Jimmy Carter's Legacy

Jimmy Carter’s Legacy

Jim Kavanagh

I was part of the Carter Center’s election observation missions in Palestine (1996 & 2006) and Nigeria (1999), and I met Jimmy Carter personally. He was, in all my interactions with him, a very nice man. He impressed me as sincere in his humanistic Christianity and, above all, in his love and respect for his wife, Rosalynn. There were a lot of problems in the 1996 Palestinian election that caused many of us to urge him not to make a statement flatly endorsing it as “free and fair,” and it was Rosalynn who successfully insisted that he make a more nuanced statement, incorporating our concerns. That relationship with Rosalynn, along with his surprising passion for wild turkey hunting (I mean going on about it at great length and in great detail) certainly humanized him for me.

Of course, personal impressions do not determine political effects. On the occasion of his death, Carter is best known by most Americans for his "post-presidency,” which shines in contrast with the self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement of other ex-presidents.  Foregoing vanity “library” projects and collections of six-figure speaking fees in favor of physical labor for Habit for Humanity, respected international election and health work via the Carter Center (the latter less well-known but central to its mission), speaking forthrightly about Israeli apartheid, and meeting with Palestinian resistance groups like Hamas made him into our most admired ex-president.

His relative honesty about Palestine-Israel is the strongest lingering “political” trait associated with him, and one for which he was shunned by the Democratic Party, including Obama, who forbade him from speaking at the 2008 Democratic convention on the advice of Alan Dershowitz—though you’re not likely to hear that during the liberal mainstream media encomia today. Nor are you likely to hear much about his accurately describing the U.S. as an “oligarchy with unlimited bribery.”

Swallowing Syria

Swallowing Syria
Jim Kavanagh

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the summit of Mt. Hermon in Syria, Dec 17, 2024. (Photo: Screenshot/GPO)

I am finding it very hard to swallow the disaster that has occurred in Syria, or to digest its consequences. It makes me sick.

Though it foresaw the looming disaster, my last article was written just before the flight of Assad and the fall of Damascus, and it was still possible to imagine there might be another out to be played. Well, it’s now, definitely, game over, and there’s no denying who won and who lost. The result is depressing and demoralizing.

To reprise what I said in that article, “If Now that Syria is lost to the Erdogan-sponsored Jihadi forces, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, the Axis of Resistance, and the Palestinian people will have lost something very important, something that cannot be recovered without a…more deadly fight than would have been required to prevent the loss.” Correspondingly, US imperialism, Zionism, and Turkish neo-Ottomanism have won a strategic geopolitical victory that gives them advantages that will be hard to overcome.

Since 2012, I’ve written at least 17 articles about the vicious “multiple, concentric proxy war” the US, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf States (especially Qatar), with their jihadi pawns, have waged to destroy the Syrian state. By 2015, it had become “the most expensive US covert action program in history.” Along with many others, I critiqued and attacked the Axis of Chaos’s arrogant and insouciant destruction of a country and a region, creating hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees, destroying ancient and vibrant cities and towns, replacing secular pluralism with head-chopping takfiri sectarianism—all to eliminate a polity independent of and resistant to U.S. imperialism, Zionist colonialism, and Turkish ambition. I and many others had been glad to see that project interrupted by a Russian intervention, and, even though most of us knew that it was not stopped, we were too complacent about the ongoing destructive effects of the ongoing U.S. occupation and sanctions (per US thug Diana Stroul) and way too complacent about the persistence and armament of the Turkish-controlled jihadi redoubt in Idlib.

Over the last couple of years, many of us focused on the waning hard and soft power of U.S. imperialism in relation to the rising military power of Russia and China and their allied economic bloc in BRICS, as well as to the waning of Zionism’s hard and soft power in relation to the rising power of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Axis of Resistance and in relation to the world’s (especially the world’s youth) rising understanding of the illegitimacy of Zionist colonialism.

All these factors are still true and in play, but we have foolishly underestimated how strong, tenacious, and diverse the Zio-imperialist team is, and we have to recognize that. We didn’t see him as the team slugger, but, in Syria, Erdogan came in and hit a walk-off home run. And we didn’t even know what inning we were in. It’s going to be a long, hard season.

Here’s where we now stand, what we have to accept:

Syria is gone. The “nation” of Syria exists only as a wished-for abstraction; it is no longer, and will never again be, the geopolitical polity that it was. It is now a territory divided into sectarian—ethnic and religious—cantons, with no central administration or military power, subject to the political and military whims of actual states, especially the United States, Israel, and Turkey, who planned and executed that outcome.

The current “leadership” in Syria is comprised of the rebranded Al-Qaeda, now named Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani. As I’m writing, Golani is still a “terrorist” with a USG $10-million-dollar bounty on his head, although he’s also meeting with Western media personalities and cabinet officials, who are frantically rebranding him. Haircut, beard trim, new suit, and even a new name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and voila, the old ISIS/al-Qaeda “terrorist” becomes an internationally respected, diversity-loving, moderate rebel.

In fact, the HTS/al-Golani-al-Sharaa “leadership” controls nothing. Its job, that it’s doing very well, is to stand down and allow Israel to bomb the former country over 800 times to destroy every bit of the former Syria’s military and its research facilities, to take its main water resources,  and to invade, seize, and settle all the former Syrian territory it wants. HTS’s job is to allow its immediate puppet master, Erdogan, to remind the world that, if it weren’t for that pesky World War a hundred years ago, Aleppo and Damascus would be part of Turkey. HTS’s job is to “shift” the former Syria into a full “free-market” economy so that US and European capital can buy up all its assets. And HTS/Golani has no more important job than constantly to proclaim that their new regime has no quarrel with Israel or the West, and will peacefully accommodate whatever the fuck Israel, or Turkey or the US/Blackrock want to do with the corpse of Syria. It makes me sick.

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside
Jim Kavanagh

The sudden jihadi offensive in Syria is a disaster. It is, first of all, a disaster for the Syrian people. It's also a disaster for the Palestinian people, Hezbollah, Iran, and the entire axis of anti-Zionist resistance. And it's a disaster for Russia (and China) and the project of replacing unipolar American hegemony with multipolarity based on a new BRICS-based global political economy.

It's a disaster that challenges all the parties involved to recognize that what they might have more comfortably treated as parallel but separate conflicts are elements of one big, unavoidable war that is going to require new strategies from each and from all of them together—strategies that reconcile the interests of each with the interests of all. If that is possible.

It does no good to downplay the disaster-in-progress in Syria. In short order—what can aptly be called a blitzkrieg—jihadi forces have taken control of Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people and one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world, and Hama, a city of a million people, with—and this is the crucial point—no significant resistance from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

We can comfort ourselves by saying it’s a tactical retreat and the Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi PMU cavalries are on the way. These are potentially formidable forces, and we all saw how Russia and Hezbollah helped the SAA defeat what seemed an unstoppable jihadi offensive from 2011 to 2019.

But, a) “Helped” is the operative word.  The SAA fought like hell during that time, resisting every assault from a panoply of forces supported by the U.S., Israel, NATO, and Gulf monarchies, until Russia and Hezbollah came in and turned the tide. This time, the SAA melted away from two major Syrian cities in a week, despite knowing that the Idlib jihadis were arming up for an offensive. As I write, the jihadis are threatening Homs and have the momentum. There may not be enough time for Russian, and/or Iranian, and/or Iraqi forces to assemble and organize an effective defense, let alone counteroffensive, before Damascus is breached. Something has gone seriously wrong with the SAA, whether complacence, incompetence, and/or corruption (per Alexander Mercouris, who reports that the SAA Aleppo contingent simply defected), and foreign forces cannot replace what was a disciplined, dedicated SAA. If Assad needs an extended commitment of masses of foreign troops (which Russia never supplied) to stop the jihadis, Assad is toast. Russia and Iran can help Syria; turning it into a protectorate of Russia or Iran is another thing entirely.

Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango

 Trump’s Free-Speech Fandango

Jim Kavanagh

So, Donald Trump dropped this fierce speech, promising to “reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans,” prompting an ecstatically joyful reaction from Elon Musk and from RFK, Jr.  who says it makes Trump one of “the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln.”

This alone puts DJT in company with the greatest U.S. presidents since Lincoln. The globalist project has laid siege to democracy and freedom across the globe. The USA is the final redoubt. President Trump just launched freedom’s counterattack. https://t.co/2brXEjTByg

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 9, 2024

 Sorry, it’s a long and necessary quote:

If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country. It's as simple as that. if this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and Liberties will topple just like dominoes. One by one they'll go down.

That's why, today, I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans. And “reclaim” is a very important word in this case, because they've taken it away. In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of Deep-State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people. They have collaborated to suppress vital Information on everything from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed, and it must happen immediately.

And here is my plan: First, within hours of my inauguration I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business, or person to censor, limit, categorize, or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or dis-information, and I will begin the process of identifying and firing every federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship—directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are.

Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new unlined censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible, and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified—these include possible violations of federal civil-rights law, campaign finance laws, federal election law, securities law, and antitrust laws, the Hatch Act and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutional offenses. To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send preservation letters—and we have to do this right now—to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.

Third, upon my inauguration as president. I will ask Congress to send bill to my desk revising section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business from now on. Digital platform should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination. We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism, while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.

Fourth. we need to break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis- and disinformation. The federal government should immediately stop funding all nonprofits and academic programs that support this authoritarian project. If any U.S. university has discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal or blacklisting, those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more. We should also enact new laws laying out clear criminal penalties for federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end run around the Constitution and deprive Americans of their first fourth and fifth amendment rights. In other words, deprive them of their vote. And once you lose those elections, and once you lose your borders, like we have, you no longer have a country.  Furthermore, to confront problems of major platforms being infiltrated by legions of former deep-staters and intelligence officials, there should be a seven-year cooling-off period before any employee of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DNI, DHS, or DOD is allowed to take a job at a company possessing vast quantities of U.S. user data.

Fifth, the time has finally come for Congress to pass a digital Bill of Rights. This should include a right to digital due process. In other words, government officials should need a court order to take down online content, not send information requests such as the FBI was sending to Twitter. Furthermore, when users of big online platforms have their content or accounts removed, throttled, shadowbanned, or otherwise restricted—no matter what name they use—they should have the right to be informed that it's happening, the right to a specific explanation of the reason why. and the right to a timely appeal. In addition, all users over the age of 18 should have the right to opt out of content moderation and curation entirely and receive an unmanipulated stream of information if they so choose. The fight for free speech is a matter of victory or death for America, and for the survival of Western Civilization itself. When I am president, this whole rotten system of censorship and information control will be ripped out of the system at large. There won't be anything left.a By restoring free speech, we’ll begin to reclaim our democracy and save our nation. Thank you, and God bless America.

Though I’m dismayed by the idea that they are “left-wing” political actors, I agree that the Biden administration has engaged in an assault on free speech and the unique protection offered to free speech by the First Amendment. It’s arguably the worst such assault since the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-8.[1] I agree that the Biden administration and the bulk of the Democratic Party and its allied media created a public-private “censorship cartel,” much as Trump describes, that  “must be dismantled and destroyed,” much as Trump describes.

Except, just one little thing my Colombo-Spidey senses notice: “We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism,”

Excuse me while I fire up my eighteen-wheeler to drive through that loophole.

Please harken to what President-elect Trump, no free-speech “absolutist,” tells us in the midst of this militant anti-censorship rant: The Trump administration will require platforms—i.e., demand via legal and financial governmental coercion— to increase their suppression of any content “promoting terrorism.”

“Promoting” is a slippery word that was placed in Trump’s speech about free speech quite deliberately. The context of a discussion of social media platforms makes it clear: Trump is not here saying his administration will require suppression of material acts of terrorism but of speech acts promoting terrorism, which he’s defining, along with “child exploitation,” as “unlawful” and outside the realm of free speech.

Is there anybody on planet Earth who does not see exactly what is going to happen? “Promoting terrorism” will replace “misinformation” as the free-speech, First-Amendment exception, the rationale for more government-mandated censorship in the realm of political speech and expression, not less. At least in any of the many corners of the discursive universe where the word “terrorism” might be conjured up. And guess where, above all, that most definitely will be? You have one guess.

What Trump Teaches, Again

 What Trump Teaches, Again

Jim Kavanagh

 

It happened, again.

After the Trump victory in 2016, I wrote an essay with the title, “Ship of Fools: What Trump Teaches” and it’s the basis for what I’ll say here, with appropriate updates and additions. See the original for a fuller analysis.

As in 2016, except worse, Donald Trump won the presidential election because of the rage of working people—of all colors and genders—over the Democratic party and administration’s failure to substantially improve the material conditions of their lives.

Working people were fed up with watching the party that claims to represent their interests allow their material conditions to worsen, even as that party lavishes attention and resources on foreign wars for “democracy” and domestic programs for “inclusion” while castigating them for not being woke enough to embrace those virtues that don’t pay the rent.

David Axelrod, an architect of the problem, described it nicely on election night on CNN: “The Democratic Party has become more of a suburban, college-educated, professional party and it still feels allegiance to working…But it approaches working people like missionaries or like Margaret Mead would approach the natives.”

Well, the natives are restless. “Democracy” means people having and exercising power. They just did. And the missionaries just got cooked. 

I really hate to say it, but even conservative commentator David Brooks can see the problem. His latest NYT op-ed, “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?” has a slew of cogent zingers like: “As the left veered toward identitarian performance art, Donald Trump jumped into the class war with both feet…His message was simple: These people have betrayed you, and they are morons to boot”; and “The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality. Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow many Democrats didn’t see it…Donald Trump is a monstrous narcissist, but there’s something off about an educated class that looks in the mirror of society and sees only itself”; and even “Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption — something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable.”

Bernie Sanders himself, who two weeks ago said Biden "has been the most progressive, pro-worker president since FDR," now recognizes, and is in high dudgeon about, the problem with the Democratic Party he surrendered his “disruptive” movement to:

It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right. 

Too bad, as Bernie admits in his statement, the Democratic Party is not going to confront and rectify this problem, because it’s not a “problem” but an effect of the party’s fundamental mission—to preserve capitalism (and Zionism).

The Democratic Party takes any disruptive threat to the prerogative of capital in its false “embrace” to kill it—which is precisely what they did with Bernie’s “disruption,” and with Bernie’s help.