Dissident Voice

1. America Is Falling Apart

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

— Bob Dylan

A water main breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated drinking supplies and boil water notices.

One out of three bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167 million vehicles each day, are in disrepair.

It is estimated that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States between 2024 and 2028, due in large part to widespread power grid failures.

No wonder U.S. infrastructure received a C- on the Infrastructure Report Card.

America is falling apart.

Collapsing bridges, buckling roads, overheated railways, deteriorating power lines, contaminated water lines, outdated public transportation, overtaxed power grids, aging ports and waterways, unsafe tunnels and highways, and spotty or insufficient telecommunications assets are all becoming frequent hallmarks of the American way of life.

If the nation is woefully unprepared to deal with climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been pledged to shore up the nation's infrastructure problems, it is because politicians across the political spectrum have failed us.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene makes this failure by the government to put the needs of the American people first painfully evident. Entire towns are under water. Roadways have collapsed or are otherwise impassable. Potable water is scarce. More than 1.5 million households are still without power.

Clearly, our national priorities need to be re-examined.

While the politicians play partisan games with our tax dollars, the nation's critical infrastructure—both the physical foundations of the nation and the figurative foundations of our freedoms—continues to be neglected and deprioritized in favor of grandstanding, bloated military budgets on endless wars abroad, foreign aid to shore up the infrastructure and military defenses of international allies, and all manner of graft and pork barrel spending.

When all is said and done, the bread-and-circus distractions and sleight-of-hand political theater being trotted out in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government's steady encroachments on our freedoms adds nothing of real value to the lives of the average American.

It's time to fix what's broken in this country.

For starters, we need an overhaul of the nation's infrastructure.

According to Time magazine, "Throughout the country, millions of Americans don't have access to or can't afford broadband internet service. In excess of 2 million people live without running water or basic plumbing. For too long, the American public has had to carry on while these deficiencies have gone unattended. The political will has been weak or inattentive, the rewards too far removed from electoral advantage."

In other words, the politicians who dance to the tune of the oligarchic elite aren't motivated to do anything about our failing infrastructure because they get nothing out of it: no votes, no money, no power.

This isn't about whether the Republicans or Democrats have better policies.

Indeed, both parties' priorities are disconcertingly alike: both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry's basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.

This is about the plight of the American people who continue to be treated like a permanent underclass.

Anyone who believes that this presidential election will bring about any real change in how the American government does business is either incredibly naive, woefully out-of-touch, or oblivious to the fact that as an in-depth Princeton University study shows, we now live in an oligarchy that is "of the rich, by the rich and for the rich."

When a country spends close to $10 billion to select what is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified homecoming king or queen to occupy the White House, while 38 million of its people live in poverty, and nearly 7 million Americans are out of work, and more than 600,000 Americans are homeless, that's a country whose priorities are out of step with the needs of its people.

Overhauling the nation's infrastructure will take a significant amount of money, which won't happen as long as the U.S. government continues to fund the military industry complex and its voracious appetite for endless wars.

James Madison was right: "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." As Madison explained, "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

This is exactly the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned would happen if we allowed the military-industrial complex to wage war, exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities.

We failed to heed Eisenhower's warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

If we are to have any hope of restoring both the structural and freedom foundations of this nation, we'll need to start by getting our priorities in order, and that means focusing on what really matters: shoring up our battered Bill of Rights and investing in the American homeland.

The post America Is Falling Apart first appeared on Dissident Voice.

2. Biden’s Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran

Photo credit: CODEPINK

On October 1, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to Israel's recent assassinations of leaders of its Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hezbollah, and Hamas. There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and if there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could propel it into an all-out war with Iran, with the U.S. in tow.

For years, Iran has been trying to avoid such a war. That is why it signed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union. Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and despite Joe Biden's much-touted differences with Trump, he failed to restore U.S. compliance. Instead, he tried to use Trump's violation of the treaty as leverage to demand further concessions from Iran. This only served to further aggravate the schism between the United States and Iran, which have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.

Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees his long-awaited chance to draw the United States into war with Iran. By killing Iranian military leaders and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as well as attacking Iran's allies in Lebanon and Yemen, Netanyahu provoked a military response from Iran that has given him an excuse to widen the conflict even further. Tragically, there are warmongering U.S. officials who would welcome a war on Iran, and many more who would blindly go along with it.

Iran's newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on a platform of reconciling with the West. When he came to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly on September 25, he was accompanied by three members of Iran's JCPOA negotiating team: former foreign minister Javad Zarif; current foreign minister Abbas Araghchi; and deputy foreign minister Majid Ravanchi.

President Pezeshkian's message in New York was conciliatory. With Zarif and Araghchi at his side at a press conference on September 23, he talked of peace, and of reviving the dormant nuclear agreement. "Vis-a-vis the JCPOA, we said 100 times we are willing to live up to our agreements," he said. "We do hope we can sit at the table and hold discussions."

On the crisis in the Middle East, Pezeshkian said that Iran wanted peace and had exercised restraint in the face of Israel's genocide in Gaza, its assassinations of resistance leaders and Iranian officials, and its war on its neighbors.

"Let's create a situation where we can co-exist," said Pezeshkian. "Let's try to resolve tensions through dialogue…We are willing to put all of our weapons aside so long as Israel will do the same." He added that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not, and that Israel's nuclear arsenal is a serious threat to Iran.

Pezeshkian reiterated Iran's desire for peace in his speech at the UN General Assembly.

"I am the president of a country that has endured threats, war, occupation, and sanctions throughout its modern history," he said. "Others have neither come to our assistance nor respected our declared neutrality. Global powers have even sided with aggressors. We have learned that we can only rely on our own people and our own indigenous capabilities. The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone."

The U.S. response to Iran's restraint throughout this crisis has been to keep sending destructive weapons to Israel, with which it has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of women and children, bombed neighboring capitals, and beefed up the forces it would need to attack Iran.

That includes a new order for 50 F-15EX long-range bombers, with 750 gallon fuel tanks for the long journey to Iran. That arms deal still has to pass the Senate, where Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the opposition.

On the diplomatic front, the U.S. vetoed successive cease-fire resolutions in the UN Security Council and hijacked Qatar and Egypt's cease-fire negotiations to provide diplomatic cover for unrestricted genocide.

Military leaders in the United States and Israel appear to be arguing against war on Iran, as they have in the past. Even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney balked at launching another catastrophic war based on lies against Iran, after the CIA publicly admitted in its 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

When Trump threatened to attack Iran, Tulsi Gabbard warned him that a U.S. war on Iran would be so catastrophic that it would finally, retroactively, make the war on Iraq look like the "cakewalk" the neocons had promised it would be.

But neither U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nor Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant can control their countries' war policies, which are in the hands of political leaders with political agendas. Netanyahu has spent many years trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, and has kept escalating the Gaza crisis for a year, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, with that goal clearly in mind.

Biden has been out of his depth throughout this crisis, relying on political instincts from an era when acting tough and blindly supporting Israel were politically safe positions for American politicians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rose to power through the National Security Council and as a Senate staffer, not as a diplomat, riding Biden's coat-tails into a senior position where he is as out of his depth as his boss.

Meanwhile, pro-Iran militia groups in Iraq warn that, if the U.S. joins in strikes on Iran, they will target U.S. bases in Iraq and the region.

So we are careening toward a catastrophic war with Iran, with no U.S. diplomatic leadership and only Trump and Harris waiting in the wings. As Trita Parsi wrote in Responsible Statecraft, "If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration's failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America's most core security interest here — avoiding war."

The post Biden's Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

3. Legacy Media

The post Legacy Media first appeared on Dissident Voice.

4. Your Mind is a Battlefield: Decolonize Your Mind to Prevent Global Catastrophe!

Talk delivered for the event "Changes Not Seen in a Century: 75th Anniversary of the Founding of PRC."

Friends, Colleagues, Comrades,

It's a great honor for me to join you in this extraordinary, historical moment of celebration and reflection on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.

As has been said, we are seeing changes unseen in a century.  Changes both great and terrible.

We are currently seeing the unravelling of Empire–and its last desperate, violent, hideous death rattle. We are seeing the unmasking of 500 years of western "civilization", and the laying bare of its hypocrisy and unspeakable brutality. We are seeing the true face of capitalist imperialism, not its made up public relations face, but its resting bastard face.

It's not pretty.

One of the precipitating factors of the end of Empire–not the only one, but a very important one, because it allows countries to resist hegemony together–is the rise of China.

The rise of China is one of the greatest success stories in the history of human civilization. So we could talk about China's accomplishments all day. I'd like to highlight three.

We all know in 1949 when China stood up, liberating half a billion people, 10-20% of China's population was still addicted to opium.  In 4 years, the CPC eradicated opium addiction, liberating 90 million people from this colonial scourge.  It's also one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the 20th century.  And I bet you've never heard of it.

By giving everyone the means of production–at the time, by distributing land–and by offering everybody education, community, meaning, hope, purpose–and by doing it at scale–because it has to be done at scale–the Party was successful.

You can't do this in dribs and drabs. tinkering at the edges.  You have to do it all at once for everyone.

The Power of People's Solidarity

We all know this and understand this: we don't liberate anyone, until everyone is liberated. We liberate each other. It's because we are fundamentally socially interconnected.

This is our species being. 

You don't help anyone, until we all help each other, because we all are implicated in each other's futures.

We saw the same thing with extreme poverty alleviation. Poverty was not seen as an individual failing–as it is, in the capitalist west.  It was a whole of society responsibility requiring a whole of society response. It focused on everyone.

So, 850 million were brought out of extreme poverty–which lets the world know that poverty is not an immutable, social, historical fact.  It is a policy choice.  You can raise everyone up, if we all work together.

That's the way it works–and it works for everything:  if we start from this approach, we can succeed, no matter how vast and immense the challenge is.

So China is proof positive of the power of people's solidarity, the power of a people's leadership, the power of scientific planning according to socialist principles to overcome unthinkable challenges.

This is how China accomplishes things, and it accomplishes them at scale–at a scale so vast that nothing under heaven–as they say–is left behind.

Now, there is another achievement that China is working on.

Yes, a socialist society, that's the ultimate goal, but this is an important stepping stone on the way to it. And it is a big one.  It is the creation of an ecological civilization.

China is literally greening the planet, creating, single-handedly, the conditions and means to transition to a sustainable energy regime, to enable sustainable development, to turn back the tide of global warming.  And it is doing it at a scale that is truly inconceivable–but necessary.

China knows how to accomplish things at scale.  It knows how to solve problems even when the problems are unthinkably immense.  And the leadership and the people do not flinch at the immensity of the challenge.

Ecological transition with Chinese characteristics:

China is concretely showing us the pathway out of Global Climate catastrophe. And as I said before, none of us are safe, good or well until all of us are. Until all of us are safe from the effects of the climate crisis, none of us are.

And China is leading the way.  All the west has to do is work together with China: China has provided the tools and the map and it is showing the path out.

So, to reduce it to its simplest terms, going green means going red. But–and there is a but: from the US standpoint, they don't want that.

They do not want energy transition if it means the Chinese are going to be leading it. They would rather be dead than red. The US would rather burn up the planet than give China its place in the sun.

If China is on the side of renewable energy, then the US has to be firmly on the side of Global Warming:  it's more important to beat China than to beat Global Warming. 

We can see that right now, in the massive sanctioning of Chinese sustainable technologies that could shift the balance. If the planet heats up, we're all dead, but if China cools the planet and saves the world, then we are no longer the coolest, and that's worse than death. That's how the leadership in the US thinks.

Preparing for War: Not if but When

So we can't talk about China's successes, without talking about the US hostility towards China. The US sees China as the enemy. It is determined to take down China and all its accomplishments.

Now, China has overcome–countless threats–but this one is an existential threat.

Let's be very clear.  The US is preparing for war–kinetic war–against China. Washington is abuzz with talk of war with China. It's seen as necessary, inevitable, and incredibly, winnable.

Winnable means they are planning to use nukes.

We see with Palestine, and now Lebanon, that there are no limits to the depravity of what the Imperial ruling class will do to stay in power. Nothing is off the table. Nothing is too inhumane, too brutal, too illegal, too dangerous. Nothing shocks the conscience.  In fact, nuclear war is definitely on the table, in the policy papers being distributed, in the military table-top exercises they conduct, in the field training and air exercises that are now being conducted with the greatest intensity since WWII. We are headed towards war, towards nuclear war.

To put it bluntly, the US ruling class would rather see the end of the world than the end of their power and privilege. So we are at a turning point in history. a crisis: both opportunity and danger, hope and terror, unseen possibility and unthinkable tragedy.

This Imperial ruling class has actually been escalating to war against China–covertly since 2009 and now overtly.  It has calendared dates–2027.

It's not if, but when.

Three Steps to War

Now there are three distinguishable steps on the way to war:

The first is Information war: inventing the enemy and then demonizing them: manufacturing consent, shutting down opposition, like you shut down the skies before bombing. We're being fire-hosed and carpet bombed with lies about China.

The second is shaping the theater logistically for war, with arms, alliance, exercises, material/fuel–pre-positioned stocks–and troops.

The third is provocation. There is non-stop provocation by the US–in the Taiwan strait, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, on the Korean peninsula, everywhere.

This follows the increasing, expanding ambit and intensity of proxy war in Europe, in the genocidal terror in the middle east, and in the building war momentum in the Pacific.  Kurt Campbell, Biden's Asia Czar and the architect of the Pivot, has threatened to unleash "a magnificent symphony of death" across a "unified field [of war]".

Martial Arts in the No-Think Zone

And we can all see and feel the shutting down of anti-war dissent, of opposing voices and alternative media. That's a key characteristic of the information war–silencing opposition, silencing voices of peace. It's like taking out anti-aircraft batteries, and imposing a no fly zone. You shut down the skies, before you drop the bombs. You shut down the opposition before you drop the narrative bombs. You attack opposition to war, attack those who want good relations with China, or negotiations. You attack divergent voices and platforms in order to create a no-think zone.  

No critical thinking. No thinking, no dialogue, no peace. 

The US literally seeks full spectrum dominance in all domains of war, but especially in the space domain: outer space, cyber space, and information space, mental space. It literally seeks to occupy your mind.

So resistance in this critical moment–at the most fundamental level–begins with first not letting your mental space be occupied, colonized, dominated. It means resisting the narrative dominance of the dominant narrative; that China is threatening the world, that war is thinkable, that war is justified. It means resisting the normalization of war, of genocide, of terror, of atrocity, of  lies and propaganda.

We can all be vectors of this transmission of lies of propaganda, or we can impede its transmission.

So it's incumbent on all of us to re-engage in the mental martial art of critical thinking: we strengthen our psychic immune system against this type of mental virus, this colonization of our mental spaces. We re-orient, de-occupy ourselves, we kick out the colonizing narratives, and we recommit to "seeking truth from facts."

What we need to do is tune up our critical thinking engines constantly, with the precision tools of wit, humor, parody, perspective, context–and facts.

The flipside of this is that we can also spread the facts and the truth, as many are doing together today. Share the truth. The rise of China, and the liberation of the Global South is not a threat to the peoples of the world. It is a transformative moment of hope for human history.

But the stakes are immense. The future of the planet is at stake. As Brian Berletic said, "A war against China is a war against the world." And we all have a part to play. We have already been inducted.

Where do we start? We start with our clear minds and our courageous hearts. Decolonize and de-propagandize your minds, and resist! Together!

The future of China, the future of the Global South, the future of the world depends on it!

The post Your Mind is a Battlefield: Decolonize Your Mind to Prevent Global Catastrophe! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

5. Australian Officials Push Authoritarian Crackdown on Pro-Hezbollah Speech

As Israel begins another invasion of Lebanon, Australian officials from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide have been falling all over themselves to get Australians punished for speech crimes about the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.

The Australian political-media class have been in an uproar ever since footage surfaced of people waving Hezbollah flags at a protest in Melbourne over the weekend and displaying pictures of the group's deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel in a massive airstrike on Friday.

After initially stating that no crime had been committed in these acts of political speech, Victoria police are now saying they have identified six potentially criminal incidents related to the demonstration. These incidents reportedly involve "prohibited symbols" in violation of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment which was enacted last year.

Needless to say, free nations do not have "prohibited symbols".

This development follows numerous statements from various Australian leaders denouncing the protests as criminal.

"I expect the police agencies to pursue this," Victorian premier Jacinta Allan said of the protests, adding, "Bringing grief and pain and division to the streets of Melbourne by displaying these prohibited symbols, is utterly unacceptable."

Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong took to Twitter to denounce the protesters, saying Australians must not only refrain from supporting Hezbollah but from even giving "any indication of support".

"We condemn any indication of support for a terrorist organisation such as Hizballah," Wong tweeted, adding, "It not only threatens national security, but fuels fear and division in our communities."

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke wants to deport any international visitors displaying prohibited symbols in Australia, saying "I won't hesitate to cancel the visas of visitors to our country who are spreading hate."

On the other side of the aisle, opposition leader Peter Dutton is on a crusade to get new laws passed to ensure the elimination of banned symbols from public view, saying "enforcement for law is required and if there are laws that need to be passed to make sure that our values are upheld then the Prime Minister should be doing that."

"Support for a proscribed terrorist organisation has no place on the streets of Melbourne," tweeted Labor MP Josh Burns. "Anyone breaking counter-terrorism legislation should face the full force of the law."

"Australians cherish the right to peaceful protest," tweeted independent MP Zoe Daniels. "However, there is no justification for supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation. Those who were seen doing so on the streets of Melbourne at protests yesterday should be investigated and prosecuted."

In an article titled "Hezbollah flags at protests shape as test of new hate-symbol laws," the ABC reports that these legal efforts to stomp out dissenting political speech are made possible by laws which were recently passed with the official intention of targeting Nazi symbols, but which "also cover the symbols of listed terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah." Which is about as strong an argument on the slippery slope of government censorship as you could possibly ask for.

Hezbollah is listed as a "terrorist organisation" on the say-so of the Australian government, not because of its actions or methods but because it stands in opposition to the US power alliance of which Australia is a part. This arbitrary designation is smeared across any resistance group on earth which opposes the dictates of Washington, and can then be used to suppress the speech of anyone who disagrees with the murderous behavior of the western empire.

And it should here be noted that Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A tremendous amount of faith has been placed in state and federal legislators to simply do the right thing, which has proved foolish and ineffective. Professor George Williams wrote for the Melbourne University Law Review in 2006:

"Australia is now the only democratic nation in the world without a national bill of rights. Some comprehensive form of legal protection for basic rights is otherwise seen as an essential check and balance in democratic governance around the world. Indeed, I can find no example of a democratic nation that has gained a new Constitution or legal system in recent decades that has not included some form of a bill of rights, nor am I aware of any such nation that has done away with a bill of rights once it has been put in place.

"Why then is Australia the exception? The answer lies in our history. Although many think of Australia as a young country, constitutionally speaking, it is one of the oldest in the world. The Australian Constitution remains almost completely as it was when enacted in 1901, while the Constitutions of the Australian states can go back as far as the 1850s. The legal systems and Constitutions of the nation and the Australian colonies (and then states) were conceived at a time when human rights, with the prominent exception of the 1791 United States Bill of Rights, tended not to be protected through a single legal instrument. Certainly, there was then no such law in the United Kingdom, upon whose legal system ours is substantially based. This has changed, especially after World War II and the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but by then Australia's system of government had been operating for decades."

If you ever wonder why Australia so often stands out as a freakish anomaly in the western world with its jarring authoritarianism and disregard for human rights, this is why.

The powerful abuse our civil rights because they can. We are pummeled with propaganda in the birthplace of Rupert Murdoch and increasingly forbidden from speaking out against the atrocities of our government and its allies overseas. We are being groomed into mindless, obedient sheep for the empire.

The post Australian Officials Push Authoritarian Crackdown on Pro-Hezbollah Speech first appeared on Dissident Voice.

6. The Longest Day: Israel’s Victim Mindset

Next month will see the commemoration in Israel of the tragic events of October 7, 2023. For Israelis, that day has taken on a degree of sanctity. It is seen as an event that was unprecedented, unforeseen and unconnected to all that came before. To look for causes, beyond antisemitism and military and political culpability or incompetence, is to question the sacred. To link it to one hundred years of war against Palestine is to provide succor to the barbarians at the gate.

Israeli media platforms – the webpages, the rolling news channels – provide a constantly updated count of days from that moment. They endlessly replay and (only partially) examine the event through stories which fit the consensus narrative. October 7 has become shorthand for unparalleled tragedy suffered by Israelis, a sacred mantra. It has been chiseled into stone and cast in bronze. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has put it, October 7 has become Israel's longest day, one that has not yet ended. It has also become part of a long addiction to a narrative of victimhood, a habit which the State of Israel seems reluctant to kick.

Israel is a young country concerned with building a shared narrative of the past. Memorialization plays a large part in this. Milestones in the national calendar include the Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers, Jerusalem Day which celebrates the 'reunification' of the city, and Independence Day. There are days marked in the calendar to honour Zionist icons and there is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Now, a new day has been consecrated.

The coming anniversary follows on from a year of almost constant commemoration in the Israeli media. Tales of tragedy and heroism relating to October 7 dominate the daily news landscape. Personal sorrow and national trauma are highly visible. Levy, never one to mince his words, asserts that Israel has been wallowing in October 7 non-stop. The latest manifestation of this is the heated (but limited) debate in Israel concerning rival ceremonies to mark the first anniversary of October 7. Levy has questioned the very need for a ceremony to mark the day: 'Is there anyone who doesn't remember? And has anyone learned lessons from it?'

So, what is the point? It seems natural to wish to commemorate the victims of October 7, certainly from the viewpoint of the families. But perhaps the vehement arguments over the format of the commemoration point to an anxiety linked to how the nation sees itself. In part, Israel's national self-identity is based upon the Revisionist Zionist notion of the Iron Wall, which conceives of a strong independent state that has no choice but to live by the sword. However, coexisting with this there has always been a sense of an identity rooted in the idea of victimhood. An idea reinforced by Israeli politicians' regular invocation of the Holocaust.

Let us not be mistaken: the events of October 7 were tragic for those who died on that day, for the hostages and their families since then. They are victims. But so too are the Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.

Whilst Israel's national trauma is highly visible within the Israeli media, there is at the same time an absence of coverage of the suffering of Gazans. Beyond officially sanctioned IDF footage and the contributions of embedded local journalists, the situation in Gaza is not broadcast. Israelis inhabit a very different media reality to the rest of the world. In Israel, alongside commemoration and memorialization there has always been erasure and forgetting. There is an Independence Day but there was no Nakba.

The current opposition to Netanyahu within Israel is an opposition to the man and his policies, particularly regarding the hostages. It does not represent a fundamental questioning of Zionism or the beginnings of a discussion as to the links between the massacre of October 7 and the years of occupation. Based on monitoring of the Israeli media over the past year, it's possible to conclude that Israelis have no current interest in complex truth, in cause and effect. They do not want a form of commemoration that stimulates discussion and critical reassessment. Instead, there's a clear preference for a form of remembering that creates myth; one that reinforces a self-image rooted in a victim mindset that serves to justify an act of revenge on a genocidal scale.

There seems to be an overwhelming need for Israel to perceive itself as an innocent victim in a world where October 7 came out of nowhere, or was a result of the unchanging nature of the indigenous population. Netanyahu articulated this viewpoint recently when chiding the UK government for suspending some arms export licenses to Israel. In his view, Britain should be supporting Israel, 'a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism.' As he put it, 'Just as Britain's heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defending our common civilization, so too will history judge Israel's stand against Hamas and Iran's axis of terror.' For Netanyahu, adoption of the role of heroic victim, a David fighting back against the odds, provides the legitimacy to complete the stated project in Gaza: the 'elimination' of Hamas, no matter what cost.

Israel explains Gaza to the world via an hasbara (or propaganda) project in which the state constantly seeks recognition of its victimhood. The sense of moral superiority, the absence of empathy and the obsession with past victimization together amount to a national victim mindset; a state of denial that the vast majority has bought into so that it can cope with the moral quagmire of life post-October 7. Zionism has become a cult that is dependent upon victimhood. This is not dismiss tragic events but it is one way of attempting to explain a collective indifference to Palestinian suffering and external criticism; to comprehend the moral isolation of Israelis as evidenced on a variety of media platforms.

It turns out that you don't just need external legitimacy provided by the Biden administration and German philosemitism in the forms of diplomacy and arms. You need to see yourself as the heroic and misunderstood victim in order to keep feeding the monster of Zionism, to provide the motive for a genocidal revenge which may lead to other outcomes.

For the ugly truth is that the obscenely disproportionate action in Gaza is one which goes well beyond any right to self-defense.

The IDF has shifted most of the Gazan population to the south and created a buffer zone together with 'clean' corridors, Philadelphi and Netzarim, which divide and enclose Gaza. The accompanying erasure of places and people, a recent Haaretz editorial observes, has created the infrastructure to enable Israeli resettlement in Gaza. These are not security measures, but are part of an ongoing settler-colonial project which covets all the occupied territories. These actions are consistent with the policies of a country which has not yet declared where its borders are, which continues to steal, build, settle and oppress whilst denying any link between an established state of apartheid and the growth of Hamas.

Of course, commemoration is important to address the grief of the families and collective trauma. However, judging by the current discourse of denial in Israel and arguments surrounding the plans, October 7 this year will be a wasted opportunity.

The commemoration of an event as if it were an unforeseeable act of barbarism occurring in a vacuum suggests that the sanctification of October 7 will become another pillar supporting the Israeli temple of perpetual victimhood. Ideally, remembrance should be an opportunity for mourning and self-examination, for a linking of cause and effect. A commemoration which bolsters a national self-identity based on victimhood will do no one any favors. Ultimately, Israel's victim mindset sits uneasily with overwhelming military might and international support and funding. It facilitates the continuation of uncritical internal support for the genocidal operation in Gaza, and ongoing collusion in de facto annexation and apartheid.

The post The Longest Day: Israel's Victim Mindset first appeared on Dissident Voice.

7. Unrealisable Justice: Julian Assange in Strasbourg

It was good to hear that voice again. A voice of provoking interest that pitter patters, feline across a parquet, followed by the usual devastating conclusion. Julian Assange's last public address was made in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. There, he was a guest vulnerable to the capricious wishes of changing governments. At Belmarsh Prison in London, he was rendered silent, his views conveyed through visitors, legal emissaries and his family.

The hearing in Strasbourg on October 1, organised by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), arose from concerns raised in a report by Iceland's Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, in which she expressed the view that Assange's case was "a classic example of 'shooting the messenger'." She found it "appalling that Mr Assange's prosecution was portrayed as if it was supposed to bring justice to some unnamed victims the existence of whom has never been proven, whereas perpetrators of torture or arbitrary detention enjoy absolute impunity."

His prosecution, Ævarsdóttir went onto explain, had been designed to obscure and deflect the revelations found in WikiLeaks' disclosures, among them abundant evidence of war crimes committed by US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, instances of torture and arbitrary detention in the infamous Guantánamo Bay camp facility, illegal rendition programs implicating member states of the Council of Europe and unlawful mass surveillance, among others.

A draft resolution was accordingly formulated, expressing, among other things, alarm at Assange's treatment and disproportionate punishment "for engaging in activities that journalists perform on a daily basis" which made him, effectively, a political prisoner; the importance of holding state security and intelligence services accountable; the need to "urgently reform the 1917 Espionage Act" to include conditional maliciousness to cause harm to the security of the US or aid a foreign power and exclude its application to publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.

Assange's full testimony began with reflection and foreboding: the stripping away of his self in incarceration, the search, as yet, for words to convey that experience, and the fate of various prisoners who died through hanging, murder and medical neglect. While filled with gratitude by the efforts made by PACE and the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, not to mention innumerable parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, even the Pope, none of their interventions "should have been necessary." But they proved invaluable, as "the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any remotely reasonable time frame."

The legal system facing Assange was described as encouraging an "unrealisable justice". Choosing freedom instead of purgatorial process, he could not seek it, the plea deal with the US government effectively barring his filing of a case at the European Court of Human Rights or a freedom of information request. "I am not free today because the system worked," he insisted. "I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else."

When founded, WikiLeaks was intended to enlighten people about the workings of the world. "Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go." Power can be held to account by those informed, justice sought where there is none. The organisation did not just expose assassinations, torture, rendition and mass surveillance, but "the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them."

Since leaving Belmarsh prison, Assange rued the abstracting of truth. It seemed "less discernible". Much ground had been "lost" in the interim; truth had been battered, "undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship."

Much of the critique offered by Assange focused on the source of power behind any legal actions. Laws, in themselves, "are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expedience". The ruling class dictates them and reinterprets or changes them depending on circumstances.

In his case, the security state "was powerful enough to push for a reinterpretation of the US constitution," thereby denuding the expansive, "black and white" effect of the First Amendment. Mike Pompeo, when director of the Central Intelligence Agency, simply lent on Attorney General William Barr, himself a former CIA officer, to seek the publisher's extradition and re-arrest of Chelsea Manning. Along the way, Pompeo directed the agency to draw up plans of abduction and assassination while targeting Assange's European colleagues and his family.

The US Department of Justice, Assange could only reflect, cared little for moderating tonic of legalities – that was something to be postponed to a later date. "In the meantime, the deterrent effect that it seeks, the retributive actions that it seeks, have had their effect." A "dangerous new global legal position" had been established as a result: "Only US citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights."

PACE had, before it, an opportunity to set norms, that "the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few but rights guaranteed to all". "The criminalisation of newsgathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted, by a foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe."

A spectator, reader or listener might leave such an address deflated. But it is fitting that a man subjected to the labyrinthine, life-draining nature of several legal systems should be the one to exhort to a commitment: that all do their part to keep the light bright, "that the pursuit of truth will live on, and the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few."

The post Unrealisable Justice: Julian Assange in Strasbourg first appeared on Dissident Voice.

8. A Moral Imperative for the 2024 US Elections

Is it acceptable for Israel to wipe Palestine and Palestinians off the map? On 5 November 2024, Americans have an opportunity to signal whether genocide is anathema for the majority of its citizens.

So, how can Americans signal their abhorrence for genocide?

Americans have been locked in a pattern of voting for the political duopoly: either wing of the business party. It is widely held that on most major matters there is little to separate the Democrats and Republicans. And this has led to many Americans voting based on whichever party is perceived to be the lesser evil.

Despite this lesser evilest-inspired voting, the election results have resulted in the presidency and congressional majority rotating between the Democrats and Republicans with little change in the US trajectory. As far as the US economy is concerned, the country has continued to increase its debt burden. As far as US foreign policy is concerned, the US has continued to wage wars abroad. As far as support for democracy is concerned, the US has continued to initiate coups against governments it does not approve of. As far as Israel is concerned, it continues to enjoy steadfast support from the duopoly.

One commonly heard refrain posits that continually resorting to the same action with expectation of a different result meets the definition of insanity. The expectation of lesser-evilist voting producing a significantly different outcome on the political scene given that such action has never brought about a change before speaks disparagingly to the strategy of lesser-evilist voting.

Being considered insane, however, is less disparaging than being considered immoral. That would be shameful.

Given the nugatory outcomes of lesser-evilist voting, another proposition comes to mind:

Fool me once, shame on you;
fool me twice, shame on me.

There are two candidates seen as frontrunners for the presidency of the United States. However, the Democratic Party candidate, Kamala Harris, and the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump. Both stand solidly behind the Zionist entity dba as the state of Israel, and neither of these candidates will exert pressure on Israel to cease and desist in its commission of war crimes. In fact, the US funds Israel, arms Israel, and has situated its military and armaments in the region in support of Israel. This is despite Israeli officials openly calling for the eradication of Palestinians, causing a case to be brought against Israel charging it with genocide in the International Court of Justice.

The upshot of this is that a vote for either Harris or Trump must be considered as a vote for genocide. The only out for a voter to escape criticism for supporting genocide is, pathetic as it may be, ignorance.

What can Americans do to avoid supporting genocide? One can always abstain from voting. That, however, would not be fighting against genocide. Moreover, abstaining would still allow the supporters of genocide to vote for a genocidaire as president.

Strangely enough, many Americans seem oblivious to the existence of other presidential candidates that one can vote for. One can even cast a vote for a candidate opposed to Israeli crimes against Palestinians. To wit, there is candidate Cornel West who calls 7 October a "counter-terrorism response"; Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver has pledged to end the genocide; candidate Jill Stein has a platform Pledge to Stop Genocide.

Unfortunately, in a winner-take-all voting system, one must consider how the strong individual desire to attain political office plays against a tactical and selfless decision to coalesce around one anti-genocide candidate to increase the chances of shutting down a genocide in progress.

Voting in the US elections on 5 November 2024 is an opportunity to indicate one's abhorrence to genocide. Elementary morality demands a vote for an opponent of genocide.

The post A Moral Imperative for the 2024 US Elections first appeared on Dissident Voice.

9. The Most Important US Presidential Election of Our Lifetime

Left-liberals plea every four years that this really is the most important election ever and time to hold our noses and send a Democrat to the White House. The manifest destiny of US world leadership, we are told, is at stake, as is our precious democracy which we have so generously been exporting abroad.

Let's leave aside the existential threats of climate change or nuclear war. However important, these issues are not on the November 5 ballot. Nor are they addressed in even minimally meaningful ways by the platforms of either of the major parties.

The USA, with its first-strike policy and upgrading its nuclear war fighting capacity, bears responsibility for Armageddon risk.  And, in fact, the land-of-the-free has contributed more greenhouse gases to the world's stockpile than any other country.

But the US electorate never voted these conditions in, so is it realistic to think that we can vote them out? The electoral arena has its limits. Nevertheless, we are admonished, our vote is very important.

But do the two major parties offer meaningful choices?

Apparently, the 700 national security apparatchiks who signed a letter endorsing Kamala Harris think so. They fear that Trump is too soft on world domination. They find a comforting succor in Harris's promise "to preserve the American military's status as the most 'lethal' force in the world." And oddly so do some left-liberals who welcome the security state, largely because they too don't trust Trump with guiding the US empire.

Although a major left-liberal talking point is the imminent threat of fascism, their fear is focused on Trump's dysfunctionality and his "deplorable" working class minions; not on the security apparatus of the state, which they have learned to love.

But fascism is not a personality disorder. The ruling class – whether its nominal head wears a red or blue hat – has no reason to impose a fascist dictatorship as long as left-liberals and their confederates embrace rather than oppose the security state.

Not only were the left-liberals enamored with the FBI's "Saint" Robert Mueller, but they have welcomed the likes of George W. Bush and now Dick Cheney, because these war criminals also see the danger of Trump.

The Democratic Party has been captured by the foreign policy neoconservatives who are jumping the red ship for the blue one. It's not that Donald Trump is in any way an anti-imperialist, but Kamala Harris is seen as a more effective imperialist and defender of elite rule.

The ruling class is united in supporting US imperial hegemony, but needs to work out how best to achieve it. The blue team is confident that the empire has the capability to aim the canons full blast at both Russia and China at the same time. And they tend to take a more multilateral approach to empire building.

The red team is a little more circumspect, concerned with imperial overreach. They advocate a staged strategy of China as the primary target and only secondarily against Russia. This suggests why Ukraine's president-for-life, who is at war with Russia, in effect campaigned for Kamala in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The inauthenticity of the left-liberals

 While some left-liberals support a decisive Russian defeat in Ukraine, their overall concern is beating Trump.

The Democratic Party was transformed some time ago by the Clintons' now defunct but successful Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which advocated abandonment of its progressive constituencies in order to more effectively attract corporate support.  While both parties vie to serve the wealthy class, the Democrats are now by a significant margin the ones favored by big money.

The triumph of the DLC signaled the demise of liberalism and the ascendency of neoliberalism. Much more could be said about that transition (viz the Democratic Party has always been capitalist with neoliberalism being its most recent expression), but suffice it to say the Democratic Party is the graveyard of progressive movements.

Liberals no longer even pretend to have an agenda other than defeating Trump. Their neglect of economic issues that benefit working people has created a vacuum, which opens the political arena for faux populists like Trump.

The now moribund liberal movement is thus relegated to two functions: (1) providing a bogus progressive patina to reactionary politics and (2) attacking those who still hold leftist principles. "Progressive Democrat," sociologist James Petras argues, is an oxymoron.

Left-liberals have the habit of prefacing their capitulations with a recitation of their former leftist credentials. But what makes them inauthentic is their abandonment of principles. No transgression by the Democrats, absolutely none – not even genocide – deters this inauthentic left from supporting the Democratic presidential candidate.

We can respect, though disagree, with the right-wing for having principled red lines, such as abortion. In contrast, left-liberals not only find themselves bedfellows with Cheney, but they swallow anything and everything that the Democratic wing of the two-party duopoly feeds them.

Consequences of supporting the lesser of the two evils

 Although today the Democratic Party is arguably the leading war party, we would have cold comfort with the Republicans in power. And domestically the Democrats talk a better line on some social wedge issues that don't threaten elite rule, such as women's reproductive rights, although – as will be argued – their walk is not as good as their talk.

Getting back to "this year more than ever we have to support the Democratic presidential candidate," the plea contains two truths. First, the "more than ever" part exposes a tendency to cry wolf in the past.

Remember that the world did not fall apart with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. No lesser an authority than Noam Chomsky is nostalgic for Tricky Dick, who is now viewed as the last true liberal president. Nor did the planet stop spinning in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ascended to the Oval Office. Barack Obama now boasts that his policies differed little from the Gipper's.

Which brings us to the second truth revealed in the plea. The entire body politic has been staggering to the right regardless of which wing of the duopoly is in power. This is in spite of the fact that the voting public is well to the left of them on almost every issue, from universal public healthcare to opposition to endless war.

Moreover, the left-liberals' lesser-evil voting strategy itself bears some degree of responsibility for this reactionary tide.

The genius of the Clintons' DLC was that the progressive New Deal coalition of labor and minority groups that supported the Democratic Party could be thrown under the bus with impunity, while the party courts the right. As long as purported progressives support the Democrats no matter what, the party has an incentive to sell out its left-leaning "captured constituents."

Thus, we witnessed what passed for a presidential debate with both contestants competing to prove who was more in favor of genocide for Palestinians and an ever expanding military.

The campaign for reproductive rights aborted

 But one may protest, let's not let squeamishness about genocide blind us to the hope that the Democrats are better than the Republicans on at least the key issue of abortion.

However, this is the exception that proves the rule. As Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report noted, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there were protests everywhere but at Barack Obama's house, "the person who could have acted to protect the Roe decision."

When Obama ran in 2008, he made passage of a Freedom of Choice Act the centerpiece of his campaign. Once elected with majorities in Congress, he could have enshrined abortion rights into law and out of the purview of the Supreme Court. Instead, he never followed through on his promise.

This was a direct outcome of the logic of lesser evilism in a two-party system. The folks who supported abortion rights had nowhere to go, so they were betrayed. Why embarrass Blue Dog Democrats and antagonize pro-lifers when the progressive dupes will always give the Democrats a pass?

Angst is not a substitute for action

 The Republican and Democratic parties are part of the same corporate duopoly, both of which support the US empire. Given there are two wings, there will inevitably be a lesser and greater evil on every issue and even in every election.

However, we need a less myopic view and to look beyond a given election to see the bigger picture of the historical reactionary trend exacerbated by lesser-evil voting. That is, to understand that the function of lesser-evil voting in the overarching two-party system is to allow the narrative to shift rightward.

If one's game plan for system change includes electoral engagement, which both Marx and Lenin advocated (through an independent working class party, not by supporting a bourgeois party), the pressure needs to be applied when it counts. And that might mean taking a tip from the Tea Party by withholding the vote if your candidate crosses a red line. But that requires principles, which left-liberals have failed to evidence. Angst, however heartfelt, is not a substitute for action.

The left-liberals' lesser-evil voting, which disregards third-parties with genuinely progressive politics, contributes to the rightward trajectory of US politics. It is not the only factor, but it is a step in the wrong direction. As for November 5, we already know who will win…the ruling class.

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10. Choose-Up Games from the Sandlots of Jamaica, Queens NY

Field of Dreams

When I was about seven years old I used to play a "let's pretend" baseball game in our backyard. I laid out 4 rags I'd gotten from the garage and placed them in a diamond form which represented the bases. The bases were about 20 feet apart. Then I looked at our house and took my batting stance and let my imagination take over. The imaginary scene is no doubt familiar to many of you. It is the last of the 9th inning, we are losing by three runs. The bases are loaded and there are two outs. Then I swing and hit the ball – tsssssch! As Mel Allen was saying in my head "there is a high fly ball deep to right center. The center fielder is at the track. It is going, going, gone". Then I would trot around the bases. As I got older, I played a great deal of hardball and I hit home runs, but never quite experienced the situation I imagined when I was seven until the end of my playing days.

Coming Through the Hole in the Fence
Around the same time, my father used to take me across the street in the woods to play catch and bat. It was a good scene because the weeds would always stop the ball from going too far. In addition, I always hit with a tree in back of me so that if my father's pitches were outside the strike zone or I missed or fouled it back, the tree stopped it. Then about a year later my father initiated me into the mysteries of the multiple baseball fields at Jamaica, Queens High School. Officially you had to go through a gate way at the end of the field to get in. But the local kids weren't having it. They used cutting wires to pry open a hole in the fence. My father and I climbed through the fence and set up. He would pitch to me even though we only had one or two balls. If I hit it past him, he had to get it.  But as happens often in these kind of situations, other kids or even adults are around, size up the situation and volunteer to catch or play the field. Willie came by and volunteered to be a catcher. He was an older kid, maybe 14, and looked like he could be a soccer player from South America. If I hit a ball past my father, I would run around those imaginary bases again. My father would retrieve the ball and throw it to Willie to try to get me out at the plate. Willie would make believe he missed the tag or the throw so I could hit a homerun. I was at the age where I couldn't quite figure out if this was intentional not. Even then, I appreciated his kindness

Geographical Constraints of Choose-up Games in the Corner
Our house was only 2 long blocks away from Jamaica High School so I went past the school for many reasons other than baseball. One time I noticed in the distance a group of kids playing baseball in the corner of the park. The actual baseball field for high school games was only part of the park. Surrounding the field was a track and beyond the track was a corner where the kids were playing. The "bases" were old rags of some sort that were laid out maybe 60-70 feet apart (as opposed to the official high school field which was 90 feet apart). These distances were decided long before I began to play. In part it was determined by the fact that our throwing arms weren't strong enough to make a throw from third base to first, or short to first with the bases 90 feet apart. Also, the pitcher's mound was only about 45 feet from the plate as opposed to 60 feet for the same reasons.

Adapting to Inadequacies in Numbers and Positions
Our games never had 18 players. Mostly we had maybe 10 or 12. That meant that any kid who wanted to play could. We would adapt our rules to accommodate them. For example, we might decide that right field was in foul territory to shorten the distances to be covered by the outfielders. In addition, we might only have one outfielder to cover center and left. That wasn't a big deal because most of us were not strong enough to hit it to the outfield. If you hit one on the other side of the high school track it was a home run. In right field there was large tree. As we got older and could hit the ball to the outfield more consistently and the right fielder had to play the ball off the trees. If someone hit a fly ball into the trees and the right fielder could catch the ball bouncing off the trees the batter was out. Needless to say, no one wanted to play right field! The pitcher and the catcher were not specialized positions. The catcher might not even be on the team on defense. It might be a player on the offensive team that was just backing up if the batter missed the ball or it was too far out of the strike zone. While the pitcher was on the defensive team, there were no balls and strikes. The pitcher's job was to just get the ball over the plate so everyone could hit. There was no standing around. If you struck out it was because you missed the ball on the 3^rd strike after either missing or fouling off the first two. Our fields had pebbles and sometimes rocks in the infield. There were many bad hops, but you just took it in stride. In the outfield you had to look out for potholes, mole hills and gravel.

Choosing Up Sides
Choosing up sides was an opportunity to feel proud or humiliated depending on when you were picked. The best players were usually the ones who picked the teams. The better players were chosen first and players with less skill picked later. In those days, Brendan and Owen were two of the best as was Tony Cirillo and I. We could all hit homeruns. Tony and I played shortstop on opposite teams. The shortstop position was usually the best fielder on the team and got the most action. Tony had a great arm. My arm was average but I covered a lot of ground. Brendan and Owen were close friends and always wound up on the same team. I don't know why. They were both big guys and it might have been the case that we were too afraid to get them on opposite teams. How was it determined who picked first? Well, some neutral player would hold a bat out and grip it tightly. One of the guys who wanted to be captain had three chances to kick the bat out of their hands. If they were successful, they got to pick the first player

Culture and Class
Most of these kids were working class Irish and Italian. Here is a list of the players I remember. Brendan Rice, Owen Brennan, Chris Green, Tony Circillo, James (Head) Circillo, Abe Circillo, Ronnie Christian, Billy Smolin, James Sheehy, Georgie Robles, Bernard Rubino, Evan Munkmeir; Danny Mettines , Billy Insulman, Kenny Lowe, and  Frankie Majori. Once in a while a tall lanky guy would slither thorough the hole in the fence on his way to the library. What was odd was that this guy (I think his name was Luke) wanted to be the Pope.  As you can imagine, he was mercilessly teased. We'd say "there goes the Pope!". Our neighborhood was very unusual. Within an area of about a mile and a half we had three social classes represented. From Parson's boulevard to Jamaica high was a working-class area. The closer you got to 168th Street the houses were lower middle class attached houses. Our block, 168th Street was middle class. I would say there was subliminal tension between us around social class which I will get to later.

What to do About Close Plays
Those adults and kids who were involved in Little League have no idea how easy they had it. The teams had coaches who determined who was going to play what position, and they had umpires who determined who is safe and who is out on close plays. In the sandlots we had to figure this out for ourselves. For us the captains determine the battling order and the positions. But the captain of a team was the first among equals. By a long process of trial and error we learned who was the best in each position so the captain barely had to say a word about who was going to play where. Also, the players themselves got to know who was a weak and a strong hitter and they would self-organize themselves accordingly. No one kept personal records of performances. We just knew what the score was and what inning we were in. To this day I cannot imagine how we kept track of close plays at home, first, second or third base. Our arguments were never technical or legal. They were always matters of who beat the throw and who didn't. What was interesting as I remember it, is the arguments never lasted very long. We just wanted to keep playing. Our games were usually high scoring so a game was usually never determined by a single call.

The Passing of a Comet: Danny Mettines
My father never liked the kids I played ball with. He grew up very poor. His mother raised seven kids and they were "on the dole". He was an artist who rose out of poverty to become a commercial artist. We lived in a middle class neighborhood (one square block) and he was afraid my baseball friends would be a bad influence on me. He was always trying to get be to play for church teams as an alternative. I never gave up my friends but I did play on one church team in grammar school. I could never get enough of baseball. At St. Nicholas of Tolentine the teams were organized with the names of native American tribes – The Mohawks, Algonquins, Iroquois, Cheyannes. One day the Mohawks showcased a pitcher who was a real phenom, Danny Mettinis. Danny just towered over us in terms of skill. As a left-handed pitcher he could strike out anybody. As a first baseman he could scoop the ball out of the dirt and do splits to sweep up errant throws from the infield. Danny ran like the wind and as a hitter he could hit the ball 100 feet further than any one else. He wasn't a big guy but he was built like a tank. He was charismatic, funny and sarcastic. I prayed that he'd never find out about our games in the corner, but that day came.

When Danny came to participate in our games, he revolutionized the existing hierarchy. Brendon, Owen, Tony and I were all knocked off of top ranking. Danny was in a class by himself. Danny was a lefthanded power hitter who would not only hit balls into the trees but over them. He would regularly hit homeruns over the track. It was hard to lose a game if Danny was on your side. Danny was charismatic, funny and sarcastic. You didn't want to get on his bad side.

For the Love of the Game: Joe Austin
On the actual playing field of Jamaica high, sometimes games and practices would be going on that were not connected to the actual high school baseball team. The players were older, maybe 15-17 years old. The person who was coordinating their practices was an old guy who I eventually came to know as Joe Austin. Joe was an ex-minor league baseball player who worked with kids in the neighborhood and eventually took them into leagues. Joe had skills way beyond any coach I had seen. If you happen to go to a baseball game early and watch the infield and outfield practices, that was the routine Joe would go through with his players. He would provide bats and balls for the players and when they were old enough to go into leagues, he would buy the uniforms. Joe worked at night in a brewery and then five days a week he would take the bus from his house on Sutfin Blvd about a mile to 168th Street. He would then walk 4 blocks to the field carrying bats, balls and gloves in a duffle bag. He was on the field from about 9AM to 3PM. When he went into leagues he named his teams Irish names. Like the Lepricons  leprechaun? , Blarney Boys and Shannons.

When Joe thought we were old enough, he started coming to our choose-up games in the corner. He was not pushy at all. He provided bats and balls for us regularly and offered to umpire our games. This was a great relief for us as time wasn't wasted arguing. He started to make lineup cards for us that he would draw on the back of a paper lunch bag. When we got a little older, maybe 11 or 12, he moved us to another part of the high school park, which had more room. Then he offered to pitch for both sides. This was a boom for us because he got the ball over the plate virtually all the time which speeded up the games. Joe had skills that in retrospect no other coach could ever come close to let alone match. He started to pitch us knuckleballs and curve balls us to get us used to hitting pitches other that weren't straight. He also worked with kids who seemed to want to become pitchers and he taught them not only to throw curves, but sliders, screwballs, and forkballs. One kid, Joey Fitzgerald made it as far as the Mets farm system. Little did we know Joe was grooming us to be his next team, the Emeralds.

"Yaw wanna play ball, play ball! Ya don't? Get the fuck off the field"
Joe always welcomed new players so that once we transitioned to a bigger field, more boys came to play. Now the teams each had 9 players on a side. We were bigger, stronger and we could hit the ball further. Younger kids started coming including Jesse Braverman (with whom I'm still friends), Joey Fitzgerald, Bobby Saca, John Brennan, Ritchie Ames. While Joe was very inclusive, he was also very demanding. Once you started playing in the games, Joe expected you to be there every day. Some of the guys I started with stopped coming to the choose-up games probably because they got tired of it. Their skills had leveled off or they got involved in other activities (some activities like drugs or stealing cars). But one player, a catcher by the name of Davey Heckendorn, made a conscious choice to stop playing, told everyone about it   and he paid for it.

One day Davey came to the field with someone I had never seen before. I later found out his name was Joe Trapp. Davey started to cry as he announced he wouldn't be coming anymore. His music teacher told him that if he continued catching, he would ruin his hands by digging the balls out of the dirt. Joe Trapp and David Bernstein were there to support him. As I recall, Joe cursed him out for quitting. If you can imagine what a response was like from a group of 15 predominately Italian or Irish boys hearing this, it wasn't pretty. We mocked him for crying and I'm sure we threatened Joe and David with a good beating for even daring to come to our turf again. I spoke with him years later, and this is the first topic we discuss. In retrospect, this was one of many miserable things I did as a 12-13 year old.

The lazy hazy days of summer pick-up games with Joe
In spite of the intensity that Joe demanded I would say the two years we spent on the big field were the happiest of all my 13 years of baseball. I loved playing against people I knew and because there were no crowds, uniforms, bells or whistles it was easy to relax. During the course of a summer's day we would have two games. One in the morning, starting about 9:30 and one after lunch. After the first game I would rush home for lunch, eat quickly and then run back to the field. As I remember it, we let Joe pick the teams instead of us choosing up. Joe had a very good sense of how to pick combinations of players who would make the teams evenly matched. As I recall it most of our games were close. I switched over from shortstop to second base because as the field was larger I couldn't make the throw from short to first very easily. I started secretly keeping records of my hitting statistics – batting average, homers, RBIs, doubles and triples. Because we were bigger now and could hit the ball further the outfield became more attractive to play rather than a sentence of banishment.

Poetry in motion
One of my favorite activities was having Joe hit fungoes to me in the outfield. He would stand at home plate and I would be stationed in center field. With the wave of his hand, he would motion to me to run from center to right center. He would hit the ball to me perfectly, neither too far to make it uncatchable nor too easy where I would stand still and wait for it. I always had to catch it on the run. Then he would motion me to run to left-center back to right center field and the same thing would happen, back and forth for maybe 30-45 minutes. I loved to fact there was no fence to worry about crashing into. Playing the outfield really developed my arm so by the time I started playing that position I developed a really strong arm. Also, I was a very fast runner but you would never know it with me playing second base. Playing center field, I could utilize my speed to the max. I loved center because, like shortstop, it's a position where you see the whole field at once.

Joe had nicknames for some of the players. He called me "Lash LaRue" after a movie he had seen where the cowboy used to strip a gunslinger's gun out of his hand with a whip. Because my arm was pretty wild in center field when it was still developing, my throws home were often way off. He once yelled at me, "hey Lash, the backstop is 18 feet across. Do you think you get that shotgun within that range?  I never took it personally. I was flattered that I had enough standing for him to tease me.

Crossing the Rubicon
We did not always just play games among ourselves. Occasionally we would get a challenge from a group from another neighborhood to play a game. The game was not slow pitch. It was with pitchers pretty much throwing fast balls as hard as they could with someone calling balls and strikes. These games were harder for everyone because we had to hit pitches coming at us at much greater velocity. Some of our better players stopped coming. Billy Smolin and Bernard Rubino didn't return. Tony Circillo stopped being the power hitter he was, but hung on as a pitcher. Brendon Rice was not a good hitter once we switched to fast pitch but continued as a catcher. Chris Green and I made the transition as did Danny.

Our entry into organized leagues as the Emeralds
It was in 1961 when I was 13 that Joe moved us to play on the actual Jamaica High School field. It was around the same year that Joe prepared us to play in the Queens-Nassau League. We stopped playing pick-up games and when we were together it was strictly infield and outfield and  batting practice. Joe bought all uniforms. He never made any cuts (telling players they didn't make the team). I think in our first year we had close to 30 players on our team. I believe it was in 1962 that we had our first team. The league had players that could be up to the age of 17. Our oldest players were 14. Joe wanted to play in a league with older players because the competition would be good for us. In retrospect I think it was a mistake. Before we got into the league, we knew that we were much better than kids our own age. But playing against teams with players who were 2-3 older than we were was demoralizing. I think in the first year in the league we were 4-16. The next year we did better. I think we played about .500 ball. Our last year in the league we thought we could compete for the championship. I think we won more than we lost but we never won anything.

A taste of the East Side kids
Our team was a rough team, kind of like the East Side kids. We got into some fights with the other teams and probably the organizers of the league warned Joe. When we played occasionally in the suburbs we could feel the class tensions and this would carry over to Joe and his relationship with the other players. Joe would coach first base. Sometimes he'd get into razzing with opposing teams' first baseman. One time
Joe told me to spike the first baseman. I said no. Joe took me out for a pinch runner.
Our team did not have good team spirit. We teased each other almost as much as we teased the other team.

Who's in and who's out?
Soon before our first year in the league two players we had never seen before started to come to our practices: Mark Kenny, Ronnie Gerreki. They were not from our neighborhood and naturally enough that challenged the existing pecking order. As I recall Mark Kenney's father talked to Joe about taking Mark on the team. His father had professional aspirations for Mark and his father knew Joe would develop his talents. I think the same thing happened with Ronnie. Both Mark and Ronnie were very good. Probably the only player we had better than they was Danny. But there was a problem. Mark played short-stop and Ronnie played second. What was going to happen to the existing people we had to play short and second?

There were a number of tension points. One was the fact that Mark and Ronnie did not come up from the ranks. They just appeared, so naturally those who played with Joe for years would feel pushed aside. I was a good hitter and Joe still wanted me in the line-up so he moved me into center field where I had been practicing for a year or two. But we already had a center fielder, Frankie Majori. I was a much better hitter than Frankie and so because of me, Frankie was on the bench. This caused tension between some of Frankie's friends and I who were also on the team. This was amplified by class conflicts. Frankie, Brendan and Bernard were working class. I was middle class and they knew it because they knew where I lived. I started to feel more isolated than I ever had.

My distance from others on the team was aggravated by the differences in where we went to school. Many of the Emeralds were also playing ball for Jamaica High School, a working class public school. My parents did not want me to go to Jamaica High. It was too rough and they thought I would get a better education at a Catholic school. So instead of going to a high school with my friends which was 2 blocks away, I was shipped off Holy Cross High School, three or four miles away. I was very angry at my parents for this and I had  a major rift with my them that never really healed completely. Meanwhile the players who went to Jamaica high noticed my absence and probably concluded that I was spoiled, being shipped off to a private school. After I got home from school in high school, I would walk over to Jamaica High to watch my old friends play, hoping to find some solidarity and imagining I was in center field there. But my old friends rarely acknowledged me. I was an outsider. After a while I stopped going. It was too painful. I never even tried out for the Holy Cross baseball team. I hated going there and didn't want to spend any extra time there.

My father coming to my games
Despite my father's disapproval of Joe and the Emeralds, he came to the games. From his point of view it was a natural thing to want to watch your kid play ball. But with rare exceptions, none of the kid's father's came to the game, so he stuck out like a sore thumb. In addition, being Italian he would yell when I did something well. It was humiliating. I asked him not to come but he didn't, telling me that the other kids were jealous because their fathers didn't come to the game. He didn't understand that for a 15-year-old teenager living in the United States in the early 1960s, the last thing they wanted was to be seen with their parents. One time we had a Saturday afternoon game in which the field we were supposed to play on was waterlogged by the previous days of rain. I got word that we would switch fields. I called my father to tell him not to come to the waterlogged field and that we were playing somewhere else. He asked me where, and I made believe I couldn't remember it. Well, I was very happy to know I wouldn't have to deal with him for a day. However, when I stepped up leading off the game in the new location, Tony Cirillo says to me from the bench, "hey Bruce, guess who's here?". It was my father, who must have made some phone calls and found the field.

My performance
I didn't do nearly as well as I did in the pick-up games. In my three years with the Emeralds I think I hit about .260 or so. I was a streak hitter and better with runners on base. I was a good left-handed drag bunter so Joe translated that as my being a good leadoff batter. I wasn't. I didn't like taking pitches and my main goal was to get my cuts in. In retrospect, my best position was batting fifth, after Mark and Danny. That way I could hit with runners on base. The only reason I liked hitting lead-off was I would come to the plate more. Our home field was the 201^st Street field which had a short rightfield fence. It was a great experience to hit a ball over the fence and trot around the bases. Until then if I hit one deep over the outfielders I had to run it out as it was it was an inside the park homer. I hit some homers but I also had bad streaks. I once struck out six times in a double-header, four in the first game and two in the second. By the end of the game, Jesse's brother Roger was pointing out what I was doing wrong in front of a small crowd. He meant well, but it was humiliating.

By my seventeenth birthday my time with the Emeralds was up. I either had to find a new team or stop playing. I had been playing ball for 10 years and wouldn't know what to do with myself, so I played on. I played three more years, one with the Dukes in South Zone Park; one was with a team in Forest Hills and one with a team from South Jamaica. I will focus most on my crazy year with the Dukes. I learned more about myself and life than I ever dreamed of in all my years with Joe. I had to face my shadow side.

From Joe Austin to Ray Church and the Dukes
The shadow side of my baseball life
In all my years with Joe I was a very good player all around. I could hit for power, I was a very good center fielder, I had a good arm and I was fast. I started every game and finished every game That meant I could count on:

• never being pinch-hit for;
• never pinch-hitting;
• Never being pinch run for
• never pinch running; and
• never going into the outfield for defensive purposes

Doing any of these things was a sign you were not a complete player and only had part-time status. Yet when I played for Ray Church, I had to learn to accept all these roles. But what I found was that as I rose to the occasion and in the process formed at deeper relationship with a coach that I ever dreamed of.

Who was Ray Church?
Ray Church was no Joe Austin. He could not hit fungoes like Joe. He couldn't curse like Joe and he never played minor league baseball. I later found out the Ray worked at the LaGuardia airport in some administration capacity, he had been in the Air Force, and like Joe, he was single. What Ray had that Joe didn't have was he was natural psychologist and social psychologist. Ray was very even-tempered and he seemed to have emotional relationships with most of players who were all about 17-18 years old. Ray was about 45 years old. My friend Jesse who used to represent Joe at the league meetings told me that Ray had coached the South Ozone Park Dukes for many years.

My introduction to Ray and Dave Laney
Dave Laney was a well-built, good looking, tall Irish kid with a mass of bleached blond hair and a red face. I never knew whether his face was red because he had been surfing or drinking. I later found out it was both. I played against Davey when I was with Joe. He was a good left-handed pitcher and first baseman with power. One day he showed up at our Jamaica high field to pitch informal battling practice. I didn't know why he was here, given South Ozone park was about five miles or so from Jamaica. However, Joe remembered him, let him pitch to us and Dave fit right in. I happened to be hitting well in batting practice and remember hitting everything he threw – line drives. I hit one over the wall. The next pitch he just rolled in like he was bowling. "Try to hit that one" he said. We had a good laugh. I liked his spirit. So I asked him about playing for the Dukes. As if he had rehearsed ahead of time he gave me Ray's phone number. It was only later that I suspected that Ray had sent him over to recruit me. Anyway, two days later I called Ray and asked him if I could play for him. He said "any one of Joe's boys can play for me". I asked him when the first practice was and we were off.

From center field to the bench
I got a late start in the Spring of 1968. The snow was slow to dry and so I wasn't able to work out with Joe as I usually had (his "Spring training" began March 15^th). Also I had put on some 10 pound, possibly from drinking in the woods with friends. We had some practices but I was struck by how rudimentary the practices were compared to Joe. However, the players were very good. The Dukes started me in center field but after three games or so I think I only had one hit. Meanwhile a center fielder named Wally Shultz was tearing up his high school league hitting .500. So, by the fourth game Wally was in center and I was on the bench. Ray seemed to understanding how disheartening this way for me. Without too much prodding sitting in his car after a game I blurted out how my father was driving me nuts, trying to control me. Before the next game Ray, came to pick me up along with some other guys and drive us to the field. I invited him to come in and meet my parents, which he did. Soon after he told me how much he understood about my situation of being controlled after meeting my parents.

As the season went on I played some of the time but never constantly. The players were much more supportive of me than anything I had experienced with Joe and all the guys I grew up with. One thing I noticed is that whenever I started a game I was never pinch-hit for, even if I wasn't doing well. I think Ray understood that would be more painful for me to start and be taken out than not starting at all. Ray had a couple of coaches who were more impatient with me than Ray and I felt Ray was defending me.

One time after another fight with my father, I called Ray and asked him to come get me. He did and we spent a long time talking at his house until about 1 in the morning. I was becoming more and more attached to him and the more I wanted to show him I was a better player than what I had shown so far.

I hit a pinch-triple
That summer I had been working at UPS unloading trucks. I dropped a 50-pound box on my foot so my toe was bandaged for a while. However, I didn't want to miss our night game we were playing so I went to game. I could still hit but I couldn't run very fast. In about the 8th inning of a game, Ray told me to pinch hit for a player. The first pitch was a high fastball which I fouled back. I thought to myself I would have creamed that in any other year but this one. Well, lo and behold the pitcher threw me the same pitch. This one didn't get away from me. I tomahawked to straight away center. It must have been 100 feet over center fielder head. I lumbered around to third with triple. Ray called time out and took me out of the game for a pinch runner. This was so weird. I had never been pinch-run for before. But then again, I probably never pinch hit before starting to play with Ray. After the game I sat in Ray's car crying. I was so happy I contributed something. We hugged.

A late inning defensive replacement
A little later in the summer when my foot healed and I lost the weight I had gained I found myself still on the bench. In the eighth inning of a game in which we were barely ahead, Ray called on me to replace Al Locaccio, a catcher who was only in left field because we needed his bat in the line-up. I hated left field because there was so little room to run. However, I was in no position to move Walley Shultz out of center. The field we were playing at was Rosedale. This field was notorious for fog. So sure enough, a right hand batter hits a long high drive towards me but curving foul. I keep on running  into and through foul territory. I lose the ball in the fog but then it comes out of the fog and I snag it. I must have been 50 into foul territory. Our bench explodes with cheering. Mike Dunn, the other coach who was sympathetic to me looked at Ray in disbelief. Ray taps his forehead with his finger three or four times. I am fighting back the tears.

Ray confides in me he is gay
My relationship with Ray was obviously deepening. He invited me to his place on Friday nights a couple of times just to visit. I asked him questions about himself because I thought it was selfish of me to keep the focus on myself. He  told me he wasn't looking forward to going to his sister's house on Sunday because they kept asking him when he is going to get married. He then said something to me like, "Bruce, I have to tell you something. I'm gay." I didn't have an adverse relation other than sympathy for the situation he was in with his sister. I asked him why he didn't just tell her. He said he wasn't ready to do that. It would send shock waves through his family. I understood. I was very pleased that I built up a relationship with him such that he didn't have to say "don't tell anyone". He just knew I wouldn't. I was proud of that.

Pinch hit double and score the winning run
We were a pretty good team and at the end of the year we were in contention to go to the playoffs. Maybe we were about 12-8. Our game was being played at my old 201^st street field where I played with the Emeralds. In our last game which was to determine if we were going to the playoffs or not I came up to pinch hit to start off the bottom of the 9^th inning of a game that was tied. Before I stepped to the plate Ray motioned to me to come towards him where he was coaching third base. He looked me straight in the eye and said "look, this is your turf. Act accordingly". I went back to home plate looked it him. He always gave me a sign to hit line drives, and not to try to hit everything out of the park. I stepped in. The first pitch was a fastball right down the middle. I blasted it over the right field fence and over the Long Island Railroad tracks for a ground rule double (it wasn't a homer for reasons I won't go into.). As I look my lead off second, I noticed that instead of pitching from a stretch, the pitcher went into a full wind-up. I broke for third. I got such a great jump I was less that 10 feet from third base when Sandy Ameroso lined a single to right. It reached the right fielder in two hops. I paid no attention to any signals from Ray, I just instinctively thought I could beat the throw. I turned on the jets and slid safely underneath the throw which reached the catcher on a hop. Our dugout exploded from the bench to greet me at home. It was hard for me to cry in front of other boys. They didn't seem to understand what I was crying about. But coach Mike Dunn and Ray knew what I was crying about.

Our end of the year party
Every year some sandlot baseball teams have a dinner in which the coaches give speeches and awards to the players. I was sitting at a table with one of some of the players I felt closest to. Since I batted .206 for the season, I was confident I wouldn't be standing up for anything. So along with many other 18-year-old boys at a table, I started to drink. I was never much good at holding my liquor so after 3 beers I was pretty high and the room seemed foggy. Then out of the fog I hear my name. "For sportsmanship award, Bruce Lerro". What the fuck"  I think to myself. I don't even know what the award is for.  The people at my table already started laughing at the prospect of me walking to the front of the room. As I was making my way to the front, Ray, said "and to present him with this award, the only and only, Joe Austin" Now, Joe himself was known to drink a bit and it seemed like he too had been drinking. I got the trophy and wobbled back to my table. the players at my table were fighting off laughing until I was respectfully seated. Then they burst out full flush.

My happy ending with my Forest Hills team
I was done with the South Ozone park Dukes because I was too old. So the next year I hooked up with another team in Forest Hills Queens. I had a very good year with this team. I played center every game and I hit consistently throughout the year. But the climax came at the end of the year when we made the playoffs. This section has been taken from my article Facing the Music: Religion, Nationalism and Sports Have Enchanted the Working Class; Socialism Hasn't

Making my dreams come true
In 1968 our team from Brooklyn got into a playoff game at Victory Field which was one of the fanciest fields around. My girlfriend, Rose Nuccio, let it be known to me that this was the last time she was coming to my games. Sunday was her only day to sleep in. "Besides" she said, "you are 0-8" (referring to my performance in the last two games.) She brought her sister Miriam along with her for this game. In the top of the first inning, I was up with two guys on base and two outs. The left-handed pitcher, Rick Honeycutt, threw me a high inside curve ball.

"Tshrush"! I tomahawk the pitch and the ball really does head for the right center field fence just like in my fantasy 13 years ago. As I watch the ball head for the fence time and space seem to contract. It's as if I were in my backyard 13 years ago. The ball lands on the tennis courts on the other side of the fence scattering everyone. I am so out of it that as I make my rounds of the bases, I miss first base. The coach has to get me to touch the base. As I round second, I see Rosie and Miriam jumping up and down screaming like two young Italian gals will. The look on Rosie's face as our eyes met was like a melting ray of sunlight that united our eyes. I missed third base, too. Finally, as I headed for home most everyone on our team came out to home plate to meet me. It was as if we won the World Series. I disappeared in a mass of teammates at the plate.

A thirteen year life cycle is complete dialectically. I returned to my fantasy of thirteen years ago, on a higher level, deeper, richer more real. I tell this story in my Brainwashing Propaganda and Rhetoric class to point out the Propagandistic power of Sports. There is rarely a dry eye in the house.

The post Choose-Up Games from the Sandlots of Jamaica, Queens NY first appeared on Dissident Voice.