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If the 5% disappeared
And the 95% became the 100%
There would be a tomorrow.
We could buy maybe another hundred years
To get our shit together.
There would be an ease of panic.
The doomsday clock would back off
A few minutes from midnight.
Everyone in the world would have enough.
It’s possible. See,
We aren’t all equal.
We’re not all the same.
We’re not all in the same boat.
Some are in a sinking raft
Trying to get to a safe landfall.
Some are in a sturdy lifeboat
With cover and adequate rations.
And some are in a yacht
Partying their brains out.
(I didn’t even know how to spell yacht.)
Guilt is a funny thing.
If you’re guilty
Guilt becomes your yoke
And people who are looking for workers
To service their estates,
Clean up after their mess,
Feed them,
Educate their children,
Groom their dogs,
Don’t have to look far for help.
If we want to make the crisis go away,
First we have to stop feeling guilty
And realize that we aren’t the problem.
The problem is that we,
In the lifeboat
Think that we are the problem,
And guilt is devouring
Our ability to act.
The problem is
That we are
Taking on the guilt
That belongs to those who are truly guilty.
No, we are not all in the same boat.
But the ones in the sinking raft
Can use some help.
And the ones in the yacht?
They have to know they are guilty.
 
 
    –Gary Lindorff

Philadelphia — Something “YUGE” is happening in the Democratic presidential campaign, and perhaps in the broader American body politic. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but like that feeling of your neck hairs rising off your skin as a big thunderstorm approaches, you know it’s big and it’s coming.

For me it was going with my wife and a friend to join a line of people waiting to get into Temple University’s 10,000-seat basketball arena for a hastily planned address by Democratic candidate for president Bernie Sanders.

When we got to the campus early yesterday, there was already a crowd of young people camped out by the entrance to the Liacouras Center. They told me they had been there since 6:30 am for an event that was scheduled to start at 8 pm, with doors opening at 5 pm. Already a line stretched back to the corner of Broad Street, around the corner and halfway down the block on Montgomery. Most of those in the line were students from Temple or from one or another of Philadelphia’s many other universities. They were white, black, latino and Asian, with a smattering of older folks. I went off to do some work, with plans for our little band to join the line around 4:30.

Big mistake! By the time we headed out to get in line, it was winding around the huge sports complex, snaking up and down several alleys and back to Broad, and then down Broad for another six blocks — about half a mile of people in all with more piling on all the time. At many places this line of people was eight to 10 across, and fairly densely packed, as people tried to shelter each other from a biting cold wind.

What was astonishing in all this was that there had been no long build-up to the event. No advance news reports, no posters, no organizations arriving with buses. It all seemed to have come together via social media in a day’s time.

By the time the line back where we were blocks from the arena finally began to move it was about 7 pm, and it took over an hour for us to get close to the entrance. At that point volunteer organizers were advising us that the arena was about full, and that we’d have a better chance of hearing the candidate in person if we abandoned the line and moved to a smaller 7,000-seat practice basketball arena in an adjacent building, where we were told Sanders would speak briefly before going to the main hall. A huge part of the line broke away behind us and began sprinting to the overflow venue. We chose to gamble and wait in the main line hoping we’d make the cut-off. Eventually, we managed to get in.

Inside, the seated crowd, which now included a fair percentage of adults, was really pumped. When Sanders, his trademark unkempt white hair flying, and his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders were spotted making their way towards the catwalk to the podium through a tunnel under the seats, a roar erupted from the crowd and became a thunderous chant of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!”

A movement in the making?: Bernie Sanders greets supporters at a rally of 17,000 at Temple University in Philadelphia
 

Sanders took it from there, with a powerful speech that riffed through every issue of the campaign. But there was a new edge to this address. Fresh off of his landslide 14%-margin win over Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, Sanders ripped into his opponent, who had just that day (citing a cheap-shot sandbagging interview of him by editors at the New York Daily News that news organizations from the Washington Post to CNN had been shamelessly misquoting and partially quoting) called Sanders unqualified for the White House.

Sanders Hits Clinton Hard as Being ‘Unqualified for President’

Sanders, who until that point has been restrained in his attacks on Clinton, continuing to suggest that he would support her if she were to win the nomination, in a blistering counter-attack, told the wildly cheering crowd at the Liacouras Center, “She has been saying lately that she thinks I am quote, unquote ‘not qualified’ to be president. I don’t believe that she is qualified … if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interests funds.”

 
In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers’ table. … Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend — the kind of face you would expect in an Anarchist, though as likely as not he was a Communist. … I hardly know why, but I have seldom seen anyone — any man, I mean — to whom I have taken such an immediate liking.
                                                                              – The opening of Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell
 

John McCain is certainly an interesting American politician. To be politically correct, maybe I should call him an American “warrior/politician,” since he’s a key leader in the post-911 culture saturated with the warrior-ethos. Last month, this warrior/politician wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that I can’t get out of my mind.

In the piece titled “The Good Soldier,” McCain saluted Delmer Berg whose obituary had run March 2nd in the Times. (Belatedly appreciating the irony, the Times changed the op-ed’s title online to: “John McCain: Salute To a Communist.”) Berg, who died at age 100, was presumably the last living American veteran of the famous Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought on the Republican side in Spain against a 1936 fascist coup led by the caudillo general Francisco Franco, certainly a warrior/politician of his day. The Republic had been constitutionally set up and its leaders duly-elected after the monarchy collapsed in 1931. The Soviet Union supported the Republican side and Hitler and Mussolini supported the Fascists. The Republican side had a romantic, underdog quality that drew writers and adventures like George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway.

Proud American communist Delmer Berg in 2014 and in 1938 in Spain, second from right in beret

In 1937, Berg was a 21-year-old dishwasher who saw a poster for the Lincoln Brigade and signed up. He soon shipping out to Spain on an ocean liner; he was eventually wounded and sent home. Of the 3000 American volunteers who fought in Spain, around 800 were killed. The Fascists prevailed in 1939. Berg joined the Communist Party in 1943. The Times called him “an unreconstructed communist.” A newspaper in California asked Berg what were the proudest moments of his life; one he said was “when one of my grandsons was valedictorian at his Oregon high school graduation and said in a newspaper interview, ‘My grandfather is my inspiration. He’s a Communist!’ ”

 
 
We were at Shelby’s at the bar and Jeff,
Who was watching Fox News,
Slams down his empty bottle
And says,
I’m so sick of hearing about damn red herrings
I’m going to catch me one.
Is anyone with me?
 
A chorus of Ayes and Aye captain!
Jeff’s boat had just come out of dry dock.
We all knew it was just an excuse
To get out of painting his basement,
But we were all on our third or fourth brew
And it didn’t take much.
So we were going to catch some red herring!
 
We’re all Bernie-supporters and
Were buoyed by his recent wins in the primaries
And the appearance of the sparrow
At his Portland rally.
As I say, it doesn’t take much.
The seas were heavy and white-capped
As soon as we cleared the jetty.
 
If it was just the lifting and rolling
It wouldn’t have been a worry
But the wind was gusting from the southeast.
Never a good sign;
Even I know that.
Occasionally we would get nailed
And the boat would shudder.
 

Women’s health advocates were uniformly jubilant on March 30, 2016 when the FDA updated its labeling for the medication, mifepristone. Mifepristone, sold under the brand name Mifeprex by Danco Laboratories, is commonly referred to as “the abortion pill.” It is used in combination in the United States with misoprostol to provide medical abortions. Medical abortions account for nearly a quarter of all abortions and over a third of all abortions before nine weeks of gestation.

Raegan McDonald-Mosley the chief medical office of Planned Parenthood described the change as “a significant step forward for science, for women, and for health care providers.” Vick Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation said that she was “delighted” by the change. Amy Hagstrom Miller, the president of Whole Women’s Health, the plaintiff in the case against Texas HB2, stated “[the] label change…is a significant advancement for women in the United States.”

Their elation is understandable. In an era of illegal and misleading smear campaigns and aggressive TRAP laws (“Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers“), the FDA announcement is a welcome victory. Since 2010, states have adopted 345 abortion restrictions, an unprecedented number of assaults on women’s health.

Women’s health advocates were uniformly jubilant on March 30, 2016 when the FDA updated its labeling for the medication, mifepristone. Mifepristone, sold under the brand name Mifeprex by Danco Laboratories, is commonly referred to as “the abortion pill.” It is used in combination in the United States with misoprostol to provide medical abortions. Medical abortions …

Continue reading “FDA Change to the “Abortion Pill” Overrated”

What on earth was the CIA doing putting plastic high explosive charges on schoolbuses and in hidden places in a Virginia public school in a “test” of K-9 dogs reportedly belonging to the Agency itself?

The story of the secret “test” broke because an alert mechanic doing a routine check on one of the Loudon County School District’s schoolbuses found a package of what turned out to be plastic explosive, packed in a plastic wrapper, jammed down in among some of the rubber hoses and electric wires around the engine. It had allegedly “fallen” from where it had originally been placed, was missed by the dogs and their handlers, and remained where it was stuck for two days, while the bus was unwittingly used to deliver some 26 young children to and from school on eight separate bus runs totaling 145 miles of driving.

I called the CIA’s “public information” office on Friday to ask for clarification as to why the CIA, which does not have a domestic policing function, would be operating, and testing, a K-9 bomb-detecting unit, given that such tasks in the US would normally be handled either by state and local police agencies, or by the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). The office, though it was mid-day, was not answering its phones, and only had a voice mail recording, on which I identified myself as a reporter, left my contact information and requested a response on deadline. No surprise: I was not called back with an answer, and do not anticipate receiving one from an agency that is infamous for its secrecy. (The standard CIA response in my experience, when I’ve received one at all, is: “We have no response to that question.”)

Still, even for a notoriously opaque and obtuse government agency, this is a truly bizarre incident that cries out for answers.

Alert Virginia school district mechanic found C-4 explosive package planted on school bus in CIA "test"
 

If the goal is testing the ability of dogs to detect hidden explosives, there is no need to run that test in a real school and in the engine compartments of real buses that transport real children, or to place such charges, as the CIA also reportedly did, in hidden locations inside a real school building. (Actually, since what’s being tested is the dogs’ smelling ability, real C-4 wasn’t needed either — only objects that had been in placed in contact with the compound, or wrappers from the charges that would have carried the odor on them.) People may benefit in training exercises when the tests are tricked out to appear more real-life, but dogs don’t need that kind of reality-theater environment to hone or test their skills. Any old bus, or for that matter a rental truck, could have been used for the job. The engine compartment for a truck is exactly the same as for a bus, and dogs don’t care whether the body color of a vehicle being searched is yellow or not (they’re color-blind after all!), or whether it has a big box behind the cab, or two rows of seats. Ditto to using a functioning school building. Any building, including one of the CIA’s own buildings at its Langley headquarters, or on “The Farm” where agents are trained, would serve as well as a hiding place for explosive charges.

We were having a bad day in the asylum,
A bad 8 years, a bad sixteen years,
Oh, heck, a bad era,
Well, let’s face it, a bad history.
But we had a good leader for a change,
A guy from Vermont
With wild white hair,
An honest man
Who most people liked and trusted
Who openly talked about revolution.
 
We were all hurting,
Waiting for a sign.
Time was rushing by.
Days, weeks, months.
We were all serving life-sentences
Without parole,
That is, living in America.
Me in Vermont, you in Pennsylvania,
My good friend Tim in California. . .
And the feeling was ominous and ubiquitous.
 
Like a Stephen King novel.
There were distant mountains
Crumbling silently,
Occasionally a forest would fall down.
Bees were going extinct.
Japanese children were eating Minke whales in school.
The government was busily making tiny atom bombs.
But who knew what was real anyway?
Some of us had turned to prayer

Philadelphia — You wouldn’t know it to read the corporate media coverage of Bernie Sanders’ blow-out 50%-margin wins Saturday, March 26 in the three states of Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. While purported “news” organizations like the New York Times and CNN are propagandistically reporting Sanders having won just 25 delegates in Washington, and on that basis are claiming that he only gained some 30 or so delegates on Hillary Clinton, the truth is that he won 72 of Washington state’s delegates along with 17 in Hawaii and 13 in Alaska, for a total of 102 new pledged delegates, compared to just 39 for Clinton, and that as things stand today, the tally stands like this at Clinton: 1266 pledged delegates, Sanders: 1038 pledged delegates. The difference between the two? Clinton is down from a high at one point of some 330 to just a 228-delegate lead, with 1638 pledged delegates yet to be chosen in coming primaries and caucuses.

While Sanders, who has to win the remaining primary contests by an average of 60%, still has to be considered a long-shot, the fact that he has won the last five of six contests by scoring in the 70-80% range, in some cases reducing Clinton to percentages in the teens, shows this is doable. Plus, his recent big wins actually brought his performance requirement for winning the nomination down from an earlier need to win remaining contests by an average of 68% to “just” 56% of the vote.

What this means is that if Sanders can manage to win by a significant amount in New York and Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other eastern and central states, as well as in Oregon, in April and May, this campaign could come down to California on June 7, when 475 pledged delegates are at stake.

What we’re seeing as the national race tightens is Sanders starting to take a much more combative stance against Clinton and the Democratic Party leadership, in response to dirty tricks, Clinton lies, and a rigged election cycle. We’re also, according to exit polling, learning that the more Clinton campaigns, the more votes she is losing, while the more Sanders campaigns, the higher his poll numbers go, and the more he wins by in primaries and caucuses. (the latest national poll, by Bloomberg, taken two days before the March 29 caucuses, has Sanders leading Clinton among all voters by 49-48%). Most of the states Clinton has won, she’s won because of early voting that was done by mail before Sanders and his campaign had begun their publicity in earnest in each state. This is critical because, since his campaign was largely blacked out until he stunningly tied in Iowa and won in New Hampshire in early February and since most mainstream media coverage of him since then has been negative, he has had to rely on rallies and alternative media to get his story out.

A small bird that landed on Sanders' lectern in a Portland stadium is seen by some as a favorable sign for his campaign (click on image to view video of the surprise visitation)
 

But his campaign strategy — hitting the issue of a rigged economy and a bought-and-paid political system — has been gaining traction with primary voters over time, and the money is pouring into his campaign in small donations from millions of backers (he’s raised over $140 million so far with no corporate funding and no PACs), giving Sanders the funding needed to compete in advertising to get his positions out, and, increasingly, to make his case against Clinton and her corporate backers.

It sure looks like there was some electoral fraud committed in the Democratic primary in Arizona on Tuesday.

The race ended up officially with Hillary Clinton getting 58% of the votes, a total of 235,667. Bernie Sanders got 40% and a total of 163,368. Half of that vote total came from the state’s overwhelmingly biggest city, Phoenix, pop. 1.5 million. In Maricopa County, which is where Phoenix is situated, the vote was Clinton 127,000, Sanders 87,000 — exactly the same 58%/40% split as the statewide vote. (This compares to neighboring Utah, and to Idaho, where on the same day, Sanders beat Clinton 80% to 20% in two caucuses.)

But Phoenix, a Democratic city in a Republican county, like most places, has a Democratic machine that is working in lock-step with the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

So it is disturbing to learn that numerous types of voter disenfranchisement occurred in the Arizona vote, across the state and especially in Phoenix.

According to a publication called The Horn, published in Arizona, many registered Democratic voters came to their polling station, only to be told that they were listed as independent, not as Democrat, and thus could not vote, as Arizona has a closed primary for both parties. Those who complained were given provisional ballots, but there has been no report on how many of those provisional ballots, if any, were counted in arriving at last night’s result of a Hillary 14% win. The decision on whether to count provisional ballots is made by local voter registrars.

Why’s Hilllary Clinton winking?
 

But that’s not all. A news site called AZCentral.com reported that before the primary, a decision was made to cut the metro area’s usual 200 polling stations down to just 60, allegedly as a “cost-saving” measure and because a flood of advance mail ballots had led voting election officials to guess that the number of physical voters using polling stations would be down (an odd assumption, since higher than usual advance balloting by mail is usually a sign of increased voter interest in an election). Phoenix itself ended up with only 12 working polling stations, with the other 48 spread out around the metro area’s various municipalities, usually two polling stations per city.

By way of comparison, in the 2012 primary, Maricopa County had 200 polling places for 300,000 voters. This year it had 60 polling places for an estimated 800,000 voters.