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This interview of TCBH! founder and collective member Dave Lindorff was published in the Tehran Times on Jan. 9, 2013
 
 
Q: In one of your recent articles, you criticized Washington for imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran that deprive millions of Iranian patients of medicines. How does the U.S. government really justify these sanctions? What’s the general attitude of the American public toward the sanctions?
 
A: The U.S. does not justify this kind of thing. It simply doesn’t acknowledge it. The admission by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that U.S. sanctions caused the untimely deaths of some 500,000 children in Iraq was an exception, caused by her being asked the question by a reporter on a live program (mostly the US media just ignore these kinds of horror stories). As for the American people, they mostly don’t know what is happening in their name, and for many who learn of this, while perhaps it upsets them a little, it is seen as “necessary” because Iran is portrayed rather absurdly as a “dangerous” enemy of the U.S.

Israel, which is threating to bomb Iran because it might be working on a nuclear bomb, has made hundreds of bombs at this Dimona plutonium-producing reactor plant. What really frightens Israel is not Iran attacking, but Israel losing its nuclear terror monopoly in the Middle East. Unlike Iran, Israel has never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, does not allow nuclear inspectors, and doesn’t even admit it has nuclear weapons.

The TCBH! Crew on Radio Free Kansas

Note: This show starts off with some music and news before the actual free-ranging interview with TCBH! members John Grant, Dave Lindorff, Lori Spencer, Linn Washington, Jr. and Charles M. Young.

TCBH! Collective (Linn, Dave, Lori, Chuck and John)

Prairie radical Mike Caddell, founder/editor of the Fightin' Cock Flyer and host of Radio Free Kansas

The Democrats seem to have forgotten that they already forged a compromise agreement, and that the fiscal cliff is the result of already giving in repeatedly to Republican demands that have unnecessarily slowed our economic recovery. During the 2011 negotiations, the Republicans knew that a bird in hand is worth more than any number in …

Continue reading “Feigning Panic at the Cliff's Edge”

… [Dr. Ann Kristin] Neuhaus wishes that she’d skipped the hearing.
 

“[Assistant Kansas Attorney General] Maxwell lied to me,” she says. “That’s how he got the records. And that’s how the charges were filed. And that’s how the trial happened. And that’s how Dr. Tiller got killed. That whole sequence of events was predicated on criminal behavior on the part of the [AG’s] office. Perjury is criminal. A lawyer is not allowed to lie at any time. He said to me, ‘I’m not going to take your records.’ When I walk in the door, he says, ‘I’m taking your records.’ And what choice do I have? I can take my box and try to run. Or I can go to jail. And if I go to jail, they still have my records. They literally cornered me and they avoided due process, and nobody’s done a fucking thing about it.”
 

— Justin Kendall
The state of Kansas is still chasing one of the last links to Dr. Tiller
The Pitch, 29 Nov. 2011

UPDATE: At the hearing, Judge Theis ruled that Neuhaus did not have to pay the extortionate court costs. He reached that decision after the attorney for the Board of Healing Arts conceded that the board had never levied such a penalty in the past and had never required posting of the amount in advance of an appeal of its decisions in the past, and after the judge himself said he had never in his decades on the bench seen such a thing done. However, Neuhaus was required to sign a promise to pay the $93,000 in full if she loses the appeal — a draconian action that was the same as voluntarily signing herself and her family into bankruptcy. Anyone who wants to stand in support of Dr. Neuhause, Mike Caddell and their principled fight against the Kansas witch hunters, should send a check to the address at the end of this article. — Dave Lindorff, TCHB!
 

Thursday, 15 Nov. 2012, former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline will be appearing before the Kansas Supreme Court in Topeka, to make arguments for keeping his state law license. Pro-choice organizations have largely remained silent as the large “pro-life” forces howl against the judges. Five judges of the highest court in Kansas have recused themselves from hearing the proceeding.

Friday, 16 Nov., 2012, attorneys for Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus will appear at the Shawnee County District Court before Hon. Franklin Theis to argue that due process for the doctor be given and an onerous $93,000 cash bond be waived. The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts having stripped her of the state license to practice medicine, now demands payment of the fee, in full, before the judge hears her defense attorneys. Four of the nine practicing physicians on the board recused themselves from taking her medical license, this fact that has not been reported in the Kansas news.

More than twenty years ago I obtained a secret recording from an anonymous source of a meeting at a Johnson County restaurant, where known members of the “pro-life” movement debated the Army of God instructions to kidnap abortion providers and cut off their thumbs.

Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus, targeted by anti-abortion zealots for helping to keep abortion safe and available in Kansas

Tuesday’s Presidential debate spoke volumes about the sorry state of politics today. Granted, both contenders gave a good show: Obama was back on his game and Romney did his best to sound like Ronald Reagan. The pundits have been given a lovely hopper of fodder to hold them for a week or so. It has been agreed that Americans only care for a spectacle, so this debate will be analyzed and judged the same way any theatrical event gets reviewed by the critics.

Unfortunately, between some of the things that the candidates said and the vast number of issues that they carefully avoided, with the help of a two-party run Debates Commission, the future doesn’t look too bright in the seeing-things-how-they-really-are department.

The two men tripped over each other praising domestic oil and gas extraction, arguing over who is the better friend to fossil fuel energy. Obama gushed excitedly about the 100 years’ worth of natural gas energy that we are starting to extract and consume. He even dragged up that old chestnut, “clean coal,” pointing out its “rightful” place in his energy policies. This is the same President who has been talking about the threat of climate change and our need to cut carbon emissions. But at this point in the campaign, it must be that the message isn’t selling well with potential voters, so any acknowledgement of the problem was jettisoned for the debate performance; better to not remind voters about such a downer issue. Until climate change can be monetized and traded for profit, it’s not going to have much appeal for the voting public.

While Obama and Romney held their carefully staged 'debate', the whole Stein/Honkala Green Party presidential ticket was busted outside for trying to crash the two-party show

The internet is full of videos exposing police officers’ use of excessive physical force when trying to apprehend or detain “potential criminals”. Every year in fact there seems to be an increase in YouTube video uploads, video views, and news stories depicting this type of injustice.

Much of this increase is due to the rising number of security cameras, which allow us to witness events that otherwise may have never been publicized at all, and to the widespread use of cellphones, which almost all have video capability.

All these videocams mean police now face added transparency and accountability (where before we only had “internal” accountability… which typically has meant a slap on the wrist).

As it so happens, I work with a security camera company called 2MCCTV, so I thought it fitting to increase awareness of police brutality by showcasing videos that happened to be captured from security cameras (not from our own cameras from around the country). There would be too many to choose from if we included other countries –especially were I to include China, South Africa, Brazil, etc., as they house some of the most brutal police forces on the planet. The secondary reason for limiting this to American footage is because I think many people mistakenly still believe that the US is the one place where police brutality is not an issue, or at least not prevalent.

We all saw the brutality of NY Police against Occupy protesters, but police brutality is an everyday affair in the US

Okay everyone. Now’s your chance. We know there are thousands of you out there who are reading this site and the articles we have been writing. But most of you haven’t contributed a dime to support us.

We are asking that every one of you who value what we are doing for nothing here make a one-time donation of at least $5.00 using our Paypal button (Click HERE or scroll down on the right side of the home page, or click the “Support us” button above), or by sending a check made out to Dave Lindorff/TCBH, POB 846, Ambler, PA 19002). If 10,000 of you will just do that little thing, we will be able to devote the time to making this site not just great by momentous.

Real journalism, as opposed to writing blogs and opinion pieces, takes time and effort and even money for travel. We want to do that real journalism, and have even managed to do some, but we can only do so much working on our own dime.

For the cost of a couple of foregone cups of coffee (or two issues of the New York Times!), you can help us really make a difference in breaking through the corporate media propaganda.

Will you do it, or just make excuses and leave it to somebody else?

Thanks in advance for your support! (And don’t forget, you can also help us by always clicking on the “send to a friend” button every time you read one of our pieces that you find important, so more people will learn about us.)

Wichita — One of four Wichita museums is facing a $100,000 cutback in funding which may force its closure.  It is called “Cowtown,” a tribute to the glory days of white settler expansion and of cattle.  A distant cry is heard from the editorial board of the city’s single daily newspaper, the Wichita Eagle, which ran an opinion piece by Peter Brownlee, titled: “Why pick on Cowtown?”

But let’s consider this particular cut more closely.

The public money slashed from the museum’s budget is less than that that was paid during this election cycle as seed money by the Koch billionaires to the state Chamber of Commerce to legally buy the Kansas state government.

Those little $500 to $1000 checks forwarded by the C of C to Kansas lawmakers’ campaigns, tossed to PACs and lobbyists, and sown each year as brome seed across the tiny Topeka state house, make a better “deal.”  

Common thinking in these parts goes that if after 50 years, a museum like Cowtown cannot “make a profit” — the motivation for all human culture and history here in Kansas, and probably everywhere in the US of A — then it must close, and culture and history be damned.

(courtesy Cowtown Museum collection)

Lahore — US Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), the chair and ranking minority member respectively of the Senate Armed Services Committee, say the US must not pay $5000 per truck as demanded by Pakistan, for supplies being shipped through this country to American troops in Afghanistan. McCain went further, calling the Pakistani demand “extortion.”

He also stated, on the TV show “The Cable,” that “We can’t look at aid in that light. It’s now becoming a matter of principle”.

I love it!

Extortion, dear Sen. McCain, is defined as the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value through the abuse of one’s office or authority.

Is it the first time US would be paying for transit of NATO supplies? They have long been paying an average of about $250 a truck for transit, as a senior US official has stated in a report by David S. Cloud in the Los Angeles Times published May 19th.

So the question dear Sen. McCain, is not about principle but rather about principal. The question could have been one of principle had the US not been paying anything at all, and then one fine day, Pakistan had woken up to the idea of…what did you say…ah yes…extortion. The question here though, is simply about the amount.

More US extortion? A US Senate committee voted to withhold $1 million in aid for each year of a 33-year sentence handed down by a Pakistani court to doctor Shakil Afridi, whose fake Hepatitis-B ‘vaccination’ program helped the US locate and assassinate Osama Bin Laden, unless Pakistan overturns that conviction.

“This is not a reflection of who we are or what we stand for.”
— Jeff Gearhart, Wall-Mart general counsel, on the firm’s Mexico bribery

[Torture] “is not the norm.”
— Mike Pannek, Abu Ghraib prison warden.

“This is not who we are.”
— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the US massacre of 16 Afghan villagers.

“This is not who we are.”
— General John Allen, commander of forces in Afghanistan, on Koran burning

“This is not who we are.”
— Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on troops posing with enemy body parts

“This is not who we are.”
— Secretary of State Clinton, also on troops posing with enemy body parts

Spying by the New York Police on Muslims in Newark, NJ, which the Newark Police Chief was alerted to, is “not who we are”
— Newark Mayor Cory Booker

“I can tell you something all of you know already – that using pepper spray on peaceful protesters runs counter to our values. It does not reflect well on this university and it absolutely is not who we are.”
— UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, who ordered campus police to use force to clear peaceful student occupiers from the campus, leading to pepper spraying of students

Ripping families apart by deporting the undocumented parents of American-born children is “not who we are.”
— President Barack Obama

“This larger notion that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own — that’s not who we are.”
— President Barack Obama

“You can’t say, well, we developed trade and the economic relations first and the disregard of human rights. That’s not who we are. We are the United States of America.”
— Sasha Gong, director of the China branch of Voice of America
 

The latest PR catch phrase from business, administration, military, state and local officials after some atrocity or other is that whatever happened, it is certainly “not who we are,” a phrase appropriately initially uttered by the Vietnam War commander, Gen. William Westmoreland, with reference to the My Lai slaughter of 400 women, children and old men, all civilians, by a group of US soldiers.
American atrocities: Not who we are? Really?