Saturday, January 25, 2025

Talk About It

Someone much wiser than me once said that the most radical thing we ever do is to really connect with another person. At the end of the longest (political) week in my memory, you may be feeling a bit like I do — exhausted by the sheer volume of insults to the norms that make up the fabric of our democratic system.

At a time like this, what is to be done?

We can connect. We can talk with friends, neighbors, family members, strangers about what is going on in our country. 

For those of us who long ago saw through Trump for what he is — a petty despot who aspires to be an autocrat — there is no joy in being right. We didn’t need to be right about something so wrong as the second Trump presidency.

He is bent on tearing apart the fabric of democracy thread by thread, and for now it may seem that we are powerless to prevent him from doing so. But the time will come for action against that and a broad resistance movement will form.

For now, just connect. We’ll be needing every voice soon enough.

***

You know, maybe I started this newsletter for times like this. 

Thank you to those who have brought my series about the Betty Van Patter case to a much larger audience — Frances Dinkelspeil, Jacob Simas, Bill Berkowitz and the editors at Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, Richmondside and the Daily Kos. Collectively you’ve vastly expanded the universe of people who know about the case and maybe some good will come from that.

Also I want to thank the Rev. Kenneth L. Schmidt for referencing yesterday’s column, One Scenario, at the noon mass at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley yesterday. As I told Kenneth, I believe this is the first time my words have ever been read from a pulpit and I am honored.

HEADLINES:

 

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Friday, January 24, 2025

One Scenario

(NOTE: What follows is speculation. I deeply hope it does not come true.)

Next year the U.S. is planning to celebrate its 250th anniversary as a nation. There will be plenty of pomp and a lot of circumstance.

Unfortunately, one of those circumstances is the grim realization that we may have entered the most hazardous period in our country’s history since the Civil War.

Given the present political environment, what worries me is that it is not far-fetched to anticipate that attacks may be carried out against one or more of President Trump’s political rivals. Assassinations are certainly not out of the question.

Should something like that happen to a prominent Trump critic, it will be difficult to hold Trump accountable, because the Supreme Court has ruled that he would be immune from prosecution.

But consider the following scenario. We know that when he wants them to act, Trump speaks to his most extreme followers in code. He uses phrases that they can interpret as orders to carry out his wishes against his enemies. 

This is all about the interplay between the mind of a cult leader or an autocrat and the mindset of his followers.

Trump is an extremely paranoid and defensive man. Even the most gentle of criticisms can send him into a rage. Exhibit A: the controversy surrounding the prayer service at the National Cathedral attended by Trump and his family earlier this week.

Here was the message delivered by the Bishop, Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde:

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you, and as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families — some who fear for their lives.

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

Afterward, an angry Trump posted “The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” (emphasis added) and he demanded an apology from her. 

Rev. Budde responded: “I don't hate President Trump. I strive not to hate anyone and I dare say that I am not of the 'radical left' either, whatever that means. That is not who I am.” But she confided that she is getting death threats now Trump has (in code) put a target on her back.

In this context, remember what happened to Paul Pelosi.

While trying to rationally evaluate the nature of the current danger faced by those who have been vocal in opposing Trump, I recalled the words of a would-be “enforcer” in quite a different context but who reminds me of a Trump extremist.

Bear with me. 

Many of you have read my ten-part series on the killing of Betty Van Patter. In that case, the so-called “security squad” of Black Panthers who carried out violent acts on behalf of their leader, Huey P. Newton. They included Flores Forbes, who later wrote a revealing memoir in which he took personal responsibility for a botched assassination attempt against a woman scheduled to testify against Newton. He said that he did it without Newton’s involvement or knowledge.

In that 2006 memoir, “Will You Die With Me?” Forbes wrote: “I was not bothered by the fact I was on my way to assassinating someone…In the final analysis, what I really believed was that Huey P. Newton was my ‘prince.’ I would kill or die for him at the drop of a hat.”

I bring this up not to suggest any equivalency between the Black Panthers and Trump, but to highlight of the mindset that motivated Forbes to try and serve the wishes of his leader, whom at the time he revered.

I believe this same mindset is common among Trump’s followers, including extremists like those who violently attacked Capitol Police officers during the Jan. 6 assault. It’s a reasonable assumption that at least a few of them would commit violent acts again on behalf of their revered leader.

All of those felons are now free, their criminal records swept away by Trump’s executive order. Almost all of them have guns and they know how to use them. And at least a few probably share the mindset so chillingly described by Flores Forbes.

Is it illogical for us to connect the dots?

(END NOTE: As I said above, this is speculation on my part, although it is speculation informed by an attention to detail and patterns in the news. We need to help in any way we can to support what remains of a free, independent press and the courts to hold Trump accountable should this scenario come true.)

HEADLINES:

  • Far-Right Leaders Granted Clemency by Trump Express Desire for Retribution (NYT)

  • Washington National Cathedral Bishop Calls Out Trump to His Face (Rolling Stone) 

  • ‘I Am Not Going to Apologize’: The Bishop Who Confronted Trump Speaks Out (Time)

  • Trump pardons anti-abortion activists who blockaded clinic entrances (AP)

  • How Trump Is Pushing at Limits of Presidential Power in Early Orders (NYT)

  • Judge temporarily blocks Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship, calling it 'blatantly unconstitutional' (ABC)

  • How the modern Supreme Court might view the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship (CNN)

  • House passes immigrant detention bill that would be Trump’s first law to sign (AP)

  • One executive order from Trump’s first day makes radical changes to border policy, attempting to erase a right established in U.S. and international law. [HuffPost]

  • Trump accelerates campaign to remake federal bureaucracy (Reuters)

  • US government workers told to report DEI efforts or face 'consequences' (BBC)

  • Senate advances Pete Hegseth as Trump’s defense secretary, despite allegations against him (AP)

  • ADL condemns Musk's Nazi "jokes" after salute controversy (Axios)

  • Trump Davos remarks target big banks, oil prices, European regulators (CNBC)

  • Hughes Fire rages near LA; 50K under evacuation orders, warnings (USA Today)

  • This economist survived a wildfire. Now she's taking on California's insurance crisis (NPR)

  • Subpoenaing Cassidy Hutchinson could massively blow up in Republicans' faces: report (Newsbreak)

  • Trump sure sounds like he wants to prosecute Biden (WP)

  • Trump’s Definitions of “Male” and “Female” Are Nonsense Science With Staggering Ramifications (Mother Jones)

  • Justice Department freezes all civil rights cases, including police investigations (WP)

  • America’s Fraught, Sometimes Deadly, History With the Panama Canal (WSJ)

  • Gaza ceasefire holds as Israel cracks down in the West Bank (AP)

  • Russia's economy grew over the past two years, but things are changing. That has contributed to the view within a section of the elite that a settlement to the war is desirable, sources say. (Reuters)

  • CNN Shuffles Lineup With New Spots For Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer & Kasie Hunt; Jim Acosta’s Show Bumped From Mornings (Deadline)

  • CNN laying off about 200 employees as part of shift to digital model (WP)

  • The Federal Communications Commission revived three complaints against NBC, ABC and CBS, after a conservative group alleged multiple instances of bias against Trump during the election season. [HuffPost]

  • ‘Emilia Pérez’ tops Oscar nominations with 13, ‘Wicked’ and ‘The Brutalist’ land 10 apiece (AP)

  • ADHD linked to shorter life expectancy: Research (The Hill)

  • Meta courted Trump. Now comes the backlash from Facebook, Instagram users. (WP)

  • Signature moves: are we losing the ability to write by hand? (Guardian)

  • OpenAI's new Operator will do web tasks for you (Axios)

  • Scientists Successfully Teach Mice To Hate Women (The Onion)

___________________________________________________________________________

Special Report: Who Killed Betty Van Patter?

(Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

  • Betty Van Patter, the Black Panthers’ bookkeeper, was murdered 50 years ago. Who killed her? Investigative reporter David Weir and others have spent decades searching for answers. (Berkeleyside) (Richmondside) (The Oaklandside)

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Thursday, January 23, 2025

The Enemy Is Within

The mob is the mother of tyrants. — Diogenes

Almost lost in the flurry of last-minute pardons and commutations issued by Biden was the case of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, who had been serving a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.

I made a reporting trip to Pine Ridge not long after those killings and what strikes me is the imbalance when you stack Peltier’s commutation up against the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump.

The left argued that Peltier was a political prisoner while the right (led by Trump) labeled the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other criminals convicted in the assault on the Capitol as political “hostages.” 

So it was one old leftist vs. 1,500 relatively young rightists. There is no equivalency here. And you don’t have to be a math major to figure out which group represents the greater threat to our democracy.

“It’s harder to imagine a greater affront to the rule of law than to give pardons to those who tried to overthrow the government,” Rick Hasen, a University of California, Los Angeles law professor, told the AP.

But that’s what Trump did and the question now is whether these extremists will now rebuild their networks of militias to carry out new actions at his behest.

Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America, spoke with Slate on this question:

  • “This is pretty devastating moment for counterterrorism in the U.S., particularly counterterrorism against domestic paramilitary groups. It sets a terrible precedent for rule of law, for violence against institutions, violence against law enforcement. 

  • “And it sends a message of permission—that political violence will be tolerated as long as it’s on behalf of a certain movement and a certain man. And that’s tremendously dangerous. We’re in unprecedented territory where people who sought to overthrow the government have now been allowed back on our streets as returning warriors.

  • “You also have those who acted out on Jan. 6 because they had a grievance against the government. And that victimhood has now been propelled further. They feel they now have more evidence that they are struggling against a tyrannical government. 

  • “Certainly, I would expect those people to double down in their activism and go back to their paramilitary and militia groups as battle-hardened leaders who now can speak with authority about the violence against the government that they’ve been promising all these years. I do think this will be a shot in the arm for the movement and for several groups who had been relatively dormant since Jan. 6.”

***

I was on Pine Ridge Reservation, reporting for Rolling Stone not long after the shootout between AIM activists and the FBI that led to Leonard Peltier’s conviction. Although we were investigating another, related case at the time, I reviewed enough of the evidence to conclude he was probably guilty of killing the FBI agents as charged.

But his subsequent conviction seemed problematic, and more to the point, AIM and other revolutionary groups of the 1960s and 70s never represented a major threat to the U.S. government in the consensus opinion of historians and experts in counter-terrorism. And whatever minor threat AIM, the Black Panthers and others did pose at the time was quickly crushed by COINTELPRO and other illegal government actions.

Trump’s loyalist militias, by contrast, are a real and active threat. They never encountered any sort of government counter-measures like COINTELPRO, only due process for breaking the law. Now Trump has cleared their convictions away, they may easily be convinced to rise to his defense again should he issue a call to do so. And in that context, we do not yet know how far Trump intends to go to neutralize his perceived political enemies.

Remember the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity? This was Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s ominous summation: “During arguments on this case, a question was posed to Trump lawyers about whether a President could dispatch a ‘SEAL Team’ to kill his political enemies…Under this ruling, if a President, in their official capacity, orders the military to kill other Americans – judges, elected officials, reporters, your neighbor – they can do so.”

U-C Berkeley political scientist Terri Bimes, a scholar in the history and operation of the U.S. presidency, agrees, stating: “The decision seems to permit the president to use the power of the office to commit acts that are illegal, that are criminal. The fact that these actions are being taken in the name of the presidency, that they’re official acts, makes them immune from prosecution. That is really problematic.”

Bimes added that “we really need the courts to step in to help control the president, to make the president more accountable.Now I’m not so sure that we can rely on that — I’m not confident. I’m worried about our democracy because of the character of Donald Trump.”

So maybe someone can help me out here. Am I being unduly paranoid that Trump could be planning on sending hit teams to eliminate leaders of what he views as the political opposition? After all, he’s repeatedly declared that the radical left is a serious internal threat to democracy and uses a very broad brush indeed as to who he considers as members of that dangerous left. All they need to do is criticize him.

I’ll tell you who is a major threat to the survival of our democracy at this moment and that is Donald John Trump, the sitting President of the United States of America. And I’ll close by recalling the words of Frederick Douglass: The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those they oppress.

Recommended Readings: 

TODAY’s HEADLINES:

TODAY’s ARCHIVAL VIDEO: 

It Makes No Difference (Remastered 2000) The Band. R.I.P. Garth Hudson

____________________________________________________________________________

Special Report: Who Killed Betty Van Patter?

(Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)

Welcome, readers of The Oaklandside, Berkeleyside and Richmondside who are looking for the rest of the ten-part series, “Who Killed Betty Van Patter?” Just click on the links below to read each part.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

See also: Betty Van Patter, the Black Panthers’ bookkeeper, was murdered 50 years ago. Who killed her? Investigative reporter David Weir and others have spent decades searching for answers. (Berkeleyside) (Richmondside) (The Oaklandside) 

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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

The First Episode of SNL

NOTE: If you only read one story today, consider making it the AP link ay the top of those listed below.

***

In the past week, a significant number of new subscribers have joined us here on Substack, mostly coming via Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside and Richmondside.

Welcome, one and all, and thank you for giving this little newsletter a try. I figure I should explain a bit who I am and what it is I am doing here.

This newsletter serves both as a news analysis site and as an odd type of memoir-in-progress. I’ve been a journalist for 59 years and have had a wide variety of strange, hazardous and/or wonderful adventures in that role. My recounting of those episodes appear here interspersed with somewhat weightier essays warning about the threats from autocracy, climate change, xenophobia and Donald Trump.

Most of the time, I try to keep things as light-hearted as possible, specifically because out in the real world things have gotten so heavy.

***

As many of you may know, I was a writer and editor for Rolling Stone magazine from 1974 to 1977.

Saturday nights sometimes would get weird in those years. One of the most memorable occurred just as Howard Kohn and I were gaining national attention for the first of our stories about the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, called "The Inside Story" in October 1975.

(The painting called “Tania’s World” for the cover of Rolling Stone.)

Our boss, the irrepressible Jann Wenner, lived in a Victorian mansion on California Street. He had a bunch of us over on the evening of October 11, 1975 -- a night that was laced with enough drugs and alcohol that it’s hard to recall in detail. Jann had an early version of a large-screen TV, and we all gathered to watch the debut of a brand new show called Saturday Night Live. It featured something never before aired by network TV -- fake ads, and I remember that Jerry Rubin was in one of them. 

I'd known Jerry for several years, since my SunDance magazine days, and in fact I'd edited a book of his, Growing Up at 37. Though we were all too stoned by 11:30 when the show came on for me to be absolutely certain about this, my memory is that Howard and I were referred to in one skit as “those two guys from Rolling Stone.”

That, alas, was our only “appearance” on the show. They never invited us back.

Annie Liebowitz was there that night. She broke into tears when she discovered her cameras had been stolen out of her car parked in Jann's driveway. Annie never got her cameras back, but Jann bought her new ones.

As for me, that Patty Hearst story would change my life forever.

Note: This year marks the 50th anniversary of SNL and also of “The Inside Story.” The former is a big deal.

HEADLINES:

  • Beneath a veneer of calm, Trump’s inauguration holds warning signs for US democracy (AP)

  • Trump puts all US government diversity staff on paid leave, starting 'immediately' (BBC)

  • The Trump Pardons That Will Haunt America (Slate)

  • Trump threatens 10% tariff on China and considers EU levy (Guardian)

  • Six Trump executive orders to watch (BBC) 

  • Trump faces pushback on his sweeping actions (WP)

  • Trump puts all US government diversity staff on paid leave, starting 'immediately' (BBC)

  • Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack (NBC)

  • Police union that endorsed Trump blasts Jan. 6 pardons (Axios)

  • Twenty-two Democratic-led states sue over Trump birthright citizenship order (Guardian)

  • President reinstates plan to strip protections from federal workers (WP)

  • Trump DOJ shake-up sidelines top prosecutors in national security, adds new US attorneys in DC and New York (CNN)

  • Files detail bid to contain fallout from Tulsi Gabbard meetings with Assad (WP)

  • What Trump’s Executive Orders Mean for the Climate (New Yorker)

  • Mexico defends sovereignty as US seeks to label cartels as terrorists (AP)

  • Hegseth Routinely Passed Out From Alcohol Abuse, Witness Says (WSJ)

  • A fork in the road for Tesla (Financial Times)

  • Economists Increase Inflation Forecasts Due to Trump’s Economic Policies (Forex)

  • 174-year-old Bay Area bookstore company files for bankruptcy, will close Berkeley store (SFGate)

  • Instagram users encounter blocked political hashtags in search results (Axios)

  • High fertiliser use halves numbers of pollinators, world’s longest study finds (Guardian)

  • Historic snow amounts are falling in Florida, Louisiana and Texas as a once-in-a-generation storm hits (CNN)

  • OpenAI product chief says world is "on the verge" of AI agents (Axios)

  • I’ve experienced the next era of AI, and I’m never going back (Digital Trends)

  • The Pentagon says AI is speeding up its ‘kill chain’ (TechCrunch)

  • Watch: World’s first human-like walking humanoid robot takes a stroll in China (IE)

  • Last Time Sources Checked This Still America (The Onion)

_______________________________________________________

Who Killed Betty Van Patter?

(Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)

Welcome, readers of The Oaklandside, Berkeleyside and Richmondside who are looking for the rest of the ten-part series, “Who Killed Betty Van Patter?” Just click on the links below to read each part.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

See also: Betty Van Patter, the Black Panthers’ bookkeeper, was murdered 50 years ago. Who killed her? Investigative reporter David Weir and others have spent decades searching for answers. (Berkeleyside) (Richmondside) (The Oaklandside) 

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Tuesday, January 21, 2025

A Day in the Sun

Monday was a weird day. I knew I was possibly putting my mental health at risk by watching Trump’s inauguration, but I did so anyway. He seemed subdued and didn’t really have many applause lines, but he also was deadly serious about doing the things he said he would do if elected. As soon as he finished speaking, I closed my laptop and went outside.

Rather than listen to the reactive news cycle voices hash over the meaning of all this, I traveled down to San Jose where I spent the day watching my eight grandchildren, ages 3-18, play in a park. 

My youngest granddaughter, who is six, asked me to go with her to the monkey bars. (Somehow I find it comforting that they still call them monkey bars.)

As I watched her swing her small frame bar to bar, her blond hair blowing in the breeze and her pink dress capturing the sunlight, I mulled over how this country may change over the next few years in ways that could alter her fortunes permanently, but of course she has no idea about any of that yet.

After the monkey bars she said she was hungry so we went back to our picnic table where she grabbed a croissant. After tearing it in half, she pointed to the inside and said, “Look Grandpa, it as a secret tunnel.” Before long, she had concocted an entire tale about a girl archeologist exploring the secret tunnel in her croissant, which definitely, I thought to myself, showed more imagination than any of Trump’s tired policy pronouncements.

Also, her rights as a young woman growing up in a post-Roe society will be markedly fewer than those of her grandmother’s generation.

Soon afterwards, my oldest grandson sat down next to me on the bench and told me about his latest college applications, which include his interest in environmental science plus engineering, hopefully working on projects like EVs that could guard against climate change and make our society a more sustainable one into the future.

I didn’t have the heart to mention to him that the new president had just denounced EVs and promised to roll back support for them in favor of gas guzzlers, while proclaiming, “Drill baby, drill!”

So it went, my day in the sun. I couldn’t escape the chill emanating from the nation’s capital from a small man who explicitly rejects the dreams of my grandchildren and millions of other young, idealistic Americans.

But I hope our young people will continue dreaming those dreams, because we need girl archeologists and boy engineer-scientists and besides, this regime — built entirely on hate, fear, resentment, xenophobia and imperialism — this too in time will pass.

***

The scope of what Trump was able to accomplish on his long-promised “day one” may look impressive on paper, but for now much of it is purely symbolic. Changing the name of a mountain or the Gulf of Mexico does nothing to help reduce inflation or make housing more affordable, for example, but it could make them worse.

On the other hand, imposing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada as of February 1st, is the equivalent of an act of war, not upon our enemies but on our friends. What I fear most now is not the immediate autocracy at home that’s implicit in many of Trump’s vows but imperialist expansion abroad.

Trump told the rich and powerful gathered for his speech that he is going to “take back” the Panama Canal.

We all have to remember that imperialism abroad is closely linked to xenophobia at home. That is what will fuel the establishment of an autocratic oligarchy of the billionaire class cohering around Trump.

This is a real and present danger.

HEADLINES:

  • Trump sworn in as 47th president (WP)

  • Convicted Felon Sworn in as President (Rolling Stone)

  • Trump signed slew of executive orders on Day 1. What are his priorities? (AP)

  • Trump commutes sentences of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders as he pardons over 1,000 January 6 US Capitol rioters (CNN)

  • The new American imperialism (Economist)

  • Trump’s First Day in Office: Signing Orders, Spinning Yarns, Settling Scores (WSJ)

  • Executive order will attempt to end birthright citizenship (WP)

  • Trump signs order to withdraw US from World Health Organization (Financial Times)

  • Trump's inauguration billionaires, CEOs: Ambani, Zuckerberg, Bezos attend church, ceremony (Reuters)

  • Trump rescinds Biden's census order, clearing a path for reshaping election maps (NPR)

  • Elon Musk appears to make back-to-back fascist salutes at inauguration rally (Guardian)

  • Designating Drug Gangs as Terrorist Groups Risks Ties With Latin America (WSJ)

  • Donald Trump jolts markets with threat of tariffs against Mexico and Canada (Financial Times)

  • Trump targets transgender protections in new executive order (Axios)

  • Donald Trump’s Inaugural Day of Vindication (New Yorker)

  • TikTok Ban Live Updates: Trump Halts Ban For 75 Days—After CEO Attends Inauguration (Forbes)

  • American TikTokers Get a Taste of Chinese Censorship as They Rush to RedNote (WSJ)

  • Local meteorologists could face layoffs amid new initiative with The Weather Channel (NPR)

  • Pentagon removes portrait of Mark Milley, former top US general (Reuters)

  • Timothee Chalamet talks about playing Bob Dylan in the new movie 'A Complete Unknown' (NPR)

  • The second wave of AI coding is here (MIT Technology Review)

  • Earth Explodes (The Onion)

    ________________________________________________________________________

    Who Killed Betty Van Patter?

    (Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)

    Welcome, readers of Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, and Richmondside who are looking for the rest of the ten-part series, “Who Killed Betty Van Patter?” Just click on the links below to read each part.

    Part One

    Part Two

    Part Three

    Part Four

    Part Five

    Part Six

    Part Seven

    Part Eight

    Part Nine

    Part Ten

    See also: Betty Van Patter, the Black Panthers’ bookkeeper, was murdered 50 years ago. Who killed her? Investigative reporter David Weir and others have spent decades searching for answers. (Berkeleyside) (Richmondside)

at No comments:
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