Last Rhodesian Dylann Roof was racist and white supremacist AND mentally ill


When a white racist mass murderer is apprehended, it’s a Western law enforcement tradition not to treat the suspect as cops do suspects of color. Fortunately television audience are now rejecting this inequity, and predictably they call for blood, instead of suggesting that all pre-trial interaction with police be conducted with respect for the presumed innocent. Similarly, white shooters and bombers are not called terrorists or racists but rather loners struggling with mental illness. I think it’s hugely important to call out the racism and xenophobia which breeds antisocial renegades like Dylann Storm Roof, and NOT judge Roof differently than the rare but much abused non-white even un-domestic insurgent. But why dismiss the insanity defense, when it obviously plays a part in more crimes not fewer. Dylann Roof was on psych meds. That’s another nightmare altogether, by which I mean for the pharmaceutical industry, who I think have a perfect record for supplementing white mass shooters. American prisons are filled with mental illness and mental disability and mental shortcomings. The justice system needs to be reformed with respect for mental health challenges, not with calls to get tougher on those with lesser ability to cope in society.

Dylann Roof’s alleged manifesto shows he’s not the brightest bulb either.

I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply because of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness. Growing up, in school, the White and black kids would make racial jokes toward each other, but all they were were jokes. Me and White friends would sometimes would watch things that would make us think that “blacks were the real racists” and other elementary thoughts like this, but there was no real understanding behind it.

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words “black on White crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got ignored?

From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there. From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.

Blacks

I think it is is fitting to start off with the group I have the most real life experience with, and the group that is the biggest problem for Americans.
Niggers are stupid and violent. At the same time they have the capacity to be very slick. Black people view everything through a racial lens. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lens. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldn’t be thinking about race. The other reason is the Jewish agitation of the black race.

Black people are racially aware almost from birth, but White people on average don’t think about race in their daily lives. And this is our problem. We need to and have to.

Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man. You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog. But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man. Why? Because dogs are lower than men.

This same analogy applies to black and White relations. Even today, blacks are subconsciously viewed by White people are lower beings. They are held to a lower standard in general. This is why they are able to get away with things like obnoxious behavior in public. Because it is expected of them.

Modern history classes instill a subconscious White superiority complex in Whites and an inferiority complex in blacks. This White superiority complex that comes from learning of how we dominated other peoples is also part of the problem I have just mentioned. But of course I don’t deny that we are in fact superior.

I wish with a passion that niggers were treated terribly throughout history by Whites, that every White person had an ancestor who owned slaves, that segregation was an evil an oppressive institution, and so on. Because if it was all it true, it would make it so much easier for me to accept our current situation. But it isn’t true. None of it is. We are told to accept what is happening to us because of ancestors wrong doing, but it is all based on historical lies, exaggerations and myths. I have tried endlessly to think of reasons we deserve this, and I have only came back more irritated because there are no reasons.

Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every White person is treated as if they had a slave owning ancestor. This applies to in the states where slavery never existed, as well as people whose families immigrated after slavery was abolished. I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive. One sticks out in my mind where an old ex-slave recounted how the day his mistress died was one of the saddest days of his life. And in many of these narratives the slaves told of how their masters didn’t even allowing whipping on his plantation.

Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.

Now White parents are forced to move to the suburbs to send their children to “good schools”. But what constitutes a “good school”? The fact is that how good a school is considered directly corresponds to how White it is. I hate with a passion the whole idea of the suburbs. To me it represents nothing but scared White people running. Running because they are too weak, scared, and brainwashed to fight. Why should we have to flee the cities we created for the security of the suburbs? Why are the suburbs secure in the first place? Because they are White. The pathetic part is that these White people don’t even admit to themselves why they are moving. They tell themselves it is for better schools or simply to live in a nicer neighborhood. But it is honestly just a way to escape niggers and other minorities.

But what about the White people that are left behind? What about the White children who, because of school zoning laws, are forced to go to a school that is 90 percent black? Do we really think that that White kid will be able to go one day without being picked on for being White, or called a “white boy”? And who is fighting for him? Who is fighting for these White people forced by economic circumstances to live among negroes? No one, but someone has to.

Here I would also like to touch on the idea of a Northwest Front. I think this idea is beyond stupid. Why should I for example, give up the beauty and history of my state to go to the Northwest? To me the whole idea just parallels the concept of White people running to the suburbs. The whole idea is pathetic and just another way to run from the problem without facing it.

Some people feel as though the South is beyond saving, that we have too many blacks here. To this I say look at history. The South had a higher ratio of blacks when we were holding them as slaves. Look at South Africa, and how such a small minority held the black in apartheid for years and years. Speaking of South Africa, if anyone thinks that think will eventually just change for the better, consider how in South Africa they have affirmative action for the black population that makes up 80 percent of the population.

It is far from being too late for America or Europe. I believe that even if we made up only 30 percent of the population we could take it back completely. But by no means should we wait any longer to take drastic action.

Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional. How could our faces, skin, hair, and body structure all be different, but our brains be exactly the same? This is the nonsense we are led to believe.

Negroes have lower IQs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior. If a scientist publishes a paper on the differences between the races in Western Europe or Americans, he can expect to lose his job. There are personality traits within human families, and within different breeds of cats or dogs, so why not within the races?

A horse and a donkey can breed and make a mule, but they are still two completely different animals. Just because we can breed with the other races doesn’t make us the same.

In a modern history class it is always emphasized that, when talking about “bad” things Whites have done in history, they were White. But when we learn about the numerous, almost countless wonderful things Whites have done, it is never pointed out that these people were White. Yet when we learn about anything important done by a black person in history, it is always pointed out repeatedly that they were black. For example when we learn about how George Washington carver was the first nigger smart enough to open a peanut.

On another subject I want to say this. Many White people feel as though they don’t have a unique culture. The reason for this is that White culture is world culture. I don’t mean that our culture is made up of other cultures, I mean that our culture has been adopted by everyone in the world. This makes us feel as though our culture isn’t special or unique. Say for example that every business man in the world wore a kimono, that every skyscraper was in the shape of a pagoda, that every door was a sliding one, and that everyone ate every meal with chopsticks. This would probably make a Japanese man feel as though he had no unique traditional culture.

I have noticed a great disdain for race mixing White women within the White nationalists community, bordering on insanity it. These women are victims, and they can be saved. Stop.

Jews

Unlike many White nationalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldn’t cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on.

I don’t pretend to understand why jews do what they do. They are enigma.

Hispanics

Hispanics are obviously a huge problem for Americans. But there are good hispanics and bad hispanics. I remember while watching hispanic television stations, the shows and even the commercials were more White than our own. They have respect for White beauty, and a good portion of hispanics are White. It is a well known fact that White hispanics make up the elite of most hispanics countries. There is good White blood worth saving in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and even Brazil.

But they are still our enemies.

East Asians

I have great respect for the East Asian races. Even if we were to go extinct they could carry something on. They are by nature very racist and could be great allies of the White race. I am not opposed at all to allies with the Northeast Asian races.

Patriotism

I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But I’m not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940’s American than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I don’t blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for.

An Explanation

To take a saying from a film, “I see all this stuff going on, and I don’t see anyone doing anything about it. And it pisses me off.” To take a saying from my favorite film, “Even if my life is worth less than a speck of dirt, I want to use it for the good of society.”

I have no choice. I am not in the position to, alone, go into the ghetto and fight. I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.

Unfortunately at the time of writing I am in a great hurry and some of my best thoughts, actually many of them have been to be left out and lost forever. But I believe enough great White minds are out there already.

Please forgive any typos, I didn’t have time to check it.

On Nikki Haley, calling for the Death Penalty

Let’s all grab our pitch forks, run around and find something to kill. There now! that should make us all feel better about what happened. If you listen to moron politicians like Nikki Halley, then you are the sucker she is counting on. “Kill Dylann”, there! problem solved.
 
It was reported by some news media, that Dylann wanted to start a race war, because he lost a girl he liked to another boy who happen to be black. Guess Dylann wasn’t keeping up with current events, there is already a race war in progress. You need only look at the fact that he is still alive, after the horrific crime he is suspected of, while many, many black men, women and children are dead, committing no crime at all.

The number of these racially motivated crimes by the police are hidden for fear the citizens will see the true nature of their “Protect and Serve” law enforcement. Here are some facts;

1. The NRA; Since 1998, the NRA has spent $28.2 million on lobbying in Washington and employed between 16 and 35 lobbyists in any given year.

2. While The Bureau of Justice Statics does not provide the annual number of arrest-related deaths by race or ethnicity, a rough calculation based on its data shows that black people were about four times as likely to die in custody or while being arrested than whites.

3. Black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails.

4. While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned.

I could provide more facts and figures, they are there for anyone wishing to see the truth. As for Nikki and her comments; She is the worst of politicians, she is only appealing to the emotions of the moment.

According to a March 29, 2011 Congressional Research Service report, Congress has approved a total of $1.283 trillion for military operations, this taxpayer money was spent to protect Americans from the “Terrorist”, you know, that brown skinned man who lives in some foreign land. While at home, in the USA, the “Terrorist” is protected by the second amendment.

“There have been at least 70 mass shootings across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Thirty-three of these mass shootings have occurred since 2006. Seven of them took place in 2012 alone, including Sandy Hook”.

Mass shootings toll exceeds 900 in past seven years, we can now add another 9 people to that list.

How many tax dollars have been spent keeping guns out of the hands of the “American Terrorist?” ZERO. The NRA has made sure of this with their control of congress. It should be noted that the NRA supports the supply of weapons to both the American and Foreign “Terrorist”.

The NRA like most of American Corporations sole function is to make money, and they have now militarized the police across US in their effort to control the mass population as they awake from a long slumber.

We need to look past the Dylann’s of America and see the culture that created him and then put a gun in his hands. Dylann serves only as a symptom of a greater disease.

It’s time for a revolution.

New York prison victims need your help

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.

Are escapees Richard Matt and David Sweat hardened criminals? Maybe, but they’re only dangerous if you’re a cop.

david sweat and richard matt
New York State authorities are warning the pubic that prison escapees David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, are hardened criminals and extremely dangerous. However, they didn’t kill anyone while making their escape from a maximum security prison, and unless you are Matt’s former boss, who he killed, or a Sheriff’s deputy who stood in their way, such as Sweat plead guilty to co-killing, there’s no past record to suggest the pair mean you any harm. Having the police tell everyone “if you see something, say something” does make everyone the fugitives encounter a potential snitch. NY law enforcement should be held accountable for what the pair might be forced to do as a result. Freedom for prisoners. Abolish all prisons.
 
Now we need homeless vagabonds to head to New York state in pairs to assist the manhunt.

Don’t Throw Me in the Briar Patch

Only a couple years ago we made a video, after seeing an email from the private prison people asking for a guarantee from the state for 90% occupancy. Think about that for a minute, then watch our video from the Media Action Network. How can the state save money when they have to guarantee to the corporation they will keep the prisons full? The taxpayers need to get in touch with their reps and tell them we’ve had enought of this BS from the private prisons group.
 

Video by AJ Oscarson and Jason Lee.

Ladon Sheats Peace Activist

LadonIt was 1979, I was sitting in the Denver County Jail waiting for my second escape trial to begin. The cell block door opened and in walked six men. I looked them over as all prisoner do when any new prisoners are given free room and board at the local crossbar hotel.
 
There was something very different about these men, I saw it the moment I set eyes on them. They seemed so relaxed and peaceful in their posture unlike most men when thrown into jail, there was no “rat in a trap” manor about them, there was a peace and calm hanging around them like a halo. As I watched them from the second tier, I made a mental note that I would talk with them to learn the Why, What and Wherefore. It was not long before I learned their dastardly crime. The TV set up on the wall was tuned to the news channel, and their they were, all over the main stream media. Their crime was: These six men and one woman had cut a hole in the barbwire fence that enclosed ” Rocky Flats” the site where the triggers were manufactured for nuclear bombs. They then entered the property, knelt down on their prayer rugs and began to pray. They were praying for an end to war.

I have never been big on prayer because it seems never to fill the empty bellies of the homeless and seemed to be only so many words in the wind. The only exceptions I’ve ever seen in prayers, was when the preacher was praying for our coins to fill his pockets.

As I sat there watching these six peaceful men, my mind was exploding with thoughts. I had seen many men come to jail over the years, Robbers, Rapist, Murderers, Drug Pushers, and all sorts of petty criminals, but this was a new first for me. I had never seen men come to jail for their convictions. It was to be a lesson I would never forget, it was not long before I knew, they had something I wanted. I was that rat in the trap and I wanted the freedom they felt as they were locked in a jail.

I would spend the next month talking with them in my efforts to discover how they could remain so calm in the calamity they faced.

One of the first thing I realized was how unselfish their act was. I had four young children at home, their act was so that my children as all children should be allowed to live and grow in a peaceful world. This was a very deeply held conviction held by all of them.

In that month, one man, Ladon Sheats and I would become close friends. This was the secret he taught me.

For every human being born to this world there is a tragedy waiting at some point in their future, the size, shape and color of that tragedy is of little importance, but what is important, is how we deal with it.

If we are gripped with fear and panic, our minds have lost much of our ability to reason and deal with the problem. Stay calm, stay strong and stay standing for what you believe in. The morrow will fall to its own devise. We enter this world as a newborn, crying and terrified, with our mind and thoughts we can leave this world with a serenity and peace, this is open to each of us.

My relationship with Ladon did not end there at the Denver County Jail, he first gave me the freedom from fear and then within a few short years he gave me the physical freedom from prison for which I hungered. Some called it a miracle as at the time I was serving three life sentences.

Ladon was a true Peace Activist.

B 1934 D 2002

City of Denver wins court battle to ignore the homeless, one arrest made


DENVER, COLORADO- The trial of the Tattered Cover Five concluded this week. For three days a municipal court considered whether a complaint made against protesters drumming in front of the downtown Tattered Cover Bookstore should or should not curb the protesters’ freedom of speech. And the jury really didn’t get it. Not only did their verdict uphold the police’s discretion to decide whose speech can be considered to be disturbing the peace, but the jury introduced their own arbitrary enforcement, judging some drummers guilty and some not, even though the complaint which prompted the charges was based on the “loud and unusual noise” generated by the ensemble.

The jury had even heard testimony that defendants were threatened with arrest if we “so much as touched a drum.” How then could this case be about disturbing the peace via loud noise? Defense attorney David Lane knew our acts of defiance were more accurately “disturbing the police.”

More obtuse than the Denver jury was the presiding judge, who resisted every rational objection and motion to insure that blunt authoritarianism always received the benefit of the doubt. I’ll admit our supporters in the audience were glib throughout the trial as our lawyer David Lane could hardly sidestep using the dumb and dumber city attorneys for mops. But the judge always ruled in dumb’s favor. It was as if courtroom 3H was an Affirmative Action program for logical fallacies, and the judge was a rubber-stamp for the rule of bad law.

This was never more clear than in the trial’s final moments, when extra deputies ringed the courtroom and then arrested an audience member.

Just before the jury was to emerge with its verdict, the judge reminded everyone that filming or recording the jury was prohibited. David Lane voiced his objection at the buildup of officers in the courtroom without cause. As usual the judge was dismissive.

Lane emphasized that in all his years this was an uncharacteristic show of force. The judge didn’t care: “Objection noted.” It was her usual refrain.

As the officers moved closer to the audience to make their oppressive presence felt, the activism instinct to raise cell phones at the ready gave the officers their cause. This escalated into a standoff, with the deputies ordering an activist to leave the courtroom. His protestations of innocence were interpreted as resisting so he was led off in handcuffs, prompting of course more impulses to film the arrest.

When more officers began targeting more cellphones, a voice of authority rang out. It wasn’t the judge calling for order in the court. No, she was satisfied to let the deputes maraud through the audience and extract people with physical force without even looking up from her monitor. It was the sonorous voice of David Lane that brought the officers to heel. He said “Nobody can take anyone’s phone.” Lane’s gravitas had never given the judge pause but it stopped the deputes in their tracks.

“The most an officer can ask you to do is to put your phone in your pocket” Lane continued. One activist was holding his phone aloft in a game of keep-away with two deputes. Hesitantly he and the other audience members pocketed their phones.

When the jury members made their entrance they were greeted by a militarized courtroom and an audience numb with shock over the justice system’s indifference to abuse of power. We were in for a worse surprise.

It could be the jury did step up to David Lane’s challenge. He’d told them they would never in their lives wield as much power as they did on this jury, their chance to fashion how First Amendment protections are upheld. Except they didn’t share Lane’s or our concern for holding off a police state. Instead they sided with the prosecution, who urged they preserve “the right to ignore someone else’s opinion.”

Honest to God, our weekly protest at the Tattered Cover was presented to have been about the Urban Camping Ban. The jury understood we were urging people not to ignore the plight of the homeless. The city prosecutor’s words could not have been more ill chosen if one is embarassed by irony.

I was one of the defendants in the Trial of the Tattered Cover Five. One of us escaped charges due to a clerical error, two others were found not guilty for lack of self-incrimination. Tim Calahan and I were convicted of Disturbing the Peace, specifically for having created a loud and unusual noise in violation of a City of Denver ordinance. I got two convictions, community service, court fees, one year’s unsupervised probation, and supervision fees (yes that is a non sequitur), but all of it stayed pending appeal.

David Hughes arrested
So what happened to the courtroom arrestee? I’m free now to say that his name is David Hughes, Denver Occupier and IWW organizer. David wasn’t released until the next day, mostly because neither the city nor county was sure with what to charge him. David was kept in an underground cell between the courthouse and the county jail while the trial went on.

Stunned by our defeat in court, our now un-merry band’s attention was diverted to our imprisoned comrade. David had refused to be excluded from the courtroom and next we learned that, like any good Wobbly, David was refusing to reveal his identity. By chance his wife held his wallet and phone so David was free to complicate his abduction as anyone innocent of charges might. We continued to shout “Free John Doe” outside the courthouse in solidarity late into the night.

Was David guilty of using his phone camera? It’s generally understood that recording devices are not to be used in courtrooms, to respect the privacy of witnesses, the jury, and the accused. In this case the judge had specified not recording the jury which had not yet entered. What had interested David was the disproportionate buildup of sheriffs deputees. How many law enforcement officers can you have in a courtroom before the public feels threatened enough that they need to film the officers for the public’s own protection? What doesn’t get filmed, the cops get away with. The judge certainly wasn’t concerned for our protection.

Reflection
I really can’t understate the disappointment we all felt about the verdict. It was predictable yes, but unsettling to see it happen. We had the best lawyer that money can’t even buy, undone by the steady creep of Fascism. I associate it with our society’s declining education and public engagement, abetted by oppressive law.

For three days, attendees who were not readily recognized as being with the defendants could circulate the halls of the Linsey-Flanigan courthouse and overhear deputees talk about the case. All the deputees were greatly chagrined that The David Lane was representing us. Apparently they all know his reputation. There was no press interest except by KGNU, but lawyers who saw David Lane walk through the hall made a point to stop by our courtroom when they had the chance to watch him work.

And so it was really a blow to the ego to meet with failure. I’ve written before about how police intervention at our Tattered Cover protests ceased entirely after the first arraignment date when David Lane showed up in our stead. We’d been surveilled by a half dozen cruisers every Friday for a half year. After David Lane officially filed our papers that number went to zero. No more visits from officers, no more drivebys with videocameras, for almost a solid year now. It should be interesting to see what happens this Friday. Will the cruisers be back? They still have no cause. No disruptions, no conflicts, no threat of lawbreaking whatsoever.

Before Lane the officers regularly interrupted our assemblies to recite their warnings in spite of our objections. When Tim and I were arrested, we had to sit in a holding cell, shackled to a bench, while Sergeant Stiggler berated us for looking like fools. We were wrong about the camping ban, we were wrong about our rights, bla bla bla bla. We kept our mouths shut to shorten his lecture. After enduring our bullhorn for three months, he’d composed quite a rebuttal. His diatribe contradicted the suggestion that our arrests were about the noise and not our message.

For now unfortunately the sergeant turns out to have been correct about our rights. And looking like fools I guess.

For now Denver’s Disturbing the Peace ordinance does dismantle the First Amendment. For now it does allow what’s called a “heckler’s veto.” That’s a marker of unconstitutionality where one person’s complaint could be used to silence political speech to which they object. It does allow police officers to decide what “time place and manner” limits to place on free speech. Nevermind “Congress shall make no law to abridge” –that’s up to the police. It’s their call!

At our earlier motions hearing David Lane spent two days arguing that Denver’s ordinance was unconstitutional, to deaf ears obviously. At that hearing, DPD officer after officer testified that what qualified as a disturbance was entirely theirs to decide. Lane laid the groundwork to show that Denver police officers aren’t given a clue how to respect free speech. This judge was already satisfied I guess to pass the buck to a higher court.

In the meantime activists can no longer brey with confidence about free speech rights in Denver. We’ll have to engage with police submiting their proposed abridgements. We’ll have to bite our tongues, as they do I’m sure, feeling our hands tied more than we’d like, they longing to beat us. It’s going to be more difficult to recruit newcomers, uneasy with what confidence we can responsibly instill in them. “Am I going to get in trouble” is the first question they ask. Now the more probable answer is not maybe.

When comments distract from posts: The dirty ice cream stick in your hand


The Guardian covered the immigrant mothers protesting their detention in the private facilities run by GEO in Texas. Reading the comments on this article, I’m reminded of a story from my youth, some 60 years ago. We young boys would all head for the Midway of the “Iowa State Fair”.

The Midway is where all tents were set up with the tattoo artist, the two headed calf and the bearded lady. This area was sometimes referred to as “The Freak Show” They also had the scantily clad women who came out and danced on a stage for a few minutes to entice the men to buy a ticket for a more revealing show inside.

While the men stood mesmerized by the hoochie-coochie girls dancing on stage, we boys would quietly slip up behind them. Picking up a dirty ice cream stick, we would gently place it in their open hand. Without thinking, unable to tear their eyes away from the girls, they would close their hands tightly on the ice cream stick.

When the girls left the stage the men would come back to their senses; they would look down at their hand holding the dirty ice cream stick with a bewildering look on their face and then fling the stick to the ground, glancing around to see if anyone noticed.

You can be sure of one thing; GEO, the private prison corp. is reading these comments and loving it.

They have you all distracted while they put the “dirty ice cream stick in your hand” (picking your pocket).

I never quite figured out why they called it “The Freak Show”. Was it because of the bearded lady or those who bought the tickets to see her?

If you don’t stand up for these mothers, you probably wouldn’t stand up for your own mother.

John Kerry tells Africa its greatest resource was & will always be slavery

With the developed empire still wildly exploiting Africa’s vast natural resources and pillaging the wealth of its peoples, US Secretary of State John Kerry had the temerity to pretend that the dark continent’s most precious resource is its untapped labor. Globalization means Western Civ doesn’t have to ship slaves to labor intensive ventures across oceans. Now debt slaves can serve world bank masters in sweatshops and maquiadores and plantations situated in their own prison states.

I’ll believe drugs are victimless when a pot activist gets off the couch for an issue other than access to his addiction

I know as many functional drug users as victims of substance abuse addiction, so it’s a complicated issue for me. I’m against drug criminalization fueling our prison industrial complex, but marijuana rights activism seems too guided by self-interest for my comfort. Is your access to pot more urgent than suffering, injustice and inequity? Of course that may be my privilege speaking. It’s a condescending bugger.

Denver march against police brutality interrupted by a DPD demonstration

DENVER, COLO.- Saturday’s “Every 5th” Anonymous march didn’t get two blocks along the 16th Street Mall before Denver police officers advanced into the compact procession to extract what looked to be targeted activists. Said one Anon: “One minute we were chanting ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ and the next they were fucking themselves! Our demonstration AGAINST police brutality was in solidarity with the New Mexico action #OpAlbuquerque, but became a demonstration OF police brutality. Thank you DPD!” Hundreds of downtown shoppers were drawn to the shit show, to see four dozen masked protesters menaced by a paramilitary force three times the size, ostensibly for jaywalking.

Local news outlets reported that the marchers were diverted from the pedestrian mall when their path was blocked by a dense row of police. Officers made five quick arrests, spraying pepper spray into the faces of marchers who weren’t accommodating their unprovoked, seemingly arbitrary snatch and grab maneuver.

ftp-nmt-dpd-arrestee-groundA few minutes later, with tension waning, the DPD made an odd sixth arrest, tackling an unrelated passerby who suddenly bolted from between their ranks. Whether opportune or calculated, the officers piled on this small man which provoked the crowd to close in on the action and boo. This resembled an attempt to incite obstruction, to provide a pretext for a police escalation, because the little man’s curious entrance coincided with a squad of riot cops already dismounting from the sideboards of their SUVs, in formation to march but without a situtation to warrant it. Let’s also add that the mystery arrestee was cop-shaped and was led off in a different direction than the other detainees.

There was plenty of shouting “FUCK THE DPD” but protesters didn’t take the bait, hardly resembling the riotous mob the DPD pretended them to be. Instead Denver citizens were treated to a front row DPD command performance of “SHOW ME WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE.”

For me, the FTP message resonates on more levels than the delightfully juvenile. The DPD show of force makes a regular cameo at every political demonstration. Often the military equipment is kept around the corner, but the oppressive presence is made felt. After DPD brutally squashed the Occupy demonstrations of 2011, even activists are deterred from joining protests in large numbers because of the eminent threat of police violence. The ever present police escorts which tail protest marches also taint demonstrators with the implication that their legal assembly verges on illegality. No matter what your issue, the police are going to stand in your way.

Though unpopular with the nonviolence zealots who consider it more effective to be non-confrontational, the FTP theme has become universal across activist disciplines, even with those one might presume were uninitiated. Obviously police violence extends well beyond the curtailment of civil liberties. Earlier on Saturday a group of Colorado Springs Anons stood before the CSPD HQ with a sign than read only “FTP”. It was complemented with posters that tempered the message for the city’s more conservative population, such as “Free the Prisons” and “Failed the People”. Yet countless passing motorists responded by rolling down their windows and pumping their fists shouting “Fuck the Police!”

More photos from Denver Anon and photog Stuart Sipkin.

Here’s the official 4/5 press release, reproduced from Pastebin:

Anonymous Police Brutality Protest/#Every5th/@AnarchoAnon

MEDIA ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: anarchoanon@riseup.net / @AnarchoAnon

Denver 4/5—Police in Denver violently attacked a protest march against police brutality on the Downtown 16th street mall a few minutes after it began at 5:30 pm. 6 arrests took place, with police violently tackling individuals in the crowd and spraying pepper spray at protesters and bystanders. A witness said that several of those arrested were passers-by who were not involved in the protest. This protest, called by the informal net-based group known as “Anonymous,” was part of the “Every 5th” event series, in which protesters have gathered downtown on the 5th of every month to protest various issues since November 5, 2013. This particular march was planned in solidarity with protests over a recent police murder of a homeless man in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with an eye to similar ongoing police brutality issues in Denver.

“The Albuquerque Police Department has come under federal scrutiny for being involved in 37 shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal.” (Democracy Now)

One participant said: “There were about 50 of us at the march. We peacefully marched from Civic Center Park to the 16th st mall, our usual march route. As soon as we turned off the mall, police officers violently tackled individuals, swung clubs at others, and sprayed clouds of pepper spray at the crowd. They then formed a line and took out rubber bullet guns, and continued to try to antagonize the crowd. The crowd grew larger as pedestrians became alarmed by the aggressive behavior of the Denver Police Department. There were also numerous military-style vehicles present with SWAT officers riding on the outside. This seems to be a deliberately intimidating response in which DPD is trying to send a strong message to the citizens of their city that the police will not tolerate people speaking out against police brutality. Despite the police violence, our march continued successfully for several hours, snaking through city streets, denouncing police brutality with chants and fliers. This sort of behavior by the police really only serves to promote our protest, and as we saw today, it actually encourages people to join us.”

UPDATE:

All 6 who were wrongfully arrested have plead not guilty and have been released on bond/PR and reported back the following:

Police kept insisting the protestors’ water bottles in their backpacks were “molotov cocktails” even after smelling the water. Repeatedly.

They were taken to what appeared to be a mass arrest area that had been set up in advance. There was a table piled with sandwiches and frosted cupcakes. When asked by one of the protesters if the cupcakes had been made especially for the occasion. A cop responded “Yes, there are cupcakes. And they aren’t for you!”

One Denver Sheriff was heard bragging in the jail to another sheriff about how he had just said to one of the cuffed arrestees “I can beat the shit out of you and won’t even lose my job. Nothing will happen to me.”

Multiple photos of direct police interaction during the protest were deleted off of one of the arrestee’s cameras.

When one bystander tried to ask a question about the protest, he was called homophobic and sexist slurs by the police as he was being arrested.

Regardless of arguments about reforming the police versus abolishing them altogether one thing the protesters are in agreement about is that DPD acts like a gang of terrorists who aren’t accountable in any way to the people they purport to “Protect and Serve.

Archived livestream footage clips from march: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anarcho-anon

Twitter handles with details from the event: @anarchoanon @standupdenver @mcsole @occupydenver @internerve

Protest isn’t a probation violation. Free Occupy political prisoner Caryn Sodaro


OCCUPY DENVER recidivist Caryn Sodaro was given 90 days this week for violating the terms of her probation, an earlier plea deal which relinquished first amendment rights in exchange for what turned out to be temporary freedom.

Amanda Knox wishes Italy was like US where a black man in jail means whites go free

Amanda Knox is disappointed with the Italian judicial system. In America of course, if you can pin the crime on a black guy, white perpetrators go free. For the 2007 murder of Meredith Kerchner, African male Rudy Guede is serving 16 years, but Italian judges are convinced he was an accessory. And remember, first Knox tried to give them ANOTHER. Knox is appealing her slander conviction for falsely naming Patrick Lumumba, and now, instead of speaking appreciatively of her two year respite from prison after political pressure muddled an appeals court reversal, Knox says she “expected more”. Not just that, she reminds us “this isn’t going to bring Meredith Kercher back.”

Post-Zimmerman, post Troy Davis, post Goddamn Iraq War, torture and war crimes, it could easily be argued that any nation has better courts than the US. Italy’s in fact convicted CIA agents who kidnapped an unconvicted suspect in Italy and rendered him for torture. In what other Western courts have today’s most grotesque perps been brought to justice? Italy has called for the agents’ extradiction but the US is not complying. Now American yahoos are cheering about resisting Knox’s extradiction. Both Knox and the CIA gents have been convicted and sentenced. Meanwhile the US is insisting that Julian Assange comply with extradiction and he’s not even charged with the crime.

I don’t care if Knox is extradited, or goes to prison. I’d rather no one did, she’s probably learned her lesson. How likely is it she’ll kill another roommate or follow another drunken murderous impulse. A psychotherapist ought to be able to assure us whether know is tapped out. Inequal justice isn’t rectified by punishing one side more.

What upsets me more is the pageant of Knox’s contempt and dishonesty to which the media offers no critique. It’s become the familiar meme of the 21st century, unblinking denial. There were psychopaths before George W. Bush, but I believe he pioneered the role as foil to modern media’s knave. There is no honor, there is no accountability, and on TV it isn’t even missing.

Bear Creek Massacre, January 29, 1863


The year 2014 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, on November 29, two days after Thanksgiving. But on this day, January 29 of the year before, a Shoshone village suffered an identical fate. The Bear Creek Massacre was also once called the Battle of Bear Creek, but the only grounds which western military history buffs have to argue that such engagements were “battles” not massacres, is that was how the US cavalry waged its fights against the hostiles, its only victories were raids upon unsuspecting villages.

Here is the official contemporary report of Colonel Connor’s attack. First the cover letter which sets the scene. From the Official Records of the War of Rebellion (what the Civil War was called then), series 1, volume 50, part 1:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
San Francisco, February 20, 1863.
Adjt. General L. THOMAS, U. S. Army,
Washington, D. C.:
SIR: I have the honor to inclose herewith the report of Colonel P. E. Connor, Third Infantry California Volunteers of the battle fought on the 29th of January, on Bear River, Utah, Ter., between U. S. troops and hostile Indians. Our victory was complete; 224 of the enemy left dead on the field. Colonel Connor’s loss was heavy. Out of 200 men engaged 14 were killed on the field and 4 officers and 49 men wounded; 1 officer and 5 of the men wounded have since died. Colonel Connor’s report of the suffering of his troops on the march and the gallant and heroic conduct of both officers and men in that terrible combat will commend the Column from California and its brave commander to the favorable notice of the General-in-Chief and War Department.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
G. WRIGHT,
Brigadier-General, U. S. Army, Commanding.

I’ll parse those totals for you. Cowboy casualties: 20 dead, 47 wounded. Indians: 224 dead, 0 wounded.

Here are the more relevant passages of Connor’s report. Notice he puts plenty of emphasis on the fight he encountered, even suggesting that the Shoshones initiated the attack. Connor sheds much less light on the aftermath. (I’ve bolded some parts of import:)

Report of Colonel P. Edward Connor, Third California Infantry, commanding District of Utah. (Excerpt)

As daylight was approaching I was apprehensive that the Indians would discover the strength of my force and make their escape. I therefore made a rapid march with the cavalry and reached the bank of the river shortly after daylight in full view of the Indian encampment and about one mile distant. I immediately ordered Major McGarry to advance with the cavalry and surround before attacking them, while I remained a few minutes in the rear to give orders to the infantry and artillery.

On my arrival on the field I found that Major Mcgarry had dismounted the cavalry and was engaged with the Indians who had sallied out of their hiding places on foot and horseback, and with fiendish malignity waved the scalps of white women and challenged the troops to battle, at the same time attacking them. Finding it impossible to surround them in consequence of the nature of the ground, he accepted their challenge.

The “scalps of white women” was a common motif used in justifying ensuing slaughters. Colonel Chivington cited the presence of same at the Sand Creek camp, although none were ever produced.

The position of the Indians was one of strong natural defenses, and almost inaccessible to the troops, being in a deep, dry ravine from six to twelve feet deep and from thirty to forty feet wide, banks and running across level table-land, along which they had constructed steps from which they could deliver their fire without being themselves exposed. Under the embankments they had constructed artificial covers of willows thickly woven together, from being which they could fire without being observed.

After being engaged about twenty minutes I found it was impossible to dislodge them without great sacrifice of life. I accordingly ordered Major McGarry with twenty men to turn their left flank, which was in the ravine where it entered the mountains. Shortly afterward Captain Hoyt reached the ford three-quarters of a mile distant, but found it impossible to cross footmen. Some of them tried it, however, rushing into the river, but, finding it deep and rapid, retired. I immediately ordered a detachment of cavalry with led horses to cross the infantry, which was done accordingly and upon their arrival upon the field I ordered them to the support of Major McGarry’s flanking party, who shortly afterward succeeded in turning the enemy’s flank.

Up to this time, in consequence of being exposed on a level and open plain while the Indians were under cover, they had every advantage of us, fighting with the ferocity of demons. My men fell fast and thick around me, but after flanking them we had the advantage and made good use of it. I ordered the flanking party to advance down the ravine on either side, which gave us the advantage of an enfilading fire and caused some of the Indians to give way and run toward the north of the ravine.

At this point I had a company stationed, who shot them as they ran out. I also ordered a detachment of cavalry across the ravine to cut off the retreat of any fugitives who might escape the company at the mouth of the ravine. But few tried to escape, however, but continued fighting with unyielding obstinacy, frequently engaging hand to hand with the troops until killed in their hiding places.

The most of those who did escape from the ravine were afterward shot in attempting to swim the river, or killed while desperately fighting under cover of the dense willow thicket which lined the river-banks.

Most were shot, but Connor skimps on the detail. The wounded Shoshones and those feigning injury were prodded with bayonettes then shot, violated sometimes before, sometimes after. Few escaped this fate. Like any population of civilians, the village was at least seventyfive percent women and children.

I have also to report to the general commanding that previous to my departure Chief Justice Kinney, of Great Salt Lake City, made a requisition for troops for the purpose of arresting the Indian chiefs Bear Hunter, San Pitch, and Sagwich. I informed the marshal that my arrangements for our expedition against the Indians were made, and that it was not my intention to take any prisoners, but that he could accompany me. Marshal Gibbs accordingly accompanied me and rendered efficient aid in caring for the wounded.

Of the good conduct and bravery of both officers and men California has reason to be proud. We found 224 bodies on the field, among which were those of the chiefs Bear Hunter, Sagwich, and Leight. How many more were killed than stated I am unable to say, as the condition of the wounded rendered their immediate removal a necessity. I was unable to examine the field. I captured 175 horses, some arms, destroyed over seventy lodges, a large quantity of wheat and other provisions, which had been furnished them by the Mormons; left a small quantity of wheat for the sustenance of 16 and children, whom I left on the field.

Putin releases oligarch, blasphemers and hooligans. Obama pardons turkeys

2013. They are arguably Russian President Vladimir Putin most formidable adversaries, behind the scenes, in popular culture and in the international court of public opinion. The corporate press think Putin did it to rehab his anti-gay stance in advance of the Winter Olympics. The most powerful leader of the free world can’t find a single motive to offer amnesty to his nemisees under house arrest in London and Moscow, or throughout his nation’s vast prison system. At Thanksgiving, President Barack Obama jokes that the power of a US president extended only so far as to be able to offer clemency to Thanksgiving turkeys, so he pardoned two.

Fake sign language interpreter gets it right at Mandela memorial, speeches were gibberish

Everyone’s in an uproar about the sign language interpreter at the memorial for Nelson Mandela. Apparently he was illiterate, but what about the speeches he was tasked to translate, were they not gibberish? I guess the hearing-impared missed President Obama criticizing the use of prison walls and snipers. They would have suspected an authentic interpretation of Obama admonishing other leaders for not tolerating voices of dissent. Apparently also, critics faulted the imposter for his emotionless delivery: “He also used no facial expression to convey the emotions of the leaders.” So he got that right too.

WWII air veterans of Doolittle Raiders celebrate 71 years of bombing civilians

Doolittle nose-art
I read 30 Seconds Over Tokyo when I was still a war-playing kid, before I would understand the mischievous consequences of the Doolittle Raiders B-25 bombers deploying without their bombsights. This was to prevent US war-making advantages falling into enemy hands but it also precluded dropping bombs with accuracy. I’m pretty certain the account for young readers also didn’t explain why over a quarter of the squadron’s bombs were of the incidiary cluster variety. Readers today know what those are for. Doolittle claimed to be targeting military sites in Japan’s capitol, but “invariably” hit civilian areas including four schools and a hospital. Of the American fliers captured, three were tried and executed by the despicable “Japs”, who considered the straffing of civilians to be war crimes. After the war, the US judged the Japanese officers responsible, as if their verdict was a greater injustice against our aviators’ “honest errors”. Today we rationalize our systemic overshoot policy as “collateral damage”.

Every year since WWII, Doolittle’s commandos are feted for their milestone bombing mission. This Veterans Day is to be the last due to their advanced ages. But it is fitting, because isn’t it time Americans faced what we’re celebrating? There’s no denying it took suicidal daring, but the Doolittle Raid inaugurated what became a staple of US warfare, the wholesale terrorizing of civilians from on high, with impunity and indifference. To be fair, the American public has always been kept in the dark. American aircraft have fire-bombed civilians at every diplomatic opportunity since 1942, and a Private Manning sits in the brig for trying to give us a chance to object.

We now know that the Doolittle Raid didn’t turn the tide, nor shake Japanese resolve. It was a retalliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, intended to boost US morale as if to say, America wasn’t defeated. Kinda like why and how we struck back at Afghanistan after 9/11, just as indiscriminately.

The “Mark Twain” ersatz bombsight
substitute bombsightThe Norden bombsight was a closely guarded US secret weapon. An airstrike without it would today be like lobotomizing so-called smart bombs, and deciding to opt for imprecision bombing. The official army record recounts that a subsitute sighting mechanism was improvised for the raid, dubbed the “Mark Twain” and judged to be effective enough. Now a bad joke. Indochina and Wikileaks-wisened, we know the mendacity of that assessment. The vehemently anti-imperialist, anti-racist Twain would not have been honored.

Twain satirized Western so-called Enlightenment thus: “good to fire villages with, upon occasion”.

Post-postwar hagiographies of the raid have suggested the improvised bombsight was better suited to low-altitude missions than the Norden model. That conclusion is easily dismissed because the device was used only for the Doolittle run and never after. The sight’s designer, mission aviator C. Ross Greening, offered a explanation for why he named the device after Mark Twain in his pothumously published memoir Not As Briefed. He didn’t.

The bombsight is named the “Mark Twain” in reference to the “lead line” depth finder used on the Mississippi River paddle wheelers in bygone days.

Because its design was so simple, we’re left to suppose. Greening’s bombsight was named for the same “mark” which Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted as his celebrated pen name. I find it disingeneous to pretend to repurpose an archaic expression whose meaning was already eclipsed by the household name of America’s most outspoken anti-imperialist. Who would believe you named your dog “Napoleon” after a French pastry?

We are given another glimpse into Greening’s sense of humor by how he named his plane, the “Hari-Kari-er” ready to deal death by bomb-induced suicide. Greening’s B-25 is the one pictured above, with the angelic tart holding a bomb aloft. Greening’s plane was another that carried only incendiary ordnance.

Much was made of the sight’s two-piece aluminum construction, reportedly costing 20 cents at the time compared to the $10,000 Norden. This provided the jingoist homefront the smug satisfaction perhaps, combining a frugality born of the Depression with the American tradition of racism, that only pennies were expensed and or risked on Japanese lives.

War Crimes
Targeting civilians, taking insufficient care to avoid civilian casualties, using disproportunate force, acts of wanton retaliation, and the use of collective punishment are all prohibited by international convention. They are war crimes for which the US prosecutes adversaries but with which our own military refuses to abide. Americans make much of terrorism, yet remain blind to state terrorism. Doolittle’s historic raid, judged by the objective against which it is celebrated as a success, was an act of deliberate terrorism.

Forcing the Japanese to deploy more of their military assets to protect the mainland sounds like a legitimate strategy, except not by targeting civilians to illustrate the vulnerability, nor by terrorizing the population, one of Doolittle’s stated aims. He called it a “fear complex”.

It was hoped that the damage done would be both material and psychological. Material damage was to be the destruction of specific targets with ensuing confusion and retardation of production. The psychological results, it was hoped, would be the recalling of combat equipment from other theaters for home defense, the development of a fear complex in Japan, improved relationships with our Allies, and a favorable reaction in the American people.

There is no defending Japan’s imperialist expansion in the Pacific, and certainly not its own inhumanity. The Japanese treated fellow Asians with the same racist disregard with which we dispatched Filipinos. While Americans point in horror at how the Japanese retalliated against the Chinese population for the Doolittle Raid, we ignore that Doolittle purposely obscured from where our bombers were launched, leaving China’s coast as the only probably suspect.

To be fair, most of Doolittle’s team was kept in the dark about the mission until they were already deployed. I hardly want to detract from the courage they showed to undertake a project that seemed virtually suicidal. But how long should all of us remain in the dark about the true character of the Doolittle Raid?

Out of deference for the earlier generation of WWII veterans, those in leadership, certain intelligence secrets were kept until thirty years after the war. Unveiled, they paint a very different picture of what transpired. The fact that the US knew the German and Japanese codes from early on revealed an imbalance not previously admitted, as an example.

About the Doolittle Raid, much is already openly documented, if not widely known. The impetus for the raid was public knowledge, the evidence of its intent in full view.

BY DESIGN
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, American newspapers were already touting offers of cash rewards for whoever would be the first to strike back at Japan. President Roosevelt expressed a deliberate interest in hitting the Japanese mainland, in particular Tokyo, to retaliate for the Japanese strike against Pearl Harbor, never mind it had been a solely military target.

Plans were made to exploit the Japanese homeland’s vulnerability to fire, as ninety percent of urban structures were made of paper and wood. Writes historian William Bruce Jenson:

In his “confidential” meeting with reporters back in November, Marshall had declared that the US would have no cavil about burning Japan’s paper cities.

For the Doolittle Raid, a bombing strategy was developed to overwhelm the fire department of his target, the Shiba ward.

A former naval attache in Tokyo told Doolittle: “I know that Tokyp fire department very well. Seven big scattered fires would be too much for it to cope with.”

As lead plane, Doolittle’s role was to literally blaze the way. Fellow pilot Richard Joyce told Nebraska History Magazine in 1995:

The lead airplane, which was going to have Doolittle on board as the airplane commander, was going to be loaded with nothing but incendiaries -2.2­ pound thermite incendiaries- in clus­ters. They drop these big clusters and then the straps break and they spray, so they set a whole bunch of fires. He was to be the pathfinder and set a whole bunch of fires in Tokyo for pathfinding purposes.

Doolittle’s report outlined his objective more formally:

one plane was to take off ahead of the others, arrive over Tokyo at dusk and fire the most inflammable part of the city with incendiary bombs. This minimized the overall hazard and assured that the target would be lighted up for following airplanes.

Greening paints the most vivid picture, of burning the Japanese paper houses to light the way:

Doolittle planned to leave a couple of hours early, and in the dark set fire to Tokyo’s Shiba ward … the mission’s basic tactic had been that Doolittle would proceed alone and bomb a flammable section of Tokyo, creating a beacon in the night to help guide following planes to their targets.

Doolittle’s copilot Lt Richard Cole, told this to interviews in 1957:

Since we had a load of incendiaries, our target was the populated areas of the west and northwest parts of Tokyo.

After the bombers had left on their raid, and before news got back about whether or not they accomplished it, the Navy crew on the carrier USS Hornet already sang this song, which went in part:

Little did Hiro think that night
The skies above Tokyo would be alight
With the fires that Jimmy started in Tokyo’s dives
To guide to their targets the B-25s.
When all of a sudden from out of the skies
Came a basket of eggs for the little slant eyes

Incendiaries

Most of the bombers were loaded with three demolition bombs and an incendiary cluster bomb. Some of the planes carried only incendiaries. According to Doolittle’s official report of the raid, here were some of their stated objectives:

Plane no. 40-2270, piloted by Lt. Robert Gray:
thickly populated small factories district. … Fourth scattered incendiary over the correct area

Plane No. 40-2250, Lt. Richard Joyce:
Incendiary cluster dropped over thickly populated and dense industrial residential sector immediately inshore from primary target. (Shiba Ward)

“The third dem. bomb and the incendiary were dropped in the heavy industrial and residential section in the Shiba Ward 1/4 of a mile in shore from the bay and my tat.”

Aircraft 40-2303, Lt Harold Watson:
the congested industrial districts near the railroad station south of the Imperial Palace

AC 40-2283, David Jones:
the congested area Southeast of the Imperial Palace

Even though the planned night raid became a daytime mission, Doolittle did not alter his original role, intended to light the way for the following planes. His target remained the Shiba District of Tokyo. His own plane: “changed course to the southwest and incendiary-bombed highly inflammable section.”

Doolittle’s report included a description of the incendiary bombs:

The Chemical Warfare Service provided special 500 incendiary clusters each containing 128 incendiary bombs. These clusters were developed at the Edgewood Arsenal and test dropped by the Air Corps test group at Aberdeen. Several tests were carried on to assure their proper functioning and to determine the dropping angle and dispersion. Experimental work on and production of these clusters was carried on most efficiently.

As has become an aerial bombardment tradition, crews were let to inscribe messages on the bombs about to be dropped. Accounts made the most of these chestnuts: “You’ll get a BANG out of this.” And “I don’t want to set the world on fire –only Tokyo.”

These details, which reveal the intentions of the raid, were not made known to the public immediately. The Doolittle Raid was planned and executed in secret, with US government and military spokesmen denying knowledge of the operation even in its aftermath. The first word to reach the American public came from the New York Times, citing Japanese sources:

Enemy bombers appeared over Tokyo for the first time in the current war, inflicting damage on schools and hospitals. Invading planes failed to cause and damage on military establishments, although casualties in the schools and hospitals were as yet unknown. This inhuman attack on these cultural establishments and on residential districts is causing widespread indignation among the populace.

This report was dismissed as propaganda. When Japan declared its intention to charge the airman it had taken captive with war crimes, the US protestations redoubled. The accusations were belittled even as our own reports conceded to the possibilities.

Lieutenant Dawson’s Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was the first published account of the raid. Printed less than a year after the event, wartime-sensitive details such as the phony guns made of broomstick handles poking out the back were left out. Targets were also not specified, but a candor remained, probably intended to be threatening. Lawson described the 500-pound incendiaries as “something like the old Russian Molotov Breadbasket”, and related US naval attache Jurika’s advice:

“If you can start seven good fires in Tokyo, they’ll never put them out,” Jurika promised us. … “I wouldn’t worry too much about setting fires in flimsy-looking sections of Tokyo,” he said. “The Japanese have done an amazing job of spreading out some of their industries, instead of concentrating them in large buildings. There’s probably a small machine shop under half of these fragile-looking roofs.”

“Flimsy” became Lawson’s keyword for the residential areas. Here Lawson described dropping his third and fourth bombs, when he saw their corresponding red light indicators:

The third red light flickered, and, since we were now over a flimsy area in the southern part of the city, the fourth light blinked. That was the incendiary, which I knew would separate as soon as it hit the wind and that dozens of small fire bombs would molt from it.

I was satisfied about the steel-smelter and hoped the other bombs had done as well. There was no way of telling, but I was positive that Tokyo could have been damaged that day with a rock.

Our actual bombing operation, from the time the first one went until the dive, consumed not more than thirty seconds.

Thus: Chance of hitting civilian homes: 50/50.
Charges of Excessive Force could be expected, because
blame the victim for being weaker than: a rock.
Care taken to avoid innocent casualties: 30 seconds.

In a later afterword, Lawson blamed Tokyo for having insufficient bomb shelters.

After the war, US occupation forces recovered Japanese records which documented the losses attributed to the Doolittle Raid: fifty dead, 252 wounded, ninety buildings. Besides military or strategic targets, that number included nine electric power buildings, a garment factory, a food storage warehouse, a gas company, two misc factories, six wards of Nagoya 2nd Temporary Army Hospital, six elementary or secondary schools, and “innumerable nonmilitary residences”.

Strafing
Japan accused the fliers of indescriminate strafing civilians. The US countered that defending fighters were responsible for stray bullets when their gunfire missed the bombers. That’s very likely, except the raiders were candid about their strafing too. Lawson:

I nosed down a railroad track on the outskirts of the city and passed a locomotive close enough to see the surprised face of the engineer. As I went by I could have kicked myself for not giving the locomotive’s boiler a burst of our forward 30-calibre guns, then I remembered that we might have better use for the ammunition.

A big yacht loomed up ahead of us and, figuring it must be armed, I told Thatcher to give it a burst. We went over it, lifted our nose to put the tail down and Thatcher sprayed its deck with our 50-calibre stingers.

Greening’s account of firing on a sailor, raises the moral ambiguity of air warfare with which few airmen grapple. By virtue that technology allows it, combatants become slave to a predetermined outcome:

When we attacked the next patrol boat, a Japanese sailor threw his hands up as if to surrender. I guess he expected us to stop and take him prisoner. We shot him and left this boat smoking too.

The Medals
Friendship Medals exchanged between Japan and the US found themselves requisitioned for Doolittle’s Raid:

Several years prior to the war, medals of friendship and good relationship were awarded to several people of the United States by the Japanese government.  In substance these medals were symbolic of the friendship and cooperation between the nations and were to represent the duration of this attitude.  It was decided by the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Frank Knox, that the time was appropriate to have these medals returned.  They had been awarded to Mr. Daniel J. Quigley, Mr. John D. Laurey, Mr. H. Vormstein and Lt. Stephen Jurkis.

After arrangements had been made and the medals secured, a ceremony was held on the deck of the Hornet during which the medals were wired to a 500 lb. bomb to be carried by Lt. Ted Lawson and returned to the Japanese government in an appropriate fashion.

Lawson’s plane no 40-2261 dropped that bomb on an “industrial section of Tokyo” omitting to mention that Japan’s industry was still a post-feudal cottage industry.

“The medals were subsequently delivered in small pieces to their donors in Tokyo by Lt. Ted Lawson at about noon, Saturday, April 18, 1942.”

–Mitscher, M.A. Letter Report to Commander Pacific Fleet.

“Through the courtesy of the War Department your Japanese medal and similar medals, turned in for shipment, were returned to His Royal Highness, The Emperor of Japan on April 18, 1942.”

–Knox, F. Letter Report to Mr. H. Vormstein

Bored Oklahoma teen murder suspects not bored or under-educated enough to be considered teens

James Edwards, Chancey Luna and Michael Jones
Bored Oklahoma teens who shot a random jogger in the back are being tried as adults not juveniles because “it was an adult crime”; though killing while bored seems a juvenile crime by definition. So does immediately confessing a motive, “we were bored,” to the police, it would seem to me. But there’s more. Despite the confessions, it was not immediately clear who pulled the trigger as the three teens trailed their victim, Australian college baseball player Christopher Lane, in their car, then sped away to find a next target. But that didn’t stop Oklahoma police from charging just TWO of the boys with first degree murder, bail denied, with the third considered an accessory. I’ve provided the mug shots to give you a hint. For which 15 and 16 year-old do you think the state of Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty? (Spoiler: YES) And the older accessory –17 but white– gets bail and will be tried as a juvenile.
 
Pundits deride African American leaders for not decrying the Lane murder like they did that of Trayvon Martin, presumably because the victim was white. But I’ll ask where is the community outcry for young James Edwards and Chancy Luna, joy-killers they may be? Though I understand full well that other than the “doing it for fun” headlines, this event is unexceptional. Black children bear the brunt of law enforcement everyday, our prison system follows in the lynching tradition.

FBI focus on Assata Shakur reveals pernicious discretion of Terrorist label

MS. SHAKUR (né Joanne Chesimard) insists she did not kill the New Jersey trooper in 1973, that she couldn’t have, she’d been disabled by a police bullet to the back while her hands were raised. Shakur contends she was the victim of a legal lynching and before that a target of the USG’s COINTELPRO. Understanding now that many black activists of that era were deliberately assassinated by law enforcement, might the 17-yr old Shakur have been justified in defending herself? She was certainly justified in escaping her torturers in prison and then gaining political asylum in Cuba. She hasn’t killed a trooper since, so it’s odd then, isn’t it, that Assata Shakur is being added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List? She’s the “first woman” because it’s a terrorist-only list. Looking back, some of the best revolutionaries have been women. Retroactively designating enemies of the people is a strange development for President Obama who won’t even revisit the last administration to look for war crimes.
 
Certainly Assata Shakur speaks against US Capitalism but does she fit the profile of drone-strike eligibility? Apparently so and that’s telling. The intelligence community doesn’t want to stop acts of terror, it’s the ideology that terrorizes them.

BIDDER 70 doc reduces super-activist Tim DeChristopher to a number, lonely

BUMMER. I was thrilled a documentary would tell the world about Tim DeChristopher. You might think his achievement would be more widely know. It’s a testament of the power he’s up against, added to the meager support he has received, that even here I have to explain who he is and what he did. Tired of the futility of outdoor protests to prevent BLM land sales to the extraction industry, Tim DeChristopher attended an auction of particularly dubious legitimacy and successfully thwarted it by posing as a bidder and buying many of the lots. This happened at the close of Bush’s presidency, but Obama’s administration pursued a successful prosecution. DeChristopher has just been released after serving two years in federal prison. The documentary “Bidder 70” recounts the ordeal in a manner that provides neither encouragement nor inspiration, and leaves me to question how DeChristopher might have been better represented in court, publicized in actions, and celebrated in film. To say Bidder 70 reduces Tim DeChristopher to a number distorts the idiom. No mere number, DeChristopher is the important but solitary number one, among a casualty count always rising. In the sea of ineffectual activism that prompted his improvisational escalation, DeChristopher emerges more singular than when he started, but that’s to judge based on a flawed documentary. Hardly an surprising result.

It’s certainly armchair quarterbacking to suggest Tim DeChristopher’s legal team failed him miserably, likewise his publicity crew, but I can unequivocally conclude that DeChristopher would have served the environmental movement much more successfully had he been free to apply his imagination and energies, literally. Jail time helped Mandela, MLK and Thoreau, but that’s because you heard about it. The makers of “Bidder 70” can’t be faulted for their subject’s obscurity, but they are applying themselves to sealing his fate with coffin nails.

“Bidder 70” has major shortcomings: you are left with an informed impression that one, there is nothing to be done, two, you don’t want to do it in prison, and three, our collective impotence is inescapable. What’s the point then of attending the movie?

Of all the questions left for a post-screening Q&A, probably one should not be whether the subject is other than he appears. Explain this, how does a protagonist gain inspiration from being told there’s nothing to be done, by a Nobel Prize winner, whom he believes and holds as his mentor? Everyone loves a good challenge, but DeChristopher comes off as a poor listener. Nothing? I’ll see your nothing and raise you nothing. Futile? Count me in! Everyone loves an underdog, but he gathers no recruits.

Never mind his in-denial heroics, the audience takeaway is that his cause is lost. This is swiftly reinforced with the story of Tim DeChristopher’s road less traveled to prison. Offered encouragement by other activists who’ve served time, who we’ve also not heard of, it’s painted to be a fate of unimaginable awfulness and given an ominous soundtrack.

Who could not to admire Tim DeChristopher and respect his dedication and courage? The filmmakers painted in super-heroic light, notwithstanding his irrational adjustments, and so their thematic choice look awfully suspect. Are we likely to learn that they’re new to activism and have no idea what does or doesn’t motivate?

Filmed between 2009 and 2011 and released last year, “Bidder 70” makes no mention of “fracking.” The environmental movement has been literally bursting with opposition to hydraulic fracturing and these filmmakers were at the forefront of the national rallies. This omission is juxtaposed with a clip of 350’s Bill McKibbon praising the consumption of natural gas over coal.

Our collective lockdown mentality, lest a siren call lure us to freedom

LOCKDOWN. The term has become ubiquitous, though lifted easily out of context, being self-explanatory. Its predecessor “batten down the hatches” used to be too. Before the advent of recreational sailing it came from a work environment synonymous with incarceration, in the days of debtors prison for penury, before which were slave galleys. As an idiom, batten the hatches still means to fasten things down, brace for difficult weather. “Lockdown” was used this week to describe the city of Boston, as its neighborhood of Watertown was swarmed by militarized police, the residents commanded to “shelter in place”, officers barking at them to stay in your houses, under penalty of being shot, by accident we like to suppose, for their own safety is the implication, or be arrested for obstructing justice. We’ve come to know what lock-down means. It’s a prison term for everyone stuck in their cell, until further notice, sometimes indefinitely. Colorado’s Supermax prison operates in a permanent state of lock-down. Of course in this age of school shootings –another self-defining expression, like “going postal”– lock-downs have become an educational tradition, and isn’t likening schools to prisons forcing an interesting slip into Freudian reality?

Students have always inferred they were inmates. Without looking it up, I’m now certain the expression “matriculation” was abandoned for its unfortunate implication of being compulsory. Before the middle class, vocational training was worse than mandatory, it was an inevitability. If of course a luxury –how far we’ve come. But our labor saving inventions weren’t meant to save our labor, that profit went to the hoarders of what we produced: produce, became grain, now money. With the means of production owned by the land owner, the rest of us are laborers once again. Underemployed, idled, in the lull of post industrialism, we’re put into lockdown.

And we accept it. Now we’re speaking of building walls to control immigration which means a macro lockdown. We’re prisoners of nation states and we’re breeding children in captivity who can never live Born Free outside zoos.

Boston accepted its lockdown. The media is reporting Bostonians are now catching their breath as if the restriction was some collective girdle. How long would the lockdown have seemed justified? I was rather hoping if the lockdown had extended, that Occupy Boston would have rallied to march on Watertown, to reject the premise that a manhunt for a solitary teen of dubious menace would justify unqualified home invasions without search warrants. I’m rather confident, had Watertown been a submunicipality of Denver, that the infamous cop-baiters of Occupy Denver would have flown their colors in the officers’ faces.

The police were hunting a fugitive teen accused of planting a crude bomb at the Boston Marathon. He’d fled a firefight with police after a car chase said to have involved pipe bombs and grenades, but whose? The suspect was armed and dangerous, but was he? The police also warned that he’d be booby-trapping the neighborhood. They searched houses not just to locate the fugitive, but to check that he hadn’t rigged unsuspecting houses. When he was finally caught there was no mention of his being armed. Perhaps that’s why they couldn’t immolate him like the usual felon, because his hiding place was fiberglass and the imaging devices gave away the fact that he was absolutely defenseless. What may have saved Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was perhaps less the virtual Cop Watch of oversight on police scanners broadcast over the internet, but that the young man sought refuge in a boat.

You might quarrel with my nautical analogy, there are perhaps less archaic idioms than “batten down the hatches”, but specifically it means to seal the hull, batten in this case being a verb referring to a tool for reefing the sail, and see, none of this translates anymore. As we lose the middle class, we lose our sailing terms, just as the working class has lost its fisheries. Hatch is still relevant to aircraft and spaceships, which the common urchin might still know virtually, but for how long prison ship Spaceship Earth?

Odysseus had his men lash (See?) him to the mast so he could resist the Sirens’ call that lured sailors to their doom. Literally battening him in lockdown, because beyond here lie dragons, sea monster mermaids who would waylay the course of Western Civilization, which now seems the better idea.

Teen Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is diminishing excuse for Boston police state tyranny

We pick up yesterday’s story with Watertown and Boston under lockdown, it’s a prison term go figure, while paramilitary police conduct door to door warrantless searches to find an immigrant teen, college wrestler Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, said to be armed and extremely dangerous, who fled from last night’s firefight with the police which left his older brother Tamerlan alive then dead. The two brothers are said by police to be suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, said to have killed an MIT campus officer, said to have lobbed grenades during a car chase, yet law enforcement spokesmen are not saying how 19-yr old Dzhokhar escaped the ten minute shootout. Now they’re treating him like Rambo. What, did he leap away wearing a bandolier loaded with pressure cookers? Won’t somebody cry BULLSHIT!?

Won’t some lawyer please jump on this menacing language coming from the Boston Police, quoted in the Boston Globe:

“This kid is obviously going down fighting,” the official said. “You can rest assured the cops are looking for a fight right now.”

Being raised in the Chechen war zone may give Dzhokhar an edge in evading the militarized joint forces pursuing him, but the profile emerging as reporters hound his relatives and friends hardly describes how and why he could be expected to pose further threat, he didn’t kill the driver whose car they highjacked, he didn’t shoot up the marathon or the 7-11.

Police are now admitting themselves into houses to check for booby-traps as if their evadee is a Johnny Poison-Appleseed with an unlimited cache of ordnance he can draw from like in a video game. At best their scared teen is bleeding to death in some corner, a fate for which Chechnya was excellent training. Otherwise this manhunt is a highly inappropriate pretext for normalizing police state tyranny.

ADDENDUM: THIS

Police are pretty much thugs here, there, and everywhere

prisonMexico’s and the USA’s prison system is run by thugs!
 
Capitalism has long created and enforced a thug-like prison system. I have recently been told the experience of someone in this system and which thousands of people do too. I am also reading The Trial by Franz Kafka and  I was reminded of this experience. As I listened to this person in tears both of relief because he got out, but also because of complete fear for what happened to those not as lucky as him, I felt sorry for him because even if he was not put back in jail, he won’t be able to become anything else because of capitalism’s structure. And so here is his story and I hope that this will not be the fate of him, and that someday Mexico’s thug-jails will be gone as will the criminality produced by poverty  in an alienating system like Capitalism.

“I was at a party and two friends went to a store and stole some alcohol. They went back to the party and continued listening to loud music. The police showed up and  I tried to run. I would have gotten away but my brother was in the house and I couldn’t  leave him.

The police caught us and lined us up against a wall where they began to hit us. They hit the girl with the butt of their gun on her head and she fainted. They hit us on the shoulders, the head and the face and they kicked us and stepped on us. My brother yells as they hit him and I scream at them to let him go but they continue punching us on the face and then they put us in the car. My brother is sixteen and so he gets lucky and is only kept over night. I, however, was there for three months.

My  friend was sent to Topo Chico where they tied  him up and hit him with wooden boards. They then soaked  him and connected  him to the light where he was electrocuted.

They are tied up for three months where they lie in their own filth and some are shot in front of all the other prisoners. My friend owes the Zetas 20,000 Pesos and the police will continue to hit him until he pays the Zetas.  

Sometimes when the police shoot someone that is tied up, they offer a prisoner to take the blame in return for 20 years in prison but without being tied up in their own filth and without the daily starvation and blows.

Most of them are innocent but they get us on the street and they torture us to get money from us; which isn’t much and sometimes their parents are forced to accept the cruelty of which is bestowed upon their kids. Sometimes it’s 4,000, sometimes it’s 30,000 but if you don’t give them money, they torture you.

They get us to confess by putting us on a board and then a towel on our face which will become drenched with water and we’ll feel as if we’re drowning. We begin to get sick from the filthy cells. I have sores all over my skin and I can’t stop itching, but I almost forget it because of how happy I am to get out.

I got lucky but I’m sorry for others that don’t because they can’t afford the quota. We are all poor and we don’t receive decent educations because even the public education is expensive and so we resort to petty crime and then get caught… Sometimes, even those with money get caught.”

Mexico has thug-like prisons that are run by cops that are no better than the organized crime. In fact, the Zetas, a major cartel group, came from the Mexican police force. And by having this alienating system and prisons, it creates a circle of even more crime.  Good luck to all of the youth trapped in this unjust system that is full of corruption and which many people cannot escape.

US forces push women to front lines, canon fodder being traditional minority role

Pentagon lifts ban on women in combat. I guess US prisons have consumed the traditional canon fodder labor pool. What’s the upside to this news –a kinder gentler militarized empire? Fail. Our culture of violence doesn’t breed matriarchs. American women on the front lines is good news for insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc, etc, now Mali, who must welcome the chance to even the score, US forces having targeted so many of their women. And this retaliatory killing comes with no karmic debt, unlike our civilian casualties, because US female soldiers, like gay don’t-ask-don’t-tell turnstile jumpers, are gung-ho eager-for-carnage volunteers. Have at it ladies. Insurgents must be really encouraged by recruiting trends in US schools which promise the prospect of the US soon deploying kids. We owe our colonial victims so many children’s lives.

Israel caught birth controlling the Falash Mura, ethnically cleansing Jews of false flesh tone

How’s this for a Wikipedia item update? After five years of having denied the practice, the Israeli government admits it is secretly administering birth control injections to its Falash Mura population, reducing that community’s birth rate by half. Falash Mura you may ask, translates to “horse of the raven” –consult Wikipedia if you’d like to see some champion dissembling from the racist imagery of that term– and refers to the descendents of Beta Israel, or Ethiopian Jews, contested as improbably Jewish on account of their skin color making Semitic Europeans uncomfortable. Israel has very reluctantly offered birthright invites to their Ethiopian Diasporans. Israel’s Law of Return is not to be confused with the International Right of Return, to which all refuges are entitled, which Israel refuses to grant Palestinians, the original and more likely descendents of ALPHA ISRAEL. But getting back to this breaking story on Zionist racism, it turns out Israel has been preemptively ethnically cleansing their darkies, no worse than the US does with ghettos, drugs, cheap guns, and the prison industrial complex.