The Nazi’s “Enabling Act”

 

by Steven Jonas

On January 30, 1933, the then President of the German Weimar Republic (1919-1933), the World War I hero Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, as part of a deal with the non-Nazi Right-Wing political parties, appointed Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, as Chancellor of Germany. Among other things, the Nazis begin moving very quickly against the trade unions and the two left-wing parties, the Socialists (SPD) and the Communists (KPD), arresting certain members of their leaderships and driving others into exile.

On February 27, the grand, historic, German Parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, is hit by a fire that would make it unusable until it was eventually restored after the end of World War II. Although it is not likely that the cause of the fire will ever be known for certain, most historians agree that it was most likely set at the direction of Hermann Goering, one of Hitler’s principal deputies, either by a lone native of Holland, a mentally-handicapped member of the Communist Party, Marinus van der Lubbe, or a crew organized by Goering.

The story of “the cause” that was released almost immediately (within hours) by the Nazis was that the fire was set by van der Lubbe, as the result of a KPD plot. And the Nazis very quickly came up with a series of documents, later proved to be forgeries), that the “KPD Did It.” (Actually, the KPD was as surprised by the Fire as was most everyone else.) The Reichstag conveniently happened to be decorated with highly flammable furniture, drapes, and wall-coverings. Apparently, a few matches did the trick. It happened that the KPD knew nothing of it and that the “incriminating documents” quickly produced by the Nazis were later proved to be forgeries. But that meant nothing at the time.

The Nazis quickly created a national hysteria over the “threat of the KPD and the SPD,” lumped together as “the Marxists,” to the “peace and tranquility of the German nation,” to the “security of the German volk.” To deal with “the Marxist threat,” on Feb. 28, the day after the Fire, before there could be any kind of investigation beyond the Nazi declarations and proffered false documents, with Pres. Hindenburg’s approval, and in accord with a provision of the post-World War I Weimar Republic’s Constitution, all of the civil liberties protections in it were suspended. But this wasn’t enough for the Nazis.

21st Century Fascism: Trump Style (pt. 2)

 

It can’t happen here by Sinclair Lewis– first edition, 1936
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by Steven Jonas

 

In the first column in this series, fascism was defined as:

“A politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who control the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; the massive and regular use of hate, fear, racial and religious prejudice, the Big Lie technique, mob psychology, mob actions and ultimately individual and collective violence, to achieve political and economic ends; a capitalist/corporate economy, with the economic ruling class’ control of State power and thus, economic, fiscal, political, and regulatory policy and policies.”

It was pointed out that this definition, and similar ones used by other authorities, is based primarily on what fascism looked like in the 20^thcentury, in particular in Nazi German fascist Italy, Spain and Japan. The analysis then went on to the use of the concept of functional fascism, for the 21^stcentury, for the United States. That is, there are certain features of classical fascism that do not exist, at least not yet, in the U.S. The Executive Branch does not have full control of all governmental functions. There is an independent judiciary. There is still a Constitution. There are still inherent personal rights and liberties. There is still not a single national ideology that criminalizes all opposition to it.

BUT, the political party currently in power, and in particular its representative occupying the Office of the Presidency, certainly has made it clear that the reality concerning these features is in a state of flux. Trump has made it clear that he would like to have much more control of various governmental functions, particularly those of the Department of Justice, than he presently does have. He is forever issuing scathing, personal, attacks on judges and courts that make decisions that he doesn’t like, e.g., a recent one on the status of DACA. The judges that he is appointing to the Federal Courts are selected and confirmed for their long-time adherence to the right-wing ideology of the private association which plays a major role in nominating them, the Federalist Society. This practice will play a major role down the road in limiting the Federal and state functions in the economic and environmental arenas, as well as in civil liberties and in such matters as the freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy. This President has shown that he is very much in favor of imposing upon large areas of civil society an ideology based on Christian Fundamentalism. And this particular President clearly reveals on a regular basis his predilection for authoritarian government.

As the Federal judiciary changes in nature, going evermore rightward in its politics (and oh yes, the judiciary is always a political animal), it will less and less function as it currently does, as a limit on the fascist aggrandizement of power by this President and the party he leads. The other major limiting factor on the progression towards outright fascism is the free press. One need look no further than this fact to understand the constant attacks on the “fake media” and “fake news” by the President, his allies in the Congress, Fox”News” (otherwise known as “Trump TV” or the Republican Propaganda Channel), right-wing talk radio, and right-wing on-line/social media (like Breitbart and The Daily Stormer). If the Republican/Trumpites are able to destroy or severely limit the activities of the anti-Trumpite media, the road to absolute power for them, that is the classical fascist state, will be much easier for them.

As to the use of the Big Lie technique, the Trumpites don’t use it so much as they do what might be called the “Little Lie Technique.” There are not just a few Big, totally not-connected-to-reality lies that they tell over and over again, like the Nazis’ “the Jews are the cause of all of Germany’s problems” that appear in major speeches by the leadership. There are rather the little lies, told over-and-over again on a daily basis, constantly rolling off the lips of Kelly Ann Conway, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and so on and so forth about everything from what is really in the tax “reform” legislation to what the “Russia” investigation is really about. As for the President, as is well known, he is the kingof the liars, Big and little.

Believe me! (Larry O’Donnell: that’s the clue he’s lying.) .NO collusion. (times ten).
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As to the features of fascism that already exist, this president regularly uses the appeals that got him to the White House in the first place: those to hate, fear, racial and religious prejudice, xenophobia, and misogyny. But most importantly for this fascism-in-process/functional-fascism is that with the Congressional Republican Party, Trump is absolutely serving the interests of the economically dominant sector of the U.S. ruling class (manufacturing; fossil fuels; agriculture/food; pharma/health services; retail; communications/entertainment; transportation; banking/investment/financial services) in the realms of economic, fiscal, political, and regulatory policy and policies.”

Thus, the Elements of Republican/Trumpite 21^st century Functional Fascism in the United States, either already achieved or set forth as goals to be achieved are:

1. The use of the law to promote racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny.

2. The criminalization of certain religious/non-religious beliefs, as in, for example, LGBT rights and the freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy. This is facilitated by the use of “God’s Word” to justify oppression, hatred, and, ultimately, Dominionism. Indeed, for the United States, Dominionism is the hand-maiden of fascism, as were Catholicism in Spain and Italy and Shintoism in Japan.

3. The repression, then criminalization, of dissent.

4. The tolerance for, and in certain quarters the promotion of the Doctrine of White Supremacy.

5. The gradual suppression of the free vote, especially among minorities, the young, and the poor, by the use of gerrymandering, voter-suppression, vote/hacking.

6. The assault on and the distortion of the use of data, of all kinds.

7. The evermore widespread use of the Roy Cohn/Lee Atwater doctrine: “Always attack; never defend.” A variant of it is the old maxim for defense lawyers: “If you don’t have the law, argue the facts; if you don’t have the facts, argue the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, argue ad hominem. (Of course, you don’t have to be a lawyer to use this one. The Right-Wing propagandists from Hannity and Conway on down (or up, depending upon your point of view) use it all the time.8. The solidification of the control of the State apparatus.

This Doctrine of Functional Fascism finds a very happy home in the modern the Republican Party. It is of course the outcome to date of the Republican Rightward Imperative which has controlled the direction of the Party since the time of Goldwater.

In the next and final Part of this series (3), some thoughts on the very difficult question of how to combat, indeed Resist, the Republican/fascist onslaught shall be presented.

 

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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books.

21st Century Fascism: Trump Style (pt. 1)

Mein Kampf, by Hitler. Apparently one of the few books that Trump has actually read, at least according to Ivana. (3t)
(Image by Gwydion M. Williams)   Permission   Details   DMCA

by Steven Jonas

 

1. Introduction. Just because there are elections and an elected government, don’t think that there cannot be fascism. One needs only to look at the Nazi German example. For some years before the German President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler Chancellor (Prime Minister) of Germany on January 30, 1933, the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party had simply been one of several major political parties in Germany. They usually received in the neighborhood of 1/3 of the vote in the then fairly frequent German elections. Hitler assured the aging President that despite his party’s tradition of violent rhetoric, he would rule in a Constitutional manner. And the non-Nazi Rightists, like ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen, assured Hindenburg that they would keep him “under control.” We all know what happened, beginning the very night of Hitler’s assumption of the Chancellorship with the rounding up and imprisonment without trial of Communists and Socialists. But he did come to power constitutionally. So it can happen.

2. The definition of fascism. There are a variety of them. One problem with the term is that it thrown around all too loosely, without bothering with a definition. It is even used, in the modern U.S. at least, by the Right to describe certain elements/individuals on the Left, again without bothering with a definition. In my own series of columns on the subject over time (e.g., http://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/11/11/fascism-in-the-21st-century-part-i-briefly-its-20th-century-background/ ) I have used one or another definition (and they are all similar to one another, differing only in length).

Here is one of my relatively short definitions of the term, based on the 20^thcentury experience with it:

“A politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who control the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; the massive and regular use of hate, fear, racial and religious prejudice, the Big Lie technique, mob psychology, mob actions and ultimately individual and collective violence, to achieve political and economic ends; a capitalist/corporate economy, with the economic ruling class’ control of State power and thus, economic, fiscal, political, and regulatory policy and policies.”

As we move into the 21^st century battle against the onslaught of fascism in the United States, I think that a shorter, more succinct, but accurate definition does need to be developed. I’m working on it. In the meantime, I use the one above.

It is important to note that “a single, charismatic leader,” often used in definitions based on the Italian/German experience, is not part of the above definition. That is because while certainly those two principal fascist powers of the 20^th century did have one, many of the others did not. In terms of the functions and power of the State and the ruling class it served, Japan was a fascist country. However, leader of the government during World War II, Hideki Tojo, was only the Prime Minister in a cabinet government and was not particularly charismatic for the Japanese people. Since the Japanese Emperor, the Head of State, was considered to be a god, that would have been impossible in any case. In Spain, Francisco Franco was a brutal fascist authoritarian ruler in a governmental system that met most of the elements of the definition above. But he was hardly what could have been considered charismatic.

3. Fascism in the 21^st Century United States: An Introduction. In times of change, fascism can be a system of government in process, not finally developed in the forms it took in 20^thcentury. For the United States, A) under the Trumpite Republicans, a 21^st century form of fascism is being developed functionally. And for them, it is the function, not the form, that counts. B) Currently, unlike the 20^th century fascist states Japan and Spain, it does have a charismatic leader, charismatic for a certain segment of the population at least, as only a reality TV star can be. However, in terms of policy development and imposition, it can be seen that if the Trumpite Republicans can maintain their current control over the political organs of power, they don’t necessarily need one. In fact, the next in line for the Presidency, the Dominionist Mike Pence, while much more doctrinally sound than Trump for the Republicans, can hardly be considered to be “charismatic.”

What has to be realized is that when the fascist form of government has come into existence, it is imposed upon a country when the capitalist ruling class as a whole, or the dominant sector of it at the time of the fascist imposition, has come to the conclusion that it is necessary for it, the ruling class, to maintain power. In each of the major countries in which it arose in the 20^th century, Italy, Germany, Japan, and Spain, there had been elected governments, with left-wing parties either in control of the State (Spain) or otherwise with a prominent presence in the political economy. With the exception of Spain, fascism was imposed, in the beginning, by constitutional means.

In the 21^st century United States there are of course no left-wing parties participating in the electoral process. The two major parties both serve the interests of the ruling class. But they do have rather different approaches to the matter of keeping the ruling class in power. This reflects the ruling class split on the self-same issue, that has existed in this country going back to the two Roosevelts. For example, it is little known that when Teddy Roosevelt ran for the Presidency as the “Bull Moose” (3^rd) Party candidate in 1912 (and received 267% of the vote), National Health Insurance was a major plank in his platform. It is also little-known that if it had not been for Watergate, the United States would have had National Health Insurance by the mid-1970s. For it was Richard Nixon who introduced such a bill to Congress in 1974, with none other than Senator Bob Dole making a brilliant introductory speech on its behalf.

But at this time, the Republican Party and the wing of the ruling class which it represents clearly see danger to their control on the horizon. The plight of the working class in this country is getting worse by the day. Trumpite mis-leading of the working class, founded as it is on racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the appeal to religious authoritarianism (of which its homophobia is only one expression), can work only just so long. Already, certain elements of the white working class “Trump base” are being turned off by major elements of Trumpism, and by his increasing number of broken promises to provide long-term assistance for them. They are also alarmed by the increasing militancy of the segments of the population that are historically against Republican policy.

American Mussolini. (He wishes.)
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And so, in my view a 21^st century form of fascism is developing in this country, under the leadership of Donald J. Trump. Since he is, to quote his Secretary of State a “moron,” and, to quote his National Security Advisor, an “idiot,” he may well be not entirely conscious of what he is doing, in terms of the political economy. (Subsequent to my original writing of this column, the journalist Michael Wolff has informed us that bunches of Trump former and present White House staff regard him in a similar light, and as functionally illiterate also. But that is another story.) But he clearly has a strong authoritarian streak within him, which, combined with the Republican policies he espouses, like the highly unpopular tax-cuts-for-the-rich, are propelling him the direction of fascism, even if he doesn’t know it, even without the installation of an actual dictatorship.

In Part 2 of this series we shall consider the elements of what can be called “21^stCentury Fascism in the United States.” It is historically unique because it eschews a number of the 20^th century fascist forms. But the Trumpite Republicans are in the process of instituting, or would like to institute, many policies that are historically fascist, without adopting many of the fascist forms of government. Thus, functionally it can be regarded as fascist.

In Part 3 we shall present some thoughts on the problems and prospects for the Anti-Fascist movement in the U.S.

 

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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books.

Revisiting ‘9/11’ / Steven Jonas

Revisiting ‘9/11’ on its 15th Anniversary, in the Context of the Reichstag Fire

The Reichstag Fire, the Tonkin Gulf incident, events like that were major historical pivots in the 20th century, yet they were all engineered, false flags designed to tighten control over the masses. In the 21st, 9/11 is still the granddaddy of all false flags—so far. Much worse is still to come, unless people get really organized.

The 15^th anniversary of the 9/11 Disaster will shortly be observed this year.  No single event in recent history has had such an impact on history itself.  I, and many, many others have been writing on it, and the still un-answered questions about it, from the time almost immediately after it happened.  In the view of many of us, the truth about what really happened has yet to be told.  On September 10-11, at New York City’s Cooper union, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, the NY State Legislative Action Project for 9/11 Justice, the 9/11 Consensus Panel, and the 9/11 Truth Action Project will be holding the next in the series of “Justice in Focus” symposia on the topic of “9/11 Truth” which have been held annually for some years now.

Hitler’s power grab: The Enabling Act. (March 1933). The Nazis’ payoff for their high-handed false flag which enabled it.

“9/11” is a subject that I have visited periodically over the years, most recently on The Greanville Post last April, upon the publication of the redacted version of “The 28 Pages.”   This time around I thought to go back to some of my earliest writing on the subject.  It appeared on a long-closed webmagazine called “The Political Junkies.net.” This time around, because the 9/11 disaster and the U.S. Republican government’s response to  it has had such a profound impact on world affairs, the multi-faceted and super-deadly current conflict in the Middle East being just one of them, I thought that it might be useful to re-visit a singular event that occurred a long time ago, that also had a huge impact in subsequent years,  That would be the Reichstag Fire, that occurred in Berlin, Germany, on February 27, 1933, just about a month after Adolf Hitler became the German Chancellor.  There are some remarkable comparisons between the governmental responses to the two events, of which this column will only scratch the surface.  This text is drawn from several columns of mine on the subject of 9/11 and the Reichstag Fire which I have written over the years, the first being done in November, 2001.

Fascism in the 21st Century

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Reprinted from The Greanville Post

As I said in beginning the first column in this series, “fascism” is a term we hear from all sorts of folk these days, ranging from some of those on the Left over occasionally to some on the Right.  I then presented a “classical” definition of the term (and there surely are a number of useful ones):

“A politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies a Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government and the executive, legislative and judicial bodies through which they do so; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; the massive and regular use of hate, fear, racial and religious prejudice, the Big Lie technique, mob psychology, mob actions and ultimately individual and collective violence to achieve political and economic ends; a capitalist/corporate economy; with the ruling economic class’ domination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”

Fascism has almost always appeared in advanced or moderately-advanced capitalist countries which were hitherto ruled by some sort of “parliamentary democracy.”   Fascism has always been imposed upon a country by the dominant sectors of its capitalist ruling class when that class has come to the conclusion that it can no longer retain control of the political economy through “parliamentary” means.  Note that in the definition above I did not include as part of it the ultimate control of state power by one person, usually known as the “dictator” or “leader”.   Of course it happened that in the two principal 20^th century examples of fascist states, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, there was one such person.  As noted in the first column in this series:

“Because of the roles that Hitler and Mussolini played in leading and ruling their respective countries it is often thought that fascismrequires such a singular leader/dictator and the cult-of-personality that was built around each.  In fact Hitler and Mussolini both adopted the term ‘leader’ to describe themselves, ‘führer’ in German and ‘Duce’ in Italian.”

Very strong cults of personality were carefully built around the two men by their respective propaganda apparatuses. For example, after 1938 or so, in Nazi Germany if one did not substitute “Heil Hitler” for the usual “Good Morning,” etc. throughout the day, one might be looked upon with suspicion.  Furthermore, a singular characteristic of 20^th fascism was that its institutionalization in a given country was accomplished by the use of violence, of one form or another.

When we are looking at 21^st century fascism, in the context of what is happening in certain of the capitalist states, at the present particularly in the United States, it should be noted that it is entirely possible that wholesale violence will not be required for its introduction.  Nor will a maximum leader necessarily be required.  Like the fog in the famous, ultra-short poem by the U.S. person Carl Sandburg, it may well come in “on little cat feet.”

As the history of the last 150 years or so shows us, in most capitalist countries the ruling class would much rather retain its private ownership of the means of production and control of the State apparatus through the aforementioned form of “parliamentary democracy” (as long as it can control it).  There are a variety of reasons for this, one being that it maintains the fiction that the non-owning classes have some real say in the governance of the economy as well as of the State.

But the principal contradictions of capitalism eventually begin to settle in, as is happening right before our very eyes in the United States: the export of capital and the resulting de-industrialization; the declining rate of profit, the necessity of the creation and expansion into unorthodox profit centers like prisons and the educational system; increasing numbers of workers languishing outside of the labor market, and so on and so forth.  Under such conditions—all inherent in capitalism’s dynamics—it becomes less-and-less easy for the ruling class to maintain control.  At that point, some sort of fascism starts to become ever more attractive.  But how to get from A to B?  In a nation like the United States, with Constitutionally-split government authority, that’s easy: through the Constitution.  And so, in the 21^st century, in the United States at least, I believe we will eventually arrive at what can be called Constitutional Fascism.

Using the increasingly corrupt electoral system, which the Republicans have been deliberately undermining by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and outright vote-count cheating, they have been taking total control of an increasing number of state governments, upwards of 2 dozen after the 2015 elections.   For the same reasons they will control the House of Representatives for the indefinite future.  If they retain their Senate majority in 2016, they will very likely do away with the filibuster on Jan. 3, 2017.  For a variety of reasons, if they somehow manage to choose the right candidate, they could very well win the Presidency in 2016, for they have managed the very clever trick of forcing President Obama to accept many of their economic/fiscal policies and then getting to blame him for the negative outcomes of same.  Finally, the other side of the Duopoly plays right into this because the Democrats—the other face of the deep corporate state and international imperialism— rarely fight back on the real issues, the issues that matter from a class perspective.

“In the 21st century, in the United States at least…wholesale violence may not be required. Gradually, step by unnoticed step, I believe we will eventually arrive at what can be called Constitutional Fascism.”

So, as we have seen, in this cynical Kabuki, it is the Repubs. who take the lead toward the slaughterhouse, while the Democrats simply follow, by passively eventually assenting to most policies proposed by the “party of business.” Thus, in a systematic way, more and more, the Repubs. are running on and/or intent on implanting most of the central elements of the definition of fascism offered above, through the use of the electoral system, which they can do because A) as mentioned earlier, the limp opposition of the Democratic Party, and B) the non-existence of any sort of mass labor union movement, following the Repubs.’ successful campaign to destroy it, a process that has been going on since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. (Again a bipartisan project).

None of this would be so outrageously easy in the presence of a functioning, autonomous media that took its duties seriously. That, however, does not exist in the US anymore, if it ever did. The American media, conceits aside, in the complete hands of the corporate plutocracy, are simply one more propaganda platform—perhaps the most effective—to bolster and disseminate the prevailing capitalist ideology.  The true left, minuscule in its media presence, forever fragmented and improvident in strategic regards, has nothing to respond with, no instruments with which to access the public debate.

Combining that with the virtually non-existent labor movement and political parties of labor, is why the fascism mongers may well be able achieve their goals “constitutionally.”  What they will do to the Constitution by amendments (that they are already talking about) once they get full control of the Supreme Court, 40 state governments, 2/3’s of the Congress, and the Presidency will then play itself out.  And the nation will have become fully fascist functionally, without violence, without a maximum leader, with, on paper two political parties offering “choice.” A perfect Orwellian democracy.

If you would like to see how this may well play out, please see my book, The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022 (Punto Press Publishing, 2013).  The original edition was published in 1996, and believe me I didn’t make up any of it.  “The 15% Solution” in the title comes from a voter-suppression program designed by an organization called the “Christian Coalition” in the late 1980s.  I just looked at what the Republicans and their soul-mates in the Religious Right were telling us, back into the 1980s, what they would do if they ever got significant control over the levers of government.  And they are doing it.  Indeed, as the overall economic conditions continue to worsen, and as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, all underlain by religious determinism, continue to expand in their domination of Republican politics, fascism will creep in like Sandburg’s fog, on little cat feet.  But it will be a highly poisonous fog. 

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Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books.  In addition to being Senior Editor, Politics, for The Greanville Post, he is: a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News.com; a contributor to the “Writing for Godot” section of Reader Supported News; and a contributor to From The G-Man. He is the Editorial Director and a Contributing Author for TPJmagazine.us.  Further, he is an occasional Contributor to TheHarderStuff newsletter, BuzzFlash Commentary, and Dandelion Salad.

Dr. Jonas’ latest book is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, and available on Amazon.

Bridge of Spies (2015)

“Bridge of Spies: A Commentary”

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH      

November 2, 2015

Even though the previews indicated that the movie “Bridges of Spies” was going to be a rollicking good spy-exchange story, and even though I remember the “U-2 Incident” on which it is based pretty well, I had been planning not to see it.  I figured that it would be part of the gradual build-up underway in this country of anti-Russian sentiment that has been going on in the context of the current decline in U.S.-Russian relations.  Many U.S. persons have a very hazy knowledge of history and certainly some of them confuse modern-day Russia with the Soviet Union.

Indeed, I noted in a previous column that even a TV news correspondent, commenting on the recent Russian build-up in Syria, twice referred to the country as the “Soviet Union” before, on the third reference, naming it correctly.  So, a historical drama that concerns the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could easily be confused by some viewers at least as representing what is currently going on between the U.S. and Russia.  (That at its base, quite unlike the U.S./U.S.S.R. conflict, it is what I have termed a “clash of capitalisms” is a matter that I have dealt with elsewhere.)

But, presently, Russia is increasingly described anywhere on a scale from “enemy” to “dangerous rival” to “a nation sticking its nose in where it doesn’t belong.”  (Those references never seem to mention the U.S.’ 750 or so bases around the world nor the U.S. policies that have stimulated violence throughout the Muslim, especially Arab world.  But that is another story).  Russian President Putin generally receives bad media coverage here.  And there seems to be a general build-up of “Russia-is-bad” reporting.  And so, I thought to myself “this one has to be nothing more than a revival of Cold War propaganda, and I do not have to subject myself to that.”

Well.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I went to see the movie because my wife, who usually doesn’t like movies with such subjects, was intrigued by it.  What a pleasant surprise of a film.  First of all, there are the Spielberg settings.  So authentic, whether in Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, Berlin (East and West), or European cities standing in for Berlin.  Then there is the acting, starring that grand actor-with-great-range, Tom Hanks.  Terrific as an insurance lawyer — the movie doesn’t tell you that he was a counsel to the Office of Strategic Services during World War II (same name, but no relation to “Wild Bill” Donovan, the war-time commander of the O.S.S.), although it does mention that he was part of the prosecution team for the Nuremberg Trials — gradually drawn into becoming a spy-exchange negotiator.  Then there is Mark Rylance, last seen here as King Henry VIII’s hatchet man (literally) Thomas Cromwell in the TV series based on the Wolf Hall novels.  Whether or not the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel was actually as Rylance portrayed him, he certainly could have been.  A superb job.

Most important is the story and the way it is presented, focusing on Donovan, Abel, Francis Gary Powers (the U-2 pilot whose plane was shot down by the Soviet air defense system and who did not, contrary to orders, commit suicide before he could be captured), and the process of the exchange.  Although one knows, even without having any familiarity with the real story, what the outcome is going to be (what big budget film-maker is going to do a movie about a potential spy exchange that fails) the film still keeps you on the edge of your seat.

It is interesting note (at least it is for students of history like me) that several very important political-historical elements/events were left out. First it is made to appear that the spy plane flight by Francis Gary Powers was the first or one of the first of its kind.  Actually, the program had been underway off and on for several years. The Soviets knew about it but had no weapon that could reach the very high-flying U-2s until they had the one that brought down Powers.   Second, no mention was made of the Four Power Summit Peace Conference between the United States, Great Britain, France and the U.S.S.R. that was to have taken place in Paris in May, 1960.

That Summit was intended by both sides to attempt to continue and broaden the first post-World War II opening to “détente” between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers that had been made by Vice-President Richard Nixon’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1959 and the mutual national shows that took place that summer in New York City and Moscow.  (I was lucky enough to have attended the opening of the U.S. show in Moscow and although not knowing it at the time, I was on the other side of a wall in the U.S. model house when the famous “kitchen debate” took place between Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.) The U-2 incident took place just before the Summit was to start and that start quickly become its end.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower did take public responsibility for the very embarrassing series of events.  However, it is thought in some quarters that the CIA spy-master Allen Dulles purposely arranged the Powers flight, without Eisenhower’s knowledge of that specific one and its timing, with the hope that it would be discovered or even brought down (and the U.S. knew that Soviet air defenses were steadily improving) so that the Summit would be sabotaged.  Dulles, along with his brother John Foster, who had been Eisenhower’s Secretary of State until his death in 1959, from the end of the World War II had at the top of his agenda the eventual destruction of the Soviet Union.  Four Power peace summits were not his cup of tea. And the “peaceful co-existence” that Khrushchev was aiming for (as was John F. Kennedy before he was murdered — see his not-so-famous “American University” speech of June, 1963) was viewed by the likes of Allen Dulles as poison.

But this movie did not require a full treatment of the history in order to make its primary point, which was not, much to my surprise, to paint the Soviet Union in a bad light.  (The German Democratic Republic — East Germany — not so good, but that’s another matter.)  Rather, in my view it had two major points to make.  First, that in the 1950s and 60s in this country there were honorable men, like James B. Donovan the real-life attorney portrayed by Tom Hanks, who firmly believed in the Constitution and the rule of law, even for foreign spies.  (And Donovan’s law firm was what was called a “white shoe” firm, generally conservative and generally Republican.  But there were plenty of Republicans in those days, like the ones who brought down the rabidly red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy, who the Tea Party/so-called “Freedom Caucus” in the House of Representatives today would be calling “Reds.”)

Second, the movie makes a very John le Carre-like point.  Secret service agents on both sides are generally not nice people (unless, of course, they are Jimmy Cagney in “13 Rue Madeline”).  Spying corrupts (although the Russian spy, “Rudolf Abel,” is portrayed as someone just doing his job), whether they are “ours” or “theirs.”  Neither the CIA guys, nor the KGB guys, nor the Stasi (East German secret police) come across particularly well.  And so while it does have plenty of greater or lesser villains, on both sides, it does have one hero, and that is a classic Honorable Man, James B. Donovan.   He fought the Nazis, and then, before he got involved in the spy-exchange drama, he fought for the U.S. Constitution and the rights it, on paper at least, provides for everyone within the borders of the United States.  What a difference between Republicans like Donovan and Republicans like Cheney and the ilk he has so successfully fostered within his party.

Tomorrowland (2015)

“Disney, of course, can, and could, have none of this. Which is what, ultimately, makes this movie a fantasy.”

Tomorrowland: Disney Studios in Fantasyland

by Steven Jonas

Walt Disney began his career, or at least first came to major public notice, with the fantasy creature, cartoon character, Mickey Mouse.  While over the years Disney Studios has gone well beyond fantasy, and well beyond Mickey Mouse, it still does like to deal in fantasy from time-to-time.  And so it has done in Tomorrowland, a sort-of science fiction, past-time-present-time-future-time, essay into the future of the Earth and human civilization.  (Actually, The New York Times reviewer, A.O. Scott, took the movie to task for “its blithe disregard for basic principles of science-fiction credibility.”)

The story is complex and I must admit that I wasn’t able to follow every one of its ins and outs.  But it starts in a time past at the 1964 New York City World’s Fair (with, among other things, a good deal of product placement).  It then seems to come forward to just about the present or perhaps just a bit into the future, with the central character, a child science-junkie in 1964, now a grown-up super science/electronics junkie.  And then it goes into two versions of a future place called — you guessed it — “Tomorrowland.”  When it first appears, Tomorrowland is a bustling metropolis, set in the middle of one-is-not-sure where, sometime in the future.  It is all clean and bright and white, occupied by a very diverse population of well-fed, seemingly well-educated, and very busy people.  It bears some resemblance, from a distance at least, to the Disney World Magic Kingdom (my, what a coincidence).

Very importantly, allusions are made to the fact that in our time, more-or-less, the Earth and we are succumbing to climate change, environmental degradation, filth, over-population, water shortages, and so on and so forth, all of which are inevitably leading to the “Sixth Extinction.”  (Pointedly, at least pointedly to me, excluded from the list are Permanent War, which now seems to be permanently with us, and the threat of nuclear war/annihilation and its probable successor, nuclear winter [which seems to be making a comeback as a major threat].) 

As I said, the plot is complex and I wasn’t able to follow all of its twists and turns.  In particular, I was confused by the fact that when we first see Tomorrowland, as noted, everything is working beautifully.  But then when we see it again at the end of the movie, as the setting for the de rigeur mano-a-mano that just seems to be an absolute MUST for such movies, between the hero, played by George Clooney, and the villain (who is a villain, but does not for the most part come across as villainous) played by the well-known British character actor Hugh Laurie, it is, while still white, run-down and deserted, with trash blowing all around.  I’m sure that that state of affairs is explained somewhere, but I missed it. 

At any rate, what we do get that appears in very few post-apocalypse movies (which seem to be growing in number every year — wonder why?) is a very uplifting new beginning: a large, very diverse, group of seemingly very bright, very well-educated, very good-looking, young adults are recruited to go forth in the world, show people the positive way, somehow restore Tomorrowland, and then, I guess, spread the good word and the good works, all around the world (that is assuming that indeed the whole world did succumb to climate change, species extinction, environmental degradation, and so-on-and-so forth). 

Tomorrowland and similar works aptly reflect the pervasive sense of impending doom gripping the world, but as works of artistic creativity they also accurately mirror the complete bankruptcy of capitalist culture and the fact the system cannot even conceive of a rational (let alone moral) way out of the crisis it has itself created.

So.  Very positive.  Very upbeat.  Very supposedly uplifting.  Yes, somehow, the Earth and human civilization will be saved, renewed.  BUT, and it’s a very big BUT, neither the principal cause of the decline and fall of civilization nor what would be needed to create a Tomorrowland that could actually work are mentioned, even in passing.  And that cause of course is capitalism, as the principal form of economic organization in the contemporary world.  As has been said many times, the principal goals of the capitalists are the making of profits from capital and the accumulation of ever-increasing amounts of capital with which to make evermore profit.  The ultimate outcome of capitalism, which depends upon the ever-increasing exploitation of both human and natural resources, is its suicide.

Disney, of course, can, and could, have none of this.  Which is what, ultimately, makes this movie a fantasy.  The on-coming destruction of the Earth as we know it, which is referred to in the movie, is “cause-less.”  It, apparently, just happens.  As for the reconstruction of the Earth, which is to be achieved by the legions of earnest young people recruited at the end of the film, it is seemingly to be achieved without any system of social organization and with no mention of the resources — physical, organizational, economic, and political — which will/would be needed to achieve the desired end.  To say nothing of the fact, that if this reconstruction were to be tried under capitalism, rather than the alternate form of socio/political/economic organization known as communism, exactly the same outcome would eventually be realized.  And that, of course, is the definition of insanity.

Postscript:  The day after I wrote this column, the following item appeared in The New York Times: “Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements.”  At Disney World, Florida, long-time hi-tech U.S. employees have been replaced by lower cost temporary immigrants, coming in on “H1-B” visas.  The latter were originally intended to be used to bring in foreign workers to fill jobs that cannot otherwise be filled in the U.S.  But of course, these particular jobs were already being held by U.S. workers.  Right here in the Magic Kingdom we can see the true “Tomorrowland” at work: capitalism — and profits — over all.

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Senior Editor, Politics, Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books. In addition to his role with The Greanville Post, he is a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement, a columnist for BuzzFlash@Truthout, a “Trusted Author” for OpEdNews, and the Editorial Director of and a Contributing Author to The Political Junkies for Progressive Democracy.  Dr. Jonas’ latest book is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, http://www.puntopress.com/jonas-the-15-solution-hits-main-distribution/, and available on Amazon.

Selma (2014)

by STEVEN JONAS

Weren’t the valiant, courageous actions of civil rights advocates a triumph for social justice? Did it not lead to further advances in that struggle? And if you are referring to the movie, is it not a triumph as well, getting a film that portrays one of the signal struggles of the Movement during the 60s with such searing honesty, no holds barred in dealing with the “Which side are you on?” question, applied to this event?

Well, yes, the Selma March was a triumph for the civil rights movement. It played a very important role in getting Lyndon Johnson to support what became the Voting Rights Act. It did lead to further advances in that struggle. The movie is a triumph as well, a brilliantly staged and acted docudrama which, among other things, uses the real Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as the setting for the re-creation of the real march that took place across it in 1965.

Ironically enough, the bridge is named for a Confederate Brigadier General, who later, operating out of his law office [!], became the leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in Selma, and then went on to become a U.S. Senator from Alabama. This is particularly ironic in the context of the Voting Rights Act and the struggle to enact it. The Ku Klux Klan was founded very shortly after the end of the civil war by an association of ex-Confederate generals, planters, certain Democratic politicians, and other white leadership who wanted to return the civil society in the South as much as possible to what it had been before the Civil War, with the exception of not having the institution of chattel slavery in place.

MLK with LBJ. Recreating history—truth (l) and simulation (r). How close did the two come in Selma, the film? (Photomontage for Slate Magazine)

One of the principal objectives of the Klan, from the earliest days of its founding, was to prevent the newly freed slaves from exercising the right to vote that had been granted to them by the 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) Amendments to the Constitution. The language of the latter is particularly instructive: “1. the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

But with the power first of the Klan, with the ever-spreading denial of the vote to African-Americans, and then with the institution over a period of some years of what was called the “Jim Crow” laws by the Democratic Party in the South, African-Americans were indeed systematically denied the right to that had being guaranteed to them by the 15th amendment.

The reality that casts a shadow over Selma is that it did not end the struggle for civil and voting rights for people of color in the United States. As I pointed out in recent column, except for the literal abolition of chattel slavery, in terms of its central goals, the South essentially won the Civil War. One the many tragedies of Selma is that one of the two major U.S. political parties still runs in part on racism, just as the old Southern Democratic Party of the time did. The story of how Nixon took the “Southern Strategy” that had been originally invented, but not in a formal way, by Barry Goldwater, and broadly implemented it for the GOP, and how Ronald Reagan cemented it in place need not be re-told here.

Indeed it is also a tragedy that the Voting Rights Act for which so many whites and African-Americans had fought so hard for so many years has been recently been gutted by the Republican Supreme Court. (That is the same Republican Court that may be on its way to gutting the Fair Housing Act as well.) It is a tragedy that indeed Martin Luther King’s words 50 years ago, about segregation and discrimination, about racism, about the lack of economic justice for non-whites (and now, of course, increasingly for many whites as well) still, as the Southern Poverty Law Center points out, cry out for justice to this day. Dr. King’s vision of a civil rights-labor alliance, which has never been achieved, echo down to us today as well. It is a tragedy that off-duty black police officers need to fear white cops just as black young men who “don’t look right,” like New York Times columnist Charles Blows’ son at Yale, do.

It is a tragedy that voter suppression, aimed at African-Americans and other population groups who tend to vote for Democrats, has become an official policy of the Republican Party, under the guise of “battling voter fraud” (which happens to be virtually non-existent, and even if it weren’t could easily be dealt with by offering free, easy-to-obtain voter ID cards). It is a tragedy that lynching, a major tool of black-suppression in the Jim Crow South, which was dying out by the time of “Selma,” has returned to this country in the form of white police officers killing black young men at an astounding rate.

Now let us turn briefly to Selma, the movie. First, of course is the fact that when it came to Academy Award nominations (not the awards themselves), while the movie itself did receive one for Best Picture, the Director, Ava DuVernay, and the lead actor, David Yellow, who had received awards and nominations elsewhere were completely shut out. That is itself a legacy of racism, given the excellence of the film.

Second, in much of the mainstream media discussion of the issues of the movie and how the primary ones remain with us down to this very day because of the policies and politics of one of our two leading parties, got glossed over. They were actually submerged, is more like it, by the flap over whether or not the movie and its writers/director gave credit where credit was due to the role of Lyndon Johnson in bringing forth the Voting rights Act and was a fair representation of the relationship between the President and Doctor King. To me, as my regular readers will know well, this is largely irrelevant. Where exactly LBJ was in the time-line pales before the fact that he did bring the Voting rights Act forward, that he did send federal troops to defend the Selma marchers against the local police/sheriffs. And that he did stand down the racists J. Edgar Hoover and George Wallace.

The bottom line, which really has been lost, is that the South did win the Civil War and one of our two major political parties runs openly and shamelessly on racism (as well as religious authoritarianism and the demonization of various “others”). These are two of the major issues facing this country now just as they were back at the time of Selma. That is the principal tragedy of the movie.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior Editor Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books. In addition to being a columnist for The Greanville Post, he also serves in the same capacity at BuzzFlash/Truthout (http://www.buzzflash.com, http://www.truth-out.org/), and he is the Managing Editor of and a Contributing Author to TPJmagazine.net.

American Sniper: History and Jingoism

by Steven Jonas

American Sniper has stirred up the Right (see Fox ”News” and etc.) and it has stirred up the Left. The Right sees the movie as one about a “patriotic American,” “doing his duty to protect our country and the freedoms it stands for.” The Right sees any critic of the film, as a commie, as a traitor, as “un-American,” if not “un-Christian” (for after all, sniper Chris Kyle was fighting the Muslims, wasn’t he?) The Left, and of course I include myself in that group, see the movie in much more complex, much starker terms, which I shall address.

In terms of the standard Right-wing propaganda lines, oddly enough, Kyle didn’t see himself as “fighting to protect the American way of life” at all. Rather, when asked a direct question on a Fox ”News” show, he said that he did what he did in order to protect his buddies. Then, there is the well-discussed historical fallacy that the Iraq War had anything to do with 9/11. The old canard that a representative of Saddam Hussein’s government went to Prague, Czech Republic, to meet with a representative from al Qaeda and that meant that they were hooking up has long since been disposed of as a unproven and unlikely rumor. Do you really think that a secular Hussein, already facing strong threats from the United States, would have formed an alliance with a religiously-based terror organization that had originally been formed in Afghanistan by the same United States? The historical distortions are a minor tragedy, but a tragedy nevertheless.

Then there are the questions that have been raised about the movie’s definition of heroism. There was a great 2001 film about the Battle of Stalingrad (one of very few US films about the Soviet role in winning World War II) called Enemy at the Gates. The hero is a Red Army sniper. The villain is a Wehrmacht sniper. But hero/villain depends very much whose side you are on, doesn’t it? It’s whose side he is on. To many U.S., he’s a hero, but a sniper on the other side he would a wicked villain, killing people with abandon.

Much more importantly, this film can be used to revive the whole argument about the invasion of Iraq, why it was done, what it has cost the U.S. in casualties, money spent, and major disruptions of our society (most of which go unnoticed), and the much, much higher toll of Iraqi dead, injured, and made refugees. What we are seeing now in terms of the turmoil of the Middle East, which was unleashed by the U.S./U.K. invasion. This is one of the major tragedies of our era. We need to re-visit the ultimate villains of the piece, the Bush/Cheney alliance and the people who worked for them. We need to revisit how the Bush/Cheneydrive to create permanent war, which was much more important to them than the drive for oil and bases, has put our nation into the perilous state in which it finds itself, and use the film to help us do that.

Then, another tragedy was of course that while Kyle was an operative, he was also a victim. He suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (who wouldn’t, having gone through what he went through, under orders) as did the vet who eventually murdered him. A majority of the vets of Iraq/Afghanistan suffer from some degree of diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD. The suicide rateamong them is remarkable, about 22 per day.

Finally, we should be saying to the Right, “what are you so excited about?” Despite the killing of service members like Kyle, the Middle East is a mess and the U.S. is in the middle of it. Should we really listen to the McCains and the Grahams who, though they won’t say it out loud, really think that the solution is “put more boots on the ground?” After all, before the 2008 elections, and after Bush was forced by the Iraqi government into negotiatingthe eventual U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, McCain was saying that the U.S. should stay there “for a hundred years.” If the U.S. should be “strong,” should be “tough,” just what is it that you on the Right have in mind, other than slogans? Where is the money going to come from? How are you going to convince the majority of U.S. people that it is in the U.S. national interest to go to war on the ground in the Middle East once again? And how many more Kyles and their murderers at home, how many more tragedies do you want to create? How many more people glorified for killing people from a safe, secure perch?

Finally, this is a movie designed to make certain U.S. feel good about the War on Iraq, based on the false idea that it was in response to 9/11 and that, as Kyle was recorded as saying in the movie, the Iraqis are “savages.”  Is it not a tragedy that it has become the best-selling war movie of all time?  Another victory for Cheney/Bush and their War to End All Peace.

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Postscript:  This column drew an unusual number of comments for one of mine, almost all supportive, and many adding important additional perspectives.  If you would like to see them, please go to the published column at:http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/the-american-sniper-takes-a-shot-at-history-and-turns-it-into-deadly-jingois

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This is Dr. Jonas’ Commentary No. 304 for BuzzFlash@ Truthout. Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books. In addition to being a columnist for BuzzFlash@Truthout he is the Editorial Director of and a Contributing Author to The Political Junkies for Progressive Democracy (http://thepoliticaljunkies.org/), and a Senior Editor, Politics, for The Greanville Post, (http://www.greanvillepost.com/). Dr. Jonas’ latest book is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013,http://www.puntopress.com/jonas-the-15-solution-hits-main-distribution/, and available on Amazon.

Torture and the U.S. Constitution

Why “Torture Doesn’t Work” Doesn’t Work, Part 1: Torture and the U.S. Constitution

By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

URL: http://www.planetarymovement.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=915&Itemid=58

As the world that is interested in such matters knows, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee finally released the (redacted) 524-page Executive Summary of its 6000-page report on torture and the CIA. It is entitled: “Panel Faults C.I.A. Over Brutality and Deceit in Terrorism Interrogations.”   But even just the Executive Summary presents a huge amount of horrifying detail about the program. (I need not detail it here; it and a huge amount of commentary has already appeared in The Times and many other news sources, print, electronic and other.  A particularly useful historical analysis has appeared on The Greanville Post.)

 

It happens that a good deal of the information contained in the report has been known, in relative bits and pieces, for quite some time.  What the Senate Committee has done is assemble a huge amount of material in one place, and then put their imprimatur on the information, which it has been collecting in sometimes gruesome detail over the past six years.  The most important conclusion to come away with in examining the Report is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s major finding about the CIA’s torture program:  that is was bad because it didn’t work.  And they produced huge mountains of evidence to support that claim. 

 

The Republicans, who for some time refused to participate in the work of the Committee have reacted in horror, not at the details of the torture itself and the catalog of CIA cover-ups, incompetence, disorganization, amateurism, and what-have-you, but at the fact that they have all been made public.  Most importantly, despite the fact that the Senate Committee assembled an overwhelming amount of evidence, and despite the fact that the Republicans did not avail themselves of it, they claimed that torture does work, in intelligence gathering, and then on, as they so often do, to try to change the subject.  Consider:  “Many Republicans have said that the report is an attempt to smear both the C.I.A. and the Bush White House, and that the report cherry-picked information to support a claim that the C.I.A.’s detention program yielded no valuable information. Former C.I.A. officials quickly began a well-prepared and vigorous public campaign to dispute the report’s findings.”

 

Of course the torturer-in-chief, Dick Cheney, went bananas over the report’s release.  He argues both that torture works and then (oops!) that what was done wasn’t torture anyway.  So he, and all of his GOP and other cheerleaders, first try to deny reality (just as they do on so many issues, from global warming to racism) and then if that doesn’t work, get the argument onto definitions.  Cheney has also famously said that whatever what was done is or isn’t torture, a), he would authorize it all over again, and b) even if innocent people were picked up and put into the program, that really didn’t matter in the pursuit of its overall goals.  Interestingly enough, I did not hear of anyone asking him, if what the Senate Committee defined as torture wasn’t, what would he define as torture and would he authorize its use if he thought circumstances warranted that intervention.

Demonstrating his complete lack of knowledge of human anatomy and physiology Cheney even claimed that “rectal feeding” was OK, if done for “medical reasons.”  Note to the former Vice-President: the colon a) is not a digestive organ, b) as a physician for over 50 years, I have never heard forced ramming of food into the rectum described as a medical therapy.  Of course if Yoo and Bybee (who defined what the CIA was doing as not torture) were quack physicians instead of quack lawyers they might well have defined “rectal feeding” as a “medical therapy.”   Andy Borowitz tells us (WARNING, satire) that to, in his terms, properly deal with the subject, Cheney has even called for an international ban on the issuance of reports on the use of torture.  Nevertheless, despite what Cheney and his fellow cheer-leaders have said, we know that the CIA has done some very bad things (bad, that is, if you think that torture is bad), fully justified by the Bush Administration.  Indeed, even though the Committee said that it wasn’t, we know, as directly confirmed by Cheney himself, that the program was fully authorized by the Bush Administration.

However, and it’s a big however, the Senate Committee’s whole premise is that: the program was bad because it didn’t work.  Which raises the question: would they have concluded that torture was OK if it had produced useful intelligence?  Uh-oh and Oh my.  If Cheney et al were/are right about the utility of torture, at least as practiced by the CIA, then the Committee’s whole argument against it collapses in a heap.  Indeed by focusing primarily on “torture doesn’t work” for its primary criticism of the program, the Senate Intelligence Committee has let the Republicans and the Right-wing generally off the hook.  For they can simply come back, as they are, as noted, doing vociferously, saying “yes it does.”

The argument should have been based on “it’s wrong,” more importantly, that it violates both domestic and international law, and, most importantly, violates the U.S. Constitution.  The use of torture by U.S. agencies is clearly prohibited by various Federal statutes.   But the central issue here is the violation of Constitutional law.  The use of torture by any signatory to them is found in the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture.  The United States is a party to both, and both are signed and ratified U.S. international treaties.  But before considering the Constitutional question, let us consider just what “torture” is, in anybody’s terms other than Cheney’s et al.

The authors of the Geneva Conventions just assumed that everyone “knows” what torture is; they didn’t bother to define it any detail.  The UN Convention defines it in general terms as “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession . . .”   By exclusion, the U.S. Army Field Manual is rather explicit about it.  The Bush Administration’s quack law firm, Bybee and Yoo, tried to define their way out of the quagmire, that “finding” being what Cheney (who probably dictated it to them, or perhaps it was his hatchet man Addington) falls back on.  But no one outside of themselves and the US Right would agree that what was done to numbers of prisoners of the US was not torture.  And the Senate Committee has certainly concluded that it was and uses the term “torture” over-and-over again.

But then comes the truly inconvenient truth that the use of torture by US authorities is simply unconstitutional. Under article VI of the U.S. Constitution, as treaties signed and ratified by the U.S. government, both Conventions are part of “the supreme law of the land and [further] the judges of every state shall be bound by them.”  This, and its illegality under various U.S. statutes and Codes, are the only arguments that one can make against the use of torture by US agencies that can withstand the “but it works” argument, even if the latter were true.  Thus, torture both doesn’t work and is unconstitutional as well as illegal.

The CIA surely knew the first: they haven’t been able to come up with even one provable example of its effectiveness.  (Further, it should be noted that during the Clinton Administration two attempted terrorist attacks that would have produce much larger death tolls even than 9/11 were thwarted, presumably through the use of conventional intelligence/interrogation techniques. The first was the 1998 “25 airliners” plot and the second was “Millennium Bomb Plot” against Los Angeles International Airport.  This was done apparently without using one torturous twitch.)  But the bottom line is that the use of torture by any U.S. agency is unconstitutional, and that, not “it doesn’t work,” is where the argument against such use should start.  Indeed, “it doesn’t work” just doesn’t work in the battle to ban the use of torture by the US government, which, as it happens, may well be renewed if the next President is a Republican.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Conflict’s in the genes: The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The Greanville Post

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes can be viewed on a number of different levels, possibly not all of them present in the minds of its makers.  First, it can be viewed as a remarkable achievement in high-tech/special effects movie-making.  It is one thing to see Andrew Serkis motion-captured as the chimpanzee leader Caesar, who becomes totally convincing (no masks here) and conversant in at least three languages: Simian sign language, human sign language (apparently), and English.  (Being in California he may also speak some Spanish, but we do not have the opportunity to find that out).  But it is quite another to see literally a multitude of totally life-like chimpanzees engaged in big-game hunting or swinging through the trees on their way to an engagement with a group of surviving Homo sapiens holed up in downtown San Francisco.

Second, it can be seen as a fairly conventional action-adventure movie, man vs. man-like ape, the latter being originally a lab creation of the former.  (By the way, in terms of the story-line, except for a few names and superficial identities, the current “Planet of the Apes” series has nothing to do with the [original 1968 film] directed by Franklin J. Schaffer, with the screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, that was based on the 1963 French novel La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulle, and starred Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, and the most appealing Kim Hunter, or its then-successors.)  

Third, it can be seen as a morality play, with a guess-which-group lives to a higher moral standard theme.  Fourth, it can be seen as an essay in paleo-anthropology, which is how I have come to see it.

A group of Simians and a group of Homo sapiens are survivors of a world-wide, highly fatal infectious disease epidemic which the humans conveniently name the “Simian flu.”  That it has nothing to do with the Simian population but rather was created in a Homo sapiens lab ([the recent CDC anthrax-smallpox episode], anyone?) is of course a product of the Homo sapiens media naming it the “Simian flu,” but what else is new?

The Simian population consists primarily of chimpanzees with few gorillas and one rather intelligent orangutan thrown in (the latter possibly being a throw-back to the Dr. Zaius character of the original).  They lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a communal setting.  While they have one acknowledged political leader, Caesar, no one appears to have either a) any control over the hunting-gathering processes or b) any material advantages over anyone else.  They also appear to not engage in inter-Simian violence, as a routine.  When one episode of that sort occurs, an attack on Caesar, when the latter wins he condemns the perpetrator to death. Before he does so Caesar pronounces the profound words: “You are not an ape.”

The Homo sapiens population is classically Homo sapiens.  They have guns aplenty and with few exceptions are ready to use them at a moment’s notice.  Violence, against other species and within their own, is commonplace and for the most part fully accepted.  This characteristic doesn’t show up in this particular scenario, because there are so few of them left (having somehow acquired immunity to the disease).  But they are members of one of the very few species of animal on the planet that slaughters each other in numbers that have grown ever larger in the brief period of time that the species has existed in its so-called “civilized” mode of organization.  They are devious, both with each other and with the Simians.  Unlike the Simians, the Homo sapiens cannot exist for very long without converting one or more elements that they find in their environment into one or more goods and services.  It is the struggle of the Homo sapiens to get to an abandoned dam that lies to the north of where the Simians live so that they can have electrical power that forms the basis of the plot-line.  They are about to run out of power as the fuel supply for their generators runs out.

So the fundamental conflict in the movie is between an apparently egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers, which among other things rejects the use of use of intra-species violence, and the classic Homo sapiens society.  There is no historical indication that if the latter would somehow manage to survive, it would not eventually revert to its economically hierarchical organization based on intra-species violence.  Why?  Because [as I have discussed elsewhere], what has happened in Homo sapiens history is that the ownership means of production that converts elements found in the environment into the goods and services that Homo sapiens needs/uses for survival has been in private hands.  And it is that mode of ownership that eventually leads to violence within and between societies on a larger and larger scale.

I said in the introduction to this column that the movie could be seen as a parable of the conflict that took place tens of thousands of years ago, between the Homo species that we call “Neanderthal” and our own.  [By the way, that name comes from the name of the valley in Germany where the original fossils of that species were found, the Valley (“thal” in German) of the German river “Neander.”)]  It will be fascinating to see where the movie series goes with this one.  And oh yes, the next sequel is set up at the end of the film.

There will eventually be a sequel to this column as well, dealing with three questions. 

A) Apparently Homo sapiens and Neanderthals co-existed for tens of thousands of years.  Is there evidence that the former killed off the latter over time, or did the former succeed them, simply through better adaptation to the shared environment over time? 

B) Is there a gene or genes for intra-species violence in Homo sapiens that exists in few other species?  (If they are to survive, all animal species need to have one or more violence genes directing activities at one or more other species.) 

C) If Homo sapiens does have one or more intra-species survival genes is it selected for by the organization of Homo sapien communities around the private ownership of the means of production?  A consideration of these questions will not be appearing your local theater any time soon.

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Greanville Post Senior Contributing Editor Steven Jonas, the polymathic author of this article, has published hundreds of essays on politics, history, culture, health and economics, and penned more than 30 books.  His essays normally appear on many venues on the web, including the leading political sites. Dr. Jonas’ latest book is The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A futuristic Novel, Brewster, NY, Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, and available on Amazon.

The City of Conversation: Remembrances by Steve Jonas

The City of Conversation: Remembrances by Steve Jonas

May 28, 2014 The Planetary Movement My wife and I recently saw a new play entitled “The City of Conversation,” at the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York City.  The play is centered on the adult life of a once-famous “Washington Hostess,” a power-broker of sorts for whom there were several real-life models.  In the days before the Reagan/Gingrich/Tea Party GOP, when there was true give-and-take between the Democrats and Republicans, on some level at least, these women played an important role in bringing leading members of both parties together for informal negotiations, out of the public eye.  The brilliance of the play is that it intertwines public and personal lives, the political and the emotional, and how they interact, in this particular telling leading to no good outcomes on the latter side.  Historically, in three acts, it is set in 1979, 1987 and 2009.  But it does reach back to the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon era as well. This column is not a review.  It is rather a collection of some of the remembrances that I had during the play, which covers the period of my adult political life.  Some are related directly to the substance of the play; many are not, but the play brought them up into my consciousness.  And so let me share some of them with you. There was President Kennedy’s little-remembered “American University” speech of June, 1963.  In it he essentially proposed taking Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev up on his earlier proposal to try “Peaceful Co-existence” as the basis for relations between the US and the USSR.  With that speech, perhaps even more than with his not-too-well hidden intent to withdraw US forces from Viet Nam after the 1964, JFK signed his own death warrant. Many of us who fought hard against the War on Viet Nam from the beginning of the escalation (I was marching in 1965 when people would come up on the street and ask “what’s the Viet Nam War?”), wondered just why it was that LBJ gave up on the Great Society, only to get sucked into the “Big Muddy.”  Had he not, he would have gone down in US history as one of the greatest Presidents of all time.  Only recently did a Johnson tape come to light in which he offered his prime reason: He was afraid that if he didn’t escalate, the Republicans would call him a “commie.”  And we are still living with the droppings of the Era of McCarthyism. Just before the 1968 election, the Democratic candidate, Sen. Hubert Humphrey wanted to declare that he would end the Vietnam War right after election, just as Dwight D. Eisenhower had done with the Korean War. For reasons that have never been clear, the by-then totally lame-duck Johnson told him, “No!” and for equally unclear reasons Humphrey listened to him.  In the meantime, the GOP candidate Richard Nixon was secretly negotiating with the right-wing South Viet Namese government which Johnson was trying to steer towards a settlement at the “Paris Peace Talks” to scuttle these talks (which they did).  Johnson knew about the treason but decided to do nothing with the information. Sen.  George McGovern’s 1972 Democratic candidacy, featuring the slogan “Bring America Home,” was doomed from the start when the right-wing Democratic establishment, the predecessors of the Democratic Leadership Council, led by Washington State’s Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the “Senator from Boeing,” refused to support him.  McGovern was portrayed by Nixon as a weak-kneed, lily-livered liberal.  Not once did George McGovern, whom I later came to know (he wrote the Foreword to my first political book, The New Americanism) ever mention that during World War II, when Nixon had a nice desk job in the US Navy, McGovern, was flying 35 missions (volunteering for an extra 10 over the required 25) piloting one of the “flying coffins” (because it was so difficult to escape from when hit by enemy fire) B-24 bombers.  George, who had survived the famous Second Ploesti Raid (Romanian oil fields, vital to the Nazi war effort), didn’t have a chance. On Nixon, I recall that when in 1972 I saw the first article in the New York Times about the Watergate break-in (front page, but a single column, “below the fold”), at which time there was not the least hint that Nixon had anything to do with it, having known of “Tricky Dick” as he used to be called, since he ran his first red-baiting campaign against the unsuspecting California Congressman Jerry Voorhis in 1946.  I said to myself, “Nixon’s behind this one.” Ronald Reagan, counseled by the famous political consultant Lee Atwaterbrought racism into the mainstream of Republican politics.  In March, 1980, he symbolically opened his Presidential primary campaign in the tiny town of Philadelphia, MS.  It just happened to be the site of the murder of the three civil rights workers during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964 (one of whom, Andy Goodman, I had known a bit at high school). Reagan also was the first to make abortion rights a political issue.  Starting down that track from the beginning, he made the resignations of George and Barbara Bush from their long-time Board memberships with Texas Planned Parenthood a condition of giving the Vice-Presidential nomination to Bush.  On energy policy, one of Reagan’s first acts as President was to shut down, on January 21, 1981, the Federally-funded alternative energy research program that President Carter had started, as well as ordering the removal of the solar panels that the former president installed on the roof of the White House.  The Global Warming Denial Movement is a direct descendant of the Reagan Presidency.   Just imagine where this country could have been in the alternative energy technology movement had that program stayed in place.  But Big Oil was as much behind Reagan as it is behind the present whole of the GOP/TP. And oh yes, in the 1980 election Reagan’s victory was called a “Landslide.”  Actually, he got 50% of the vote, Jimmy Carter got 43% and a third party candidate (for whom I had worked), former Congressman John Anderson, got 7%. On “Iran-Contra,” during his Presidency Reagan broke the law by supporting the right-wing rebels in Nicaragua, such support being specifically prohibited by an Act of Congress.  (He also broke the law by secretly dealing with the Iranian “terrorists,” with whom, during the 1980 Presidential Campaign, much like Nixon he committed treason by bargaining with them not to release the US Embassy hostages until after the Presidential election, thus making sure that Carter would continue to be saddled with the continuing crisis.)  “Iran-Contra” eventually got to a joint Congressional Committee.  Ted Kennedy and other liberals were kept off the Committee by Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, the Democratic fixer for the GOP, who would in the future play a similar role on the “9/11 Commission.”  It is interesting to note that current Democratic “fixer,” Cong. Steney Hoyer, has arranged to keep such liberal lights as Cong. Alan Grayson off the newly minted House “Benghazi” (Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi) Committee.  Hamilton also arranged for Col. Oliver North, who was at the center of the Iran-Contra plot, to be given Congressional immunity.  Otherwise, he would have been forced to take the Fifth, which likely would have rightly led to Reagan’s impeachment. The appearance of two gay men in the third act of the play (2009) made me think back to the first AIDS Crisis, which broke about in the middle of the Reagan Presidency.  Reagan, so strongly indebted politically as he was to the “Revs.” Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who had immediately labelled AIDS as, “God’s punishment for the sins of homosexuality,” of course Reagan had known many gays during his days in Hollywood, including the “Male Archetype” Rock Hudson, who happened to have been one of the early victims of the dread disease, couldn’t bring himself to mention the word (AIDS) for more than two years after it had been coined. Finally, you might ask, why so many negative memories and so many that feature Republicans and Ronald Reagan.  Only because it is the Republicans,and the policies with which they have been running our country, whether in the majority in Washington or not, and gradually running it into the ground, for the bulk of my adult life.  And, it was Ronald Reagan, the “failed B-movie actor,” as he is described by the leading liberal at the beginning of the play, who set the pattern on so many levels for what the Republican Party and our nation have become today. Yes indeed, Sean, “What would Reagan do?”  One only has to look at the record.