VT Shooter: 'Libertarians Want Trans Furrys To Be Able To Protect Their Cannabis Farms With Unregistered Machine Guns'

It appears I was misled about the identity of the Vermont man who shot and injured three Palestinian college students over the weekend. The source where I found a photo of the arrestee has now swapped the soldier photo without acknowledging it, replacing it with the one above which was released by the Burlington police. And, while it's possible the two could be the same Jason J. Eaton, it seems unlikely.

The actual shooter appears to be a middle aged white male who was living with mental illness and guns. And in his long and rather odd resume, military service doesn't appear. So I apologize for misleading readers.

What did I find odd? Per the Daily Beast:

According to the resume, Eaton was a field instructor for the McCall Outdoor Science School in Idaho, where he taught science to 5th and 6th graders for two months in 2005. A year later, he apparently became an investment adviser representative, where he managed about 100 clients and $7 million in assets.

I once taught science to 5th graders. No one at the time suggested that this qualified me to manage investments in the realm of $7 million.

Another oddity as reported by the BBC among others is that Eaton's Twitter account had a banner reading: "Libertarians want trans furrys to be able to protect their cannabis farms with unregistered machine guns." This strikes me as a slam on Libertarians, or a lame attempt at humor, or a bit of both. It hints at the way the Libertarian Party in northern New England competes with the Republican Party for members.

AG Merrick Garland's Justice Department will be deciding whether to prosecute a hate crime on top of second-degree murder charges. Eaton has already pleaded "not guilty" and presumably will pursue a "lone wolf" mental illness defense. 

I'm left with two thoughts:

1) White middle aged men who go on a rampage shooting strangers often appear lonely and isolated, even within the structure of their own families. Palestinian martyrs who are shot by strangers often appear as deeply connected to their extended families, and to their communities. 

2) Chris Hedges has written about the tendency in decaying empires for crisis cults to spring up. Eaton appears to have dabbled at the edges of some of these, many with aspects of dog whistle antisemitism (mostly of the "Jewish money controls the world" variety). 

How ironic that he shot three men who are part of the struggle against the Zionist occupation of Palestine. One, Hasham Awartani, remains in critical condition with injuries to his spine and hand. Kinnan Abdalhamid's uncle revealed that the family feels betrayed for encouraging that young man to attend college in the U.S. believing it would be safer than continuing to live in the occupied West Bank. Along with their friend Tahseen Ahmad, the students were shot on their way to Awartani's grandmother's house returning from a bowling birthday party for his 8 year old cousins. Hard to get more wholesome than that.

In so many ways, the U.S. empire's long reign of terror in the rest of the world is coming home to roost. People of color would likely say, when has it not been roosting at home? And I can't disagree with that.

Around One-Third Of Male Mass Shooters Are U.S. Military Veterans

Warning: this post contains some sarcasm about racism and gun culture in the U.S. See if you can spot it.

I know you will all be terribly shocked to learn that the person pictured above, Jason J. Eaton, 48, of Burlington, is under arrest for the shooting of three Palestinian college students over the weekend. Because we never thought the shooter would be a white middle aged male with military training on Islamophobia plus how to use guns to kill and injure people.

One of those shot had a bullet lodged in his spine and his condition remains critical.

https://twitter.com/Fahad_Heaven/status/1729089965710282908

Did you know that around a third of all mass shooters in the U.S. were trained by the military? David Swanson lays out his research on this here. And for context adds:

In the United States, only a very small percentage of men under 60 are military veterans.

In the United States, at least 31% of male mass shooters under 60 (which is almost all mass shooters) are military veterans.

Technically this was not a mass shooting (less than four people shot) but very likely a hate crime i.e. the shooter was motivated by hatred of Palestinians or Arabs in general and was triggered by their attire and spoken language. 

Now where would Jason J. Eaton have learned to think like that?

As we in the U.S. know well, only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun.

However, these two U.S. citizens of Palestinian origin (plus a green card holder i.e. legal resident) don't appear to have been armed with guns. Were they good guys? They were on their way to have dinner at Awartani's grandmother's house. Maybe she can shed some light on their character once she's moved past the shock and trauma of her grandson and his friends being gunned down for existing.

Here's the joint statement issued by their families. Do they sound like bad guys to you?

https://twitter.com/theIMEU/status/1728849328515764467

Three College Students Shot In Vermont Wearing Kuffiyeh And Speaking Arabic

It's seemed like the U.S. government-aligned media is doing all it can to bring on civil war. I'm sure it's seen as preferable to the uprising of the 99% that we so desperately need. 

But I didn't expect that the issue we'd fall out about would be the empire's evil doings in Palestine. More and more violent Zionism is emerging here in the U.S. both in word and in deed. One of the men shot for speaking Arabic and wearing a kuffiyeh has a bullet lodged in his spine, and the gunman is still at large.

With each passing day, though, the split between the generations is deepening over support for or resistance to Israel's genocide in Gaza. 

It isn't a red-blue split or even a (fake) left-right split. 

It's not driven by race or by socio economic status either. 

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone says, Israel doesn't have a Gen Z problem, they have a morality problem. And she theorizes that younger people have not scarred their consciences with so many compromises and looking away from things that make them morally queasy. Thus, they are better equipped to recognize genocide when they see it.

A common sign in Vermont reads: this brave little state says no to hate. Does it, though?

Burlington, Vermont is the stomping grounds of Senator Bernie Sanders, a big supporter of genocide as it turns out. He was once its mayor. He owns a fancy house on the shore of Lake Champlain. It's noon the next day after the shooting and he has yet to 1) condemn this hate crime in his backyard or for that matter 2) condemn the genocide in Gaza.

Honestly, I personally couldn't care less what Bernie says or doesn't say. It's been clear that he's a faithful Democrat Party apparatchik for years now. But you wouldn't believe how many people still see him as some kind of a moral leader.

I don't want to see civil war in any country including my own. But it may turn out to be the most effective way of bringing the evil empire to its conclusion sooner rather than later.

For ways to support the shooting victims who are still in hospital maybe call the Burlington Police 802-658-2704 or the mayor 802-865-7272   mayor@burlingtonvt and/or the Vermont State Police 802-224-8727 to say: 

the whole world is watching while you fail to find the shooter targeting Arab young men. 

What Will Be The Mood Killer At Your Thanksgiving?

What will be the mood killer at your Thanksgiving table this year?

Will someone acknowledge that the myth of this colonial holiday is based on attempted genocide against the indigenous people of this continent? And that many of them hold a National Day of Mourning on this occasion?

Will someone else bring up the connection to the settler colonial project in Palestine and the ongoing attempted genocide in Gaza?

https://youtu.be/GJps2koIFNM?si=HtSWdqdiY7uHVjyI

Will the generations split because young people get it about Israel's long oppression of the indigenous people of Palestine while older people don't?

Will anyone revive last year's argument over the now nearly defunct proxy war in Ukraine which failed to defeat or even weaken Russia militarily or economically despite the U.S. alone spending nearly a trillion dollars?

Put another way, will the people with stock portfolios and pension funds invested in corporations who profit from building weapons that slaughter civilians stand with humanity or attend to their bottom line?

Will the generations who were heavily indoctrinated to support Israel right or wrong listen to Gen Z rising up and rejecting white supremacy and racially motivated violence against Palestinians?

Maybe you just wanted to have a harvest feast with family and friends with no lies about the history of the holiday and no talk of current events.

https://twitter.com/jesse_jett/status/1727413864625823859

Because silence in the face of genocide is easier; it doesn't run the risk of offending anybody and is palatable to most. But do you want the children in your family to grow up thinking that the thing to do when a genocide is unfolding is...freeze? Look the other way and say to yourself or to anyone who asks, I see nothing.

This count was current as of Nov 7 but by now the number of children killed exceeds 5,000 -- and it does not even include the many children whose bodies are still trapped under the rubble from Israel's carpet bombing of Gaza. 

Or maybe you'll eat some food, have some real talk, and then head out the next day to help shut it down for Palestine?

Here's a website where you can find a national list of Black Friday BDS events.

In Maine where I'm located on unceded Wabanaki land:

Shut It Down For Palestine Roundup

I was able to attend two of the many, many actions in solidarity with Palestine in my state this week.

On Friday evening I joined 150 at a demonstration held outside the state capitol building fence, sponsored by the newly minted Maine Coalition for Palestine (which I've now joined). Truly excellent speeches by well-informed activists were interspersed with chants like "Free, free Palestine" and a whole lot of honking from passing motorists. The crowd assembled was quite different from the group I stood with about a month ago at a same time, same place demo. Not nearly as many people of color or Arabic-speaking college students this time. Maybe they have peeled off to join demos nearer to them in our sprawling, sparsely populated state? The crowd last Friday had more oldsters but was predominately white 20 and 30 somethings from coalition organizations like the PSL* and Student for Justice in Palestine.

One of my old friends who has done social work with children in Palestine told another friend who was there of her desire to get arrested opposing Israel's genocide, and to spend Christmas Day in jail. We'll see where that goes.

All Topsham Nov 18 photos by Mary Beth Sullivan

On Saturday we had our regular monthly antiwar meetup with a statewide coalition that now includes the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), *Party for Socialism & Liberation Maine, Libertarian Party of Maine, People’s Party of Maine, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Veterans for Peace - National, and United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). 

We began the monthly event over a year ago with a focus on objecting to funding a proxy war on Russia, but soon expanded to include a robust set of demands mostly borrowed from UNAC.

I'm glad we did that and especially that we held on to the demand about Israel (when I was on the Jimmy Dore Show in April he read out our demands and commented, "Strong words!" about that one). 

https://youtu.be/v3NQmgnp-EM?si=SNeQSSAfZnNqNyjL&t=98

I'm glad because our monthly gathering on Saturday had clearly morphed into a Palestine solidarity demonstration with flags, kufiyahs, and messaging around stopping the genocide in Gaza. There were 30 of us if you count Beans the dog, who is a regular, and ages ranged from 90+ years to 17 months. Our chanting wasn't as loud as the Augusta group's but it was just as passionate. With an anti-imperialist perspective, it's possible to oppose all the empire's wars without the contradictions that the two corporate parties run into when they brand each war as D or R depending on who's in the White House.

Shared on @pslmaine's Insta feed with other photos from Nov 17 Shut it down event in Augusta

One of the best signs I saw in Augusta called out all of Maine's congressional delegation which includes two Democrats (Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree), a Republican (Susan Collins), and an Independent (Angus King). All are supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza with our tax dollars and Mainers are pissed. All have failed both at representing their constituents and at being decent human beings.

Stay tuned for lots more actions in the days to come!

Can't get out to a demo? Maybe do some boycotting of these brands doing business with Israeli occupiers.

Film Review: WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW

Last night I attended a screening of the veterans' documentary WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW. After garnering the audience favorite award at last summer's Maine International Film Festival the film attracted sponsors including peace organizations I belong to that worked to bring the film to more audiences here in Maine. Attendance at the November 13 screening in Brunswick was sparse -- about 20 people -- but an engaging discussion after the film was facilitated by veterans' counselor Robyn Belcher.

Archival footage of the wars the U.S. waged in Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11 was interspersed with contemporary interviews of multiple veterans of those wars. Organized loosely by chronology of the enlistees' journeys from private citizens to imperial cannon fodder, the narrative arrived at moral injury -- a final resting place where one veteran predicted he will still be dwelling decades from now.

The film's theme is futility and the sensation that all the limbs and lives lost, plus the civilians terrorized or slaughtered, was for nothing. Several clips of a succession of U.S. presidents speaking conveyed the lies that combat veterans now believe they were told in the course of their enlistment. 

This photo and the one at the top are stills from the film's website.

There was no clear mission and, once in country, soldiers literally drove around in circles waiting for their turn to be blasted by an IED. They arrested the wrong men, they shot blindly into crowds of civilians, and in their view absolutely nothing was gained.

Ostensible reasons for being there i.e. bringing "democracy" or advancing the rights of women were quickly exposed as fraudulent. Insurgents had the support and loyalty of the people, and woe betide those who threw in with the occupying forces as interpreters only to be cast aside as the U.S. military departed. These acts of disloyalty contributed to the moral suffering described by veterans, and to the moral decay in evidence as soldiers whoop and congratulate themselves on shooting down from helicopters onto unarmed civilians.

U.S. soldier Steven Green hung himself in prison after being among a group of soldiers convicted of rape and murder committed in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq in 2006.  Photograph: AP

The film has a tight focus but I thought there were some glaring omissions in the moral injury department. No discussion of rape except in the context of Afghan warlords and their exploitation of boys? Really? Who can forget the gang-rape and murder of 14 year old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi by U.S. Army soldiers who then killed her entire family in order to eliminate the witnesses. 

And why was there no discussion of opium production in Afghanistan used to fund the war while driving an opioid epidemic in the West until the Taliban again eradicated it after the occupiers departed? Plenty of veterans have died of suicide by overdose in the intervening years.

Suicide was touched on as it's well known that more active duty soldiers die in "accidents" or by their own hand than die from enemy fire. Soldiers described feeling betrayed by their leaders and demoralized by the things they both saw and did while deployed, a potent combination that eroded their will to stay alive.

Most of the audience discussion focused on damaged vets and how to help them help themselves. I have to admit that was not my focus as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in situations like this. Why not celebrate the fact that largely because of their suffering the will to enlist in the U.S. military is at an all time low? Even military families, traditionally the best source of volunteers, are telling their younger generations not to enlist. Decades of war for profit with dishonor have gutted what was once a proud military that believed in its mission (however deluded that notion might have been). 

The U.S. imperial mission in Ukraine and now in Israel have been spectacular failures that the government and its obedient press are still lying about today. Those in the know understand that Ukraine could not beat or even weaken Russia, and that Israel cannot win against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Resistance coalitions coming together to fight them and their U.S. sponsor. Attacks on illegal U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq are reported almost daily. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands in the U.S. and millions across the globe continue marching to demand an end to the genocide happening right now to Palestinians.

Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip on Salah al-Din Street in Bureij, Gaza Strip, Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

The long downfall in morale that began with the Vietnam War has proven far more enduring than freedom.

U.S. Congress, You Can't Hide! We Charge You With Genocide

Photo credit for Golden's office pics: Lawrence Reichard

But try to hide our "representatives" will. My representative Jared Golden was not present in his Bangor office this week when eight people were arrested trying to deliver a letter demanding he support a ceasefire in Gaza. And plans for a second group to try again were thwarted when staff closed his Bangor office early on Friday. 

Photo credit: DSA Maine

Maine's 1st district rep Chellie Pingree was not present in her Portland office last week when Jewish organizers with If Not Now turned out 200 or so. A handful of them were led out in zip ties after office staff refused to accept the letter they were trying to deliver.

I consider several people who took part in these actions friends, and I got to speak with one of them about his experiences in Bangor. Rob Shetterly, who has worked in refugee camps in the West Bank on trips sponsored by Veterans for Peace, reported:  "We wanted to do our little piece of the international actions to support the Palestinians and stop the genocidal actions continuing in Gaza. And to encourage other people to take a stand." 

The group failed to disperse after being blocked from delivering a message that said in part:

As residents of Maine, we are here today to demand that Rep. Jared Golden and all of Maine’s congressional delegation support House Resolution 786, a congressional resolution that calls for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.

Calling for a cease-fire is not support for Hamas, and criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitism. As Mainers, we can no longer stand by and idly bear witness to this slaughter of innocent civilians. 

We would no more bomb our beloved brothers and sisters in Palestine for the actions of some than we would bomb our beloved friends and neighbors in Lewiston for the actions of one man. Enough. Stop the killing. Stop it now.

Shetterly told me, 

Just before we went in we got the news about the censuring of Rashida Tlaib which affected me more strongly than Golden’s support for bombing. To pick out a Palestinian person in our Congress who's simply speaking out on behalf of humanity reminds me of collective dehumanization like the Nazis did to Jews or like White Americans do to Black Africans or Native people.

A person in a position power has a particular responsibility to know the history of the things they talk about. A whole series of genocidal actions are taking place on the basis of wildly false information. There’s a history here of ethnic cleansing and violent military occupation that was inevitably going to lead to resistance.

He said that he plans to reach out to Tlaib to see if she will agree to be painted as he would like to add her portrait to his ongoing series Americans Who Tell The Truth. 

Shetterly and the others were released on their own recognizance after paying a bail bondsman $60 each to process their paperwork. If they did not pay, they were told that they would be jailed over the four day weekend. Their arraignment date is January 10.

I'm old enough to remember when our elected representatives in Maine at least pretended to hear from constituents. They held town halls and would also schedule time for constituents to call on them when they were back in district. 

These days the only way to get their attention seems to be civil disobedience. Thus more than 100 congressional staffers walked off the job last week to protest U.S. support for genocide in Gaza. Many of them are undoubtedly the young voices we hear when we call to express our opinions. I'm always courteous because the staffers are in a tough place and possibly on the verge of their own awakening from the delusion of American exceptionalism. One young woman in Sen. Angus King's office sounded on the verge of tears as she responded to my call, "I hear you, Lisa."

Students walked out of classes and then blocked the front entrance of the New York Public Library on Thursday Nov 9.

In related actions last week, writers occupied the New York Times demanding truthful reporting on Palestine following writer Jazmine Hughes being forced to resign after signing a letter of support for Palestine; and both Brandeis and Columbia suspended the group Students for Justice in Palestine. Columbia also suspended Jewish Voice for Peace.

Brown University in Providence had student protesters arrested.

Bottom line: the people aren't having it, especially young Jewish people. And you cannot hide from an idea whose time has come.

Geography Quiz: Let Palestine Live!

Lluís Ràfols November 2012

Chris Hedges and other Western journalists are going to stand at the Rafah gate on the Egyptian side I learned yesterday from his heart-breaking Letter to the Children of Gaza. This is in response to Israel's refusal to let in international witnesses to the carnage (10,000+ dead with 40% of those children) and Israel's rapid killing of Palestinian journalists already on the ground. A video of tv journalist Salman Al Bashir ripping off his press vest and helmet saying, "This protection gear does not protect us!" has gone viral.

What's a blogger to do in these genocidal times? Lift up other voices, spread the word, help jam congressional phone lines and offices demanding a ceasefire now, and educate myself about the balkanized geography of a fossil fuel resource region. So here, in the midst of the worst onslaught against Gaza ever, is another geography quiz.

Map A – This nation is what the United Nations laid out in 1948 after the Nakba by Zionist militias saw several hundred thousand indigenous people slaughtered. Note that it does not stretch from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.

Map B - This nation was created by UN mandate in 1948 after British colonial rulers had promised both the indigenous Arabs and also the Zionist Jews in Europe the same territory. 

Map C - This nation is the home of Hezbollah which takes credit for defeating Israel and driving it out after a civil war during which Israel stood by while militias massacred Nakba refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

Map D - This nation absorbed millions of refugees driven out by Zionists in 1948 and has refused to accept any more following the Al Aqsa Flood breakout from Gaza in October 2023.

 

Map E - This nation absorbed millions of refugees driven out by Zionists in 1948 and has refused to accept any more following the Al Aqsa Flood breakout from Gaza in October 2023. 

Map F - This nation is frequently bombed by Israel and the U.S., which maintains illegal military bases there in order to steal its oil.

Current blank maps sourced from Free Country Map 

Map G - This German map was made in 1869 when the Ottoman Empire considered itself entitled to rule the prime location where ancient Silk Road routes met the Mediterranean Sea. Falsely described by Zionists as "a land without a people."

Map H - This region of historical Palestine is named for a body of water that it borders.

Answer Key

Map A – UN-mandated Palestine

Map B - UN-mandated Israel

Map C - Lebanon

Map D - Egypt

Map E - Jordan

Map F - Syria

Map G - Palestine

Map H - West Bank

Ground view in Gaza right now:

For an extended video tour of the damage shared on reddit:

Israeli propaganda trolls don't want you to see these kind of footage, because they're trying to hide from the world that Israel has been dropping over 6000 bombs in the first week alone.

That's the equivalent of 2 nuclear bombs. Israel killed over 10,000 Palestinians so far, incl over 4000 children

No Rocket Launch Site Off Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island in Maine is a gorgeous spot stolen from Wabanaki people who considered what white people now call Cadillac Mountain a sacred place. I've watched the sun come up from the shoreline near a campground at Acadia, a good reminder of why Native people called their home the Dawnland. 

Acadia's view of the Atlantic could include a rocket launch site someday soon if profiteers sniffing around nearby Steuben get their way. We've been organizing opposition to that and yesterday some board members of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space attended the Maine Space Conference in Portland. Two of us paid to go inside while a dozen of us met outside at the lunch break to picket the hotel venue, our presence meriting one sentence at the end of a puff piece by local tv a reporter. 

That puff piece studiously avoided the word "military" as did most of the presentations we saw inside. But we're paying attention to the promises made when the Maine Space Corporation legislation was rushed through under the gavel amid assurances to legislators that any launch site would be strictly for civilian uses like education and research. That is complete bullshit if the experiences of other launch sites like Kodiak, Alaska are any indication: promised no military use, they now play a key role in Israel's genocide in Gaza as the Israeli military uses the Kodiak facility frequently to launch communications satellites.

bluShift Aerospace is pushing for the rocket launch site and its CEO told us in September that he expects to accept funding from both NASA (its official at the conference was referred to as the Maine space industry's "sugar daddy" which seemed to delight him) and the U.S. Space Force. One of the breakout sessions I attended on Composites also had an orientation toward military applications and this was mentioned as a point of pride.

Meanwhile, everyone I spoke to at a rally for Gaza last weekend in Portland was astonished that there are plans to build a rocket launch site anywhere in Maine much less off the coast near Acadia.

To raise awareness our print ad is running this week in two newspapers in Bar Harbor near Acadia, and our radio ad is airing in that market as well.