This Can't Be Happening!

 
PREFACE
 
Asked by veterans from the Vietnam Veterans of America inmate Chapter 466 in Graterford state prison to be the official speaker for their Armed Forces Day event on May 18th, the following was given as a speech. Members of VVA Chapter 466 were in attendance, along with a host of friends and supporters of the chapter, some who are quite conservative veterans. Several Graterford staff and security officials were in attendance. Pennsylvania Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel was invited and had committed to attend the Armed Forces Day event, but at the last minute he had a conflict and did not show up. Wetzel worked his way up from a corrections officer and was given the top prison job in May 2010 by conservative Republican Governor Tom Corbett. A copy of the speech has been sent to Werzel's office and to other officials in Harriburg. During these years, I have become acquainted with a number of decent, hard-working Graterford officials and staff employees. The following remarks were written with all these individuals and parties in mind.

As a Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans For Peace, I have worked with the VVA chapter and other interested groups for a number of years as an advocate for prison reform in the area of veterans. Of particular interest to me is recognition of the mitigating factor of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Pennsylvania's draconian life-without-parole sentence in which the only way out is a coffin or a commutation. And in the current political climate in Pennsylvania commutations are rare and tend to be given as a governor is leaving office.
 

It is a great honor to speak here today for Armed Forces Day. I must say, when I was asked to be the speaker today I was a little surprised. While I’m very much an American, I am not a flag-waver.

So I’m not going to give the usual Armed Forces Day speech that praises our military for preserving our freedom here in America. Everyone has heard that one many times before.

Since I’m speaking to a mixed audience of prison inmates (most of them veterans), prison officials and other distinguished guests, I want to talk about the Armed Forces and incarcerated veterans.

Graterford Prison outside of Philadelphia

Like others in this room, I’m a Vietnam veteran. But that identification really doesn’t tell anyone much other than triggering stereotypes.

I joined the Army in 1965 a week out of high school. I had just turned 18. My father had been a PT boat captain in the south Pacific, and my brother was in the Army infantry at the time. I ended up as part of the Army Security Agency, was sent to Vietnam and was assigned, first, to the 25th Division, then to the 4th Division, both headquartered in Pleiku. I was a fairly intelligent kid, but, frankly, very naïve. I was trained in Morse code to work as a radio direction finder.

I was what we called -- and pardon the obscenity -- a REMF, or rear echelon motherfucker. Still, I ended up working in forward areas in support of large infantry operations. I was at a firebase near the famous Ia Drang valley where a year earlier Commer Glass fought as a young soldier. I was dropped by helicopter on remote mountaintops near the Cambodian border with a half squad of grunts to protect my sorry REMF ass. It was all pretty amazing experience for a young kid just out of high school.

Point of No Return, a mixture of novel and autobiography, is an engaging story of an intrepid war correspondent who resembles a saucy crime detective. It is superb story-telling.

Andre Vltchek’s just re-released Point of No Return is a revised third edition. First published in 2005, the French edition was widely praised, with one French critic compared the authors writing with that of Malraux and Hemingway.

The hero is Karel, who has covered dozens of foreign wars and internal liberation struggles. Most of the book concerns Israel-Palestine and Latin America, especially Peru. Indonesia’s aggression against East Timor and Egypt also play important roles. There are also stops in Paris, New York and Japan.

The author Andre has traveled to three-fourths of the world’s countries over two decades, communicating to whomever he can reach about the state of the world. He has written a score of non-fiction, fiction and poetry books. He is also a photographer and documentary film-maker.

The robust story flows rhythmically, sensually, enticingly. It is a sad reality that the veteran war correspondent encounters sometimes sickening things, which are just a reality of living and dying for three-fourths of the world’s seven billion people.

In Andre’s own words:

“Politicians and economists are blurring the whole picture…A small group of historically aggressive nations is still ruling the world. The economic system which it promotes has nothing to do with humanism, with solidarity, compassion, willingness to share. We have billions of people rotting in gutters all over the world; hundreds of millions of people dying from curable or at least controllable diseases. The rich world is still plundering the rest of the planet; stealing raw materials, employing people for a pittance.... If poor nations resist, the rich world stages coups or something worse.... And it is all legitimized through the United Nations, which was sidelined, made truly impotent...”
Author Andre Vitchek

"Paranoia," said Woody Allen, "is knowing all the facts." By that measure, we're becoming more and more "paranoid" every day.

This week, we learned that the Obama Justice Department seized two months of records of at least 20 phone lines used by Associated Press reporters. These include phone lines in the AP's New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn offices as well as the main AP number in the House of Representatives press gallery, the private phones and cell phones belonging to AP reporters and a fax line in one AP office.

The government effected this massive seizure "sometime this year" according to a letter from the Justice Department to AP's chief counsel this past Friday (May 10). The letter cites relevant "permission" clauses in its "investigative guidelines" and makes clear that it considers the action legal and necessary.

Locking Horns: AP's Gary Pruitt and Attorney General Eric Holder

In many ways, this is the most blatant act of media information seizure in memory. It affects over 100 AP journalists and the countless people those journalists communicated with by phone during those two months. It violates accepted constitutional guarantees, the concept of freedom of the press and the privacy rights of literally thousands of people. Predictably and justifiably, press, politicians and activists have expressed outrage.

But as outrageous as the admitted facts are, the story's larger implications are even more disturbing. It's bad enough that the Obama Administration has grossly violated fundamental constitutional rights, acknowledged the violation and defended their legality. Even worse is that likelihood that the intrusion will probably be ruled legal, that it has been ongoing against other targets for some time and that this is only the tip of the intelligence-abuse iceberg.

In a late but happy surprise, ThisCantBeHappening! has learned that two of its founding members, Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington, Jr., were winners of a pair of this year's Project Censored awards.

Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington: Maybe not 'ones for the book,' but making waves just the same

Each year Project Censored's judges select the 25 issues that they believe were most censored or poorly reported on by the corporate media. More than one news organization or writer can win an award in any particular story category. For some reason, both Dave's and Linn's stories, though selected by the judges, were left out of the group of winners listed in the organization's annual book, Censored 2013, but today Project Censored Director Mickey Huff discovered the oversight and corrected it, listing and linking both articles by the two journalists on the organization's website.

Linn's winnng piece reported on how Wachovia Bank had knowingly laundered millions of dollars of cartel drug money, but when caught by federal regulators, was only hit with a fine, and no criminal charges, with its executives skating free. He made the key point that at the same time, thousands of people caught with a small quantity of drugs for their own use are languishing in the nation's prison. The article was titled Too Big to Do Time?: Fed Wrist-slap for Wachovia Bank Makes a Farce of the Drug War. It ran in this publication last May 27.

Dave's award was for an article that appeared first in the online edition of The Nation magazine. Titled Colleges Withhold Transcripts from Grads in Loan Default, it ran on March 30, 2012.

To view the Project Censored award pages for these articles, you can go here and here.

ThisCantBeHappening! now can claim four Project Censored awards, which is not bad for a little news organization that has no budget, can't pay its writers, depends upon donations from its readers, and has been banned by Truthout!. (Earlier awards, both won by Dave, were for an article about government planning preparations for restoring the draft and an article exposing US military use of depleted uranium munitions in the 2011 air attacks on Gaddafy troops in Libya.)

The Project Censored Awards are honors, but don't come with any cash. We'd like to suggest that our readers help us celebrate by sending us some financial support, which is badly needed here at TCBH!. You can use the Paypal button on the right of the masthead, or send a check made out to "Dave Lindorff/TCBH" at POB 846, Ambler, PA 19002. (We'll probably blow the first donation on a bottle of champaign or a few bottles of beer to celebrate, but the rest will go straight into subsidizing our journalism work at TCBH!)

A 21st century psychotherapist steps into a time machine and comes out in Atlanta in 1855. Having no other marketable skills, he hangs out a shingle and promises new remedies for mental illness. A well-dressed gentleman knocks on the door and inquires if the psychotherapist might come to his plantation to examine the slaves.

“Most of them are well satisfied with their position and work hard within their natural limitations,” says the gentleman. “But a few appear to suffer most severely with drapetomania, dipsomania and dyaesthesia aethiopica. Even after whippings, they continue to defy my rules, either by subterfuge or outright defiance. I do not understand their affliction, which is cause for much suffering among them and financial losses for myself.”

After looking up drapetomania (compulsive running away), dipsomania (compulsive drinking) and dyaesthesia aethiopica (compulsive avoidance of work) in the latest journals of negro behavior, the psychotherapist goes to the plantation and convinces the psychotic slaves to talk with him for 50 minutes each week.

“I think I know what the problem is,” says the psychotherapist after a few months of research. “Your slaves had unhappy childhoods because they come from dysfunctional families. Their parents were often absent and even when they were around, they didn’t appreciate their children for their true selves. In some sense, your slaves are living in the past, acting out childhood fear and anger that is deeply buried in the unconscious.”

“And what do you recommend as a remedy?” says the gentleman.

“The best psychology has to offer right now is continued brutalization, on the theory that their race is incapable of deeper insight,” says the psychotherapist. “I think the evidence  indicates that re-traumatizing the already traumatized is ineffective for a small number of stubborn cases, as you have discovered. For the stubborn cases, I would suggest another form of therapy...”

If the 21st century psychotherapist was Freudian, he might now recommend years of talk therapy for the slaves until they had a clear understanding of their parents and siblings.

If the psychotherapist was Jungian, he might recommend dream journals and more creative outlets for the slaves so they could get insight from active imagination.