People!
1:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017
The Press has never been more
dishonest than it is today.
Stories are written that have
absolutely no basis in fact.
The writers don’t even call asking
for verification. They are
totally out of control. Sadly, I kept
many of them in business.
In six years, they all go BUST! 4:20 AM - 20 Feb 2019
Journalism is and always has been a
dangerous profession. Publicly “writing” (in wide interpretation of that word –
generally, free political speech) about people that do not want to be written
about, particularly rich and powerful people and institutions with the means
and tools to repress, is a very high-risk activity. In 2016, the Committee to
Protect Journalists recorded 48 journalists murdered worldwide. In each of 2017
and 2018, another 42. Unofficial numbers suggest vastly higher fatalities. The
murder by the Saudi government this past fall of Washington Post
journalist, U.S.-resident and Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi, held
the headlines for weeks. Our President was one of the few leaders in the world
who accepted claims of innocence from the Saudi crown. Killing those who vocally oppose powerful
incumbents has been with us throughout most of recorded history.
“Perhaps the most famous case of
censorship in ancient times is that of Socrates, sentenced to drink poison in
399 BC for his corruption of youth and his acknowledgement of unorthodox
divinities. It is fair to assume that Socrates was not the first person to be
severely punished for violating the moral and political code of his time. This
ancient view of censorship, as a benevolent task in the best interest of the
public, is still upheld in many countries, for example China. This notion was
advocated by the rulers of the Soviet Union (USSR), who were responsible for
the longest lasting and most extensive censorship era of the 20th Century…
“Free speech, which implies the free
expression of thoughts, was a challenge for pre-Christian rulers. It was no
less troublesome to the guardians of Christianity, even more so as orthodoxy
became established. To fend off a heretical threat to Christian doctrine church
leaders introduced helpful measures, such as the Nicene Creed, promulgated in
325 AD. This profession of faith is still widely used in Christian liturgy
today. As more books were written and copied and ever more widely disseminated,
ideas perceived as subversive and heretical were spread beyond the control of the
rulers. Consequently, censorship became more rigid, and punishment more severe.
“The invention of the printing press
in Europe in the mid-15th century, only increased the need for
censorship. Although printing greatly aided the Catholic Church and its mission,
it also aided the Protestant Reformation and ‘heretics,’ such as Martin Luther.
Thus the printed book also became a religious battleground.” The Long History of Censorship by Mette
Newth (Norway 2010), beaconforfreedom.org. How many people were tortured,
burned at the stake, ripped apart, imprisoned or banished for words they have
spoken or written?
Sometimes it has been the church. Usually a
repressive government. Not infrequently, it is a powerful criminal consortium
or a drug cartel. “Mexico is one
of the worst countries in the world to be a journalist today. At least 104
journalists have been murdered in this country since 2000, while 25 others have
disappeared, presumed dead. On the list of the world’s deadliest places to be a
reporter, Mexico falls between the war-torn nation of Afghanistan and the
failed state of Somalia. [In 2016], 11 Mexican journalists were killed, the
country’s highest tally this century.” 11 more were killed in 2017, 10 in 2018.
There are no dictatorships, no
autocratic regimes on earth that protect and encourage an open and free press.
None. Zero. Nada. As the Washington Post masthead says, “Democracy dies in
darkness.” One of the first efforts of rising strongmen, a polite word for
“male dictator,” is to crush opposition and any public expression that remotely
encourages that opposition or criticizes their authority, their vision and
their political agenda. Donald Trump is all about crushing all forms of public
criticism of anything Trump, from comedy shows teasing the President –
particularly Saturday Night Live – to most mainstream media, except his
propaganda machine, Fox News. The above tweets are just the tip of his
tweet-storm against the press.
It was evident very early in his
campaign. Two years
ago, at a campaign rally in Fort Worth Texas, Trump said, “One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do
and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they
write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and
win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New
York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington
Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and
win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally
protected.” Kill the press!
“Donald Trump’s repeated use of the
phrase ‘enemies of the people’ in his attacks on the media has
stoked anger and fear not only because of general concerns that he is
demonising a pillar of American democracy, but because of its echoes of totalitarianism…
The phrase has old
roots, even appearing in a Shakespeare play, but it became well known in the
20th century when it was adopted by dictators from Stalin to Mao, and Nazi
propagandists, to justify their murderous purges of millions.
“Stalin was perhaps most closely
associated with the phrase, which successor Nikita Khrushchev specifically denounced in a
landmark speech after Stalin’s death, which he used to begin dismantling the
dictator’s poisonous legacy.
“Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy
of the people’. This term automatically made it unnecessary that the
ideological errors of a man be proven,’ Khrushchev said in his secret address to the
Communist party’s inner circle… ‘It made possible the use of the cruellest
repression, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those
who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad
reputations.’
“In fact the phrase was first deployed
in a modern political sense during the French Revolution, allied with a form of
another favourite Trump phrase, ‘fake news’, according to the New York
Times.” Guardian UK,
August 3, 2018. That Donald Trump has adopted this anti-free-press mantra,
taking that verbiage in a direction that even the post-Stalinist Soviet
leadership found both reprehensible and too extreme, is exceptionally telling.
“The phrase was too toxic even for Nikita Khrushchev, a war-hardened veteran communist not known
for squeamishness. As leader of the Soviet Union [in the 1950s], he demanded an
end to the use of the term ‘enemy of the people’ because ‘it eliminated the
possibility of any kind of ideological fight.’
“‘The formula ‘enemy of the people,’’ Mr.
Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s
cult of personality, ‘was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically
annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with the supreme leader.” New York
Times, 2/26/17.
Donald Trump has reduced the number of his
press conferences, thrown journalists from highly prestigious news services out
of White House briefings, personally insulted those who have criticized them in
consistent ways never expressed by any American president in his tweets, most
recently excluding several journalists from the pre-negotiation dinner with Kim
Jong-un prior to his failed summit with that Korean leader.
As he faces unfamiliar territory, a House of
Representatives now fiercely controlled by his opposition, no longer able to
depend on his lock-step, base-fearing GOP congress people, he cannot cope.
Shutting down the government – holding his breath until he turned blue – failed
to produce money for his vanity wall that Mexico is definitely not paying for.
So his inner autocrat, with unflagging GOP support (the GOP moderates have
mostly been pushed out), issued an edict, usurped the House’s constitutional
right to originate all appropriations bills and declared a formal national
emergency – which Trump himself said he really “didn’t need to do” – to
appropriate money for his border wall. Witnessing an American autocrat work is
chilling.
As I watched the Michael Cohen testimony,
supported by hard evidence, I wondered what hard evidence the Republican
committee members would produce to counter Trump’s defrocked former lawyer.
There was none. Zip. Just a “he is a convicted liar, so you cannot believe
anything he presents.” Thin and flies in the face of how America has convicted
criminals since its inception. Take away criminals who repented and turned
against their mob bosses, and the Mafia would still run all our major cities.
Make no mistake, Donald craves becoming America’s nationalist strongman, a
Nicholas Maduro or Vladimir Putin pulling all the strings from his White House, a military in support.
I’m Peter Dekom, and red-alert: Mr. Trump’s
actions parallel the same kinds of actions that dictators have imposed against
democratic institutions throughout the ages.
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