Chris Hedges writes in part, "...the liberal church, like the rest of
the liberal establishment, looked the other way while the poor and
workingmen and -women, especially those of color, were ruthlessly
dis empowered and impoverished.."
For my thinking, the Church and the Liberal establishment did not look
the other way, so much as they were bought out.
Of course the Church, Liberal and otherwise, has always been the tool
of the Ruling Classes. The hollow promises of a Land Beyond the
River, has always been far worse than merely Hope Deferred. It has
been, Hope Denied. But despite all the evidence that God is unable to
manage His Earthly Affairs, people continue to cling to some vague
notion that God moves in mysterious ways, and knows where He is going.
I have said many times that one of the biggest barriers to true
democracy is our refusal to come to terms with the understanding that
there is no God. And we are not somehow above the other life on this
planet. Our own ignorance and smugness stand in our way of real
Freedom.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/25/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> The Suicide of the Liberal Church
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_201601
> 24/
>
> Posted on Jan 24, 2016
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The chapel of The General Theological Seminary in New York City. The
> seminary, founded in 1817, sold much of its property to developers in
> recent
> years. (Julie Jacobson / AP)
> Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are
> inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could
> ever
> achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend
> their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances
> that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the
> strength
> to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying
> institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push
> those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks,
> rendering themselves obsolete.
> The wisdom of Tillich and Niebuhr has been borne out in the precipitous
> decline of the liberal church and the seminaries and divinity schools that
> train religious scholars and clergy. Faced with shrinking or nonexistent
> endowments, mounting debts, dwindling memberships, a lack of employment for
> their graduates and growing irrelevancy in a society that has little use
> for
> tepid church piety and the smug arrogance that comes with it, these
> institutions have fallen into physical and moral decay.
> The number of adults in the mainline Protestant churches-Presbyterian,
> Unitarian-Universalist, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian,
> Congregationalist-decreased from about 41 million in 2007 to 36 million in
> 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. And the average age of the
> congregant is 52. The Catholic Church also is being decimated; its decline
> has been exacerbated by its decades-long protection of sexual predators
> within the priesthood and the Vatican's relentless campaign, especially
> under John Paul II, to force out of the church priests, nuns and lay
> leaders
> who focused their ministries on the poor and the oppressed. The Catholic
> Church, which has lost 3 million members over the last decade, has seen its
> hold on the U.S. population fall to 21 percent from 24.
> Mainline seminaries and divinity schools have been merging or closing, and
> enrollment at such schools has declined by 24 percent in the last decade.
> Andover-Newton, founded in 1807, recently shut down. Lutheran Theological
> Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa., and Lutheran Theological Seminary at
> Philadelphia plan to merge. Union Theological Seminary, where black
> liberation, feminist, womanist and queer theologies have their roots,
> appears to be on the verge of selling "air space" to a developer to
> construct a luxury 35-to-40-story condominium building on its campus.
> General Theological Seminary in New York City, a school founded in 1817,
> has
> sold much of its property to developers, and it ended tenure for its
> faculty
> after the professors went out on strike to demand the removal of Dean and
> President Kurt Dunkle. Dunkle, who epitomizes the infusion of corporatism
> into the church, worked for many years as a lawyer doing commercial
> litigation before being ordained.
> "What doomed General Seminary was not just financial mismanagement, but
> unethical leadership," Rob Stephens, a third-year student for the ministry
> at Union and part of a student movement fighting Union's building project,
> said when I spoke with him by phone. "That is what made the faculty walk
> out. The Union administration, board of trustees and all of us need to
> learn
> this lesson and put a halt to the project. The Union administration has
> said
> that Union, by building this luxury condominium, was being as bold as the
> original founders. This is one thing I can agree on. The original founders
> envisioned a place for privileged, white men. The original founders called
> abolitionism 'fanaticism.' The founders' values won't get us through this
> storm. Union is bigger than the administration and board. Union should be
> for all God's people. If built, this luxury condominium would be a middle
> finger to Harlem. It would be a middle finger to faith-based social
> movements.
> "This seminary has turned Black Lives Matter into a commodity," he went on.
> "They sell this campus as being allied with Black Lives Matter and other
> social justice movements. But if we are readers of the Bible, we know that
> saying one thing and doing another leads to internal combustion.
> Inconsistency of values and actions can only lead to failure. As a seminary
> community, how can we have more faith in an unstable housing market than in
> the Gospel? You can't reconcile luxury condominiums built by an anti-union
> contractor and no affordable housing with the gospel of Jesus. This is
> another example of mainline Christianity casting their lot with capitalism
> instead of community. When will we learn?"
> The self-identified religious institutions that thrive preach the perverted
> "prosperity gospel," the message that magic Jesus will make you rich,
> respected and powerful if you believe in him. Jesus, they claim, is an
> American capitalist, bigot and ardent imperialist. These sects selectively
> lift passages from the Bible to justify the unjustifiable, including
> homophobia, war, racism against Muslims, and the death penalty. Yet there
> are more students-2,067-at the evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological
> Seminary alone than at the divinity schools and seminaries of Yale,
> Harvard,
> Union, Vanderbilt and Chicago, whose combined enrollment is 1,537.
> The doctrine these sects preach is Christian heresy. The Christian faith-as
> in the 1930s under Germany's pro-Nazi Christian church-is being distorted
> to
> sanctify nationalism, unregulated capitalism and militarism. The mainstream
> church, which refuses to denounce these heretics as heretics, a decision
> made in the name of tolerance, tacitly gives these sects credibility and
> squanders the prophetic voice of the church.
> Kevin Kruse in his book "One Nation Under God: How Corporate America
> Invented Christian America" details how industrialists in the 1930s and
> 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social
> witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals,
> socialists and proponents of the New Deal. These corporatists promoted and
> funded a brand of Christianity-which is today dominant-that conflates faith
> with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The rich are rich, this
> creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use
> their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and
> the vulnerable, but because they are blessed. And if we have enough faith,
> this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us
> too. It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel. You don't
> need
> to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that
> out.
>
> The liberal church committed suicide when it severed itself from
> radicalism.
> Radical Christians led the abolitionist movement, were active in the
> Anti-Imperialist League, participated in the bloody labor wars, fought for
> women's suffrage, formulated the Social Gospel-which included a huge effort
> to carry out prison reform and provide education to prisoners-and were
> engines in the civil rights and anti-war movements. Norman Thomas, a
> longtime leader of the Socialist Party of America, was a Presbyterian
> minister.
> These radicals generally were not embraced by the church hierarchy, which
> served as a bulwark of the establishment, but they kept the church vital
> and
> prophetic. They made it relevant and important to the oppressed, the poor
> and to workingmen and -women. Radicals were and are its hope.
> The loss of an array of prophetic voices on the national scene such as Phil
> and Daniel Berrigan, William Stringfellow, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Dorothy
> Day and Martin Luther King Jr. left the liberal church as morally bankrupt
> as the rest of the liberal class. James Baldwin, who grew up in the church
> and was briefly a preacher, said he abandoned the pulpit to preach the
> Gospel. The Gospel, he knew, was not heard most Sundays in Christian houses
> of worship. And today with most ministers wary of offending their aging and
> dwindling flocks-counted on to pay the clergy salary and the bills-this is
> even truer than when Baldwin was writing.
> The church is also a victim of the disintegration of the civic associations
> that, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, are vital to the maintenance of a
> healthy democracy and the common good. Robert Putnam in his book "Bowling
> Alone" chronicled the broad disengagement from political and public life.
> He
> lamented, correctly, the loss of this "social capital." Those who no longer
> join parents' organizations, gardening and historical clubs or fraternal
> orders, who do not show up at town hall or city council meetings, also no
> longer attend church. There is little, given this cultural malaise-much of
> it driven by the constant availability of entertainment through the
> Internet
> and electronic devices-that the church can do to blunt the public's retreat
> from public space.
> What remains of the church, if it is to survive as a social and cultural
> force, will see clergy and congregants leave sanctuaries to work in
> prisons,
> schools, labor halls and homeless and women's shelters, form night
> basketball leagues and participate in grass-roots movements such as the
> anti-fracking struggle and the fight to raise the minimum wage. This shift
> will make it hard to financially maintain the massive and largely empty
> church edifices, and perhaps even the seminaries, but it will keep the
> church real and alive. I had a dinner a few months ago with fellow teachers
> in the prison where I work. We discovered, to our surprise, that every one
> of us had seminary degrees.
> William Stringfellow, who worked as a lawyer in Harlem in the 1950s and
> 1960s, in his book "My People Is the Enemy," wrote of the church:
> The premise of most urban church work, it seems, is that in order for the
> Church to minister among the poor, the church has to be rich, that is, to
> have specially trained personnel, huge funds and many facilities, rummage
> to
> distribute, and a whole battery of social services. Just the opposite is
> the
> case. The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the
> poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with
> nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to apprehend
> and the courage to reveal the Word of God as it is already mediated in the
> life of the poor. When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among
> the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has
> that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world.
> Stringfellow repeatedly warned Christians, as well as Christian
> institutions, not to allow the fear of death to diminish the power of
> Christian witness. Faith becomes real on the edge of the abyss. "In the
> face
> of death," he wrote, "live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the
> Word. Amidst Babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and
> falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of
> God."
> During the rise of the American species of corporate fascism-what Sheldon
> Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism"-the liberal church, like the rest
> of
> the liberal establishment, looked the other way while the poor and
> workingmen and -women, especially those of color, were ruthlessly
> disempowered and impoverished. The church and liberals were as silent about
> the buildup of mass incarceration as they once were about lynching. The
> mainline church refused to confront and denounce the destructive force of
> corporate power. It placed its faith in institutions-such as the Democratic
> Party-that had long ceased to function as mechanisms of reform.
> The church, mirroring the liberal establishment, busied itself with
> charity,
> multiculturalism and gender-identity politics at the expense of justice,
> especially racial and economic justice. It retreated into a narcissistic
> "how-is-it-with-me" spirituality. Although the mainline church paid lip
> service to diversity, it never welcomed significant numbers of people of
> color or the marginalized into their sanctuaries. The Presbyterian Church,
> for example, is 92 percent white. It pushed to the margins or sought to
> discredit liberation theology, which called out the evils of unfettered
> capitalism, white supremacy and imperialism. The retreat from radicalism-in
> essence the abandonment of the vulnerable to the predatory forces of
> corporate capitalism-created a spiritual void filled by protofascist
> movements that have usurped Christian symbols and provided a species of
> faith that is, at its core, a belief in magic. This Christian heresy is
> currently on public display at Donald Trump and Ted Cruz political rallies.
>
> The last scenes of this decline are being played out at schools such as
> Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Tillich and Niebuhr taught at
> Union. America's most important theologian, James Cone-who opposes the
> condominium building project on the campus-teaches there.
> The president of the seminary, Serene Jones, says that unless part of the
> seminary's quadrangle is handed over to the developer, the seminary will
> not
> have the funds to survive (although she and her administration have refused
> to make school finances public). If Jones gets her way, Union will become
> part of the vast gentrification project being waged against the poor,
> especially poor people of color, in Morningside Heights and West Harlem.
> "With these development rights, we envision the creation of a beautiful,
> slender building that is visually in keeping with the neighborhood and that
> is set on the northeast end of the quad," Jones wrote in an open letter to
> the Union community last December. "We want our newest building to feel
> like
> it has always been part of the current campus. We chose this location after
> thorough analyses showed that this was the best, and only, suitable site."
> Union is working with the developer L+M Development Partners on
> construction
> plans. The firm has a history of hiring shady subcontractors-including MC&O
> Construction (found guilty of stealing $830,000 in 2013 from workers on a
> project of NYSAFAH contractor Procida Realty & Construction), RNC
> Industries
> LLC of Holtsville, N.Y. (repeatedly cited by the Occupational Safety and
> Health Administration for unsafe working conditions that have led to
> fatalities), and Ro-Sal Plumbing (which settled, for a class-action
> complaint filed by workers over unpaid wages).
> It is bad enough that Union would collaborate with companies charged with
> safety violations, workers' compensation fraud and wage theft, but it is
> also abetting the driving of poor families, many of them of color, from
> their homes throughout the city. Apartment rents have risen in New York by
> 75 percent since 2000. The poor are being pushed out of neighborhoods
> around
> Union, in some cases into homeless shelters and the streets.
> Students, and a few of Union's faculty members, have risen up in
> opposition.
> They charge, in the words of first-year student Yazmine Nichols, whom I
> interviewed by phone, that "there is a lack of honesty and transparency on
> the part of the administration."
> "No one knows," she told me, "how far along the plans are, whether there
> will be affordable housing units. All these things are question marks.
> "It is hard to get the school galvanized around something they [the
> students
> and faculty] have no information about," she added. "And this is part of
> the
> administration's plan-divide and conquer by not providing information.
> People are left guessing and speculating.
> "We need to ask ourselves what it means to exist as a theological
> institution," Nichols continued. "Are we truly existing if we do not hold
> onto the core values the institution is predicated on? This is a question
> about what it means to be a seminary geared to social justice. What does it
> mean when homeless people are sleeping outside seminary dormitories? With
> growing income inequality and a shrinking middle class, we must begin
> asking
> the question, 'Affordable for whom?' What we mean by 'affordability' is
> that
> housing ought to be affordable for people of color who fall at or below the
> NYC poverty line. What does it mean to worship God and theologize in a
> world
> where people are suffering? What does it mean for an institution to thrive
> in the presence of that suffering? What is the purpose of Union's
> existence?
> For Union to exist with a luxury condominium is for Union not to exist at
> all, at least not the Union I applied to. Union may continue to exist
> physically, but the soul of Union will be gone."
> Fear has driven church and seminary leaders into the hands of those the
> Gospel condemns as exploiters of the poor and the oppressed. They have
> turned their backs on Christian radicals, who alone can infuse new life
> into
> the church. The institutions believe alliances with the powerful and the
> wealthy will save them. They are wrong. Once they stand for nothing they
> become nothing.
> "There is a mourning among the declining members of mainline Christianity,"
> Rob Stephens, the Union student, said in the interview. "I don't share
> that.
> The mainline churches, by which we mean white denominations, are
> responsible
> for many of our greatest social ills, including white supremacy and
> patriarchy. If those parts of mainline Christianity need to die for renewal
> to take place, we need to learn how to embrace that. There is no
> resurrection without death."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
> The Suicide of the Liberal Church
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_201601
> 24/
>
> Posted on Jan 24, 2016
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The chapel of The General Theological Seminary in New York City. The
> seminary, founded in 1817, sold much of its property to developers in
> recent
> years. (Julie Jacobson / AP)
> Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are
> inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could
> ever
> achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend
> their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances
> that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the
> strength
> to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying
> institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push
> those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks,
> rendering themselves obsolete.
> The wisdom of Tillich and Niebuhr has been borne out in the precipitous
> decline of the liberal church and the seminaries and divinity schools that
> train religious scholars and clergy. Faced with shrinking or nonexistent
> endowments, mounting debts, dwindling memberships, a lack of employment for
> their graduates and growing irrelevancy in a society that has little use
> for
> tepid church piety and the smug arrogance that comes with it, these
> institutions have fallen into physical and moral decay.
> The number of adults in the mainline Protestant churches-Presbyterian,
> Unitarian-Universalist, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian,
> Congregationalist-decreased from about 41 million in 2007 to 36 million in
> 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. And the average age of the
> congregant is 52. The Catholic Church also is being decimated; its decline
> has been exacerbated by its decades-long protection of sexual predators
> within the priesthood and the Vatican's relentless campaign, especially
> under John Paul II, to force out of the church priests, nuns and lay
> leaders
> who focused their ministries on the poor and the oppressed. The Catholic
> Church, which has lost 3 million members over the last decade, has seen its
> hold on the U.S. population fall to 21 percent from 24.
> Mainline seminaries and divinity schools have been merging or closing, and
> enrollment at such schools has declined by 24 percent in the last decade.
> Andover-Newton, founded in 1807, recently shut down. Lutheran Theological
> Seminary at Gettysburg, Pa., and Lutheran Theological Seminary at
> Philadelphia plan to merge. Union Theological Seminary, where black
> liberation, feminist, womanist and queer theologies have their roots,
> appears to be on the verge of selling "air space" to a developer to
> construct a luxury 35-to-40-story condominium building on its campus.
> General Theological Seminary in New York City, a school founded in 1817,
> has
> sold much of its property to developers, and it ended tenure for its
> faculty
> after the professors went out on strike to demand the removal of Dean and
> President Kurt Dunkle. Dunkle, who epitomizes the infusion of corporatism
> into the church, worked for many years as a lawyer doing commercial
> litigation before being ordained.
> "What doomed General Seminary was not just financial mismanagement, but
> unethical leadership," Rob Stephens, a third-year student for the ministry
> at Union and part of a student movement fighting Union's building project,
> said when I spoke with him by phone. "That is what made the faculty walk
> out. The Union administration, board of trustees and all of us need to
> learn
> this lesson and put a halt to the project. The Union administration has
> said
> that Union, by building this luxury condominium, was being as bold as the
> original founders. This is one thing I can agree on. The original founders
> envisioned a place for privileged, white men. The original founders called
> abolitionism 'fanaticism.' The founders' values won't get us through this
> storm. Union is bigger than the administration and board. Union should be
> for all God's people. If built, this luxury condominium would be a middle
> finger to Harlem. It would be a middle finger to faith-based social
> movements.
> "This seminary has turned Black Lives Matter into a commodity," he went on.
> "They sell this campus as being allied with Black Lives Matter and other
> social justice movements. But if we are readers of the Bible, we know that
> saying one thing and doing another leads to internal combustion.
> Inconsistency of values and actions can only lead to failure. As a seminary
> community, how can we have more faith in an unstable housing market than in
> the Gospel? You can't reconcile luxury condominiums built by an anti-union
> contractor and no affordable housing with the gospel of Jesus. This is
> another example of mainline Christianity casting their lot with capitalism
> instead of community. When will we learn?"
> The self-identified religious institutions that thrive preach the perverted
> "prosperity gospel," the message that magic Jesus will make you rich,
> respected and powerful if you believe in him. Jesus, they claim, is an
> American capitalist, bigot and ardent imperialist. These sects selectively
> lift passages from the Bible to justify the unjustifiable, including
> homophobia, war, racism against Muslims, and the death penalty. Yet there
> are more students-2,067-at the evangelical Gordon-Conwell Theological
> Seminary alone than at the divinity schools and seminaries of Yale,
> Harvard,
> Union, Vanderbilt and Chicago, whose combined enrollment is 1,537.
> The doctrine these sects preach is Christian heresy. The Christian faith-as
> in the 1930s under Germany's pro-Nazi Christian church-is being distorted
> to
> sanctify nationalism, unregulated capitalism and militarism. The mainstream
> church, which refuses to denounce these heretics as heretics, a decision
> made in the name of tolerance, tacitly gives these sects credibility and
> squanders the prophetic voice of the church.
> Kevin Kruse in his book "One Nation Under God: How Corporate America
> Invented Christian America" details how industrialists in the 1930s and
> 1940s poured money and resources into an effort to silence the social
> witness of the mainstream church, which was home to many radicals,
> socialists and proponents of the New Deal. These corporatists promoted and
> funded a brand of Christianity-which is today dominant-that conflates faith
> with free enterprise and American exceptionalism. The rich are rich, this
> creed goes, not because they are greedy or privileged, not because they use
> their power to their own advantage, not because they oppress the poor and
> the vulnerable, but because they are blessed. And if we have enough faith,
> this heretical form of Christianity claims, God will bless the rest of us
> too. It is an inversion of the central message of the Gospel. You don't
> need
> to spend three years at Harvard Divinity School as I did to figure that
> out.
>
> The liberal church committed suicide when it severed itself from
> radicalism.
> Radical Christians led the abolitionist movement, were active in the
> Anti-Imperialist League, participated in the bloody labor wars, fought for
> women's suffrage, formulated the Social Gospel-which included a huge effort
> to carry out prison reform and provide education to prisoners-and were
> engines in the civil rights and anti-war movements. Norman Thomas, a
> longtime leader of the Socialist Party of America, was a Presbyterian
> minister.
> These radicals generally were not embraced by the church hierarchy, which
> served as a bulwark of the establishment, but they kept the church vital
> and
> prophetic. They made it relevant and important to the oppressed, the poor
> and to workingmen and -women. Radicals were and are its hope.
> The loss of an array of prophetic voices on the national scene such as Phil
> and Daniel Berrigan, William Stringfellow, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Dorothy
> Day and Martin Luther King Jr. left the liberal church as morally bankrupt
> as the rest of the liberal class. James Baldwin, who grew up in the church
> and was briefly a preacher, said he abandoned the pulpit to preach the
> Gospel. The Gospel, he knew, was not heard most Sundays in Christian houses
> of worship. And today with most ministers wary of offending their aging and
> dwindling flocks-counted on to pay the clergy salary and the bills-this is
> even truer than when Baldwin was writing.
> The church is also a victim of the disintegration of the civic associations
> that, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, are vital to the maintenance of a
> healthy democracy and the common good. Robert Putnam in his book "Bowling
> Alone" chronicled the broad disengagement from political and public life.
> He
> lamented, correctly, the loss of this "social capital." Those who no longer
> join parents' organizations, gardening and historical clubs or fraternal
> orders, who do not show up at town hall or city council meetings, also no
> longer attend church. There is little, given this cultural malaise-much of
> it driven by the constant availability of entertainment through the
> Internet
> and electronic devices-that the church can do to blunt the public's retreat
> from public space.
> What remains of the church, if it is to survive as a social and cultural
> force, will see clergy and congregants leave sanctuaries to work in
> prisons,
> schools, labor halls and homeless and women's shelters, form night
> basketball leagues and participate in grass-roots movements such as the
> anti-fracking struggle and the fight to raise the minimum wage. This shift
> will make it hard to financially maintain the massive and largely empty
> church edifices, and perhaps even the seminaries, but it will keep the
> church real and alive. I had a dinner a few months ago with fellow teachers
> in the prison where I work. We discovered, to our surprise, that every one
> of us had seminary degrees.
> William Stringfellow, who worked as a lawyer in Harlem in the 1950s and
> 1960s, in his book "My People Is the Enemy," wrote of the church:
> The premise of most urban church work, it seems, is that in order for the
> Church to minister among the poor, the church has to be rich, that is, to
> have specially trained personnel, huge funds and many facilities, rummage
> to
> distribute, and a whole battery of social services. Just the opposite is
> the
> case. The Church must be free to be poor in order to minister among the
> poor. The Church must trust the Gospel enough to come among the poor with
> nothing to offer the poor except the Gospel, except the power to apprehend
> and the courage to reveal the Word of God as it is already mediated in the
> life of the poor. When the Church has the freedom itself to be poor among
> the poor, it will know how to use what riches it has. When the Church has
> that freedom, it will be a missionary people again in all the world.
> Stringfellow repeatedly warned Christians, as well as Christian
> institutions, not to allow the fear of death to diminish the power of
> Christian witness. Faith becomes real on the edge of the abyss. "In the
> face
> of death," he wrote, "live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the
> Word. Amidst Babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and
> falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of
> God."
> During the rise of the American species of corporate fascism-what Sheldon
> Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism"-the liberal church, like the rest
> of
> the liberal establishment, looked the other way while the poor and
> workingmen and -women, especially those of color, were ruthlessly
> disempowered and impoverished. The church and liberals were as silent about
> the buildup of mass incarceration as they once were about lynching. The
> mainline church refused to confront and denounce the destructive force of
> corporate power. It placed its faith in institutions-such as the Democratic
> Party-that had long ceased to function as mechanisms of reform.
> The church, mirroring the liberal establishment, busied itself with
> charity,
> multiculturalism and gender-identity politics at the expense of justice,
> especially racial and economic justice. It retreated into a narcissistic
> "how-is-it-with-me" spirituality. Although the mainline church paid lip
> service to diversity, it never welcomed significant numbers of people of
> color or the marginalized into their sanctuaries. The Presbyterian Church,
> for example, is 92 percent white. It pushed to the margins or sought to
> discredit liberation theology, which called out the evils of unfettered
> capitalism, white supremacy and imperialism. The retreat from radicalism-in
> essence the abandonment of the vulnerable to the predatory forces of
> corporate capitalism-created a spiritual void filled by protofascist
> movements that have usurped Christian symbols and provided a species of
> faith that is, at its core, a belief in magic. This Christian heresy is
> currently on public display at Donald Trump and Ted Cruz political rallies.
>
> The last scenes of this decline are being played out at schools such as
> Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Tillich and Niebuhr taught at
> Union. America's most important theologian, James Cone-who opposes the
> condominium building project on the campus-teaches there.
> The president of the seminary, Serene Jones, says that unless part of the
> seminary's quadrangle is handed over to the developer, the seminary will
> not
> have the funds to survive (although she and her administration have refused
> to make school finances public). If Jones gets her way, Union will become
> part of the vast gentrification project being waged against the poor,
> especially poor people of color, in Morningside Heights and West Harlem.
> "With these development rights, we envision the creation of a beautiful,
> slender building that is visually in keeping with the neighborhood and that
> is set on the northeast end of the quad," Jones wrote in an open letter to
> the Union community last December. "We want our newest building to feel
> like
> it has always been part of the current campus. We chose this location after
> thorough analyses showed that this was the best, and only, suitable site."
> Union is working with the developer L+M Development Partners on
> construction
> plans. The firm has a history of hiring shady subcontractors-including MC&O
> Construction (found guilty of stealing $830,000 in 2013 from workers on a
> project of NYSAFAH contractor Procida Realty & Construction), RNC
> Industries
> LLC of Holtsville, N.Y. (repeatedly cited by the Occupational Safety and
> Health Administration for unsafe working conditions that have led to
> fatalities), and Ro-Sal Plumbing (which settled, for a class-action
> complaint filed by workers over unpaid wages).
> It is bad enough that Union would collaborate with companies charged with
> safety violations, workers' compensation fraud and wage theft, but it is
> also abetting the driving of poor families, many of them of color, from
> their homes throughout the city. Apartment rents have risen in New York by
> 75 percent since 2000. The poor are being pushed out of neighborhoods
> around
> Union, in some cases into homeless shelters and the streets.
> Students, and a few of Union's faculty members, have risen up in
> opposition.
> They charge, in the words of first-year student Yazmine Nichols, whom I
> interviewed by phone, that "there is a lack of honesty and transparency on
> the part of the administration."
> "No one knows," she told me, "how far along the plans are, whether there
> will be affordable housing units. All these things are question marks.
> "It is hard to get the school galvanized around something they [the
> students
> and faculty] have no information about," she added. "And this is part of
> the
> administration's plan-divide and conquer by not providing information.
> People are left guessing and speculating.
> "We need to ask ourselves what it means to exist as a theological
> institution," Nichols continued. "Are we truly existing if we do not hold
> onto the core values the institution is predicated on? This is a question
> about what it means to be a seminary geared to social justice. What does it
> mean when homeless people are sleeping outside seminary dormitories? With
> growing income inequality and a shrinking middle class, we must begin
> asking
> the question, 'Affordable for whom?' What we mean by 'affordability' is
> that
> housing ought to be affordable for people of color who fall at or below the
> NYC poverty line. What does it mean to worship God and theologize in a
> world
> where people are suffering? What does it mean for an institution to thrive
> in the presence of that suffering? What is the purpose of Union's
> existence?
> For Union to exist with a luxury condominium is for Union not to exist at
> all, at least not the Union I applied to. Union may continue to exist
> physically, but the soul of Union will be gone."
> Fear has driven church and seminary leaders into the hands of those the
> Gospel condemns as exploiters of the poor and the oppressed. They have
> turned their backs on Christian radicals, who alone can infuse new life
> into
> the church. The institutions believe alliances with the powerful and the
> wealthy will save them. They are wrong. Once they stand for nothing they
> become nothing.
> "There is a mourning among the declining members of mainline Christianity,"
> Rob Stephens, the Union student, said in the interview. "I don't share
> that.
> The mainline churches, by which we mean white denominations, are
> responsible
> for many of our greatest social ills, including white supremacy and
> patriarchy. If those parts of mainline Christianity need to die for renewal
> to take place, we need to learn how to embrace that. There is no
> resurrection without death."
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/failed_states_and_states_of_failure_2016
> 0125/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/failed_states_and_states_of_failure_2016
> 0125/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/failed_states_and_states_of_failure_2016
> 0125/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/activists_wage_war_on_wasted_food_201601
> 25/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/activists_wage_war_on_wasted_food_201601
> 25/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/activists_wage_war_on_wasted_food_201601
> 25/
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_oscar_nominee_mark_ruffalo_attack
> s_americas_white_privilege_racism_20/
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_oscar_nominee_mark_ruffalo_attack
> s_americas_white_privilege_racism_20/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_oscar_nominee_mark_ruffalo_attack
> s_americas_white_privilege_racism_20/
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_elizabeth_warren_anyone_who_says_
> change_hard_billionaires_20160125/
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_elizabeth_warren_anyone_who_says_
> change_hard_billionaires_20160125/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_elizabeth_warren_anyone_who_says_
> change_hard_billionaires_20160125/ http://www.truthdig.com/
> http://www.truthdig.com/
>
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>
>
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Re: [blind-democracy] A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
Mention of FDR's Internment Camps for Japanese American Citizens
during World War II reminds me that we don't need to look back so far
to see what internment does to a people. Just look for starter at the
Indigenous People shoved onto lands not needed by our Empire. Take a
trip and wander through these enforced camps. Want something closer
to home? Just wander down to your city's Central Slums. Take a look
at the people crammed into these internment camps. And be aware that
there are those who would put Muslims and all non Christian people in
special camps. Women are no longer safe from those who would run
their lives for them.
That is what Internment Camps are all about. Controlling the lives of
others. And we are a nation chock full of them.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/25/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Domestic Use of Military
> A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
> ________________________________________
> By davidswanson - Posted on 12 January 2016
> Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in
> Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is
> simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed
> practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear
> missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to
> uphold
> the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
> But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military --
> such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic
> Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the
> U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war
> game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a
> corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
> Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support
> for
> the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's
> profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility,
> while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the
> U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to
> suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack
> Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known
> restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the
> Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of
> African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential
> power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing
> the former.
> Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men
> occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of
> similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against
> peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them
> simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered
> since
> -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among
> the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on
> the Home Front:
> Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston,
> desensitizing
> people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
> Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their
> oligarchs.
> The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial
> for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
> The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S.
> citizens
> or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as
> anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
> Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
> Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
> Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States
> against
> the people of the United States.
> Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government
> violence.
> Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put
> martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a
> president.
> The militarization of the Mexican border.
> The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the
> bombing
> of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and
> Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
> The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all
> such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms,
> earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these
> threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and
> destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they
> can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent
> green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and
> non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian
> Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency
> services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and
> preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a
> publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a
> State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new
> project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
> If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the
> main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
> .
> . davidswanson's blog
> . Email this
> &&&&
>
> . Home
> . Books
> . Article Topics
> . Talk Nation Radio
> . About
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> . Search
> . Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> . Twitter
> . Youtube
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> . RootsAction.org
> . Images
> . RSS
> . Store
> . WorldBeyondWar.org
> . War No More
> You are hereBlogs / davidswanson's blog / A Homeland Is a Country That
> Allows Domestic Use of Military
> A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
>
> By davidswanson - Posted on 12 January 2016
> Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in
> Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is
> simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed
> practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear
> missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to
> uphold
> the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
> But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military --
> such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic
> Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the
> U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war
> game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a
> corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
> Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support
> for
> the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's
> profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility,
> while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the
> U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to
> suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack
> Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known
> restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the
> Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of
> African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential
> power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing
> the former.
> Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men
> occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of
> similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against
> peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them
> simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered
> since
> -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among
> the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on
> the Home Front:
> Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston,
> desensitizing
> people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
> Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their
> oligarchs.
> The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial
> for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
> The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S.
> citizens
> or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as
> anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
> Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
> Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
> Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States
> against
> the people of the United States.
> Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government
> violence.
> Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put
> martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a
> president.
> The militarization of the Mexican border.
> The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the
> bombing
> of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and
> Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
> The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all
> such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms,
> earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these
> threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and
> destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they
> can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent
> green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and
> non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian
> Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency
> services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and
> preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a
> publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a
> State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new
> project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
> If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the
> main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
> . http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php
> http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php
> . davidswanson's blog
> . /forward?path=node%2F5023 Email this
>
>
> Home
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>
>
>
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> RSS
> Store
> WorldBeyondWar.org
> War No More
>
>
>
>
>
>
> You are hereBlogs / davidswanson's blog / A Homeland Is a Country That
> Allows Domestic Use of Military
>
> A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
>
>
>
> By davidswanson - Posted on 12 January 2016
>
>
> Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in
> Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is
> simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed
> practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear
> missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to
> uphold
> the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
>
> But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military --
> such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic
> Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the
> U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war
> game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a
> corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
>
> Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support
> for
> the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's
> profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility,
> while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the
> U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to
> suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack
> Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known
> restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the
> Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of
> African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential
> power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing
> the former.
>
> Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men
> occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of
> similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against
> peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them
> simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered
> since
> -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among
> the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on
> the Home Front:
>
> Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston,
> desensitizing
> people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
>
> Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their
> oligarchs.
>
> The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial
> for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
>
> The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S.
> citizens
> or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as
> anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
>
> Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
>
> Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
>
> Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States
> against
> the people of the United States.
>
> Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government
> violence.
>
> Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put
> martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a
> president.
>
> The militarization of the Mexican border.
>
> The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the
> bombing
> of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and
> Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
>
> The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all
> such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms,
> earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these
> threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and
> destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they
> can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent
> green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and
> non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian
> Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency
> services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and
> preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a
> publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a
> State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new
> project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
>
> If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the
> main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
>
>
>
during World War II reminds me that we don't need to look back so far
to see what internment does to a people. Just look for starter at the
Indigenous People shoved onto lands not needed by our Empire. Take a
trip and wander through these enforced camps. Want something closer
to home? Just wander down to your city's Central Slums. Take a look
at the people crammed into these internment camps. And be aware that
there are those who would put Muslims and all non Christian people in
special camps. Women are no longer safe from those who would run
their lives for them.
That is what Internment Camps are all about. Controlling the lives of
others. And we are a nation chock full of them.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/25/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Domestic Use of Military
> A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
> ________________________________________
> By davidswanson - Posted on 12 January 2016
> Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in
> Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is
> simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed
> practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear
> missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to
> uphold
> the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
> But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military --
> such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic
> Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the
> U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war
> game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a
> corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
> Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support
> for
> the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's
> profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility,
> while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the
> U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to
> suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack
> Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known
> restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the
> Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of
> African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential
> power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing
> the former.
> Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men
> occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of
> similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against
> peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them
> simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered
> since
> -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among
> the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on
> the Home Front:
> Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston,
> desensitizing
> people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
> Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their
> oligarchs.
> The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial
> for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
> The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S.
> citizens
> or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as
> anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
> Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
> Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
> Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States
> against
> the people of the United States.
> Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government
> violence.
> Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put
> martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a
> president.
> The militarization of the Mexican border.
> The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the
> bombing
> of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and
> Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
> The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all
> such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms,
> earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these
> threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and
> destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they
> can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent
> green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and
> non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian
> Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency
> services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and
> preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a
> publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a
> State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new
> project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
> If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the
> main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
> .
> . davidswanson's blog
> . Email this
> &&&&
>
> . Home
> . Books
> . Article Topics
> . Talk Nation Radio
> . About
> . Donate
> . Search
> . Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> . Youtube
> . WarIsACrime.org
> . RootsAction.org
> . Images
> . RSS
> . Store
> . WorldBeyondWar.org
> . War No More
> You are hereBlogs / davidswanson's blog / A Homeland Is a Country That
> Allows Domestic Use of Military
> A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
>
> By davidswanson - Posted on 12 January 2016
> Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in
> Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is
> simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed
> practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear
> missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to
> uphold
> the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
> But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military --
> such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic
> Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the
> U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war
> game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a
> corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
> Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support
> for
> the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's
> profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility,
> while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the
> U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to
> suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack
> Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known
> restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the
> Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of
> African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential
> power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing
> the former.
> Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men
> occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of
> similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against
> peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them
> simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered
> since
> -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among
> the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on
> the Home Front:
> Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston,
> desensitizing
> people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
> Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their
> oligarchs.
> The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial
> for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
> The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S.
> citizens
> or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as
> anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
> Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
> Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
> Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States
> against
> the people of the United States.
> Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government
> violence.
> Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put
> martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a
> president.
> The militarization of the Mexican border.
> The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the
> bombing
> of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and
> Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
> The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all
> such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms,
> earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these
> threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and
> destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they
> can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent
> green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and
> non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian
> Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency
> services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and
> preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a
> publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a
> State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new
> project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
> If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the
> main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
> . http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php
> http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php
> . davidswanson's blog
> . /forward?path=node%2F5023 Email this
>
>
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> You are hereBlogs / davidswanson's blog / A Homeland Is a Country That
> Allows Domestic Use of Military
>
> A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
>
>
>
>
> By davidswanson - Posted on 12 January 2016
>
>
> Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in
> Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is
> simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed
> practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear
> missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to
> uphold
> the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
>
> But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military --
> such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic
> Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the
> U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war
> game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a
> corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
>
> Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support
> for
> the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's
> profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility,
> while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the
> U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to
> suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack
> Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known
> restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the
> Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of
> African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential
> power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing
> the former.
>
> Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men
> occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of
> similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against
> peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them
> simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered
> since
> -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among
> the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on
> the Home Front:
>
> Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston,
> desensitizing
> people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
>
> Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their
> oligarchs.
>
> The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial
> for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
>
> The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S.
> citizens
> or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as
> anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
>
> Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
>
> Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
>
> Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States
> against
> the people of the United States.
>
> Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government
> violence.
>
> Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put
> martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a
> president.
>
> The militarization of the Mexican border.
>
> The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the
> bombing
> of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and
> Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
>
> The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all
> such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms,
> earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these
> threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and
> destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they
> can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent
> green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and
> non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian
> Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency
> services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and
> preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a
> publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a
> State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new
> project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
>
> If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the
> main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
>
>
>
Monday, January 25, 2016
united ducks appeal on kiosks : Imagine revisited
Back in the early 90's, Washington State's office of disinformation
decided that public Kiosks, placed around such places as Malls and in
airports, would allow citizens access to information that at present
would require them to go to their government offices to obtain. Of
course those designing these Kiosks were mostly young, White, healthy
males. We, at the Department of Services for the Blind, protested
these Kiosks, to no avail. But due to other issues they did not come
to fruition.
Here again is the story these events caused me to write:
IMAGINE
By Carl Jarvis
Imagine: You've just entered your office on what may well be the
most hectic, stressful day of your life; in other words, any normal
day. Suddenly you realize all of your reference books, piles of
paper-work and notes are covered with little bumps. In fact, you
discover there is not one single printed word to be found. Every
scrap of information necessary to do your job, is now in Braille.
Imagine: you rush back out of your office, wildly looking about;
peering into offices; staring over the shoulders of clerks. Everybody
is calmly doing their job, using Braille. Mysteriously they have
learned the language overnight. Only you, it seems, were overlooked.
For some unknown reason, you are permanently and totally Braille
challenged.
Imagine: you dash for the door hoping the rest of the world has not
gone mad. It has. In the elevator, you're not sure which button to
press for the lobby. Someone has to help you. They stare at you as
if you are stupid. Pausing at the news stand, you are unable to tell
one magazine from another. You can't stand it, you need to go home
and collect your thoughts. But at the bus stop, there's no way of
telling which coach is yours. You back away, not wanting anyone to
know, and you decide you'll call a cab. Of course, you only brought
bus fare and lunch money, not nearly enough for the taxi. Remembering
your bank card, you pull it out as you run back into the lobby.
There, at the access machine, you stop short. The card has turned to
Braille, and so have all of the instructions on the machine. You'll
have to call home and ask for help. Funny, you never paid much
attention to the telephone dial and now, in your growing state of
confusion, you don't recall which number goes where. You are so
alone, so frightened, you actually begin to weep.
Imagine: you have always seen yourself as a leader; a visionary, a
problem-solver. You will not run from this challenge. You shall
succeed. You have a large mortgage.
Once you have recovered from the great shock, you begin looking for
ways to survive.
Imagine: you have finally made arrangements, through your employer,
to hire a Braille reader, a process so complex and painful you plan to
patent it and use it to torture spies. Now you sit in your chair
going quietly mad listening to the drone of your reader's voice,
taking hours of time to cover what you once scanned in minutes, while
others whip about you efficiently communicating among themselves via
Braille-FAX and E-B-mail. You begin to feel the "ice" in isolation.
Imagine: you learn you are not alone. You are a member of a very
small minority of Braille-Challenged people. There is, in fact, a
Braille-less Culture; a history far too long and complex to discuss
here. So, you become a member of the, Braille-less Association of
America. (BAA) At the BAA meetings you find out about a number of
small companies manufacturing adaptive equipment which enables
Braille-less persons to access all of the Braille computers, FAX
machines, Braille scanners and Braillers.
The expense is far more than you can afford, so you seek assistance
from your employer. Your request is turned down. There are no
requirements that your employer accommodate your disability.
Imagine: BAA, along with many other disability groups, battle in
Congress for the passage of a Bill, guaranteeing you equal treatment
under the Law.
The bill passes and, despite subtle, subliminal negative messages from
your fiscal officer--money is, "found" for your accommodation. After
considerable time and effort, the technician from the Department of
Services for the Braille-less, has you on-line. Now you are able to
scan Braille text and convert the little dots into letters, and
through a very complex process, the Braille display on your computer
is transformed into print. Finally, you are again up to speed, being
your old efficient self, feeling good about your work.
Imagine: you are humming and smiling and cranking along in high gear.
Suddenly, a message flashes on your screen and drives terror through
your heart. New breakthroughs in technology have produced equipment
so superior to the ancient junk--at least four years old-- presently
in use, that your organization is up-grading the entire communications
system.
The BAA, technicians have already informed you that your adaptive
equipment is not compatible with it. You go to the,
"Powers-That-Be" in your organization, and request a meeting to
discuss this concern. You are told that your fears are groundless.
You will not be forgotten. Following this meeting A rumor goes around
hinting that you are trying to sabotage the new system, and your
associates begin to whisper behind your back. They want the new
system. It's far superior, more compact, ten times faster, and it's
cool looking. They are sick of your whining and constant complaining.
You feel the "ice" settling in again.
Imagine: you have been forgotten. The new system is in place.
Everybody loves it. You've been told not to worry, someone will be
around to do what is necessary to put you back on-line. The "someone"
they had in mind is the same technician who told you the system would
not work.
Despite your concerns, no one bothered to investigate before the
equipment was installed.
Once again you sit, going quietly mad while your reader plows line by
line through the piles of Braille.
Imagine: you know you are close to losing your mind or your
job--probably both. You must find other employment, but you do not
want your associates to know you are finally beaten. You try to
figure out a way to do a quiet job search when all information is only
accessible in Braille.
One day you hear that your State has developed a central information
center, called a, "kiosk". These information centers are being set up
in easily accessible locations. The plan is for these kiosks to make
government information and services available quickly and
conveniently, to the public. Sort of a "one stop shopping center".
You learn that lists of job openings are among the many services
offered. This is perfect. This is exactly what you need. you
discover your town recently placed a kiosk in the Mall. You go there
on Saturday afternoon. There it stands, costing the tax payers
hundreds of thousands of dollars to create, but well worth it. In its
ultimate form, the kiosks will bring virtually all State services
right into your local neighborhood. You are thrilled as you step up
to the controls. An automated voice welcomes you and brags about the
wonders of this system. Breathlessly, you wait for your
instructions...
Then, the Braille display appears.
Imagine: they are dragging you away, shrieking at the top of your
voice. Onlookers are amazed. They do not know how you managed to rip
the iron bench from the floor of the Mall. None of them dared to try
to stop you as you swung it over your head, again and again, smashing
the kiosk into pieces of broken plastic, glass and twisted metal.
None of them understand why you kept screaming the same words over and
over.
"I pay taxes, too! I pay taxes, too! I pay taxes, too!"
Imagine!...
On 1/25/16, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> United Ducks Appeal Over Kiosks for the Blind
>
> By MARIA DINZEO
>
>
>
> Facebook frame
>
> Facebook
>
>
>
> Like
>
> Like
>
> Like
>
> Like
>
>
>
> 43
>
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>
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> Tweet
>
> ShareThis
>
>
>
> SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - United Airlines need not face a class action over its
> limited number of kiosks accessible to blind travelers at California
> airports,
>
> the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday.
>
> Issuing its decision 38 months after hearing
>
> oral arguments,
>
> the three-judge panel said federal statutes pre-empt the National Federation
> for the Blind's claims for violation of California's Unruh Civil Rights
> Act.
>
> Such claims furthermore do not relate to a "service" provided by
> United, as outlined by the Airline Deregulation Act, according to the
> ruling.
>
> The National Federation of the Blind sued United Airlines back in
> October 2010, joined by three individuals - Michael May, Michael Hingson and
> Christina
>
> Thomas.
>
> Rather than offering audio output or other blind-friendly alternatives,
> United's machines operated exclusively by video and touch-screen
> navigation,
>
> according to the complaint
>
> U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed the action, finding the
> claims pre-empted by both the Airline Deregulation Act and the Air Carrier
> Access
>
> Act.
>
> Affirming on Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit pointed to its en banc opinion
> in the 1998 case Charas v. Trans World Airlines, which determined that the
> term
>
> "service" in the Americans with Disabilities Act refers to the provision of
> air transportation - such as "the prices, schedules, origins and
> destinations
>
> of the point-to-point transportation of passengers, cargo or mail," not
> airline-provided amenities like drinks and luggage handling.
>
> Though the Federal Aviation Act contains a broad savings clause, it did
> not result in a reversal today.
>
> "According to the federation, any state-law claims that fall outside
> the scope of the ADA express preemption provision are necessarily preserved
> by
>
> the FAA's savings clause. Not so," Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for a
> three-judge panel.
>
> Under the federation's interpretation, "a passenger could sue an
> airline for violating any state standard of care not expressly preempted by
> the ADA,
>
> notwithstanding federal regulations covering in depth the particular field
> at issue," Berzon noted.
>
> "The result would be chaotic."
>
> New Department of Transportations regulations on accessibility of
> airport kiosks furthermore speak "directly to the concerns raised by the
> federation's
>
> suit," the ruling states.
>
> "Given its great detail and pervasive extent, the new regulation
> preempts any state regulation of that same field," Berzon wrote.
>
> Document
>
> Source:
>
> http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/01/19/united-ducks-appeal-over-kiosks-for-the-blind.htm
>
decided that public Kiosks, placed around such places as Malls and in
airports, would allow citizens access to information that at present
would require them to go to their government offices to obtain. Of
course those designing these Kiosks were mostly young, White, healthy
males. We, at the Department of Services for the Blind, protested
these Kiosks, to no avail. But due to other issues they did not come
to fruition.
Here again is the story these events caused me to write:
IMAGINE
By Carl Jarvis
Imagine: You've just entered your office on what may well be the
most hectic, stressful day of your life; in other words, any normal
day. Suddenly you realize all of your reference books, piles of
paper-work and notes are covered with little bumps. In fact, you
discover there is not one single printed word to be found. Every
scrap of information necessary to do your job, is now in Braille.
Imagine: you rush back out of your office, wildly looking about;
peering into offices; staring over the shoulders of clerks. Everybody
is calmly doing their job, using Braille. Mysteriously they have
learned the language overnight. Only you, it seems, were overlooked.
For some unknown reason, you are permanently and totally Braille
challenged.
Imagine: you dash for the door hoping the rest of the world has not
gone mad. It has. In the elevator, you're not sure which button to
press for the lobby. Someone has to help you. They stare at you as
if you are stupid. Pausing at the news stand, you are unable to tell
one magazine from another. You can't stand it, you need to go home
and collect your thoughts. But at the bus stop, there's no way of
telling which coach is yours. You back away, not wanting anyone to
know, and you decide you'll call a cab. Of course, you only brought
bus fare and lunch money, not nearly enough for the taxi. Remembering
your bank card, you pull it out as you run back into the lobby.
There, at the access machine, you stop short. The card has turned to
Braille, and so have all of the instructions on the machine. You'll
have to call home and ask for help. Funny, you never paid much
attention to the telephone dial and now, in your growing state of
confusion, you don't recall which number goes where. You are so
alone, so frightened, you actually begin to weep.
Imagine: you have always seen yourself as a leader; a visionary, a
problem-solver. You will not run from this challenge. You shall
succeed. You have a large mortgage.
Once you have recovered from the great shock, you begin looking for
ways to survive.
Imagine: you have finally made arrangements, through your employer,
to hire a Braille reader, a process so complex and painful you plan to
patent it and use it to torture spies. Now you sit in your chair
going quietly mad listening to the drone of your reader's voice,
taking hours of time to cover what you once scanned in minutes, while
others whip about you efficiently communicating among themselves via
Braille-FAX and E-B-mail. You begin to feel the "ice" in isolation.
Imagine: you learn you are not alone. You are a member of a very
small minority of Braille-Challenged people. There is, in fact, a
Braille-less Culture; a history far too long and complex to discuss
here. So, you become a member of the, Braille-less Association of
America. (BAA) At the BAA meetings you find out about a number of
small companies manufacturing adaptive equipment which enables
Braille-less persons to access all of the Braille computers, FAX
machines, Braille scanners and Braillers.
The expense is far more than you can afford, so you seek assistance
from your employer. Your request is turned down. There are no
requirements that your employer accommodate your disability.
Imagine: BAA, along with many other disability groups, battle in
Congress for the passage of a Bill, guaranteeing you equal treatment
under the Law.
The bill passes and, despite subtle, subliminal negative messages from
your fiscal officer--money is, "found" for your accommodation. After
considerable time and effort, the technician from the Department of
Services for the Braille-less, has you on-line. Now you are able to
scan Braille text and convert the little dots into letters, and
through a very complex process, the Braille display on your computer
is transformed into print. Finally, you are again up to speed, being
your old efficient self, feeling good about your work.
Imagine: you are humming and smiling and cranking along in high gear.
Suddenly, a message flashes on your screen and drives terror through
your heart. New breakthroughs in technology have produced equipment
so superior to the ancient junk--at least four years old-- presently
in use, that your organization is up-grading the entire communications
system.
The BAA, technicians have already informed you that your adaptive
equipment is not compatible with it. You go to the,
"Powers-That-Be" in your organization, and request a meeting to
discuss this concern. You are told that your fears are groundless.
You will not be forgotten. Following this meeting A rumor goes around
hinting that you are trying to sabotage the new system, and your
associates begin to whisper behind your back. They want the new
system. It's far superior, more compact, ten times faster, and it's
cool looking. They are sick of your whining and constant complaining.
You feel the "ice" settling in again.
Imagine: you have been forgotten. The new system is in place.
Everybody loves it. You've been told not to worry, someone will be
around to do what is necessary to put you back on-line. The "someone"
they had in mind is the same technician who told you the system would
not work.
Despite your concerns, no one bothered to investigate before the
equipment was installed.
Once again you sit, going quietly mad while your reader plows line by
line through the piles of Braille.
Imagine: you know you are close to losing your mind or your
job--probably both. You must find other employment, but you do not
want your associates to know you are finally beaten. You try to
figure out a way to do a quiet job search when all information is only
accessible in Braille.
One day you hear that your State has developed a central information
center, called a, "kiosk". These information centers are being set up
in easily accessible locations. The plan is for these kiosks to make
government information and services available quickly and
conveniently, to the public. Sort of a "one stop shopping center".
You learn that lists of job openings are among the many services
offered. This is perfect. This is exactly what you need. you
discover your town recently placed a kiosk in the Mall. You go there
on Saturday afternoon. There it stands, costing the tax payers
hundreds of thousands of dollars to create, but well worth it. In its
ultimate form, the kiosks will bring virtually all State services
right into your local neighborhood. You are thrilled as you step up
to the controls. An automated voice welcomes you and brags about the
wonders of this system. Breathlessly, you wait for your
instructions...
Then, the Braille display appears.
Imagine: they are dragging you away, shrieking at the top of your
voice. Onlookers are amazed. They do not know how you managed to rip
the iron bench from the floor of the Mall. None of them dared to try
to stop you as you swung it over your head, again and again, smashing
the kiosk into pieces of broken plastic, glass and twisted metal.
None of them understand why you kept screaming the same words over and
over.
"I pay taxes, too! I pay taxes, too! I pay taxes, too!"
Imagine!...
On 1/25/16, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> United Ducks Appeal Over Kiosks for the Blind
>
> By MARIA DINZEO
>
>
>
> Facebook frame
>
>
>
>
> Like
>
> Like
>
> Like
>
> Like
>
>
>
> 43
>
> Facebook frame end
>
>
>
> Tweet
>
> ShareThis
>
>
>
> SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - United Airlines need not face a class action over its
> limited number of kiosks accessible to blind travelers at California
> airports,
>
> the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday.
>
> Issuing its decision 38 months after hearing
>
> oral arguments,
>
> the three-judge panel said federal statutes pre-empt the National Federation
> for the Blind's claims for violation of California's Unruh Civil Rights
> Act.
>
> Such claims furthermore do not relate to a "service" provided by
> United, as outlined by the Airline Deregulation Act, according to the
> ruling.
>
> The National Federation of the Blind sued United Airlines back in
> October 2010, joined by three individuals - Michael May, Michael Hingson and
> Christina
>
> Thomas.
>
> Rather than offering audio output or other blind-friendly alternatives,
> United's machines operated exclusively by video and touch-screen
> navigation,
>
> according to the complaint
>
> U.S. District Judge William Alsup dismissed the action, finding the
> claims pre-empted by both the Airline Deregulation Act and the Air Carrier
> Access
>
> Act.
>
> Affirming on Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit pointed to its en banc opinion
> in the 1998 case Charas v. Trans World Airlines, which determined that the
> term
>
> "service" in the Americans with Disabilities Act refers to the provision of
> air transportation - such as "the prices, schedules, origins and
> destinations
>
> of the point-to-point transportation of passengers, cargo or mail," not
> airline-provided amenities like drinks and luggage handling.
>
> Though the Federal Aviation Act contains a broad savings clause, it did
> not result in a reversal today.
>
> "According to the federation, any state-law claims that fall outside
> the scope of the ADA express preemption provision are necessarily preserved
> by
>
> the FAA's savings clause. Not so," Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for a
> three-judge panel.
>
> Under the federation's interpretation, "a passenger could sue an
> airline for violating any state standard of care not expressly preempted by
> the ADA,
>
> notwithstanding federal regulations covering in depth the particular field
> at issue," Berzon noted.
>
> "The result would be chaotic."
>
> New Department of Transportations regulations on accessibility of
> airport kiosks furthermore speak "directly to the concerns raised by the
> federation's
>
> suit," the ruling states.
>
> "Given its great detail and pervasive extent, the new regulation
> preempts any state regulation of that same field," Berzon wrote.
>
> Document
>
> Source:
>
> http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/01/19/united-ducks-appeal-over-kiosks-for-the-blind.htm
>
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Re: [blind-democracy] Defend women’s right to choose!
I would be stunned if I met a Black person today, who believed that
slavery was a good thing, Yet, over and over again I encounter women
who believe it is the right of Men to tell them what they may do with
their bodies. It can only be assumed that Men have confused and
muddied the issues to the point that some women are attacking
Windmills. The issue cannot be any clearer. Should Women have the
final say over their own bodies? Or should Men have the Right to
prevent them from exercising this Right?
The decision to have an abortion is one that ultimately belongs to the
pregnant woman. She may include many others in her decision making
process, but the final decision is hers to make, and to live with the
consequences. The fact is that this battle is not one of saving a
little person, all curled up inside a woman's body. That is the smoke
and mirrors put forth by those wanting to control women. If that
little person were really so important, then wouldn't it stand to
reason that once born into the world, these little people would be
assured of a safe home, good healthy food, free education to the
highest level they can obtain, opportunity to secure a job of their
choice and at a living salary. A home and a family. But that is not
the case. Not even close. Want proof that the "Right to Livers"
don't care one whit about these little persons? Just turn on the
evening news. Poverty is growing. Crime is growing. Unemployment is
growing. Education costs are growing. That is the world our
Defenders of Life are offering these new little persons.
Still, the real issue continues to be one of who controls each woman's
body. Until every woman has total control of herself, a form of
slavery exists. It is just a short step back to those "Good Old Days"
when a woman had to have her husband's permission in order to purchase
a car, which title was still in her husband's name. She could not buy
a home without a man signing with her. She earned only two thirds, at
best, of a man's wage.
Do women really want to travel back to those Golden Days?
I know one for sure who does not.
Carl Jarvis
23/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> http://themilitant.com/2016/8004/800420.html
> The Militant (logo)
>
> Vol. 80/No. 4 February 1, 2016
>
> (editorial)
>
> Defend women's right to choose!
>
> The labor movement and all working people should join in the fight
> against the growing number of state laws restricting women's access to
> abortion, and against the attacks on Planned Parenthood.
> Defending the right to choose abortion is a working-class question: the
> right to decide when or if to bear children is fundamental to a woman's
> control of her own life and to winning full social, economic and
> political equality, a prerequisite to uniting the working class. The
> attacks on the right to choose — from waiting periods to excessive
> regulations designed to force clinics to close to denial of Medicaid and
> insurance coverage for abortion — land hardest on working-class women
> and the rural poor.
>
> The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution registered the conquests of
> the Second American Revolution, which put an end to chattel slavery. It
> says, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
> privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
> state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
> process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
> protection of the laws."
>
> The fight for abortion to be the decision of a woman — not the
> government, a doctor, a relative or anyone else — is part of the fight
> to extend this constitutional protection fully to women.
>
> In the context of today's capitalist depression and growing attacks on
> working people, the rulers' efforts to relentlessly cut women's access
> to abortion is part of a broader campaign against working-class women to
> undermine their confidence, drive down the value of their labor power
> and divide the working class.
>
> Women and the working class are paying a big price today for the refusal
> of the established women's rights organizations to mobilize spirited
> public actions in support of women's right to abortion, and campaign
> vigorously for it as a fundamental question of women's equality. Like
> most liberals today, they believe workers are moving to the right,
> evidenced by the support for Donald Trump. They argue supporters of
> abortion should focus on "stopping the right" and not to rock the boat.
> Trust in the courts, they say, and work to elect "pro-choice" politicians.
>
> The Socialist Workers Party points to the young people who mobilized in
> Chicago Jan. 17 against restrictions on women's right to choose abortion
> as a good example that can and should be emulated.
>
>
> Related articles:
> Protest hits restrictions on abortion rights, cuts to Planned Parenthood
>
>
>
> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>
>
>
>
slavery was a good thing, Yet, over and over again I encounter women
who believe it is the right of Men to tell them what they may do with
their bodies. It can only be assumed that Men have confused and
muddied the issues to the point that some women are attacking
Windmills. The issue cannot be any clearer. Should Women have the
final say over their own bodies? Or should Men have the Right to
prevent them from exercising this Right?
The decision to have an abortion is one that ultimately belongs to the
pregnant woman. She may include many others in her decision making
process, but the final decision is hers to make, and to live with the
consequences. The fact is that this battle is not one of saving a
little person, all curled up inside a woman's body. That is the smoke
and mirrors put forth by those wanting to control women. If that
little person were really so important, then wouldn't it stand to
reason that once born into the world, these little people would be
assured of a safe home, good healthy food, free education to the
highest level they can obtain, opportunity to secure a job of their
choice and at a living salary. A home and a family. But that is not
the case. Not even close. Want proof that the "Right to Livers"
don't care one whit about these little persons? Just turn on the
evening news. Poverty is growing. Crime is growing. Unemployment is
growing. Education costs are growing. That is the world our
Defenders of Life are offering these new little persons.
Still, the real issue continues to be one of who controls each woman's
body. Until every woman has total control of herself, a form of
slavery exists. It is just a short step back to those "Good Old Days"
when a woman had to have her husband's permission in order to purchase
a car, which title was still in her husband's name. She could not buy
a home without a man signing with her. She earned only two thirds, at
best, of a man's wage.
Do women really want to travel back to those Golden Days?
I know one for sure who does not.
Carl Jarvis
23/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> http://themilitant.com/2016/8004/800420.html
> The Militant (logo)
>
> Vol. 80/No. 4 February 1, 2016
>
> (editorial)
>
> Defend women's right to choose!
>
> The labor movement and all working people should join in the fight
> against the growing number of state laws restricting women's access to
> abortion, and against the attacks on Planned Parenthood.
> Defending the right to choose abortion is a working-class question: the
> right to decide when or if to bear children is fundamental to a woman's
> control of her own life and to winning full social, economic and
> political equality, a prerequisite to uniting the working class. The
> attacks on the right to choose — from waiting periods to excessive
> regulations designed to force clinics to close to denial of Medicaid and
> insurance coverage for abortion — land hardest on working-class women
> and the rural poor.
>
> The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution registered the conquests of
> the Second American Revolution, which put an end to chattel slavery. It
> says, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
> privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
> state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
> process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
> protection of the laws."
>
> The fight for abortion to be the decision of a woman — not the
> government, a doctor, a relative or anyone else — is part of the fight
> to extend this constitutional protection fully to women.
>
> In the context of today's capitalist depression and growing attacks on
> working people, the rulers' efforts to relentlessly cut women's access
> to abortion is part of a broader campaign against working-class women to
> undermine their confidence, drive down the value of their labor power
> and divide the working class.
>
> Women and the working class are paying a big price today for the refusal
> of the established women's rights organizations to mobilize spirited
> public actions in support of women's right to abortion, and campaign
> vigorously for it as a fundamental question of women's equality. Like
> most liberals today, they believe workers are moving to the right,
> evidenced by the support for Donald Trump. They argue supporters of
> abortion should focus on "stopping the right" and not to rock the boat.
> Trust in the courts, they say, and work to elect "pro-choice" politicians.
>
> The Socialist Workers Party points to the young people who mobilized in
> Chicago Jan. 17 against restrictions on women's right to choose abortion
> as a good example that can and should be emulated.
>
>
> Related articles:
> Protest hits restrictions on abortion rights, cuts to Planned Parenthood
>
>
>
> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>
>
>
>
Friday, January 22, 2016
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: grand jury on sourceamerica
Last evening, Thursday, January 21, 2016, I took part in a telephone
conference. The Department of Services for the Blind was, and is,
seeking comments on its proposed Vocational Rehabilitation Operations
Plan for the coming year, and beyond. Out of all of the efforts to
make this pubblic meeting known, and attended, only 7 people called
in. This included the assistant director and his associate, whose job
it was to provide us with an overview and seek comments. The agency
plan is about 70 pages long, part of a 600 page document outlining the
tasks and responsibilities of the general social service agencies.
Only the assistant director and his assistant had read the entire
proposal. All of those joining in on this call are members of the
ACB, except the assistant director. No one from the NFB was concerned
enough to attend.
I bring up this dismal attendance because it demonstrates what is
happening in this nation today. We are becoming apathetic, reacting
rather than acting on government proposals. We are allowing our
future to be determined by the very people we should be giving
direction to. Even when, as I believe last evening showed, the
efforts of those government employees are well-intentioned, we are
sending a signal that we simply don't want to be bothered. Of course,
I believe we have come to this place in our behavior through long
efforts by the Ruling Class to distract us.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/22/16, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@littlebreezes.com> wrote:
> All too often this is what happens when work is subcontracted and
> privatized. Nothing unusual here.
> Boggles the mind and sickens the stomach.
> Frank
>
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of joe harcz
> Comcast
> Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2016 1:43 PM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] grand jury on sourceamerica
>
> Feds investigating premier work program for disabled after CNN reports
> Feds investigating premier work program for disabled after CNN reports
>
> (CNN) - A federal grand jury is examining the nation's premier program that
> provides work for people who are severely disabled, after a series of CNN
> investigative
> reports detailing allegations of corruption and cronyism in what sources say
> could be the biggest fraud case ever in a U.S. government agency.
>
> CNN has learned government investigators have issued grand jury subpoenas as
> they investigate the huge taxpayer-funded program, known as AbilityOne, and
> specifically its managing agency, SourceAmerica.
>
> Along with bid rigging and corruption, grand jury investigators are looking
> into allegations the program is operating numerous contracts illegally, and
> not hiring enough disabled people to fill contracts as required by law, as
> CNN detailed in earlier reports.
>
> The AbilityOne and SourceAmerica program dole out hundreds of
> multimillion-dollar contracts to scores of organizations. To get a contract,
> 75% of a company's
> work must be performed by the severely disabled, people who cannot get work
> elsewhere.
>
> Yet, numerous sources have told CNN that SourceAmerica awards contracts
> unfairly, giving lucrative deals to companies with inside connections. Some
> SourceAmerica
> board members have also worked at companies that are awarded big contracts.
>
> One such example is outlined in a lawsuit alleging bid-rigging, one of
> several suits filed against AbilityOne and SourceAmerica in recent years.
>
> The suit was filed by Ruben Lopez, owner of Bona Fide Conglomerates, a
> company that lost its contract cleaning the federal courthouse in Las Vegas.
> He alleged
> the contract was taken away and given to another company that had an
> official sitting on the board of directors at SourceAmerica.
>
> Eventually, Lopez settled the Las Vegas contract dispute with SourceAmerica.
> As part of the settlement, SourceAmerica agreed to treat Lopez's company
> more
> fairly, even appointing their top lawyer, Jean Robinson, to work with him.
>
> But Lopez said his company was blackballed instead and received no more
> contracts. Lopez sued SourceAmerica again, claiming it violated the
> settlement agreement,
> and that claim is now ongoing in the courts.
>
> Lopez became so disgusted with how corrupt the process was that he began
> working with federal investigators and secretly recorded conversations
> between
> himself and Robinson.
>
> Those recordings, which CNN obtained independently, are now part of the
> federal investigation, having been requested under the grand jury subpoena.
>
> The recordings are striking, among other reasons, because Robinson compared
> her company's leadership to the leadership of the mafia.
>
> "They're like - they're like the mafia, I mean, and they pride themselves in
> it. They don't care," Robinson is heard saying in one part of the
> recordings.
>
> "You know, we are dealing with the mafia here, the old - the old
> SourceAmerica mafia," she said in another recording.
>
> On the recordings, Robinson confides she is nervous about being set up by a
> board of directors she claims has been fraudulently awarding contracts for
> decades.
>
> "People have been doing it for so many years, and they're not going to
> stop," she said. "They're just - it's like an addiction. They're just, so
> much time
> has passed, they've been getting away with it for, you know, for what, 25
> years, and they don't know how to do it different."
>
> Officials at SourceAmerica and AbilityOne repeatedly declined interviews
> with CNN, issuing statements denying fraud, corruption, cronyism, bid
> rigging,
> or illegal activity.
>
> The recordings of Robinson, SourceAmerica writes, are "factually inaccurate
> and untrue." The statement notes that Lopez, head of what it calls a
> "disgruntled"
> nonprofit, is suing Source America. The statement goes on to say
> "SourceAmerica is continuing to vigorously defend itself against these
> unfounded allegations."
>
> Source:
> http://www.wlsam.com/news/feds-investigating-premier-work-program-for-disabled-after-cnn-reports/
>
conference. The Department of Services for the Blind was, and is,
seeking comments on its proposed Vocational Rehabilitation Operations
Plan for the coming year, and beyond. Out of all of the efforts to
make this pubblic meeting known, and attended, only 7 people called
in. This included the assistant director and his associate, whose job
it was to provide us with an overview and seek comments. The agency
plan is about 70 pages long, part of a 600 page document outlining the
tasks and responsibilities of the general social service agencies.
Only the assistant director and his assistant had read the entire
proposal. All of those joining in on this call are members of the
ACB, except the assistant director. No one from the NFB was concerned
enough to attend.
I bring up this dismal attendance because it demonstrates what is
happening in this nation today. We are becoming apathetic, reacting
rather than acting on government proposals. We are allowing our
future to be determined by the very people we should be giving
direction to. Even when, as I believe last evening showed, the
efforts of those government employees are well-intentioned, we are
sending a signal that we simply don't want to be bothered. Of course,
I believe we have come to this place in our behavior through long
efforts by the Ruling Class to distract us.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/22/16, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@littlebreezes.com> wrote:
> All too often this is what happens when work is subcontracted and
> privatized. Nothing unusual here.
> Boggles the mind and sickens the stomach.
> Frank
>
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of joe harcz
> Comcast
> Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2016 1:43 PM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] grand jury on sourceamerica
>
> Feds investigating premier work program for disabled after CNN reports
> Feds investigating premier work program for disabled after CNN reports
>
> (CNN) - A federal grand jury is examining the nation's premier program that
> provides work for people who are severely disabled, after a series of CNN
> investigative
> reports detailing allegations of corruption and cronyism in what sources say
> could be the biggest fraud case ever in a U.S. government agency.
>
> CNN has learned government investigators have issued grand jury subpoenas as
> they investigate the huge taxpayer-funded program, known as AbilityOne, and
> specifically its managing agency, SourceAmerica.
>
> Along with bid rigging and corruption, grand jury investigators are looking
> into allegations the program is operating numerous contracts illegally, and
> not hiring enough disabled people to fill contracts as required by law, as
> CNN detailed in earlier reports.
>
> The AbilityOne and SourceAmerica program dole out hundreds of
> multimillion-dollar contracts to scores of organizations. To get a contract,
> 75% of a company's
> work must be performed by the severely disabled, people who cannot get work
> elsewhere.
>
> Yet, numerous sources have told CNN that SourceAmerica awards contracts
> unfairly, giving lucrative deals to companies with inside connections. Some
> SourceAmerica
> board members have also worked at companies that are awarded big contracts.
>
> One such example is outlined in a lawsuit alleging bid-rigging, one of
> several suits filed against AbilityOne and SourceAmerica in recent years.
>
> The suit was filed by Ruben Lopez, owner of Bona Fide Conglomerates, a
> company that lost its contract cleaning the federal courthouse in Las Vegas.
> He alleged
> the contract was taken away and given to another company that had an
> official sitting on the board of directors at SourceAmerica.
>
> Eventually, Lopez settled the Las Vegas contract dispute with SourceAmerica.
> As part of the settlement, SourceAmerica agreed to treat Lopez's company
> more
> fairly, even appointing their top lawyer, Jean Robinson, to work with him.
>
> But Lopez said his company was blackballed instead and received no more
> contracts. Lopez sued SourceAmerica again, claiming it violated the
> settlement agreement,
> and that claim is now ongoing in the courts.
>
> Lopez became so disgusted with how corrupt the process was that he began
> working with federal investigators and secretly recorded conversations
> between
> himself and Robinson.
>
> Those recordings, which CNN obtained independently, are now part of the
> federal investigation, having been requested under the grand jury subpoena.
>
> The recordings are striking, among other reasons, because Robinson compared
> her company's leadership to the leadership of the mafia.
>
> "They're like - they're like the mafia, I mean, and they pride themselves in
> it. They don't care," Robinson is heard saying in one part of the
> recordings.
>
> "You know, we are dealing with the mafia here, the old - the old
> SourceAmerica mafia," she said in another recording.
>
> On the recordings, Robinson confides she is nervous about being set up by a
> board of directors she claims has been fraudulently awarding contracts for
> decades.
>
> "People have been doing it for so many years, and they're not going to
> stop," she said. "They're just - it's like an addiction. They're just, so
> much time
> has passed, they've been getting away with it for, you know, for what, 25
> years, and they don't know how to do it different."
>
> Officials at SourceAmerica and AbilityOne repeatedly declined interviews
> with CNN, issuing statements denying fraud, corruption, cronyism, bid
> rigging,
> or illegal activity.
>
> The recordings of Robinson, SourceAmerica writes, are "factually inaccurate
> and untrue." The statement notes that Lopez, head of what it calls a
> "disgruntled"
> nonprofit, is suing Source America. The statement goes on to say
> "SourceAmerica is continuing to vigorously defend itself against these
> unfounded allegations."
>
> Source:
> http://www.wlsam.com/news/feds-investigating-premier-work-program-for-disabled-after-cnn-reports/
>
Monday, January 18, 2016
Re: [blind-democracy] The Mirage of Justice
Most certainly if you are poor Justice is a mirage. But even more
than effecting the Poor, Justice is not an option for any person who
is not one of the, "Truly First Class Citizens".
And that includes not only the poor, or persons of Color, or Women, or
Elderly, or Disabled, but it includes the majority of people believing
that they are Citizens of the United States of America.
Justice is working just fine, if you are one of the small privileged
minority. The owners of this American government make the laws and
rules to serve their needs. These laws and rules also keep us cowed
and confused. By telling us that we are fortunate to be part of this
Free Society, we can't seem to figure out why we keep getting slammed
to the mat. If times are good, it's because of the clever maneuvers
of our Wall Street CEO's. If times are bad, it's the fault of the
American Workers who are mismanaging their lives. The fact that we
are seen by the, "True First Class Citizens" as a resource to serve
their needs, we are consumers to be exploited, and sucked dry of our
meager resources.
Justice is alive and well. The problem is not with Justice, but with
whose Justice we are dealing with.
Leaking like the dykes in New Orleans, there are not enough, "Truly
First Class Citizens" to plug them all. And the leaks are growing.
Look around at the dissatisfaction abroad in the Land. Like Climate
Change, Social Change is rolling like a snowball heading down a steep
slope. We are in for a time of serious oppression, but the People
will roll over the Privilege, and establish a new Justice. Justice
for All.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> The Mirage of Justice
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_mirage_of_justice_20160117/
>
> Posted on Jan 17, 2016
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The online documentary "Making a Murderer" illuminates the corruption and
> unfairness of the American system of justice. Above, Steven Avery, one of
> the subjects of the film. (Netflix)
> If you are poor, you will almost never go to trial-instead you will be
> forced to accept a plea deal offered by government prosecutors. If you are
> poor, the word of the police, who are not averse to fabricating or
> tampering
> with evidence, manipulating witnesses and planting guns or drugs, will be
> accepted in a courtroom as if it was the word of God. If you are poor, and
> especially if you are of color, almost anyone who can verify your innocence
> will have a police record of some kind and thereby will be invalidated as a
> witness. If you are poor, you will be railroaded in assembly-line
> production
> from a town or city where there are no jobs through the police stations,
> county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because
> you don't have money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences
> that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in
> the industrialized world.
> If you are a poor person of color in America you understand this with a
> visceral fear. You have no chance. Being poor has become a crime. And this
> makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.
> The 10-part online documentary "Making a Murderer," by writer-directors
> Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, chronicles the endemic corruption of the
> judicial system. The film focuses on the case of Steven Avery and his
> nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were given life sentences for murder without
> any
> tangible evidence linking them to the crime. As admirable as the
> documentary
> was, however, it focused on a case where the main defendant, Avery, had
> competent defense. He was also white. The blatant corruption of, and
> probable conspiracy by, the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin
> and then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz is nothing compared
> with
> what goes on in the well-oiled and deeply cynical system in place in
> inner-city courts. The accused in poor urban centers are lined up daily
> like
> sheep in a chute and shipped to prison with a startling alacrity. The
> attempts by those who put Avery and Dassey behind bars to vilify them
> further after the release of the film misses the point: The two men, like
> most of the rest of the poor behind bars in the United States, did not
> receive a fair trial. Whether they did or did not murder Teresa Halbach-and
> the film makes a strong case that they did not-is a moot point.
> Once you are charged in America, whether you did the crime or not, you are
> almost always found guilty. Because of this, as many activists have
> discovered, the courts already are being used as a fundamental weapon of
> repression, and this abuse will explode in size should there be widespread
> unrest and dissent. Our civil liberties have been transformed into
> privileges-what Matt Taibbi in "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age
> of
> the Wealth Gap" calls "conditional rights and conditional citizenship"-that
> are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become
> privileges, none of us are safe.
> In any totalitarian society, including an American society ruled by its own
> species of inverted totalitarianism, the state invests tremendous amounts
> of
> energy into making the judicial system appear as if it functions
> impartially. And the harsher the totalitarian system becomes, the more
> effort it puts into disclaiming its identity. The Nazis, as did the Soviet
> Union under Stalin, broke the accused down in grueling and psychologically
> crippling interrogations-much the same way the hapless and confused Dassey
> is manipulated and lied to by interrogators in the film-to make them sign
> false confessions. Totalitarian states need the facade of justice to keep
> the public passive.
> The Guardian newspaper reported: "The Innocence Project has kept detailed
> records on the 337 cases across the [United States] where prisoners have
> been exonerated as a result of DNA testing since 1989. The group's
> researchers found that false confessions were made in 28 percent of all the
> DNA-related exonerations, a striking proportion in itself. But when you
> look
> only at homicide convictions-by definition the most serious cases-false
> confessions are the leading cause of miscarriages of justice, accounting
> for
> a full 63% of the 113 exonerations."
> "[T]he interrogator-butcher isn't interested in logic," Alexander
> Solzhenitsyn writes in "The Gulag Archipelago," "he just wants to catch two
> or three phrases. He knows what he wants. And as for us-we are totally
> unprepared for anything. From childhood on we are educated and trained-for
> our own profession; for our civil duties; for military service; to take
> care
> of our bodily needs; to behave well; even to appreciate beauty (well, this
> last not really all that much!). But neither our education, nor our
> upbringing, nor our experience prepares us in the slightest for the
> greatest
> trial of our lives: being arrested for nothing and interrogated about
> nothing."
> If the illusion of justice is shattered, the credibility and viability of
> the state are jeopardized. The spectacle of court, its solemnity and
> stately
> courthouses, its legal rituals and language, is part of the theater. The
> press, as was seen in the film, serves as an echo machine for the state,
> condemning the accused before he or she begins trial. Television shows and
> movies about crime investigators and the hunt for killers and terrorists
> feed the fictitious narrative. The reality is that almost no one who is
> imprisoned in America has gotten a trial. There is rarely an impartial
> investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent
> of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining. Of the 2.2
> million people we have incarcerated at the moment-25 percent of the world's
> prison population-2 million never had a trial. And significant percentages
> of them are innocent.
> Judge Jed S. Rakoff in an article in The New York Review of Books titled
> "Why Innocent People Plead Guilty" explains how this secretive plea system
> works to thwart justice. Close to 40 percent of those eventually exonerated
> of their crimes originally pleaded guilty, usually in an effort to reduce
> charges that would have resulted in much longer prison sentences if the
> cases had gone to trial. The students I teach in prison who have the
> longest
> sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial. Many of them went to
> trial because they did not commit the crime. But if you go to trial you
> cannot bargain away any of the charges against you in exchange for a
> shorter
> sentence. The public defender-who spends no more than a few minutes
> reviewing the case and has neither the time nor the inclination to do the
> work required by a trial-uses the prospect of the harshest sentence
> possible
> to frighten the client into taking a plea deal. And, as depicted in "Making
> a Murderer," prosecutors and defense attorneys often work as a tag team to
> force the accused to plead guilty. If all of the accused went to trial, the
> judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse.
> And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys
> routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a
> flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of
> justice.
> The wrongly accused and their families, as long as the fiction of justice
> is
> maintained, vainly seek redress. They file appeal after appeal. Those
> convicted devote hundreds of hours of study in the law library in prison.
> They believe there has been a "mistake." They think that if they are
> patient
> the "mistake" will be rectified. Playing upon such gullibility, authorities
> allowed prisoners in Stalin's gulags to write petitions twice a month to
> officials to proclaim their innocence or decry mistreatment. Those who do
> not understand the American system, who are not mentally prepared for its
> cruelty and violence, are largely helpless before authorities intoxicated
> with the god-like power to destroy lives. These authorities advance
> themselves or their agendas-Joe Biden when he was in the Senate and Bill
> Clinton when he was president did this-by being "tough" concerning law and
> order and national security. Those who administer the legal system wield
> power largely in secret. They are accountable to no one. Every once in a
> while-this happened even under the Nazis and Stalin-someone will be
> exonerated to maintain the fiction that the state is capable of rectifying
> its "mistakes." But the longer the system remains in place, the longer the
> legal process is shrouded from public view, the more the crime by the state
> accelerates.
> The power elites-our corporate rulers and the security and surveillance
> apparatus-rewrite laws to make their criminal behavior "legal." It is a
> two-tiered system. One set of laws for us. Another set of laws for them.
> Wall Street's fraud and looting of the U.S. Treasury, the obliteration of
> our privacy, the ability of the government to assassinate U.S. citizens,
> the
> revoking of habeas corpus, the neutralizing of our Fourth Amendment right
> against unreasonable searches and seizures, the murder of unarmed people in
> the streets of our cities by militarized police, the use of torture, the
> criminalizing of dissent, the collapse of our court system, the waging of
> pre-emptive war are rendered "legal." Politicians, legislators, lawyers and
> law enforcement officials, who understand that leniency and justice are
> damaging to their careers, and whom Karl Marx called the "leeches on the
> capitalist structure," have constructed for their corporate masters our
> system of inverted totalitarianism. They serve this system. They seek to
> advance within it. They do not blink at the victims destroyed by it. And
> most of them know it is a sham.
> "We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right
> to repress others," Solzhenitsyn warned. "In keeping silent about evil, in
> burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we
> are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When
> we
> neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their
> trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from
> beneath new generations."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
> The Mirage of Justice
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_mirage_of_justice_20160117/
>
> Posted on Jan 17, 2016
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The online documentary "Making a Murderer" illuminates the corruption and
> unfairness of the American system of justice. Above, Steven Avery, one of
> the subjects of the film. (Netflix)
> If you are poor, you will almost never go to trial-instead you will be
> forced to accept a plea deal offered by government prosecutors. If you are
> poor, the word of the police, who are not averse to fabricating or
> tampering
> with evidence, manipulating witnesses and planting guns or drugs, will be
> accepted in a courtroom as if it was the word of God. If you are poor, and
> especially if you are of color, almost anyone who can verify your innocence
> will have a police record of some kind and thereby will be invalidated as a
> witness. If you are poor, you will be railroaded in assembly-line
> production
> from a town or city where there are no jobs through the police stations,
> county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because
> you don't have money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences
> that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in
> the industrialized world.
> If you are a poor person of color in America you understand this with a
> visceral fear. You have no chance. Being poor has become a crime. And this
> makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.
> The 10-part online documentary "Making a Murderer," by writer-directors
> Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, chronicles the endemic corruption of the
> judicial system. The film focuses on the case of Steven Avery and his
> nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were given life sentences for murder without
> any
> tangible evidence linking them to the crime. As admirable as the
> documentary
> was, however, it focused on a case where the main defendant, Avery, had
> competent defense. He was also white. The blatant corruption of, and
> probable conspiracy by, the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin
> and then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz is nothing compared
> with
> what goes on in the well-oiled and deeply cynical system in place in
> inner-city courts. The accused in poor urban centers are lined up daily
> like
> sheep in a chute and shipped to prison with a startling alacrity. The
> attempts by those who put Avery and Dassey behind bars to vilify them
> further after the release of the film misses the point: The two men, like
> most of the rest of the poor behind bars in the United States, did not
> receive a fair trial. Whether they did or did not murder Teresa Halbach-and
> the film makes a strong case that they did not-is a moot point.
> Once you are charged in America, whether you did the crime or not, you are
> almost always found guilty. Because of this, as many activists have
> discovered, the courts already are being used as a fundamental weapon of
> repression, and this abuse will explode in size should there be widespread
> unrest and dissent. Our civil liberties have been transformed into
> privileges-what Matt Taibbi in "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age
> of
> the Wealth Gap" calls "conditional rights and conditional citizenship"-that
> are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become
> privileges, none of us are safe.
> In any totalitarian society, including an American society ruled by its own
> species of inverted totalitarianism, the state invests tremendous amounts
> of
> energy into making the judicial system appear as if it functions
> impartially. And the harsher the totalitarian system becomes, the more
> effort it puts into disclaiming its identity. The Nazis, as did the Soviet
> Union under Stalin, broke the accused down in grueling and psychologically
> crippling interrogations-much the same way the hapless and confused Dassey
> is manipulated and lied to by interrogators in the film-to make them sign
> false confessions. Totalitarian states need the facade of justice to keep
> the public passive.
> The Guardian newspaper reported: "The Innocence Project has kept detailed
> records on the 337 cases across the [United States] where prisoners have
> been exonerated as a result of DNA testing since 1989. The group's
> researchers found that false confessions were made in 28 percent of all the
> DNA-related exonerations, a striking proportion in itself. But when you
> look
> only at homicide convictions-by definition the most serious cases-false
> confessions are the leading cause of miscarriages of justice, accounting
> for
> a full 63% of the 113 exonerations."
> "[T]he interrogator-butcher isn't interested in logic," Alexander
> Solzhenitsyn writes in "The Gulag Archipelago," "he just wants to catch two
> or three phrases. He knows what he wants. And as for us-we are totally
> unprepared for anything. From childhood on we are educated and trained-for
> our own profession; for our civil duties; for military service; to take
> care
> of our bodily needs; to behave well; even to appreciate beauty (well, this
> last not really all that much!). But neither our education, nor our
> upbringing, nor our experience prepares us in the slightest for the
> greatest
> trial of our lives: being arrested for nothing and interrogated about
> nothing."
> If the illusion of justice is shattered, the credibility and viability of
> the state are jeopardized. The spectacle of court, its solemnity and
> stately
> courthouses, its legal rituals and language, is part of the theater. The
> press, as was seen in the film, serves as an echo machine for the state,
> condemning the accused before he or she begins trial. Television shows and
> movies about crime investigators and the hunt for killers and terrorists
> feed the fictitious narrative. The reality is that almost no one who is
> imprisoned in America has gotten a trial. There is rarely an impartial
> investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent
> of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining. Of the 2.2
> million people we have incarcerated at the moment-25 percent of the world's
> prison population-2 million never had a trial. And significant percentages
> of them are innocent.
> Judge Jed S. Rakoff in an article in The New York Review of Books titled
> "Why Innocent People Plead Guilty" explains how this secretive plea system
> works to thwart justice. Close to 40 percent of those eventually exonerated
> of their crimes originally pleaded guilty, usually in an effort to reduce
> charges that would have resulted in much longer prison sentences if the
> cases had gone to trial. The students I teach in prison who have the
> longest
> sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial. Many of them went to
> trial because they did not commit the crime. But if you go to trial you
> cannot bargain away any of the charges against you in exchange for a
> shorter
> sentence. The public defender-who spends no more than a few minutes
> reviewing the case and has neither the time nor the inclination to do the
> work required by a trial-uses the prospect of the harshest sentence
> possible
> to frighten the client into taking a plea deal. And, as depicted in "Making
> a Murderer," prosecutors and defense attorneys often work as a tag team to
> force the accused to plead guilty. If all of the accused went to trial, the
> judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse.
> And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys
> routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a
> flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of
> justice.
> The wrongly accused and their families, as long as the fiction of justice
> is
> maintained, vainly seek redress. They file appeal after appeal. Those
> convicted devote hundreds of hours of study in the law library in prison.
> They believe there has been a "mistake." They think that if they are
> patient
> the "mistake" will be rectified. Playing upon such gullibility, authorities
> allowed prisoners in Stalin's gulags to write petitions twice a month to
> officials to proclaim their innocence or decry mistreatment. Those who do
> not understand the American system, who are not mentally prepared for its
> cruelty and violence, are largely helpless before authorities intoxicated
> with the god-like power to destroy lives. These authorities advance
> themselves or their agendas-Joe Biden when he was in the Senate and Bill
> Clinton when he was president did this-by being "tough" concerning law and
> order and national security. Those who administer the legal system wield
> power largely in secret. They are accountable to no one. Every once in a
> while-this happened even under the Nazis and Stalin-someone will be
> exonerated to maintain the fiction that the state is capable of rectifying
> its "mistakes." But the longer the system remains in place, the longer the
> legal process is shrouded from public view, the more the crime by the state
> accelerates.
> The power elites-our corporate rulers and the security and surveillance
> apparatus-rewrite laws to make their criminal behavior "legal." It is a
> two-tiered system. One set of laws for us. Another set of laws for them.
> Wall Street's fraud and looting of the U.S. Treasury, the obliteration of
> our privacy, the ability of the government to assassinate U.S. citizens,
> the
> revoking of habeas corpus, the neutralizing of our Fourth Amendment right
> against unreasonable searches and seizures, the murder of unarmed people in
> the streets of our cities by militarized police, the use of torture, the
> criminalizing of dissent, the collapse of our court system, the waging of
> pre-emptive war are rendered "legal." Politicians, legislators, lawyers and
> law enforcement officials, who understand that leniency and justice are
> damaging to their careers, and whom Karl Marx called the "leeches on the
> capitalist structure," have constructed for their corporate masters our
> system of inverted totalitarianism. They serve this system. They seek to
> advance within it. They do not blink at the victims destroyed by it. And
> most of them know it is a sham.
> "We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right
> to repress others," Solzhenitsyn warned. "In keeping silent about evil, in
> burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we
> are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When
> we
> neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their
> trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from
> beneath new generations."
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/president_obama_please_come_to_flint_mic
> higan_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/president_obama_please_come_to_flint_mic
> higan_20160118/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/president_obama_please_come_to_flint_mic
> higan_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/62_people_own_as_much_as_half_th
> e_world_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/62_people_own_as_much_as_half_th
> e_world_20160118/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/62_people_own_as_much_as_half_th
> e_world_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/tell_the_truth_about_bernies_health_care
> _stand_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/tell_the_truth_about_bernies_health_care
> _stand_20160118/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/tell_the_truth_about_bernies_health_care
> _stand_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_odds_of_a_kasich_miracle_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_odds_of_a_kasich_miracle_20160118/
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_odds_of_a_kasich_miracle_20160118/
> http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
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>
than effecting the Poor, Justice is not an option for any person who
is not one of the, "Truly First Class Citizens".
And that includes not only the poor, or persons of Color, or Women, or
Elderly, or Disabled, but it includes the majority of people believing
that they are Citizens of the United States of America.
Justice is working just fine, if you are one of the small privileged
minority. The owners of this American government make the laws and
rules to serve their needs. These laws and rules also keep us cowed
and confused. By telling us that we are fortunate to be part of this
Free Society, we can't seem to figure out why we keep getting slammed
to the mat. If times are good, it's because of the clever maneuvers
of our Wall Street CEO's. If times are bad, it's the fault of the
American Workers who are mismanaging their lives. The fact that we
are seen by the, "True First Class Citizens" as a resource to serve
their needs, we are consumers to be exploited, and sucked dry of our
meager resources.
Justice is alive and well. The problem is not with Justice, but with
whose Justice we are dealing with.
Leaking like the dykes in New Orleans, there are not enough, "Truly
First Class Citizens" to plug them all. And the leaks are growing.
Look around at the dissatisfaction abroad in the Land. Like Climate
Change, Social Change is rolling like a snowball heading down a steep
slope. We are in for a time of serious oppression, but the People
will roll over the Privilege, and establish a new Justice. Justice
for All.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> The Mirage of Justice
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_mirage_of_justice_20160117/
>
> Posted on Jan 17, 2016
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The online documentary "Making a Murderer" illuminates the corruption and
> unfairness of the American system of justice. Above, Steven Avery, one of
> the subjects of the film. (Netflix)
> If you are poor, you will almost never go to trial-instead you will be
> forced to accept a plea deal offered by government prosecutors. If you are
> poor, the word of the police, who are not averse to fabricating or
> tampering
> with evidence, manipulating witnesses and planting guns or drugs, will be
> accepted in a courtroom as if it was the word of God. If you are poor, and
> especially if you are of color, almost anyone who can verify your innocence
> will have a police record of some kind and thereby will be invalidated as a
> witness. If you are poor, you will be railroaded in assembly-line
> production
> from a town or city where there are no jobs through the police stations,
> county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because
> you don't have money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences
> that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in
> the industrialized world.
> If you are a poor person of color in America you understand this with a
> visceral fear. You have no chance. Being poor has become a crime. And this
> makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.
> The 10-part online documentary "Making a Murderer," by writer-directors
> Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, chronicles the endemic corruption of the
> judicial system. The film focuses on the case of Steven Avery and his
> nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were given life sentences for murder without
> any
> tangible evidence linking them to the crime. As admirable as the
> documentary
> was, however, it focused on a case where the main defendant, Avery, had
> competent defense. He was also white. The blatant corruption of, and
> probable conspiracy by, the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin
> and then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz is nothing compared
> with
> what goes on in the well-oiled and deeply cynical system in place in
> inner-city courts. The accused in poor urban centers are lined up daily
> like
> sheep in a chute and shipped to prison with a startling alacrity. The
> attempts by those who put Avery and Dassey behind bars to vilify them
> further after the release of the film misses the point: The two men, like
> most of the rest of the poor behind bars in the United States, did not
> receive a fair trial. Whether they did or did not murder Teresa Halbach-and
> the film makes a strong case that they did not-is a moot point.
> Once you are charged in America, whether you did the crime or not, you are
> almost always found guilty. Because of this, as many activists have
> discovered, the courts already are being used as a fundamental weapon of
> repression, and this abuse will explode in size should there be widespread
> unrest and dissent. Our civil liberties have been transformed into
> privileges-what Matt Taibbi in "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age
> of
> the Wealth Gap" calls "conditional rights and conditional citizenship"-that
> are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become
> privileges, none of us are safe.
> In any totalitarian society, including an American society ruled by its own
> species of inverted totalitarianism, the state invests tremendous amounts
> of
> energy into making the judicial system appear as if it functions
> impartially. And the harsher the totalitarian system becomes, the more
> effort it puts into disclaiming its identity. The Nazis, as did the Soviet
> Union under Stalin, broke the accused down in grueling and psychologically
> crippling interrogations-much the same way the hapless and confused Dassey
> is manipulated and lied to by interrogators in the film-to make them sign
> false confessions. Totalitarian states need the facade of justice to keep
> the public passive.
> The Guardian newspaper reported: "The Innocence Project has kept detailed
> records on the 337 cases across the [United States] where prisoners have
> been exonerated as a result of DNA testing since 1989. The group's
> researchers found that false confessions were made in 28 percent of all the
> DNA-related exonerations, a striking proportion in itself. But when you
> look
> only at homicide convictions-by definition the most serious cases-false
> confessions are the leading cause of miscarriages of justice, accounting
> for
> a full 63% of the 113 exonerations."
> "[T]he interrogator-butcher isn't interested in logic," Alexander
> Solzhenitsyn writes in "The Gulag Archipelago," "he just wants to catch two
> or three phrases. He knows what he wants. And as for us-we are totally
> unprepared for anything. From childhood on we are educated and trained-for
> our own profession; for our civil duties; for military service; to take
> care
> of our bodily needs; to behave well; even to appreciate beauty (well, this
> last not really all that much!). But neither our education, nor our
> upbringing, nor our experience prepares us in the slightest for the
> greatest
> trial of our lives: being arrested for nothing and interrogated about
> nothing."
> If the illusion of justice is shattered, the credibility and viability of
> the state are jeopardized. The spectacle of court, its solemnity and
> stately
> courthouses, its legal rituals and language, is part of the theater. The
> press, as was seen in the film, serves as an echo machine for the state,
> condemning the accused before he or she begins trial. Television shows and
> movies about crime investigators and the hunt for killers and terrorists
> feed the fictitious narrative. The reality is that almost no one who is
> imprisoned in America has gotten a trial. There is rarely an impartial
> investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent
> of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining. Of the 2.2
> million people we have incarcerated at the moment-25 percent of the world's
> prison population-2 million never had a trial. And significant percentages
> of them are innocent.
> Judge Jed S. Rakoff in an article in The New York Review of Books titled
> "Why Innocent People Plead Guilty" explains how this secretive plea system
> works to thwart justice. Close to 40 percent of those eventually exonerated
> of their crimes originally pleaded guilty, usually in an effort to reduce
> charges that would have resulted in much longer prison sentences if the
> cases had gone to trial. The students I teach in prison who have the
> longest
> sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial. Many of them went to
> trial because they did not commit the crime. But if you go to trial you
> cannot bargain away any of the charges against you in exchange for a
> shorter
> sentence. The public defender-who spends no more than a few minutes
> reviewing the case and has neither the time nor the inclination to do the
> work required by a trial-uses the prospect of the harshest sentence
> possible
> to frighten the client into taking a plea deal. And, as depicted in "Making
> a Murderer," prosecutors and defense attorneys often work as a tag team to
> force the accused to plead guilty. If all of the accused went to trial, the
> judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse.
> And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys
> routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a
> flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of
> justice.
> The wrongly accused and their families, as long as the fiction of justice
> is
> maintained, vainly seek redress. They file appeal after appeal. Those
> convicted devote hundreds of hours of study in the law library in prison.
> They believe there has been a "mistake." They think that if they are
> patient
> the "mistake" will be rectified. Playing upon such gullibility, authorities
> allowed prisoners in Stalin's gulags to write petitions twice a month to
> officials to proclaim their innocence or decry mistreatment. Those who do
> not understand the American system, who are not mentally prepared for its
> cruelty and violence, are largely helpless before authorities intoxicated
> with the god-like power to destroy lives. These authorities advance
> themselves or their agendas-Joe Biden when he was in the Senate and Bill
> Clinton when he was president did this-by being "tough" concerning law and
> order and national security. Those who administer the legal system wield
> power largely in secret. They are accountable to no one. Every once in a
> while-this happened even under the Nazis and Stalin-someone will be
> exonerated to maintain the fiction that the state is capable of rectifying
> its "mistakes." But the longer the system remains in place, the longer the
> legal process is shrouded from public view, the more the crime by the state
> accelerates.
> The power elites-our corporate rulers and the security and surveillance
> apparatus-rewrite laws to make their criminal behavior "legal." It is a
> two-tiered system. One set of laws for us. Another set of laws for them.
> Wall Street's fraud and looting of the U.S. Treasury, the obliteration of
> our privacy, the ability of the government to assassinate U.S. citizens,
> the
> revoking of habeas corpus, the neutralizing of our Fourth Amendment right
> against unreasonable searches and seizures, the murder of unarmed people in
> the streets of our cities by militarized police, the use of torture, the
> criminalizing of dissent, the collapse of our court system, the waging of
> pre-emptive war are rendered "legal." Politicians, legislators, lawyers and
> law enforcement officials, who understand that leniency and justice are
> damaging to their careers, and whom Karl Marx called the "leeches on the
> capitalist structure," have constructed for their corporate masters our
> system of inverted totalitarianism. They serve this system. They seek to
> advance within it. They do not blink at the victims destroyed by it. And
> most of them know it is a sham.
> "We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right
> to repress others," Solzhenitsyn warned. "In keeping silent about evil, in
> burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we
> are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When
> we
> neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their
> trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from
> beneath new generations."
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
> The Mirage of Justice
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_mirage_of_justice_20160117/
>
> Posted on Jan 17, 2016
> By Chris Hedges
>
> The online documentary "Making a Murderer" illuminates the corruption and
> unfairness of the American system of justice. Above, Steven Avery, one of
> the subjects of the film. (Netflix)
> If you are poor, you will almost never go to trial-instead you will be
> forced to accept a plea deal offered by government prosecutors. If you are
> poor, the word of the police, who are not averse to fabricating or
> tampering
> with evidence, manipulating witnesses and planting guns or drugs, will be
> accepted in a courtroom as if it was the word of God. If you are poor, and
> especially if you are of color, almost anyone who can verify your innocence
> will have a police record of some kind and thereby will be invalidated as a
> witness. If you are poor, you will be railroaded in assembly-line
> production
> from a town or city where there are no jobs through the police stations,
> county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because
> you don't have money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences
> that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in
> the industrialized world.
> If you are a poor person of color in America you understand this with a
> visceral fear. You have no chance. Being poor has become a crime. And this
> makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.
> The 10-part online documentary "Making a Murderer," by writer-directors
> Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, chronicles the endemic corruption of the
> judicial system. The film focuses on the case of Steven Avery and his
> nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were given life sentences for murder without
> any
> tangible evidence linking them to the crime. As admirable as the
> documentary
> was, however, it focused on a case where the main defendant, Avery, had
> competent defense. He was also white. The blatant corruption of, and
> probable conspiracy by, the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin
> and then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz is nothing compared
> with
> what goes on in the well-oiled and deeply cynical system in place in
> inner-city courts. The accused in poor urban centers are lined up daily
> like
> sheep in a chute and shipped to prison with a startling alacrity. The
> attempts by those who put Avery and Dassey behind bars to vilify them
> further after the release of the film misses the point: The two men, like
> most of the rest of the poor behind bars in the United States, did not
> receive a fair trial. Whether they did or did not murder Teresa Halbach-and
> the film makes a strong case that they did not-is a moot point.
> Once you are charged in America, whether you did the crime or not, you are
> almost always found guilty. Because of this, as many activists have
> discovered, the courts already are being used as a fundamental weapon of
> repression, and this abuse will explode in size should there be widespread
> unrest and dissent. Our civil liberties have been transformed into
> privileges-what Matt Taibbi in "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age
> of
> the Wealth Gap" calls "conditional rights and conditional citizenship"-that
> are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become
> privileges, none of us are safe.
> In any totalitarian society, including an American society ruled by its own
> species of inverted totalitarianism, the state invests tremendous amounts
> of
> energy into making the judicial system appear as if it functions
> impartially. And the harsher the totalitarian system becomes, the more
> effort it puts into disclaiming its identity. The Nazis, as did the Soviet
> Union under Stalin, broke the accused down in grueling and psychologically
> crippling interrogations-much the same way the hapless and confused Dassey
> is manipulated and lied to by interrogators in the film-to make them sign
> false confessions. Totalitarian states need the facade of justice to keep
> the public passive.
> The Guardian newspaper reported: "The Innocence Project has kept detailed
> records on the 337 cases across the [United States] where prisoners have
> been exonerated as a result of DNA testing since 1989. The group's
> researchers found that false confessions were made in 28 percent of all the
> DNA-related exonerations, a striking proportion in itself. But when you
> look
> only at homicide convictions-by definition the most serious cases-false
> confessions are the leading cause of miscarriages of justice, accounting
> for
> a full 63% of the 113 exonerations."
> "[T]he interrogator-butcher isn't interested in logic," Alexander
> Solzhenitsyn writes in "The Gulag Archipelago," "he just wants to catch two
> or three phrases. He knows what he wants. And as for us-we are totally
> unprepared for anything. From childhood on we are educated and trained-for
> our own profession; for our civil duties; for military service; to take
> care
> of our bodily needs; to behave well; even to appreciate beauty (well, this
> last not really all that much!). But neither our education, nor our
> upbringing, nor our experience prepares us in the slightest for the
> greatest
> trial of our lives: being arrested for nothing and interrogated about
> nothing."
> If the illusion of justice is shattered, the credibility and viability of
> the state are jeopardized. The spectacle of court, its solemnity and
> stately
> courthouses, its legal rituals and language, is part of the theater. The
> press, as was seen in the film, serves as an echo machine for the state,
> condemning the accused before he or she begins trial. Television shows and
> movies about crime investigators and the hunt for killers and terrorists
> feed the fictitious narrative. The reality is that almost no one who is
> imprisoned in America has gotten a trial. There is rarely an impartial
> investigation. A staggering 97 percent of all federal cases and 95 percent
> of all state felony cases are resolved through plea bargaining. Of the 2.2
> million people we have incarcerated at the moment-25 percent of the world's
> prison population-2 million never had a trial. And significant percentages
> of them are innocent.
> Judge Jed S. Rakoff in an article in The New York Review of Books titled
> "Why Innocent People Plead Guilty" explains how this secretive plea system
> works to thwart justice. Close to 40 percent of those eventually exonerated
> of their crimes originally pleaded guilty, usually in an effort to reduce
> charges that would have resulted in much longer prison sentences if the
> cases had gone to trial. The students I teach in prison who have the
> longest
> sentences are usually the ones who demanded a trial. Many of them went to
> trial because they did not commit the crime. But if you go to trial you
> cannot bargain away any of the charges against you in exchange for a
> shorter
> sentence. The public defender-who spends no more than a few minutes
> reviewing the case and has neither the time nor the inclination to do the
> work required by a trial-uses the prospect of the harshest sentence
> possible
> to frighten the client into taking a plea deal. And, as depicted in "Making
> a Murderer," prosecutors and defense attorneys often work as a tag team to
> force the accused to plead guilty. If all of the accused went to trial, the
> judicial system, which is designed around plea agreements, would collapse.
> And this is why trial sentences are horrific. It is why public attorneys
> routinely urge their clients to accept a plea arrangement. Trials are a
> flashing red light to the accused: DO NOT DO THIS. It is the inversion of
> justice.
> The wrongly accused and their families, as long as the fiction of justice
> is
> maintained, vainly seek redress. They file appeal after appeal. Those
> convicted devote hundreds of hours of study in the law library in prison.
> They believe there has been a "mistake." They think that if they are
> patient
> the "mistake" will be rectified. Playing upon such gullibility, authorities
> allowed prisoners in Stalin's gulags to write petitions twice a month to
> officials to proclaim their innocence or decry mistreatment. Those who do
> not understand the American system, who are not mentally prepared for its
> cruelty and violence, are largely helpless before authorities intoxicated
> with the god-like power to destroy lives. These authorities advance
> themselves or their agendas-Joe Biden when he was in the Senate and Bill
> Clinton when he was president did this-by being "tough" concerning law and
> order and national security. Those who administer the legal system wield
> power largely in secret. They are accountable to no one. Every once in a
> while-this happened even under the Nazis and Stalin-someone will be
> exonerated to maintain the fiction that the state is capable of rectifying
> its "mistakes." But the longer the system remains in place, the longer the
> legal process is shrouded from public view, the more the crime by the state
> accelerates.
> The power elites-our corporate rulers and the security and surveillance
> apparatus-rewrite laws to make their criminal behavior "legal." It is a
> two-tiered system. One set of laws for us. Another set of laws for them.
> Wall Street's fraud and looting of the U.S. Treasury, the obliteration of
> our privacy, the ability of the government to assassinate U.S. citizens,
> the
> revoking of habeas corpus, the neutralizing of our Fourth Amendment right
> against unreasonable searches and seizures, the murder of unarmed people in
> the streets of our cities by militarized police, the use of torture, the
> criminalizing of dissent, the collapse of our court system, the waging of
> pre-emptive war are rendered "legal." Politicians, legislators, lawyers and
> law enforcement officials, who understand that leniency and justice are
> damaging to their careers, and whom Karl Marx called the "leeches on the
> capitalist structure," have constructed for their corporate masters our
> system of inverted totalitarianism. They serve this system. They seek to
> advance within it. They do not blink at the victims destroyed by it. And
> most of them know it is a sham.
> "We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right
> to repress others," Solzhenitsyn warned. "In keeping silent about evil, in
> burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we
> are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When
> we
> neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their
> trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from
> beneath new generations."
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