Tag Archives: New York

A hero does not shoot an unarmed man in the back, then pose for trophy photo.

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SORRY, NO. And I’ve seen this composition before. Abu Ghraib. Or any of the trophy shots found on the digital cameras of US soldiers in free fire zones. These officers are holding up for display a critically injured man struggling to breathe. Shortly he’ll be interrogated while still in intensive care, while America pretends this is justice.

Sergeant Jay Cook saw escapee David Sweat running for the dense woods. No, shooting an unarmed man in the back does not fall within rules of engagement, neither for border patrol nor fugitive manhunt. Sergeant Cook was among a posse of thousands, including all variety of aircraft and vehicles. Though Sweat had evaded capture for 21 days, this was the first direct sighting. Cook was too porcine to make chase, but did he think the prisoner could outrun everything else? Shooting Sweat twice in the back was an act of cowardice, like that of snipers or drone pilots. Jay Cook is an American Hero for the Police State.

New York prison victims need your help

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AT THE VERY LEAST people living near New York State’s now infamous prison break could be getting fresh air in defiance of their governor’s ludicrous warnings to hide from the dangerous felons. Neighbors can exercise their property rights to spectate as they please and take strolls where they can to muck it up for the K9s hounding fugitives David Sweat and Richard Matt. Fellow freedom-loving itinerants could also converge upstate to force multiply the sightings of vagabond pairs crisscrossing the woods around the Clinton Correctional Facility, known in the industry as “Little Siberia”. But most certainly, lawyers of any conscience should assail the Clinton County DA’s office in defense of poor Joyce Mitchell, the prison sweatshop supervisor who may have helped the escapees, whom authorities were waiting to charge until after she’d cooperated with interrogators. Lawyers should be livid that neither authorities nor reporters bat an eyelash at Ms. Mitchell’s lack of proper counsel. Media coverage while constant is marred by omission.

Are fugitives Matt and Sweat dangerous? The media doesn’t want to detail their criminal histories other than to repeat they are murderers. David Sweat and an accomplice plead guilty to first degree murder of a sheriff’s deputy when Sweat was 22. (Who pleads guilty to first degree murder?) The deputy had interrupted a burglary, other accomplices were not charged. When Sweat was 17 he served time for attempted burglary.

While in his twenties Richard Matt killed his boss. Why and what was their line of work? The media won’t say. Matt’s previous record was as a juvenile.

Both appear to be examples of the failure of the correctional industry in handling juveniles. This prison break was the only hope either men had for escaping its clutches. The escape was nonviolent and fears that either men mean harm to others are not grounded in anything but hyperbole about how “evil” they are.

Is this FBI-speak? Ima throw you off this balcony and break you in half boy

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Wherever did NY congressman Michael Grimm learn such language? I’m guessing the FBI edition of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, Grimm being former FBI. If ex-officer Grimm isn’t prosecuted for MENACING, threatening to throw a DC news reporter off a balcony, it would seem only fair that the representative’s constituents be free to tease him with the same bullying words, and who knows, even mean them. I doubt Grimm himself is “man enough” to weather bluster coming his way, especially if spoken with intent. “HEY CONGRESSMAN! LET ME BE CLEAR TO YOU! If you disrespect us again, we’re going to throw you off this fucking platform! We’re going to break you in half, boy!” That heckle should be perfunctory at every next Grimm public appearance. Would it be illegal? It is. As it should be, in particular from the mouth of an offensive politician who appears to act with impunity. For example, I not only believe Grimm, I believe he’d get away with it. Does Grimm have to throw journalists from balconies before he is arrested? Would he be more than upbraided even then? It shouldn’t be up to reporter Michael Scotto to decline to press charges, the real victims are everyone who’ve now witnessed and felt this threat. And let’s press the FBI to apologize for their former agent, and promise to wipe “throw you from a fucking balcony” from their interrogation script.

City Hall ignoring bad publicity from New York

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So Ed went on this radio talk show, called in, broadcast in Nuevo Jork. Did pretty good and, since the station is one of the few LEFT wing media in America, (to paraphrase the DumFox Listener bumper sticker “I don’t believe In The Existence Of the Liberal Media.”) but since Pressure Points radio is Left instead of the two “mainstream” methods of delivering news hate speech, Fascist opinions and Propaganda,(Far Right and Extremely Far Right outlets) Our Beloved non-elite elitists at City Hall are ignoring it. I probably wrote that redundantly in an inappropriately repetitive manner, but I only see three lines at a time, I put in html code and it’s a long sentence.
Many understand me, many want to and don’t understand me and the tiny fraction of hard-core right wing morons left over can merely bite me.

As Wikileaks threatens establishment, Apple wields sledgehammer FOR 1984

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Remember when Apple pretended to be the defiant sledgehammer to 1984? Today as Julian Assange swings the hammer, Apple joins its big brothers on the giant screen as it removes the Wikileaks app for iPones and iPads. Did you think there were any heroes in the corporate firmament? Amazon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, now Apple, nobody wants YOU to get un-manipulated news. But here Steve Jobs has missed an innovation bigger than he has ever rolled out. For man’s innate curiosity about himself, Wikileaks has become the reason to get up in the morning. Every new day is a chance to learn or confirm something you intuited about the facade erected around you. Odd, but isn’t that what the NEWS used to do?

And it’s a curious news model, it’s all old news, serialized because 250,000 revelations is too much transformitive revisionist history for anyone to handle.

Wikileaks is providing what the corporate news media will not. Into the vacuum, leaks. How can anyone dispute that Wikileaks has not single-handedly changed the accepted narrative of recent history? Although the Cablegate diplomatic cables represent the opinions of US personnel, they are unspun by the media propagandists, as it were, straight from the horsemen’s mouths.

Which lend themselves to government’s traditional role for “leaks,” disseminating lies which the media can get more excited about than their humdrum press releases. Cablegate has probably launched a new office within the state department to poison future databases with false cables.

Michael Moore had to defend his anti-US-healthcare documentary Sicko from the Wikileaked untruth that it had been banned in Cuba. The cable in question was a US diplomat’s idea of creating spin for the US insurance industry’s smear campaign against Moore.

(Did you see him trying to untangle that mess, and explain his support for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night? They were broadcasting from New York’s 92Y to an audience strangely cool to Michael Moore. When Moore proclaimed his Christian values, asking if it was safe to use the word in present company, Maddow missed the gist of his “YMCA” joke, because the 92nd Street “Y” is actually a Jewish center, a Young Men’s Hebrew Association facility, and the NY audience last night were neither Wikileaks supporters nor fans of Moore’s criticism of America’s six ongoing wars.)

The Wikileaks v. Cuba scenario reminds me of the famous Alec Guinness spy farce Our Man in Havana where a clueless vacuum cleaner salesman is recruited by western intelligence services to be their eyes and ears in Cuba. Failing to chance upon serviceable info, he makes sketches of the latest futuristic vacuum, enlarged to industrial scale to suggest it’s a secret missile facility. In fact another recent cable which purported to document a Fidel Castro “crush on Obama” was based on nothing more than reading Castro’s regular “Reflections” as printed in the Cuban press. It used to be our government had a lock on what Americans could observe about Cuba, but today Fidel’s Reflections are available to all online.

Another unique aspect of Wikileaks as a news organization, is that it is beholden to no corporations, and no benevolent noblesse oblige, but to a 24 year-old military hero now held in solitary confinement.

NY trial no threat for Guantanamo 5

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BUSH REGIME ENGINEERED 9-11Whatsa matter Mayor Giuliani? Are you afraid if the 9/11 suspects come to trial in NYC, that these 9/11 TRUTH fellows might turn up? It was your Ground Zero hero’s launchpad, this time it may be theirs.

You and the media paint the Guantanamo 5 as guilty, without a trial. Sarah Palin would like to see them executed before a trial, allegedly. We can grant her the benefit of the doubt to not have said something so callous, but there’s no charity left for ragheads. Maybe a drone outfit could target Guantanamo, and we’d be spared having to incarcerate its inmates elsewhere. The detainees have already served eight years of inhumane detention and torture. I’m very enthused to see them get a day in court. They’re what, innocent until proven guilty, so that makes them suspects, at best alleged terrorists. You call them terrorists, but at worst they are terror conspirators. Neither are, after all, the nineteen hijackers.

Speaking of which, if you could get your hands on the hijackers who were mistakenly identified to have been on the plane, who are taunting you from their homes in the Middle East, if you could extradite them, what charges would you bring? Conspiracy to impersonate phantom bogeymen?

Normally high profile defendants plead to be tried away from the population center of their victims. For NINE ELEVEN there may be a case to make either way. The “9/11 terrorists” may face a tough crowd sourced from NY’s bitterly racist civil servants. On the other hand, the aftermath of Ground Zero has ruined a whole lot more people than were killed in the twin towers and were bought off handsomely to ask no questions.

Speaking of the 9/11 victim families, when are we going to quit asking the families about this, that, and how to proceed in Afghanistan?! We’re ALL OF US VICTIMS OF 9/11 NOW! None more than the Iraqis and Afghans, and poor people everywhere the US is prosecuting its War On Terror. They’re offered a pittance for their loses, Americans are losing sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and sometimes the survivors get a favorable insurance payout, but the rest of us get zilch, that much credit, and a broken economy. The 9/11 family survivors were compensated for the lost expected income of their darling WTC financiers, plus a little extra to stay away from the 9/11 Widows, the true patriots. Of course the war industry and its corporate media look to the 9/11 families when the public needs a booster shot of embittered venom, but why are the rest of us not laughing in derision? Come on, you fathers and mothers of bitches. You took your silver, now beat it to Cancun. No more innocents need to die because you can’t come to terms with the fact that your Little Eichmanns got their due.

The GOP culpables are wondering aloud if NYC trials for the terror suspects would in reality put America on trial. You betcha!

Usually when the posses returns with the wanted men, the deputes have to protect them from the angry mob trying to break into the jail to have a lynching. Rudy Giuliani and his GOP can see the mob already converging for the trials, and they know it’s not the Guantanamo Five they’re after.

USS NY apt reincarnation of WTC steel

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USS New York of World Trade Center steelFinally the USS New York, famously built from the steel of the fallen twin towers, sails into NY for a photo-op near the site of the WTC, looking every bit to me like a fortified extension of the official 9/11 cover up.

The wreckage of Ground Zero was carted off before forensic engineers could test the material and explain the mysterious collapse. Now the steel is back, albeit just two army trucks’ weight worth, in the bow of a floating fortress whose foreboding facade informs us, with a wicked armored smirk, that its secret will be remain off-limits to civilians forever. New Yorkers have to look across the water and be reminded the military laughs at the police and firemen, who bravely ascended buildings which should never have vaporized, who died on September 11, 2001 for reasons forever to remain unexplained.

The USS NY sailing up to NYC is gunboat diplomacy against America’s own people.

I’m no naval engineer, but the USS NY’s twin funnels are the most grotesque mimicry of the now iconic towers.

But how fitting a tribute, that the WTC remains –we might pretend even the dust of its victims, if military contractor shoddy standards follow precedent, are concealed in the steel– were used to build an amphibious transport ship, whose only military purpose is offensive. Unless you count America’s questionable dominion in the Pacific and Caribbean, to where would we need to ship troops in defense of our homeland. Lamentably, the USS New York is the perfect reincarnation of the World Trade Center, which engaged in relentless attacks on economies overseas, until cut brutally short by boxcutters and Third World anger. Of late, Americans may have glimpsed from the financial crisis that the WTC was also waging war on our own domestic economy. As these revelations dawn, so too will the USS N.Y. turn its guns against us.

All the news fit to be shown to Americans

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Simultaneous editions of NewsweekThis September has been the most fatal month for Canadians in Afghanistan. The number of Canadian soldiers killed peacekeeping for NATO has been accelerating of late and now stands at 37. It would stand to reason that Afghanistan would make the news.
 
Amy Goodman’s Independent Media in a Time of War examined the difference between the Iraq war coverage on CNN versus CNN international. Not the difference between Fox-News and the BBC, just the difference between in-house news departments of the same company.
 
What explains the decision to have a different cover story in this week’s domestic issue of Newsweek? Losing Afghanistan everywhere else, Annie Liebowitz: My Life In Pictures here.
 
The War in Afghanistan has become the forgotten war, due in large part because it is also kept an invisible war.
 
It serves to remember that regardless of the occasional expose, our press is neither unvigilant nor asleep. More precisely, their vigilance attends to guarding we don’t lose our sleep.
 
I have to remind myself, after reading any story critical of the war, that our press is not critical. The Wall Street Journal are terrible Neocon war mongers. The Washington Post, cynical war mongers. The Los Angeles Times, bandwagon war mongers. The New York Times, gatekeeper war mongers. Fox, MSNBC, of course cheerleader war mongers. CBS, ABC, war monger wannabees. Disney, war monger profiteers.
 
Recently fans are rallying around Keith Olbermann and his recent tirades against this administration. I agree we should support his speaking out, but Olbermann’s got a long way to go before he atones for his full throttle support in the lead-in to war.

Over 250,000 Iraqis are dead as a result of our invasion. Afghanistan too continues to suffer terrible civilian casualties. Our press supported both ventures and continues to support them.