Old Glory

The Vault — On the Rocks

Meeting in Darby’s Cafe (across the street from the Olympia Film Society’s Capitol Theater) the Homeless tell how they slipped between the cracks, the impact it has had on them, and the problems they’re facing. Some are struggling to remain in school, others to stay out of jail in the face of the City’s new anti-poverty laws targeting them. All have developed profound insights into our culture and its relationship to our government.

Oly Homeless Tell Their Stories 1/5 2-4-13

Oly Homeless Tell Their Stories 2/5 2-4-1

Oly Homeless Tell Their Stories 3/5 2-4-1

Oly Homeless Tell Their Stories 4/5 2-4-1

Oly Homeless Tell Their Stories 5/5 2-4-13

Can a nation conceived in liberty based on our most fundamental inalienable human rights having devolved into one that beat the Nazis only to become just like them, habitually involved in torture, genocide, extra judicial murders far from any battlefield, wars of aggression, state sponsored terror, monetary chicanery, dispossession of its own citizens, trashing the most basic due processes, and divided against itself long stand?

A newly revealed Justice Department memo finds that US citizens believed to be senior al Qaeda operators may lawfully be killed, even if no intelligence shows they are actively plotting an attack.

Pandora’s Box

Many older American’s remember Nixon’s notorious ‘Enemies List’. It’s notoriety was due, in part, to the number of articulate respected Americans noted for their political and academic opposition to the Nixon administration. That administration arranged for the targets to receive IRS audits, gratuitous police investigations, and special attention from other assorted government agencies. The difference between that administration and today’s is our current administration simply kills those on the President’s list–no oversight by the legislative or judicial branch before or after the killing, no opportunity to surrender or be notified, an expansive definition of ‘imminence’, and geographical carte blanche. In short, the President is now afforded the opportunity to sign a death warrant for almost any American based on his own secret judgment, without explanation, without recourse or appeal, without notice, while the target may be sleeping in the same room with his family. This ‘collateral damage’, of course, receives little notice or discussion. Like the weather, it’s tantamount to an act of God–or Obama in this instance.

Gitmo was the eventual receptacle of many of the victims of President Bush’s torture program–a program that included John Brennan as one of its senior administrators. Shortly after his 1st election as President, Obama reiterated what Congress had prohibited in law: No Torture! And despite his promise to close Gitmo, it remains. Yet the military prison for suspected terrorists has received no new prisoners during either of Obama’s terms in office. Why?–one suggestion has been those suspected of being hostile to U.S. interests or members of Al Qaida are now killed rather than captured…remotely…by drone warfare. These acts of war are conducted within remote regions of countries without their permission yet go largely unchallenged. The 500# canary has landed, disinclined to move.

A link to a white paper discussing the long suppressed White House memo justifying this campaign of extra judicial killings far from any battlefield or cogent understanding of ‘imminent’ is included at the end of this report.

Rachel Maddow reports:

Here Comes The Sun

by Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” — even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the  September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.

A federal search warrant issued on the basis of allegations made by an FBI agent related to Seattle’s violent 2012 May Day protests.  A close reading of the redacted version linked below reveals that contrary to the assertion of some (A)narchist apologists, the innocent were targeted along with public property and symbols of corporate-government dominion.

CLICK on search_affadavit for details on how suspicion is leveraged into carte-blanche for a fishing expedition.

The warrant appears to suggest there is already sufficient evidence for an indictment. So what are the feds waiting for? Could they have provided immunity, even for the guilty subpoenaed to testify before the federal Grand Jury, in order to target bigger fish than the youthful vacuous zealots wielding the flag poles, injuring photojournalists, assaulting innocent drivers, slashing tires, smashing car windows, or defacing & destroying public property? If this is, as some sympathizers suggest, part of a much wider net being cast, the  feds may be attempting to bring to ground those instigators and academic provocateurs behind the scenes seldom seen by and unknown to the public in their catalytic roles.

Pacific NW campuses are used as venues to brain storm and coordinate planned direct action against the state. The senior academic instigators are too clever to get their own hands dirty in such a public manner. Being privileged comfortably tenured academics, salaried by the state no less, they manipulate and encourage our callow youth instead. Thus, the state has opted to incarcerate  Grand Jury resisters who may/may not be guilty of criminal offenses/conspiracies in an attempt to break them, to coerce them into revealing the wider network of radicals plotting smashing the state. Many of these are unreconstructed retreads from SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and Marxist-Leninist days.

Wanda 4′-11″?

Target or Victim?

Click on Non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA to read an erudite analysis of non-violent strategies used by MLK in the struggle for equal rights in America.

Race To The Bottom

The most recent national census data indicates over 10% of Mason County’s residents are Hispanic. While the Obama administration prepares for immigration reform/debate, many unemployed Americans question whether the proposal is consistent with charity beginning at home. Demonstrations for immigration reform are nothing less than rallies for lower wages, they say. Between corporate outsourcing of high-wage jobs overseas and U.S. Presidents like Bush arguing Americans don’t want the low paying jobs anyway (carpentry, construction, harvesting, slaughterhouses, child care, auto repair, forest products, home health care, etc.) they can’t feed their families or make Social Security/Medicare contributions, these displaced blue collar citizens moan.

Meanwhile, unprecedented numbers of youth and children are homeless today while the nation’s stock of abandoned/foreclosed homes has never been greater. Seniors, youth, the poor, the homeless, probationers, poor white trash, released inmates, black minorities, indigenous people, high school dropouts, the developmentally challenged–all would prefer to remain unemployed rather than accept the work these immigrants have acquired according to Presidents who are clueless about how much a gallon of milk costs, or a dozen eggs.

Parodying this race to the bottom, a classic South Park episode attempts to make this point through self effacing satire. In GOOBACKS, Humans from the year 3045 are traveling to South Park through a recently discovered time portal and are looking for work. When the boys try to earn some extra money, the time-traveling immigrants are willing to do the same work for next to nothing, causing the boys to lose their jobs–a bit raw, but funny stuff…if you’re employed.

Mayor’s Ultimatum

On 1-8-13, Olympia’s City Council unanimously passed an ordinance banning ‘camping’ (i.e. sleeping) on its public property/spaces despite unanimous public comment against the law slated  to  take effect on 2-8-13. If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Elected representatives continue to stonewall their constituents everywhere in America. It amounts to nothing less than a failure of government.

That this ordinance was directed at the homeless was transparent and it virtually criminalized an entire class of people in Olympia, by definition. The preening mayor enabled by his fellow council members vacuously boasted of how generous they had been toward homeless issues (while simultaneously grousing about the relatively inferior efforts of their nearby sister cities and the County of Thurston) and openly relished the thought of how his passage of the hateful ordinance was ‘beneficial’ in that he thought it would motivate other agencies and NGO’s to do more.

The Least of These

Click HERE for a legal analysis of the unconstitutionality of Olympia’s poverty laws.

Anonymous sources promise there will be campaigns of civil disobedience in protest of the new ordinance targeting the homeless.

“You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.” -Abbie Hoffman-

The Solution

Achieving the impossible, the Obama administration has evoked sympathy for a terrorist now in its custody and on trial.

Abu Hamza Masri is being held in a supermax facility in Manhattan while he awaits trial on terrorism charges. Meanwhile, the metal hooks he uses for hands have been taken away as a security risk. Hamza lost his hands when a Soviet mine exploded n Afghanistan in the 80’s. Since then he has used metal hooks in place of his hands. While in British jail, he was allowed to keep his hooks and his cell was specially fitted to permit their use. However, in the US, prison officials quickly deemed them a risk and took them away. Without hooks or hands, Abu Hamza is being forced to eat through a straw. Prison officials are not going to feed him, so he has no choice but to consume his food, blended.

Anal Animosity

TORTURING THE WRONG MAN

by Rania Khalek on January 28, 2013

Dispatches From The Underclass

Demonstrators rally outside the LA County Sheriff’s Department in Compton to demand justice for Jose de la Trinidad. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

“How am I supposed to explain to my daughters that their father was murdered by the police, the people they’re supposed to go to for protection,” asked Rosanna de la Trinidad three days after her husband was killed. Jose de la Trinidad, 36, left behind a wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 6 when he was shot dead by Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies on November 10, 2012.

An autopsy report obtained by the Los Angeles Times reveals that he was shot from behind. Five of the bullets pierced him in the upper and lower back, one in the right forearm, and another in his right hip. Four were described as fatal.

This makes the deputies who shot him look more guilty of execution-style murder than they already did.

Police say they opened fired because De la Trinidad was reaching for his waistband where he could have been keeping a gun. But this is contradicted by a witness who saw the whole thing. She says deputies opened fire on De la Trinidad after he followed their orders to turn around and put his hands above his head. The autopsy report confirms that he did in fact have his back turned to police when they killed him.

It all started when Jose and his older brother, Francisco, left his niece’s quinceañera. Police tried to pull them over for speeding, but Francisco, who was driving, refused to stop, prompting a brief car chase. A few blocks later, the car came to a sudden halt and Jose jumped out of the passengers seat. Francisco quickly took off again, forcing one deputy to drive after him. Meanwhile, Jose stood on the sidewalk where he was greeted by three deputies in the street with their guns drawn. That’s when, police say, Jose reached for his waistband to retrieve what they could only assume was a gun (because, duh, he’s brown!). ‘Fearing for their lives’, two of the deputies shot and killed him.

Little did they know that a nearby resident, who goes by the name Estefani, to protect her identity, witnessed the entire incident from her bedroom window directly above the shooting.

“His hands were on his head when they started shooting,” she told investigators canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses some 30 minutes after the shooting.

Estefani said De la Trinidad did jump out of the car after it came to a sudden stop. After he ran toward the deputies a few feet, they ordered him to stop and turn around — which he did immediately, she said.

Seconds later, the deputies opened fire, she said.

But they didn’t like what they were hearing:

The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.

“I told them, ‘You’re just trying to confuse me,’ and then they stopped,” she said. Authorities later interviewed Estefani a second time.

In their most recent report on the autopsy, the Times failed to include a vital tidbit: the Sheriff’s Department initially denied having spoken to any witnesses. It wasn’t until they were questioned by, ironically enough, the Times that they came clean, though they blamed it on “a lack of information flowing between various deputies and lieutenants involved in the investigation.”

The family plans on suing the Sheriff’s Department, according to their attorney, Arnoldo Casillas, who argues that De la Trinidad ”complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies.”

Over 100 people joined De la Trinidad’s relatives in Compton on Saturday to demand justice. They marched through the streets chanting, “No justice, no peace! No killer police!”, a rallying cry sung far too often in neighborhoods of color where police shootings are a regular occurrence. But you would never know this from the Times piece, which includes just two sentences about the weekend protest.

Luckily, the LA Activist’s Dan Bluemel was there:

Converging on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Compton station, protesters demanded justice, not only for the Trinidad family, but for other victims of police shootings.

Speaking to demonstrators, Gigi Fahmi, a friend of De la Trinidad and his wife, described the victim as devoted to his spouse, Rosanna de la Trinidad, and his two daughters, ages three and six.

Fahmi demanded the deputies responsible for De la Trinidad’s death face criminal charges.

“[Sheriff] Lee Baca has no control over his department and should be ashamed of himself, as well as the department, for the way they handled, what deputy sheriffs called a ‘routine traffic stop,’” she said. “You tell me, what’s so routine about two sheriffs instructing an unarmed man to ‘stop, turn around, put your hands on your head,’ so sheriffs can then proceed to shoot him execution style, riddling his body with seven bullets?”

…

Damian Ramirez delivered a personal message to the sheriffs. He was a close friend of Michael Nida II, who was killed by Downey Police in October of 2011. Like De la Trinidad, Nida was unarmed and gunned down in the back.

“No more murders of innocent men because you don’t know how to do your job, because you are afraid of the community you serve,” said Ramirez to the deputy sheriffs. “The time has come to change the way you do business, the way you are trained to police these communities. These are human beings you are stealing from their families, human beings who deserve to live the rest of their lives in peace and freedom.”

According to the Times, there have been at least 238 police killings in Los Angeles County since 2007, which Bluemel highlights at the LA Activist, adding:

Jubilee Shine, an organizer for the LA Coalition for Community Control Over the Police, referred to the officer-involved shootings as a “long pattern and practice of abuse of poor, black and brown and working-class people.”

Since 1983, he said, only one California police officer has been jailed for killing a civilian while on duty. That was Johannes Mehserle, a former transit cop who killed Oscar Grant while Grant was lying face down and pinned by another officer. Grant was unarmed. Mehserle said he had mistaken his sidearm for his Taser when he shot Grant in the back.

Shine, who called attention to the diverse racial makeup of the crowd, told the demonstrators they had a “common enemy and a common purpose.”

“These police and these deputy sheriffs, they do not come from these neighborhoods,” he said. “They do not come from Compton, Watts or Inglewood. They bring these cops and deputy sheriffs in from out of town — from Anaheim, Pasadena and the Westside. They give them good salaries to come and act like armies in our streets.

People on the left often worry about extrajudicial killings abroad, as they should. But do they realize that in certain US neighborhoods, state-sanctioned murder is routine.