It's Enough to Make You Resume Blogging

"Heroes" on Parade

My brother-in-law sent me this article. He said he thought I might "appreciate" it. Well, hell, yeah. I appreciate his pointing me to this, and I appreciate the article like a rampant case of jock itch. Like many other nefarious things going on, I had no idea. This is a miserable piece of news.

It turns out that our so-called "defense" department is paying out millions of dollars to NFL teams to have them honor the troops with salutes and various other displays at games. Fourteen teams and $5.4 million from 2010-14, to be precise. Now I know there are many more millions than that in this country that won't see a thing wrong with this idea. There's more the pity. Only dangerous radicals have problems with this kind of mass manipulation. People like me.

This is, my friends, exactly what national socialism and other brands of totalitarianism is about. This is what they do. Manufacture patriotism and brandish its symbols and slogans on any occasion and in any venue where it can reach thousands, nay, millions of spectators. Think military parades, military ads. military events like air shows, military open houses at bases and on ships, military aircraft flying over stadiums, military getting on planes first, being cheered in airports, etc., etc. All this, and they use your money to do it with. Your taxes are paying for these phony displays. Yes, in the NFL case this is five and a half million bucks that could be used for oh, fixing a school or a bridge or a highway. Or providing food to some American family down on its luck or . . . well, you get the idea. This is an outrage. This is a crime. This is thievery from the American taxpayer. That's what I think of it.But don't forget, I'll be among the first to be swept up when they send the heroes out armed to the teeth to purify American society.

(More than coincidental, I think, that my last blog post, way back in early January, was on this same theme.)

Soldier Worship

I totally agree with this piece from Salon by David Masciotra:

Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.

It has become impossible to go a week without reading a story about police brutality, abuse of power and misuse of authority. Michael Brown’s murder represents the tip of a body pile, and in just the past month, several videos have emerged of police assaulting people, including pregnant women, for reasons justifiable only to the insane.

It is equally challenging for anyone reasonable, and not drowning in the syrup of patriotic sentimentality, to stop saluting, and look at the servicemen of the American military with criticism and skepticism. There is a sexual assault epidemic in the military. In 2003, a Department of Defense study found that one-third of women seeking medical care in the VA system reported experiencing rape or sexual violence while in the military. Internal and external studies demonstrate that since the official study, numbers of sexual assaults within the military have only increased, especially with male victims. According to the Pentagon, 38 men are sexually assaulted every single day in the U.S. military. Given that rape and sexual assault are, traditionally, the most underreported crimes, the horrific statistics likely fail to capture the reality of the sexual dungeon that has become the United States military.

Chelsea Manning, now serving time in prison as a whistle-blower, uncovered multiple incidents of fellow soldiers laughing as they murdered civilians. Keith Gentry, a former Navy man, wrote that when he and his division were bored they preferred passing the time with the “entertainment” of YouTube videos capturing air raids of Iraq and Afghanistan, often making jokes and mocking the victims of American violence. If the murder of civilians, the rape of “brothers and sisters” on base, and the relegation of death and torture of strangers as fodder for amusement qualifies as heroism, the world needs better villains.

It is undeniable that there are police officers who heroically uphold their motto and mission to “serve and protect,” just as it is indisputable that there are members of the military who valiantly sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Reviewing the research proving cruelty and mendacity within law enforcement and the military, and reading the stories of trauma and tragedy caused by officers and soldiers, does not mean that no cop or troop qualifies as a hero, but it certainly means that many of them are not heroes.

Acknowledging the spread of sadism across the ranks of military also does not mean that the U.S. government should neglect veterans, as they often do, by cutting their healthcare options, delaying or denying treatment, and reducing psychiatric services. On the contrary, if American politicians and pundits genuinely believed that American military members are “heroes,” they would not settle for sloganeering, and garish tributes. They would insist that veterans receive the best healthcare possible. Improving and universalizing high quality healthcare for all Americans, including veterans, is a much better and truer way to honor the risks soldiers and Marines accept on orders than unofficially imposing a juvenile and dictatorial rule over speech in which anything less than absolute and awed adulation for all things military is treasonous.

One of the reasons that the American public so eagerly and excitedly complies with the cultural code of lionizing every soldier and cop is because of the physical risk-taking and bravery many of them display on the foreign battleground and the American street. Physical strength and courage is only useful and laudable when invested in a cause that is noble and moral. The causes of American foreign policy, especially at the present, rarely qualify for either compliment. The “troops are heroes” boosters of American life typically toss out clichés to defend their generalization – “They defend our freedom,” “They fight so we don’t have to.”

No American freedom is currently at stake in Afghanistan. It is impossible to imagine an argument to the contrary, just as the war in Iraq was clearly fought for the interests of empire, the profits of defense contractors, and the edification of neoconservative theorists. It had nothing to do with the safety or freedom of the American people. The last time the U.S. military deployed to fight for the protection of American life was in World War II – an inconvenient fact that reduces clichés about “thanking a soldier” for free speech to rubble. If a soldier deserves gratitude, so does the litigator who argued key First Amendment cases in court, the legislators who voted for the protection of free speech, and thousands of external agitators who rallied for more speech rights, less censorship and broader access to media.

Wars that are not heroic have no real heroes, except for the people who oppose those wars. Far from being the heroes of recent wars, American troops are among their victims. No rational person can blame the soldier, the Marine, the airman, or the Navy man for the stupid and destructive foreign policy of the U.S. government, but calling them “heroes,” and settling for nothing less, makes honest and critical conversations about American foreign policy less likely to happen. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make much sense to call their mission unnecessary and unjust. It also makes conversations about the sexual assault epidemic, or the killing of innocent civilians, impossible. If all troops are heroes, it doesn’t make any sense to acknowledge that some are rapists and sadists.

The same principle of clear-eyed scrutiny applies to law enforcement agencies. Police departments everywhere need extensive investigation of their training methods, qualifications for getting on the job, and psychological evaluation. None of that will happen as long as the culture calls cops heroes, regardless of their behavior.
An understandable reason for calling all troops heroes, even on the left, is to honor the sacrifice they make after they die or endure a life-altering injury in one of America’s foolish acts of aggression. A more helpful and productive act of citizenship, and sign of solidarity with the military, is the enlistment in an antiwar movement that would prevent the government from using its volunteer Army as a plaything for the financial advancement and political cover of the state-corporate nexus and the military-industrial complex of Dwight Eishenhower’s nightmares.

Given the dubious and dangerous nature of American foreign policy, and the neglect and abuse veterans often suffer when returning home wounded or traumatized, Americans, especially those who oppose war, should do everything they can to discourage young, poor and working-class men and women from joining the military. Part of the campaign against enlistment requires removing the glory of the “hero” label from those who do enlist. Stanley Hauerwas, a professor of divinity studies at Duke whom Time called “America’s best theologian,” has suggested that, given the radical pacifism of Jesus Christ, American churches should do all they can to discourage its young congregants from joining the military. Haurwas’ brand of intellectual courage is necessary, even among non-Christians, to combat the hysterical sycophancy toward the military in a culture where even saluting a Marine, while holding a coffee cup, is tantamount to terrorism.

The men and women who do enlist deserve better than to die in the dirt and come home in a bag, or spend their lives in wheelchairs, and their parents should not have to drown in tears and suffer the heartbreak of burying their children. The catastrophes become less common when fewer people join the military.

Calling all cops and troops heroes insults those who actually are heroic – the soldier who runs into the line of fire to protect his division, the police officer who works tirelessly to find a missing child – by placing them alongside the cops who shoot unarmed teenagers who have their hands in the air, or the soldier who rapes his subordinate.

It also degrades the collective understanding of heroism to the fantasies of high-budget, cheap-story action movies. The American conception of heroism seems inextricably linked to violence; not yet graduated from third-grade games of cops and robbers. Explosions and smoking guns might make for entertaining television, but they are not necessary, and more and more in modern society, not even helpful in determining what makes a hero.

A social worker who commits to the care and advocacy of adults with developmental disabilities – helping them find employment, group home placement and medical care, and just treating them with love and kindness – is a hero. A hospice worker in a poor neighborhood, providing precious comfort and consolation to someone dying on the ugly edges of American healthcare, is a hero. An inner-city teacher, working hard to give essential education and meaningful affirmation to children living in neighborhoods where bullets fly and families fall apart, is a hero.

Not all teachers, hospice workers or social workers are heroes, but emphasizing the heroism of those who do commit to their clients, patients and students with love and service would cause a shift of America’s fundamental values. It would place the spotlight on tender and selfless acts of solidarity and empathy for the poor. Calling all cops heroes too often leads to pathetic deference to authority, even when the results are fatal, and insisting all members of the military are heroes too often reinforces the American values of militarism and exceptionalism.

The assignment of heroism, exactly like the literary construct, might have more to do with the assignment of villainy than the actual honoring of “heroes.” Every hero needs a villain. If the only heroes are armed men fighting the country’s wars on drugs and wars in the Middle East, America’s only villains are criminals and terrorists. If servants of the poor, sick and oppressed are the heroes, then the villains are those who oppress, profit from inequality and poverty, and neglect the sick. If that is the real battle of heroism versus villainy, everyone is implicated, and everyone has a far greater role than repeating slogans, tying ribbons and placing stickers on bumpers.

David Masciotra is the author of Mellencamp: American Troubadour (forthcoming, University Press of Kentucky). He writes regularly for the Daily Beast and Splice Today. For more information visit www.davidmasciotra.com.

Happy New Year

"Some Assembly Required" is worth quoting at length today:

New Year's Day is an arbitrary and mostly fictional marker. It is common to pretend that some clear divisor has been set between what was and what will be. But that is a fiction mainly used to peddle prognostications that turn out to be as false as the occasion. 
  For my part, I believe that more of the same will predominate, as always. History creeps in when we're not looking. We're told that the good times will continue, but most Americans won't know what the pundits are talking about. If times are so good, why are the majority of Americans worse off? The reality is that there has been little if any recovery over the last four years. Or eight, to give Obama his due.
More of the same: the global economy will not seize up suddenly and leave us all to starve in the dark, but it won't change much for the better, either. Wars and atrocities and inequality and rape and torture will all go on, and go on being ignored. So will the hollowing out of the American middle class, as what once were government prerogatives of a self-governing people continue to be treatied away to international corporations. 
  Police will continue their extra-juridical execution of lower caste young men and the streets will pulse with ineffective protests – because protesting in the streets will not change the balance of power. Dying in the streets in large numbers might, but not any time soon.
The number of Americans trying to survive without a job will continue to increase, the effective standard of living for most of the population will continue to decline. The dollar is not going away and neither is the euro; high priced oil will return as fracking starts to subside, and climate change will continue to be ignored as we not-so-slowly burn our way to oblivion. The world’s finite supplies of petroleum, along with most other resources on which our extractive civilization depends, will continue depleting while we continue our blind faith in forever.

More of the same. We'll call it progress.

The Eternal Divide: A Broken Record

Some things I encounter have to be put out there in toto, or much of the point is lost. When once the country rolls over and dies because of the disparity of wealth, such pieces as this will seem prescient. Every single one of these points is telling (not to mention outrageous), but I'm absolutely convinced that no one in this country is the least bit concerned. We're more intent on fiddling while the country falls down about our ears.

 

This article--and it's not included in its entirety--appeared on the Alternet blog. It's just variation on a theme that's been echoing through the nation's consciousness for several years now. But it doesn't seem to be striking any chords.

 A recent posting detailed how upper middle class Americans are rapidly losing ground to the one-percenters who averaged $5 million in wealth gains over just three years. It also noted that the global 1% has increased their wealth from $100 trillion to $127 trillion in just three years.

The information came from the Credit Suisse 2014 Global Wealth Databook (GWD), which goes on to reveal much more about the disappearing middle class.

1. Each Year Since the Recession, America's Richest 1% Have Made More Than the Cost of All U.S. Social Programs

In effect, a reverse transfer from the poor to the rich. Even as conservatives blame Social Security for being too costly.

Much of the 1% wealth just sits there, accumulating more wealth. The numbers are nearly unfathomable. Depending on the estimate, the 1% took in anywhere from $2.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion per year. (All numeric analysis is detailed here.)

Even the smaller estimate of $2.3 trillion per year is more than the budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), Medicaid ($304 billion), and the entire safety net ($286 billion for SNAP, WIC [Women, Infants, Children], Child Nutrition, Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Housing).

2. Almost None of the New 1% Wealth Led To Innovation and Jobs

In 2005, for every $1 of financial wealth there was 66 cents of non-financial (home) wealth. Ten years later, for every $1 of financial wealth there was just 43 cents of non-financial (home) wealth.

What happens to all this financial wealth?

Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate. Business startup costs made up less than 1% of the investments of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. They come from the middle class.

On the corporate side, stock buybacks are employed to enrich executives rather than to invest in new technologies. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks, but in recent years they've been spending up to 95 percent of their profits on buybacks and dividends.

3. Just 47 Wealthy Americans Own More Than Half of the U.S. Population

Oxfam reported that just 85 people own as much as half the world. Here in the U.S., with nearly a third of the world's wealth, just 47 individuals own more than all 160 million people (about 60 million households) below the median wealth level of about $53,000.

4. The Upper Middle Class of America Owns a Smaller Percentage of Wealth Than the Corresponding Groups in All Major Nations Except Russia and Indonesia.

The upper middle class in the U.S., defined as everyone in the top half below the richest 20%, owns 11.9 percent of the wealth. Indonesia at 10.5 percent and Russia at 7.5 percent are worse off, but in all other nations the corresponding upper middle classes own 12 to 27 percent of the wealth.

America's bottom half compares even less favorably to the world: dead last, with just 1.3 percent of national wealth. Only Russia comes close to that dismal share, at 1.9 percent. The bottom half in all other nations own 2.6 to 10.2 percent of the wealth.

5. Ten Percent of the World's Total Wealth Was Taken by the Global 1% in the Past Three Years

As in the U.S., the middle class is disappearing at the global level. An incredible one of every ten dollars of global wealth was transferred to the elite 1% in just three years. A level of inequality deemed unsustainable three years ago has gotten even worse.

 This is the bad news, and it's surely bad enough, but if you continue to read the article, it goes on to suggest that a so-called transaction tax could be used to get the richest to contribute their fair share towards the cost of everything. They don't pay anywhere near that now, you can be sure.

Map of World Wealth

Where the Fat Cats Are

The map of world wealth

This is a map of the world weighted not by land mass or navigation lines but around how much wealth each country has. As you can see, North America and Western Europe balloon to enormous proportions — even after adjusting for purchasing power, 46 percent of global wealth in 2002 was in their hands. The horror of this map is the shrunken husk of Africa. That’s a lot of people living with very little.

The National Pastime

And no I don't mean baseball, even though we're in the midst of what might be a real interesting World Series. I mean the national pastime of pretending that college athletics is not riddled with fraud and cloaked with lies from the top of its (mostly empty) head to the soles of its $300 sneakers/cleats/whatever footwear. This is all over the news today:  

Tarred Heels: For 18 years athletes at the University of North Carolina have been guided into classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies which do not meet, have no professors, and give A's and B's to everyone, especially football and basketball players. The theory is that no one in the University's administration knew this was happening, and no one above the rank of water-boy in the Athletic department had a clue either.

OK, so a prestigious university--it was invariably described on TV news as one of the great paragons of learning in the US--has been cheating by falsifying the academic attainments of its athletes at least since 1993. So what else is new? Can you tell me with a straight face that you think the majority of college athletes are "student athletes"? As in, working for a degree while they play sports? Can you honestly believe that these coddled providers of unholy amounts of revenue for their schools are not in some privileged and special category when it comes to anything academic, such as classes, tests, grades, and GPA? You think UNC is the only place something like this is going on? And that everyone in university administration or with the least bit of connection to the athletic departments in all these schools doesn't know what's going on? [Insert audible derisive scoff here.]

The thing that gets me is, this fiction that these largely underprivileged kids are "in school" while they're playing football or basketball and probably other things too (but the big money-makers are the ones named) is embraced (I cannot believe it's believed) by millions and millions of people. Its one of the great lies that's gained national assent and it takes its dishonorable place daily among a number of other lamentable nationwide delusions.

We are a doomed people.       

Our Biggest Public Program

The United States’ biggest public program of the past 75 years, now outstripping the rest of the world combined, is war preparations. The routine “base” military spending, not counting spending on particular wars, is at least 10 times the war spending, or enough to totally transform the world for the better. Instead it’s used to kill huge numbers of people, to make the United States less safe, and to prepare for wars that are — without exception — lost disastrously. Since the justification of the Soviet Union vanished, U.S. militarism has only increased. Its enemies are small, yet it does its best to enlarge them. U.S. Special Operations forces are actively, if “secretly,” engaged in war or war preparations in over two-thirds of the nations on earth. U.S. troops are openly stationed in 90 percent of the nations on earth, and 100 percent of the oceans. A majority of the people in most nations on earth consider the United States the greatest threat to world peace. Source

 The cost of this madness is beyond astronomical; it's almost beyond calculation. We had a presentation in church this morning about the numbers of LGBT kids who are on the streets homeless because they have been thrown out of their homes by their parents. And how the Congress of the United States is cutting to the bone federal funds for providing housing and care for the homeless. We are now engaged in yet another war in the Middle East that's going to suck more of our fast-diminishing sustenance from us for who knows how many years? I cannot for the life of me understand what the American people are thinking about allowing their government to so misuse the citizenry of this country, who have desperate life-threatening needs being ignored so we can play emperor of the world. Take that back: I think if I try real hard, I can understand how the people have been duped into supporting our imperialism. What I cannot understand is how long it is taking the country to get wise to being consistently violated by the mad rapists in the Pentagon and their pimps in the Congress and the Executive department.  

Cowardly Dissimulating Midgets

The wonderful phrase is James Kuntsler's from his angry blog this week entitled "Barbarism vs Stupidism" which begins thus: "In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today." Notice, he tells us, how the crisis in Ukraine has disappeared from the news and front pages. Why? Because:

The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO — and away from the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union — turned an “intelligence” fiasco into a strategic humiliation for the Obama White House. . . . So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.

And this before he sinks his teeth into the incredibly insane policy we've just initiated in Syria.

Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle. . . .

We’ll look back on these weirdly placid years after the 2008 train wreck with amazement. These are the rudderless years of no leadership, of cowardly dissimulating midgets. A people can only take so much of that.  

Although I agree almost totally with Kuntsler, particularly in his disgust for the imbecility that passes for leadership of this country, I'm not sure I agree that the NLF-saturated, smug, overfed gullible idiots who allow their government get away with so many monstrous lies and to perpetrate an unending stream of outrages on common sense without taking to the streets in dudgeon right now will one day be stirred enough to register some massive protest to these crimes. I agree with the general proposition that people can only take so much, but don't you see? We're past the point of doing anything about it. We've let things go too far to get anything changed without a blood bath ensuing. We'll be gunned down like dogs if the national security state decides that we finally get it. And half of us, at least, will be right there with the storm troopers applauding the final crushing of American constitutional democracy, not that we're not well on the road already.

Gunning 'Em Down

"313 is not my lucky number."

I'm recently involved in an email conversation with a dear friend who thinks we should just "wait" before we come to any conclusions about what happened in Ferguson, MO. I politely demurred. I don't think there's any question about the broad outline of the story: a cop shot an unarmed black teen (Michael Brown) to death. How exactly did it happen? Some witnesses say the guy had his hands up and was basically in a submissive position; others disagree. In fact, there are several versions. You can find a video of what the victim's friend, who was with him during the incident, said here and here. Both of these accounts are in sync. Does this guy look like he's making it up as he goes along? Fabricating a story because he and his friend were actually the villains of this piece? Or does it sound like a guy who's just seen his friend shot down and was scared shitless himself? I suppose we're going to get several different stories on this whenever the "investigation" of the incident gets finished. (I've read that there are going to be at least three investigations, including one by the Justice Dept.) But we now do know that this one cop, Darren Wilson, shot the guy six times, twice in the head. Something's not right here.

I'm not prejudging--or am I?--when I observe that cops shooting and killing young black men are hardly a rarity in the Land of the Free, which is why I don't see that "waiting" for a answer is really going to change much of anything. This article, and accompanying data, contends that a black man is shot by police or vigilantes once every 28 hours in this country. That's 313 in the year 2012. It would repay your glancing at it. The numbers are convincing. And even if it's only half-true, that's still a dead black man at the hands of cops three times a week. Does that sound like we don't have a problem?

Here's what Some Assembly Required has to say, a different tack:

Inquiring Mind: What makes you think that the clash between the poor and the police in St. Louis is about race, rather than the continuing economic slavery the descendants of slaves have been kept in for 125 years? How long before the 50 million Americans who are poor realize that being poor gives them more in common than the shades of their skin divide them, that being poor is as big a crime as being black? That united they would be unstoppable? Maybe it starts in the #QuickTrip People's Park.

And that's a good argument too, except the "descendants of slaves" are all African-Americans, and the institution they descended from in America was strictly race-based.

Bubble, Bubble. There's Going to be Trouble

I have been documenting police brutality and general savagery for some time. (Just click on "cops" in "Labels" over there on the right for a sampling.) The continuing crisis in Ferguson, MO, in the wake of yet another police killing of an unarmed black person, has not been far from the thoughts of anybody who's concerned with the fate of our country, not to mention the individual fates of people we hold dear like our children and grandchildren. And today I'm struck by a conversation Chris Hedges had with Lawrence Hamm, a longtime community organizer and chairman of the People's Organization for Progress, based in Newark. Their topic was Ferguson and here's part of what Hamm had to say:

The pendulum swung far to the right after 9/11. Now it is swinging back. Fear and paralysis gripped the country after 9/11 and the creation of our authoritarian police state. We are overcoming this fear. The rebellion in Ferguson was not planned. It was spontaneous. People said, ‘Enough.’ They struck out in the only way they knew how. All the other ways—and I have no doubt that the people in Ferguson and St. Louis, as we have, marched peacefully, sent letters and went to city council meetings to protest police violence—have proved ineffective. We will see other incidents like this one, but because of demographic changes these rebellions will occur in places that did not rebel previously.

All I can say is "yep." Think about those frantic years after 9/11. We got involved in two wars, we as a people authorized extraordinary rendition, torture, arrest and holding people with no charges, greatly expanded powers to national intelligence agencies, Gitmo, drone killings of American citizens. The list goes on. But all the while something else really sinister was happening: the militarization of police forces all across the country. Have you checked out the so-called "police" on TV in action in Ferguson? They look like the 82nd Airborne, complete with automatic weapons and armored cars.

This is the state we're in today. Doesn't make any difference where you are in the country. Your police force has a SWAT team, or several, and are armed to the teeth against . . . who? Against you, ordinary citizen, that's who.

Watch this video of one of John Oliver's monologs. Humor does a fine job of skewering the madness that's overtaken police forces all over the country.

Variations on a Theme

Yes, I know, you get tired of the same old song, but two items from today's "Some Assembly Required" blog naturally caught my attention. Both of these observations were, I'm sure, prompted by the police circus ongoing in Ferguson, MO, where the suburb of St. Louis is still in turmoil over shooting of an unarmed black teen by a policeman. All indications at this stage are that the shooting was totally unjustified. 

District Nine: Things have gotten so bad in our cities that the Palestinians are giving our citizens tips on how to handle tear gas as they confront militarized robo-cop wannabes with armored cars, automatic weapons and not the faintest idea how to behave. The American police assault on our citizenry is so bad that foreign nations warn their citizens to avoid certain US cities – including St. Louis. Despite the knee-jerk reaction against the militarization of the police, they've got the weapons and they are going to keep them. And keep using them. 

Roll Call: In NM, a sherriff with “misconduct” issues teamed up with his son to pistol-whip a motorist. In Utah, cops gunned down a young man because he couldn't hear them over the music from his headphones. In San Jose, the cops mistook a drill for a gun and killed the woman who was carrying it, and in AZ, they shot a lady who was armed with a hammer. In NY, the Democratic candidate for governor got off easy – he was only arrested for “menacing” police officers with an unloaded umbrella. In San Bernardino. Cops tasered a man to death for riding a bicycle. For two days, cops in NO neglected to admit they'd shot a man in the head during a routine traffic stop. In VA, a sheriff's deputy mistook his daughter for an intruder and shot her. In SC the cops showed exemplary restraint and managed to arrest a woman for swearing in public without shooting, beating, choking or gassing her.

Israel's Best Friend

That would be us, as in US. Israel would have a far tougher time throwing its weight around without Uncle Sugar. Now it turns out we're doing a lot more than the known $3.5 billion we subsidize their relentless oppression of the Palestinian people. Yet more revelations from the Snowden papers have made clear the extent of our complicity with the Middle East's longest-standing mess.

The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S. and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza.

Over the last decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.

The relationship has, on at least one occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets.

The new documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters.  Source

 I cannot help but think that if the American people really understood the ramifications of the day-to-day skullduggery, crime, and mayhem their tax dollars are paying for, they would rise up in righteous indignation.

But remember, I am unfortunately afflicted with flights of fantasy.

Not News Anymore

The cops have shot and killed another innocent black person. Here's the story. And another. This is getting to be so commonplace in our culture that it barely causes a blip on the radar any longer. I'm sure I'm wrong, but it happens so frequently that it seems that cops killing an innocent African American has become a weekly event. I find myself wondering how the African American community continues to live with this sort of thing going on year after year for decades. "Killed by police while being black" is no clever flippant explanation . . . if you happen to be young, male, and black just about anywhere in America.

John Crawford 

The latest outrage happened in a Wal-mart store in Beavercreek, Ohio. John Crawford, a 22-year old African-American was in the store on his cell phone with LeeCee Johnson, the mother of his two children, ages 4 months and a year old. (Who is pregnant with their third child.) Crawford had been playing video games in another part of the store, and he had apparently wandered over to the toy section where he picked up a bb-gun the store sells and was walking around the store with it.The last words she heard him say were: "It's not real." Then a bunch of shots and "Get on the ground," from the cops. But Crawford was already on the ground shot to death. According to witnesses, from the time Crawford first encountered the police to the shots 10 seconds elapsed.

Apparently, an ex-Marine in the store at the time, called 911, which in turn summoned the Beavercreek officers. Read the first story cited above for a reporter's skepticism about the semi-official version of the story. Including the latest announcement that investigation of the shooting will not be concluded for "months." He wants to know why. Good question.

Stupid America, Episode 6,451

Why is this man smiling? At the absurdity of it all?

Are you ready for this? Some guy in Utah--the lucky state this time because I can think of about 40 more states at least where this could have happened, Oklahoma not the least of them. Why? Because our stupidity or ignorance, if I wanted to be kinder, is nationwide. It knows no boundaries. (I suspect my friend Bob, who lives in Utah would disagree. When I told him about this, he already knew and informed me that the story had gone viral.) Anyway some guy in Utah who teaches at an English as second language school lost his job because he blogged about homophones. (Check this story out.) Yes, you read that right. And moreover, the reason you think this cost him his job is also correct.

Tim Torkildson told the Salt Lake Tribune that shortly after his lesson went up, Nomen Global Language Center owner Clarke Woodger fired him, complaining "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."

"I had to look up the word" Woodger said, according to the account Torkildson published on his personal blog, "because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. We don't teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students, and it's extremely inappropriate. Can you have your desk cleaned out by eleven this morning? I'll have your check ready."

It seems too ridiculous to believe, but Torkildson's former employer confirmed the incident of homophonia actually happened.

"People at this level of English," Woodger told the Tribune, "may see the 'homo' side and think it has something to do with gay sex."

What more is there to say? This guy still got fired. Even a dictionary couldn't save him.

 

The Intercept

For those of you who share my interest in the secret and often nefarious doings of our security and defense apparatus, I would commend to your attention the establishment of a new online publication called "The Intercept." I've long been a reader of Glenn Greenwald, most lately (in)famous for being instrumental in breaking the Edward Snowden story that informed the world the extent to which the U.S. national security agency (NSA) is spying on just about everybody in the world including us millions of once-unsuspecting (but now fully aware) Americans. Who thought the laws protected them from domestic spying and also prevented the NSA and other arms of the government from snooping into their affairs. The amazing thing is that even after the revelations of widespread NSA misconduct, a great many Americans aren't upset by it. It's yet another measure of our ignorance.

Here's an edited discussion of The Intercept's goals and purpose from its website. The emphasis in the paragraphs is mine.

This looks like something all friends of civil liberties ought to be jumping on.

About The Intercept

The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media, was created by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill. It has a two-fold mission: one short-term, the other long-term.

Our short-term mission is to provide a platform to report on the documents previously provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. . . . Our NSA coverage will be comprehensive, innovative and multi-faceted. We have a team of experienced editors and journalists devoted to the story. We will use all forms of digital media for our reporting. In addition, we will publish primary source documents on which our reporting is based. We will also invite outside experts with area knowledge to contribute to our reporting, and provide a platform for commentary and reader engagement.

Our long-term mission is to produce fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues. The editorial independence of our journalists will be guaranteed. They will be encouraged to pursue their passions, cultivate a unique voice, and publish stories without regard to whom they might anger or alienate. We believe the prime value of journalism is its power to impose transparency, and thus accountability, on the most powerful governmental and corporate bodies, and our journalists will be provided the full resources and support required to do this.

While our initial focus will be the critical work surrounding the NSA story, we are excited by the opportunity to grow with our readers into the broader and more comprehensive news outlet that the The Intercept will become.

Vatican North

The UK is being rocked by a pedophile scandal of mammoth proportions and (of course) official complicity in covering up the crimes of highly placed individuals in British society and government. Here's a summary of events in the probe until now. Susan asked me if I had heard about this a couple of days ago. I had, but just barely. My guess is we're going to be hearing a lot more about this appalling business in the days ahead.

Vatican North: The UK establishment is apparently home to as many, if not more, pedophiles than the Roman Catholic Church, with an appalling concentration in Whitehall. The practice, concealed since the Thatcher government if not before, has been at best passively condoned by politicians and senior government officials. And the denial continues, with over 100 child abuse investigative files being 'missing from official records.' The current Education Secretary, continuing decades of cover ups, insists there is no need for a public inquiry into the cover-up or the crimes – especially in that investigation would show that Madame Thatcher's administration actively hid the crimes of MPs and peers. According to a former UK health minister, as early as 1992, government investigators were aware that “powerful people” used government run children's homes as a “supply line” for their victims.

Random Stories

With the subtitle: Mostly bad news. The following headlines appeared in today's USA Today.

• Economy shows new signs of weakness -- Well, for the regular people,the 99 percent of us who don't inhabit the realms of unreality where there is no such thing as not enough money to do any damn thing you want, this is not a great surprise. In fact, I would argue that the so-called "recovery" has not arrived for most of those millions brought low by the recession. The real question is whether it ever will.
• Police: Boy's parents researched hot-car deaths -- A mom and dad in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, did some Internet research on child deaths inside of vehicles and the temperatures required for that to happen. Then the dad drives their 22-month old toddler to his job and leaves him locked in the SUV for 7 hours. The little boy died of hypothermia. The father claimed he "forgot" the kid was in the car. I don't know if there is a hell, but there ought to be. With a special place for people like this. 
• Critical need for primary care providers -- Bottom line is U.S. because of population growth, more aging people, and the Affordable Care Act is expected to need 52,000 more primary care physicians by 2025 and we're going to fall far short. There are a number of issues including funding for medical residencies, the rising cost of med school, more lucrative specialty care fields, and the scope of practice laws (states have been slow in allowing PAs and nurse practitioners to take over services traditionally provided by physicians.) I think the only thing this country is going to have more of by 2025 is idiots and poor people. Everything else, we're going to fall short.
• Ebola crisis now deadliest ever -- When does good news come out of Africa? The crisis in western Africa is the worst ever and it's threatening to spread. 400 dead already. This Ebola virus is deadly. Causes high fever, vomiting, muscle pain, diarrhea and can lead to massive internal bleeding and organ failure. It kills 90 percent of its victims. It's spread by simple contact with victim's (human or animal) fluids, tissues, or blood. Traditional African burial rituals, suspicion of foreign doctors, and just plain ole ignorance are not helping in the fight.
• Iraqi insurgents announce new Islamic state -- This Al-qaeda breakaway bunch (ISIL--Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant--they left because Al-qaeda wasn't radical enough) has overrun parts of Syria and northern Iraq. They say they are now a new Islamic caliphate. I guess we'll have to see, but another piece on the editorial page that asks "If the U.S. is going to re-engage, it should do so with the means to win." sends chills up my spine. Can anyone in their right mind think what we should do is get entangled in that shit again?

The Horror of It All

As the World Turns: A woman has been stoned to death by her family in front of a Pakistani high court for marrying the man she loves. At least it wasn't the woman she loved. A Sudanese woman who was found guilty of marrying her Christian lover has given birth in jail. She will now suffer 100 lashes and then hanged. (source)

The woman in Pakistan was 25 years old. Her crime was going against the wishes of her family. Police watched her murdered and did nothing. The woman's father has no regrets about participating in the murder of his daughter. And they tell me this all has something to do with the will of Allah.

Two Americas

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ cover story at The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” published last night — and the subject of this week’s Moyers & Company interview — shows how dramatically the legacy of slavery and centuries of legalized and institutionalized racism have held back our country’s African-American population. In 2014, there still very much exists what in 1967 Martin Luther King described as “two Americas,” one “overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity,” the other tainted by “a daily ugliness … that constantly transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.”

This source of the quotation above and of the charts below makes the point that I've always considered obvious. That is, that the notion that anything resembling racial equality in America actually exists is probably our country's number one myth and self delusion. There has never been racial equality in this country, and that of course includes the time before we even were a country. Next year will mark the 150th anniversary of passage of the 13th amendment, the one that banned chattel slavery. 150 years in terms of human history is nothing. This country lives with the legacy of what was done to the African American people for centuries. The damage has never been repaired, and anyone who thinks it has is fooling themselves. Alas, that includes millions upon millions of white Americans right now.

(After diligently trying to embed the charts I wanted you to see, I failed. So I have pasted in links to them here and here. Of course, you can see all eight of them in the link "source" above.)

Look What $1 Trillion Will Buy

Did you know that the president's 2015 budget request for all national security-related programs amounts to over $1 trillion? Yes, you are reading that correctly. It's not a misprint. Before going any further, just mull that number for a moment. Do you know how many starving people that could feed for two or three years? how many schools, bridges, highways, water treatment plants, wind and solar farms, light rail systems, and on and on could be built with this amount of money? But what are we going to buy with this? We're going to buy so-called "national security."

I'm not even going to go into my usual rant about how much of this is wasted, pissed away every year on everything from boondoggles for the brass, to unneeded weapons systems, to recruiting advertising, to special forces operators in roughly 175 countries in the world, to 12 battle carrier groups for the Navy, and so forth, etc., etc., etc. No, this time I'm going to just bewail how huge the number is. Monstrous in every way.

The military's friends and shills in Congress are whining that even this outrageous budget is not enough. Don't forget that the Republicans managed to exempt the DoD from the crippling budget sequester that every other department of government is bearing.

Read this piece "An Inadequate Defense Budget? Compared to Whom? Compared to When?" You know the answers to the questions . . . but it's laid out pretty neatly here.

The relationship of US defense spending to that of presumed threat nations and the girth of contemporary defense spending compared to a time of greater threat does not call into question the adequacy of the size of today's US defense budget; it calls into question the competence of current US political and military leadership, both in the Pentagon and in Congress.