Any Kleptocracy Strives To Capture The Judiciary

In a system of government of, by and for thieves, capturing the judiciary is key. Doing so reduces the possibility that the thieves will be held accountable to the rule of law.

When a drunk man steals a young woman's sense of personal safety and scars her emotionally for life, an independent judiciary might hold the man accountable for his deed.

When a white police woman shoots and kills an unarmed black man (rest in power, Botham Shem Jean) in his own apartment, because she is "scared" by him not complying with her shouted demands, an independent judiciary might hold the woman accountable for her deed.

When a corporation poisons an area and causes the cancer rate among residents to soar,  an independent judiciary might hold the corporation accountable for their deed.

When a nation attacks another nation without provocation, claiming that their preemptive strike is because the other nation intended to attack with "weapons of mass destruction," an independent judiciary might hold that nation accountable for their deeds.

At least, this was the theory of checks and balances functioning in a democracy that I and others of my generation were taught in school.

It has been a colossal failure.

People in my home state are distraught that our female Senator Susan Collins gave a speech yesteday exonerating the Republican Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in advance of voting to confirm his appointment today. People are urging that we donate to a Democratic candidate who will unseat her from a long tenure in that office. This is such a weak response to the problems of our day that I would laugh if it were not so sad. Collins has shown moderation in the past when it was expedient for courting voters, and she is showing fascist loyalties now ever since the demagogue with bad hair moved into the White House without his wife. She sucked up to blatant racist Jeff Sessions for attorney general, and she supported the uneducated, anti-education billionaire Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education.

Now the battle cry is to punish Collins by voting her out as senator. Clearly, she has much higher offices in her sights -- like governor or vice president.

Cigar strike, Detroit, 1937

Only a women's general strike would bring this rotten system to its knees and pry loose the stranglehold of wealth on what was once described as a government by, of and for the (white, male, propertied) people.

Frederick Douglass famously observed, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." A formerly enslaved man that bought back his own freedom, he saw literacy as the foundation of freedom. I once believed that, too. Now, I'm not so sure.

Maybe it's political literacy that is really that foundation. May we find our way there, somehow. Until then, it's onward, kleptocracy.

Most Damning Indictment Of Kleptocracy And Capitalism: Infants Crying Because There Are No More Clean Diapers In Their Home

The most damning indictment of capitalism possible appeared on the refrigerator at my school this week. It announced a diaper drive in my area, an effort which I'm confident the staff at my school will participate in. 

The Kennebec Valley Community Action Program created a flyer which was posted with a handwritten note that a staff member will deliver the diapers we bring to school next week.

I will donate diapers and gladly, but it's a perfect example of why charity will not get us as a society out of the disgusting mess capitalism has created.

Despite what the flyer claims, charity is not a solution to this problem.

Here are some of the facts shared on the flyer that I as a middle class grandmother found traumatizing. I can only imagine how traumatized are the children, parents and grandparents experiencing diaper distress. (Increasingly, children in dire poverty around here are raised by their grandparents).

• 36% of mothers living in poverty regularly run out of clean diapers.
• You cannot buy diapers with food stamps.
• Babies in soiled diapers cry more, and are abused more. Somerset County where I live has the highest rate of child abuse in Maine, and 1/3 of children live in poverty.
• Parents who have run out of diapers feel guilty, anxious and stressed.

Some of the questions running through my brain:

What would a person in another country think of the U.S. if they knew these sordid facts about how we care for our most vulnerable community members?

Source: Maine Equal Justice Partners "It's time to end child poverty)

Is America great again in light of these realities?

Will elections that put in place candidates from either of the two corporate parties fix this shameful problem? 

For those who blame the victims, yes by all means let's criticize mothers in poverty for using expensive disposable diapers instead of virtuous cloth diapers washed by hand in the bathroom sink. Because a hallmark of poverty is lack of a washer and/or dryer in the house (often, lack of hot water in the house), and if you've ever used cloth diapers you would understand that a daily trip to the laundromat and a whole lot of quarters would be required if you can't wash them at home. A diaper service like I used when my children were babies -- if you could even find one in rural Maine -- costs just about the same as disposables i.e. approximately $100 a month. That is after you have purchased the pricey diaper covers that hold everything in place and make it waterproof. And a whole lot of washcloths or disposable wipes for those blowouts when the baby poop extends up their back and down their legs (my youngest grandchild's parents cut her onesie off her with scissors to extricate their daughter from a mega blowout when she was around 5 months old.)

Flooded hog farm, photographer unknown (Source: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3321/3238701897_c86eabd6dd.jpg)

When I told my husband about how horrified I was after reading the flyer, he was reminded that he had been horrified hearing radio reporting on the hog feces flowing into towns downstream from industrial scale farms in the path of Hurricane Florence. Rescue workers are warning that folks returning to clean their flooded homes will be exposed to E. coli, and that town water supplies are also at risk.

It appears to me that late stage capitalism will drown in its own shit before the people wise up, rise up, and shut the system down by withdrawing their cooperation.

Women could do this quickly if they just stopped showing up for work.

If the date rapist candidate for the Supreme Court is confirmed, women may very well get angry enough to do so feeling that their reproductive freedom is at stake.

Otherwise, the kleptocracy now in power will have successfully captured the judiciary of the federal government at its highest level. Moneyed interests will decide everything from how much health care your great grandmother receives, to whether climate change and catastrophic storms are addressed, to how many clean diapers your baby is entitled to. Don't bother suing because a) you can't afford it and b) if you make it to the Supreme Court, you'll lose.

So much for checks and balances.

Any system that treats children like ours does deserves to die.

Kleptocracy Loves Mercenaries, Who Love $$$$$

One of the billionaire families currently infesting what was once billed (but never fulfilled the promise of being) a government of, by and for the people has produced two dangerous individuals: Betsy DeVos, an uneducated education secretary, and her brother Erik Prince. He feeds at the public trough by supplying the Pentagon with an endless supply of mercenaries to kill people in other countries.

Both have been in the news this week.

Protesters at George Mason University in Virginia greeting U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos this week. Photo: Mike Theiler, Reuters

DeVos, a traitor to her gender, proposed new guidelines for handling rape on U.S. college and university campuses. Her new rules protect the accused and the college at the expense of young women who are sexually assaulted while trying to pursue the education that DeVos never got. The fact that she has not matriculated may explain why she is curiously devoid of empathy toward victims of this all too common trauma. (Actually, its probably her inherited billions that have rendered her devoid of empathy.)

Anyone who has been to college knows someone who was raped there. As a 30-something friend of mine observed, "I can't believe _____ has that job now! In college, I wouldn't have trusted that guy to hold my drink."

Even more menacing than the defender of rapists is the mercenary Prince.

Blackwater catapulted to fame following the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007.

His firm changes its name regularly to evade responsibility for atrocities conducted amid the fog of debt-financed war. Blackwater created atrocities in Iraq, then morphed to Xe Services, now Academi. No matter what his corporation is named, taxpayers for generations to come will be helping to pay to satisfy Prince's greed.

In Afghanistan, the demagogue with bad hair is threatening to privatize the military forces the U.S. keeps there because what we're currently doing 17 years in "isn't working." Note: it's working fine for those who profit from war. But, no, the U.S. hasn't won the hearts and minds of many Afghan people, and the Taliban continues to expand its control of territory. Suicide bombings in Kabul recently killed scores of civilians -- including young people taking an exam.

Maybe Kabul will be Prince's Waterloo. No foreign invaders have ever succeeded in subduing the indigenous population of Afghanistan, earning that mountainous country a reputation as "the graveyard of empires."

But a for-profit corporation isn't an empire, is it? The longer the endless war on "terror" continues, the better for Prince and his cronies.

Zara Ibrahim, head of the Association of Women Against War, in her office, Agadez, Niger, January 2018. Photo: Joe Penney. Source: The Intercept

The U.S. empire though, that's another story. It's building a $100 million drone base in Niger as I write these words, and in fact drone attacks on civilians are at an unprecedented high. Also the other corporations that profit from war are doing a booming business selling, for instance, the bombs that Saudi Arabia rains down on starved and cholera infected children in Yemen.

Federal employees won't get a raise this fiscal year, but executives for war profiteers will get hefty bonuses and new yachts.

Maybe Prince will get the contract for the Space Force that the demagogue has promised. This has alarmed people not paying attention to the fact that the U.S. has been dominated outer space with military hardware for years now, trying to project "full spectrum dominance" of the sky.

Onward, kleptocracy.

Join concerned citizens of the world during Keep Space for Peace week sponsored by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

October 6-13, 2018

Keep Space for Peace Week

International Week of Protest to

Stop the Militarization of Space

No Space Force

No Missile Defense

Close U.S./NATO Bases Worldwide

Stop Drones Surveillance & Killing

End Privatization of Foreign/Military Policy

Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Deal with climate change and global poverty

Local Events List in formation

·       Asheville, North Carolina (Oct 6-13) Ken Jones (VFP) will make the poster image of Trump Vader with the No Space Force message into a sandwich board and walk through downtown Asheville for an hour each day during Keep Space for Peace Week. Will pass out informational flyers and talk with whomever is moved to engage.         kwjj1949@gmail.com

·       Bath Iron Works, Maine (Oct 6) Vigil across from administration building on Washington Street (Navy Aegis destroyers outfitted with “missile defense” systems built at BIW) 11:30-12:30 am   Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm (207) 763-4062

·       USAF Croughton, England (Oct 6) No Space Force march & rally at main gate of U.S. satellite communication and joint intelligence base. Space communications, drones, bomber guidance, missile defence and command & control functions.  12-4 pm. Oxfordshire Peace Campaign, oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk

• RAF Fylingdales, England (Oct 6) Walk around the US and NATO missile 'defence' radar on the North Yorkshire moors. See www.yorkshirecnd.org.uk  and check with info@yorkshirecnd.org.uk  or phone 01274730795 for details.

Space Week Co-Sponsor: Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, U.S. Section

Resources:

·       Find our full-size space week poster at http://www.space4peace.org/actions/Keep%20Space%20for%20Peace%20Poster%202018.pdf 

•  Space videos for viewing and sharing available at:  http://www.space4peace.org/videos.htm

Sample Letter to Editor:

Dear Editor,

We must stop Trump’s ‘Space Force’ proposal which is provocative and highly expensive.  How about instead we fund National Health Service for all, ensure Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are fully funded and begin to deal with our real problem – climate change?  We don’t need an arms race in space.

 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  (blog)

This Is Your Government On The Drug Of So-Called Defense Contracting #OnwardKleptocracy

If Senator Susan Collins had to wear her corporate sponsorships for Maine voters to see, this is what it would look like.

Here are videos made at a talk by investigative reporter Alex Nunes speaking at the University of Southern Maine in Portland June 2, 2018.

This version is the whole talk including Alex's response to questions from the audience.


https://youtu.be/N5x7hSi-QsY

This version has been edited to feature just Alex's remarks about how so-called defense contracting at Bath Iron Works, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, has infested Maine government. This is a problem at the national, state and municipal leve. 

His focus is on Congress and especially the odious Senator Susan Collins, whose husband profits mightily every time she votes for more Pentagon contractor enrichment.


https://youtu.be/05hAz34HU-4

Thanks to Martha Spiess of Peace Action Maine for both videos.

Under Regimes Of White Supremacy And Kleptocracy, Suicide Rates Are Skyrocketing -- Even Among Elites

Lorie Meacham

Follow · June 6 · 

I don't care how you try to spin it. Children are not criminals. They don't belong in cages. Period.

When Europeans landed in North America with their heads full of white supremacy and colonialism, it was the beginning of a long demise. For them and for everyone unfortunate enough to be in their path to conquest.

NEW- CLARIFICATION OF WHAT TRUMP WANTS INSURANCE COMPANIES TO BE ABLE TO DENY OR UP-CHARGE FOR:

-Asthma inhaler
-Mild anxiety
-Alcoholism
-Toe fungus
-Being 50
-High blood pressure
-Birth control

Individual coverage for cancer, diabetes, a transplant, epilepsy wouldn’t exist https://t.co/CRFEYwEP45

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) June 8, 2018

The places where white supremacy and unregulated capitalism have brought us are dismal. 

Dismal for everyone. This is the part elites don't get: a society ruled by racist kleptocrats is not worth living in. The suicide rate in the U.S. has risen dramatically in the last two decades, and elites are far from immune from this particular disease of despair.

From the Center for Disease Control:

If you need help for yourself or someone else, please contact the

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Talk: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Chat: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Emulating my shero Cecile Pineda, here's a rose among thorns from Maureen Ostensen of Maine's Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farm. May it give you hope for the future!

Frances [high school daughter] participated in a forum for Democratic candidates for governor.  Each student wrote questions for one candidate, and Frances wrote the questions for Mark Dion.  She asked him how he voted on the tax break for BIW and why.  He responded that he is one of five Democrats who voted against the tax break calling it corporate ransom.  He said there is no need to take money from the tax payers in Maine to give a tax break to a corporation whose CEO earned in excess of (I think he said $20 million).

With this statement he received almost a standing ovation from a large crowd of pretty affluent Democrats. 

I wanted to share this with you, as I was impressed at how well the crowd understood the issue.  I do not think there would have been that kind of recognition had you [Bruce Gagnon] not made such a valiant effort to publicize the issue.

I have to believe there are pockets of support for a more human approach to weapons and war out there who are beginning to make connections to BIW.

My note: BIW refers to Bath Iron Works which is a subsidiary of super wealthy weapons manufacturer General Dynamics.

Created In 2003, ICE Is The New Gestapo -- How Will We Stop Their Crimes Against Humanity?

My sister posted this photo of the young woman murdered by border patrol with the comment, "Looks really threatening, huh?" Maybe it's because I've been reading I, Rigoberta Menchú recently, but I can totally understand why a traditionally dressed young woman from Guatemala with a sober expression on her face is perceived as a threat by the violent patriarchy that rules the U.S.

Image: GoodReads

Women in Central America, especially women from indigenous cultures, have mounted decades of serious resistance to right wing governments and the thieving corporations they enable.

So, the kleptocracy ascendant here in the USA rightly fears indigenous women.


Note that I am not in any way excusing the murder of Claudia Gómez by ICE. 

The death, which her boyfriend waiting for her in the U.S. called "an assassination," was reported by Molly Hennessy-Fiske in the Los Angeles Times. The story includes an interview with a witness on the scene, amateur videographer Marta Martinez, who sees people running and hiding from ICE in her Texas neighborhood all the time.

Something interesting I learned today from sister activist Jessica Stewart:

ICE was only created in 2003, as part of the US's post-9/11 hyper-militarized, xenophobic frenzy.

We didn't have this department 16 years ago, we do not need it, and we should abolish it immediately. 

I do not say this lightly: ICE is America's gestapo and we should treat them with that level of serious resistance.

Ms. Gómez’s family in Guatemala City

Her aunt had this to say about the death of her niece, as reported by Sofia Menchu for Reuters:

“To the government of the United States,

(I ask) that you do not treat us like this, like animals, just because you are a powerful and developed country,” 

Dominga Vicente, Gómez’s aunt, told reporters in Guatemala City. The young woman from the Guatemalan highlands had left her home in search of work and education opportunities, Vicente said.

From the YouTube post of Martinez's video:

Gómez Gonzáles was a Maya-Mam indigenous woman and had reportedly graduated from a program in forensic accounting in 2016. She had hoped to further her education, her father, Gilberto Gómez, told the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre. 

Lidia Gonzáles, the woman’s mother, told a local news channel that the family didn’t have enough money for her daughter to continue her studies. “She told me she wanted to keep studying at university but we don’t have the money,” Gonzáles said, according to a translation by The Guardian. “We’re poor and there are no jobs here. That’s why she traveled to the U.S. But they killed her. Immigration killed her.” 

Back to the Gestapo theme.

Did Nazi Germany as a "powerful and developed country" treat Jews, including young women and children, as animals? Unless you're a child yourself, you know full well that they did.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has achieved infamy by telling reporters for NPR that separating families is a effective deterrent to asylum seekers, and that it's not cruel because the minor children are “put into foster care or whatever.”


Did you think as you learned about the Holocaust: If I had been living in Europe at that time in history I would have resisted with all the resources I had available to me? Well, here we are now.

More from Jessica Stewart:

Who is following recent news about Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)? For those of us who are citizens, what if it were your kids or my kids? What would you or I want people to do? 

1. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced that for families seized by ICE, children will be separated from their parents in detention with no word on when they will be reuinted (more here: http://time.com/526…/jeff-sessions-illegal-border-separated/) 

2. Of the 7,000+ children that ICE has captured from their families, 1,475 are unaccounted for. Gone. And this is only the first report, numbers may be much higher. (More here: http://time.com/5256734/government-missing-migrant-children/) 

3. Documents obtained by the ACLU show massive horrific abuse of children in ICE custody, including kicking a child in the ribs, running over a 17 year old with a patrol car, sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl in a search, and detaining a 4 pound premature baby and her mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell full of sick people. (More here: https://www.aclusandiego.org/civil-rights-civil-liberties/) 

4. ICE plans to destroy records of immigrant abuse, including sexual assault and deaths in custody (From an August 2017 report, more here: https://www.aclu.org/…/ice-plans-start-destroying-records-i…) 

Here's reporting from Curt Prendergast and Perla Trevizo for the Arizona Daily Star:

Alma Jacinto covered her eyes with her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.

The 36-year-old from Guatemala was led out of the federal courtroom without an answer to the question that brought her to tears: When would she see her boys again?

Jacinto wore a yellow bracelet on her left wrist, which defense lawyers said identifies parents who are arrested with their children and prosecuted in Operation Streamline, a fast-track program for illegal border crossers.

Image: Facebook post by Jeanne Morales, an immigration attorney in Texas

Anne Frank and her family were deemed illegal border crossers, forced to wear badges on their clothing identifying them as Jews and criminals.

One thing you can do: teach Holocaust history, which many young people in the U.S. are completely ignorant about. 

Photo by Henryk Ross "Children being transported to Chelmno nad Nerem (renamed Kulmhof) death camp." 

You can also join or donate to the ACLU to support the legal fight against ICE detention and separation of families. Or find other organizations to support that are battling ICE forces of evil.

You could write to the kleptocrats in Congress and the White House for all the good it will do (note that Obama's record on immigrant detentions and deportations was also abysmal). 

You can also write letters to the editor, which are free and reach thousands of people daily. 

Spread the news!!!

Dark Times

Gaza medics in identifying clothing approach wounded with their hands raised, but get shot anyway. You can contribute to support unarmed civilians being attacked by Israel's military here at Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Besides being overwhelmed at work and at home, I'm struggling this week with the darkness that seems to be closing in worldwide. It's hard to say which I'm more troubled by: Israel's slaughter of unarmed civilians at the Gaza border while kleptocrats partied in Jerusalem; U.S. warmongering against Iran; or confirmation of a known pregnant woman torturer to head the CIA. 

Yesterday there was another mass shooting at a high school, this time in Texas. The NRA, the enforcement arm of kleptocracy that keeps us all fearful, took time out from harassing teens who've survived school shootings to put convicted felon Oliver North at its helm.

Families began being ripped apart at the border as migrants fleeing violence in Central America attempted to cross over to safety. And, needless to say, the ongoing bad news of weapons corporations using taxpayer funding to lobby elected officials for tax breaks on top of the already gargantuan military budget with its attendant austerities for the people -- rolled on.

Then there were the small discouragements: all my postcards to Kings Bay Plowshares anti-nuclear activists were sent back rather than delivered. This small cruelty to the activists was expected because other correspondents had posted photos of their undelivered regulation post office issue postcards earlier in the week. I know that my first batch of postcards a few weeks ago were received, because I got replies from several of the conscientious objectors to nuclear warmongering. They were all arraigned last week and if they care to can post a $5000 bond and submit to house arrest with ankle monitors pending their trial. You can contribute to their bond fund here.

I've said before that I write this blog to keep my head from exploding as I attempt to process the bad news of our times.

Clearly, I should spend more time reading my friend Cecile Pineda's newsletter which always ends with a Roses Among Thorns section sharing encouraging, uplifting, hopeful current events. Thanks, Cecile, for your pinpoint of light shining in these dark times.

Voices Crying In The Wilderness Of U.S. Collapse: Aegis 9 Go On Trial This Week

Anthony Freda

What have my co-defendants in the Aegis 9 been up to in the weeks since we selected our jury and awaited our trial for criminal trespass, being prosecuted on behalf of mega corporation General Dynamics by the taxpayers of Maine?

Russell Wray

To name a few, Jason Rawn has been flyering to oppose the $60 million Maine payroll tax giveaway that General Dynamics has written for itself and gotten before the Taxation Committee. Mark Roman has been testifying to the Environmental and Natural Resources Committee of the Maine legislature, trying to stop the appointment of a Nestle executive to the Board of Environmental Protection. Bruce Gagnon has been dealing with a hacking attack on his email account and two of his home computers crashing. Natasha Mayers has been fundraising for a documentary about her art activism. Jessica Stewart has been organizing to oppose offshore oil drilling slated for the coast of Maine. 

I don't know what Russell Wray, Mike Tork and Bob Dale have been up to, but I'm confident they have their eyes on the prize of a better life for everybody in the rapidly crumbling USA.

Me, I'm always reading in between teaching school. Oh, and crying out in the wilderness of kleptocracy against the submission of my government to corporate interests.

Here's a partial digest of my Sunday morning reading list (illustrations added by me):

Why We're Underestimating American Collapse: The Strange New Pathologies of the World's First Rich Failed State by Umair Haque. Discusses the latest school shooting (the 11th so far in 2018, which is not quite one month old) in the context of poverty, opioid addiction, and how the richest nation in the world found itself on this desolate path. 

Anthony Freda

Losing Sight: a 4 year old girl was the sole survivor of a US drone strike in Afghanistan and then she disappeared by May Jeong. Uses recently opened archives to examine civilian deaths and their coverups by examining one example of a 2013 (i.e. Obomber administration) drone strike that maimed a young child and removed her from her surviving family.

Homeless man almost crushed after San Diego city workers scooped him up and tossed him in a garbage truck by Jeff McDonald. Examines the policies of a wealthy California city in dealing with the 9,000 homeless people who live there.

Anthony Freda

US, UK Knew of Nazi War Crimes in 1942, Did Nothing: Archive published on teleSUR English. Reveals new evidence of what historians already knew but the passive consumers of WWII war porn in the US still do not, that "individuals within the state department were focusing on the economic relations between the U.S. and West Germany."

Anthony Freda

16 year old Virginia girl's body found 2 weeks after she went missing. Her parents say police treated her like a runaway by Angela Helm. A missing black teenage girl is low priority for many tax-funded public "safety" entities like police departments. #BlackLivesMatter

America's reluctant septuagenarian workforce by Peter Whorisky. Title is self-explanatory: people work into their 70's because they can't afford to live on what remains of the pension system in the U.S.

Anthony Freda

Refrigerator upgrade for Air Force One to Cost $24 million: report by Avery Anapol.

Onward, kleptocracy.