Current Events

 Trial of Chicago 7 - Teaser Trailer - Dailymotion Video  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7wubyf   Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a historical drama streaming on Netflix. It deals with the court proceedings in 1969–70 in which organizers of protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago, faced charges of conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot. The charges brought by the Nixon administration’s Justice Department were aimed at intimidating and criminalizing political opposition. The Trial of the Chicago 7 At the center of the Chicago protests was the Vietnam War, then at its height. Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson had been elected in 1964 on the pledge he would not escalate the war (“We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home…”)—and then did precisely that. The brutal character of the imperialist intervention outraged great ...

  In 2015, Donald J. Trump decided he was going to run for president on popular ideas. T his was a stunning, historic breakthrough in American politics. He made his announcement in a speech talking about Mexican rapists , pledging to deport illegal aliens and build a wall. And the rest is history. I’m thinking he should try it again this Thursday night. Recall that Trump’s famous escalator speech provided any number of possible campaign themes: Bomb ISIS! Take their oil! Protect our veterans ! Bring our jobs home ! Repeal Common Core ! Repeal Obamacare! Protect the Second Amendment! Make China pay! Concealed carry ! But that’s not what the crowds chanted. They certainly weren’t chanting “Reform Social Security!” or “Protect Ukraine’s national sovereignty!” No, the slogan that inspired a million T-shirts, chalk etchings , replicas and hashtags was: Build the wall! Month after month, at every rally, whenever Trump mentioned the wall, the crowds went wild. It was Trump’s o...

Trump’s 2016 victory was seen as nothing less than a cataclysm by the American establishment—the greatest shock to the system in memory and perhaps in the entire history of the Republic. After all, Trump was vehemently opposed by the entire establishment from far left to the neoconservative and Chamber of Commerce right. It was, one might say, a hostile takeover. The left was on the cusp of going into end-game mode, so losing was incredibly frustrating, especially since Hillary Clinton was expected to win easily. But Trump won. Whatever you think of Trump’s actual performance, the fact is that throughout the campaign and since taking office the media and pretty much the entire left has been labeling him a Nazi and White supremacist (I wrote 5 articles for Vdare on this). And it’s continued, even into the recent presidential debate and the town hall hosted by Savannah Guthrie. When Trump won, they were apoplectic — on the verge of complete victory with a “sure thing” H...

  Two Antifa “protest buddies” have been charged for their alleged involvement in the plotting and execution of serious violent attacks on Seattle police at Antifa riots throughout September. Danielle Elizabeth McMillan, a 29-year-old realtor, has been charged by King County prosecutors for attempted arson in the first degree, a Class A felony. She is accused of bringing a concealed firebomb to an Antifa black bloc riot outside the Seattle Police East Precinct on Sept. 1 in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, the area previously occupied by CHAZ. McMillan is alleged to have lit and thrown the incendiary device at the facility. The device failed to make it over the fence protecting the building and shattered on the ground. McMillian’s alleged black bloc accomplice, 19-year-old Jacob Bennet Greenburg, is charged with felony first-degree attempted arson, felony first-degree assault and felony first-degree reckless burning in relation to three violent Antifa riots in Septem...

  The ongoing destruction of the jobs, incomes and aspirations of tens of thousands of artists of every kind in the US and elsewhere has implications that go beyond the immediate cultural sphere. More astute capitalist commentators are expressing concern. After all, what would it mean if this unemployed or under-employed, increasingly disaffected social grouping were to begin to think more critically about the economic structure of society, in short, to question capitalism? What would the consequences be if artists began in serious numbers “to hold … the mirror up to” contemporary American life? LOST ART–Measuring COVID-19’s devastating impact on America’s creative economy The news reports and statistics remain stunning. In September, the co-authors of a Brookings Institution report, “Lost Art: Measuring COVID-19’s Devastating Impact on America’s Creative Economy,” published the month before and to which we will return, issued a further appeal, “We need all hands on de...

  Ben Innes on taking a 'selfie' with the EgyptAir hijacker The 26-year-old British health and safety auditor describes why he posed for picture while held hostage on flight MS181 Elle Hunt Wed 30 Mar 2016 08.13 EDT First published on Tue 29 Mar 2016 19.01 EDT A British man who posed smiling for a photo with a hijacker on board an EgyptAir flight has said he did it to take “a closer look” at the apparent explosives belt, adding: “I figured if his bomb was real I’d nothing to lose anyway.” EgyptAir hijacking: from siege to surrender Read more Ben Innes, 26, was one of three passengers and four crew held to the end of a hostage siege, after Seif Eldin Mustafa hijacked the EgyptAir flight bound for Cairo from Alexandria and forced it to be redirected to Cyprus . The plane landed at Larnaca airport, where Innes was snapped standing next to Mustafa – who was still wearing what he claimed to be an explosives belt – in the cabin of the Airbus 320. Advertisement The bomb was ...

  Last week, nearly the entire leadership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) began circulating a “ pledge ” to campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nominee, Joe Biden. The pledge states that, while “there is no choice at the top of the ticket that would advance our movement… A Trump loss would be unequivocally better for the working class and for our movement than a Trump re-election victory.” To secure Trump’s defeat and Biden’s victory, the signers commit “to volunteer our time to phonebanking, textbanking, doorknocking, and otherwise organizing to defeat Trump over the next four weeks.”   The signatories of the document include many members of the National Political Committee (NPC), including Hannah Allison, Maikiko James, Kevin Richardson, Abdullah Younus, and Megan Svoboda, as well as national leaders on the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission, National Electoral Committee, AFROSOC Executive Committee, DSA International Committee Steerin...