This Can't Be Happening!

Dr. Ben Carson rocked the presidential campaign TV circus by suggesting the victims of the Roseburg, Oregon, shooting were too passive in responding to the lunatic gunman who shot and killed his writing professor and eight classmates. Carson received derision from the left and from liberals like Chris Matthews; on the right, he was defended by Bill O’Reilly and others.

This came in the midst of a growing national political struggle between a Black Lives Matter movement and a Blue Lives Matter movement. Given this struggle and the fact Carson is African American, his comments on passivity in the face of outrage and violence raises some interesting questions.

Does Carson have a point concerning citizen passivity in the Oregon shooting? Does our addiction to infotainment media and fantasy encourage passivity among American citizens in the real world? Have we as a people become too soft and too reliant on the police, their SWAT teams and all their military equipment and tactics? In Amsterdam, a port city where marijuana and prostitution are legal and where there’s a long history of dealing with exotic temptations, a Dutch psychiatrist once told me that the Dutch mother teaches her child that he or she has an interior locus of control to engage with all the temptation. In this light, do Americans more and more rely on the various exterior loci of control, like police, courts and prison? In the post-911 climate of demagogic fear we live in, have ordinary citizens handed over too much power and authority to what has become deceptively known as “first responders”?

What exactly does the term first responder mean? The men on United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who shared glances and signals and said “Let’s roll!” were not cops or military. They were the real first responders, citizens who chose to respond instead of sitting passively in their seats accepting their fates. The same for the three Americans on the French train; they chose to take a risk and to act. (Note: Michel Chossudovsky claims the United 93 incident never happened, since what we supposedly know of the “Let’s roll!” story hinged on cellphone contact with the plane in the air, and such connections were spotty in 2001. He argues it was a propaganda narrative to inspire the War On Terror.)

Most Americans living in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic region of the country probably didn’t realize that for the last year or so they’ve been being spied on from the sky by a sophisticated ‘eye-in-the-sky’ blimp tethered to the ground in Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Air Force jets, which notoriously were not scrambled as four commercial jets were commandeered and flown into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, were scrambled quickly in this case to track the wayward blimp as it drifted with the wind into Pennsylvania.

It just goes to show you that the military can do the job when it wants to.

It will be interesting to see what they do if this thing comes down. It’s big enough to do some damage, but my guess is the feds will do a good job of keeping the public from getting too close to it.

As it is, they’re not saying much about what this thing was doing in the first place.

The Army has claimed the purpose of this and a second blimp has been to defend the US against an attack by cruise missile, but that seems strange, given that most of its cameras point groundward. According to a December 2014 report in Intercept magazine, these two blimps, built by Ratheon Corp. have the ability to scan 340 miles in all directions, covering an area the size of Texas, and to see and track vehicles within that range.

Ominously, while one blimp has high definition radar equipment, the other is equipped, according to the Army, to provide detailed “targeting information.”

I’m wondering where spotting and defending against cruise missile attack, which after all would likely come from the ocean, not from a 340-degree radius, comes into any of that.

Giant government spy blimp cuts loose and heads for the open ocean
 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, initialed by the delegations of the 12 participating countries in early October, is one of the most talked-about mysteries of our time. The moment the treaty was announced, there was a tidal wave of commentary and criticism: most of it based on previous versions, speculation and a few leaks. Because it won’t be published for months (even years perhaps), nobody really knew what the document actually said.

Then Wikileaks, the on-line bible of revealed secrets, published several leaked sections of what its editors believe is the final edition and the collective groan morphed into an outcry. It was, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation puts it, “all that we feared.” The TPP internationalizes some of the worst inequities and abuses specific signing governments are currently committing and nowhere is that more true than with surveillance and communications repression.

We now know the answer to that question.
 

Its measures deepen the illegality of whistle-blowing and broaden who can be held responsible for it. They use copyright law to make online dissent and online scholarship and research much more difficult. And they chop away at the rights to online privacy.

The deal would fundamentally repress the Internet and, while proponents insist that the agreement would not over-ride the specific laws of each country, it allows and even encourages countries to pass more repressive laws.

It is, in short, a nightmare.

The police slaying of musician Corey Jones in South Florida highlights one of the most reprehensible aspects of law enforcement in America — the ubiquitous undercover cop.

As yourself: What was a police officer doing driving along the highway at 3 in the morning wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap in the posh neighborhood of Palm Beach Gardens? He wasn’t undercover for the purpose of infiltrating a gang. He wasn’t trying to fit into some commercial or street scene where there was a lot of suspected crime going on. He was just driving around randomly on patrol in a community known for its paucity of crime. And when he stopped at the dark entrance ramp to I-95, allegedly to check on what he claims he thought was an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road (where Jones’ van had stalled out on him and he was waiting for road assistance to arrive), this cop didn’t turn on any flashing police lights, which at least would have suggested to anyone in the van that he was a almost certainly a cop.

He just walked towards the van.

Now if you were someone like Jones, a lone black musician with some valuable drums and equipment in your vehicle, and you saw someone like Officer Nauman Raja approaching you in the dark, you’d be scared — especially if Raja had his gun drawn, as he well might have, given how he was approaching the vehicle unannounced.

The last thing you’d suspect would be that he was a police officer.

In Jones’ case, we know he had a licensed handgun. In the US that’s not illegal. In fact, many Americans say it’s a common-sense precaution. You can agree or disagree with that argument, but it was a purely legal thing for him to do.

If Officer Raja was actually on patrol hoping to “catch burglars” as claimed, he should certainly have been equipped with a car that could flash its lights alternately, if only for safety purposes. Parking on the side of a highway or on ramp late at night presents hazards simply because tired or inebriated drivers may not see the stopped vehicle and could plough into it injuring or killing both officer and driver. As well, as mentioned above, it would also allow the officer making a stop to alert the driver that he is a cop, and not a criminal. Many undercover police cars are even equipped with flashing blue lights which appear when flipped on, but which are not visible otherwise. Clearly, Raja’s vehicle either did not have those signal options, or he chose not to use them for some inexplicable reason.

Musician Corey Jones and his killer, Police Officer Nauman Raja
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Drums.
Do you hear them?
Around the block,
Just around the glass and marble corner.
Smell the smoke
Of the eternal fire.
Salt Lake City,
Built on Native land.
Near the great Salt Lake,
Sacred lake.
I saw it sparkling from high up
When I flew in
On southwest air.
There is a crystal
In the center of that lake.
They say the old ones
Used to walk out there
On the water
To make offerings.
The water held them up
Just like Jesus.
No kidding.
How do you like this day?
Does it feel new?
Is it powerful?
Do you hear the drums?
Do you smell that smoke?
Do you want to be here?
Thanks to the Navahos,
The Dine,
I taste my blood again.
 
   —Gary Lindorff

The Last Mexican of Venice is gone. The flippers got her. Yanked her like a rotten, smelly tooth. Sent L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies to do it.

Jeannine Mendoza grew up in Venice. She and her four siblings waded in the marshes before there was a Marina, built bonfires on the beach before it was illegal, delighted in its unpretentious working-class Little Rascals streets. Her parents bought an unassuming house in what avaricious realtors would one day dub “The Golden Triangle,” but it was just a sidestreet niche in 1957. And Mom and Dad had grown up in West L.A. and Santa Monica.

For that matter, the Last Mexican of Venice was descended from the Marquez family, recipients of an 1839 land grant that included Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades.

You want your “roots?” There are your “roots.”

But Jeannine Mendoza, a great-granddaughter of Old California, has been kicked out, under threat of arrest, from the home she and her late husband, Aaron Hassman, bought back in the ‘70’s. A 500-square-foot matchbox on Superba Avenue near Lincoln where they somehow managed to raise two boys, while Jeannine’s Nana lived in a mother-in-law apartment out back. Typical circumstances of old Venice, long replaced by millennial tekkie royalty, movie royalty, developer royalty.

Royalty. I remember an old bum I met on a pier long ago, declaiming. Everything in his speech somehow came back to the word, “rat.” “Royalty!” he exclaimed, spit hanging off his white stubble. “Roy. Al. Ty. RAT!”

The RATs got the Last Mexican of Venice, which is how Jeannine wryly referred to herself in recent years, just as they have gotten countless others in her heavily white gentrified neighborhood, and flipper-infested neighborhoods everywhere. The RATs smell money, and nothing else matters. Not someone’s hard work or integrity, not suffering, not tragedy. Only money. It’s really just the old Vaudeville play, “The Drunkard,” on a huge scale. The poor widow (Jeannine lost her husband several years ago) being evicted by the rich landlord.

Jeannine Mendoza grew up believing that you should give back to the community, the world, in some way. Most people used to believe this way, before college kids answered “icon” or “rich” when polled as to their career ambition. She went to Cal State Northridge on loans and financial aid for minorities (Educational Opportunity Program) in the early ‘70’s, got a degree in education. Then a Master’s degree. Eventually, an Ed. D. Right. Dr. Mendoza.

And she taught. . .kindergarten. Occasionally first or second grade. She believed this is where she could make the most impact, and that the most impact should be made here, when brains and hearts are so malleable. She was dedicated, she was effervescent, she adored her students. Many came back years later to thank her. Radiant reviews from supervisors. Always.

And so it went. She taught, she raised a family, she paid off her gigantic student loans. Her husband taught grade school, and supplemented income by becoming a boat captain for hire, piloting outings to Catalina, Baja on weekends. The Hassmans got by. They were a happy couple, in love with each other, their kids, their home, their work.

Except. . .

Venice, California, pre-gentrification in the '70s and gentrified today. Where are the People?
 

The legacy of the World War II effort to build the atom bomb is haunting the present and may still be wreaking destruction more than 70 years after two bombs killed hundreds of thousands in Japan. This time the target is in the middle of the United States. Radioactive waste in a landfill north of St. Louis is in the path of an underground fire that’s been smoldering out of control at an adjacent dump site for more than five years. In October the St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger released an evacuation plan meant to “save lives” in case of a “catastrophic event at the West Lake landfill.” The document warns that “there is potential for radioactive fallout to be released in the smoke plume and spread throughout the region.”

The region is the north county area near the St. Louis airport not far from Ferguson, where civil unrest flared, igniting the nation-wide “Black Lives Matter” movement after the police killing of an unarmed Black teenager last year. While much has been written about the poverty and deep-seated racism in Ferguson, little has been said of the environmental racism occurring at their doorstep.

Dawn Chapman, a local resident and founder of West Lake Moms, says it’s time for the state to “focus on the people.” The group is demanding that the government which failed to warn them of the radioactive waste dump now buy out their homes. Chapman says “somebody decided to develop around here.” Adding that “it goes hand-in-hand with social justice.”

The radioactive waste at West Lake was generated by uranium processing and refining carried out beginning in 1943 with the Manhattan Project and lasting through the early years of the Cold War. The Mallinckrodt Chemical Works took on the job of turning uranium ore into the purified chemicals necessary to feed the nuclear reactors and other facilities at Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The ore, which came from sources in Africa, Canada and the western United States, was processed into various compounds at sites near Buffalo, New York, in Ontario and St. Louis prior to being formed into metal slugs from which nuclear bomb fuel could be produced.

Ground Zero of a landfill with a long-burning underground fire that threatens an adjacent Cold War-era nuke waste dump just outside of Ferguson, MO
 

Protests against rampant police brutality occurred recently in the respective capitals of France and the United States – two nations that proclaim strict fidelity to the rule of law yet two professed democracy-loving nations where officials routinely condone rampant lawlessness by law enforcers.

The 20th Anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March – captioned “Justice Or Else” – took place in Washington, DCk with a core complaint being police brutality. During that protest rally held outside the U.S. Capitol building and along the National Mall relatives of police brutality victims were invited speakers. Those relatives included the father of Michael Brown, killed in 2014 by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri and a sister of Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas police station this past summer following a flawed and brutal arrest for an alleged minor traffic violation.

On the same Saturday as the “Justice Or Else” rally in DC, protestors gathered outside the Gare de Nord train station in Paris to demonstrate against the death earlier this year of Amadou Koumé. That 33-year-old father of three died during an encounter with police at a bar in Paris when he was put in a choke-hold while being handcuffed. The Paris protestors demanded a judicial inquiry into the death of Koumé, rejecting what they contend has been a cover-up by police and prosecutors in Paris regarding his death.

While nearly 4,000-miles separate Washington, DC and Paris, the issue of police brutality connects the two capitals through a chain of similarities surrounding police brutality, for example the fact that the principle targets of police brutality in France and across America are persons of color.

Trans-Atlantic Police Murders: Amadeu Koumé in Paris, France and Tamir Rice in the Cleveland, Ohio
 

As expected, the European Union court has thrown out an agreement, forged in 2000, that allows virtually uninhibited data sharing and transfer between the United States and EU countries and is the legal basis for National Security Agency’s on-line surveillance and data capture programs.

The Court’s decision is binding on all EU members and violation of its decisions could end in punitive measures including fines and trade restrictions.

EU Court Chief Justice Koen Lenaerts

The decision validates an opinion issued by the EU Court’s Advocate General last month that the Safe Harbor Framework — a group of trade regulations approved by the EU in 2000 — violates the laws of various EU member countries and the EU’s 2009 Charter of Fundamental Rights.

 
 
Let us bomb your neighborhood
Guided by our intelligence.
Let us erase your neighbor
Out of love.
 
Not you, not your children.
Bombs of love!
You should be grateful
After the dust clears
After the evil has been exploded,
After the crater
Has been filled and paved;
We will explode our way into your hearts.
 
We might miss our intended target. . .
Our missiles of love are no more accurate
Than our missiles of hate.
 
No one is perfect.
We will say “We’re sorry.”
And other words.
 
There is nothing to be gained
By challenging why we obliterate.
We have plans for your future.
We will make sure
That evil doesn’t return.
Our bombs are well-intended, moral bombs.
Bombs of democracy,
Antiseptic bombs of change,
Bombs of a new order for you,
Of superior judgment
And love.
 
 
—Gary Lindorff