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The Assassination of Julius Caesar: Parallels with Trump

The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Michael Parenti (2012)

Film Review

In this presentation, Michael Parenti discusses the fraudulent history we are taught about the late Roman Republic. In particular, he focuses on the popular resistance movement that led to the rise of the Populares in the Roman senate in the second century BC. The revolt of the Roman proletariat was largely a reaction to the privatization of Rome’s collective agricultural lands as latifundia (plantations owned by Roman aristocrats). Historically there was no private land ownership in Rome until thugs hired by aristocrats drove the peasants off their land around 200 BC.

Parenti starts by demolishing the myth promulgated by mainstream historians that Rome was a republic. The Roman senate was a self-appointed oligarchy. For the most part Roman senators paid no taxes though. Instead they loaned money at interest to the Roman government (sound familiar?). The lower classes, in contrast, were heavily taxed.

The first great Populares to serve as consul was Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. He and his brother Gaius, who succeeded him, fought for land reform to break up the latifundia and redistribute them to the landless. Despite their aristocratic background, all the Populares consuls challenged a Roman economic system that was rigged in favor of the elites All were assassinated by aristocratic death squads.

Julius Caesar would be the last Populares consul, and he, too, would be assassinated in 44 BC. Among the reforms he enacted were

Lowering interest and fines on debts
Building exceptional public libraries to be used by all Roman citizens
Guaranteeing freedom of religion to Roman Jews
Ending the practice of forcing people with unpaid debts into slavery
Introducing a democratic constitution
Creating state jobs in Rome and the colonies for the unemployed
Ending Cicero’s* witch hunts and extrajudicial executions

The aristocrats in the senate, who detested Caesar because he threatened their wealth and privilege, responded by labeling him a brutal tyrant and assassinating him. Ironically the emperors who succeeded him were far more tyrannical. Yet the senate aristocrats supported them as they protected their wealth and privilege.

What strikes me most about this presentation are the clear parallels with the current period, with the liberal elite and intelligence establishment portraying Trump as an unspeakable fascist tyrant based on little evidence other than his rhetoric. I’m aware that much of the liberal establishment is justifiably frightened of the ultraconservative bent of Trump’s appointees. However most of the strident anti-Trump rhetoric seems over the top to me.

For me the two main ways the parallels break down are 1) the absence of a genuine reform movement from below similar to the Roman resistance movement that led to the formation of the Populares 2) the absence in Trump of the towering intelligence, charisma and military and political ingenuity that Caesar displayed. Trump’s lack of political experience raises the vital question whether he or his conservative cabinet will be in control. Despite his promise of numerous populist reforms, I’m extremely skeptical whether the prominent conservatives in his cabinet support them.

Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul on Michael Flynn’s Resignation

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Two excellent commentaries from the left (the true left – not the CIA infiltrated faux left) and right. Kucinich has an especially strong reaction to the illegal wiretapping of Flynn and the desire of the military intelligence complex to disrupt Trump’s rapprochement with Russia.

Stop Making Sense

The first video features former Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich during his appearance on FOX Business Network’s Mornings with Maria. The second video features former Republican Congressman Ron Paul in conversation with Daniel McAdams. Both men, who often came together when serving in the U.S. Congress, give their views on Michael Flynn’s resignation and the who is most likely to benefit from the scandal. (Fox Business/Liberty Report)

The Leakers Who Exposed General Flynn’s Lie Committed Serious — and Wholly Justified — Felonies
After Michael Flynn’s Resignation, Surveillance Defenders Suddenly Care About Wiretap Abuse
Trump and Spicer Blame Russia Scandal on ‘Illegal Leaks’ Rather Than Lies by Senior Officials
Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence
Pence learned Flynn had misled him after Washington Post story
Trump knew for weeks Michael Flynn misled over Russia contact
White House was warned about Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia, say sources
What Did Trump…

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Nixon Advisor: War on Drugs Invented to Crush Anti-War and Black Movements

By Carey Wedler at theantimedia.org

In 1994, a former Nixon policy adviser admitted the War on Drugs was waged not to keep Americans safe, but to crush dissent. According to John Ehrlichman, who served time in prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, the Drug War was intended to disempower anti-war and black rights movements in the 1970s.

Author Dan Baum wrote in the April edition of Harper’s Magazine that in 1994, he spoke with now-deceased Ehrlichman, who frankly explained why President Nixon pushed prohibition:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

This approach was, in fact, not new in American government. Henry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — a precursor to the DEA — saw drugs and marijuana as a race-based threat. He often perpetuated bigoted notions not about about African-Americans and heroin, but weed:

“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others,” he famously said. He also claimed “[r]eefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” With regard to war, Anslinger insisted marijuana “leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing.” Though Anslinger was found to be dishonest — his department was caught fabricating figures in an attempt to prove prohibition stopped drug use and to prove marijuana was unhealthy — his basic prejudiced notions persisted for decades.

Whereas Anslinger reigned from the 1930s to the early 1960s pushing racist, anti-marijuana propaganda, the modern drug war, launched in 1971, was all but certainly a pointed attempt to quell popular uprisings. With the baby boomer generation actively opposing the war in Vietnam (along with behemoth figures in the civil rights movement like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X speaking out against it), the government needed an avenue to neutralize that dissent.

Intense African American rioting in cities across the country, first over institutionalized racism and then over the assassination of King in the spring of 1968, drew the iron fist of police forces and the National Guard. Shortly after, the United States government acted swiftly to crush the uprising: it passed the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which both ramped up police presence in the United States and instituted gun control; many rioters had brought guns to protest, often against police brutality. The ‘anti-crime’ bill was passed two months before tens of thousands of anti-war protesters descended upon the Democratic National Convention.

The War on Drugs, as Ehrlichman admitted, was a thinly-veiled effort to clamp down on the inherently anti-authoritarian features of both anti-war and black movements. Only three years after the federal government cracked down on riots, Richard Nixon declared his war on drugs — and it proved effective at attaining the goals Ehrlichman shared with Baum in 1994.

As Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, has explained:

“People are swept into the criminal justice system — particularly in poor communities of color — at very early ages … typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes. [The young black males are] shuttled into prisons, branded as criminals and felons, and then when they’re released, they’re relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement … Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you’ve been branded a felon.”

The federal government did not need to make as great as an effort to associate marijuana with the anti-war movement. Anslinger had already declared that marijuana turned people into pacifists, a reality that appeared to parallel the burgeoning anti-war movement. . .

Source: Nixon Advisor Admitted War on Drugs Invented to Crush Anti-War and Black Movements

United States FBI spies on environmentalists

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The FBI is investigating political activists campaigning against the Dakota Access pipeline, diverting agents charged with preventing terrorist attacks to instead focus their attention on indigenous activists and environmentalists.

Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video from the USA says about itself:

14 February 2017

The FBI is investigating political activists campaigning against the Dakota Access pipeline, diverting agents charged with preventing terrorist attacks to instead focus their attention on indigenous activists and environmentalists.

The Guardian has established that multiple officers within the FBI’s joint terrorism task force have attempted to contact at least three people tied to the Standing Rock “water protector” movement in North Dakota.

Read more here.

Related articles



[image error] The F.B.I. Is Reportedly Investigating Dakota Access Pipeline Protestors As Terrorists


[image error] Photographer Mico Toledo documents the defiant protestors of Standing Rock


[image error] Kellyanne Conway referred to a terror attack that never occurred as a catalyst for Trump’s immigration ban


[image error] More fake news: No, the Trump administration is not going to remove all vaccine-related information from the CDC website, but that doesn’t mean science advocates shouldn’t worry [Respectful Insolence]

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Trump Silent on TiSA (TPP on Steroids)

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Email from Trade for People and Planet Team:

Dear Corporate Greed Resisters,

The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) is currently being negotiated among 50 countries with the objective of expanding on the existing General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

While President Trump has had a lot to say about the TPP and NAFTA, he has not offered public comment on TiSA, which thus far has major provisions to deregulate and privatize the international service economy, including the financial industry and big data.

Deborah James, Director of International Programs for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has clearly outlined Trump’s likely incentives to continue with TiSA negotiations. She reminds us that Trump is not against corporate-driven trade agreements. So you can bet that corporations are actively lobbying in Washington for deregulation and privatization, which Trump and his cabinet are actively seeking to implement domestically. Finally, TiSA is focused on services and not necessarily manufacturing, meaning that opposition from manufacturing workers may be lower as the agreement is focused on the service economy.

Here is where things gets scary. Team TiSA – a consortium of multinational financial, logistics, and big data corporations – are looking to set severe limits on how governments can regulate economies domestically while providing strict investor rights provisions. Deborah James outlined ten aspects of TiSA that have been accepted by all parties or are under negotiations that could have significant consequences:

Companies are expanding the category of “services” in order to make it all-encompassing so that the agreement could apply as broadly within the economy as possible.
Offshoring and outsourcing of jobs and downward pressure on wages could greatly accelerate as TiSA would lock in labor, tax, and regulatory arbitrage.
Not only would TiSA promote offshoring of jobs, but it would also greatly expand domestic “inshoring.” Foreign contractors (say from Japan) would be able to bring in workers (say from Philippines) to conduct work inside a consumer country (say the United States) on terms well below the minimum local pay and standards.
The TiSA does not include a labor chapter, and in fact the draft texts only mention labor rights once.
Preventing governments at the national, state, and even municipal levels from supporting local business and local employment.
The principle of “technological neutrality which TiSA negotiators take as a given would have immeasurable job impacts particularly with regard to the “gig” economy. So if a country opened its market to passenger transport services, it could not apply new and different rules to Uber than to traditional taxicabs.
Job loss as a result of privatization would increase as publicly owned utilities would have to compete under the same rules as private companies, reducing the benefits of public ownership, resulting in the elimination of jobs that inevitably follows privatization.
The financial services text of the TiSA is the closest thing imaginable to a guarantee of another job-killing financial crisis. If the draft texts were accepted, the TiSA would constrain governments from implementing most of the regulations that are recognized, both domestically and internationally, as essential to prevent another global financial crisis.
Workers would have to shoulder even more of the tax burden as corporate tax evasions would accelerate.
The TiSA could potentially be used as the basis of a foreign company’s claim against the United States.

For more details on each point, read Deborah James’s entire article here.

The jury is still out on what the actual contents of the agreement will be under the new administration. However, we do know that the TiSA has been and continues to be a notably secretive agreement with no transparency or public participation. Check out this article by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to learn about their proposals to create inclusive and transparent trade negotiations.

We also know that Congress gave the presidency Fast Track authority under Obama, and this authority has been inherited by President Trump. According to Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach, this means that “Congress has empowered Trump to unilaterally launch NAFTA renegotiations or create bilateral deals with Mexico and Canada; determine the contents, sign and enter into deals before Congress gets a vote; and then write implementing legislation and force congressional consideration in 90 days with amendments forbidden and Senate supermajority rules suspended.” This applies to TiSA as well and is why we were so adamant about pressuring Congress to reject Fast Track in the first place.

Please take a minute and resend this email to 2-5 people. The people need to know what is behind TiSA!

Join our weekly National People’s Agenda Call next Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 9pm EST/ 6pm PST. We need to work together to stop TiSA from passing and to fight the consolidation of the global deregulatory and privatizing machine.

Click here to register for the call.

More Links

TISA Leak Reveals 10 Key Threats to Commonsense Financial Regulations by Ben Beachy, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
TPP and TTIP are not dead: now they’re called the Trade In Services Agreement by Pete Dolack in The Ecologist
Leaked TISA Safe Harbor Proposal: the Right Idea in the Wrong Place by Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation
The new TTIP? Meet TISA, the ‘secret privatisation pact that poses a threat to democracy’ by Ian Johnston

Unite for Global Justice,

Trade for People and Planet Team

Trade for People and Planet on the web

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#NoDAPL Solidarity Week of Action starts NOW as Drilling Begins

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#NoDAPL solidarity week starts February 17.

The Free

IT’S GOING DOWN       IGDCAST       ROUNDUP       LIBRARY       Action

Mobilize for #NoDAPL Solidarity Week of Action!
By    Anonymous Contributor 

=The NoDAPL Global Solidarity Campaign has called for a Week of Action from February 12th – 17th. The Army Corps has approved the final easement and drilling has begun! The Solidarity Campaign is asking for supporters to take action and escalate pressure against corporations that are funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.

From #NoDAPL Solidarity:

We are calling all able bodied, prepared Water Protectors to the frontlines! Come to camp prepared! The conditions are hazardous and North Dakota State Legislature is passing laws that target Water Protectors! Be prepared for these conditions. Several contingents of US Veterans are on their way back to camp. Join us! We need you now! This is…

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Your Daily Reminder: The War of Terror is A CIA-Sponsored PsyOp

Corbett • 02/13/2017 While people on both sides of the phony left/right divide squabble over terrorist boogeymen and Trump’s CIA chief gives Saudi Arabia [the chief ISIS paymaster]  an award for “counter”terrorism, everyone …

Source: Your Daily Reminder: The War of Terror is A CIA-Sponsored PsyOp

War Crimes by UN Forces in Haiti

Haiti: We Must Kill the Bandits

Kevin Pina (2007)

Film Review

We Must Kill the Bandits carefully documents the systematic war crimes committed by US, Canadian, French and UN forces between 1990 and 2005, as part of the US-led effort to destroy Hait’s pro-democracy Lavalas movement.

In 1990, former Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who headed the Lavalas movement, was elected president of Haiti by a virtual landslide. In 1991, the CIA-backed Haitian military high command undertook a coup against Aristide and forced him into exile in Africa. Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton intervened and allowed Aristide to return to Haiti. After Aristide was re-elected president in 2001, US marines illegally invaded Haiti on February 29, 2004, kidnapped Aristide and forced him onto a plane bound for South Africa.

The poor of Haitai immediately responded with weekly protests demanding Aristide’s return. When the Haitian police and army proved incapable of propping up the US-installed puppet government, US, Canadian and French troops occupied Haiti, routinely rampaging through poor neighborhoods slaughter civilians and arresting suspected Lavalas supporters. Owing to their existing military commitments in Iraq, these forces were eventually replaced by UN peacekeeping forces (Blue Helmets).

The most shocking scenesein the documentary are those of Blue Helmets firing on peaceful demonstrators and killing unarmed civilians during massacres they carried out in poor neighborhoods in 2004 and 2005.

Postscript: The documentary ends in 2005, five years before the devastating earthquake and cholera epidemic that hit Haiti in 2010. In 2011, President Obama allowed Aristide to return to Haiti provided he agreed not to run in the 2011 presidential elections. He refrained from participating in political life until 2015, when he joined the presidential campaign of Lavalas candidate Maryse Narcisse.

 

Organic Farming Could Save Thousands of U.S. Farms Now Suffocating from Debt

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Millionaires receive the largest portion of farm subsidies, not small farms. It’s time for small, organic farms to take their power back.

Openhearted Rebel

By Christina Sarich, The Mind Unleashed

The U.S. Department of Agriculture just released its biannual report on farm incomes, and it looks bleak. Farmers are drowning in debt, and it’s being blamed on a poor dollar and dropping grain prices, but let’s look at some additional factors which may be bankrupting the farmers of the U.S., and some easy ways to save them.

-U.S. farms grow tons of government-subsidized GMO corn to be used for ethanol. This practice is killing our soil, and bankrupting farmers. It is also totally unnecessary since we shouldn’t be relying on oil for energy anymore. Costa Rica, Iceland, and Bonaire are three countries that are already running 100% on green energy. Let farmers grow hemp instead.

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Trump May Finally Bring Paid Parental Leave to US

The stars may finally be aligned for the US to offer paid parental leave, a benefit taken for granted in most of the rest of the world. And it’s Donald Trump who may make it possible. More specifically, his daughter Ivanka. Ivanka Trump has been pushing issues important to families, including childcare and maternity leave,  and today (Feb. 13) the US president is scheduled to discuss women in the workforce with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. At the urging of Ivanka, Trump included a maternity leave plan as part of his campaign platform, making him the first Republican nominee to do so. He also included a discussion on working women in the inaugural meeting of his business advisory council Feb. 3

The US is an infamous laggard when it comes to paid leave. At least 180 countries offer some form of mandatory paid time off for mothers after giving birth, and many offer leave for both parents. While the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act requires employers to give full-time workers time off because of childbirth or family illness, it doesn’t mandate they be paid, and only 12% of US employees (PDF) have access to paid leave. . .

via Trump may finally bring paid parental leave to America this year — Quartz