe,” he said. “I absolutely did not feel safe. It was a very chaotic environment. I wanted to understand why some people would choose not to go into shelter. It was cold. Below 40’s. And it was raining. You wonder why people would choose to do that, knowing that there were beds available in the shelter.” Fights broke out and their was yelling all night.

“Some of the folks i talked to said it’s better to be outside and get some space from the drug trade and shooting gallery that inundates the area immediately in front of shelter doors.”

After a fitful 4 hours of sleep, they headed to the shelter, named The Road Home. The closer they got to the shelter, the more drug dealers plied their wares…mostly heroin, meth, coke and spice.

“The primary buyers are not homeless people. If you take the hundreds of people who are staying at the shelter and empty all of their pockets, there’s not going to be a whole lot of money to buy drugs.”

As bad as the night on the street was, the shelter was a nightmare. It housed over 1000 men. Though rules are in place, and employees and volunteers were present, it was riddled with violence and drugs. Reimherr was assigned a different dorm. McAdams’s bunkmate injected a needle into his arm in front of him. He saw similar in the dorm. The smell of the drugs was prevalent. He witnessed violence. He saw a man pulled from his bunk and heard the loud smack as his head hit the pavement.

The first thing he was told when he entered was to not take off your shoes, use your bag as your pillow and never, ever go to use the bathroom at night.

He now saw why being outside in the rain and cold was preferable. “At least it was warmer inside.”

The director of The Road Home, Matt Minkevitch, notes that though the area around the shelter is full of drug use, “…instances of people using drugs in the shelter aren’t incredibly common and don’t represent most of the clientele. For 80 percent of the 8,000 people who visited the shelter last year, it was a one-time, brief episode of homelessness before a quick return to stable housing. It’s hard to see that when you’re seeing this repetitive cycle of despair and desperation and the suffering that’s going on with the people who are living on the streets. Who are filthy dirty and confused.”

His time was consumed by solving two pressing needs. “Where am I going to sleep? And where am I going to get food? You have to plan your day around that. It leaves little energy left to search for jobs or housing.”

They ate at Missions and had church sponsored meals. A group outside the shelter handed out sack lunches. A mystery-meat sandwich and a bag of Funyuns.

He met a family with a nine year old autistic child. “She’s the age of one of my kids,” the mayor said. “It’s heartbreaking to see a young child who’s growing up in those circumstances. What psychological trauma is probably inflicted on a child who doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep or where his next meal is going to come from?”

Mayor Benjamin McAdams. First elected in 2013. Re-elected in 2016. A good man.

McAdams ended his experience with one understanding. That “doing nothing is not an option, even if it’s the end of me politically.”

“I knew when I accepted this task that it would come with consequences for me personally. But this work isn’t about me personally. It’s about doing the right thing for people who are in crisis. If I have to pay a personal price for moving this work forward, it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

”I ran for office to make a difference. Not to have a job.”

By mid-July of 2019, the three new shelters will open, and The Road Home will close. He vows to assist in every aspect of “the shelter experience” into one “focused on rehabilitation and recovery.”

In the meantime, The Road Home is having the area in front on Rio Grande Street made into a courtyard with a fence to help protect the homeless from predatory behavior. That meals will be nutritious with more fruits and vegetables. And he is trying to work out a deal for the local area’s state-run liquor store to move to a different location, away from it’s proximity to the shelter.

“I know that my three days and two nights is nothing. It was a helpful insight. But i knew that if something happened, i have health insurance. I have a family. I have a home. My backstop was a phone call away. I am very, very fortunate.”

Salt Lake, both the county and city, have been models for helping the homeless, compared to most other large cities and counties in the country. Mayor McAdams aims to raise the bar that much higher. In his years at the helm, he has already done so much to tackle this problem. Starting with having local law enforcement not unduly harass the homeless, but to help and assist. This has been something he has been passionate about since he became mayor in 2013. And it’s making a tangible difference. As the following clip shows….

August 9, 2017 0

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