Author: Dave LIndorff

About six years ago, as part of his Bar Mitzvah, my son Jed did a project on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, producing his own graphic novel about the underground fighters who used courage, creativity and the city’s sewer system to, in some small way, offer resistance to the murderous program of the Nazis to exterminate Poland’s Jews.

In the course of his research, Jed interviewed a friend of my father’s, a Polish man who had been a teenager in Warsaw during World War II. He told my son how one day, as he was riding the streetcar to a job, the tram came to a halt near the wall of the ghetto. Everyone was told they had to get out. Standing there in a crowd outside the wall, he saw vast amounts of smoke and heard an enormous amount of gun and cannon fire, and bombs exploding. Asking what was happening, he said he was told by a Polish woman near him, “They’re barbecuing the Jews!”

It was, it turned out, the final catastrophic leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto that he was witnessing, and this man recalled, still in horror at the memory, that people had gathered from all over the city to watch it happen, like going to a fireworks display.

Now we’re seeing the same phenomenon in Israel, as the Israeli Defense Force enters its second week of bombing and invading the walled-in ghetto of Gaza, where some 1.8 million Palestinian men, women and children have been trapped for years with nowhere to go to escape the bombs, rockets, cannon fire and IDF snipers.

And like the horrific case of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, here too we have a small-scale, improbable, resistance being put up by fighters who use home-made rockets, small arms and a network of tunnels to challenge their much better armed attackers. We also have people — ironically this time it’s Jewish citizens of Israel — dragging lounge chairs and refreshments out to hillsides in the evening to watch the fireworks as the IDF’s tanks, bombers and ships off the coast of Gaza pulverize this huge ghetto that is fully under Israeli control.

As the New York Times reported in an article about the Israeli spectator sport of watching the leveling of Gaza, where by July 22 nearly 600 Palestinian, including over 100 children, had been killed by Israeli weapons, this was nothing new. Similar crowds gathered, equipped with comfortable seating and refreshments, during the prior bloody assault on Gaza in 2008-9 in which between 1160 and 1400 Palestinians were reportedly killed.

Israelis as spectators, enjoy the IDF assault on the Gaza ghetto (l), and a view of the damage from one IDF attack (r)

If the best the US can do to pin the blame for the Malaysia Flight 17 downing on Russia is to have Secretary of State John Kerry say that “circumstantial evidence” points to Moscow being behind it, we can be pretty certain it was not Russia at all.

Kerry’s credibility on such matters has been in the toilet since last August when he claimed during last year’s furor and push for war against Syria’s Basher al Assad that he had seen “clear and compelling evidence” that the Syrian government had used poison gas against its own people. That “evidence” turned out (clearly with Kerry’s knowledge) to have been ginned up, falsified and staged, and in the end it was evident that Syria had not been the guilty party. Had Kerry and the White House succeeded in duping the world and the American people the way President George W. Bush and VP Dick Cheney succeeded in duping them about Iraq’s “WMDs,” an armada of US planes and ships already in position around Syria would have begun a massive aerial bombardment of Syria sparking a whole new war in the Middle East, even as Iraq was already in the throes of a civil war.

Fortunately, John Kerry’s and the accommodating US corporate media’s lies that time were exposed, and that bloody catastrophe was averted.

Now, undeterred by that first attempt at a full-blown campaign of lies, Kerry and the Obama White House are at it again, trying to falsify a casus belli against Russia by blaming Moscow for the downing of a civilian airliner that killed 298 people.

The problem for Kerry and Washington’s warmongers is that the story they’re selling is ludicrous.

Ukraine's military has a hundred or so Buk anti-aircraft missiles and dozens of mobile launchers like these seen in a Kiev parade

When a journalist in a news article refers to a woman as “strident,” you know what you’re reading is a hit piece, not a dispassionate report, and that’s what the New York Times offered up to readers in today’s piece about a court appearance yesterday by Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan.

The Times reporter, Monique O. Madan, as a professional journalist, surely knows that the meaning of “strident” is, as the Oxford English Dictionary says, “loud, harsh and grating” and that it implies the slanted presentation of a point of view in an “unpleasantly forceful way.” If she somehow didn’t know this, her editors certainly do, and yet they were okay with her disparaging and loaded word choice.

Supposedly Madan was writing a news report on McMillan’s appearance in a Manhattan criminal court on a misdemeanor charge of “obstructing governmental administration.” This related to an incident in 2013 in which she allegedly advised two people being ordered to show their identification to a Transit Police officer in the Union Square subway station that they did not have to comply.

Madan referred to McMillan as a “cause célèbre” because of her earlier arrest at a March 2012 rally in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park commemorating the months-long Occupy Wall Street action that had begun six months earlier in September, 2011. McMillan, in that earlier arrest, had been charged with second degree felony assault of a police officer and, following a trial earlier this year, was convicted and sentenced to three months in jail at Rikers Island plus five year’s probation.

Not mentioned by the reporter was the reality that McMillan’s fame and notoriety is deserved (she received thousands of letters of support from around the world, and even a supportive jailhouse visit by two recently freed members of the celebrated Russian protest rock group Pussy Riot). Not only was McMillan grotesquely overcharged by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. She was also treated by both prosecutor and judge throughout the trial as though she were a dangerous menace, not even being granted bail after the verdict was rendered and she was awaiting her sentence hearing (a courtesy routinely granted to first offenders and to the powerful and well-to-do). The reporter might also have noted that, once convicted, McMillan’s incredibly short felony sentence (the charge carried a maximum term of seven years!) and her subsequent release from jail after serving just under two months’ time at Rikers, probably rank among the shortest punishments for someone convicted of “felony assault” of a cop in the history of US jurisprudence.

Photo of Cecily McMillan showing the bruises and abrasions on her right breast caused by an officer's grabbing her from behind

In an exclusive intervew on the Progressive Radio Network’s “This Can’t Be Happening!” program, Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan, just released after two months of a three-month sentence to the Women’s Prison on Riker’s Island, talks about her conviction on a trumped-up charge of felony assault of a New York Police Officer.

A master’s degree student at New York’s New School, McMillan explains how the arresting officer she was convicted of felony assault for elbowing in the eye had actually grabbed her breast from behind, causing significant bruising, and then threw her to the ground, where she was further injured.

Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan after being released from Rikers' Island jail. Her puny three-month sentence and her early release after 2 months are proof that the charge of felony assault of a NYPD cop was trumped up DA Cyrus Vance Jr.
 

McMillan, who refused on principle a plea bargain offered by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. that would have left her with a felony conviction but perhaps no jail time, insisted on a full trial. She tells host Dave Lindorff how she was then barred by a pro-prosecution judge from presenting evidence to the jury about the arresting cop’s history of brutality and corruption.

Germany, after all, has a powerful economy — one that, driven as it is by a strong manufacturing sector and a solid trade surplus, including with the US, in many ways is much stronger than the US economy. Germany has no need to worry about any risk of US trade sanctions, the way most countries …

Continue reading “Station Chief Ousted as CIA Spies Found in German Parliament and Spy Agency”

The vote by the US Supreme Court’s five reactionary Catholic male members in the Hobby Lobby case, declaring that companies substantially owned by people who on religious grounds believe that contraception is a sin can not be compelled to offer coverage for it in any health plan provided to their employees raises a few important questions.

The biggest one of course, is: Why if this is a decision based upon the Constitution’s separation of church and state, would it stop at contraception?

How about a company owned by Jehovah’s Witness believers? They believe that the bible, by banning the ingestion of blood, makes any blood transfusions, or even for many believers, the storing of blood for later use, a sin. Should such employers be allowed to offer insurance plans to their worker that don’t cover blood transfusions, or perhaps that even deny coverage for operations that require blood transfusions — for example dialysis, heart surgery, treatment for leukemia and bone cancer, or just emergency surgery following some injury that involves major blood loss?

Or what about a company owned by a Christian Scientist, who opposes any and all medical intervention. Should such a company be able to offer a plan that only covers palliative care by a hospice nurse, or visits by a religious “healer”?

We have, of course, entered that Alice-in-Wonderland world here of “faith-based conservatism.” Any kind of nonsense could be justified in such a world, and with the five right-wing Catholics now ensconced on the court supporting such a mad world view, we should be ready for it. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the sixth Catholic on the nine-member court (the other three are Jews, in an astonishing turn of events that has filled the court entirely with representatives of two faiths that historically were barred from the court or that were allowed just token representation), will have her hands full trying to make the theological argument against the troglodyte and anti-woman sentiments of her five catholic colleagues.
Five pushy, conservative old Catholic men are running the Supreme Court
 

Dave Lindorff is interviewed by Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips of Project Censored on their June 27 program on San Francisco public radio station KPFA. Lindorff tells Huff and Phillips about how TCBH! learned, from a Department of Homeland Security document obtained recently thanks to a Freedom of Information Act filing by the Partnership for Civil Justice, that ThisCantBeHappening! had been labeled a “threat” by the DHS.

As Lindorff explains, the DHS’s Office of Threat Assessment “alert” to 72 Fusion Centers, in a Nov. 18, 2011 alert its Office of Threat Assessment in Washington fired off to all 72 Fusion Centers then operating, does not say ThisCantBeHappening! and the journalists in the collective are terrorists or that we are supporting terrorism. Rather, they warn that an article we had run three days earlier, on November 15, 2011, at the height of the national crackdown by local police paramilitary thugs on Occupy actions across the country, had exposed the DHS’s central role in orchestrating and coordinating that crackdown.

The memo sent out to the Fusion Centers — organizations established by DHS after 9-11 that link up regional offices of all the three-letter spy and law enforcement agencies with local and state police in large metropolitan areas, ostensibly to combat terrorism — did not deny the assertions in our article, but goes on to express relief that the information in our exposé had, to date, remained “compartmentalized” in the alternative media. It goes on to warn that the office “wanted to make you aware of these references in case the national news media begins [sic] speculating about fusion center involvement.”

To hear this KPFA interview, just click here and slide the bar to the point 47 minutes and 27 seconds into the Project Censored program. You can also just click on the image below and go to the same point in the program.

For a full report on this story, and an actual image of the DHS “alert” memo obtained by ThisCantBeHappening!, click here.

An Oakland Police nighttime assault on Occupy Oakland became the DHS's model for similar assaults nationwide (click onimage to go to the program)

Host Dave Lindorff talks on this week’s broadcast of radio “ThisCantBeHappening” with Dr. Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, NY, about the new “Common Core” math curriculum being pushed on about 70 percent of the public schools in New York, to the consternation of most children, parents and teachers.

Burris blasts the state and the country for ramming “Common Core” down on school systems, teachers and children, instead of introducing it in a measured, coherent way, starting with the very lowest grades, suggesting that the main agenda seems to be to attack teachers.

Meanwhile Dave exposes the questionable financial and political motives of the company, Common Core Inc., that was paid $14 million by New York State’s Board of Regents to produce this NY curriculum, which Common Core Inc. is now marketing to states across the country.

The company, he notes, has both a convicted felon and a scandal-tainted former charter school company executive on its board of trustees as well as an executive director who also serves as advisor to an organization dedicated to opposing the very common core standards her company’s curriculum claims to be aligned with.

New York principal Carol Burris attacks states' rush to impose Common Core curriculum on schools and students (click on image to hear a podcast of the program)

The rat, among mammals, is one of the most successful animals on the planet. Cunning, ruthless, competitive and above all adaptable — it is able to change its habits quickly as needed to accommodate the situation it finds itself in.

When it comes to foreign policy, the US government is swarming with rats.

Just look at the situation in Iraq. The US invaded the country in 2003, claiming it was a rogue nation that had, or was trying to develop, “weapons of mass destruction.” When it became clear that this was a lie, or at best, simply not true, the stated motive for the invasion was changed to “regime change,” and the goal became “bringing democracy to Iraq.”

The US and the key US corporate news organizations loved Maliki when his party won the largest block of seats in the first parliamentary election in 2006 and he became prime minister. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius crowed at the time, after the votes were in, “The most important fact about Maliki’s election is that it’s a modest declaration of independence from Iran.” Ignatius quickly went to the US ambassador at the time, Zalmay Khalilzad, for a comment, and Khalilzad, a neoconservative linked to the National Endowment for Democracy, obligingly told him, “His reputation is as someone who is independent of Iran.”

Khalilzad had worked assiduously (almost rat-like, one might say) behind the scenes to build a coalition of Kurds, Sunnis and Shia politicians opposed to the incumbent prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari (who was seen as Iran’s man), in order to back Maliki’s ascendancy.

In 2010, the US again backed Maliki, supporting him for a second term even though the initial results of the voting gave a plurality to his challenger Ayad Allawi. Using heavy-handed tactics and his control of the judiciary, Maliki essentially stole that election,. He did this with the approval of the US Embassy which, in 2010, was still, if not controlling the country, a major player.

Like rats, the US foreign policy establishment is cunning, ruthless, competitive and adaptable, and quick to dump democracy as needed when it’s no longer convenient
 

Santa Barbara, CA — What can we learn from the medieval church about biometric identification? Quite a lot it turns out, at least according to Santa Barbara city officials.

Biometrics is the science of human identification based upon an individual’s unique characteristics, which are used to classify them for authorized activities and pursuits. This technique gathers information about the appearance and mannerisms of an individual, using markers like fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition and gait to determine whether or not the individual will be permitted entry to restricted sites or become the target of surveillance.

Social classification is a function of institutional paradigms in any epoch. In the Middle Ages, the dominant social institution was the church and one of its greatest concerns was identifying those suspected of heresy, witchcraft or demonic possession. Church officials developed several ingenious methods for identifying such individuals. For example, they could examination the suspect’s body for telltale warts, moles, birthmarks and other signs of heresy, or even test them by throwing them into a pond to see whether they would float. Individuals who floated were deemed witches and promptly burned at the stake, while those who sank…well. Many an alleged heretic and witch met their fate at the stake for failing such church biometric standards.

Since at least the 18th century, the dominant social institution involved in such “scientific” stigmatization of individuals based on physical characteristics or behaviors has been the state, and one of its biggest concerns has been the identification of those considered to be predisposed to criminal behavior.

Nineteenth century biometric techniques included the “science” of phrenology, a method of cranial measurement that was believed to map the human head for signs of unusually concentrated brain activity as evinced by the bumps, protrusions, and other outward manifestations of potentially deviant cognitive dispositions. Though later dismissed as psuedoscience, dedicated phrenologists nevertheless played a role in the development of the idea — still widely held — of the innate criminality of certain groups based on the observable traits and mannerisms of their members.

Fast forward to present-day biometric discussions prompted by the national security state and its growing interest in the identification of terrorists — particularly domestic terrorists as defined by the Patriot Act. On that front, Santa Barbara’s city prosecutor Hilary Dozer last month made the case for a gang injunction in the Superior Court of Judge Colleen Stern. His goal is to combat the alleged public nuisance posed by Latino youth in this university city about 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

Latino protesters against proposed Santa Barbara, CA gang injunction