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Now that Edward Snowden is safely away out of the clutches of the US police state, at least for now, let’s take a moment to contemplate how this one brave man’s principled confrontation with the Orwellian US government has damaged our national security state.

Firstly, there are the four computers loaded with National Security Agency secrets, which have already exposed the details of how our government is monitoring our entire national communications grid, prying into the details of the telephonic and internet activity of every American citizen. We’ve only begun to learn about the ugly totalitarian activities of our government, and now that Snowden is safe from arrest, we will no doubt learn much more.

Second, the US has been humiliated by both China and Russia, which have demonstrated dramatically that they cannot be intimidated by the world’s dominant superpower, which stands revealed as less super and less powerful than it has been claiming. China, according to local experts on Hong Kong/China relations like Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Willie Lam, intervened in the legal process to tell Hong Kong authorities not to honor the US government’s arrest warrant on espionage and theft of official secrets charges, and to allow him to leave the territory. Russia, meanwhile, whose President Vladimir Putin had already volunteered to grant Snowden amnesty, provided the world’s most celebrated whistleblower a seat on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, where he just landed safely today.

The US was left to bluster impotently. The government warned that Hong Kong’s unwillingness to arrest and hold Snowden in response to the US indictment and extradition request was a sign that the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, which supposedly has autonomy from Beijing, is actually not so autonomous if it cannot adhere to an extradition treaty with the US (one that was signed in 1996 while the city was still a British colony). As an unidentified “senior official” of the Obama administration was reported saying to the Washington Post, “If Hong Kong doesn’t act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong’s commitment to the rule of law.”

That line must be evoking gales of laughter around the world. It could also be a laugh line for local comics here in the US, where the rule of law died years ago. It died with the illegal invasion of Iraq, the illegal secret rendition, detainment and torture of hundreds of suspects in the Bush/Obama “War” on Terror, the continued operation of the internationally illegal Guantanamo Bay detention and torture center, the three-year torture and detainment without trial of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning, the extra-legal killing of Americans by drone-launched missile attacks, and the NSA spying on all Americans, begun as early as 2007.
Vans from the presidential office of Vladimir Putin waiting at Moscow airport for Edward Snowden's arrival from Hong Kong

We are proud to announce that ThisCantBeHappening!, on the eve of its anniversary for completing three years of publication, that we have passed the 3.5 million mark of readers visiting this news site. That’s a 50% increase over last year, and a sign that we are really being valued for what we are doing. It’s also just a small fraction of the people who are getting our news reports, analysis and commentary, since most of our articles are picked up and run by sites like Counterpunch, Common Dreams, OpEd News, Smirking Chimp, NationofChange.org, etc. We are also linked to by many sites, from Rense.com to Antiwar.com to DissidentVoice. Add ’em all up and we’re probably reaching half a million readers a month.

Send us $5, or make a $50 donation and get this great all-cotton T-shirt as a gift!
 
 

The reason: where else can you find a report about how the FBI Houston Office had information about a plot by an “identified” organization that planned to use photo surveillence to tag the leaders of Occupy Houston, and then use “suppressed sniper fire” to execute them, but then did nothing about it? Where else can you learn that the Obama White House was notified by Turkish forensics experts that American 19-year-old peace activist Furkan Dogan had been murdered at point blank range by Israeli commandos in their shipboard raid of a Gaza Peace flotilla, but hid that report from the American public? Where else can you learn that the federal government paid journalists in Miami to trash five Cuban’s on trial for espionage so as to help win a conviction? Where else can you get the kind of inside reporting on the Occupy Wall Street action that we had from Manhattan TCBH! journalist Chuck Young?

Okay so we know you appreciate the uniqueness of what we are doing, but what we don’t understand is why ya’ll don’t fork over a little money to help us do better. There is a core of people who regularly pony up anywhere from $5 to $50 to support us, but it’s a small group. We appreciate what they do, but our model was to have every reader send in $5 per year. That is a tiny contribution. About what you spend on three cups of coffee (one fancy coffee at Starbucks!) or half a movie. It can be made by sending cash, or a check made out to Dave Lindorff/TCBH at POB 846, Ambler, PA 19002, or by clicking on the Paypal button at the top of this page.

If even half of the roughly 100,000 people who are regular readers of this site each give that $5 annual donation, we in the TCBH! Collective would all be able to devote full time to this endeavor of bringing you the news that even the rest of the alternative media ignore.

So to those of you who are not supporting us, but who keep reading our work, why aren’t you sending us that little but important donation?

Please make this model of journalism a success! At a time that a fascist cult of secrecy and police-state spying threatens to overwhelm our democracy, we need fearless journalism, and that is what ThisCantBeHappening! is offering.

For all our sakes, support us!

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The TCBH! Collective

This week, the government began their assault against private Bradley Manning. Even though he has already plead guilty to misusing classified documents and faces twenty years in prison, prosecutors want him branded as having aided the enemy, with a life sentence to go along.

The government is incensed that this lowly private would take his oath to protect and preserve the Constitution seriously enough to expose illegal and unconstitutional acts by our government. They are furious that Manning’s leaks gave the world video proof of some of the American military’s war crimes. They want vengeance because the callous, supercilious, erroneous and ignorant acts by government officials in dealing with international affairs have been revealed to all through the leaked cables. They are embarrassed that they have been exposed as the lying liars that the public generally assumes them to be. They are mortified that some citizen or news organization will draw peoples’ attention to the fact that the government is over-classifying documents at conspiratorial levels.

So, reminiscent of the best of Stalin or Kafka, they have put Bradley Manning “on trial” for his crimes. They will rely on secret evidence to make their case. They will not give Manning’s defense full access to this evidence. And they will prevent him from being able to shine the spotlight on what should really be on trial here: the illegal and immoral actions of the United States government and military. Even Fulgencio Batista, the military dictator of Cuba, allowed Fidel Castro to speak in his own defense without censoring him while he was being tried for an armed assault on a Cuban military installation. Of course, Batista would soon be driven from power by Castro, and the oligarchy that runs America doesn’t want to make the same mistake. So they will stack the deck against Manning, bring the media on board with tantalizing but vague claims of national security threats and then concoct some sort of narrative that casts the Private as a troubled, unstable soul, or perhaps a misguided and vindictive one that will explain away the why of the crime and the erase the significance of anything unearthed in the leaked documents.

Let’s take a moment to consider some of the conduct of our most recent leaders and the outcomes of that conduct. Lyndon Johnson lied about a naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to initiate combat in Vietnam. Nixon lied to the American people about a secret plan to end the war while he was actually using intermediaries to delay peace talks to help his election chances. More than one million Vietnamese and 58,209 Americans perished in that senseless war. America’s prestige was exposed as a fraud and we are still exacting a price from homeless veterans, Agent Orange survivors and PTSD victims, not to mention the decades it has taken in restoration efforts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Pvt. Bradley Manning, a hero betrayed by his own commander in chief

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

I was trying to travel to that city.
Now I think I’ll just stay here
Where I can’t even smell a car.
I think I’ll think twice before I go anywhere.

I was once an anarchist.
I didn’t want to kill
Or bomb anyone
Which is why I was an anarchist!
But I was really angry.
I saw red because my government
Wanted to send me to kill in Vietnam.
I refused to be manipulated
By people I didn’t respect.

And I’m still red-angry
At a government
That can lock down a city.
(And it’s not even my city!)

I want to unlock this city of my red anger.

This city is having a bad dream.
This city is having a bad day.
Helicopters, armored police,
Going house to house,
Door to door.
Creeps me out.

Lindorff on Iran, Korea and the US:

On Iran: “The Iranians have enough money to buy a bomb if they wanted one, on the black market, so I think all of this has been hugely overblown in US propaganda, and Israeli propaganda.”

“If Iran got the bomb, I don’t think they’d use it. I think they’re not crazy. Israel has about 200 nuclear bombs and very high quality delivery systems and Iran would be toast if they used it and they know that. So what you’d actually have if Iran had the bomb would be a similar situation — only probably more stable — than the one you have in India and Pakistan, two countries that really hate each other having nuclear countries, with the difference being that those two countries have borders that are flash points. There are no borders that are flash points between Iran and Israel. So actually I think if Iran had the bomb it would make Israeli diplomacy more difficult, but it might in the end have a salutory effect on the two having to reach a kind of modus vivendi.”

On Korea: “You have the equivalent of a medieval absolute monarchy and so what’s going on in Korea is palace politics, and … I think the US would be wise to let what is happening in that close-to-failed state play out without irritating it to the point of a war.”

On the US: “I would argue that when it comes to adhering to international norms, that probably the biggest outlier state right now is the United States itself. The US has assumed for itself the authority to do whatever it wants regardless of international norms. And I would look at the invasion of Iraq, the threatened war against Iran–which does not pose an imminent threat to the US certainly, and probably to anybody–and the use of a place like Guantanamo that defies all international norms, and the use of drone attacks in any country we want to attack. These are all the actions of what would qualify as a rogue state.”

Lindorff on RT-TV's 'Cross-Talk' Program with the Hudson Institute’s Richard Weitz and Zachary Keck, editor of ‘Diplomat’ magazine (click on image to play program on YouTube)

Hold everything!

I mean it. Stop talking about cutting school budgets, Social Security benefits, Medicare, Veteran’s pensions. Stop cutting subsidies to transit systems, to foreign aid. Stop cutting unemployment benefits. Stop it all. There can not be any justification for budget cutting while wealthy criminals, corrupt politicians and business executives are hiding what reportedly totals between $29 trillion and $32 trillion in offshore tax havens.

A massive data dump by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), working in conjunction with dozens of news organizations around the globe, has exposed the secret files of over 120,000 dummy offshore companies that have been used for years to hide the wealth — much of it ill-gotten, all of it tax-dodged — of the world’s rich and mega-rich.

Before we go further, let’s think about those numbers, which are really mind-boggling.

The US annual federal budget for 2012 was $3.7 trillion. The total US economy, largest in the world by far, was $15.8 trillion in 2012. That federal budget deficit that we hear so much about, which is growing by $1 trillion a year, totals about $16 trillion.

Now by comparison, the Philadelphia school system — fifth-largest in the country — is in crisis, with 27 schools being closed down because of a budget shortfall of $304 million. That shortfall (the direct result of tax breaks given to wealthy corporations in the city), is approximately one ten-millionth of a percent of the amount of money criminal politicians and business leaders — many and probably the vast majority of them, Americans — are reportedly squirreling away abroad in hidden accounts each year!

The British Virgin Islands: Where the super rich are hiding our money

in time no more will be I’ll see and quiet mind see out as always back to push back assume preserve status quo of instances of loss and scribbled lists little births and karmic asides I’m about to scream catch-phrases silver gold brass and the wall paper is peeling and the toilet is Swedish sorry about the mess never home we’re friends now she hates me the water doesn’t taste good and the trees are crying again go see what they want if they come again let me know we have to put a stop to all this bad music all of us are leaving are you coming or are we just waiting for a sign the milk is sour the cat thin what’s that? Who said? Look what I bought what did you want? What kind of color is peach? Laugh laugh I hate when we can’t tell if he’s angry the way they look it takes my breath away but I’ll be there at 6:00 I said there I said it I thought you were I made an offer I said they wouldn’t but you knew better didn’t we North Korean missiles pointing and I thought everything was Billy Boy Billy Boy what do you want from me but here’s a thought change your name get a splinter etcetera etcetera
 

— Gary Lindorff

(Photo by Gary Lindorff)

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!)

Have you even noticed that you don’t see articles from ThisCantBeHappening! running on the Truthout site?

There’s a reason for this. Truthout, over a year ago, decided to ban this publication from its pages.

They took this ridiculous and incredibly lacking-in-alternative-media-solidarity step not because our work is flawed. Not because we had made some embarrassing mistake. Not even because we demanded payment for their use of our work.

No. They banned us because I had the temerity to question their news judgement when they ignored some breaking stories that we wrote and published.
  

ThisCantBeHappening!, for news you can’t find at Truthout!