The Clown Show Winds Down

The current occupant of the White House was known for his book The Art of the Deal long before the corporate press elevated him to be a contender for the presidency. I remembered this factoid as news reached me yesterday that, posturing aside, he did after all sign the gargantuan military spending bill connected with the insultingly paltry pandemic relief payment of $600 for the people. Also extending unemployment insurance and a freeze on evictions in the first winter of covid.

Clearly the threat to veto the bill until Congress amended the payment to $2000 was a bargaining chip in a deal that paid off somehow. 

We may or may not ever know what was exchanged in that transaction.

As our days fill with pardons of war criminals who slaughtered children and other civilians, plus white collar criminals, 2020 draws to a close.

Those observing with clarity point out that the current occupant of the White House was essentially the same as all the other occupants: beholden to the death machine of the US militarized economy, and unconcerned to keep the promises they rode to election.

The incoming administration will be no different.

Ending subsidies to fossil fuel extraction profiteers was a promise during the primaries that Democrats used to lure idealistic youth climate activists, but quickly abandoned to kick off the general election season.

Forgiving student debt (that he had a key role in fashioning as a yoke built to last a lifetime) was another grandiose promise now being reduced to ashes.

Or maybe dangling $2000 was meant to ensure the current president's legacy remains strong among the struggling workers who still think he went to Washington DC to drain the swamp?

Here was his final "swamp draining" budget proposal.

70 million people voted for the clownish Twitter personality the second time around because the reality of their lives is deadly peril from threats more sure than succumbing to covid.

Covid is now the leading cause of death in the US, and will be for the near future even as vaccines roll out for Congress but not for most of us. 

Facing the dangers of a virus or of your job without health care has a huge impact on one's ability to survive, but the corporate-sponsored House of Representatives won't even consider a performative vote on Medicare for All much less legislation to enact universal health care. 

What show will ensue after the pageantry of the new president's inauguration subsides? 

Will the manufacturing of consent rest on the White House dogs who are vastly more telegenic than their elderly, addled master?

I'm betting it's the good-looking, intelligent Vice President who will end up carrying this administration's public relations efforts. As she is a woman and bi-racial, she is guaranteed to draw the vitriol of white supremacists losing their grasp on earning a living. (You know, the ones who voted for leaders that literally went golfing and skiing on Christmas without responding to the fact that a bomb was detonated in downtown Nashville.)

The show must go on! But most have tired of clownish "governing" and many in the younger generations actually find clowns terrifying.

Me? I'm older, and I find the incoming cabinet more terrifying than any clown. Ticking boxes for identity politics while elevating the executives of the very corporations who have murdered and impoverished working people is cynical. 

Yes, selecting Deb Haaland as the first Native Secretary of the Interior is wonderful and may she uphold indigenous wisdom in the Democratic Party (it's hard to even type those words). I was also glad to see an actual educator, Miguel Cardona,  nominated to head up the DOE. 

Speaking of the art of deals, how about a former small town mayor who parleyed stepping down after a modest primary showing into a nomination for Secretary of Transportation. But he's openly gay! That will be a great comfort to liberals in the owning class who bemoan climate crisis while supporting elected officials who consistently fail to invest in a robust public transportation system to address climate like other countries have.

And you can't blame the clownish performance of the defeated president for any of that.

Revised 12/30/20: Correcting my misunderstanding that the current occupant of the White House's veto of the military spending bill (aka NDAA) remains in place until a vote in Congress to overrride occurs. The pandemic stimulus/relief bill was signed, and the $2000 counteroffer by the deal artiste was also found to contain provisions for contesting certification of the electoral college victory of his opponent.

Violent Patriarchy On The March Toward Its Own Doom

With people in the U.S. reeling from the mass murder of openly gay men in Orlando this week, very few even noticed the creep of the latest "defense" spending bill through Congress. Instead they focused on the ethnicity and alleged beliefs of the latest in a string of military weapon-wielding men who enter public spaces and shoot everyone in sight. The argument that access to such weapons must be curtailed in order to achieve the low death by gun rates of other rich countries falls on deaf, NRA cash stuffed ears in Washington DC. Anyway, your "representatives" are busy funding their campaign contributors via the next gargantuan budget for weapons of mass destruction.

Does violence breed violence? Let's look at some of the amendments to the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to see what might be growing there.

Both the House and the Senate added amendments requiring women to register for the draft, but only the Senate's version passed thus far. In light of the fact that a woman in the military runs a one in three chance of being sexually assaulted by a man serving alongside her -- and a nearly 100% chance of having her case stonewalled by the senior command if she has the guts to report her rapist -- this is a giant leap forward for violence aimed at women.

Joint Chiefs of Staff from Pentagon at congressional hearing on military law.

On the other hand, if more troops in Okinawa were female, perhaps the local women would be safer. 

(If you know me at all you know that I oppose U.S. military bases in Japan or anywhere else on the planet. But I am following the logical outcomes of drafting women into the military.)

Codepink protesting the governor of NY's anti-BDS order in Albany this week.

Another NDAA amendment that reeks is the attempt to render the non-violent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement illegal if it targets the human rights abuser Israel. BDS has been gaining traction internationally and Israel is feeling the pressure, as evidenced by New York state's governor issuing an executive order that creates a black list of companies and organizations engaging in BDS.

How does Israel control members of Congress or the governor of a vast state like New York? The same way defense contractors control those who allegedly represent us -- campaign contributions and other piles of cash, often funneled through shell entities like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Then there was the amendment to legalize discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans-sexual (LGBT) persons by the federal government's contractors. This amendment was offered under the guise of "religious liberty" which makes about as much sense as claiming that Islam is a religion that promotes violence.

Systems of oppression and a jobs program that is almost entirely dependent on manufacturing weapons are what promote violence, extremists of any religious persuasion and their claims to purity via murder notwithstanding.

It is increasingly clear to the people around the planet that the U.S. brand of violent patriarchy contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

What to do as patriarchy descends into climate chaos and endless war whether led by violent men or violent women? Lift up your voice. Rattle your chains. If you're in Maine on June 18, join us at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard for civil disobedience to protest the "christening" of a $4 billion Zumwalt destroyer warship. It's the epitome of what Rep. Barbara Lee called out when explaining why she will not support the NDAA: "We can no longer afford 'pet project' weapons systems that re unnecessary or the Pentagon's unchecked levels of waste, fraud and abuse."

Truth Is Behind the Lies People Tell Themselves About Their Empire

Source: Al Jazeera Witness "Four Days in Guantanamo"

A lot of angry responses to the satirical video my husband and I made about the rationalizations people tell themselves in order to continue to support their naked emperor, and some of them mistook us for actual Obama supporters. Stuff Obama Supporters Say has 13,000+ views after a couple of days on YouTube, and 100+ comments in a lively debate where it was posted to Common Dreams (thanks, Abby Zimet).

As one critic of the video put it, "But some of those things are true." In celebration of the success of stop SOPA/PIPA blackout day yesterday, I have used the Internet and yes, Wikipedia, to unearth some nuggets of truth alluded to in the video. It was our intention to lampoon those in denial; the ugly facts of detention in Guantanamo or Bagram, where our tax dollars support the torture of kids as young as 15, are out there just waiting to be discovered. But the mainstream media feed in the U.S. will, as a matter of policy, not help people discover many facts. Instead, it will enable the skewed priorities of valuing organic gardening over drone attacks on civilians.

Inverted priorities have been typical of affluent imperial citizens throughout history. What did "good Germans" mainly do to support the Nazi's genocidal plans? They looked the other way.

Quite possibly they were afraid -- and rightly so -- of becoming the victims of indefinite detention.

Feeble thinkers, they believed that the rule of law was not important to them, because they were not criminals (or Communists, or trade unionists, or terrorists, etc.). A basic failure to understand why the writ of habeas corpus is the cornerstone of equal access to justice goes hand in hand with the failure to understand why the rights outlined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution are worth struggling to uphold.

Source: Mother Jones article on Iranian government's plan to send Obama a pink toy model of the U.S. drone that landed in that country last month.

If I don't see any drones patrolling my skies (yet) then they must not be a problem for me -- right?

Source: http://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com reprint of Al Jazeera article UK: Campaigners Seek Arrest of Former CIA Legal Chief over Pakistan Drone Attacks

(Obama thinks he is such a good father, he can joke around with his pals about ordering Predator drone strikes against boys that might be interested in his daughters.)

And who is Bradley Manning anyway?

Logan Price, a 27-year-old activist, said he went up to the president and asked why he hadn’t addressed the concerns of the protesters. “I thought that Bradley Manning was the most important whistleblower of my generation..."

Source: Politico

( Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images / March 14, 2011 ) via CODEPINK blog PINKTank

Guantanamo And Bagram Are Torture Prisons Funded By U.S. Taxpayers

Sign Close Guantanamo With Justice here, and learn more. Source: Center for Constitutional Rights.

It has now been ten years since the indefinite detention center at Guantanamo was established, ostensibly to conduct the "war on terror." Failing to close the notorious torture prison (see guard Chris Arendt's testimony above for details) is a broken promise made by candidate Obama, at the rotten center of denial employed by the complicit, who cover their eyes and ears in order to keep supporting him.

Last month our corrupted Congress passed and our corrupted president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, re-funding the military machine for another year AND making it illegal to release detainees who cannot be convicted of acts of terror due to lack of evidence. Your taxes will continue to feed them -- except that right now they are on hunger strike to mark the 10th anniversary of this particular island in the gulag archipelago -- as they will not be returning to their families, or to residence in a host country. Ever, apparently. It is gruesomely fitting that the legislation refusing to allow these men to be released was packaged with a law enabling the U.S. government to indefinitely detain anyone, anywhere, if deemed a threat by whichever warlord happens to be in the White House at the time. RIP, habeas corpus.

When the purpose is justice, wrongfully imprisoning a children's humanitarian relief worker is a tragedy. When the purpose is intimidation and the display of brute force, locking up Lakhdar Boumediene works as well as does keeping alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for months before a day in court. The message your government is sending you: Be frightened, be very frightened -- you could be next.

Obama may have inherited Guantanamo, but Manning and the torture prison at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan are all his. In recent days U.S. mainstream media have largely ignored an investigative report of torture and indefinite detention at Bagram -- funded by you and by me, unless you've figured out how to resist paying war taxes.

Source BBC: "Afghan investigators have accused the US Army of abusing detainees at its main prison in the country, saying inmates had reported being tortured and held without evidence.

Today I wish I were in Washington DC to join my CODEPINK sisters, Amnesty International and others who are paying attention, to form a human chain around the White House, dressed in the iconic orange jumpsuits of Guantanamo.

A decade of torture in the beautiful setting of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, thus commemorated. Since I cannot be there, I will instead offer this beautiful rendering of the Cuban song Guantanamera, meaning "woman of Guantanamo," superbly performed by Celia Cruz. My mother used to sing this song when I was a child. To the lost innocence of a girl who once believed in the words of the U.S. Constitution -- and to my fellow citizens who still hold to their belief that all human beings are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, innocent until proven guilty -- I offer an additional verse?

You broke my heart when you tortured
The beautiful ones, and the bad ones.
You broke my heart when the young soldiers
Had to watch all this being done.
How could our Constitution
ever stand for something like this?
If there is such a thing as a court,
I hope all you torturers stand before it.

Guantanamera...oh women of Guantánamo
And may the indigenous
grandmothers save us.

Bring our war $$ home from Bagram, and Guantanamo, and the rest of the torture archipelago.

War Funding Rolls On -- What To Do About It

source: USA Today Obamas greet military families in Hawaii

Please join me in considering some New Year's Resolutions: Get the word out about war spending vs. budget cuts. Blog, tweet, get in your local paper, write letters to the editor, reprint other people's op-eds -- like this beauty from Betsy Crites, North Carolina Peace Action Director, which ran with the title "Bring the war dollars home" in the Durham Herald-Sun (thanks to Jacqui Deveneau for sharing).

Ok, that's a partial action list for 2012. But right now, still 2011, President Obama has neither signed nor vetoed $600+ billion for continued military expansion in the coming year, and the gravest attacks on civil liberties since the McCarthy era, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It's not too late!

Call the White House 9am-5pm EST Switchboard: 202-456-1414
24 hour automated comments recording: 202-456-1111

Other things I plan to do in 2012:

• Keep reading (while we still have the Internet). Here's a good article I started yesterday: "Economic Downturn Took a Detour at Capital Hill" by Eric Lichtblau in the NYT via Common Dreams. It's about how banks got bailed out, we got sold out -- and our "representatives" in Congress got wealthy in the process.

• Help wage a vigorous campaign against impending Internet censorship (SOPA is the House version of the bill, PIPA is the Senate version).

• Help people stay in their already occupied homes by resisting the next cascading millions of foreclosures.

• Join a planning meeting for the statewide Bring Our War $$ Home campaign on Sat. Jan 14 at noon in Augusta.

• Lend CODEPINK Maine support to the Union of Maine Visual Artists celebrating a creative response to the Occupy movement that has swept the planet, and is still rolling on gathering momentum. Sat. Jan 21 (snow day Sun. Jan 22) Draw-a-Thon at Harlow Gallery in Hallowell. Are you an artist? No need to wait until Jan. 21. Start creating now!

• Join a statewide meeting to assess the Occupy movement in Maine, and to consider which paths look productive and likely for the near future. Sat Jan. 28, 9am-4:30pm (snow date: Jan 29)  Randall Student Center, U/Maine, Augusta. FMI  rosc@psouth.net Larry Dansinger, (207) 525-7776.

With $662 billion for military, indefinite detention for all

Source: Guardian Bradley Manning hearing -- live updates

Honor Bradley Manning today on his 24th birthday -- his second in custody -- by calling the White House message line to register your outrage at the passage of the worst annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ever. Number to vent your spleen: 202-456-1111. Why not also call Congress while you're at it? 877-429-0678.

No one in either place cares what you think, but it may possibly relieve some of the intense anger you feel in response to habeas corpus being legislated away under the false pretense of making you safer. It's icing on the cake to have it signed into law by a faux constitutional law professor the 1% hope to scare you into voting for come November. Hey, Obama didn't invent indefinite detention. It's been in place since the outset of the war on terror.

NDAA  also approved expenditures of $662 billion for military, including wars, next year. Polls indicate most Americans don't want war against Afghanistan, didn't want the U.S. doing business as NATO to attack Libya, and don't want more than about 6% of their taxes being spent on the military in any case. Current spending on military constitutes 57% of the pie. What's wrong with this picture?

source: Waterville Morning Sentinel

Of course the outrage over continuing to make defense contractors obscenely wealthy while cutting funds for heating assistance, medical care, and food for the nearly 50% of U.S. residents now living below the official poverty line got muted by the civil liberties issue tacked on to NAAA.

Indefinite detention for all at the whim of the military, or perhaps with some power retained by the president selected by leading campaign contributors, alarmed the few who were paying attention. The Democrat party loyalists pretended to believe Obama would veto it. Now they will probably pretend that his hands were tied and he couldn't veto it. Just like they pretend Democrats oppose gutting social programs even as they agree to do so.  These people are like abuse victims who make excuses for the abuser and return to him again and again and again. Some of them grow quite nasty lately as they can feel the 99% slip away from even a whisper of belief in the false dichotomy Punch and Judy show that national  electoral politics have become.

So let's not pretend that our voting or our phone calls do anything significant to resist the shredding of the constitution, or the bankrupting of the U.S. taxpayer on behalf of Lockheed Martin, et al.

The whole system would grind to a half in an instant if the 99% simply stopped cooperating to uphold it.

Whether they realize it or not, is another matter.

So here's what I'm going to do after making those futile calls. I'm going to get with others that are as concerned as I am, I'm going to listen to their ideas, and I'm going to do my homework on the effective use of nonviolent methods (Gene Sharp documentary Dec. 18 free at SPACE gallery in Portland 7pm).

I'm going to keep working as a citizen journalist to the extent of my abilities. I'm going to watch and share the "Collateral Murder" video from Iraq, the one Bradley is accused of leaking, plus more revelations from Iraq as the ghastly first phase of its subjugation draws to a close.

Citizen journalism is what we depend on now for news. If not for a tweet, how would I know and rejoice that yesterday someone in the courtroom called out "Bradley Manning is a hero!".

If I'm indefinitely detained for speaking out? So be it. We are all Bradley Manning. (Contribute to Manning's defense fund here.)

You're sexy, you're cute, just take off your riot suit

@MMBKG Maxx tweet yesterday evening:

#oo #portshutdown I wish they all could see how beautiful they are right now pic.twitter.com/9w7rA14Y

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, but a woman's got to sleep sometime. Thus I went to bed last night and missed seeing around 8,000 people assemble to close down commerce at the port of Oakland. And San Diego, Portland OR, Longview WA, SF, LA/Long Beach -- I saw them all yesterday face off with riot police using song, dance, signage and cheers to get their point across: police violence will only bring increased numbers of us to the streets. Related chant at raided encampment on the San Francisco side of the bay: "Occupy will never die! Evict us? We multiply." 

Source: Houston Chronicle

 But my all time favorite chant of yesterday, offered up by what sounded like mostly women's voices as the buff riot police of the OPD marced by at the Port of Oakland yesterday: 

"You're sexy, you're cute, just take off your riot suit."

Ok, Lt. John Pike is probably not sexy or cute in the buff -- but he looked pretty good as a cut out, marching on Dec. 12 in Oakland.

@susie_c Susie Cagle tweet:

Best sign ever: Pike pepper spray cut-out. #portshutdown #d12 pic.twitter.com/B7xd4vhT

Why is all this important? Because the U.S. military profit machine has been killing innocent civilians and making more enemies with drone strikes in Pakistan, against our will, and with our tax dollars. Reporting  in WIRED by Spencer Ackerman featured a rare collection of photos of bloody "facts on the ground" as the military likes to call them.

Because the Senate passed the annual defense spending authorization bill with $662 billion slated for war profiteers and their minions next year, plus the authority to detain anyone anywhere indefinitely and without charges on battlefield Earth in the war on terror. As Jon Stewart put it, So this will continue until...terror surrenders? S

Because Bradley Manning is still in detention without a day in court after 17 months. His first appearance, for a pre-trial hearing, is slated for this week. His defense has asked to call witnesses including the Secretary of State and the POTUS, who infamously said on camera of Manning: "He broke the law." Some constitutional law professor he turned out to be. 

The Magna Carta established the legal concept that indefinite detention is WRONG in 1215. This historic document established, among other rights, that of habeus corpus i.e. not being locked up indefinitely, but having an appearance in court to hear what you are being charged with. Ok, it didn't apply to serfs, only to "freemen." Guess which one your governments considers you to be?