Category Archives: Tyranny

For June 14: Don’t Miss This Big Chance to Find Allies Among the Troops (We Need Them.)

This “billboard” is meant to be the first of a series in the runup to the June 14 “NO KINGS” protests.

The strategy of the series is to widen the gap between Trump-Hegseth (TH) and many troops, and remind them (and others watching) that their oath is to defund the Constitution (not a wannabe monarch). It also will remind them that domestic deployments (sending troops against U. S. Citizens here in the “homeland”) is both illegal AND a very REAL threat under rule by TH. (The troops have been taught this.)

This approach is based on my eleven years as Director of Quaker House in North Carolina, near Fort Bragg/Liberty. There we counseled dissident troops, and organized well over 150 peace protests, large & small, in the midst of one of the biggest military communities.

In our work we learned early on that to get our messages across, it was CRITICAL that our public witness constantly express “support” and respect for the troops, even while rejecting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

We were surrounded by many troops and veterans who had been brainwashed by Fox News etc. to believe we hated and looked down on soldiers (which we did NOT), and were atheist commies, etc. which we also weren’t.

(Sorry, lefties.)

Just in case you think I’m exaggerating about the attempts to smear us as “troop-haters & Commies”; this was in Smithfield NC, in October 2007.

We DID “support” them, in our Quaker ways, as persons of conscience, many of whom had moral questions about the war and military culture. We worked to help them clarify their personal moral convictions (if they asked), privately and for free. We didn’t try to make them Quakers or pacifists.

The efforts to push us and our work into a polarized frame never stopped (and this was years before MAGA appeared). And our “Yes to the Troops/No to the Wars” pushback was just as steadfast.

It paid off. In the first two years of the Iraq invasion, our vigils in downtown Fayetteville often drew catcalls and one-finger salutes. But then, with the war bogged down and casualties kept mounting, morale shifted and we began to get thumbs up, and even an occasional cheer.

As the war’s cost climbed ever higher, our “Yes to the troops” became more credible, as we weren’t locked into a polarized frame.

In 2025, there are many issues facing conscientious servicemembers. Some surfaced at the West Point commencement last month. While the big media didn’t notice, the thousand graduating cadets watched and listened as West Point Superintendent General Steven Gilland subtly but fiercely denounced Trump’s character to his face as utterly beyond the pale of every section of the academy’s strict honor code. The sitting  Commander in Chief would have been booted out of West Point with the first of his multitude of indictments; along with his skeezy Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth (who didn’t even show up).

Hegseth taking aim

But these two “leaders” are also the pair who seem determined to loose the military on the American citizenry, in defiance of the law and the oath those thousand cadets took to defend, not a president but the Constitution.

 Hegseth published an entire book about his fixed vision of a real medieval-style crusade to “annihilate” the enemies within (mostly, besides migrants, that would be us).

If that dire push should come to shove, will there be a significant portion of the officer corps and troops who will stand by their oath in the crunch? In real life, coups fail if they don’t keep control of the national military.

Those of us who will be protesting Trump’s vanity parade are more than spectators (or targets): we can evade the ginned-up polarization and appeal to the best in the uniformed ranks. Sure, the military tends to be more conservative than the general population, and extremists are hard at work recruiting there.

But that’s not the end of the story. How we communicate with them could make a difference, maybe a key difference.

Our motto at Quaker House can be adjusted: NO To The COUP.  Remember Your Oath. Defend The Constitution. NO To Domestic Deployments.

I have more sign ideas, and will add some soon.

But if you’re on board, you write the next ones. And pass this on.

pVb/h June 14 will be here quick. Get ready. I’ll catch up.

Washington Post: More In Sorrow, But With PLENTY of Anger

 

 

 

NOTE: “Corruptio optimi pessima” = Corruption of the best is the worst of all.

I can’t remember when I started reading the Washington Post. I was following it through the Watergate years, but was a mostly broke rookie trying to find my footing as a writer to afford a subscription. By the early ‘80s, though, when I lived inside the Beltway, it was slapped down outside my front door every morning. After detours in Pennsylvania and then a move into North Carolina, I became a regular again. I was not an early adopter of the digital edition, but soon got used to it.

When Bezos killed the Harris endorsement, I didn’t like it, but mostly shrugged. After forty years as a working writer, I knew that endorsements rarely move the needle and  understood the Golden Rule of Journalism (& the rest of corporate America): Them With the Gold Make (& Break) the Rules. I was more upset by watching the once-titanic paper shrink and shrivel with the wasting disease of internet competition.

But now we’ve turned the page into the wilderness of Project 2025, and anyone can see its progress, like a rapidly-metastasizing tumor. The Post’s bending of the knee is tragically just about on schedule.

There are other news sources, mainly in the half-underground of Substack. But the loss of the Post is gall and wormwood, a bitter pill.

And not the last one.

Yikes!! AI Is Coming for My JOB — Even Though I’m Already Retired!

Tom Edsall writes a very valuable  weekly column in the New York Times, and he’s paid a lot of attention to the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Like other observers, he’s particularly concerned about AI’s developing impact on jobs and society, present and future.

In his June 5 column, Edsall picks the brains of several scholars who are delving deeply into these matters. One piece of what he found jerked me upright. Continue reading Yikes!! AI Is Coming for My JOB — Even Though I’m Already Retired!

Tiananmen Square, China: Remember

CNN: Tiananmen Square timeline

April 15, 1989 – Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader, dies. Hu had worked to move China toward a more open political system and had become a symbol of democratic reform.

April 18, 1989 – Thousands of mourning students march through the capital to Tiananmen Square, calling for a more democratic government. In the weeks that follow, thousands of people join the students in the square to protest against China’s Communist rulers.

May 13, 1989 – More than 100 students begin a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. The number increases to several thousand over the next few days.

May 19, 1989 – A rally at Tiananmen Square draws an estimated 1.2 million people. General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, appears at the rally and pleads for an end to the demonstrations.

May 19, 1989 – Premier Li Peng imposes martial law.

June 1, 1989 – China halts live American news telecasts in Beijing, including CNN. Reporters are prohibited from photographing or videotaping any of the demonstrations or Chinese troops.

June 2, 1989 – A reported 100,000 people attend a concert in Tiananmen Square by singer Hou Dejian, in support of the demonstrators.

June 4, 1989 – At about 1 a.m., Chinese troops reach Tiananmen Square. Throughout the day, Chinese troops fire on civilians and students, ending the demonstrations. An official death toll has never been released.

June 5, 1989 – An unidentified man stands alone in the street, blocking a column of Chinese tanks. He remains there for several minutes before being pulled away by onlookers.

History.com

Tiananmen Square History

While the events of 1989 now dominate global coverage of Tiananmen Square, the site has long been an important crossroads within the city of Beijing. It was named for the nearby Tiananmen, or “Gate of Heavenly Peace,” and marks the entrance to the so-called Forbidden City. The location took on added significance as China shifted from an emperor-led political culture to one that was governed by the Communist Party. . . .

On the 20th anniversary of the massacre [June 2009], the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.

Still, thousands attended a memorial vigil in honor of the anniversary in Hong Kong. Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the event, in 2019, New York-based Human Rights Watch published a report detailing reported arrests in China of those associated with the protests.

The 1989 events at Tiananmen Square have also been highly censored on China’s tightly-controlled internet. According to a survey released in 2019 by the University of Toronto and the University of Hong Kong, more than 3,200 words referencing the massacre had been censored.

Tiananmen Square Censorship

It wasn’t until 2006 that Yu Dongyue, a journalist arrested for throwing paint at a portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square during the protests, was released from prison.

On the 20th anniversary of the massacre [2009], the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.

A famous statue at the University of Hong Kong marking the Tiananmen Square massacre was removed late on Wednesday [December 22, 2021].

The statue showed piled-up corpses to commemorate the hundreds – possibly thousands – of pro-democracy protesters killed by Chinese authorities in 1989.

The “Pillar of Shame” Tiananmen Memorial at Hong Kong University – officials removed it in December 2021

It was one of the few remaining public memorials in Hong Kong commemorating the incident.

Its removal comes as Beijing has increasingly been cracking down on political dissent in Hong Kong.

The city used to be one of few places in China that allowed public commemoration of the Tiananmen Square protests – a highly sensitive topic in the country. . . .

“The dissident Fang Lizhi, holed up at the United States Embassy in Beijing, in 1990, to avoid arrest after the Tiananmen crackdown, composed an essay titled “The Chinese Amnesia.”

“About once each decade, the true face of history is thoroughly erased from the memory of Chinese society,” he wrote . . . .

“This is the objective of the Chinese Communist policy of Forgetting History. In an effort to coerce all of society into a continuing forgetfulness, the policy requires that any detail of history that is not in the interests of the Chinese Communists cannot be expressed in any speech, book, document, or other medium.”

New Yorker, 10/02/23