An entire public career of denying the existence of Climate Change, finally catches up with former Florida Governor and present US Senator Rick Scott, in the unforgiving form of Hurricane Milton.
(Voldemort, a Rick Scott look-a-like; Florida residents protesting Senator Scott’s long record of Climate Denial (photo from the Florida Phoenix, Sept. 30, 2024)
Think of the vilest villains
Who have disfigured the faces
Of nightmarish graphic novels, movie screens,
Or other such rot. Than, think of Rick Scott.
If Lex Luthor & Voldemort
Mixed their twisted sperm into a test-tube,
And steamed it in a fetid Florida swamp for
Many months or years, or what,
The end result would be…Rick Scott.
His glowing orb, fresh from the Dark Lagoon,
Sucked life from ailing humans far too soon,
Hissing his seductive tune of health care savings each day,
Killing them harshly, through Columbia HCA.
A mere warm-up for the spawn of Voldemort & Lex,
His deprivation of care, sheer insanity.
How easily Scott shilled his heinous hex,
Manipulating it, Mengele-like, against humanity.
Crazed Eyes, ablaze with dollar signs,
Gleefully pulling the plug on yours and mine.
Then, foraging for more to defraud, or scare,
Scott’s ghoulish-gaze grabbed Medicare.
With Frankensteinian flare,
He raped and pillaged taxpayers bare.
His scandalous fraud hit the multi-billion $$ scale,
So Scott “5th” away the truth 75 times, cheating jail.
Fueled by money from Big Oil & Gas,
And his own crooked, thieving past,
Scott sucked up Fossil Fuel funds,
While the Gulf overheated, very fast.
The soul-less son of Slytherin,
Slimed the idea of “Climate Change;”
Wiping it out of State Regs, and
Erasing it from students’ brains.
Slithering into his Naples Mansion,
Giving Floridians a middle-fingered jilten’,
Scott gets spit-out, dervish-like, from the boiling Gulf,
Stripped bare by the wrath of his creation, Hurricane Milton.
From Tampa Bay to Key West,
Scott’s Climate Change denials roared on shore,
His pathological scientific whitewash,
Was now a killer storm–Category 5 or 4.
Scott force-fed the State a pipeline—
One of 3 from which he sucked out cash;
Addicting Florida, fentanyl-like, to Fossil fuels,
Setting it up for a crippling, tidal surge crash.
“I’m not a scientist,” Scott once bragged,
Such willful blindness leaving Floridians sandbagged.
Now, he tells CNN “something’s clearly changing,”
As the waters his actions heated, wipes out people, raging…
Israel’s Netanyahu is waging a Regional War in the Middle East to keep his grasp on power, and, potentially, stay out of prison.
(Photo from the New York Times)
Every since I converted to Judaism 44 years ago, I’ve always loved Rosh Hashanah.
I am always humbled by the Jewish New Year’s 10-day focus on introspection and contemplation, rather than the brainless and ritual inebriation of the other New Year’s celebration.
Sure, it’s a time to raise a glass of wine or two and be grateful for surviving another year of life, but Rosh Hashanah was always more of a gentle invitation to a quiet retreat from that life. To me, the High Holy Days always been a special, sacred time to reflect on where our lives, our humanity and our souls have been over the past year, and where we would like them to be.
This year, the sounding of the Shofar, a modern day trumpet, which Maimonides and other Jewish scholars have interpreted as a “wake-up-call” for personal introspection and self-improvement, or as “a means of asking God to remember man” (Pentateuch), appears on the brink of being thrust back centuries to an ancient role of heralding war, the way it was used when Joshua waged war against Jericho.
In Hayyim Schauss’ book, The Jewish Festivals: History & Observance, (1938; 12th Printing 1978, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Schocken Books, NY), the author writes that:
“In the old days, the shofar was used as a musical instrument by Jews at various religious ceremonies, but its’ most important use was to intimidate the enemy, to declare war, and in general, to make proclamations of the people.”
Apparently, the Netanyahu government is choosing to use the shofar this Rosh Hashanah to sound a clarion call for widespread war, in the increasingly questionable claim of Israel’s self-defense.
Netanyahu and his extremist Ultra Nationalist government has chosen to respond to the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas of more than 1200 Israeli citizens and the forced kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, by grinding Gaza into the dust, and killing more than 40,000 Palestinian non-combatants, most of whom are women and children.
Gone is any semblance of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF), Code of Ethics for the IDF, which previously—before Netanyahu came to power– commanded the IDF to adhere to specific rules of combat.
That Code of Ethics, required as part of basic training for IDF soldiers, consists of four essential principles:
· NECESSITY: “to apply force only for the sake of the mission;”
· DISTINCTION: “aim your fire at those who pose a threat, NOT at combatants indiscriminately;
· RESPONSIBILITY: “since you know there will be collateral harm of civilians, you have to do whatever you can to MINIMIZE the expected collateral harm.”
· PROPORTIONALITY: “Is the expected collateral harm proportionate to the military achievement?”
All of that moral and ethical guidance for Israel’s soldiers was tossed out when Netatanyu and his megalomaniacal cabinet seized power, declaring war on anyone not sufficiently Jewish, according to their own extremely narrow perspective. Unarmed Palestinian women and children—either in Gaza or the West Bank—were considered sub-human by the Ultra Nationalists controlling the Israeli government and its’ armed forces.
Instead of abiding by the IDF’s historic ethical code, Bibi and his unbridled band of extremists have justified dropping 2,000 pound bombs—provided by the UnitedStates—on civilian populations by claiming, often suspiciously, that Hamas or Hezbollah combatants had hidden themselves underneath non-combatant populations and structures, like hospitals, schools, day-care centers, or apartment buildings. By its’ own actions, the Netanyahu government has single-handedly undermined the credibility of any statements or videos coming from the IDF.
Under that spurious “self-defense” definition, any civilian population in any country in which anti-Israel terrorists may be hiding is fair game for any indiscriminate—and non-proportional— IDF attack. National borders, international law, or individual state sovereignty do not matter under this new formulation of “self-defense” by the Netanyahu government.
Netanyahu and the Ultra Nationalists ruling Israel, using the “self-defense” trap to ensnare the US and other allies in its military actions, have now expanded it’s unending crusade for revenge for the murders of October 7, 2023, well-beyond retribution against Hamas, or the boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank.
Bibi has launched a Regional “Ring of Fire” War not just against the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, but has dangerously expanded the war, just this week, across the national borders of Lebanon, Yemen & Syria, and is poised to attack any number of sites in Iran, to retaliate for Iranian missiles being launched into Israel. Iran’s missile attack was done in response to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah strong holds in Southern Lebanon, the killing of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, and the maiming of thousands of Hezbollah operatives and Lebanese citizens with exploding personal communications devices—an act on Israel’s part, considered by some, to constitute terrorism against the nation of Lebanon and its people.
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, 5785 (2024), the Jewish publication The Forward outlined several military options Israel may take against Iran, which would shatter any hopes for a ceasefire, any chance of peace in the MidEast, and destabilize democratic nations and economies around the world:
· “A tactical strike on Iran: A more substantial response could involve direct military action against Iranian assets, such as oil facilities or military installations. This would aim to inflict real damage on Iran’s infrastructure, forcing it to reconsider further provocations.
An attack on an oil installation, for instance, could disrupt Iran’s economic lifelines and send the clear message that Israel will not tolerate continued missile strikes. The goal here would be to create enough pain for Iran to deter future actions, without pushing the region into a full-scale war.”
· “A strategic overhaul of the region’s balance of power: This option is far more ambitious, and fraught with risk, but could reshape the Middle East. It would involve Israel somehow pushing the West to lay down the law with Iran, demanding not just an end to its missile strikes, but a full dismantling of its nuclear program and an end to its sponsorship of proxy forces across the region”.
The Forward goes on to point out that the most extreme option poses a serious, not hypothetical, risk of starting World War III:
“If Iran responds forcefully, the U.S. would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict to protect Israel. This could trigger a chain reaction, with Russia and China, both of whom have strategic relationships with Iran, seeing an opportunity to exploit the chaos. China could use the distraction to finally make a long-threatened move on Taiwan, while Russian President Vladimir Putin might take the opportunity to expand his war in Ukraine, or press into neighboring countries.
The global balance of power would be thrown into disarray, with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
At the end of our High Holy Days, our Days of Awe, we Jews say a profound prayer during Yom Kippur:
“On Rosh Hashanah it is written,
On Yom Kippur it is sealed:
How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be;
Who shall live and who shall die;
Who shall see ripe age, and who shall not;
Who shall perish by fire, and who by water;
Who by sword and who by beast;
Who by hunger and who by thirst;
Who by earthquake and who by plague;
Who by strangling and who by stoning;
Who shall be secure and who shall be driven;
Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled;
Who shall be poor and who shall be rich;
Who shall be humbled and who exalted;
But REPENTANCE, PRAYER, and CHARITY
Temper judgement’s severe decree.”
It’s in the spirit of that prayer, of this somber and reflective period, and of this immensely important moment in each of our lives that I question the tragic circle of firing squads that Netanyahu and the Ultra-nationalist Israeli government have built encircling Israel and threatening to plunge the world into full-scale war.
During this time of questioning, we need answers to a few critical questions.
1. What about the 100+ hostages in Gaza? Has BiBi given up on them?
2. Did the Netanyahu government turn its attention to Hezbollah because it was losing the public opinion and political war in Gaza, and saw no hope of getting the hostages out alive?
3. Does the IDF already know the hostages are dead, and is using a wider war as a distraction from that horror?
4. Did Bibi carefully calculate that with only a month out from the US Presidential Election few, if any, American politicians would oppose any military action taken by Israel, as long as it was shrouded in the words, “self-defense?”
5. Was the booby trapping of personal electronic devices—and interdicting the supply chain to do it—an act of international terrorism? Does it open up a new and dangerous vein of “permissible” terrorist activities, now that Israel has done it? Has it raised the possibility of terrorists interdicting and arming I-Phones headed for the consumer market in the US or Western Europe?
6. Were those hand-held explosives an act of war vs. Hezbollah, or against Lebanon? Iran?
7. Can Israel do anything in the region—or in pursuing terrorists around the world—as long as it declares it: an act of Israel’s self-defense?
8. Has Bibi and Israel’s Nationalist government intentionally ratcheted up his “Circle of Fire” strategy and shooting war across several sovereign state borders to justify bombing Iran’s oil and Nuclear production facilities?
9. Is this Netanyahu’s “October Surprise” for Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential Election to continue the US’ unquestioning support for any Bibism?
10. Was this Netanyahu’s long-term plan since sabotaging Barack Obama’s Nuclear agreement with Iran in 2014? Did he always want to take out Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons himself, militarily, and not allow it to happen under a global peace agreement?
The stakes here, at this very instant in human history, are extraordinary, and not just for the future existence of Israel, but for all of us.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told Katy Tur of NBC news that, while he wanted to “guarantee security for Israel,” he believed that Netanyahu was “creating the danger because he doesn’t want a two-State solution.”
Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, an US educated member of the Jordanian Druse community—Israel’s long-time allies—urgently pleaded that “The Arab states around Israel can guarantee its’ security.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, in his final speech delivered at the Peace Rally where he was assassinated by an Ultra Nationalist Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995, stated clearly one of the fundamental principles upon which the State of Israel was built:
“The path of peace is preferable to the path of war. I say this as a military man…and see the pain of the families of the IDF soldiers. For them, for our children, in my case for our grandchildren, I want this Government to exhaust every opening, every possibility to promote and achieve a comprehensive peace.”
Just as Bibi campaigned against every peace initiative put forth by Rabin going back 30 years–especially regarding a Two-State solution—he has repeatedly scuttled American cease-fire efforts in Gaza over the past several months to free any remaining hostages, or entertain any exit plan from Gaza and the West Bank that involves Palestinian self-determination, or contradicts the fever dreams of the Ultra Nationalist coalition keeping Netanyahu in power, and out of prison.
That terrible and troubling track record compounds an already towering tragedy, and this Rosh Hashanah, it appears the Netanyahu wants to use the Shofar as an instrument of war and revenge, and acquire for himself the awful power to determine “who shall live, and who shall die.”
A “Black Libel,” against Haitians, has been added to the ancient arsenal of White Supremacists and Anti-Semites: The “Blood Libel” against, and scapegoating of, the Jews.
(Fascist publications like ‘Der Sturmer’ (above) were responsible for fanning the flames of the centuries old “Blood Libel” that Jews were killing Christian babies and using their blood for ritualistic purposes—lies that resulted in the scapegoating of, and the mass murder of millions of Jews. For more than 200 years, Haitians have been the target of a “Black Libel,” falsely accusing them of everything from voodoo and animal sacrifice, to the spread of AIDS. (below).
Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their blood-thirsty, bigoted white supremacist sic(sic)-o-phants expose their full-throated, fundamentalist hatreds each time they open their mouths: Blacks & Jews, they howl, should be blamed for our evils.
The misogynistic MAGA monsters also can’t stand strong, independent women—who refuse to be humble handmaidens of their hate–have repeatedly demonstrated over decades of pushing policies aimed at keeping women subservient, pregnant & poor, particularly in the area of women’s health and reproductive rights why Kamala Harris’ candidacy drives them crazy: she refuses to be shackled by the white, male supremacists’ centuries long campaigns of shame & subjugation.
Yet, the real red flag of Harris’ candidacy to these bigoted bullies, is not just that she’s a woman, but that she’s multi-racial, with one of her parents being from the Caribbean—an exotic, erotic place of mystery and Black independence history– and is happily married to a successful & confident white Jewish man. In one single sweep, a charismatic new American persona–Kamala Harris–represents all of the crazed, conspiracies these haters have harbored, and acted upon, going back centuries. Despite—or perhaps because of– her obvious joy, likeability, and deep professionalism, Harris is the worst nightmare of White Supremacists, sexual oppressors, and anti-Semites.
Their virulent attacks by Trump, Laura Loomer, JD Vance, Mark Robinson, and other Far Right extremists, against American Jews who don’t support authoritarianism, and upon the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, are only the latest eruptions of their dangerous bile, hate speech and group libel. In the past, such relentless campaigns of hate and dehumanization against Jews and non-Whites, have yielded deadly results.
Jews of every political persuasion have been subjected to “Blood Libels” against them going back to the 12th Century, according to “A History of the Jewish People,” an 1100-page encyclopedic work edited by H.H. Ben Sasson, and published by Harvard University Press in 1976. That “Blood Libel,” first surfaced in England, when the Jews of Norwich, were “accused of having murdered a Christian child.” It’s get subtly resurrected each time a Christian Nationalist, or proponent of Project 2025, refers to the United States as a “Christian Nation.”
The anti-Semitic “Blood Libel & Ritual Murder” is defined by early Jew-haters, as, “once the Jews had crucified Christ (a lie), they thirsted for pure and innocent blood (another lie.)Since the formerly incarnate God was now in “heaven,” the grotesque lie continued that, “the Jews aspired to the blood of the most innocent believers, i.e., the children, the tender Christians.” (Page 482, History of the Jewish People).
Dangerously, millions of Christians believed those early “blood libels” to be true, resulting in large numbers of Jews being burned at the stake. A full century after the Jews had been expelled from England, Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, wrote The Canterbury Tales in 1387. In the “Prioress’ Tale”, “an innocent Christian child was walking through the ‘Street of the Jews’ singing songs in praise of Mary, mother of Jesus. The Jews seized and murdered him. The crime was miraculously revealed, and the whole community of Jews was put to death.” (Page 483, History of the Jewish People.)
Jewish history is replete with such repulsive smears and crusades against an entire people from the murderous lies and 15th century treachery of John of Capistrano (latter canonized into Sainthood by the Catholic Church), and the Libel of Trent (1475) where Franciscan monks preached that Jews in that German town were responsible for the disappearance of a 2-year old boy. Without any evidence at all, the entire Jewish community was arrested, tortured, and expelled from the region.
Nearly 500 years—and the murders of millions of Jews–later (1965), the Catholic Church officially “acknowledged that a judicial error had been committed against the Jews of Trent…” (Page 580,History of the Jewish People).
Sadly, the Jew Haters were just beginning to hone their horrific lies. During the Spanish Inquisition, witchcraft and crucifixion were added to the fictional charges of “blood libel” and “ritual murder,” against the Jews, along with the utterly insane charge that Jews used the heart and blood of a crucified boy to “spread rabies among all Christians.” Despite there being no factual foundation for any of the charges, all Jews merely accused of the crime were burned at the stake, with Christians ready to believe any evil of anyone who was Jewish.
In the 16th Century, the founder of Lutheranism, the German conservative Martin Luther, was savagely anti-Semitic, spelling out detailed methods of how to destroy the Jewish population, many of which were updated and perniciously put into practice by Adolf Hitler 400 years later, resulting in the torture and annihilation of six million Jews, one million of whom were children.
But, Hitler was not alone. At the same time Hitler and the embryonic Nazi movement were rising in Germany, the KKK was at the peak of its power in the United States, getting 30,000 of its robed followers to March on Washington in 1925—the same year “Mein Kampf” was published. The year before, the KKK was instrumental in crafting the virulent anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant Immigration Act of 1924—the basis for the present day Trump/Stephen Miller immigration policy.
Such actions “normalized” how the KKK operated. Teaming up with other White Supremacists across the US, the KKK—while continuing to lynch thousands of Black Americans for the sole “crime” of being Black– passed Jim Crow laws in some 30 American states. Those Jim Crow Laws, according to Princeton Professor and legal scholar James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model, served as the basis for Nazi lawyers in drafting the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews, forever linking legislated hatred and state-sponsored discrimination against Blacks, with legislated hatred, discrimination and state-sponsored murder against the Jews. (See https://open.substack.com/pub/villano/p/dictating-hate-jim-crow-white-supremacy?r=cveu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
In fact, it was during the tumultuous, anti-immigrant 1920’s in the United States, when not only were Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti executed (1927) for a murder that was not proven they committed, but, the following year, a well-documented case of “Blood Libel” against Jews occurred in Massena, New York, a small town in St. Lawrence County, just across from the Canadian border.
In his book, The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town, NYU History professor Edward Berenson—a native of Massena, N.Y.—documents a “Blood Libel” against local Jews in an upstate N.Y. town at a time (1928) when anti-immigrant fervor was at a fever pitch in the United States, the KKK was at the peak of its political power, and the first Catholic candidate—New York’s Governor Al Smith, with Irish and Italian ancestors—was running for President of the United States.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described this “modern blood libel” as:
“When a four-year-old girl went missing from her home, and a rumor spread that local Jews had kidnapped and killed her. Crowds gathered outside Massena’s police station, where the town’s rabbi had been summoned. A state trooper questioned the rabbi, and asked him whether Jews offered human sacrifices or used blood in rituals. The girl was eventually found alive and unharmed.”
In the Massena case, the young girl, named Barbara, had gotten lost in the local woods—very dense around that North Country community—and returned home the next day, unharmed. However, despite the direct evidence of Barbara’s safety, the accusations of “Jewish rituals” persisted in the local and national press for weeks.
The ADL, in its’ Global Anti-Semitism resource material from 2016, goes on to detail the wild stories and lies of blood libels against Jews throughout 1,000 years of history, resulting in the massacres of entire Jewish communities:
“Some Christians believed that the four cups of wine that Jews drink at the Passover Seder celebrations were actually blood, or that Jews mixed blood into hamantaschen, sweet pastries eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Others claimed that Jews used Christian blood as a medicine or even as an aphrodisiac.”
Professor Berenson told the New York University News’ in September, 2019, that he believed the Massena “Blood Libel” occurred during the cultural backdrop of:
“…mass immigration, which by the 1920s was three and a half decades old. Before that… the United States was overwhelmingly a Protestant country; after the 1880s, you had a huge influx of Catholics and Jews, and it really changed the country…
So in the 1920s—and this will have echoes for the present—there were an awful lot of people who were not so happy about this new demographic situation, and one of the main organizations that opposed it was a revived Ku Klux Klan. There’s some evidence that there were several members of the volunteer fire company in Massena who were members of the Klan. And there were essentially no African Americans who lived up there, so most of the Klan’s hostility was directed against Catholics and Jews, and people who were seen to be connected to immigration in one way or the other.”
Professor Berenson went on to point out in his interview with NYU News:
“Religious venom surrounded this campaign (of 1928). There was horrible hostility to Catholics because Al Smith was the first Catholic candidate ever for the presidency. And some of Al Smith’s top advisors were Jews, and everybody knew that they were Jewish. So this election kind of brought together all of these themes that were percolating in the 1920s.”
Fast forward to today, nearly 100 years later, to the Presidential Election of 2024, when the candidate of one major party, Donald Trump, has a well-documented record of racism toward Blacks, deep anti-immigrant animus upon which he has campaigned and enacted policy, and Jew-blaming, when it suits his purposes, as it did recently when a purported address on “Anti-Semitism” by Trump turned into an all out attack on Jews who don’t support him, whom he preemptively blamed for his defeat, should he lose the election to Kamala Harris. Multiple news sources and commentators noted Trump’s new “Blame the Jews” strategy of scapegoating the very people who have been similarly scapegoated for centuries, with horrific consequences. To Trump and many of his supporters, the perverse and dangerous irony of scapegoating Jewsat a conference on Anti-Semitism, meant nothing.
Vice President Harris, for her part, is the first US Presidential candidate in American history who is a female, mixed race daughter of immigrants—one of whom is a Caribbean Black—and who is married to a Jew. In one highly qualified and enormously charismatic candidate, White Supremacists, Anti-Semites and Xenophobes have been blinded by their own rage— the same effect the Democratic, Catholic son of immigrants Al Smith had upon the KKK and other bigots in 1928.
With immigration as a similar lightening rod political issue today as it was in 1924 & 1928–it was inevitable that at least one particular group of immigrants would be targeted for discrimination and vilification during the 2024 election. What was also not surprising was that the group targeted by Trump and his supporters—would not be Latino, as they were for Trump’s entire political career—but Haitian legal immigrants, a persistent target of White Supremacists going back over 200 years, at precisely the same time when the Democrats nominated a Black woman with ancestors from the Caribbean. Had the Haitians become Trump’s Willie Horton?
Even with local public officials and the Governors of each state pointing out how much Haitian immigrants have helped build the local economies of Springfield, Ohio and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Trump has doubled down on the blatant blanket of lies and hate spread by himself and his running mate JD Vance– by telling 67 million Americans during a Presidential debate that the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs, the people that came in; they’re eating the cats; they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Before the Democratic Presidential candidate was a women with Caribbean ancestry, Trump’s running mate Vance—A US Senator from Ohio for the past two years—never once identified any reports of pet eating by anyone in the Ohio city of approximately 60,000 people, despite an in-migration of some 20,000 Haitians to Springfield over the past 4 years. Was this “Black Libel” created out of thin air specifically because a Black woman was now running against Trump?
The fact thatthisgroup of immigrants were Haitian was irresistible for vitriolic attacks from White Supremacist, anti-immigrant extremists. After all, it was Haitians who were falsely accused of another “Black Libel” 40 years ago– of being the source of the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980’s, despite evidence that the disease was brought to Port-O-Prince, Haiti, by white American, non-Haitian tourists. The brilliant infectious disease doctor and medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer—who spent years delivering health care services to Haiti–wrote a meticulously researched book entitled AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, smashing the negative stereotypes against Haitians.
Even in New York City, Haitians were targeted for HIV-related hate crimes in the 1980’s where Farmer writes, “ In Brooklyn, walls on the margins of a predominantly Caribbean neighborhood were spray-painted with the words “Haitians=N_____S withAIDS.” This followed a classification by the CDC during the Reagan Administration of Haitians as a “high risk group.” Subsequently, Haitian children in Brooklyn were beaten up and shot; Haitian store owners in Brooklyn went bankrupt and Haitian families in Brooklyn were evicted from their homes, regardless of whether they tested negative for HIV. Let that sink in, in light of the newest “Black Libel” being pedaled today by Trump and JD Vance, of Haitians eating household pets. Vance continued to spread the lie even after being presented with clear evidence that it was not true, simply to spread anti-immigrantfears and the newest Black Libel.
In AIDS and Accusations, Paul Farmer wrote: “A social service organization in South Florida reported that, following the inclusion of Haitians on the CDC listing, it was unable to find job placements for a majority of its clients. That same organization also received hate mail which conveyed such slogans as, ‘ Hire a Haitian—Help Spread AIDS,” and, “There were (sic) no AIDS in the USA until the illegal Haitian Dogs came.”
Farmer noted that the effect of these wild speculations and lies about Haitians were disastrous: “The burden of the new syndrome (HIV/AIDS) was not apparent before 1983—after all, 40 AIDS cases did not add up to much against a background of tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria, malnutrition and political repression. But the effect of AIDS-related discrimination would be instantly palpable.”
Over the past 40 years of baseless accusations against them of spreading disease, or practicing voodoo, or witchcraft, or ritual sacrifices or divination—similar to what Jews have been historically accused of–White Supremacist, Haitian haters have moved from accusing legal Haitian immigrants of being “illegal Haitian Dogs,” to spreading lies that Haitians were actually eating dogs.
While not the same as the historic and genocidal “blood libel” against the Jews, dating back over 1,000 years, the “Black Libel” against Haitians almost always involved blood (HIV/AIDS in the bloodstream) or the eating of animal blood, and their skin color—all carefully chosen attacks designed to rhetorically and racially herd Haitians back centuries to a primitive status, before Haiti became the first country in the New World to eliminate slavery, some 60 years before the United States did.
The wealthy, white slaveholders of the Confederacy were terrified that the success of the “free the slaves” movement in Haiti, while the US was in its infancy—and within the Constitution’s 10-year timetable for reconsidering Slavery which expired in 1808– would spread to the United States, only 700 miles away, and destroy their profitable “slave economy” of the US.
Now, the very same forces of White Supremacy and human oppression are terrified of an organic “Democracy movement” in the United States today, personified, not by a Haitian, but by an immigrant daughter of the Caribbean, married to a proud Jew. These fanatic voices of viciousness and hate, have demonstrated they will resurrect any baseless “Blood Libel” or “Black Libel” from the past, along with any racist, or anti-Semitic slurs or conspiracy theories they can concoct, to preserve inequality and choke off any semblance of social or political change.
And, if they fail to hold back the future, as they will, they’ve already lined up some familiar scapegoats to blame for their own failures.
We’ve seen the danger of these dehumanizing Trump tropes of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant lies before, with deadly results.
The Jim Crow Laws in 30 States formed the basis for Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws.
Ever wonder where Adolf Hitler got some of his inspiration for the Nuremberg Laws and his cult of racial hatred responsible for the mass murder of six million Jews?
Well, stop wondering: we’ve met one of the enemies of humanity, and it’s us — the good ole’ USA was one of his inspirations, specifically the 30 States which enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws against Black Americans after Reconstruction.
And, for added depravity, throw in the passage of the US Immigration Act of 1924 — Donald Trump & Stephen Miller’s favorite law — which classified entire ethnic groups of people — Italians, Jews, Asians — as expendable. That law was created by KKK-backed Members of Congress, and signed into law by a Republican President, at the peak of the Klan’s power in the US, when they marched 30,000 strong in the streets of Washington, DC.
Hitler couldn’t believe his good fortune when Nazi lawyers ( Hitler’s own Bill Barrs) presented him, after his election in 1933, with the documentary evidence that even a “great” democracy like the United States of America, believed in racial purity. We helped create the monster who dehumanized and then slaughtered six million Jews during a 12-year long racial jihad, and was responsible for the death of more than 400,000 American soldiers during World War II.
A meticulously documented book by Yale Law School Comparative Law professor James Q. Whitman, “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law,” (Princeton University Press, 2017; Princeton, NJ.)spells all of this out in horrifying detail, including Hitler’s lavish words of praise for the way White Americans massacred Native Americans and institutionalized racism against Black Americans. Hitler used our example of White Supremacy as a rational for mass murder against Jews.
Whitman’s astonishing and terrifying book carefully documents — through never before published material and verbatim transcripts — how the Nazis, as early as the 1920s, were inspired by the U.S’s Jim Crow laws — racist laws in 30 American States, and America’s increasingly xenophobic anti-immigrant laws. The Nazis were so inspired by these American laws reflecting our “racial madness” that they based the Nuremberg Laws upon them — “laws” which resulted in systematic dehumanization and eventual annihilation of 6 million Jews. The Nazi’s model for “Systemic Racism”, was none other than State and federal laws of the United States, a nation founded upon racial inequality and segregation, which built hundreds of monuments to the defenders of that pernicious system.
I read “Hitler’s American Model” while traveling through Maryland, a border state which once had statutory penalties of up to 10 years in prison, if a white person married a black person. That was Maryland, not Mississippi.
Legal documents uncovered by Professor Whitman of debates among Nazi lawyers drafting early versions of the Nuremberg Laws, reveal that even the most radical Nazis thought that America’s anti-miscegenation laws “went too far.” Let that sink in for a moment: the Nazis, believed that Maryland went too far in it’s “race madness,” by criminalizing interracial marriage. Until, of course, the Nazis went off the deep end.
I finished Whitman’s book while staying in a hotel in Fredericksburg, VA, off of Jefferson Davis Highway, a major interstate named for the President of the Confederacy, a violent militia of White Supremacists, who committed armed treason against the government of the United States, resulting in the deaths of more than 365,000 official U.S. Army troops, under the Confederate Flag of racial hatred.
That death toll almost equaled the 400,000 American troops killed by the Nazis in WWII. That’s a total of some 3/4 of a million patriotic, democracy-loving Americans slaughtered by the unhinged, hate-blinded crusaders for racism, at home and abroad.
Fredericksburg is, as many local residents are proud to tell you, the area of several key battles in the Civil War, including the Battle of Fredericksburg, where Confederate Troops — fighting to preserve slavery and keep institutionalized racism — slaughtered thousands of Union Troops who left their families and gave up their lives to set people free. The General who commanded the slaughter of American troops was Robert E. Lee, whose statue was finally removed from Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue — some 155 years after the formal end of the American shooting war for racial equality.
The continuing “racial madness” of the Confederacy — including the fighting of a civil war which killed more than 600,000 northerners and southerners — served as one of the inspirations to the Nazis when they crafted the Nuremberg Laws. Look closely at the Confederate Flag; it’s bold color scheme featuring a shocking blood red, heavily influenced the Nazi’s Swastika symbol of racial hatred. Notably, the black and red color of those two flags, are repeated in much of the branding of Donald Trump’s campaigns for President, and the MAGA movement.
But the U.S. Civil War, and America’s racist Jim Crow laws, weren’t the only inspirations for the Nazis that were made in the USA.
Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf — (100 years ago this year) how thrilled he was by the United States willingness to commit genocide against Native Americans in order to achieve America’s “Manifest Destiny” and acquire new territory. The Nazi’s would later use America’s “gunning down of redskins” (Hitler’s own words), the racist slaughter and aerial bombing of hundreds of Black Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood Neighborhood (“Black Wall Street) in 1921, and the blatantly racist Immigration Act of 1924 that discriminated against any but those from Nordic nations, as justification for murdering 6 million Jews and many others.
America prides itself on being a beacon of hope and democracy for people around the world. For Adolph Hitler and his Nazi followers, systemic racism in the United States, the institutional violence enshrined in Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the brutalization of Black Americans — proudly symbolized by a Confederate swastika — served as an inspiration for genocide.
It’s THAT heritage of hate all Americans must reject in 2024, especially when the choice is so clear.
The Trump troglodytes have no concept of the power of the Tsunami about to hit.
Taylor Swift’s exquisitely timed endorsement of Kamala Harris & Tim Walz immediately after Harris led Trump to immolate himself in front of 67 million viewers during the ABC-TV debate on September 10, 2024, was only the beginning of watching the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans.
Sure, Swift’s Instagram account has 230 million followers, and as soon as she issued an excellently worded endorsement (reprinted below), the non-MAGA mega Rock Star’s announcement became almost as a big a story as how Harris hog-tied the mendacious, mean and felonious swine on the other side of the stage from her.
Swift-fictionados would have immediately recognized the striking similarities between the vicious music critic who called the performer “young and dumb,” in 2010, prompting the artist to write the song “Mean” on her Third Album, “SpeakNow,” and Donald Trump, who called Kamala Harris “dumb as a rock,” before Harris brilliantly demolished him during the debate.
Like Harris, Swift masterfully dismantled the miserable misogynist who called her “dumb,” in the Song “Mean.” Here are some of the lyrics:
“Someday, I’ll be big enough, so you can’t hit me And all you’re ever gonna be is mean Why you gotta be so mean?
And I can see you years from now in a bar Talking over a football game With that same big loud opinion, but nobody’s listening Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing All you are is mean All you are is mean And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life And mean, and mean, and mean, and mean
But someday, I’ll be living in a big old city And all you’re ever gonna be is mean, yeah Someday, I’ll be big enough, so you can’t hit me And all you’re ever gonna be is mean Why you gotta be so mean?
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean (Why you gotta be so mean?) Someday, I’ll be big enough, so you can’t hit me (why you gotta be so mean?) And all you’re ever gonna be is mean Why you gotta be so mean?”
Not only did the mean, mendacious men underestimate Taylor Swift and Kamala Harris, but they woefully miscalculated the call to direct action and change that these two powerful women represent. During Swift’s brief Instagram endorsement, she shared a link to Vote.gov, where her fans could find info on where to register to vote or update their voter registration. Vote.gov is the official government website run by the US General Services Administration (GSA), an independent government agency.
As NPR reported:
“In the 24-hour window that Swift’s story was live on Instagram, a GSA spokesperson told NPR that there had been 405,999 visitors to the Vote.gov website via her unique link. That’s more than 13 times more visitors than a typical day on the site…
“Vote.org, a separate voter group that provides registration information and guidance, told NPR that more than 52,000 people registered to vote from its’ platform, and more than 144,000 checked their registration status in the period shortly after Swift’s endorsement on Tuesday night through midday Thursday, September 12, 2004.”
CBS National News reported on September 12, that:
“Harris’ campaign quickly embraced the support of one of the world’s most influential pop stars. The campaign soon began selling Harris/Walz friendship bracelets, the fashion accessory that millions of Swift fans have worn to her Eras Tour around the world. The bracelets sold out by Wednesday.”
As anticipated, the avalanche of “SwiftVoting” already being heaped upon Harris & Walz is driving Trump & his troglodytes into tongue-tied tirades. Trump bitterly barked out that “she will pay a price in the marketplace,” and that—in true Trump teenaged tantrum style—nyah, nyahed that he liked “Brittany Mahomes,” better.
JD Vance, Trump’s mini-me, who owes his entire political career to weirdo billionaire Peter Thiel (who believes democracy and freedom are not compatible), whined that “I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”
Ha. So much for what JD knows, who continues to demonstrate that his initials stand for “Just Dumb.” Like Trump, JD is completely clueless to the power of “SwiftVoting.”
Reprinted below is the full endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz by Taylor Swift, as it appeared on Instagram, on the evening of September 10, 2024:
“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.
Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.
I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.
I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.
