This Can't Be Happening!

 
Following a decade of military invasion and occupation in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, the United States is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of empires: “We get no respect!”

The undisputed post-World War Two top dog in the world, on virtually every front the United States is more and more playing catch-up with two-faced, Clintonian shuttle diplomacy around the world and a well-entrenched regime of secrecy and sophisticated public relations aimed at keeping the dismal story of decline out of the domestic mind-space.

Economic realities dictate that the US government ratchet down its exorbitant military from the strutting days of Colin Powell’s two-front shock-and-awe doctrine to a leaner doctrine centered on highly mobile, focused assassinations. Instead of bombing cities and structures like a boxer who batters the body, we now go for quick, well-placed head shots, especially to the key, sensitive areas of the brain that provide inspiration and leadership to the movements we deem threatening to our declining future.

US citizens are absorbing this accelerating imperial decline without being informed that’s what’s going on. The myth of exceptionalism must be kept alive and the donut hole of our global empire — the American homeland where we all work and raise our families — must carry the burden of sacrifice.

The imperial system isn’t working like it used to; and much of it is being held together by political fantasy. What else can explain the incredible degree of unreality and nonsense more and more at the core of American politics? As the secrecy rises, formal bullshit, as defined by Harry Frankfurt, has become an American language.

Democrats are accomplished with it, but for the masters of bullshit you have to witness the current preposterous level of argument and thinking among the presidential candidates in the Republican Party. There’s no presumption of even a grip on reality; it’s a struggle for power and nothing else — with the mainstream media keeping score.

We Live in a Noir World

As part of a personal study, I recently watched two classic RKO noir films from 1947 – Out Of The Past and Born To Kill, the former very famous and the latter more obscure. The sensibility of these black and white films seems perfectly in synch with the incredibly corrupt times we live in.

(Noir means black in French. The symbolism of blackness as evil goes way back in white, European culture, so unfortunately noir imagery as used here does collide today with the desire to be racially neutral. Human symbolism is complex; for example, in places like Haiti, funeral hearses are often white.)

The Nagasaki bomb and Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past

In his book Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City, Nicholas Christopher suggests the late 40s and 50s noir films were mining and expressing the deep-seated anxiety – the “collective shudder” – of a culture on the threshold of the post-Hiroshima atomic age that had not yet fully sorted out the demons of the Great Depression.

“The war ends but there is no closure,” Christopher writes. “Forces are unleashed. Organized crime, street violence, political corruption, poverty. … GIs returning to the United States from Europe and the Pacific carry, not microbes, but lethal infirmities of the mind and spirit after four years of living day in day out with brutality and violent death, and surviving a war in which 1,700 cities and townships were destroyed and 35 million people were killed.”

Word that the Los Angeles Police, who sent in 1200 officers in riot gear to violently rout a few hundred Occupy Movement demonstrators from their LA encampment last week, had earlier sent 12 undercover young officers into the peaceful occupation camp to spy on the activists should come as no surprise.

Nor should wild and unsubstantiated claims–clearly bogus–that these spies overheard some of the protesters supposedly planning to sharpen bamboo sticks to use as weapons against police, come as a surprise either. Since the national Occupy Movement is by design rigorously non-violent, and since there has been not one example of occupiers using violence against police, even when attacked, if any of the police spies really heard such talk it had to have been coming either from some provocateur on the payroll of the FBI or one of the plethora of other federal intelligence agencies, or from another of the 12 LAPD undercover cops were so well disguised they didn’t recognize each other. (No such handmade weapons were in evidence during the police assault on the occupation, and no arrests were made of anyone allegedly making such plans.)

The LAPD has a long, sordid history of undercover activity, including provocateur activity, being used against peaceful protesters and anti-establishment groups, dating to the early part of the last century. More recently, the late LAPD police chief Daryl Gates famously operated, first under Chief Ed Davis, when Gates was director of the so-called Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID) and later as chief of the department, a massive spying operation that boasted dozens and perhaps over 100 officers working undercover. These cop spies were used not to attack organized or serious crime, but to monitor and gather dossiers on nonviolent political activists, nearly entirely on the left.

In the 1950s, LAPD “red squad” spies regularly infiltrated leftist labor and political organizations considered to be Communist or “fellow travelers” of the CP, as well as civil rights organizations. In the ‘60s, the PDID was used extensively to infiltrate anti-war organizations and black nationalist organizations.

In the mid-1970s, as the anti-war movement faded away, the PDID spy net widened substantially. I had my own experience with the broad reach of this LAPD’s spy unit, when I was a co-founder of a non-sectarian leftist alternative weekly newspaper, the Los Angeles Vanguard.
The LAPD Red Squad spy operation has a long ugly history of repression

This is Part II of a series of reports from our traveling correspondent in the American heartland. Part I covered the arrest of 10 Occupy OKC protesters as they “mic checked” a local Walmart on Black Friday. Part II takes them through 13 hours in an Oklahoma jail. Part III will culminate in the occupiers’ final standoff against police as they face a forceful eviction from Poet’s Park.
 

All Chris Thomas remembers of his arrest was that “Several officers ran past me and tackled Jay first. I was grabbed from behind. I informed the officer that I had a compound fracture and had five surgeries on my elbow. I asked the officer to be careful because my arm does not extend fully. He said, `we will fix that!’ – as he forced my arm behind me and cuffed me.

“They left me in the cuffs for over an hour,” said Thomas. “I meditated while I was in cuffs and tried to ignore the pain. The officer that finally un-cuffed me commented that my had was twisted into a weird position. My hands were numb. My arm was forced into a position that my arm can not normally go in.”
(When I interviewed Thomas nearly 36 hours after the incident, he was still in a great deal of physical pain.)

Del City police deny that excessive force was used in handling the occupy protesters. Police Lt. Steve Robinson said that only one of the protesters – Jay Vehige – was “combative.” Vehige and his fellow demonstrators say even this allegation is untrue. Video of Vehige’s arrest shows that he was complying with all of the officer’s orders. He is lying face-down on the floor and does not appear to be physically resisting. Regardless, Vehige was also charged with resisting arrest.

Other Occupy OKC members arrested that night were Thomas, Agnew, Destiny Smith, 22, David “Cody” Grandstaff, 21, Sean Lovell, 25, Mark Faulk, 55, and siblings Helen Lavictoire, 27, Cassandra Lavictorie, 27, and Griffin Lavictorie, 19. All were charged with disorderly conduct.

“It’s a pretty vague charge,” according to Brittany Novotny, an attorney representing the Occupy OKC protesters. She told KOCO-TV, “I don’t think these folks are guilty of disorderly conduct. They were asked to leave by store personnel. They tried to do so and, at that point, a couple of them were tackled and arrested.”

“We weren’t being hostile at all,” Agnew insists. “We just wanted to raise awareness.”

Bronwyn Agnew and Sean Lovell (photo courtesy Bronwyn Agnew facebook)

The US Congress is such a craven bunch that you really have to turn to Olde English to aptly describe them.

Consider that on Thursday, by a vote of 93-7, the Senate approved a National Defense Authorization Bill that effectively defines the US “homeland” as a war zone, and that allows for the indefinite incarceration without trial of anyone, including US citizens and Green Card holders, without trial, in blatant violation of the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution and of fundamental international judicial standards.

These elected representatives, so ready to sell out the fundamental rights of the people and the nation’s heritage, can be best described, using Olde English usage, as a “congress” of baboons, or a “cowardice” of curs, a “sneak” of weasels” or perhaps just a “stench” of skunks.

And it’s not over. Both houses of Congress are also considering a proposal by President Obama of a measure that will seriously undermine Social Security — a further cut in the Social Security 12.4% payroll tax by 3.1% for workers and a matching 3.1% cut in the 40% share of that tax paid by employers–measures which taken together would gut the Social Security Trust Fund by more than $350 billion in one year.
Needed: A 'rout' of wolves to oust a 'stench' of skunks from D.C.

London — Standing on a picket line in front of her work place at a world renowned heart-lung hospital in London wasn’t Jeanette Anderson’s first choice for how to spend her day.

However, Anderson said protesting was her “only choice.”

Protesting as part of a nationwide general strike in the UK, Anderson said, was necessary to combat austerity measures from Britain’s conservative led government that now targets the pensions of public sector workers like Anderson and her picket line colleagues at the Royal Brompton Hospital in this city’s up-scale Chelsea section.

“We do not get the fat-cat pensions like the rich,” Anderson said, noting that participating in the one-day strike action wasn’t something she took lightly.

“Public sector workers are already into a two-year pay freeze and now the government plans to extend that pay freeze for another two years.”

Anderson, her Brompton Hospital picket line colleagues and an estimated two million other public sector workers staged a one-day general strike across Britain Wednesday (11/30).
Public workers prepare to march through Central London in Wednesday's UK General Strike (photos by Washington)

Oklahoma City – In the early morning hours of Black Friday, 10 members of Occupy OKC  discovered that chanting “Buy local!” in a crowded Walmart is an arrestable offense in the United States of America. 

Walmart stores were the target of occupations in Oklahoma City last Friday

It all started with a group of about 20-25 Occupy OKC demonstrators doing “mic checks” at several mega retailers around the Oklahoma City area open on Thanksgiving night. “We hit Best Buy, Toys `R’ Us, a Target store, and two other Walmarts between 10pm and midnight,” said Nick Saltzman, 19, one of the local occupiers who managed to avoid arrest. “It was going so well.”

That is, until the group left Oklahoma City limits and ventured into nearby Del City (recently voted “OKC’s Worst Suburb” by 41% of Lost Ogle readers.) Unlike the Oklahoma City police department, the off-duty officers working security at the Del City Walmart on Tinker Diagonal were not in a tolerant mood. Maybe they were already unhappy about having to work an extra shift on a holiday when they could have been home with their families. They probably needed the extra dough, and were willing to be on the payroll of the 1%. 

“We have taken a lot of steps in our stores to maintain a safe shopping environment,” a Walmart spokesman told the Daily Oklahoman. “As part of these plans, our store worked with police to have officers at the store during the (Black Friday) event.”

All of the earlier protests within Oklahoma City limits had gone off without a hitch.  A group had walked in, mic checked the assembled shoppers and employees, spoke their piece, and walked out unmolested. But they did notice something interesting as the night went along: With each new store they visited, there was an increased police presence.

 
Christmas has come a long way from the three wise men on camels visiting the Baby Jesus in a manger in a Middle Eastern desert or from the anti-capitalist-greed morality tale of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Now we have a holiday cartoon blockbuster called Arthur Christmas that looks like The Invasion of Normandy starring The Muppets as told by Tom Clancy and delivered by Fed Ex.

In this version, the ranking Santa Claus sports a red military uniform with golden epaulets and medals on his chest (presumably for past Christmas campaigns) while his vast army of elves dressed in camouflage military uniforms march around the North Pole in formation harassing endangered polar bears.

The premise of the movie is that the Claus family has a super-secret base in The North Pole and operates its modern delivery juggernaut from a massive “mission control” not unlike the war room in Doctor Strangelove, except this vast room featuring thousands of computer terminals and giant video screens is not constructed out of harsh, film-noir light and shadow but of cotton-candy and ginger bread.

Generals Norman Schwarzkopf and Santa Claus

Here’s the movie’s synopsis according to its publicity blitzkrieg:

“This Christmas movie highlights the technological advances of operations at the North Pole, revealing how Santa and his vast army of highly trained elves produce gifts and distribute them around the world in one night. However, every operation has a margin of error. When one of 600 million children to receive a gift from Santa on Christmas Eve is missed, it is deemed ‘acceptable’ to all but one, Arthur. Arthur Claus is Santa’s misfit son who executes an unauthorized rookie mission to get the last present half way around the globe before dawn on Christmas morning.”

The mainstream media likes to claim that Occupy Movement is comprised of aimless activists without concrete goals. They should go ask Martha and Lorena Reyes, two recently fired Hyatt housekeepers who know exactly why the 1% who run everything need to be occupied and what the 99% is demanding.
Until recently, the two sisters worked for the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA. On October 14th, after 30 years of combined service, they were abruptly fired.

According to the Hyatt, they were terminated for “stealing company time.” The hotel alleges that they took ten minutes too long on their lunch breaks. The Reyes sisters explain that housekeepers are assigned so much work that they frequently do not have time to take their legally-mandated, 10-minute break in the morning. It is routine and long-accepted by management for them and their coworkers to take an extra ten minutes during lunch to replace their missed break.

The Reyes sisters believe that they were actually fired for a different reason.

Their story begins in September during “Housekeeping Appreciation Week.” On arrival to work, Martha was greeted with a collage of her and her coworkers’ faces digitally altered onto the bodies of women in bikinis. She was horrified and took down the picture of herself and her sister, Lorena.

Though it’s commonplace to see images of scantily clad women in the media, Lorena explains, “In my culture I was raised to be conservative with my body. I don’t like bikinis… I felt very uncomfortable knowing my male coworkers were looking at that.”

Shortly afterwards, both women were fired.
Standing up to the boss: Marta (l) and Lorena (r) Reyes

The growing number of video clips and photos showing police in Darth Vader-like riot gear assaulting peaceful demonstrators with everything from tear gas and mace to truncheons, point-blank shots with beanbags and rubber bullets, and of course the ubiquitous fist and club, have made a bad joke out of claims that America is either the land of the free or the home of the brave.

Scott Olson, a veteran of America’s Iraq War, suffered a severe brain injury that nearly killed him, and left him with difficulty speaking, thanks to a shot to his head by an attacking police officer in Oakland who was firing teargas canisters from a gun-like weapon. Olsen is lucky to be alive and will hopefully recover over time. A comrade, veteran Kayvan Sabehgi, who was retreating from advancing police that same night with his hands tucked in his pockets, can be seen being chased and so brutally beaten by another attacking thug cop that he had to be hospitalized for treatment of a lacerated spleen (although the cops left him writing in agony in a cell for hours before sending him to the hospital).

Old women, pregnant mothers-to-be, and even children have been hit with pepper spray, teargassed and terrorized by police goons in New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere in what is almost certainly a coordinated attack on the Occupy Movement being run out of Washington. One 19-year old pregnant woman, struck several times and pepper sprayed (but not arrested) by Seattle Police who were clearing out Occupiers there, suffered a miscarriage several days after suffering the assault. A 70-year old poet and retired professor at UC Berkeley was punched and knocked down by a policeman as he pleaded with the police not to hurt protesting students. His wife had been knocked to the ground just before him.

Americans have been watching these scenes of cops assaulting peaceful demonstrators in shock. They are used to seeing this kind of thing going on in Latin America or the Middle East or Asia, and our own government would always make noises of protest. Now it’s happening here at home.

President Obama, meanwhile, has remained shamelessly silent about this police-state behavior by the nation’s local police forces, all of them armed and armored with the aid of Federal Homeland Security grants, and working on the basis of “intelligence” collected by federally-funded Fusion Centers” and federally- run Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

This is the moment that Obama, who faces an election in less than a year, has to demonstrate whether he is the president of the banks that have so lavishly funded his first campaign, that continue to pour money into his current re-election campaign, and that are pushing for this crackdown on protests, or the people — especially the young people — who worked so hard to put him into office in the first place.

Through his silence alone, Obama is condoning the police abuse of demonstrators of the Occupy Movement

With Congress no longer performing its sworn role of defending the US Constitution, the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee and the Partnership for Civil Justice today filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) asking the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and the National Parks Service to release “all their information on the planning of the coordinated law enforcement crackdown on Occupy protest encampments in multiple cities over the course of recent days and weeks.”

According to a statement by the NLG, each of the FOIA requests states, “This request specifically encompasses disclosure of any documents or information pertaining to federal coordination of, or advice or consultation regarding, the police response to the Occupy movement, protests or encampments.”

National Lawyers Guild leaders, including Executive Director Heidi Beghosian and NLG Mass Defense Committee co-chair and PCJ Executive Director Mara Veheyden-Hilliard both told TCBH! earlier this week that the rapid-fire assaults on occupation encampments in cities from Oakland to New York and Portland, Seattle and Atlanta, all within days of each other, the similar approach taken by police, which included overwhelming force in night-time attacks, mass arrests, use of such weaponry as pepper spray, sound cannons, tear gas, clubs and in some cases “non-lethal” projectiles like bean bags and rubber bullets, the removal and even arrest of reporters and camera-persons, and the justifications offered by municipal officials, who all cited “health” and “safety” concerns, all pointed to central direction and guidance.
The police assault on Zuccotti Park led to the Occupation Movement's biggest rally yet on Nov. 17