A larger-than-usual crowd in really cold weather to protest Senator Fetterman’s position on the war in Gaza. On December 4th, Amnesty International concluded Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. This follows several other organizations concluding the same thing, but okay. According to AP, Trump won Pennsylvania by 50.4%. Harris got 48.7%, Stein (strongly pro-Palestinian) not particularly relevant as she only got 0.5%, so Fetterman is unlikely to come around and support Palestinians.
Our two hosts, Robin and Terry Rumsey with Aly Halpert.
Hamas began the current war with an attack on 7Oct2023 where many Israeli civilians were killed or captured. Israel has long since occupied all of Gaza, but there is still no peace because Israel has no peace plan once territory is occupied, which means the Israel Defence Force has to go back and re-conquer long-since conquered territory. An internationally-recognized Israeli historian is documenting Israel’s many, many war crimes.
And oh yes, many people said they couldn’t possibly vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris because of President Biden’s terrible policies against Palestinians. Hmm, let’s take a look at the policies that President-Elect Trump has promised. From a 2Dec2024 post on his Xitter-like platform, he promises that when he is inaugurated “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY…for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities…” By “atrocities,” he means the attack on Israel by Hamas on 7Oct2023. So yeah, think the phrase is “out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
So why is Trump our President-Elect to begin with? There’s no question that we’re drowning in conspiracy theories. The main difference between the political left and the right is that the right wing has spokespeople like Representative Greene (Democrats are controlling the weather) and Donald Trump (the 2020 election was stolen). There are no such figures on the left, where conspiracy theories die for lack of oxygen (people aren’t repeating or circulating the belief).
George Lakey, a well-known speaker on non-violent revolution.
The Editor of Press Watch, Dan Froomkin, describes the influence of the NY Times and the WaPo as the “engine of the news” as their articles are regularly shared by both newspapers and cable news. The NY Times ran a fact-check piece on some of the crazier policies that Trump plans to impose. They were able to make everyone believe that Hillary Clinton had an email problem during the 2016 campaign and that Joe Biden was really old and unfit to run again in 2024, but they never ran a full-court press on Donald Trump’s unfitness and bizarre, unsubstantiated beliefs.
Music and speeches from demo at Fetterman’s
How do we know that the American people were poorly served by the mainstream media? GOP Business Leaders FAFO (#$@% Around and Find Out) with Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Had the media been doing it’s job, these business leaders might have said “Y’know, it might not be such a good idea to be that drastic on immigration. Maybe we shouldn’t support Trump after all.”
A further advantage of the press paying attention to Trump’s political plans before the election is that Trump plans to deport ALL undocumented immigrants. An interviewer pointed out that there are roughly four million mixed families, some who are undocumented and some who were born here and thus have birthright citizenship. Trump’s answer? Deport them all! Birthright citizenship is treated as an irritant, but as essentially a non-problem. Sure would have been nice to have known that before the election!
I wrote a piece earlier about how Trump and his people want to prosecute military commanders for tactical decisions, and ultimately the decision to withdraw, made in Afghanistan during the first year of Biden’s term. A problem with that is that military law tends to be about civilians and prisoners of war, not about tactical decisions or the sorts of policy decisions made by a Commander-in-Chief. In this case, it would be entirely appropriate for a commander to say “I was just following orders.”
How to explain the appointees that Trump wants to place in various government positions? I regard Trump’s administration as very much taking after the spirit of der Fuhrer:
The Nazi government that followed was a mess of overlapping bureaucracies with no clear areas of control, just influence. The Weimar constitution was never officially repudiated, but the letter of laws became far less important than their interpretation according to the “spirit” of Nazism. In lieu of a rational political order, there was a kind of governing principle that one Nazi party member described as “working towards the Führer”
How do we know that Trump is taking after der Fuhrer when he makes personnel appointments? Well, he nominated Chris Wright to run the Department of Energy. Wright is actively in denial over human-caused climate change. He’s the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, an oilfield services firm, so he has a very clear financial incentive to believe that climate change isn’t a problem. What’s Trump’s excuse? What would be his reason to seek the active degradation of the very existence of humankind?* See the above. Basing any of his views on science means admitting that facts and truth would have a higher authority than he does. Biden, being a regular American politician, doesn’t have a problem with that. Trump, being a person with a fascist belief system, has a serious problem with that!
Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of CodePink.
*Among other things, human-caused climate change doesn’t just mean warmer temperatures, rising oceans and a more furious weather system, it also means a rise in invasive species. “Burmese pythons, Cuban tree frogs and hundreds of additional species” have now been unleashed in Florida due to Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
When we were finished with the outdoor section of the rally, we went to Christ Church and had more music and lunch there.
So Georgia, the land South of the Caucasus Mountains of Russia, North of Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. As of 11Dec2024, the people there have been in full-scale peaceful revolt against their government, which has tried to put off Georgia becoming a member of the EU for an indeterminate number of years.
President Zelenskyy of Ukraine doesn’t believe the West is supporting Georgia enough. Georgians quite typically hold up both Georgian and EU flags. Latest news on the social media site Bluesky for Georgia protests is here. Hope this doesn’t turn out to be another Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968. Hopefully, Russia is so distracted and committed in Ukraine, they have to let Georgia go, just as they recently did with Syria.
Archived Photoessays 
Leave a comment