War On Palestine Requires War On Truth, Death To Journalists

Women in Jordan mourn Shireen Abu Akleh  photo source: Haaretz

With sadness I awoke to the news that Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the head by Israeli forces (IDF) in the West Bank region of occupied Palestine. 

The journalist was wearing body armor with PRESS in bold letters on her flak vest; presumably a sniper aimed for her head?

Here's the last known photo of Abu Akleh, doing her job:

Photo source: Arwa Ibrahim on Twitter

Israel has been violently evicting families in the West Bank while bombing Gaza and Damascus in recent days. Abu Akleh was covering an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp when she was murdered.

Rapper Lowkey took the Associated Press to task in a tweet about their reporting of the incident.

She was killed by the same army that bombed your offices in Gaza. Say it. https://t.co/EKjLME5iRH

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) May 11, 2022

https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1524289928405921794

All the terror is not on one side. For the second Ramadan in a row the IDF targetted worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, wounding some and arresting others, while Palestinians repelled IDF soldiers by throwing rocks and petrol bombs. And an unusual event inside Israel this week resulted in three deaths by stabbing in a knife and ax attack near Tel Aviv. The two assailants were believed to be Palestinian young men from Jenin.

Also hard to see as coincidental was an act of terrorism (i.e. instilling fear) on a flight from Israel's Ben Gurion Airport where passengers were sent photos of various airline crashes while waiting to fly to Turkey. Twitter eerily reported these two news events consecutively in their "What's Happening" section this morning.

A search of the Committee to Protect Journalists database revealed 17 other journalists killed by the IDF in either occupied Palestine or Israel itself:

War on journalists is not new but has ramped up in recent years especially as the poster boy for press freedom, Julian Assange, languishes in Belmarsh Prison awaiting word of his possible extradition to the U.S. to be charged as a spy. Assange is an Australian citizen whose wikileaks website published evidence of U.S. and Israeli war crimes, and he has been publicly tortured for practicing journalism in the years since.

RIP Shireen Abu Akleh and all who dare to report truth amid the fog of wars.

Why Was The MAGA Attack On The Capitol Allowed To Happen?

Source: ACLU blog "The Patriot Act 10 Years Later"

In the 90's I was a public school teacher in central Maine who was told that, to keep my job, I needed to give up my fingerprints to the FBI's database to prove that I wasn't a child molester. No one had accused me of being a child molester, and I knew that most suspected child molesters are encouraged to resign and move far away to spare superintendents the pain of an ugly public relations fiasco. Thus their fingerprints were not in any database of convicted child molesters.

I had been a busy working mom with little time for political action. Then my 9 year old was fingerprinted at school even after I expressly forbid the school to do that. These experiences radicalized me and I began working against the educator fingerprinting law in Maine. Twice we managed to have the law overturned, and twice the governor vetoed it. I resigned over the issue and moved to California to earn more money while I had two kids in college at the same time.

After hearing news from his chief of staff that the second tower of the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane, the president seemed pensive but went on reading to students in a Florida classroom. Screenshot via YouTube

Then 9/11 was allowed to happen.

Then Joe Biden's Patriot Act passed with breathtaking speed, curtailing our civil liberties and giving sweeping surveillance powers to the federal government because "terror" had frightened us. Then the never ending "war on terror" began for control of energy resources and shipping lanes, and we still go without universal health care to pay for it.

Then I moved back to Maine and got fingerprinted because I needed the health care for my family.

Now comes the January 6 MAGA attack on the Capitol. Why was it allowed to happen do you suppose?

It wasn't a surprise attack at all but was well-publicized in advance.

Whether Capitol and DC municipal police opened the fencing to allow the MAGA mob in to the Capitol grounds, or simply failed to defend the line when the mob pushed into them, seems like a moot point. (Remember when the National Guard teargassed peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Park so the occupant of the White House could walk to a nearby church and pose with a Bible? Remember how the Guard were directing traffic Jan. 6 while legislators were under attack?) Via AP

Cue the new even more repressive laws the public has been led to believe are needed because "domestic terror" has frightened us. 

My prediction: we will continue to go without universal health care to pay for more policing and spying on ourselves.

Australian Caitlin Johnstone as usual is seeing things with a clearer eye from Oz:

The narrative managers' ability to move liberals and progressives from "Defund the police" to "MOAR POLICING" in just a few months was even more impressive than their ability to move them from "Believe Women" and #MeToo to "Tara Reid is a lying grifter".

 My family member points out the danger to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color:

We have a long history of institutional racism. So when you talk about expanding anti domestic terrorism powers it’s a pretty safe prediction that it’s going to carried out in a racist way and in service of capital.

Also, say a Biden admin handles it as well as possible, what does the next republican administration do with those expanded powers? It’s Pandora’s box. You don’t open it and then see what happens, once you’re there it’s too late. 

Also, I'm guessing another purpose of allowing violent intruders with handcuffs at the ready to break into the Capitol was to discourage Medicare for All candidates like me from running for Congress. 

And about that man dressed all in black with the bouquet of plastic zip-ties whose photograph is being circulated widely? Perfect set up for right wing propagandists to make the false claim that Antifa was behind the MAGA crowd.

It looks like another event is being planned for January 17.

Impeaching the current occupant of Camp David will not solve our problems, and many argue it's a waste of time at this point, but it should be done anyway to keep the grifter off the public dole and unable to issue any more pardons. 

For those wondering if it’s worth impeaching him this time, it means he:
1) loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life
2) loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance
3) loses lifetime full secret service detail
4) loses his ability to run in 2024

— Ben Costiloe (@BenCostiloe) January 8, 2021

People who think the Biden administration is going to save us from any of this are not paying attention. Or, possibly, they are too young to remember what Senator Obama did directly after receiving the nomination of the Democratic Party.

He voted to grant immunity to the big telecom corporations for spying on all of us after 9/11.

It's Not The Burning Of The Reichstag -- That Happened 20 Years Ago #9/11NeverForget

Okay, a few more than 13 have been arrested since I made this meme on Thursday.
But the number is still < 100. It is generally agreed that if the U.S. Capitol mob had been Black, the police would have arrested thousands.

The aftermath of an armed mob breaching the "security" of the U.S. Capitol building will be long and likely not very good for civil liberties, pandemic containment, or racial justice.

But I do wish people would stop comparing the event to the Reichstag (i.e. German capitol) arson that the Nazis used to kick up their takeover of Germany. The framing of a developmentally disabled worker with a Communist Party card in his pocket was the pretext for heightened surveillance and press censorship just before a key election. Military aggression and concentration camps for "others" followed.

Our Reichstag parallel event already occured -- on Sep. 11, 2001 -- with the bombing of the twin towers in New York City. The "Patriot" Act shredding our constitutional rights was pushed through immediately. Press censorship grew via control of online search engines and consolidation of independent outlets by corporate behemoths.

Office of Inspector General/Department of Homeland Security via Getty Images

Military aggression and concentration camps for "others" followed.

Some of the lies and misinformation swirling around the storming of the U.S. Capitol include right wing media claiming that antifa were masquerading as Trump supporters. This will help them spin the fact that a police officer is one of the five who died as the result of the mob violence. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was injured and died later that day.

Three other people died of heart attacks and the like, but it is military veteran and Kew Anon believer Ashli Babbit who died first, bleeding out quickly after being shot by police when she tried to crawl through a window the mob had broken. 

Babbit had traveled all the way from San Diego, California to gather with hundreds of other unmasked white supremacists during a pandemic. Ironic, eh? As will be the wave of covid-19 infections from this super spreader event. 

Ironic, because their dear leader is generally understood to have lost the election due to his gross negligence and mismanagement of our public health crisis.

Here's the (white) spouse of sexual assault perpetrator Clarence Thomas fanning the flames:

On the morning of Jan. 6, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the protest demanding that Congress overturn the election, then sent her “LOVE” to the demonstrators, who violently overtook the Capitol several hours later. She has not posted since. pic.twitter.com/378CHMkFN5

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 8, 2021

Democrats posing as the heroes of the current crisis are throwing around impeachment because it doesn't look like the Vice President will invoke the 25th Amendment to have Trump declared unfit. It would take cabinet members participating to do that, and nearly all of them have resigned this week. (Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the latest, and I can hear teachers all over the country rejoicing.)

All these people in Congress talking about "I was scared for my life," today, Try losing your paycheck for 9 months and get back to us.

— Sean (@SeanB95926) January 7, 2021

Left commentators are cynically noting that Congress went into recess after working through the night to finish election certification interrupted by the mob. Dem members of Congress are tweeting about impeachment with less than two weeks remaining of the current administration, but have yet to take up the matter of universal health care which the vast majority of people in the U.S. need desperately. Priorities, priorities. In a crisis like this, who can think about something as mundane as health care? Not elected officials who already have it, that's who.

Dems are also cheering the banning of the commander in chief from Twitter and Facebook for spreading lies about the election outcome that led directly to lethal violence. Thoughtful commentators expect this to form the pretext for more silencing of dissent. 

via Getty

To sum up: the president who was elected due to millions in free media coverage from liberal publications who selected him as the best candidate for Hillary Clinton to beat incited a crowd who destroyed press equipment and defaced the interior of the capitol building with the message:

Remember: in the case of really sophisticated propaganda, even the reverse isn't true. 

The Pen Is A Mighty Change Agent

Among the idealistic beliefs I cling to, sometimes in the face of fierce opposition, is the power of information.

"The pen is mightier than the sword" is something I wanted to believe when I was young, and studying history and current events has strengthened this conviction.

Other ways I've learned of expressing this belief include "You can't kill an idea whose time has come" as well as the proverb of indigenous people of Mexico:



With those thoughts in mind, today I'll share the latest crop of opinion pieces and letters to the editor calling for the retirement of the Skowhegan high school "Indian" mascot/team name.

The first is from The Maine Campus, student newspaper of the University of Maine, Orono. It's a well-researched and well-written op-ed by Liz Theriault. "Maine high schools should consider harmful impacts of Native American Mascots." An excerpt:

No one understands the painful history of a culture more than those whose ancestors endured it. USA Today reported that high schools across the nation started adopting Indian team names around the 1920s and 1930s, the same time that the use of Native language or the practice of Native religion was banned. The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 provided federal funding to boarding schools designed to assimilate Native Americans into white culture. While these egregious acts were being forced upon Natives, and as they were banned from practicing their cultures, students wore feathers, mocked chants and offensively danced on the sidelines of sports games.

I look forward to reading more from Liz Theriault in the years to come!


The next two letters were published today in the Waterville Morning Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal, sister newspapers serving the area that contains the sprawling district MSAD 54.

"Skowhegan's mascot fight is costly" was sent in by Abby Norling, a retired special ed teacher whom I taught with many years ago in Oakland. An excerpt:

With the school budget season upon us, I can’t help but wonder what else $15,000 could buy for students — perhaps new books, science lab equipment, or busing to tournaments? New uniforms have also been suggested, but that’s not a pressing need, since SAHS team uniforms don’t say the team name on them and haven’t for years. 

As a former board member myself, I also worry about potential future legal actions, and what that might cost taxpayers. Prudent management of the district’s scarce resources for education would seem to suggest that retiring the team name soon would be a financially responsible thing, as well as just the right thing to do.

"SAD 54 Board should listen to tribes" by Ernie Hilton brings his perspective as an attorney into play by pointing out which groups are and aren't credible when they claim to speak for Maine's Natives. An excerpt:

...the governing bodies of the four sovereign tribes noted above [Penobscot Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe, Houlton Band of Maliseets and the Micmacs], having as they do the legal right to represent the interests of the larger diaspora of their members, have engaged in a deliberative process and arrived at a conclusion — a conclusion mind you which is based on a great deal of unrefuted scientific evidence that the use of “Indian” symbology, whether termed as a mascot or otherwise, is damaging to their members.  They have appointed official ambassadors to present this request.

Interested parties may want to join us to maintain a presence at the MSAD 54 board meetings.

Alumna Tamarleigh Grenfell at the last board meeting. I particularly like the message on her yellow sign. The acronym SAHS on her pink sign stands for Skowhegan Area High School.

The next meeting is tomorrow, Thursday, February 28 at 7pm in the Skowhegan Area Middle School cafeteria (link to Facebook event with more info here). An item to decide on how to proceed on the mascot issue is on the agenda, but it's very unlikely a vote will occur this week.

If you'd like to share some information or reasoning with the school board directors, a handy copy and paste list of their email addresses can be found here.

"Under Threat From Public Scrutiny" U.S. Govt v. The People

CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin with associates in Portland, Oregon just before the release of her book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

I was momentarily elated to read that the CIA was scaling back the use of drone attacks in Pakistan because the program was "under threat from public scrutiny," as reported here by ABC News. 

But I soon found that meant public scrutiny in Pakistan, not the U.S.

Despite the unceasing efforts of anti-drone activiss to share information on how many civilians -- including numerous children -- die in drone strikes, and how less than 2% of the deaths are actually targeted militants,

 Screenshot of amazing data display which you deserve to see unfold: Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

the U.S. public remains largely oblivious, concerning itself mostly with what to eat and celebrity gossip about the birth of famous babies.

Sunlight Foundation blogger John Wonderlich reported that, on the eve of Bradley Manning's sentencing, "Obama Promises Disappear from Web": 

Change.gov, the website created by the Obama transition team in 2008, has effectively disappeared sometime over the last month.

Speculating as to why this might have occurred, Sunlight re-published one of the many promises that had been disappeared:

Protect Whistleblowers... Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Tell that to John Kiriakou, whistleblower on the CIA's use of torture. Here's his letter on being denied medical treatment in the federal prison where he's doing 2+ years of time for sharing information the Obama administration did not want shared. About torture conducted by an official of the Bush administration.

 (Image from twitter user@jeremyscahill)

Meanwhile, back in drone land, Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye was finally freed after three years in prisons our own Justice Department describes as subjecting prisoners to torture and abuse -- and the White House expressed disappointment. That Abdulelah Haider had been freed.

Because Obama had specifically requested that he be kept in prison.

His crime? Jeremy Scahill speculated that it might be that the journalist had

conducted several interviews with the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Shaye did the last known interview with Awlaki just before it was revealed that Awlaki, a US citizen, was on a CIA/JSOC hit list.

Al-Awlaki, as those of you paying attention are aware, is the most high profile US citizen to have been killed by extrajudicial drone strikes, in part because his 16 year old son, also a US citizen, was killed two weeks later in yet another drone strike in Yemen.

It isn't just war news that is suppressed. So is news about what is likely to eventually be seen as the biggest event of any of our lifetimes. Almost no one in the U.S. knows that Fukushima's reactor No. 3 appears to be in meltdown. Or that TEPCO seems unable to muster a meaningful response even though there is action they could take. Or that thyroid abnormalities in infants have increased 28% in Hawaii and the west coast of North America. 

You can sign a petition urging West coast senators to investigate the unfolding disaster as a step toward mustering an international response.

Did you know that Obama instructed the EPA to stop monitoring radiation levels in April, 2011? Or that the American Medical Association recently issued a call for testing all U.S. seafood for radiation and sharing the results with the public? Because, for instance,

On July 10, 2013, the Japan Times reported that rising radioactivity levels in seawater off the coast of Fukushima measured 90,000 times more than officially “safe” drinking water...Bluefin tuna caught off San Diego in an August 2012 study demonstrated elevated amounts of Cesium 134 and 137, which are considered characteristic isotopic markers for Fukushima radiation.

Well, maybe you did know that. But most of your neighbors remain in blissful ignorance.

Our government acts with impunity because it does not believe that what passes for public scrutiny in the U.S. is meaningful enough to pose a threat.

Not yet.