This Can't Be Happening!

There is a man reporting on how bad the smog is in China.
He is saying,
“See, right there,
at the end of this street that you don’t see
is the second tallest building in China.”
I squint. . . I don’t see anything!
“In fact”, he’s saying,
“the smog is so bad,
I’m actually standing right here in front of this camera,
so you wouldn’t have seen the building anyway,
but you can’t even see me!”
This guy is good!

Let us pause to honor Charles Fury.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have protested America’s bloated, out-of-control military, and millions more are outraged that the US spends upwards of $1 trillion a year on war and preparing for war. The protests and the opposition to military spending have had little effect, as the military continues to grow in size and cost, backed by a Congress whose members are bought by the arms industry, and a ruling elite that wants its global investments protected–at taxpayer expense.

Fury, 25, while perhaps not an opponent of the US military, with one little action, managed to do more to damage the US war machine than all those protesters and war opponents put together.

Reportedly suffering an anxiety attack in the cramped torpedo room of the USS Miami, a 361-foot-long nuclear attack submarine that he and a group of fellow maintenance workers were renovating at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and wanting to get sent home early, Fury, a civilian painter and sandblaster, lit a small pile of rags on fire. His plan was to create a small conflagration that would force an early end to work that day. Instead, the fire he set spread and raged out of control for 12 hours, destroying the whole forward section of the massive vessel. Only one man, who fell through an opening on the deck breaking a couple of ribs, was injured by the 2012 fire.

The sub was destroyed as effectively as if it had taken an enemy torpedo. There was talk of repairing all the damage, but in the end, Congress has decided it is not worth the estimated $750 million needed to fix everything, and so the Miami is being scrapped.

Arsonist Charles Fury and the destroyed nuclear sub Miami, ablaze in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard

 
    One way to win the game is by making up at least part of the rules, something the rich do.
                    -From “Winning the Game” by Rubem Fonseca
 
 
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — The sun was going down and the wide boulevard Rua Rio Branco was jam-full of screaming humanity backed up with banging drums and all sorts of waving signs and banners. It was a large unruly demonstration on the 1st of April recognizing the 50 year anniversary of the 1964 coup that led to over 20 years of brutal military rule in Brazil. The anniversary has been discussed in newspapers and in various forums in Rio leading up to this date.

Remembering the coup has become all wrapped up with the controversy over urban renewal efforts and costly construction projects associated with the June World Cup matches and the 2016 Olympics. Many in Brazil would prefer resources be used to improve education, medical care, transportation and other infrastructure areas. It’s an eternal political struggle, especially in a place like Brazil, between the top and the bottom of society.

A writer colleague and I are in Rio focusing on this historical moment and what it might mean for the future of Brazil. The military government of the coup years featured all the usual incidents of beatings, tortures, disappearances and murders. The only thing that can be said of the Brazilian dictatorial period is that it was not as severe or as rotten as the one in neighboring Argentina, where they famously cleansed themselves of left-leaning individuals by kicking their naked, dead bodies like garbage out of planes over the Atlantic.

The usual image of Rio de Janeiro, the famous Copacabana Beach

In the case of the Brazilian military dictatorship, after 20 years of governing it decided in the 1980s that it was tired of running things from out front and was ready to install a democratic government. Naturally, before it did that it self-established all sorts of amnesty programs for its generals and the torturers and killers who did their bidding. Those amnesties are now controversial, and young people have taken up painting signs on walls announcing that a torturer lives here. Sort of like identifying child molesters in US communities.

Cinelandia Plaza is the site of a famous cinema theater known as The Odean, which on April 1st was running a series of Brazilian films focused on the culture’s African roots. The Plaza is surrounded by open-air restaurants and impressive buildings. When the moving mass of pissed-off humanity reached the Plaza, darkness had fallen and the dynamic became a cat-and-mouse game between cops from the Policia Militar dressed like Darth Vader’s raiders and a rambunctious assemblage of youth, many with gas masks and willing to taunt the highly disciplined cops. Someone powerful had clearly made it known to these cops that there would be no “incidents” this night — or else. For instance, the well-protected cops received a few large rocks lobbed into their huddled midst without any kind of retaliation.

For two years, starting in 2010, the United States Agency for International Development ran a social networking service — similar to Twitter — for the Cuban people. Its long-term objective was to forment popular revolt against the government and de-stabilize the country.

They called it “ZunZuneo” (Cuban slang for a hummingbird’s “tweet”) and launched it under absolute secrecy about who was really running it. “There will be absolutely no mention of United States government involvement,” according to a 2010 memo from one of the companies supposedly running the service. “This is absolutely crucial for the long-term success of the service and to ensure the success of the mission.”

The “mission” was to reach a critical mass of Cuban users by offering tweets on sports, entertainment and light news over the service and signing recipients up through word of mouth — you call a phone number and your phone is hooked up. With that critical mass in place, the tweets would start getting more political: inspiring Cuban citizens to organize “smart mobs” — mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice to spark a kind of a “Cuban Spring” or, as one USAID document put it, “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”

The registration page for the ZunZuneo service
 

At one point there were 40,000 Cubans getting ZunZuneo tweets but the project was abandoned in 2012 when the initial funding ran out and the people who own the real Twitter refused to take it on.

The story, an investigative report by the Associated Press, is probably not surprising to many people in this country. After the NSA revelations, what could possibly surprise us? And besides, it would not be the first time that USAID was found doing the nefarious work of the CIA and State Department of undermining democratic governments. But it is an embarrassing revelation about how our government is using the Internet and about how “hot” the Cold War still remains.

“Connectivity,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a CNN interview last year, “is a human right.”

If it surprises you that one of the kings of the corporate Internet would repeat a slogan used by Internet activists to mobilize against companies like his, examine the context. Zuckerberg made his remark to support and explain a new set of Facebook strategies that will, if successful, put the world’s Internet connectivity under his company’s control.

It’s called internet.org which is not only a real website but a consortium of companies and government agencies Facebook is leading. The very name — “internet.org” — also provides a glimpse of Facebook’s intentions.

Facebook conception of a drone connecting people
 

Using a combination of drones, satellites and other technologies, Facebook seeks to bring connectivity to the entire world. The picture is remarkable: Facebook satellites and drones with six month life cycles will bounce every connection signals (like Wify) to people in every corner of the earth. Every human being will now have access to the Internet.

On its face, it’s a wonderful idea until you realize that this would put all the world’s connectivity in the hands of one company and a coalition of partners it’s brought on to realize the project. Those partners, by the way, include — are you ready? — the National Security Agency of the United States.

Zuckerberg reminds us that this isn’t imminent; it’s a project for what he calls “the far-off future”. But he doesn’t explain how far off “far-off” is. Connectivity projects are a process and portions of the world would be progressively “hooked up”. In fact, his company has already invested $1 billion in the project and, he says, will continuously invest a lot more.

The people of the world are, Zuckerberg says, “…going to use it to decide what kind of government they want, get access to healthcare for the first time ever, connect with family hundreds of miles away that they haven’t seen in decades.”

The Facebook announcements followed by a year an announcement by Google that it’s researching how to use huge balloons to bring the Internet to the world or at least to remote locations in it. Google calls it “Project Loon”.

Just after midnight on May 22, 2013, after 4 and a half hours of interrogation, and shortly after a potential witness was ordered from the scene by a second FBI agent, the FBI agent investigating a critical witness in the Boston Marathon bombing case shot and killed Ibragim Todashev in his own apartment in Orlando, Florida. The agent fired three bullets into Todashev’s back, apparently as he was trying to flee a brutal interview, and then, when he turned, possibly to surrender, he was shot in the arm and the heart, and hit with a coup de gras into the top of the head. Host Dave Lindorff reports on this story of an apparent FBI rub-out, and guest Elena Teyer, Todashev’s mother-in-law, offers her theory on why the Bureau may have arranged this killing.

To listen to this program on Progressive Radio Network (PRN.fm), just click on tbej photo above, showing Ibragim Todashev with his wife Reni Manukyan, and his body in the morgue, with the agent’s shot to the head exposed.

Shenid Bhayroo was one of the thousand-plus journalists that traveled to South Africa in December 2013 to cover the death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela, the former political prisoner and first black president of the southern-most nation on the African continent.

Most of those journalists representing nations worldwide covering the memorial activities for Mandela, reporting on the ‘mood’ in that country, missed the mood Bhayroo saw among many South Africans.

Bhayroo saw a strong public dissatisfaction with the deep poverty rampant across South Africa, poverty many South Africans increasingly blame on failures of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the organization Mandela once led. Many studies list income inequality in South Africa as highest in the world, citing such figures as the poorest ten percent averaging $427 in annual income compared to $80,800 for the richest ten percent.

“What I saw was a greater sense of criticism of the short-comings of the ruling party, even from staunch ANC supporters,” Bhayroo said referencing rising objections including criticisms of corruption and nepotism among ANC officials, particularly South African President Jacob Zuma. “There’s been little improvement in the lives of the working poor.”
Shenid Bhayroo (r) and Rose Thamae at Thamae’s anti-AIDS/anti-poverty organization in the impoverished township of Orange Farm outside Johannesburg. (WashingtonPhoto)

In the voluminous report issued by Florida State’s Attorney Jeff Ashton’s Office on the killing in Orlando last May 22 of a witness/suspect under interrogation by the FBI — an investigation that concluded that the shooting was “justified” — there is not a single mention of the bruise and contusion found on the left side of Boston Marathon witness Ibragim Todashev’s head.

That together with the lack of explanation for three shots in the center of the back raise a suspicion that Todashev may have been shot while trying to flee a brutal interrogation, and then killed, possibly while trying to surrender.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UPDATE!
In an earlier article in Counterpunch magazine I suggested that if the killing of Todashev by the FBI was a deliberate action, now being covered up as a justifiable homicide, one possible explanation might be that, as Ibragim Todashev’s mother-in-law Elena Teyer suggests, Todashev “knew too much” about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. I mentioned the fact that the FBI has been deeply involved in orchestrating all but one of the 41 terrorist plots since 2011 that it claims to have “prevented” or “disrupted,” and wondered whether the Boston Bombing might be one such plot that got away from them somehow or went awry. Now a report in the Boston Globe saying that lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan’s younger brother who is facing capital charges for the bombing, are saying that back a year before the bombing, the FBI at least sought to get Tamerlan to become an FBI informant. Perhaps the lawyers are wrong an the FBI succeeded, and doesn’t want the world to know that he was on their payroll and perhaps Todashev had learned that from his friend Tamerlan.

One more reason not to take this shooting of Todashev at face value.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First about the bruise wound, which Orange County/Orlando Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Gary Utz told me, in an exclusive interview conducted in the week before the release of Ashton’s report on the case appeared to be the result of Todashev’s having been “forcibly struck,” blows out of the water the entire story of this case, as “reconstructed” by both Ashton’s office and the FBI and US Justice Department.

Note the bruise and contusion on the left side of Todashev's head, indicating, according to the coroner who examined the body, that he was “forcibly struck”
 

These agencies all have Todashev sitting at 11:30 pm in his apartment at the end of a four-and-a-half hour grilling, calmly “confessing” to participation, along with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in a vicious 2011 triple murder of three small-time drug dealers in Waltham, Mass., and starting to write down his confession on a couple of sheets of lined white paper. Out of the blue, they claim he “suddenly” upends the coffee table in front of the bed where he is sitting, tossing it at the head of the FBI agent sitting across from him, runs for the front of the apartment, and then turns and charges towards the FBI agent and Massachusetts State Trooper who have been interrogating him. As he attacks, the agent fires three rounds, causing him to stumble forward, but he “incredibly” rises and continues his attack, at which point he’s shot four more times and falls to the floor dead.

As I wrote yesterday, there’s a major problem with this account: It’s not the one provided by either of the two lawmen on the scene, but rather is an FBI composite that merges two wildly divergent accounts — one by the trooper that Todashev him running straight to the front door, grabbing a metal broomstick or rod leaning there, turning and brandishing it, and the other that has him running first into the kitchenette area, that is separated by a waist-high counter from the rest of the room, rifling through a drawer of kitchen implements, then running out of the kitchenette and rounding towards the agents in the living room before being shot. Clearly one or both of those conflicting accounts is untrue. He can’t have done both, as the merged “account” has him doing (State’s Attorney Ashton lamely insists the two accounts are “basically consistent”)

Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Rufus Seth Williams, the first African-American in Pennsylvania to hold a powerful top prosecutor post, persistently projects himself as an expert on racism.

Commendably Williams has acknowledged the corrosive impact of racism within the criminal justice system.

Curiously though, when Williams usually asserts his professed expertise on racism he is defending improprieties by police and prosecutors.

Williams, for example, indignantly rejects all allegations of race-related improprieties in the controversial conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, arguably the most racism-stained murder case in the 300-plus-year history of Philadelphia.

Earlier this year Williams participated in the ‘political lynching’ of an Obama Administration nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. During that assault on nominee Debo Adegible, a former NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer, DA Williams allied himself with Philadelphia’s police union, an organization with a sordid record of supporting racism within police department ranks and vicious brutality by police officers.

Recently, Williams attacked Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, blasting the fellow Democrat for her comments about racism.

Philadelphia DA Seth Williams with his buddies in the ever-racist Fraternal Order of Police, which hasn't met a police abuse case against a minority victim where it hasn’t supported the cop

The Florida State’s Attorney for the Orlando region, Jeffrey Ashton, today released his conclusion at the end of a 10-month investigation into the FBI slaying of Ibragim Todashev, a suspected witness in the Boston bombing case, saying that he will not be prosecuting the agent. Ashton ruled that the killing, in which the agent, at the end of a nearly 5-hour May 21 interrogation in Todashev’s Orlando apartment, fired seven bullets into Todashev, killing him justifiably, after being attacked.

However the evidence submitted to Ashton’s office by the FBI, the local coroner’s office and his own investigators, on examination, actually leads to a different conclusion from the one of justifiable homicide which he, and the FBI in its own internal probe, have reached.

For one thing, the two accounts of what happened offered by the FBI agent who shot Todashev, and by a Massachusetts State Trooper who was also in the room at the time of the shooting, are significantly at odds.

Why should we care about the FBI slaying of a Russian Chechen immigrant during an investigation into a Boston murder case? Because, as I wrote recently in Counterpunch magazine, Todashev was actually also a close friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two brothers suspected of being the Boston Marathon bombers. The FBI had started investigating Todashev a day after the bombing when it learned he was a friend of the elder brother, but perhaps were more interested in preventing him from talking about what he knew than in learning what he had to say.

First a scene setter: According to all witnesses who came onto the scene after the shooting, Todashev’s body ended up in a foyer leading to the front door from the apartment’s living room, where the interrogation happened, his feet pointing to the front door, and his head and shoulders on the floor in the living room. He was found positioned face down by an investigator from the local Medical Examiner’s office lying there on top of a red broomstick, a point made by every witness to the scene.
Diagram showing where an FBI agent's bullets hit slain interrogation subject Ibragim Todashev