We have a 30 minute delay in the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin. I've cornered C.I. for a quick talk. (C.I. of The Common Ills.)
In the snapshot today, she notes a person and some photos so we're going to start there. Elaine told me that the original thing that got deleted was actually more than a single paragraph.
C.I.: She probably is correct.
Let's start with why delete it?
C.I.: Let's start with what it was. In the 90s, I met _______. The way I meet people usually, fate drops them into my world. And then we were talking about other things and somehow the person brought up Pierre Salinger. Who I knew. And needed an excuse to say hi to, actually. So I end up calling Pierre and I'm going to his area and we make plans to meet up. So a few weeks later, we do. And I mention ____. He's surprised and gets upset. Now I'm sorry to be confusing but in the original dictation that got deleted, I gendered the person. I don't even want to do that. It's not my story to tell. Pierre wanted the photos burned and thought they were. He wanted that for the person's safety.
And the photos are related to RFK's assassination?
C.I.: They're said to be. I've never seen them. They basically -- Okay, I'm going what the person who took the photos told me and what Pierre told me. They interpret the photos to demonstrate that it was not an accident, what happened in San Francisco, the murder of RFK. The nameless person was a huge supporter of RFK. The nameless person was not a professional photographer. In Los Angeles, the person took photos and did so from a rooftop. And the photos supposedly indicate that a group was present in LA that may have been considering an assassiantion there.
The way Chicago was supposedly almost the assassination of JFK?
C.I.: Right, that claim.
What do you think happen?
C.I.: My guess would be that Robert [RFK Jr.] is correct in what he surmises.
That the plot involved government efforts?
C.I.: Yes. And the reason why I believe that is the pushback. If you say you believe, for example, that the CIA was involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy, you say that. Where's the harm? If people are lying about transgendered persons? You pushback. Because these lies do real harm. We're talking about people's lives and health. Transwomen, especially African-Americans, are targted with violence. So you pushback. I understand that. But this nonsense, this decades long pushback? The most reasonable explanation? That people are working to cover something. Look at JFK, Oliver Stone's film. It was going to be a film. Danny Schechter would do a documentary on it but it was going to be a film and that's really it. Why the need for the press orchestrated hit? And that's what it was. It started before filming even began. Do you know how many bad films get made? If these people were worried about a bad film, they really overreacted. And it started with the entertainment journalism but quickly moved beyond that. They are the easy journalists to push around. Truly. But it quickly picked up with all these other 'name' journalists coming in to attack -- Tom Wicker, et al. And this happens over and over. The response to someone writing a book or making a film or giving a speech is completely out of proportion to what is supposedly being responded to. It's suspicious and it's telling. The failure to release government files, all these years later, is suspicious. The American people have never believed The Warren Commission report. At her site, Ruth has shared her belief over the years and, I have to say, it makes sense. Her belief is that the plan was to release the material by whatever year -- let's say 2002. And then the American people would have found out that, forty years before, the US government participated in the murder of JFK. They, the people behind it, loathed John F. Kennedy and thought he was garbage. Ruth's hypothesis is that they thought he'd be forgotten by now. They weren't counting on his continued popularity. We're not sixty years after the murder and JFK remains popular so the truth remains buried.
Is that what you think is happening?
C.I.: I think Ruth's made a strong hypothesis. Regarding the photos, I did leave in that I haven't seen them -- in the snapshot, it states that. I don't know what happened. I wasn't in Los Angeles when RFK was there before he moved on to San Francisco. I wasn't in Dallas when JFK was murdered. I am happy to say that this or that happened for events I was present for. If I wasn't present, I'm not going to stake a claim to it. Nor am I going to have a fit over someone offering a reasoned alternative take on it -- alternative from what might seem obvious to me. Pierre believed the photos and he saw them. He believed that the photos could get the person harmed and advised/insisted that they be burned. The person believes the photos reveal something. Do they? I don't know. Why did I mention it? Robert [RFK Jr.] is losing his audience, he's losing his support. This is a person who has wanted these photos to be public but due to various fears hasn't made them public. Robert's run for the presidency provided a lot of people hope. I was hopeful. But it made this person very hopeful. Now this person has no desire to hand the photos over to Robert and doesn't trust Robert. That is what he's done in his eight or ten week campaign. He started out with hopes and aspirations that we put on him, myself included, and he became a huge disappointment.
Can he turn it around?
C.I.: A smart campaign could. It would mean a campaign staff shift. It would mean getting rid of loser Dennis Kucinnich who has never stood for anything. The most infamous example being ObamaCare which Dennis knew was not universal healthcare and which Dennis announced he would never vote for it and would never support. Then Dennis takes a trip on Air Force One and Barack explains that a Democrat can primary Dennis. Dennis buckles immediately. And the joke's on Dennis because not only did Barack get Dennis' vote, Dennis still got primaried. I don't see Robert as being able to adapts. He's gone for the low hanging fruit, the rotten fruit, and he's betrayed the aspirations so many people had in him.
Would you say that to him?
C.I.: No. I have no interest in speaking to him at present. I would yell and scream. I am furious with what he's done, with what he's failed to do. Which is why we cover it in the snapshot. And my point in the snapshot today was you have this person who has photos that they believe would make it clear that there was not just a plan for one shooter in San Francisco. The person wanted Robert to get those photos. But Robert's bulls**t is so tremendous that even this person who rooted for Robert's father and was rooting for Robert has been turned off.
Okay. Can I ask about press pushback?
C.I.: In terms of?
Any other thing there with regards to either JFK or RFK.
C.I.: Sure. Marilyn Monroe was used and abused by both brothers. The orders came down from Justice to grab up all the photos of Marilyn and JFK in the hours following her death. Yet the media tried to lie about that affair forever. Geraldo Rivera left ABC over this issue. 20/20 was supposed to be airing a report -- that had already been covered by the BBC in England -- and then Roone Arlidge pulled the report. Barbara Walters objected, Hugh Downs objected. But that still happened and the people doing this thought they could keep this a secret. No. You can't. But it's worth noting the media response to this truth which was to attack and deny. Again, a response can be very telling. And you know the next response, after it won't go away, after the truth won't go away, is to lie and say, "Oh, well it was just Jack -- that's Jack. RFK was an innocent, he didn't sleep around." Really? Do we want to talk about the aging Twitter queen who claims she just went clubbing with RFK but her husband at the time knew she f**ked him because he had an investigator on her tail? I always think of the George Michael song "I Want Your Sex" -- "There's things that you hide and little things that you show" -- that really seems the reality when it comes to the truth and what the media will report.
I would love to continue this but I know Gina and Krista just sent a group text that the roundtable's about to start. So thank you.
I typed as we spoke and there may be typos here so if there are, my apologies to anyone reading.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
It has been two years since CME Consulting employees, Robert Pether and Khalid Radwan, were lured to #Iraq, unlawfully arrested and sentenced to five years in #prison on fabricated charges. Here’s the truth about their arrest ⬇️https://t.co/twN50tRF06
— CBI Transgression (@CBItransgress) July 5, 2023
He then offered a telling anecdote about what this meant. Kennedy recalled how he’d accompanied his father’s body by train from New York to Washington, D.C., after his assassination, and was met on the tracks by thousands of supporters—Black Americans in cities such as Trenton and Baltimore, and white Americans in the countryside. “There were hippies, there were people in uniform, there were Boy Scouts,” Kennedy recounted. “Many people, white men and women, holding signs that said Goodbye, Bobby, holding American flags, holding up children.”
But four years later, the younger Kennedy had a rude awakening about these same people. Examining demographic data from the 1972 presidential campaign, he discovered that “the predominant numbers of white people” who had supported his father had not voted for George McGovern, “who was aligned with my father on almost every issue,” but rather “ended up supporting George Wallace, who was antithetical to my father in every way—he was a fierce, rampant segregationist and racist.”
In the interview, Kennedy casts this about-face as an illustration of how populist energy can be channeled for good or ill. But he can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge the obvious implication: For backers of Kennedy Sr., as for those of Kennedy Jr., the choice was never about policies but about a posture, which is why the same voters were willing to support outsider candidates with seemingly opposite ideals.
It's John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he, he took the whole South except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky. And there's a reason he didn't take Tennessee but he got 481,453 votes and the asshole got 556,577 votes. [. . .] Now the problem we got here is anti-Catholicism. These dumb-heads around here - they're all Baptists and whatever, I don't know. Even to teach 'em to make change over at the bar, you gotta crack their skulls, let alone to teach 'em to vote for the Catholic just because he happens to be the better man. [. . .] All I remember, the next few days was us just lookin' at that TV set and seein' that great fat-bellied sheriff sayin' 'Ruby, you son of a bitch.' And Oswald. And her in her little pink suit. [. . .] And then comes Bobby. Oh, I worked for him. I worked here, I worked all over the country, I worked out in California, out in Stockton. Well, Bobby came here and spoke and he went down to Memphis and then he even went out to Stockton California and spoke off the Santa Fe train at the old Santa Fe depot. Oh, he was a beautiful man. He was not much like John, you know. He was more puny-like. But all the time I was workin' for him, I was just so scared -- inside, you know, just scared.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
And we’re going to turn right now to another Supreme Court decision. In another setback for equal rights, the conservative-majority Supreme Court also ruled 6 to 3 Friday in favor of a Christian Colorado web designer who refused to create websites for same-sex couples even though the state, Colorado, bans such discrimination. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent decision that the decision was “heartbreaking” and a “reactionary exclusion.”
Democracy Now! spoke to The New Republic reporter Melissa Gira Grant Friday, who reported that part of the lawsuit that the Alliance Defending Freedom filed on behalf of Lorie Smith of Colorado was fake.
MELISSA GIRA GRANT: So, in 2016, this website designer named Lorie Smith, whose business is called 303 Creative, she believed that a Colorado anti-discrimination ordinance that protects people from discrimination — among other things, from discrimination based on sexual orientation — she believed that that precluded her from entering into the wedding website business. Now, she has never created a wedding website for anybody, and including a same-sex couple.
So, in the course of making this argument, she claimed two things: one, that this law meant that she couldn’t post an announcement on her website saying that she wouldn’t make these websites for any couple that wasn’t in a biblical marriage that she approved of, and, additionally, in a later filing in the original case in 2016, she claimed that an actual same-sex couple sought to have her build a website for them, that an inquiry — it doesn’t seem that it was a legitimate inquiry, but it remained in the case. It came up in the district court ruling that ruled against her. It came up in their appeal. It’s even been included in filings to the Supreme Court and was referenced by her attorneys, Alliance Defending Freedom, who are a Christian nationalist law project. They said, “Hey, she’s had an actual inquiry, so this is a case that, you know, has some relevance.”
But before this inquiry became a subject of debate — it hadn’t really been reported out until I was able to reach the person who allegedly made the inquiry.
AMY GOODMAN: To see our full interview with Melissa Gira Grant, go to democracynow.org.
We’re joined right now by Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush. He’s president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, which, along with 30 other faith-based and civil rights groups, filed an amicus brief in Supreme Court case, 303 v. Elenis.
Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, thanks so much for being with us. Can you talk about what this means? If a private company can discriminate against, oh, the LGBTQ community, can they put a sign in a window of a store that says, “We don’t serve gays”? Can they put a sign in the window of a store, “We don’t serve Jews. We don’t serve Blacks. We don’t serve Latinos”? What does this decision mean?
REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH: Well, thank you for having me on. I’m delighted, and frustrated that this is the reason we’re talking.
We’re entering into a terrible moment where a Pandora’s box has been opened, and we’re not sure exactly what it means. But what it does mean for sure is that permission has been granted to use religion as a way to discriminate against your fellow people, and we’re going to see how this happens. It’s not in a vacuum. This is happening already, when LGBTQ people are under attack with religion as a pretext. And this gives permission for a lot of bad behavior.
And what we have to just say is we are in a situation which — where what is legal cannot be considered moral, and what the law is cannot be considered just. And so, you know, we have a Supreme Court that has basically put down an adverse decision, which is bad for religion, and it’s also bad for discriminated areas. Like, it could be race. It could be other protected groups. And we just have to see how this plays out. But it’s bad news for America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Reverend, could you talk about the Alliance Defending Freedom that backed this suit? What do we know about it? And how was it able to get this case all the way up to the Supreme Court?
REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH: Well, this is, essentially, a group that works with Christians using Christianity as a bludgeon to discriminate. They use religious freedom in a way that it was never intended. And, you know, they have had other cases that they have brought, and they have been successful. And so, we’re in a moment where they saw the Supreme Court opportunity, and they took it all the way up.
And, you know, unfortunately, there was very little that the dissenting justices could do, aside from pointing out the obvious, that we are now in a moment — I’ll quote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said, “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.” I mean, that’s what this law group has done, and that’s what the Supreme Court went along with.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, you are a gay Baptist minister. Talk about the religious community’s response. And also, you supported the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act. How does this decision affect that?
REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH: Well, I think this shows why the Respect for Marriage Act was so important, is that it codifies the ability for families like my own to be protected against discrimination and that our marriages are not to be dissolved. By the way, the Respect for Marriage Act protects also interracial marriages, which this photographer, with her fake case, could also say, “I don’t to photograph interracial marriages.”
So, you know, for me, this hits me on a lot of levels. One, it hits me as a gay man with a husband and two children, who, of course, we — you know, this now opens up the possibility that we could go into an establishment, and they can say, “Oh, well, we don’t want to do your portrait.” You know, who knows to what extent people will be able to discriminate against my family?
But it’s also really bad for religion. I have to say that, because people might think, “Oh, this is a victory for freedom of religion.” Actually, you know, one of the main — I’ll put on my pastor hat here — like, one of the main reasons that people are leaving the church, especially young people, they cite the antagonism that they perceive the church has against LGBTQ people. And this is just — you know, this is just going to make more and more people say, “Ech, who wants to have anything to do with religion or Christianity?” And that’s — you know, I think, for me, that’s terrible, because it’s a terrible understanding of what Christianity is and who Jesus was.
It also just does not reflect the fact that the majority of religious people in America support anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ people. That’s the fact. They don’t want — this is not just the American people at large, but also the majority of almost every religious community rejects the idea that there should be discrimination against LGBTQ people in just such a way as the court has decided. And so, basically, the court is representing a very small and diminishing part of the public in this decision. And it’s just bad for religion, it’s bad for freedom, and it’s bad for America. It’s bad for the fabric of America. It disintegrates the fabric of America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Reverend, we just have about 20 seconds left, but what should faith groups that are opposed to this decision — what recourse, what next steps would you recommend?
REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH: Well, you know, we need to be rallying all over the country, and we need to be standing up, and we need to be very loud to insist that religion should be a cause for celebration, not discrimination, a cause for liberation, not subjugation, a cause for a bridge, not a bludgeon. And we have to say that just because this law is now the — is the law doesn’t mean it’s moral. And we have to stand up and say, “If you’re doing this, you are not representing a good religion. You’re representing bad religion.” It’s very important that everyone stand up and be very clear about where they stand on this law.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, we thank you so much for being with us, joining us from Massachusetts, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance. And that does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Our website is democracynow.org. Thanks so much for joining us.
A court in the Kurdistan region of Iraq dealt independent civil society a blow on May 31, 2023, by ordering the closure of Rasan Organization over “its activities in the field of homosexuality,” Human Rights Watch said today. Rasan is the only human rights organization willing to vocally support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), in addition to its work on women’s rights and domestic violence.
“Shuttering Rasan is not only an attack on civil society in Kurdistan but is also a direct threat to the lives and wellbeing of the vulnerable people they support,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “By closing Rasan, the government has sent a clear message that it does not respect freedom of association.”
Tanya Kamal Darwish, CEO of Rasan Organization, told Human Rights Watch that the purported reason for closing the group down was not because of its activities, but because the judge took issue with its logo, which contains the colors of the rainbow. The court order states that “the expert committee confirmed that the logo of the organization is a complete expression of its activities in the field of homosexuality.”
Rasan has appealed but is unable to continue operating while the appeal is pending.
The closure of Rasan is part of a broader pattern of oppression and targeting of LGBT people and activists by local Kurdish authorities in recent years. Human Rights Watch has previously documented the targeting of LGBT people online and violence against LGBT people by armed groups in Iraq, including the regional government.
The closure is the result of a lawsuit filed against Rasan in February 2021 by Omar Kolbi, a member of the Kurdistan Parliament, who accused Rasan of “promoting homosexuality,” and “engaging in activities that defy social norms, traditions, and public morality.” Kolbi also submitted a complaint to Barzan Akram Mantiq, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Department of Non-Governmental Organizations, an official body responsible for registering, organizing, and monitoring all nongovernmental organizations in the region.
After the suit was filed, local police issued arrest warrants for 11 LGBT rights activists who were either current or former employees at Rasan based on article 401 of the penal code, which criminalizes “public indecency.”
“The Department of Non-Governmental Organizations is supporting MP Kolbi’s complaint against us, but that is backward,” Darwish said. “The department should have been supporting us, not standing against us.”
Darwish said that the trial, which took place last year, focused on the activities of Rasan and never mentioned any issues with the group’s logo. “They were asking about our activities, and we told them what we do,” Darwish said. “We focus on human rights. Anyone who comes to us with a problem we help without any discrimination.”
Rasan found out about the issue with the logo only when the court decision was published. “We weren't expecting them to take any action against us, since we weren't doing anything illegal. They used the logo as an excuse because they couldn't find anything illegal in our activities,” Darwish said.
Rasan, which has operated in Sulaimaniya, a city in the Kurdistan region, for nearly two decades, has faced increasing threats and official retaliation for its activism and work. The group provides legal, psychological, and social support for women and LGBT clients, raises awareness of LGBT and women’s rights, and collects and compiles data relevant to LGBT people and gender-based violence.
In September 2022, members of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament introduced the “Bill on the Prohibition of Promoting Homosexuality,” which would punish any individual or group that advocates for the rights of LGBT people. Under the bill, the vague provision against “promoting homosexuality” would be a crime punishable by imprisonment for up to one year and a fine of up to five million dinars (US$3,430). The bill would also suspend, for up to one month, the licenses of media companies and civil society organizations that “promote homosexuality.”
Momentum for adopting the bill appears to have stalled, but in the context of repeated targeting of LGBT people, local LGBT rights activists fear it could be quickly revived and passed at the whim of local authorities.
“By going after Rasan, authorities are effectively scapegoating activists working to protect among the most vulnerable members of society, who should not fear reprisals for speaking up about abuses,” Coogle said. “The Kurdistan Regional Government should take immediate steps to ensure that organizations like Rasan are permitted to operate freely and cease harassment and targeting of LGBT advocates.”
