The Hidden Cruelty of Trump’s Executions

Not only is Trump a Narcissist, a Zionist, a Clown and a Rapist but he is a Sadist too

In this article in The Intercept we learn that one more achievement of the, hopefully, one-term President Trump, is to restart Federal executions. In the United States not only individual states but the Federal Government carries out executions. Except that until now there had not been an execution in 17 years.

The last person was executed in 2003 under George Bush’s administration and before that under Clinton. It was Bill Clinton’s crime bill in 1994 and his 1996 Effective Death Penalty Act which mandated the disregarding of errors in the courts below, such as the exclusion of Black jurors. Clinton himself had won the Presidency on the back of executing 3 men in his native Arkansas. This is the man whom Tony Blair found so congenial.

The death penalty in civil society is an act of barbarism, designed to instil terror in the poor and working class. It is almost unheard of for rich white men to be executed in America. It and the prison system is the only place where Black men are overrepresented. That is why the death penalty is not just a humanitarian issue but a class issue.  Giving the state the power to deliberately kill people is to give power to the ruling class.

A view of the Terre Haute prison in Indiana where Federal executions are carried out

I don’t need to rehearse the arguments about the death penalty, such as the danger of killing someone who is innocent. In the United States, because of poor representation of Black and poor White people, a remarkably large percentage of those convicted of murder are innocent.  This is a testimony to a racist and corrupt police force. There are other arguments, prime amongst which are the fact that the death penalty demeans a civilised society. It reduces society to the level of the murderer. Far from bringing closure to the relatives of the victim, it simply fills them with the desire for vengeance.

Politically the death penalty is racist, a legacy of slavery and lynchings, inhumane in that it involves the slow and deliberate killing of an individual. 

You are 17 times more likely to be executed for killing a White person than a Black person in the United States. In 1987 in McCleskey v. Kemp the Supreme Court voted by 5-to-4 that even solid statistical evidence of race discrimination in the capital justice system did not offend the Constitution. In 1991, after he retired, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., the author of the majority opinion, was asked whether there was any vote he would like to change. “Yes,” he told his biographer. “McCleskey v. Kemp.”  As one of the dissenters in the case, Justice John Paul Stevens, wrote after his retirement in 2010.

“That the murder of Black victims is treated as less culpable than the murder of white victims provides a haunting reminder of once-prevalent Southern lynchings,”

he wrote that year in The New York Review of Books. Opponents of the death penalty have been deeply critical of the decision, comparing it to the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling that enslaved Black people were property and not citizens.

“McCleskey is the Dred Scott decision of our time,” Anthony G. Amsterdam, a law professor at New York University, said in a 2007 speech.

“It is a declaration that African-American life has no value which white men are bound to respect. It is a decision for which our children’s children will reproach our generation and abhor the legal legacy we leave them.”

The argument that the death penalty is a deterrent is an obvious logical fallacy. I figured that one out as a child. I remember the last hangings, of 2 men in Liverpool and Manchester in 1964. In my childish innocence I wondererd why, if the death penalty was such a great deterrent why, did they ever have to use it?

There is only one exception where the use of the death penalty is justified and that is the case of war crimes against civilians.  Those who order or are responsible for genocide, the mass murder of people for no other reason than who they are or are not, are making political decisions that whole categories of people are no longer fit to live. Those tempted to make such decisions should be in no doubt that they will pay the ultimate price. 

They are not suffering from mental illness, temporary madness, blind love or even greed.  Nor are they psychopaths.  They took decisions for political decisions and should be accountable for those decisions. The military in Burma should be accountable for its crimes against the Rohinga. ISIS for its genocide of the Yazidis. 

It is the Bill Clintons, George Bushs and Tony Blairs of this world who deserve the ultimate penalty.  Why?  Because that is how society makes it clear that war crimes are literally beyond the pale. Hence I would defend the decision of the Nuremberg courts to execute the Nazi defendants. But war crimes apart, the use of the death penalty is indefensible.

In other words it is those who are most in favour of the death penalty who are most deserving of it.

It is no accident that at a time when the death penalty in the United States is decreasing and even the Republican state of Nebraska abolished it (only to reverse its decision) that Trump has decided to reintroduce it on the federal level.

It is also no coincidence that those who describe themselves as ‘pro-life’ i.e. anti-abortion in the United States are the most vociferous supporters of the death penalty.  It is the Christian Bible Belt which uses the death penalty most, led by Texas. We can assume that Amy Coney Bennett would have no compunction in supporting the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in favour of the death penalty.  Despite being a rigid Catholic she voted in favour of the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, the first person executed on a federal level since 2003. Coney is a good example of the hypocrisy of pro-lifers.

Of course we should not be surprised at the actions of Trump. In 1989 he took out full page ads in 4 New York newspapers calling for the execution of 5 Black teenagers who were convicted of raping and killing a young woman. In 2002  DNA tests proved they were innocent and the actual culprit confessed.  Trump has still refused to apologise to those whose death he demanded. It says something about the United States and the American people that he is in contention for the post of President when he is unfit to be a dog catcher.

Below is an excellent article from The Intercept and links to a series of similar articles.

Tony Greenstein

Less than a week after executing Christopher Vialva in front of his mother and aunt, the DOJ announced it will kill Orlando Hall next.

October 17 2020, 12:00 p.m.

 On the morning she buried her son Christopher Vialva, Lisa Brown arrived at Affordable Burial and Cremation Service, a small funeral home in a strip mall in Killeen, Texas. Her older sister was waiting, along with the funeral director, who wore a suit and a mask. The last time Brown had seen her son, he was lying under a blanket on a gurney in Terre Haute, Indiana, where a federal official had declared his time of death. Now he lay in a casket in a blue pinstripe suit, a prayer shawl, and a kippah he crocheted himself.

“I walked over to the casket and put my hand on his chest,” Brown recalled. It was the first time she had touched her son in more than 20 years. Looking down, she saw something she’d noticed inside the execution chamber. “The whole back of his hand was bruised,” she said. The funeral director said it was probably where they had inserted his IV. “And I said, ‘I know it was.’”

Brown moved her hands to Vialva’s hands and face. She touched him all over, so eagerly, the funeral director “probably thought I was mauling my son,” she chuckled. “I was thankful that he said he was an understanding man.” Brown’s sister did the same thing. “She was hugging on him and she was touching his chest. She kissed him on the forehead.”

A portrait of Stacie and Todd Bagley on the tombstone of Stacie Bagley’s grave in Dyersburg, Tenn., on Sept. 18, 2020 - Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

Vialva had been executed one week earlier, on September 24, for the carjacking and murder of two youth ministers from Iowa in 1999. He was 19 years old when he shot Stacie and Todd Bagley on the grounds of Fort Hood, not far from the funeral home. Vialva’s co-defendant, Brandon Bernard, was only 18 at the time. Both were sentenced to death. After the Trump administration restarted federal executions following a 17-year pause, Vialva became the seventh man killed in the Terre Haute death chamber since July.

Even to those paying close attention, the loved ones of the condemned had remained largely invisible in Terre Haute. Although the Bureau of Prisons books travel and accommodations for the families of the victims — and arranges for them to address reporters following the executions — no such help is given to relatives of those facing execution. Until Vialva, none of the condemned had arranged for family to attend.

Brown was disturbed by the lack of communication from prison officials. After confirming that she would be in attendance, they did not speak to her until the day before he was to die. Brown was on an elevator leaving the prison after her last visit with her son when Vialva’s case manager told her that the Crisis Support Team was waiting to brief her. Answering her questions in the lobby, they were courteous, almost overly polite. “They almost seemed nervous. You know, like it was a new thing for them. Which it probably was.”

By the time she woke up on the morning of her son’s death, Brown had done as much as she could to prepare herself. She had even read the filings in a lawsuit over lethal injection, which warned that autopsies from executions carried out using pentobarbital showed clear evidence that the condemned had experienced pulmonary edema: the filling of their lungs with fluid. “For me, knowledge is power,” Brown said. “The more I’m aware of what can go wrong, the more comfortable I am.” Still, it wasn’t easy to read that Vialva might suffer a sensation akin to being waterboarded — “that same panic, suffocating, drowning feeling.”

Ron Kaz of Charleston, S.C., helps organize the Abolitionist Action Committee’s annual protest and hunger strike against the death penalty outside the U.S. Supreme Court on July 1, 2019, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A Well-Oiled Death Machine

Amid a global pandemic, national protests, and the impending presidential election, news of the federal executions had been largely eclipsed since they began this summer. Vialva had been dismayed by the lack of national media attention as the men around him went to their deaths. After the execution of Lezmond Mitchell on August 26, he wrote to a friend that they had mentioned him on the CNN crawl, but that was it. “A man’s life is taken by the government but not even a segment to talk about it,” he said.

“They are a well-oiled death machine now,” he went on. “It was sad watching them walk Mitchell right past me so they could drive him to the death house. Everything was so clinical.”

Vialva’s execution was a painful blow to those who knew and worshipped with him on death row. “I just want everyone to know that Chris was the real deal when it came to his faith and being sorry for all he had done,” one neighbor wrote to his own supporters in late September. As with every round of executions, a wave of anxiety spread across the Special Confinement Unit after Vialva died. “We don’t know when they will pick someone else, but we believe it will be 3-5 more people in the coming months.”

On September 30, the Department of Justice announced the next execution date. Orlando Hall, 49, is scheduled to die on November 19. He would be the second Black man killed in the federal execution chamber this year. In a media release, his lawyers noted that Hall was sentenced to death by an all-white jury, one of myriad ways in which the federal death penalty mirrors the same flaws and inequities of state systems. On October 16, the DOJ announced execution dates for two more people. One is Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row. The other is Vialva’s co-defendant, Brandon Bernard.

Politicians on both sides have remained almost completely silent about the federal executions. Although it was the Trump administration that was preparing to take his life, Vialva was particularly critical of the Democrats before he died. The party has enshrined opposition to the death penalty as part of its platform, yet ignored the issue during the Democratic National Convention. Presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was instrumental in the expansion of federal death row but now claims to disavow capital punishment, has said nothing about the executions. Neither has vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, despite touting her opposition to the death penalty.

Two days before Vialva’s execution, as the DOJ prepared to kill William LeCroy on September 22, activists with Death Penalty Action gathered for a press conference in front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Faith leaders were present from different religious denominations. They spoke out against the executions and called out Attorney General Bill Barr, who was scheduled to be honored the next day during the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

The event featured New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the sponsor of a bill to abolish the federal death penalty introduced last summer. A parallel bill was brought forward by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who last year called for an investigation into the federal government’s lethal injection plans.

“We’ve gotta be louder about this,” Espaillat said. He echoed a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center, linking the death penalty to the legacy of slavery and lynching in the United States. Not only are Black people overrepresented on death row today, he said, “defendants convicted of killing white victims are executed at a rate 17 times greater than those convicted of killing Black victims.” Indeed, of the seven men executed in Terre Haute, almost all of their victims were white.

Activist and attorney Ashley Kincaid Eve leads a vigil across from the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., moments before the execution of Christopher Vialva on Sept. 24, 2020. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

Later that day, activists under the banner of the Terre Haute Death Penalty Resistance returned to the grassy field next to the Dollar General on Route 63, directly across from the federal penitentiary. Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and activist from Indianapolis, was leading the protests that week, although she still harbored hope that Vialva’s execution would not go forward. Eve had developed a close friendship with Vialva after he saw her on the news and wrote to thank her for caring enough to protest the executions. “We are here because people decided that we are trash to be thrown in the dumpster,” he said in his first letter. But over the years, 

“I have listened to men sing the praises of their children, mourn the loss of their loved ones, talk about their ambitions while knowing they will not come to fruition, discuss their spiritual journey, and lament the decisions that put them here.”

Eve had previously spearheaded a successful lawsuit against the Indiana State Police, who barred the activists from the area across from the prison during the first round of executions in July. It was one of many ways in which authorities tried to tightly control what the public was able to see. In a nod to the First Amendment, the BOP had designated two spots in the fields along Route 63 for protesters on either side of the issue, but required participants to be transported by government buses hours in advance. No phones or electronic devices would be allowed. In the briefings for press before each execution, BOP spokespersons have repeatedly told reporters that no one has shown up to protest the executions.

While in prison Vialva crocheted a number of stuffed animals and blankets for his mother, Lisa Brown, which she keeps at her home in Killeen, Texas - 16.9.20.

BOP officials have been tight-lipped with journalists. For media witnesses, who have waited long hours on prison grounds to carry out their assignments, there are few explanations or updates. In contrast to death penalty states where prison officials routinely provide detailed descriptions about the last meals of the condemned, the BOP refuses to disclose even such trivial information. But Vialva had told Eve about LeCroy’s last meal. He had asked for KFC but his request had been rejected, she told me. The bones in the chicken presented a security risk, he was told. So, like Vialva, he requested Pizza Hut instead.

Photographs of Lisa Brown, now 61, and her son Christopher Vialva, now 41, when Christopher played football at Ellison High School, photographed at her home in Killeen, Texas, on Sept. 16, 2020. Photo: Matthew Busch for The InterceptAdd caption

Victims on Both Sides

LeCroy’s execution went later than planned. Although it was scheduled for 6 p.m., he was not declared dead until after 9 p.m. LeCroy had been sentenced to death for the brutal killing of a nurse practitioner named Joann Lee Tiesler. Court records showed that LeCroy, who had a history of mental illness, said he had killed her in the mistaken belief that she was a former babysitter who had molested him when he was a child. In a clemency application for LeCroy, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his attorneys pointed out that LeCroy’s own family had lost his brother, a Georgia state trooper, to murder in 2010. “The pain and sorrow felt by the LeCroy family at potentially losing two of their sons is unimaginable,” they wrote.

Lisa Brown visiting her son Christopher Vialva on federal death row in August 2020. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brown

Tiesler was engaged to be married when she was murdered; her fiancé witnessed LeCroy’s execution, as did her father, Tom Tiesler. In a written statement, Tom Tiesler thanked Trump and Barr for restarting federal executions. LeCroy “died a peaceful death in contrast to the stark horror he imposed on my daughter Joann,” he wrote. 

“He was allowed to live nineteen years longer than Joann, with us taxpayers paying for his food, shelter and medical care. I am unaware that he ever showed any remorse for his evil actions, his life of crime, or the horrific burden he caused Joann’s loved ones.”

LeCroy had prepared a lengthy statement of his own, which he mailed to Sister Barbara Battista, a Catholic nun who served as his spiritual adviser, to read at his execution. But it did not arrive on time. Two days later, on the morning of Vialva’s execution, Battista brought the letter to a press conference outside the Dollar General. It began with a quote from the poet W. H. Auden. “‘Those to whom evil is done do evil in return,’” it read. This was not an excuse, he said.

“Yet it describes many of us human beings in our primitive emotional states as children. It is a fact that some abuse — physical, emotional, and/or sexual — can stunt emotional growth. … We feel that we are what happened to us, that we cannot be that which we desire to become. And we lash out in anger. … We did things that we were unable to take back, harmed another human being, ourselves, and so many who loved us.”

Activists stood behind Battista as she read the letter, holding signs and wearing masks. They were joined by Lisa Brown. In a purple mask, a black headscarf, and a gold Star of David pendant, she came forward after Battista was done, to say a few words about her son. “This is really hard,” she said, her voice breaking. “This is the first venue that I’ve had in which I could say to Todd and Stacie’s family, I am so sorry for your loss. I’ve never been able to tell you that because I was told I could not have access to you.”

Lisa Brown addresses reporters on the morning of her son’s execution. Christopher Vialva was executed on Sept. 24, 2020, at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He was the seventh person executed by the Trump administration. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

Brown emphasized that her son was remorseful for his crime. But she also shared a story she told me the first time we spoke. Like LeCroy’s family, she had experienced the legal system from both sides of the courtroom. “In 2009, my daughter’s ex-husband attempted to murder her,” she said. 

“He bludgeoned her in the head with a hammer, poured gasoline over her and set her on fire. She survived with second and third degree burns over 80 percent of her body. And she forgave her attacker shortly after it happened. … And she taught me that I had to forgive. And it changed my life from being in a perpetual state of victimhood to a life that I can put that behind me, and see that there is peace in that.”

Later that day, as Brown reported to the parking lot of the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office, Eve returned to the same spot at the Dollar General to set up for the protest against Vialva’s execution. She had said goodbye to Vialva on the phone the night before, hoping to convince him to let her file a last-minute challenge to his execution. But he asked her not to. Everyone on death row had seen what happened to Daniel Lewis Lee, the first man to be executed in Terre Haute this year: Lee was lying on the gurney for four hours before the government took his life, as lawyers fought over his fate. Vialva did not want that to happen to him.

“He’s lost faith in our courts and I don’t blame him,” Eve said. “I’ve lost faith in our justice system. But I haven’t lost faith in humanity.” In the last several weeks, she had heard from people all over the world who were moved by his story.

It was just after 6 p.m. when Eve introduced the final speaker, a woman named Katie, who had traveled to Terre Haute from Minnesota. “I don’t know Chris personally,” Katie said. But she knew Vialva’s younger sister, Audrey. The two had met at a retreat for survivors of domestic violence, where Audrey had shared the story of how her ex-husband tried to kill her. “I am at risk of being a murder victim,” Katie said. Before going to prison for violating a restraining order, her own abuser beat, choked, and sexually assaulted her, she said. He is no longer incarcerated — and he could still kill her one day, she said. But she does not want his life.

Katie pointed to the penitentiary complex behind her. “Do you think that what’s going on behind us right now is going to save my life?” she asked. “Do you think he knows that this is happening and it’s going to deter him from anything he wants to do? It’s not.”

At 6:48 p.m., a BOP spokesperson sent out an email to reporters. “Please report back to the Media Center at this time if you choose to,” he wrote. The execution had been carried out. At the media center, officials handed out a statement from the mother of Todd Bagley. She said she was “hurt and disappointed” by the coverage of the case that morning, which focused on Vialva and how he had changed. Todd and Stacie also touched many lives, she wrote. “We will never know how many people they could have influenced for good if they had been given the chance.” She was heartened by the fact that they were in Heaven, she said. “I know without a doubt we will have a glorious reunion with them one day!”

Lisa Brown with her son Christopher Vialva and his younger sister, Audrey, in 1988. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brown

The Ultimate Price

On October 1, a few dozen guests gathered at the Killeen City Cemetery for Vialva’s funeral. His gray casket was covered in white lilies and chrysanthemums. His mother and sister sat in the front row. Eve, who drove down from Indianapolis, sat behind them under the tent.

Vialva’s 11-year-old nephew read a tribute from Vialva’s best friend on death row. Then Vialva’s sister Audrey delivered his eulogy. She shared childhood memories: how they would break the rules and ride their bikes to Walmart; how he would tickle her, play freeze tag with her, and have water balloon fights with her every summer. As he got older, she said, Vialva started spending more time playing video games and listening to music with his friends. But she remembered the time they stayed up all night memorizing the lyrics to the 1994 song “Funkdafied” by Da Brat. “He kept hanging his head off the top bunk asking why it was taking so many playbacks for me to get it,” she said. “His memory was always better than mine.”

Brown read the letter Vialva had written for his funeral. He was no longer the angry 19-year-old he had been, he wrote.

“If you have written me a thousand letters or only just sat and thought about me from time to time, I appreciate it. If you came to visit me once a year or just saw my mother in passing and told her to tell me hello, I appreciate it. … If anyone here feels they could have done more, don’t. You did what you could and that is all that matters. So, thank you for those mercies and for your attendance today.”

The funeral director, Robert Falcon, was moved by the service. It was not the first time he had presided over the burial of a man executed by the state. Often times, he told me, such families “want to arrange something very private, something very, very quiet,” he said.

“I’ve had services where nobody shows up. … There may be a representative from the family, a minister, and the funeral director. And that’s it. And Christopher’s situation was quite unique in that there was about 40 people present. And I’ve never seen that.”

Falcon did not minimize the pain of the victims in cases like Vialva’s. In his decades helping families bury their loved ones, he had seen his share of murder victims. He knew that their families continued to hurt after an execution, he said. But “sometimes we forget that the person has now paid the ultimate price for their crime, and now that family is left to hurt.”

Five days after her son’s funeral, Brown spoke to the mother of Orlando Hall, the next man in line to die in Terre Haute. She learned that he has six children and a number of grandchildren. Hall’s mother is in poor health and was not sure whether she will attend the execution, Brown said. “I told her, I want to be able to help facilitate their peaceful transition through this process,” Brown said. “And she said, ‘Oh thank you, Jesus.’ She says, ‘You just made my day, Miss Lisa.’ That blessed me.”

Brown has not yet spoken to the mother of Brandon Bernard. But she feels called upon to support other families as their loved ones get execution dates. “There are so many more like me,” she said. It is also what her son would have wanted. Over the phone, she read from a card that was waiting in the mail when she returned from Terre Haute. “I know this is hard for you,” he had written. “I would even go so far as to say that it’s harder on you than me. … I just want you to stay strong. I need you to do that for me. If they do take me away, then you can let them know how much it hurts. Maybe one day your love will change things.”

 

See also

Trump’s Execution Spree Continues at Federal Killing Ground in Indiana - More federal executions have been carried out in 2020 than in the past 57 years combined.

Blood in the Water - Disregarding the Virus and Victims’ Families, Trump Rushes to Execute as Many People as Possible

The Life and Death of Jerry Givens, Virginia’s Executioner-Turned-Abolitionist - After killing 62 people in the death chamber, Givens became an activist against the death penalty. Then Covid-19 took his life.

The Life and Death of Jerry Givens, Virginia’s Executioner-Turned-Abolitionist

Executions Are On Hold, but States Are Still Pushing for Death Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

The Abolitionists - A Push to Repeal the Death Penalty Gains Ground Across the Western United States

Trump Prepares to Execute Christopher Vialva for a Crime He Committed as a Teenager

General Election - Is Labour on the threshold of victory?

No one has been more disappointed with the success of Labour’s campaign than the Labour Right and Zionist Jewish Labour Movement

At the very start of the election campaign, when all was doom and gloom, I published a post Labour Can Win if Corbyn is Bold – the Key Issue is Poverty and the Transfer of Wealth John Woodcock Must Not be Allowed to Stand.  This was at a time when the Tory lead was 20%.  I wrote:

It was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics.  Seven weeks is a political eternity.  Theresa May has taken a gamble that her 21% lead will hold.  It is a gamble that she may yet come to regret.

There is only one direction that her lead can go and that is down.  Once her lead falls then a snowball effect can take over.  What is essential is that Labour marks out the key areas on which it is going to base its appeal.  The danger is that Corbyn is going to continue with his ‘strategy’ of appeasing the Right and appealing to all good men and women.  If so that will be a recipe for disaster.

No election is guaranteed to be without its surprises.  Theresa May is a cautious conservative.  She is literally the product of her background, a conservative vicar’s daughter.  Reactionary, parochial and small-minded, she is a bigot for all seasons.  What doesn’t help is that she is both wooden and unoriginal.  The danger is that Corbyn tries to emulate her.

Strong and stable Mrs May found that her slogan had made her a figure of fun as she dodged having to directly debate Jeremy Corbyn.  She even sent her Home Secretary into bat for her in the debate between party leaders earlier in the week, despite Rudd having only lost her father two days before.

It would be a mistake for people to be over confident at the fact that the Tories made major slip-ups over things like the Dementia Tax, taking food of children’s tables etc.  It is clear that the Tories and the Mainstream Media (BBC et al.) are going hell for leather over the question of Corbyn’s devotion to the State, be it Ireland, Terrorism or  Trident.

The essence of what I wrote was correct.   The Tory lead has shrunk.  My fears that Corbyn might backtrack have not come to pass in the economic sphere.  Labour’s manifesto was unexpectedly radical.  But in one particular area, the State and Security, Corbyn has retreated from all the things be has believed in in the past.

The Guardian has done its best to undermine Corbyn since he was elected

When Corbyn began to draw links between British foreign policy and the terrorist bombing in Manchester he held back.  He should have been more up front and said that it wasn’t simply a question of speaking to everyone and being peaceful but that we, the British and Americans, created the very terrorists who are now detonating bombs in Manchester and Europe.

Andrew Neil gave Corbyn a hard time in his interview and Corbyn was on the defensive throughout.  But he didn’t need to be with this Tory toe rag.  Neil started off by saying in his interview that Isis was in existence before the Iraq War.  Wrong.  They came out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which itself only came about as a result of the invasion.  But even more importantly, Corbyn was not on top of the facts about the genesis of the development of terrorism.  If Isis came out of Al Qaeda, then Al Qaeda came out of our involvement in Afghanistan.

Theresa May was always happiest speaking to carefully selected audiences

Even before the invasion of Afghanistan, we had been sponsoring a range of Mujahadeen and Islamic terror groups in the country ever since the Soviet invasion in 1979.  We helped create both Al Qaeda and the Taliban (via the Pakistan secret service ISI).  We invited Saudi sponsorship of a multitude of Jihadist groups.  You don’t take my word for it.  Even Hilary Clinton admitted that the US created al Qaeda.  Just as Israel created Hamas. 

The other aspect of the ‘terrorism’ attack is Corbyn’s links with the IRA.  Despite his denials it is a fact that Corbyn heavily supported the Republican movement and Sinn Fein in particular.  Corbyn was right to do so (he didn’t support or oppose the IRA specifically).  But the point is that the IRA were not terrorists.  They came from a community, 45% of northern Ireland, which was forced into a Protestant supremacist statelet that they never agreed with in 1921.  In 1918 an all Ireland election had produced an absolute Sinn Fein majority.  This didn’t suit the British therefore they ignored the election result.

As they did in India and Palestine, the British pursued a divide and rule tactic, setting off Protestants against Catholics.  That is what led to The Troubles from 1969 onwards.

For 50 years Catholics in the north suffered horrendous violence, discrimination and gerrymandering  When they formed a civil rights movement in 1969 it was batoned off the streets.  The Catholic ghetto of The Bogside in Derry was attacked by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the para military B-Specials.  There were riots as barricades were erected and the Catholics defended themselves.  That led to the troops being sent in, ostensibly to protect the Catholics but in fact to prop up the existing state.

That was where the IRA came from.  It initially stood for I Ran Away.  The old IRA had been disbanded.  They were called the Officials whereas the new IRA under Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams (Adams was commander of the Belfast Brigade) were formed from scratch and in fact fought a war against the Officials, who were Stalinists moving to the Right.

Why were the IRA not terrorists?  Because  they had a mass base of support in the working class Catholic ghettos and represented the most oppressed section of Northern Ireland society.  Today they are the most successful party in the Catholic community and indeed are virtually on level pegging with the Democratic Unionist Party.  When the IRA planted bombs they gave warnings.  30 years ago a massive 1500 Kg bomb devastated the heart of Manchester and yet not one person was killed because there was a 90 minutes warning.  Unlike the scum of  ISIS who deliberately sought to kill innocent children, the IRA went to extreme lengths not to kill innocent people.  Of course sometimes they got it wrong as with the Birmingham pub bombings  Sometimes the warning weren’t passed on.  Yes they killed innocent people but not deliberately so.

The British army be it in Ireland or Iraq killed thousands of innocent civilians.  They invented a term – ‘collateral damage’ to explain it away.  Yet no one calls the British army terrorists.  What we had was a colonial war with the British army supporting the existing regime.  That regime was unsustainable and politically it had to be collapsed via direct rule  Even so the cause of Ireland has not gone away and won’t go away until the Partition of Ireland is eradicated. 

It is a great pity that Corbyn and even more so John McDonnell didn’t acknowledge that they supported, not peace but the Republicans.  Not only would it have been more honest it would also have explained and negated the attempt to put the ‘terrorist’ label on Corbyn and company.  

Unfortunately Corbyn and his advisers chose to do what they had done on Palestine.  Retreat behind meaningless platitudes.  On Palestine he moved from a position of support for Palestine solidarity and opposition to Zionism, which he explicitly supported with his sponsorship in 1984 of a conference which explicitly called for the disaffiliation of Poale Zion (now the Jewish Labour Movement) to one of support for 2 states.  In essence Corbyn has no criticism of Israel, which is the most racist state in the world.

Where to for the Election?

I do not have a crystal ball.  My initial predictions, that there would or could be a hung parliament was based on my assessment of the situation.  This is still quite possible as the Tories are widely detested for  their attacks on the working poor, people on benefits and the continuous privatisation of the NHS.  They are seen as the party of a vicious class rule, which is what austerity is about.

That does not, however, mean that the Tories will necessarily be defeated.  People do not vote in line with their class interests.  The whole purpose of the patriotic card, used by a succession of ruling class scoundrels from Pitt to May, is to blind people to their real interests.  It is saying that British workers and the poor have more in common with the rich and the ruling class than they do with each other.  The Tory press of course is doing its best to foster illusions in Strong and Stable.

Labour could still become the largest party but I also sense a vigorous fightback by the Right.  It seems that one part of the prediction I made will not come true.  The Lib-Dems are not going to gain enough seats to prop up another Tory coalition  At the moment they are tipped to win just one extra seat.  By ruling out any form of pact with Labour under Corbyn, the Lib-Dems have guaranteed their own irrelevance.

We could be in for a period of political instability such as we have not known for 40 years.  This is one of the hardest elections to call.  A Tory government is still possible if it cobbles together a coalition of the Lib-Dems & the Ulster Unionists-DUP.  Even a majority Tory government cannot be ruled out.

One thing that should be changed is the fact that Sinn Fein don’t take their seats because they won’t swear allegiance to the Queen.  Why should honest Republicans have to swear allegiance to a Monarch they don’t believe in?  Many MPs have been republicans, for example Tony Benn, but they had to lie to become MPs.  This should be one of our most immediate demands. 

The great danger, if that if Corbyn gets within a whisker of becoming Prime Minister, a number of Progress and Zionist Labour MPs – West Streeting, Louise Ellman, Joan Ryan (Labour Friends of Israel), John Mann, Peter Kyle, John Woodcock, Hilary Benn etc. are in effect going to refuse to support Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.  All their lies that they opposed him because he was ‘unpopular’ with the people, in reality Murdoch and the Mail, will disappear.  We will see that these arch-rightwingers are fiercely opposed to Corbyn  because they hate socialism.

Anyone who thinks the Right will make peace if Corbyn wins the election or gains enough seats to make a deal with the SNP and others is mistaken.  The fight with the Right will continue and regardless of the vote Corbyn must stay Labour leader until new elections when the rules have been changed to allow someone with 5% of PLP nominations to stand.

That is why the battle inside Momentum will take on a new significance.  Jon Lansman is intent on appeasement come what may.  A fight against the Right and their Zionist friends is the last thing he has on his mind.  Our job is to mobilise to remove any MP who refuses to support Corbyn as Prime Minister if that opportunity comes about.  We will have shown that radicalism is not unpopular.  Despite all the media flack, people have warmed to Corbyn’s ideas, even though they have in many cases been watered down.

It is to be hoped that housing, which has barely been mentioned figures.  That rent controls, security of tenure starts to figure.

We are living in exciting times.

Below are two articles by Jonathan Cook, an ex-Guardian journalist now living in Nazareth who points out the poisonous and treacherous role played by the Guardian since Corbyn was elected.  It was the Guardian, in the form of Jonathan Freedland and Owen Jones, which led the ‘anti-Semitism’ attack on Corbyn and the Left.  They are both good articles and well worth reading.

Tony Greenstein

Time to confront the media’s anti-Corbyn bias

1 June 2017

Those journalists who should have been behind Corbyn from the start – who could have been among his few allies as he battled the corporate media for nearly two years as Labour leader – are now starting to eat humble pie. Polls suggest that Corbyn may be gradually turning the election around, to the point where the latest poll, published in the Times, indicates that Britain could be heading for a hung parliament.

No one is surprised that the Daily Mail, Telegraph and Times have been relentless in their hatchet jobs on Corbyn. But it has been disconcerting for the left that the Guardian and BBC never gave him a chance either. He was in their gun-sights from day one.

Owen Jones, a Labour stalwart and Guardian columnist, should have been Corbyn’s number one ally in the press. And yet he used the invaluable space in his columns not to challenge the media misrepresentations, but to reinforce them. He engaged in endless and morose navel-gazing, contemplating a Labour rout.

In an Evening Standard interview in February, he imparted the following wisdom: “Things change but only if people will it to be.” But then almost immediately ignored his own advice, saying that if another Labour leadership election were held: “I’d find it hard to vote for Corbyn.”

In eary May, Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian’s most senior columnist, wrote a commentary entitled: “No more excuses: Jeremy Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown.” In fact, though he did not mention it, he had been making that very same argument for the previous two years.

But as Corbyn has begun chipping away at Theresa May’s lead – and equally significantly, forced the media to widen the public debate into political territory it has avoided for nearly four decades – Freedland finally admitted this week, very reluctantly, that he and others may have misjudged the Labour leader.

Freedland’s reassessment, however painfully made, was still an evasion. He and Jones continue to avoid facing up to the central problem of British politics – and must do, because they are at its very heart.

The lesson of Corbyn’s much-improved polling, according to Freedland, is this:

If May is returned with a Commons presence far below the expectations of even a month ago, it will suggest that one more bit of conventional wisdom needs to be retired along with all the rest. It will prove that campaigns matter.

But that is not the real lesson. The turnaround in Labour’s fortunes is not chiefly about the party getting its act together, staying on-message and communicating better with the media. Rather, it is that the formal requirements of an election campaign – equal coverage, reporting the speeches of candidates, leaders’ debates – have made it much harder for the media, especially the broadcasters, to entirely obscure Corbyn’s winning qualities. His honesty, warmth and humanity eclipse May’s stiff, evasive and charmless demeanour.

It was precisely those qualities in Corbyn that proved so attractive to voters in the Labour leadership elections. He inspires a rare passion for politics when he is heard. That is why he is the only politician filling stadiums. That is why the Labour party now has hundreds of thousands of members, making it the largest party in Europe. That is why young people have been registering for the election in record numbers.

The demographic breakdown of support for Corbyn and May is largely generational. Corbyn enjoys a huge lead among young people, while May can rely on overwhelming backing from those aged over-65.

It may be comforting to imagine this is simply the natural order of things. Radicalism is the preserve of those starting out in life, while old age encourages caution and conservatism. This may be one factor in explaining the generational divide, but it clearly will not suffice. In much of the post-Thatcher era, the young have proved to be even more conservative than their parents.

The reason for the Corbyn-May split has to be found elsewhere.

The fact is that the young are least likely to trust the traditional, corporate media, and most likely to seek out information from alternative sources and social media, which have been fairer to Corbyn. Youtube clips of Corbyn’s speeches, for example, are one way to bypass the corporate media.

Conversely, elderly voters are mostly still relying on the BBC, Sky and the Daily Mail for the bulk of their information about politics. The over-65s have little sense of who Corbyn is apart from what they are told by a media deeply wedded to the current neoliberal order he is threatening to disrupt.

But neither Freedland nor Jones has been prepared to admit that all of the corporate media – not just their trusted scapegoat of the “rightwing press” – have been to blame for preventing Corbyn getting a fair hearing. It is an admission they cannot make because it would expose their own complicity in a media system designed to advance the interests of corporate power over people power, oligarchy over democracy.

A desire to avoid facing this simple truth has led to some quite preposterously contorted reasoning by Freedland. In a commentary before his recent reappraisal of Corbyn, he dismissed suggestions that the media had played any significant role in the Labour leader’s troubles. Freedland cited two focus groups he had witnessed. It is worth quoting the section at length to understand quite how ridiculous his logic is.

With no steer from the moderator, who remained studiedly neutral, they described Jeremy Corbyn as a “dope”, “living in the past”, “a joke”, as “looking as if he knows less about it than I do”. One woman admired Corbyn’s sincerity; one man thought his intentions were good. But she reckoned he lacked “the qualities to be our leader”; and he believed Corbyn was simply too “soft”. …

Corbyn’s defenders will blame the media, but what was striking about these groups was that few of the participants ever bought a paper and they seldom watched a TV bulletin. Corbynites may try to blame disloyal MPs, but, whatever its impact elsewhere, none of that Westminster stuff had impinged on either of these two groups, who couldn’t name a single politician besides May, Corbyn and Boris Johnson. They had formed their own, perhaps instinctive, view.

Blaming others won’t do.

How do people form an “instinctive view” on political matters, if they never read a paper, never watch TV and never attend a political rally? Through the ethers?

The answer should be obvious. They can do so only through conversations with, or impressions gained from, family, friends, acquaintances and work colleagues who do watch TV and read papers. Given that it is impossible for most voters to see Corbyn in the flesh, most are either getting their information and opinions directly mediated for them by the media, or receiving the mediated information second-hand, from people they know who have been influenced by the media.

Freedland’s assumption that it is possible for voters to form a view instinctively that Corbyn is a “dope” – the view of him that has been uniformly cultivated by the media – is laughable. It is evidence of a profound unwillingness to confront the power of the media, and his own irresponsible complicity in wielding that power.

Corbyn is a “dope” not because that’s the way he’s seen by voters. He is a “dope” because that is the way he has been characterised for two years by all of the media, including the Guardian. The fact that a growing number of voters are starting to question whether Corbyn is quite the dope they assumed is because he has finally had a chance to talk to voters directly, even if in the leaders’ debate Jeremy Paxman did his best to prevent Corbyn from forming a complete sentence.

If we had a fair, pluralistic media driven primarily by the desire to serve the public’s interests rather than those of corporations, who can doubt that Corbyn would be winning hands-down in the polls?

Guardian staff come out of closet for Corbyn

2 June 2017

Dear Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett,

Congratulations on coming out of the Guardian closet and admitting that you have been a secret Jeremy Corbyn admirer all along. Your column, “I used to be a shy Corbynite but I’m over that now”, was excellent.

Interestingly, I noticed Jonathan Freedland, the paper’s senior commentator and its Corbyn-denigrator-in-chief (he has some competition!) – and your boss, I suppose – wrote an oped a couple of days ago admitting he may have misjudged Corbyn. Maybe that was the moment you finally sparked up the courage to come clean about liking Corbyn.

I was very interested in what you had to say about why you remained silent for so long.

I had become so used to political commentators popping up every time I expressed admiration for Corbyn’s principles to call me naive or a narcissist or an Islington-dwelling champagne socialist or a loony lefty, as though we were in some pompous game of whack-a-mole, that I began to sort of believe it.

Are you talking about Freedland? But I suppose there were lots of other ideological bouncers out there in liberal-media pundit land. It must have been hard. As you say, “Stop treating us like fools!”

But I never did stop believing in the same things Corbyn does – in equality, social justice, social mobility and peace. Nor did I ever doubt that families such as my own would be much better off under a Labour government than a Tory one. Which is why I’m going to vote for him again.

Great, Rhiannon! Shame it took so long for you to pluck up the courage to speak out.

Why should anyone feel embarrassed to back an anti-austerity politician in this context? Why should anyone who cares passionately about the NHS remaining safe from being transferred into private ownership feel ashamed to support a politician who is committed to it? Why should any young person – most of whom seem to be voting for Corbyn – cringe at voting for a party that has committed itself to tackling generational injustice?

Good question. Why should anyone feel embarrassed, especially a well-paid, career-minded young journalist like yourself?

Here’s a guess. Maybe because your own paper worked relentlessly to make even leftists feel stupid for supporting Corbyn. The group-think got so bad, even at the Guardian, that Owen Jones, a friend of Corbyn’s, was too embarrassed to come out with anything more than grudging support for him in the paper’s pages. He spent his columns instead agonising over what to do about Corbyn.

Even George Monbiot, your in-house radical, sounded almost apologetic telling us recently that he supported Corbyn. No wonder you were too afraid to tell your bosses how you felt, or to pitch to them a pro-Corbyn commentary over the past two years. Safer to keep that information to yourself.

I worked at the Guardian myself for many years. I know the atmosphere in the newsroom only too well. I can imagine it was hard to contradict all those older, “wiser” heads further up the Guardian hierarchy. I wonder how many of the other young staff felt equally frightened to speak up over the past two years.

The narrative has shifted so much in the Tories’ favour, to the point where to announce you’re voting Labour feels subversive and threatening. … The frame has moved, but we still have the same brains, the same hearts, and the same guts. And my brain, my heart, and my gut are telling me that I would never forgive myself if I didn’t back Labour at this crucial time.

Yes, the narrative has shifted so much in the Tories’ favour. I suppose that was because there were no left-liberal journalists there to challenge it. If only we had a left-liberal newspaper that could support a social democratic candidate like Jeremy Corbyn for prime minister. Oh, but wait – isn’t your newspaper supposed to be left-liberal?

Anyway, well done, Rhiannon. I am glad you wrote this piece. Let’s hope, there are more like it to come. Maybe now it looks like Corbyn is in the running, and the Guardian editors have realised that they have egg on their face and that they have alienated large swaths of their readership, they will be more open to letting young journalists tell us about how they have been secretly longing to confess their passion for Corbyn and his politics.

Best wishes,

Jonathan Cook