Author:

Thanks to Globalrevolution, it looks like the revolution may be televised afterall!

While you’re down there at the bottom of our page, slide over to the right side, and check out our new T-shirt, which you can order. Watch the reactions you get as people read the logo “This Can’t Be Happening!” and our newest motto: “a major distabilizing influence.”

Just $18, shipping included, or free for a donation of $50 or more to support ThisCantBeHappening!

Click on this image for the video

This appalling video shows what the Bureau of Land Management is really doing in its euphemistically-named “round-ups” of America’s wild horses.

As was reported in ThisCantBeHappening! earlier, the contractors hired by BLM to run horses off of public lands, so that those so-called “dual use” lands can be taken over by mining, timber or agribusiness-owned cattle interests, are not only destroying a part of the heritage of the American West, but are doing it with a cruelty that is both astonishing to behold, and also that is being hidden as much as possible from the public.

Laura Leigh, founder of the organization Wild Horse Education, who has been fighting to protect the wild horses, notes that contrary to the claims of the BLM, which has the responsibility for managing some 260 million acres of federal lands, federal law does not “force” the agency to “cull” these horses. Rather they are required to “manage” them. But through a duplicitous process reminiscent of how the “Indian problem” was “solved” during the 19th century, the agency has been shrinking the horses’ range areas, and then declaring them to be over-crowded, and then coming in and driving them out of their remaining land, often running the terrified animals until their hoves literally fall off. Many of the “round-ups,” as Leigh has written, are deliberately done during the foaling season, leading to many deaths among the young horses.

(Third in a series of Rediscovering America)
 
“How are you?” a perky, young female clerk asked me as I walked through the front door of the odds and ends shop in Upper Dublin, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia.

I was taken aback by her forthright question. I hadn’t been back to the US for a dozen years and had just arrived the night before from Denmark, where one is not ordinarily asked such an intimate question by strangers. I had come to visit my friend Dave and partake in a reunion of the 1970s alternative weekly, the Los Angeles Vanguard, and the new online newspaper, This Cant Be Happening!.

“Not so well; kinda sad,” I ventured timidly.

The questioner’s jaw dropped. The three women customers stopped talking and looked at me inquisitively.

“Why’s that?” asked the clerk.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked incredulously.

The clerk nodded her head. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, I’m sad about this country killing so many people in the world through their wars of aggression.”

The three customers immediately rushed out the door, one waving her gloved hand to the clerk while averting her eyes from my perplexed face.
Old Glory is everywhere in today's America

Hvalsoe, Denmark–It was with joy that I watched television coverage of election day, September 15. According to all the nine political parties running, and the mass media, there were no wars in the world and Denmark no longer was involved in three wars—Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya–alongside the USA.

In fact, all through the three-week long election campaign, none of the parties spoke of war, or of that most fundamental of moral questions a society must ask: do we kill other people who do not attack us?

There were eight political parties in the 179-member parliament before election day. The right-wing coalition of liberals (Venstre, middle-to-large farmers’ traditional party) and conservatives (Konservativ, businessmen’s traditional party) held power for a decade but to achieve a parliamentary majority had been compelled to rely on the far right, racist People’s Party (DF).

These eight parties form two blocs: red (center left) and blue (center right).Two in the red bloc declare themselves to be socialist: The People’s Socialists (SF) and the Red Green Alliance (Enhedslisten/Unity List or EL). Another is the traditional majority party, Social Democrats (SD). The fourth “red” party, which shifts between blocs, is the Radical Liberals (Radical Venstre/RV, small business employers and self-employed).

In this election, significant shifts in the numbers of parliamentary factions occurred. EL went from 2.2% of the vote to 6.7% for a gain of eight MPs, 12 in all. The Conservatives lost ten of their 18 (from 10.4% to 4.9%), with most of those votes going to the RV (from 5.1% to 9.5%), which went from nine to 17 MPs, and the laissez faire, libertarian capitalist party, Liberal Alliance, which went from five to nine MPs (and from 2.8% to 5% of the vote).

The red bloc now has 89 MPs and the blue 86. Semi-autonomous Greenland and the Faroe Islands each have two MPs in the Danish parliament. These four are usually divided between the two blocs. So the red bloc, despite lacking one vote for a majority, can form a government and rule only if the Red Green Alliance does not oppose its three new partners over principled anti-war morality or pro-socialist economic policies, which is not likely to happen. In the past ten years, several billion dollars has been used for war and new billions are slated to buy more killing machines. Other billions have been used to bail out the banks here, just as in the US. EL’s new partners have supported these policies and continue to do so.

Since its founding, in 1989, EL has opposed aggressive wars. But in this election, it decided to join the red bloc and negotiate with it, if victorious, for a state budget based on a capitalist economy.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, 44-year-old leader of the Social Democrats, will become Denmark's first female prime minister

Become a “major destabilizing influence” in your neighborhood, school or workplace, and spread the word, and the web address, of our alternative online newspaper.

Check out the shirt and the ordering information by scrolling down the right side of this home page.

These all-cotton shirts are bright red with black lettering, and cost $18 including shipping (except overseas). Get one free with a $50 donation to the paper. Be sure to specify a size: S, M, L or XL

Newfane, VT — A classic David vs. Goliath battle is taking shape in the courtroom and in the streets and fields of Vermont as Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana tries to overturn Vermont law in the federal courts.

The state has thoughtfully and repeatedly voted no to the extension of Entergy’s Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor’s license, which is due to expire on March 21, 2012. Results of Town Meeting votes, a 26-4 vote by the Vermont Senate, and a pivotal gubernatorial race all have shown that the state does not see Vermont Yankee as a reliable or economical partner for its energy future. Forty years’ accumulation of radioactive waste on the banks of the Connecticut River is enough.

Entergy was stunned when their corps of high-priced lobbyists failed to prevail at the statehouse, but they are counting on their high-powered legal team to carry the day for them in the favorable atmosphere of the federal court system–packed as it is these days with judges named by Reagan and two Bushes. And even though the Supreme Court claims to support the concept of states’ rights, it is not clear that that bias will over-ride their love for corporate personhood/rights. Meanwhile, their distaste for so many things that Vermont, (as personified by its socialist Senator Bernie Sanders), stands for and represents are likely to override any professed passion for states’ rights, which tend to coincide with right-wing issues. So although the state government has taken all appropriate action (and continues to do so in the courts), it ultimately may have to be the power of the citizens who will have to shut down this leaky, decrepit reactor as scheduled.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu made clear on NPR what it is that citizens need to do, when he explained that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project was abandoned because of “concerted, growing, local opposition”.

Vermonters are not taking a wait-and-see approach. With their neighbors from New Hampshire and Massachusetts, they are organizing a movement. They promise to close down the plant by direct action if it continues to operate past March 21, 2012. Activists are discovering that support for direct citizen action is growing throughout the region. From senior citizens to harried single moms, people are volunteering and vowing to get arrested or whatever else it will take to close down the reactor. Non-violent civil disobedience training sessions are being conducted throughout the region and organizers are working in a variety of ways to build a region-wide movement.
The Vermont Yankee plant, one of America's oldest, is a decrepit, leaking relic, but its owner wants to keep it running anyhow

 
Second in a series: “Rediscovering America”
 

Leading black-skinned representatives of the “hegemon”, as Cynthia McKinney calls President Barak Obama and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, could hardly expect to win any votes from the standing-room-only crowd at her anti-war tour last night at Calvary Church in Philadelphia.

Speaking before nearly 300 people–two-thirds of them black, the remainder white and hispanic–in her T-shirt proclaiming that “war kills”, the former U.S. congresswoman said:

“We need someone in the White House who thinks like us and not just one who looks like us. We have to act like we’re free if we want to be free. We have to liberate ourselves from war-mongering political parties.”

Philadelphia was one of the last cities on McKinney’s International Action Center-sponsored “Report from Libya: Impact of U.S. war in Africa” tour, which hit 21-plus cities. The Philadelphia meeting was co-sponsored by several community groups and left-wing political parties, including the Green Par,ty which ran Mckinney as its candidate during the last presidential campaign.

In addition to McKinney, representatives of the community and Sara Flounders, co-director of the IAC, spoke. Pam Africa of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal said, “This meeting is about action to stop the wars over there and here at home. And Amy Goodman [Democracy Now anchor] needs to stop ignoring the word brought to us by Cynthia McKinney.” A brust of applause reenforced this viewpoint.

A representative of an anti-police brutality group encouraged people to vote for Diop Olugbala for mayor as the only anti-imperialist running against the pro-corporate Mayor Michael Nutter.

McKinney led a delegation to Libya last May-June in opposition to the US-NATO assault on that country, which began in March and destroyed much of Tripoli and other cities that were controlled by the government of Muamar Gadsafy. She witnessed some of the bombing and its destruction of life and of the country’s infrastructure.

“I speak with a heavy heart, knowing that places I visited no longer exist. Migrant workers camped out in tents close to ‘The Door to Africa’ as Gaddafi’s residence, Bab al-Azizia, is known. They are gone now, many split into pieces; only rubble remains,” said McKinney.
Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on Libyan state TV displaying anti-personnel weapons dropped by NATO forces..

Journalists from ThisCantBeHappening! took on the Philadelphia Inquirer. the nation’s third-oldest surviving daily, this morning, conducting a leafletting “happening” in front of the paper’s soon-to-be-sold headquarters building on Broad Street.

A one-page flyer, written in Old English and featuring a replica of the masthead of Benjamin Franklin’s original one-page broadsheet, the Pennsylvania Gazette, accused the oft re-sold and steadily downsized and gutted Inquirer of abandoning its Fourth Estate role in favor of entertainment and profits.

Inquirer editors, reporters and other workers entering and leaving the building for the most part willingly accepted the fliers, sometimes reading them on the spot, and sometimes carrying them off to read later. A few stopped to talk with the TCBH! leafleters, who included one activist from the Philadelphia Independent Media Center.
TCBH 'Red Squad' garbed in their new TCBH! T-shirts, challenges the Philly Inquirer: Ron Ridenour, John Grant and Dave Lindorff (from left), (photo by Rich Gardner)

One man, asked if he was an Inquirer worker, laughed wryly, saying, “I am until November 18.” He explained that after working at the paper for nearly three decades, he had received notice two weeks ago that he was being sacked. “28 years,” he said, shaking his head. Reading the short broadsheet, which was published on antique-looking fake parchment, and which listed some of the news stories and issues that the Inquirer has consistently ignored, blacked-out or grossly misreported, he said, “It’s true. Every time this paper has changed hands things have gotten worse.”

Others agreed.

Workers passing by on the way to jobs in Center City or at the neighboring Board of Education building just up the street from the Inquirer were nearly unanimous in agreeing that the Inquirer–and other local media — were doing a poor job of informing the public about many important issues. Only a handful of people refused to accept a copy of the flyer, shown below:

(This is the first of a series of impressions of Ron’s return to the Belly of the Beast)
 

“We’re making a killing” read signs held in front of the permanent war profiteer, Lockheed-Martin, overlooking the King of Prussia Mall.

Consumerism and War Making go hand-in-hand at this US bloody flag-infested Philadelphia suburban mall. People casually shop beside the world’s number one weapons corporation.

Sixty-six years ago, on August 6, 1945, the United States government dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and murdered 150,000 human beings in an instant. An equal number have since been murdered by after affects of this Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). Three days later it was Nagasaki’s time.

Since the Second World War, the US has invaded 66 countries, under various pretexts, a total of 160 times (See Permanent War) –murdering, handicapping and torturing millions.

Today, the Lockheed Martin Valley Forge facility in Philadelphia–built in the very locale revered for that great battle for freedom, liberation and sovereignty which birthed this Land of Opportunities–produces WMD. It is part of the government-private industry nexus that has killed a million or so in Iraq and Afghanistan–nations where there is a lot of oil and crucial transportation routes–all so that the wealthy get richer, and then even more rich as they don’t have to pay taxes in the good ole’ US of A.

There they stood: 30 human beings. A young couple with babe-in-arms stood out among the mostly gray folks. They bore signs of the usual kind, hoping some would heed their cry for species survival. They recalled 66 years ago when “people ran to the rivers to escape, and soon the rivers became…a stream of drifting dead bodies…” and “birds ignited in air.”

As they read their cry for peace in collective voice, a dozen uniformed armed men stood by their police and security cars ready to protect American Private Property.
Protesters ran crime scene tape across the Lockheed Martin entrance before being busted (photos by Brandywine Peace Community)

Fifty-eight years ago, on July 26, 1953, 160 Cuban rebels attacked Moncada Barracks near Santiago de Cuba. Had the rebels been able to take the fort with 1,000 troops—a good possibility—it would have started a revolution that might well have defeated the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista within a short time.

The main cause for failure was a missing vehicle with their heavy weaponry. Nevertheless they were able to cause three times the numbers of casualties that they suffered. Nearly one-half of the rebels were killed but most of them died under or following torture.

After being held for 76 days in isolation without access to reading material, Fidel Castro, the 26-year old leader, came into a courtroom filled with 100 soldiers. He gave a rousing defense of the need for revolution to topple the dictator and change the corrupt and brutal socio-economic system so that all could be fed, obtain education and health care, so that farmers could own land and all have a voice.
In his five-hour speech, Fidel said, “The right of rebellion against tyranny, Honorable Judges, has been recognized from the most ancient times to the present day by men of all creeds, ideas and doctrines.”
Instead of asking for acquittal, he demanded to be with his brother and sister rebels in prison.

“Condemn me, it does not matter, history will absolve me!”

Fidel Castro considers ethics and morality to be essential for revolutions. In My Life: Fidel Castro, the 2006 interview book with Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel speaks of these highest principles on numerous occasions. He asserts that “especially ethics” is what he learned most from the national liberation hero, José Martí.
Jose Marti: Cuban independence hero and inspiration for Castro and Che