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Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice: for they shall be filled. Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord.


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Topic Summary

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 26, 2024, 05:34:16 pm »


UN Lecture on 100 Years of  Balfour Declaration by 🕯️ Prof. Rashid Khalidi


United Nations Palestinian 🗽 Rights Committee 4.21K subscribers 30,326 views  Mar 20, 2024  UNITED STATES

The United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee organized a lecture on the Balfour Declaration and the impact it has had on the Palestinian people. The lecture   by Professor Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs took place on 2 November 2017  in the ECOSOC Chamber of the United Nations Secretariat in New York. It brought together a broad range of participants, including members of the diplomatic community in New York, UN staff members, representatives of civil society organizations and the general public. The session was chaired by 🕊️ Amb.  Jerry Matthews Matjila of 🗽 South Africa.

Timecodes
0:00 Intro
8:18 Lecture by Prof. Khalidi
41:30 Q&A


DON'T LET ANYONE CONVINCE YOU THAT IT STARTED ON October 7th, 2023:

1. Haifa Massacre 1937
2. Jerusalem  Massacre  1937
3. Balad al-Sheikh  Massacre 1939
4. Haifa  Massacre 1939
5. Haifa  Massacre 1947
6. Abbasiya  Massacre 1947
7. Al-Khisas  Massacre 1947
8. Bab al-Amud  Massacre
9. Jerusalem  Massacre 1947
10. Sheikh Burek  Massacre 1947
11. Jaffa  Massacre 1948
12. Deir Yassin  Massacre
13. Tantura  Massacre 1948
14. Khan Yunis  Massacre 1956
15. Jerusalem  Massacre 1967
16. Bahro Al Baquar 1972
17. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982
18. Al Aqsa Mosque Massacre 1990
19. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994
20. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002
21. Gaza Massacre 2008-09
22. Gaza Massacre 2012
22. Gaza Massacre 2014
24. Gaza Massacre 2018-19
25. Gaza Massacre 2021
26. Gaza Massacre 2023 is still ongoing.


The Balfour Declaration explained

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 15, 2024, 09:09:40 pm »

🕯️🕊️ Max Blumenthal : (The GrayZone) - Who Runs US Foreign Policy?


🗽🦅 Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom  Streamed live on Mar 14, 2024

Max Blumenthal : (The GrayZone) - Who Runs US Foreign Policy?


Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 15, 2024, 08:43:53 pm »

🕯️🕊️ Aaron Maté - (The GrayZone) : 🦍 Nuland and the Leaked 😈 German Plot.


🗽🦅 Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom 318K subscribers 68,003 views  Streamed live on Mar 13, 2024

Aaron Maté - (The GrayZone) : Nuland and the Leaked German Plot.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 15, 2024, 07:23:04 pm »


DON'T LET ANYONE CONVINCE YOU THAT IT STARTED ON October 7th:

1. Haifa Massacre 1937
2. Jerusalem  Massacre  1937
3. Balad al-Sheikh  Massacre 1939
4. Haifa  Massacre 1939
5. Haifa  Massacre 1947
6. Abbasiya  Massacre 1947
7. Al-Khisas  Massacre 1947
8. Bab al-Amud  Massacre
9. Jerusalem  Massacre 1947
10. Sheikh Burek  Massacre 1947
11. Jaffa  Massacre 1948
12. Deir Yassin  Massacre
13. Tantura  Massacre 1948
14. Khan Yunis  Massacre 1956
15. Jerusalem  Massacre 1967
16. Bahro Al Baquar 1972
17. Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982
18. Al Aqsa Mosque Massacre 1990
19. Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994
20. Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002
21. Gaza Massacre 2008-09
22. Gaza Massacre 2012
22. Gaza Massacre 2014
24. Gaza Massacre 2018-19
25. Gaza Massacre 2021
26. Gaza Massacre 2023 is still ongoing.
Quote
“Nobody ever asks how should we respond to Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians for the last 75 years. Nobody ever ask how should Hamas respond to the IDF that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Nobody ever asks how should the Palestinians respond to the hundreds of deaths in the West Bank that have occurred this year at the hands of the settlers, including the deaths of children, as documented again by Israeli journalists. Those questions are not raised. The questions are always how to respond to Hamas. Well, that’s a fair question. But an equally fair question is how should Hamas and Palestinians respond to Israel and to the historical expulsion and mass killings. Nobody ever asks.” --🕯️🗽🕊️ Doctor Gabor Mate


LEARN MORE:
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: February 02, 2024, 06:10:28 pm »





Colonial law and the erasure of Palestine w/ 🗽 Noura Erakat ✨



937K subscribers 897 9,495 views  February 2, 2024 The Real News Network Podcasts

In Palestine, the law has been used as a tool of oppression to legitimize and advance the dispossession of the Palestinian people for more than a century. From the theft of Palestinian land by legal mechanisms to the non-recognition of Palestinians as a people with the inalienable right of self-determination, the law is yet another weapon wielded against the Palestinian people by Israel and its patrons. Activist, attorney, and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the use of lawfare against Palestine and her new book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley

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#chrishedges #therealnewsnetwork
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 29, 2024, 04:24:19 pm »




January 5, 2024

🕯️ Ray McGovern: The Imprisonment of the Palestinian People Was Not an Act of God

SNIPPET:
Israel’s current war on Gaza and the Palestinians draws pessimism and hopelessness, reminding two veterans of its origin in another such war in the region in 1967, The Six Day War, which resulted In Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence  to dissect the relationship Israel has maintained and exploited ever since that imperial conquest with support of the United States, and how the future of American foreign policy appears to once again be led not by informed individuals but rather by selfish and dangerous impulses.

Calling up the Six Day War, McGovern notes it was understood within the CIA as a preemptive war of choice: “The reality is that [Israel]… had carte blanche to do it [the Six Day War], that they were given forgiveness, if not permission, (by the US) before they went up on the Golan. And that’s the situation that exists today with a president who shows himself as being joined at the hip with Bibi Netanyahu,” McGovern explained.

Back then, more than six decades ago, McGovern was in CIA headquarters, advising President Lyndon Johnson,  and Scheer was a journalist reporting from the ground in Egypt, Israel and the newly occupied Gaza and West Bank in the immediate aftermath of the war. In this conversation, the two draw from their experience to show the deliberate, imperial force that has destroyed implementation of the UN-mandated creation of a Palestinian state to be created alongside the Jewish state.

They explain how the Six Day War, ostensibly fought to prevent an imagined threat from Egypt,  which was in temporary control of Gaza,  and Jordan in the West Bank, was resolved with an eventual peace agreement between Israel and those two Arab  nations. But it became the excuse for Israel’s permanent conquest of the millions of Palestinians tilling the lands of Gaza and the West Bank who had posed no military threat to the survival of a Jewish state, a state justified by the European Holocaust, for which the Palerstinans held no accountability.

Recalling their own common childhood growing up in the Bronx during WWII, McGovern and Scheer remark on the deepest of ironies that it is Germany, the historical author of the Holocaust, that is now arresting its own citizens for opposing the dispersal and destruction of the Palestinian people who, like the Jews, have been assured in UN declarations of an equal claim to a state of their own.

Watch VIDEO: 
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/05/ray-mcgovern-the-imprisonment-of-the-palestinian-people-was-not-an-act-of-god/

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 29, 2024, 12:15:57 pm »

January 21, 2024

🕯️ Glenn Greenwald: How the 👿 Israel 🐍 Lobby 😈💰 Takes 🔨Out Its Opponents


By 🕯️ Glenn Greenwald / System Update

The latest installment of Glenn Greenwald’s System Update show dives into the career of former Congressman Paul Findley, who authored of the recently discussed War Powers Act that governs when a president can deploy military forces without Congress in an emergency, and the bombing of Yemen. Greenwald also goes into how that recent of Findley’s time in Congress can be revealing of our current political dynamic.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 18, 2024, 05:49:29 pm »

Dr. Gerald Horne On Palestine, Zionism, US Imperialism & More


The Indigenous Nightmare Podcast 639 subscribers 2,830 views  Jan 15, 2024

IN THIS EP I SIT DOWN WITH DR. GERALD HORNE WHO HOLD THE JOHN J & REBECCA MOORES CHAIR OF HISTORY AND AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON AND IS THE AUTHOR OF OVER 40+ BOOKS  AND A LONG LIST OF ARTICLES ALL PERTAINING TO HISTORY AND THE ORIGINS OF SETTLER COLONIALISM AND US IMPERIALISM ACROSS THE GLOBE. IN THIS EP DR. HORNE GIVES HIS ANALYSIS TO THE CURRENT GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE AND THE CASE SOUTH AFRICA HAS MADE TO THE ICJ ( INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE) AGAINST ISRAEL. LASTLY WE DISCUSS THE AMERIKKKAN IMPERIALIST MODE OF CAPITALISM AND HOW IT IS FAILING ON FRONTS.
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 18, 2024, 03:45:22 pm »

Jamas STUDIED IDF weapons and flawed methodology


AEK Media 627K subscribers Jan 18, 2024
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 17, 2024, 12:43:32 am »

Gaza: Cruel Zionism, Past and Present with Professor Avi Shlaim

The Thinking Muslim 97.9K subscribers Jan 16, 2024  The Thinking Muslim

Today, we are confronting nothing short of a campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians of Gaza, not seen since the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948. Yet many in the Western world are silent about the suffering. Much of what justifies Israel and its actions in the West is premised on history, and many European and American historians have been ready to present a compelling argument for Zionism and the case for Israel in the heart of the Middle East.
 
This historical justification, based on persecution and antisemitism, gives the story of Israel a potency that has for many years served to find acceptance in the West – of impunity to act without restraint - that is not offered to any other state. At the same time, the Palestinian story has been undermined by these same historians. They were a Bedouin community, readily able to vacate their land – it is said. Palestinians, according to leading Israeli politicians, are a mythical people. 
 
Today, we are honoured to have Professor Avi Shlaim with us to untangle historical facts from fiction. Avi Shlaim is an eminent historian. He is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and the author of 📚 The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014) and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009). Professor Shlaim is a dual Israeli British citizen who lived in the country as a child. His family originated from Iraq and migrated to the newly founded state in 1950.

Listen to the audio version of the podcast:
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#thethinkingmuslimpodcast episode131

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
03:21 – Persecution of Jewish Arabs
07:21 – His Story
14:40 – Bombing attacks
26:28 – His critics
27:51 – False flag operations
33:04 – Jews under the Ottomans
38:00 – Israel and Race
43:14 – Palestinian Identity?
46:36 – Balfour Declaration
57:25 – David Lloyd George
59:46 – His wife?
1:01:17 – 1948 Nakba
1:08:30 – Gaza
1:15:07 – Context to 7 October
1:23:20 – Israeli right
1:28:10 – Israeli left
1:31:18 – Keir Starmer and Israel
1:35:08 – His memory
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: January 02, 2024, 05:12:23 pm »


Geopolitics of Israel war explained: Gaza, Iran, Saudi, Yemen, Red Sea ship attacks


Geopolitical Economy Report 169K subscribers 5.3K 58,694 views  Dec 26, 2023

Is Israel's war on Gaza expanding into a regional conflict? Why is Yemen attacking ships in the Red Sea? What are the roles of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Journalist Ben Norton discusses the geopolitics of the crisis.

|| Geopolitical Economy Report ||
Please consider supporting us at https://GeopoliticalEconomy.com/Support

Patreon:   / geopoliticaleconomy 
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Newsletter: https://GeopoliticalEconomy.Substack.com

Posted by: AGelbert
« on: November 09, 2023, 08:27:24 pm »

Britain in Palestine 1917-1948



Balfour Project 10K subscribers 1,002,436 views  Apr 11, 2023
Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.

To access English, Arabic and Hebrew subtitles click on the CC link on the video. For further analysis of the events outlined in the film see the Companion Guide to Britain in Palestine 1917-1948.

Reviews

A very useful explanation of how we got to where we are today. Fascinating photos I had not seen before. A great resource to show in any classroom or forum to people who want to learn more about this region, and specifically, Britain’s involvement. Afif Safieh, Former Palestinian Ambassador

“…This film brilliantly puts into perspective the role the United Kingdom played in Mandate Palestine from 1917-1948.” Rabbi Howard Finkelstein, Ontario, Canada

“This is an excellent short 18-min video from @BalfourProject explaining briefly but super-clearly how British colonialism has caused a century of war in Palestine.” Matthew Teller, Journalist and author of Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City (2022)

“Britain in Palestine 1917 – 1948 is a clear, precise and factual explanation of the historical origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For anyone who wants to develop a real understanding of the issue but is intimidated by it’s complexity, this film is the place to start.” Judah Passow, Photojournalist
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: August 20, 2023, 02:43:04 pm »

🕯️ Letters from an 🦅 American 🗽

August 19, 2023 By Heather Cox Richardson

Various constitutional lawyers have been weighing in lately on whether former president Donald Trump and others who participated in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The third section of that amendment, ratified in 1868, reads:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

On August 14 an article forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Law Review by William Baude of the University of Chicago Law School and Michael S. Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas School of Law became available as a preprint. It argued that the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment is still in effect (countering arguments that it applied only to the Civil War era secessionists), that it is self-executing (meaning the disqualification of certain people is automatic, much as age limits or residency requirements are), and that Trump and others who participated in trying to steal the 2020 presidential election are disqualified from holding office.

This paper was a big deal because while liberal thinkers have been making this argument for a while now, Baude and Paulsen are associated with the legal doctrine of originalism, an approach to the law that insists the Constitution should be understood as those who wrote its different parts understood them. That theory gained traction on the right in the 1980s as a way to push back against what its adherents called “judicial activism,” by which they meant the Supreme Court’s use of the law, especially the Fourteenth Amendment, to expand the rights of minorities and women. One of the key institutions engaged in this pushback was the 💵🎩😈 Federalist Society, and both Baude and Paulson are associated with it.

Now the two have made a 126-page originalist case that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits Trump from running for president . Their interpretation is undoubtedly correct. But that interpretation has even larger implications than they claim.   

Moderate Republicans—not “Radical Republicans,” by the way, which was a slur pinned on the Civil War era party by 👿 southern-sympathizing Democrats—wrote the text of the Fourteenth Amendment at a specific time for a specific reason that speaks directly to our own era.

When 👿 John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Congress was not in session. It had adjourned on the morning of Lincoln’s second inauguration in early March, after beavering away all night to finish up the session’s business, and congressmen had begun their long journeys home where they would stay until the new session began in December.

Lincoln’s death handed control of the country for more than seven months to his vice president, Andrew Johnson, a former Democrat who wanted to restore the nation to what it had been before the war, minus the institution of slavery that he believed concentrated wealth and power among a small elite. 😈 Johnson refused to call Congress back into session while he worked alone to restore the prewar system, dominated by Democrats, as quickly as he could.

In May, Johnson announced that all former Confederates except for high-ranking political or military officers or anyone worth more than $20,000 (about $400,000 today) would be given amnesty as soon as they took an oath of loyalty to the United States. He pardoned all but about 1,500 of that elite excluded group by December 1865.

Johnson required that southern states change their state constitutions by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting enslavement except as punishment for a crime, nullifying the ordinances of secession, and repudiating the Confederate war debts. Delegates did so, grudgingly and with some wiggling, and then went on to pass the Black Codes, laws designed to keep Black Americans subservient to their white neighbors.

Under those new state constitutions and racist legal codes, southern states elected new senators and representatives to Congress. Voters put back into national office the very same men who had driven the rebellion, including its vice president, Alexander Stephens, whom the Georgia legislature reelected to the U.S. Senate. When Congress reconvened in December 1865, Johnson cheerily told them he had reconstructed the country without their help.

It looked as if the country was right back to where it had been in 1860, with legal slavery ended but a racial system that looked much like it already reestablished in the South. And since the 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole people for the first time, southern congressmen would have more power than before.

But when the southern state delegations elected under Johnson’s plan arrived in Washington, D.C., to be seated, Republicans turned them away. They rejected the idea that after four years, 600,000 casualties, and more than $5 billion, the country should be ruled by men like Stephens, who insisted that American democracy meant that power resided not in the federal government but in the states, where a small, wealthy minority could insulate itself from the majority rule that controlled Congress.

In state government a minority could control who could vote and the information to which those voters had access, removing concerns that voters would challenge their wealth or power. White southerners embraced the idea of “popular sovereignty” and “states’ rights,” arguing that any attempt of Congress to enforce majority rule was an attack on democracy.

But President LIncoln and the Republicans reestablished the idea of majority rule, using the federal government to enforce the principle of human equality outlined by the Declaration of Independence.

And that’s where the Fourteenth Amendment came in. When Johnson tried to restore the former Confederates to power after the Civil War, Americans wrote into the Constitution that anyone born or naturalized in the U.S. was a citizen, and then they established that states must treat all citizens equally before the law, thus taking away the legal basis for the Black Codes and giving the federal government power to enforce equality in the states. They also made sure that anyone who rebels against the federal government can’t make or enforce the nation’s laws.

Republicans in the 1860s would certainly have believed the Fourteenth Amendment covered Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of a presidential election. More, though, that amendment sought to establish, once and for all, the supremacy of the federal government over those who wanted to solidify their power in the states, where they could impose the will of a minority. That concept speaks directly to today’s Republicans.

In The Atlantic today, two prominent legal scholars from opposite sides of the political spectrum, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig and emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School Laurence H. Tribe, applauded the Baude-Paulsen article and suggested that the American people should support the “faithful application and enforcement of their Constitution.” 🦅 🗽

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-19-2023/comments


Notes:

https://newrepublic.com/article/174977/baude-paulsen-trump-14th-amendment

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/donald-trump-constitutionally-prohibited-presidency/675048/

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fourteenth-amendment-2024-race/index.html

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1865?amount=20000

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4532751


Posted by: AGelbert
« on: August 16, 2023, 08:27:56 pm »



August 16, 2023 By CHRIS HEDGES
       
On Aug. 19, 1953, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had seized Iran’s vast oil fields from the British and put them under Iranian control, was removed from power in a 🦍 coup 😈 organized and 💰 financed by the 🦖 British and 🦖 U.S. governments.


He was replaced by the dictatorial Shah who immediately signed over forty percent of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies. The coup ushered in a long nightmare of repression, buttressed by Iran’s brutal secret police, Savak, trained and equipped by the CIA. The Shah not only crushed the democratic aspirations of Iranians, but enriched U.S. oil companies and purchased billions of dollars of weapons from U.S. weapons manufacturers.

The CIA and the British intelligence used bribery, libel, black propaganda that accused Mossadegh of being a communist, assassinations and orchestrated riots by paid mercenaries to overthrow the democratic government. They hired agents to pose as communists to threaten religious leaders, while the U.S. ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged attacks on American nationals. They oversaw the assassination of the chief of police, Mahmoud Afshartous, a Mossadegh loyalist, leaving his mutilated body on the street as a warning to others who might defend the democracy. At least 300 people were killed in fighting in the streets of Tehran. Mossadegh’s house was surrounded by and attacked, killing many of his security detail. Mossadegh was sentenced to three years in prison followed by house arrest for life. 🥵😠

The dictatorship of the Shah fueled the virulent anti-American backlash that led to the 1979 revolution and the establishment of a militant Islamic government. The Iran coup became the template used by the CIA to overthrow other governments around the globe that challenged U.S. imperialism and exploitation by global corporations. The list of CIA orchestrated coups that installed compliant right-wing dictatorships includes not only Iran but Guatemala, Indonesia, South Vietnam, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Iraq, Indonesia, Cambodia, Chile, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Angola, East Timor, Argentina and Afghanistan. Hundreds of million people suffered because of U.S. interference the loss of their freedom, impoverishment and repression because of these interventions. They were sacrificed on the altar of U.S. power and corporate profit. Joining me to discuss his documentary, Coup 53, is the is Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani. His film uses newly discovered archival material to expose how the CIA worked clandestinely to overthrow Mossadegh, providing us as well with the blueprint for the numerous other CIA ☠️ coups carried out in the last few decades.


                        
Posted by: AGelbert
« on: March 02, 2023, 05:00:50 pm »



March 2, 2023

By Nancy Altman, Social Security Works

A 40 year 🐘 campaign to destroy Social Security

Social Security is the most popular and effective program in America. That’s why Wall Street has spent 40 years on an insidious campaign to undermine the people’s faith in the system.

Think we’re exaggerating? The right wing called for a “Leninist Strategy on Social Security” back in 1983. And reading it today, much of that strategy looks just like reality.

Social Security Works is pushing back against the Wall Street lies. But they have a head start. Chip in $7 to fight back!

In 1983, Social Security was in a real crisis, but the system’s popularity protected it from destruction, much to Wall Street’s disappointment. Wall Street sees our Social Security system as a cash cow that they can’t access. They would give anything to get their hands on Social Security’s $2.9 trillion trust fund, which is instead invested in US Treasury bonds.

So Wall Street-funded conservative think tanks got to work, outlining a long-term strategy to chip away at the public’s confidence in Social Security. And it was extraordinarily successful.

The right-wing Cato Institute published a plan in 1983 called a Leninist Strategy, designed to 😈 “neutralize” elderly voters while continuing to 🐍 undermine confidence for Social Security among the young. Their model was the Leninist movement's "success in isolating and weakening its opponents." (Yes, they really were taking cues from V.I. Lenin, even in the depths of the Cold War. :o)

This strategy of undermining Social Security is exactly what Rick Scott and Mike Pence are doing to this day! Chip in $7 to fight back against opponents of Social Security. Together, we will expand and defend Social Security!

The strategy had two main prongs: Make younger Americans lose faith that Social Security will keep its promise to them, and create an alternative in the form of private accounts that could be gambled on the stock market, similar to 401ks.

The strategy took a decade to be mainstreamed by the Republicans.

In 1988, a presidential candidate sharing their views about Social Security appeared on the scene. Former Delaware governor Pierre S. “Pete” du Pont IV, an heir to those who had thrown money at any FDR-hater they could find, sought the Republican nomination for president and ran on a platform of privatizing Social Security.

But George H. W. Bush won the Republican nomination and the election that year. As president, he showed his understanding of the program, when he said, “In my budget plan, I say we’ve got to control the growth of . . . mandatory programs, but set Social Security aside. It’s not a welfare program. It’s sacrosanct.”

In 1994, the House of Representatives returned to Republican control for the first time in over 40 years, the first time since Eisenhower was president. The Republicans had run in support of the “Contract with America,” drafted and promoted by Congressman Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Unfortunately for those opposing Social Security, the Contract with America expressed implicit support for the program by proposing only minor modifications.

However, in 1994, as the law had required since 1956, the Secretary of Health and Human Services appointed 14 members to serve on Social Security’s quadrennial advisory council. The trustees had begun to project a long-term deficit in Social Security’s financing occurring somewhere more than 35 years in the future. Included in the report was an appendix, entitled “Developments Since 1983,” which addressed the causes of the projected shortfall. The appendix began by debunking the myth that the inexorable tide of aging baby boomers had anything to do with the projected deficit.

The report clarified: “the fundamental ratio of beneficiaries to workers was fully taken into account in the 1983 financing provisions and, as a matter of fact, was known and taken into account well before that.”

The report then explained that the shortfall resulted from a variety of factors. By the time the advisory council reported, almost 31 million workers participated in 401(k) plans, which contained assets of over $1 trillion. As the stock market went up and up in the 1990s, these arrangements became more and more popular.

This was the opportunity the Leninist Strategy envisioned. More and more Americans were becoming used to private accounts for retirement income.

The Cato Institute, who had first called for this 😈 Strategy, formed the Project on Social Security Privatization on August 14, 1995. A co-chairman of the project was José Pinero, the Pinochet minister of labor who had designed the Chilean system of private accounts. Just as supporters of private accounts had been doing since almost the moment Chile had privatized its Social Security program, Cato touted the Chilean system as a model for the United States, despite its decidedly mixed results.

The new 🐘 right-wing project fueled privatization talk with publications and conferences. In less than a decade, the project could proudly boast that it had “published more than forty books, articles, and reports” criticizing Social Security and advocating private accounts.

Conservative think tanks have spent decades working to undermine Social Security. Stand with Social Security Works today to protect and expand Social Security and invest in our future!

During these years, Social Security produced large surpluses, as it had been projected to do when the 1977 and 1983 amendments had been enacted—but the federal deficit produced record deficits.

On March 7, 1999, the wealthy governor of Texas had announced that he was forming a committee to explore a run for the presidency. Despite his limited political experience and his weaknesses as a speaker, he had one huge asset. He happened to be the son of a former president, and the two men shared the same first and last names, George Bush.

Well before Bush formed his exploratory committee, he had been thinking about the presidency and had been thinking about Social Security, as well. He had a long history of hostility to the program. As a student at the Harvard Business School in the early 1970s, he had railed against Social Security and other New Deal programs. In his losing bid for a congressional seat in 1978, he had ventured that “people [should] be given the chance to invest [Social Security] the way they feel.”

The patience of the anti-Social Security forces seemed to have paid off. They finally had a president who seemed to see the world their way.

Just as in the Bush years, Wall Street continues to try and get their hands on our hard-earned Social Security benefits. Donate to Social Security Works today to fight back against attempts to privatize this critical program.

Despite Social Security’s absence from the campaign, President Bush established a presidential commission on May 2, 2001, to study and make recommendations about Social Security.

Naturally, the members consisted only of people who were dedicated to destroying Social Security’s universal promise, and it resulted in Bush’s privatization scheme.

Unlike most presidential commissions, which are given broad guidelines within which to work, this commission was to be tightly constrained. Among the stipulations dictated by Bush was that the commission’s recommendations “must include individually controlled voluntary personal accounts.” It was not a commission to consider what should be done; rather, it was a commission to advise the president how to do what he had already made up his mind to do.

At the same time, Bush used the administration of government to sow distrust in Social Security. Though Trustees Reports between 2001 and 2004 grew slightly more optimistic, with the projected year of exhaustion of the trust funds slightly further into the future, Social Security Administration publications became more alarmist. No longer confirming that Social Security faced “no immediate crisis,” the publications now warned that the program was “unsustainable,” and “underfinanced.”

Most disturbing was the change in the annual statement sent to all of the 125 million workers age 25 and over who pay into the trust funds. This statement, completely unsolicited, simply arrives in each worker’s mailbox. The 2001 statement proclaimed, “Will Social Security be there when you retire? Of course it will.”

This reassurance was gone by 2002, and in 2005, the unsettling remark “Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time” was now in the mailing, just in case workers were feeling too secure.

The same tactics are being used today: Republicans in Congress are systematically underfunding the Social Security Administration, forcing office closings and longer wait times to receive the world class service Americans are promised.

Social Security Works is dedicated to fighting back against these 💵🎩🐘🐍🦍🐉 schemes that  fly 😈 under the radar. Donate $7 to support our work!

George W. Bush set the agenda for 🐘 today’s Republicans: Pass a massive tax cut, and then try to cut Social Security in the name of fiscal discipline.

This isn’t a new fight―it is the same thing we have been fighting for nearly a century. With our voices together, we beat Bush’s privatization scheme, we beat President Obama’s fiscal commissions, we beat Paul Ryan’s supercommittees, and we beat Donald Trump’s defunding attempt

Now, Republicans are holding the global economy hostage in exchange for unspecified budget cuts. While many of them claim not to have Social Security and Medicare in their sights at the moment, they are also quick to feed the same false narratives that the Leninist Strategy demands.

The way we win is to go on offense: We need to EXPAND Social Security, never 🔨 cut it.

We’re rallying members of Congress behind a bill to expand our Social Security system, which will protect and expand benefits for millions of Americans and keep Social Security strong through the 21st century and beyond!

We need to stand together to fight back against efforts to undermine confidence in Social Security. Donate to Social Security Works to ensure Social Security thrives for future generations!

Thanks,

Nancy Altman
Social Security Works

P.S. Can’t donate right now, but still want to help? Cast a vote for Social Security Works in CREDO’s donation pool for this month!

Social Security Works leads the fight every day to expand and protect our Social Security system. Become a member today.

Social Security Works for Everyone!
From SSW's co-founders, Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, this book builds on the success of 2013's Social Security Works: The Book, updating and expanding its argument that Social Security is the best way to protect and expand the insurance Americans love and count on. Order your copy today!

Contact info@socialsecurityworks.org