A Very Disappointing “Peace” & “Justice” “Coalition” “Attempt” — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

I just came from a meeting. At the Friends Meeting House. A political meeting. Of radicals, so to speak. The local Left, showing up in Northampton, Mass. Peace and justice issues. Thirty-five or so activists. Real dedicated people.

You know, it’s impressive and inspiring to see and hear dedicated activists who’ve worked hard through many decades, and even through the Obama years, unflinching. (Let’s see, just a minute, let me do the math…) Okay: I’m 57; and I was one of the youngest people in the room. Someone quoted the completely non-commercial songwriter Charlie King (who wrote the legendary Vaguely Reminiscent of the Sixties), and nobody even asked “Charlie who?” But, something was missing. Why were so few young people there?

There was an Election Tuesday. President Obama was reelected. Here in Massachusetts, voters replaced pliable incumbent Republican Scott Brown with hawkish Democrat Elizabeth Warren. Massachusetts also saw one of the nation’s biggest landslides Tuesday:

In a binding Referendum, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly Legalized Medical Marijuana, voting 63%-37% in favor of the new law, which takes effect in early 2013. In a previous Election, the state voted by a similar margin to instruct all of its elected representatives to work to Legalize Marijuana. Massachusetts US Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren said (in her Debate against Brown) that on this issue she will defy the will of the people who elected her, and will refuse to strive for Marijuana Legalization.

Because of that, I couldn’t vote for her, I mean, if she’s going to snub our democratic process and not protect our Rights, well, as George Wither wrote 400 years ago in Shall I Wasting in Despair, “…But if she be not so for me, What care I how fair she be?”

Back to the meeting: There were several cool people there, and some important Progressive organizations were represented. Jill Stein’s 2010 Gubernatorial running mate Rick Purcell was one of the speakers. Former Political Prisoner Paki Wieland was there, fresh from her courageous trip to Pakistan to witness Obama’s Coward Drone Murder regime for herself. (At least it wasn’t like in Bahrain, where Obama’s thugs detained her immediately before one of Bahrain’s infamous ‘Torture-the-protesters’ crackdowns in March.)

The Murderous Obama-backed Fascist Khalifa regime was then running, and now continues to run Genocide programs (Pogroms) against Bahrain’s Shi’a Muslim majority, and against its South Asian Slaves (which far outnumber the citizens). The Obama Government’s Genocidal Murders in Bahrain are often carried out with Poison Gas paid for by US taxpayers. Hurry, hurry, don’t look, walk fast, nothing to see here.

It’s the deplorable, anti-Semitic Genocide in Bahrain that gets more noticed in the limited news coverage; but most reporters don’t use the words Genocide or Pogrom – though the more honest ones do. (Google it if you care to.) Yes, it’s the horrific anti-Semitic Genocide that gets the more notice, because the Semitic Arabs are citizens and they’re protesting; however, I think the anti-Slave Genocide is just as bad. But, maybe that’s just me.

In fact, I don’t even think they should have Slaves. I think it was Archie Bunker who said of Slavery “I was never for that!” Me too neither, but you know, I’d like to take it a step further even than Archie was willing to go: I just don’t think that the US should arm Genocidal Slave states at all. Maybe that’s just me. And that’s even if they give the President lots of money, I still say No Pogroms. No Poison Gas to killers. Just Say No!

So, back to the meeting. We were all pretty happy about the ‘Budget-For-All’ non-binding Referendum that passed overwhelmingly – 87% in Northampton, and 86% in neighboring Amherst. Such bills passed in many towns in Western Mass, and in Vermont. It’s basically Green Presidential candidate Jill Stein’s Green New Deal (but without Dr. Stein’s understanding of Hemp’s place in our economy and environment): The Referendum advises that money now going to the Military and giant capitalists should instead be spent locally, hiring the jobless, manufacturing the things we need, addressing the environment; and, taking the money out of politics – thus getting rid of Citizens United.

We’re against Nuclear weapons, against war in Iran and Afghanistan. Hopefully against the war in Syria, too, but no one said that. (I hope that people aren’t now considering Syria ‘the good war,’ like Afghanistan before it.)

We’re against Drones, very much. We’re seeing that Obama is already putting Medicare and Social Security on the Fiscal Cliff for his Grand Bargain with his Republican cronies (even though, in the Vice Presidential Debate, Joe Biden revealed that Obama is lying about one reported part of that Grand Bargain, and that Military cuts are not really on the table as Obama has repeatedly claimed): In the Debate, Paul Ryan challenged Biden on the issue, asserting that cutting the Military arbitrarily is completely irresponsible. Biden hushed him up immediately saying “We’re not gonna do that” [cut Military spending].

A speaker at our meeting pointed out that Obama has already offered to cut twice as much from the social safety net as is cut from the Military. On how we might attain Jill Stein’s goal of Medicare For All, and the Budget-For-All, Richard Purcell quoted Jill Stein: “It doesn’t take an army [to organize for political change], if you start a street at a time.”

Many people at the meeting said that they wanted to form a broader coalition. Amid all the praise for the success on non-binding Referendums, there were calls of “Let’s do some binding Referendums!” (Or is it Referenda?)

The highlight of the event, as far as I’m concerned, was when 93-year-old peace and anti-Nuclear activist Frances Crowe called for a national General Strike. Nobody said nothin’! So she explained a scenario wherein lots people would simultaneously not work or drive on a Sunday afternoon. The audience looked very confused. Then she came to her point. She lamented that in Italy people just stayed out on strike nationwide for five raging days, but here, we couldn’t even get a few people to strike for just part of a Sunday afternoon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Crowe

Frances, and several others there, noted that Obama had quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words on getting Progressive change accomplished: “‘Now, make me do it.’” We intend to make him. Please help.

Frances, Paki, and Rick were brilliant, and the other speakers were good too. Even the guy from Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). He said that social issues showed a Progressive victory in this Election. He mentioned Gay Rights. He did not mention Marijuana. He bragged that his organization had not endorsed Obama in 2008 or in 2012. He glowed over the electoral victories Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren, and the ever-popular Alan Grayson. He said he did not like Warren’s pin-headed jingoistic Militarism, but that they had worked something out. Then he went on to name some prominent members of Congress’s Progressive Caucus.

(Elizabeth Warren is a rabid war monger on Iran, inferring [when she endorsed throwing "all Military options" on the table] that the United States should consider such a Genocidal move as Nuclear Bombing Iran’s Nuclear facilities, even though that would set much of the country on fire, and would kill many US servicemen in Bahrain and Afghanistan – the latter because it is downwind from Iran, via the jet stream upper air current. I hope that Warren and Obama don’t Dirty-Bomb our own troops. Jet stream phenomena, by the way, also show that Warren and Obama are lying in their claim that Iran would shoot Nukes at Israel if it ever had them: Iran is downwind from Israel: They’d be Dirty-Bombing themselves!)

And there were other names dropped at the meeting too. I had to take exception eventually, when I finally got my chance to say a few words. Someone mentioned our state’s senior Senator John Kerry, who was directly involved in the most viewed public Torture video in history [up to that time]. Yes, John “Taser Torture” Kerry is our US Senator, as disturbing as that is. I was once Tortured until my back was broken. I don’t like Torturers. If you don’t remember the incident, let me refresh your memory:

John “T.T.” Kerry was speaking at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He was taking questions. A student asked Kerry embarrassing questions, including one about his lodge-brotherhood with his Presidential Election opponent George W. Bush: Kerry and the Bushes belong to Yale University’s ghoulish homoerotic Skull & Bones secret society (believed by many people in Florida to be a devil-worshipping cult). Apparent Democratic Party shills started to shout the young man down. Cops started brutalizing him and arresting him. A cowardly policeman stepped forward and aimed a Torture device at the student.

“Don’t Tase me, bro!” the Torture victim pleaded. Incredibly, even though the incident was before large group of witnesses, and on widely circulated video, the Torturer was not arrested. Incredibly, though he was once said to have courage, Senator Kerry did not speak up for the Torture victim. Incredibly, the University blackmailed the student, threatening him with the loss of his college education – everything but the loans – the University in violation the law forced the Torture victim to apologize to his Torturer, and to the cowardly crooked politician too. UF has done a lot of good in history, but it should lose its certification over its criminal Conspiratorial participation in Torture. University officials should be turned over to the Hague in Holland, for War Crimes prosecution. (But I didn’t tell the Quakers all that.)

None of those Torturers has been arrested. So much for Bushbama’s lie “We don’t Torture.” Incredibly, the cowardly Senator Kerry has not yet apologized for his role in the Torture of Andrew Meyer, and for Meyer’s ordeal as a Political Prisoner. What an incredible disgrace to our Commonwealth and country, what a disgrace to the human race is John Taser Torture Kerry! Why are there not loud protests everywhere he goes?!

Yeah, so I mentioned Kerry’s part in the Torture at the meeting, to dead silence. The PDA guy had already mentioned Kerry voting for war twice. Said that they had found some common ground, though. And don’t get me started on Kerry’s fake climate protection bill. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2010/05/14/massachusetts-is-embarrassed-humiliated-by-senator-kerrys-disgraceful-climate-fraud-bill/

And I pointed out that most of those “Progressive” Democrats now in the Caucus in Congress that he’d just named had recently Covered Up for our criminal Attorney General Eric Holder’s Operation Fast and Furious, which smuggled assault weapons to the notorious Zetas Cartel in Mexico. Some of the assault weapons Holder’s F&F smuggled to Mexico got smuggled back to the US, and used to Murder Law Enforcement.

And Holder and Obama have Conspired in Hate Crimes against Skin Cancer patients, thousands of whom will die this year. But active ingredients in Marijuana kill Cancer cells, and with a stroke of his pen, Obama could give Skin Cancer patients access to Rick Simpson Oil, simply by removing MJ from Schedule 1, which he can do at any time as an Executive Order. If you’ve never seen the photographic evidence that it works, I recommend seeing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nBSc6TOb-Y and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy66MUZP538&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnFJYxCx7zk&feature=related

So there was no reaction to Frances Crowe’s call for a General Strike, no reaction to Kerry Torture, no reaction to so-called “Progressive” Democrats sold us out on Eric Holder, lying that the Congressional investigation was a “Witch Hunt.” A Congressional Committee subpoenaed Holder but he [and Obama] refused to honor the subpoena, just like the Bush Administration. That’s crooked, and it’s Fascism. In the last couple of months, Ron Paul, Rocky Anderson, and Cornel West have all publicly called President Barack Obama “Fascist.”

And there was no reaction to the information about our President and Attorney General – the nation’s two highest ranking Law Enforcement officials – and their Fascist refusal to answer a subpoena, and their Hate Crimes against medical patients. Hate Crime against Skin Cancer patients. That seems pretty bad to me. (One would think that someone would rationalize some conscience-easing by saying ‘Hey, that’s not Hate Crime,’ or something.)(I’d like to see Human Rights extended even to the people who will die if they don’t get Rick Simpson Oil for their Skin Cancer, even though they’d technically be using a Marijuana product – albeit one that doesn’t get people high.) Seems pretty bad to me, but maybe that’s just me: Obama-Holder Hate Crimes against Skin Cancer patients.

Still no reaction. But my main message was about the landslide. These people and groups at the meeting were (I thought) trying to build a broader coalition. Some had suggested that they go for binding Referendums in the future. (Or is it Referenda?) So, here, in the Marijuana movement, we just put together a coalition that includes 63% of the voters in the state. We are less than a dozen small-s socialists and Rainbow hippies who did the leg work for years, proving with hundreds of Public Policy Questions put before Massachusetts voters town-by-town that we could carry just about exactly 63% of the vote.

Looking for a broader coalition? Broader than 63% may not be possible anywhere. We carried every ethnic group by a landslide. We carried Gays and Straits. We carried Freaks and Straits. We carried Democrats and Republicans and Independents and Blacks and Whites and Hispanics and college students, lots of college students. Our percentage was even higher among young voters. Looking for an economically revolutionary binding Resolution? We just passed one by a Super Majority. The group took no interest.

Man, was that frustrating! One person came up to me afterward and noted that my sound advice on coalition building unfortunately fell on deaf ears. Frances Crowe may have been the only person there who actually had deaf ears, but the others were faking it pretty good.

It is unfortunate: The Republicans are going after the Marijuana demographic, and they might get it. Republicans have now taken over what much of what the the public perceives and the pro-Marijuana Party, the Libertarians, it seems: In 2008, Right-wing Republican Bob Barr supposedly turned over a new leaf and campaigned for the Libertarian nomination. He got it, but here in Massachusetts, the state Libertarian Party refused to recognize Republican Barr. The Mass Lib Party ran George Phillies instead.

But this year, Gary Johnson, the former Republican Governor of New Mexico, got the full Libertarian Presidential nomination, even here. The Republicans have taken over the Libertarian Party, and Libertarian nominee Johnson got three times as many votes as Green Party candidate Jill Stein. So, lots of Marijuana smokers don’t vote, perceiving that the Democrats and the Republicans are all against their Civil Rights, and that Progressive organizations are indifferent to our Rights. And caring about Rights but not our Rights makes the organizations seem much less sincere, and even a little hypocritical.

To counter that argument, one of the speakers said to me privately that probably everyone in the room had voted for the bill. But that’s not the same thing as working for it. That’s not the same as joining the coalition. Not quite the same as really caring fully. Someone there mentioned the Occupy movement, which of course had some old people, but mainly young. And we here in the room were mainly old. And Marijuana voters are mainly young. In Massachusetts, without Marijuana voters, what can this movement’s chant be? I’ve got one: “We Are The Thirty-Seven Per Cent!”

And as if that weren’t frustrating enough, as I walked away from the Friends Meeting House on this warm and sunny, touristy afternoon in downtown Northampton, I ran into a friend, an award-winning investigative documentary filmmaker. Everybody here at FireDogLake.com is familiar with dirt on Bush that this man has uncovered, and the memes he generated therefrom. A brilliant writer. Tremendous activist. I told him about my frustration, trying to Left-orient people who’d thought they were already Left enough, but (to my mind) may have overlooked some important facts.

I told him my disdain for Obama ordering Murders and then pardoning himself for it, noting that self-pardons are illegitimate everywhere. He said that people take it too easy on Obama, and that he is one of them. He even used the term Liberal, referring to the President. I had to correct him. He feebly tried to argue back, but facts are facts. If the President or the King or the Dictator orders someone killed, then, by definition we’re living in a Fascist country.

And the President ordering Murders and then self-pardoning is not Liberal. And I had to correct him again. No Liberals condone Presidents ordering Murder. Fascism is not Liberalism.

That exchange was troubling, too. Even a little stressful. We smiled and cordially parted company. Luckily, 4:20 pm was approaching, time for meds. I ducked away to an undisclosed location and began to toke up. Right away something happened to restore my faith in humanity. A couple of young voters came walking along with a guitar. When they saw me, one of them said “We won!” I didn’t know if they smelled the pot, or recognized my face, or what. As they walked up to me, one of them asked “Aren’t you Norm?” (It’s a small town.)

We introduced ourselves and toked up together and talked about the Election. “There’s gonna be 35 Dispensaries.” “At least 14, one in each county” I told them, having read the text of the new law. As we walked away from the scene of the crime, we continued to discuss the election. “Can’t wait till March!” “Obama sucks, though.” “Yeah, Obama sucks.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You see, the point is: We’ve already got 63% of the voters on our side: That means, in two years, if we hang together and put up a Full Legalization binding Referendum, then in 2014 we Marijuana voters can pick both our new Governor, and a new US Senator to replace our current Taser Torture Senator.

President Obama’s Hateful Policies Against Sikhs — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

I greeted my young Sikh friend. Neither of us spoke of the tragedy. We just spoke of our mutual compassion and respect. He said his father wants him to leave this country … to a place with less bigotry, discrimination, and violence; I guess: South Africa.

During his reign, President Obama’s policies have consistently encouraged Hate Crimes against Sikhs. Below are examples. Most of the world’s Sikhs live in India. Sikhs do not cut their hair or beard. Many wear turbans. The massacre operation was carried out by a Right-wing Terrorist who was US Military Intelligence veteran who was specifically trained to carry out such Psy Ops attacks. He was indoctrinated into anti-religious Hate Groups in the Army.

1. Obama’s FBI refuses to track Hate Crimes against Sikhs even though they comprise the world’s fifth largest spiritual tradition [after Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists], and even though the first high-profile 9-11 Revenge Murder was of a Sikh, Balbir Singh Sodhi, on September 15, 2001.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi and http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/06/4702996/fbi-says-it-had-not-monitored.html

I think Obama’s policy of refusing to track Hate Crimes against 25 million people is a Hate Crime itself. The FBI does track Hate Crimes against other religious groups, just not against Sikhs. The Sikh Coalition, a Civil Rights group, said it has received “thousands of requests for protection.” Reuters news agency released a disgusting screaming propaganda headline tacitly supporting the Obama Administration’s now-deadly discrimination against Sikhs, yesterday asking “Was” … killing Sikhs while meeting at their temple … “a Hate Crime?” http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/tagblogsfindlawcom2012-blotter-idUS275046093920120806 and http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/april-congressional-letter-urged-fbi-to-track-hate-crimes-against-sikhs-4k6ch6g-165074026.html

But what can we expect out of a sleazy outfit like Reuters except propaganda? The New York Times [speaking of sleaze] revealed last month that both it and Reuters regularly Bribe President Obama by giving him editing privilege over wording of their articles. New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters divulged that both his paper and Reuters [and other so-called "free" press] began paying the Bribes after President Obama Blackmailed them, insisting that they would get no access to the President if they did not pay the Bribes. Isn’t it nice having a President from the Chicago Mafia? http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/07/21/ny-times-bribes-obama-and-romney-after-campaigns-demand-it/

2. Sikh Slavery in Obama’s puppet state Bahrain: President Obama, Commander and Chief of the US Armed Forces, could park the Navy’s 5th Fleet anywhere he wants. Anywhere he wants. That’s what “Commander and Chief” means. Let’s assume the reason that he parks it in Bahrain is not Only because he wants Sikhs to be kept as Slaves. Let’s assume that he has some other reason that doesn’t seem as evil. Even so, Slavery is a deal-breaker. We fought a Civil War in this country over Slavery. Here’s a Bahraini ad to buy a 22-year-old female Sikh as a sex slave, and have her delivered to Bahrain from Punjab in India. http://www.punjabimatrimony.com/matrimonials/Country/17/Bahrain.html Abraham Lincoln said “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” Under President Obama’s “democracy,” or morals, or whatever you want to call it, keeping Sikhs as Slaves is OK.

3. In Obama’s Bahrain, Sikhism is illegal: The Slaves of Bahrain, including the Sikhs, are not allowed to practice their own religion. Under Bahraini Shari’a law, Islam is the only Legal religion. Even the most immoral and repugnant Slave owner recognizes that he is responsible for the well-being of his Slaves. If President Obama is to continue holding those Slaves, he is morally required to provide protection for their Freedom of Religion. So please, President Obama, I am begging you, if you’re absolutely refusing to free the Slaves, then at least, grant them Freedom of Religion!

4. Sikh religious Sacrament draws the Death Penalty in Obama’s Bahrain: Tolerated in India for millennia, Marijuana is a traditional sacrament at Sikh festivals, and among the Sikh Nihang and Bhangi sects; and the Tenth Sikh Guru, one of Sikhism’s founders, Guru Gobind Singh wrote it about as “Bhang” in his poetry, and gave it to followers. In the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report, the Sikhs’ practices concerning Ganja are reported under the regional heading “Punnjab.” http://www.ukcia.org/research/indian/chapt9.php

5. As South Asians, Sikhs in Bahrain face Genocidal Pogroms at the hands of Obama’s puppet dictator: During both of Obama’s ongoing Pogroms in Bahrain, people are killed with poisonous gas supplied by the Obama Administration – that includes Obama’s South Asian pogroms wherein South Asians are killed or removed. http://www.bikyamasr.com/52331/bahrain-commission-report-details-deadly-pogroms-against-migrant-workers. / and http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/03/02/live-chat-with-political-prisoner-paki-wieland-out-of-torture-jail-as-usbahrain-regime-murders-more-there-with-poison-gas/

6. Obama Classifies the Pakistanis it kills as “Millitants” if the have Facial Hair, even if the Murdered Pakistani is a Child, according to Medea Benjamin’s documentary Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

7. Obama’s Goons frequently Commit Hate Crimes Against Medical Marijuana patients, many of whom have Long Hair or Facial Hair: These Hate Crimes ordered by the President (raids on Medical Marijuana facilities) have resulted in excruciating suffering and premature deaths for patients with ALS, AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, Skin Cancer, and many other maladies. Longtime activist Medical Rights activist Steven DeAngelo, now a Political Prisoner with long hair and facial hair like a Sikh. http://stuffstonerslike.com/2012/07/14/protest-president-obamas-fundraiser-in-oakland-ca-on-july-23/

8. The President has publicly announced that he is allowed to order Murders/Assassinations: The Murders he orders are frequently against people with beards. The high-profile Murders that Obama orders are against non-Christians.

9. Obama ordered the Administration’s investigation of US Right-wing Terrorism closed down because Rush Limbaugh and other Right-wing TV personalities demanded it. In ordering the investigation of Right-wing Terrorism stopped, he also committed a Hate Crime: He further that all Terrorism investigation be against Muslims, according to Democracy Now! This was a Hate Crime against non-Christians who might have hair.

10. The Obama Administration has cracked down on non-mainstream-Christian religious practices: Its FDA carried out a Hate Crime in Lawrence, Kansas, at a shop dealing in religious sacraments named “Sacred Journey.” Anyone can tell by the name of the place that its intentions are religious, and thus protected by the First Amendment. The owner was charged with crimes though he was growing perfectly Legal plants, and supplying Legal sacraments. Even if President Obama has an intense personal hatred on non-mainstream-Christians, he should not be empowered to put that hatred into policy against the minority religions.

11. These Massacres of US citizens happen specifically during time of war. Obama is pushing for lots more war.

12. When the Colorado Massacre happened a Few Days Earlier, Obama’s spokeperson immediately announced that more such incidents would certainly be tolerated: According to Democracy Now!, Press Secretary Jay Carney the President would say nothing and do nothing that would curb gun violence by restricting Right-wing lone nuts from massacring Americans. Carney said they weren’t gonna touch it. Terrible choice. The President’s job is to protect the American people, no matter how much money the Gun Lobby has.

New York Times Bribes Obama and Romney Because Campaigns Demand It — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters revealed this week that his paper Bribes both President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent Mitt Romney. He reported that the Times began giving the Bribes after they were Blackmailed by both Obromney campaigns. Peters said that the Washington Post also pays the Bribes, as do Reuters news service and Bloomberg News. Peters indicated that all four were Blackmailed by the two campaigns into agreeing to pay the Bribery. He says many other news outlets have been victimized by the Republicrats during this rigged Election.

Allowing the President to Censor the Press marks a Government as overtly Fascist.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/18/headlines/us_media_granting_politicians_final_say_on_attribution_quotations

The report begins at 9:28 in the video below:

Both Barack Obromney and Mitt Obromney are taking part in the Blackmail and Accepting the Bribes. We need an Independent Prosecutor right away!

Accepting Censorship privileges is Accepting a Bribe. The definition of Bribery is a gift that alters the behavior of the recipient. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery

Refusing to give interviews unless allowed Censorship privileges is Blackmail. The definition of Blackmail is making unjustified threats to make a gain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail

Obama’s Torture Chief Omar Suleiman (who Caused the Egyptian Revolution with Mubarak) Suddenly Gets Dead — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Omar Suleiman, who Tortured victims for Barack Obama and George W. Bush, mysteriously got dead in a US hospital today, where he was supposedly being tested for something undisclosed. Clearly, the person who benefits from this killing the most is President Obama. Interestingly, Barack Obama claims that he is allowed to order Murders against Arabs anywhere in the world. Omar Suleiman is an Arab.

In fact, according to Medea Benjamin’s LinkTV lecture, President Obama’s policy regarding beards is: If a man or boy has a beard and is killed by a drone, that man was a “militant.” The implication is that killing a man or boy with a beard is always OK to do. Omar Suleiman has a beard. Had. http://www.linktv.org/programs/medea-benjamin-drone-warfare

President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and then-CIA-director-now-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, incompetents all, were all into sending their Torture victims to Omar Suleiman in Fascist Egypt. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Obama-s-gambit-Holding-Eg-by-Wayne-Madsen-110204-704.html

Suleiman was also into rigging the election in Gaza. We wouldn’t want any testifying about that, would we? http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/07/why-we-were-unprepared-for-hamas-2006-victory-in-gaza/

Under insistence from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama, Suleiman was christened Vice President of Egypt, late in President Hosni Mubarak’s Fascist 30-year reign of terror. Suleiman’s death prevents him from testifying about his Torture for the US Presidents, after Obama and Bush had their victims illegally “renditioned.” He was being sued for Torture by Australian victim Mahmoud Habib. http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2011/04/26/rendition-victim-mamdouh-habib-sues-omar-suleiman-for-torture/

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3192562.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/06/guantanamo.australia

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/07/hillary-cant-decide-whether-to-impose-democracy-or-not/

http://www.tenterfieldstar.com.au/news/national/national/general/habib-overwhelmed-by-egypt-welcome/2250419.aspx

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/02/06/claiming-consensus-omar-suleiman-promises-to-hold-protesters-accountable/

President Obama’s policies toward Arabs, Muslims, people with beards, and his other Torture and Murder/Assassination victims, these policies are Hate Crimes. America, you should be ashamed of yourself.

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/04/as-obamas-egyptian-torture-team-shoots-doctors-his-yemeni-programs-to-assassinate-muslims-and-bomb-citizens-spark-revolution/

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/17/tiananmen-update-obama-thugs-torture-journalists-activists-and-murder-pro-democracy-protesters-in-yemen-bahrain/

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/03/right-now-obama-suleiman-torture-brigade-egyptian-army-attack-round-up-journalists-activists/

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/02/right-now-anderson-cooper-attacked-by-obamas-torture-regime-suleimans-thugs/

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/tag/omar-suleiman/

US/Al Qaida Genocidal Oil Dictatorship Torturing Black Libyans: Obama & NY Times say Rigged Election was Cool — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

These guys did not get to vote, even though no one could possibly be more patriotic than them: During their Torture at the hands of US-backed mercenaries in this video, watch them forced to eat green Libyan flags.

Before the Obama Administration’s US Military crushed Arab Spring by starting its war against Libya, that country’s leader Moammar Gaddafi enjoyed wide support among Black Africans living mainly in Libya’s South. After the US hired Al Qaida mercenaries to overthrow Gaddafi, the new Al Qaida Dictatorship now running Libya carried out widespread repression, Torture, and Genocide against Black Africans. I have seen no reports that any Black Africans voted in the Parliamentary Election there this weekend.

US President Barack Obama’s praise of the Libyan Election was quite echoic of his praise for the “Elections” following the Fascist takeovers that were parts of his Administration’s Administrative coup de tats that Obama’s CIA carried out in Honduras in 2010, in the Maldives earlier this year, and in Paraguay two weeks ago. The New York Times propaganda headline yesterday also said it was a mainly good Election. The problem I see with it is the Election workers Assassinated, polling officials Murdered, and the ballots burned. l call that a “Rigged Election.” But President Obama and inept media with misinformed readers and viewers call it cool. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/08/us-libya-elections-obama-idUSBRE86700X20120708

http://www.euronews.com/2011/08/22/obama-praises-libyans-courage-and-sacrifices/

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/hond-n09.shtml

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/d-s-hube/2012/04/17/obama-maldives-gaffe-uncharacteristic-more-akin-bush

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201278122117670811.html

http://guyana.hoop.la/displayForumTopic/content/283892053966117963

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3739-the-paraguayan-coup-how-agribusiness-landowning-and-media-elite-and-the-us-are-paving-a-way-for-regional-destabilization

The New York Times quotes an official of the Fascist Al Qaida regime, an apparent propagandist, saying that it was “very peaceful.” Helicopter shot down, Assassinations, ballots burned …. mainly without incident. http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/libyans-vote-in-first-election-in-more-than-40-years-643722/

normanb July 8th, 2012 at 10:49 pm 1

Yahoo/AP reports that two people were Murdered carrying out the Election. HuffPost claims just one. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/07/libya-election_n_1656370.html?utm_hp_ref=world Someone shot down a helicopter carrying Election equipment. Also, two rockets were fired at the Benghazi Medical Center. http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n282600

Like most wars, this one was fought to raise the price of Oil. This one also had the direct effect stealing Oil that a country had been using to support itself, and handing that Oil and its attendant economy to Oil corporations. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-19/conoco-books-tanker-to-ship-libyan-oil-to-u-s-shipbrokers-say.htm Mercenaries during the 2011 US War on Libya were paid by BP, Blackwater, and ultimately, by US. At the top of the page is a recent video upload of Black Africans still being Tortured by the current Libyan mercenary Dictatorship. US-backed Al Qaida mercenaries have stuffed Libyan flags into Black people’s mouths, and are forcing them to eat the flags.

The US-backed Al Qaida Torture Atrocities include gang rapes against Black Libyan women. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/07/123403/african-women-say-rebels-raped.html#storylink=omni_popular

BrasscheckTV says Obama’s Genocidal actions in Libya constitute War Crimes. http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/war-crimes/ethnic-cleaning-in-libya.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/01/2012126133028210385.html

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/libya260212.html

http://runronpaul.com/interviews/the-al-qaeda-flag-is-now-flying-high-and-proud-over-libya-as-ron-paul-predicted/

And here are more Torture videos, and background information, if you’re not sick enough from what you’ve already read and seen. Firedoglake.com is one of the only US media outlets covering the Libya situation, instead of Covering it Up.

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/02/28/videos-of-obama-death-squad-committing-genocide-torture-against-black-people-in-libya/

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/28/gen-mccaffrey-gaddafi-will-inevitably-be-murdered-but-saudi-invasion-of-slave-state-bahrain-to-prop-up-obama-thugs-is-more-important/

http://my.firedoglake.com/alfreed369/2011/10/21/16-things-libyans-will-never-see-again/

http://my.firedoglake.com/slindauer/2011/03/28/libyas-blood-for-oil-the-vampire-war/

http://my.firedoglake.com/iflizwerequeen/2011/08/30/an-al-qaeda-asset-is-the-top-rebel-libyan-military-commander-in-tripoli/

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/01/27/doctors-without-borders-describes-being-asked-to-treat-patients-between-torture-sessions-in-libya/

http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2011/10/21/libya-and-the-one-percent/

http://my.firedoglake.com/saintpeterii/2011/02/25/mercenaries-mercenaries-everywhere/

http://my.firedoglake.com/phoenix/2011/04/01/why-did-france-and-the-uk-want-us-to-help-them-help-the-libyans-400000-refugees/

http://my.firedoglake.com/danps/2011/09/10/libya-the-latest-failure-of-americas-war-policy/

Prison Planet noted that the fully corporate Huffington Post favored the invasion. http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-prepares-invasion-of-libya-under-humanitarian-cover.html

Here is President Obama lying about the US invasion of Libya, and the US-backed Al Qaida Genocide against the Black people of Libya. He claims it to be a “broad international effort” when in fact more than 95% of the bombing runs were by US Military aircraft. He claims that the invasion avoided Humanitarian catastrophe, when in fact it brought Genocide against the Black people there. President Obama lies to the American people in this video, seeking to legitimize his War Crimes in Libya. Please compare his bullshit to the more level-headed words of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the video that follows. http://live.wsj.com/video/obama-libya-mission-averted-humanitarian-disaster/3064390D-03DB-4704-BB89-FDE823C86DD9.html#!3064390D-03DB-4704-BB89-FDE823C86DD9

You’ll note that President Obama claims his attack on Benghazi is noble. You’ll also note that Benghazi is one place where ballots were burned and looted. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/07/us-libya-elections-protest-idUSBRE86604920120707

That last report was from RT out of Russia. Of course, US-backed far-Right Libyan mercenaries arrested Journalists from Press TV of Iran during the conflict. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/228888.html

The British later revoked their license. http://www.rt.com/news/iranian-presstv-license-revoked-333/ The US Government named the Journalists at both Press TV and RT of Russia as enemies. If you’ve never watched them, both are much better journalism than we usually find on PBS, on Fox, or on ABCNNBCBS.

Of course, one of the first things NATO did in Libya was bomb the Journalists in the broadcast center. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8560856/Libyan-state-television-claims-Nato-bombed-broadcast-centre.html

The US-installed Fascist Government in Libya immediately initiated Fascist Reforms, and cracked down on Freedom of the Press. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/22/libyan-misrata-tough-foreign-media

Florida: What it was like being Tortured in the United States 31 years ago Today– by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Let’s have a big laugh about Torture. Torture can be fun, funny. I haven’t publicly addressed this nearly enough, and for good reason. But now, let’s all laugh it up at my Torture. Because laughing is more constructive than crying, more positive. I do sometimes deal with my own Torture in my act:

Some people think of June 6 as D-Day, the day in 1944 that US and Allied forces invaded Normandy, France, from England, leading to the defeat of Germany in World War II. The anniversary holds a different significance for me. It was the day in 1981 that US and hostile forces invaded NormanB in Florida.

That’s the day I was Tortured, nearly to death, by public employees (cops and a doctor) in Florida, USA. They accused me of drug crimes that they couldn’t prove. They broke my back. They hemorrhaged my eyeballs. They permanently paralyzed part of my right hand. (I am right-handed, and a writer.)

What they did to me fits the Webster definition for Torture: Intentionally inflicting harm or damage, or the fear thereof, in attempt to obtain evidence or confession. I think it also fits the definition of Kidnapping.

Cops committed the crimes, but guess who got arrested? I was ultimately charged with three violent felonies against them!

Their actual story, as read in court from their depositions, was that when they approached me with their guns drawn: I attacked them; none of them touched me; and then I broke my own back. (I may have lost consciousness during part of the Torture, but I know that’s not what happened!)

So, I need to tell what happened, and how it came about. But I don’t want to tell anybody; I need to. I don’t want to think about it. I want to forget about it. I want it not to have happened. Broken back. I was planning to use that vertebra.

The Torture lasted for hours, at three different locations. They thought I was dead a couple of times. And I sure thought I was dead. I thought they were just going to bury me out back. I’m pretty sure they would have done that if I hadn’t gotten word out that I’d been disappeared.

When they realized that I was paralyzed from the waist down, they tried to make me walk, by having two trustees drag me around the jail while a police lady moved my feet. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

The beating was ostensibly just spontaneous mayhem, just a stupid poorly trained policeman almost Murdering a county citizen whom he was being paid to protect.

Though the investigation certainly did relate to it, the violence may have had nothing to do with the death threat I received a few months earlier from a DEA agent – the threat that he would kill me if I exposed pertinent details of a CIA Cocaine smuggling operation. I never did reveal those details, but it looks like he sicked the dogs on me anyway. And I don’t mean dogs.

In order to set me up, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department used Confidential Informant Jack Windisch. Though too old to be a student, Jack used to hang around my high school to sell hard drugs (Cocaine, Dilaudid [pharmaceutical Heroin two-and-a-half times as strong as the real thing], and other pharmacy products, as well as their bootlegged knockoffs). By the time Jack was assigned to entrap me, he was already angry at me for making him pay after he had tried to rip me off, and he was charged with cigarette smuggling.

Western Pasco County is a small smuggling community on Florida’s West Coast (the very next county North of the counties of Tampa and St. Pete – “Tampa Bay”). In my time, there were only two industries in West Pasco: Drug dealing and jailing. Many people were involved in both: The then-current Sheriff and the previous one both lived at the same private airport, where residents have airplane hangars next to their garages. Went on for decades.

Yes, even now every day police chase drug users and sellers while ignoring the actual crimes going on all around them. A bunch of ignorant cowards, afraid of real criminals, brutalizing school kids.

June 6, 1981, Jack Windisch phoned me, looking for some coke. I told him I had none. Right away somebody else called me, offering some. Perhaps a little too naive, I didn’t smell a rat yet. I got together with Jack. He shot up most of the coke and poured in a bunch of cut. We went to a Sambo’s restaurant parking lot where I wasn’t supposed to meet anybody.

I was still sitting in the driver’s seat when Jack brought a plainclothesman to the passenger door. The undercover detective said that a small plastic packet in my hand looked good. I knew that wasn’t good. If a bag that he thinks is Cocaine looks good to him in the dark from four or five feet away, then he’s a cop. Conventional drug-world wisdom and judicial precedent tell us what’s done next. I dropped the packet into a hard-box cigarette pack with no cigarettes in it. I crumbled the hard-box. He pulled out his gun and pointed it at me. “Pasco County Sheriff’s Department!”

I put the hard-box in my mouth. Now, I know first-hand why Alexander the Great made his soldiers shave for battle: The first thing that detective did was grab my beard and try to pull my mouth open. But I knew from Anatomy and Physiology class (I had studied Pharmacy in college) that the human jaw can clamp down tight with force that applies 20,000 pounds of pressure per square inch of tooth surface area: Anyone can hold your mouth closed; but nobody can hold your mouth open. However, it was a big package, and he stopped me swallowing it by choking me.

Suddenly, out of nowhere [or perhaps out of cars in the parking lot] uniformed Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies were running at me. The first one at my driver’s door was a 300-pound behemoth, the monster who did most of the damage. “Spit it out or I’ll blow your brains out!” he yelled as he pointed his gun at my head. I just said “Uuuuhhhhhhhhh!!!” [I was being choked.] He’d said he was willing to kill me for Possession. But I still knew about the 20,000 pounds psi.

The second cop started choking me lower on my neck than the first one. They both choked me and yanked my beard and hair and tried to force their hands into my mouth. The lying detective said that I had bitten his finger. If I had done that, his finger would have gone to the same place that hard-box went.

With both of them choking me, I stopped breathing. I thought I was about to pass out. Finally the first one let go of my neck, and I swallowed the hard-box. The big uniformed cop (weighing more than twice as much as me) yanked me out of the car by my neck, and hammered my head into the pavement of Sambo’s parking lot, over and over and over again, screaming “Spit it out! Spit it out!”

With my body between his legs, he stood cussing at me, calling me names, and dashing my bloodied head to the concrete. He stomped his jackboot onto my right hand twice, severing part of the radial nerve, permanently paralyzing part of my right thumb and ring finger. He kept his boot on my hand, his full weight. A second cop grabbed my other hand. A third one grabbed my feet. The hammering continued.

As my eyeballs hemorrhaged, I could see nothing but rapidly changing bright colors. Red! Green! Blue! Orange! White! Purple! Black! Flame! Red! Blue!…

I felt like I was flying upward in a spiral, through the flashing changing colors, flying faster and faster and faster! He hammered my head again and again. I knew I was dying. Shortly after the Torture started, I may have gasped the word “Pig!” between hammerings to the concrete; but now, dying, I didn’t want my last words to be words of hate, so I said “Jesus loves you.” Then he smashed my head a bunch more times.

They threw me into the back of a pig car and laughed about me not breathing. Two of them sat in the front seat of the car and started filling out reports.

Here is perhaps the place to flash forward to talk about my injuries. I already told you about the hand. Hemorrhaged eyeballs are not bloodshot. I don’t know what my eyes looked like the night of the Torture, because the police didn’t allow a mugshot. That would have been evidence against them. I know what my hemorrhaged eyes looked like in the mirror a month later: They were still not bloodshot: They were solid red, fire-engine red, as red as that bright red icon on your computer screen. Not bloodshot.

I don’t know exactly how or exactly when they fractured my vertebra. Maybe they hit me with their clubs. That could do it. They broke off one of the processes [bony protrusions] from a vertebra in the upper part of my back. Now, all these years later, it remains lodged between my heart and my lung, a living “bone island.” And what about mental damage? Well,… I tried to publish this article on June 6. …It’s not that anymore. Man, this is hard.

When I began to move, the cop in the driver’s seat exclaimed “He’s not dead!” The detective answered “He’s alright. Take him to West Pasco [Hospital] to get his stomach pumped!” They rushed me to the county Hospital, not to treat my extremely severe injuries, but to continue Torturing me, to try to [unconstitutionally] gain more evidence.

In the ER I met the evil Dr. Charles Prespare, MD, who is still practicing medicine in Spring Hill, Florida. I told him he should be treating my head injuries – I didn’t yet know that my back was broken, but I knew I was hurt, abrasions and blood and bruises all over my face and my head and my body.

I told him to treat my injuries, but the Fascists told him to pump my stomach. He got out an emergency medical text and read aloud that it takes 1.2 grams of snorted Cocaine for a fatal overdose.

I told the doctor I needed to speak with him privately. He pulled a curtain between me and the cops. That actually didn’t provide any privacy for our conversation, since the detective who started the beating was right there on the other side of the curtain and could hear every word. I told Dr. Prespare about Jack cutting the coke in half, and that it was nowhere near pure even before he stepped on it. So, I hadn’t taken anything like a whole gram, and anyway the 1.2 gram fatality was based on snorting, not eating it. (The reason people snort coke is that it doesn’t get you high eating it, because the metabolism is too slow to produce a high, much less an overdose.)

I told Dr. Prespare this was no O.D. and that he should be treating my injuries instead of further Torturing me. He threw the curtain back and said “Pump his stomach!” Then I demanded “What’s your name, doctor?!” He quipped “Dr. Wasserman!” ridiculing his patient, while drawing uproarious laughs from his fellow Torturers.

Healthcare workers witnessing the crimes were horrified. But none of them came forward to help me out with my case in the weeks and months that followed. Most people are afraid to oppose Fascist repression and violence. The regular Emergency Room workers wouldn’t help them Torture me though, so the cops and Dr. Prespare carried on without them. They tied my hands down. They tied my legs down. They forced a tube up my nose, down my throat, and into my stomach.

The mad doctor pumped a pint of noxious Ipecac syrup into my stomach. Ipecac bark is poisonous, and awful to a mere mortal. But I belong to the Church of the Tree of Life wherein we use herbs as sacraments, and even before joining the Church, I had been an herbalist for years, an herbal high enthusiast. I’ve had lots worse stuff in my stomach than that putrid Ipecac. I just looked at them. He pumped in another pint of Ipecac. I just looked at them.

An unexpanded human stomach only holds about two pints. But stomachs do expand. My Torturers pumped in another pint of Ipecac. Still nothing. The doctor was not legally allowed to pump in another pint of Ipecac. So, he pumped in a pint of water. I don’t intend to ever give evidence under Torture, even unto pain of death!

Dr. Prespare had used what looked like a turkey baster to pump the fluids up my nose and down the tube in my throat to my stomach. At this point, he inserted the turkey baster into the end of the tube still protruding out of my nose. He used it to suck liquid up the tube, then pumped it back down, fast. Up. Down. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. I was starting to feel nauseous. I was turning my head side to side, trying to make sure that if I threw up, it would be either on that lying detective or on that evil doctor.

Finally, I vomited, but I caught the hard-box with my teeth and swallowed it again. I was hurting. Bad. I knew that swallowing the pack again would mean a lot more Torture. But I had no choice: If I submitted and gave evidence under Torture, then that would encourage the practice of Torture. I would be doing the wrong thing. I thought I might die at any second. I didn’t want my last act to be doing something I know is wrong. Do not cooperate with Torture! Ever!

Well, they did it again, until I vomited again. This time, they were able to recover the hard-box and one plastic packet containing brown stomach juices. Their lying lab claimed that it was the purest Cocaine that they had ever tested. After those hours of ordeals, first in the parking lot, then in the Hospital, they still refused to treat my injuries. They sent me to the jail, where there were no medical facilities or healthcare workers.

At the jail, I was ordered to do something, go somewhere. I said I couldn’t do it, because I couldn’t move my legs. They wouldn’t take “No” for an answer. They had me dragged around for an hour, trying to make me walk. I couldn’t.

When a another cop came on duty, he looked in at me in my cell, where I lay face down on the cement floor, all bloodied and not moving. “What’s wrong with this guy? Is he dead?” The receptionist told him “He’s not dead. He was ‘Resisting Arrest With Violence,’” a crime which, if true, would theoretically make Torturing or Murdering me OK. The newly arrived cop chuckled. “He looks like he was ‘Resisting Arrest With Violence,” he said drawing lots of male laughter from other cops. As you might guess, ‘Resisting Arrest With Violence’ is a very common charge in these here parts. Then and now, lots of people were/are Tortured and Murdered by police in Florida.

All day, during the next day, people came to visit prisoners. They all stopped at the receptionist’s desk, 20 feet from my cell. Every time I heard someone there, I yelled out that the police had Tortured and crippled me. I urged them to call the FBI and the newspaper. All the visitors acted like they didn’t hear me. Of course they did: They were there to visit or pick up their accused relatives: They didn’t want their relatives to be Tortured like me: They didn’t want to be brutalized or arrested themselves. People are afraid to oppose Fascism.

Of course, the police didn’t allow me a mugshot, fingerprinting, or one phone call. That would have been evidence against themselves. After a whole day of that, a trustee who apparently had access to a phone asked me if the police had really done “that” to me. He asked me whom I wanted him to call. I told him to call my parents. If he hadn’t called for me, I believe I would have been buried out in back of the jail. I wonder how many bodies are out there.

And I hope that trustee wasn’t Tortured or Murdered for making the call that may have saved my life. A few minutes later, I heard the receptionist lying to my father on the phone. “Yes, he’s here, Mr. Bie. No, you can’t see him. Yes, he is in pretty bad shape: He took an overdose of Cocaine.”

My second morning at the jail without medical help still had me lying face down on the cement floor. Perhaps the Ipecac poisoning was taking effect, I don’t know, but I went into convulsions, and a thick white foam mixed with blood began oozing out of my mouth. The jailers and cops found this very funny. Many of them looked in to make fun of my convulsing and effusing. One of them joked “Maybe he’ll die!” That brought on lots of male laughter, but the female receptionist angrily rebuked them.

“If he dies, it’s our ass!” she said – she was the one who had spoken to my father. She knew my life was in danger – both from my medical condition and from her comrades. But she didn’t seem concerned about my safety, just her own. In any case, it was her impetus that resulted in me being sent back to West Pasco Hospital, to finally be treated for my injuries, two days after the Torturers broke my back.

When the ambulance arrived, a cop told the driver that I needed to go to the Emergency Room for a Cocaine overdose. When I got to the Hospital, I blurted out to the first doctor I saw “There’s no overdose! The cops beat me up!” The doctor said “I can see that.”

The unconstitutional atrocities continued at the Hospital. The cop who broke my back, hemorrhaged my eyes, and paralyzed my hand walked into my Hospital room and chained me to the bed rail. He bellowed so loud it seemed to shake the Hospital halls: “If something happens and you start walking again, I’m gonna hit you!” The word hit is slang for Assassinate, as in hit man.

West Pasco Hospital used the crooked Dr. Willard O. Brown, D.O., on my case: After examining me and my X-rays, he didn’t notice any fractures. When I confronted Brown, and told him that the X-ray Technician has seen a fractured vertebra, Brown Covered Up, claiming that it was “an old fracture.” But I’d had no old fracture to my backbone. I knew right then I’d need to get out of this podunk backwater to get any healthcare. A few weeks later, I went to the city. I took the X-rays to Dr. Arthur Appleyard, MD, a legitimate doctor in St. Pete. He confirmed that it was a fractured vertebra, and a recent one. He was willing to testify.

This same Dr. Brown had two years earlier, in January 1979, examined X-rays of my skull after a semi-truck crushed my car with me in it. Brown noticed no fracture to my skull, though all later doctors who checked did. Here’s how to check: Feel the slightly protruding bony ridge that runs from your ear to your eye: I’ve got one on my left side, but on my right side it was dented, when that truck fractured my skull! Dr. Brown’s diagnosis helped out that trucking company a heap! [I don't know if he is the same Dr. Willard Brown whom Russel Means later told me about, who had (maybe intentionally) horribly messed up things for Means' fellow American Indian activist Leonard Peltier - but he got interrupted, and I didn't get the full story, though Means repeated the name several times: "Dr. Willard Brown."]

Because the cops didn’t allow a mug shot, and because photographic evidence could help our case, my brilliant lawyer Marc Salton (now a Judge) brought a photographer to the Hospital to document my injuries. But the cops physically stopped him, and took the photographer out of the Hospital. The next day Marc walked in carrying a briefcase. He whipped out a camera, and started shooting. The cops stopped him, but he’d gotten some good photos and ran out to get them developed. Of course, when we got to court, the prosecution tried to suppress that photographic evidence of my Torture.

When Attorney Salton had first met with me at the Hospital, I told him that I may not have actually been arrested, because I wasn’t booked, read my rights, fingerprinted, photographed, or allowed one phone call; and because it seemed like they were keeping my presence there a secret in case burial were deemed necessary. But Marc assured me that I had been arrested. My four original charges were Possession of Cocaine, Possession of Cocaine With Intent to Distribute, Possession of Narcotics Paraphernalia (Jack’s needles, which actually never were illegal), and Possession of Marijuana (less than one gram allegedly found in my pocket while I was unconscious).

After a couple of days in the Hospital, they stopped chaining me to the bed. With lots of help from Physical Therapists and Nurses’ Aides, I was able to walk again in a week or ten days. After a couple of weeks in the Hospital, I was released, as bail had been posted, ten percent of a few thousand dollars. Attorneys for drug cases cost thousands. If you can’t pay a good lawyer his good income, then you can’t expect of a good outcome.

I suggested my lawyer use the precedent of Jehovah’s Witnesses being allowed to refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds, even if it endangers their lives; to show that I too had a right to turn down the “medical treatment” of having my stomach pumped, even though cops and a doctor claimed it was necessary. The prosecution tried to suppress the Torture photos, but the Judge insisted on viewing them. He surpassed the precedent:

He ruled that my Torture was more repugnant to the community than any drug crime could possibly be. He threw out the Cocaine and Paraphernalia charges, leaving only the Misdemeanor Marijuana. But the prosecution was undeterred: They quickly filed three violent felony counts against me, to try to excuse what the cops had done. Let me state here that I am a pacifist. The St. Petersburg Times after the beating quoted my father as saying that I was “a well-known pacifist.” I did not commit any violence against them, yet they charged me with Aggravated Assault, Battery on a Law Enforcement Officer, Resisting Arrest With Violence, and Possession of a pinch of pot.

After a year of legal wrangling and a change of venue to a different Judge, the case was ready for trial. Nervous, I cut my hair and shaved my beard, to try to look respectable. I got into court, and there sat a Judge with long hair and a beard. It seemed like he now wore my newly missing beard and hair. Here’s the sitch: I was already on drug Probation for pot and coke a few months before the Torture; but the prosecution flinched on trial date before we did, and agreed that if I’d plead No Contest, then Adjudication would be Withheld, and I would have no criminal record, not even on the drug crimes for which I was already on Probation.

The deal was cut, but the Judge had to make it look good for his audience, and I’m telling you, he leaned forward, pointed his trembling finger at me, and laid it on thick: “Fifteen years! The full force of every one of these charges! That’s what you’ll get if you ever get caught with drugs while you’re on my Probation, I’ll throw the book at you!” I did and he didn’t. For the three violent felonies, he added three months to the Probation I was already on, and when that was over, I had no criminal record. But what I had to go through for it!

And it seems that the First Amendment [granting Freedom of the Press] never passed in Pasco County, at all. I went to the local St. Petersburg Times office to get a copy of the weeks-old newspaper with the article about my Torture, including the words of my father and the lies of the Sheriff: “That’s what you have to expect when you Resist Arrest With Violence.” The person at the front desk claimed that they didn’t have any copies of it, and couldn’t get any. But since I was a reporter, I knew reporters, and one of them got me a copy of the paper.

Yeah, I was a reporter, until that very Sheriff ordered the West Pasco Press to fire me. Yeah, but here’s the thing, when you work as kind of your own boss, like I did, you don’t go into the office or even check in very much, when you’re out on the go, doing interviews, covering stories, shooting photos. So, I didn’t get the memo, that I was being fired on orders from the Sheriff. So, my assignment was to go photograph the Sheriff making some bullshit speech. I did it with aplomb. I shot photo after photo, near and far, used up the whole roll. I didn’t know that he had earlier that day refused to issue a Press Pass for me. I’m sure the ‘All-Reporters-Must-Carry-A-Press-Pass-Issued-By-the-Sheriff’ policy was started specifically to get rid of me. So I moved to a civilized country – St. Pete. More of a publishing industry down there, anyway.

~                         ~                         ~                         ~                         ~                        ~                         ~

Is pig one of those “words of hate”? In the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, issued by the Canting Academy to translate slang from the slums of London, the word pig is defined as a police officer. The book gives examples of its correct usage. My favorite is the sentence using a few slang words, the premise being that straight people and cops won’t get what we’re talking about: “‘Let’s floor the pig and bolt’ means ‘Let’s knock the policeman down and run away.’” About that word pig, and remembering the quote from The Big Lebowski: “This isn’t a guy who built the railroads here.” But seriously, pig is an insult. It refers to corrupt and violent police whom poor people fear, and must hide from. It’s a good word.

And the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is lots of fun for cunning linguists; I highly recommend it. Torture and execution were popular public entertainment in those days. Cockles. Do you know what it means? Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: “I heard him cry ‘Cockles!’” Still don’t have it? Cockles is the sound a person makes when he’s being strangled to death. Ahahahahahahhaha!

Obama & Netanyahu Threaten to Dirty-Bomb US Soldiers, Marines & Airmen in Afghanistan — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

“All options are on the table,” said US Vice President Joe Biden three days ago. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/156122#.T7875r-0zJw

President Obama made the same threat Monday, February 27: “I don’t bluff … all options are on the table.” http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/obama-to-iran-and-israel-as-president-of-the-united-states-i-dont-bluff/253875/ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the same threat the same day Obama did. http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=260576

President Obama and puppet PM Netanyahu are threatening to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities with Israel’s Air Force. If these madmen carry out their threat, they will deploy the largest and potentially the most deadly dirty bomb in history against all American Military personnel in Afghanistan. NATO troops too. The biggest Friendly Fire incident ever! And that’s assuming that Obama and Netanyahu are not really as insane as they’re acting.

…Because “All options on the table” could also include bombing an operating nuclear facility with a nuclear bomb. That would incinerate parts of Iran and bordering countries. It would also poison us in this country – because the jet stream just keeps on coming. Or an “option” might be nuking something else in Iran. That would be irresponsible. And evil. And it would still poison our guys.

They’re actually talking about bombing nuclear facilities with “conventional” weapons, and scattering those charged particles into the wind, specifically, into the jet stream of upper air currents that always blows from West to East (due to the rotation of the Earth).

Here are the nuclear facilities. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11927720 Here are the US bases. http://militarybases.com/overseas/afghanistan/ & http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1920&bih=885&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=eAd6UE3nn2jR2M:&imgrefurl=http://martinjapan.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html&docid=dO_0w4vKqaWjQM&imgurl=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PMw1aINrCrw/THqNBuUeOdI/AAAAAAAADvU/xNwNrlfBX7Y/s1600/isaf-afghanistan-2006.jpg&w=1224&h=989&ei=HKa_T8CGDaXw6AHDr42eCg&zoom=1 Now, please note how today’s jet stream [for May 25, 2012] will deliver those radioactive particles [that the explosion sends into the atmosphere above Iran] directly to the air over US Military bases in Afghanistan. http://squall.sfsu.edu/gif/jetstream_norhem_00.gif It does that every day.

Besides poisoning all US servicemen in Afghanistan, this diabolical scheme will poison civilians in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, East Turkestan, and probably elsewhere. If the US is willing to poison these people merely because they’re Muslims, then our genocidal impulse is reaching a feverish pitch. A Hate Crime in all our names.

And let’s remember just how preposterous this lie is: Obama, Netanyahu, and their propaganda mouthpieces claim that Iran’s nuclear program poses “an existential threat” to Israel. Of course there’s no proof that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons – which Israel already has. But even if Iran had them, they couldn’t bomb Israel with them, for the very same reason: The jet stream would carry those charged particles right back to Iran: They’d be dirty-bombing themselves!

Of course, dirty-bombing one’s own Military is by definition Treason: Waging war against one’s own people. If Obama [or Iran's Military leader] does choose that option, it will be a clear case of Treason. Then, Senators Al Franken, Sherrod Brown, and others who got elected as Liberals, will be forced to either oppose President Obama for this Treasonous act, or join him in his War Crime barbarism.

East Turkestan, by the way, is  an occupied nation in the Northwestern quadrant of China. It is the land of the Uygurs, and it’s known in US propaganda as “China’s Muslim West.” Territorial claims of occupied East Turkestan and occupied Tibet comprise more than half of what the colonial powers [through international law] call “China.”

Most Americans have never heard of the Uygurs. Most who have heard just found out about them when Presidents Bush, and then Obama, ordered several innocent Uygurs to be held in Guantanamo Bay Torture Facility for years, as a favor to China. Four were released to Bermuda in 2009. Two were “freed” last month to El Salvador, a Fascist country. Eleven are still said to be warehoused at the G.B. Torture Facility. There is no proof that they are still alive.

The bullying US forcing Bermuda to accept the Uygurs violated the island nation’s sovereignty, and its Constitution. http://bermudasun.bm/main.asp?SubSectionID=901&ArticleID=58530&SectionID=24 Those just sent to El Salvador also will likely face harsh discrimination. http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/05/a-sliver-of-good-news-from-guantanamo/

The reason President Obama is making this nuclear threat is to raise the price of Oil. Iran is one of the world’s leading Oil producers. Newspaper editorials in the 1970s predicted that the US would someday wage war against Iraq and Iran to steal their Oil. Fighting over Oil, or threatening to do so, causes upward pressure on its price. This tactic always works.

And by raising the price of Oil, Obama and Netanyahu help pay for Iran’s nuclear program, wholly financed by Oil. Raising the price of Oil also helps pay for Obama’s and Netanyahu’s own political futures.

Don’t believe Obama’s lies: There Are No WMDs! (Some people will do nearly anything for Oil money.)

Obama’s Part in Conspiracy Helps Trayvon Martin’s Confessed Kiler Escape – He’s Gone — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

By personally speaking up to to cite no need for a Federal investigation into George Zimmerman’s crimes against Trayvon Martin [the child Zimmerman admitted killing], President Obama has allowed Zimmerman’s escape: Whereabouts unknown! He stuffed his stuff into a rented trailer, turned off his phone and Facebook, and hit the road; according to ABC’s Good Morning America this morning. Police in Florida continue to insist Zimmerman is not a suspect. Obviously not.

For weeks, following President Obama’s “leadership,” Federal, state, and local authorities refused to make inquiries into the February 26 Premeditated Murder of the Black Florida teen by Zimmerman, who was stalking Trayvon Martin while calling him a “fuckin’ coon.” Instead of launching an investigation or ordering the apprehension of the criminals involved, opportunist President Obama politically exploited the teen’s death, using it to blur the distinction between Church and State.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to Trayvon Martin’s family. But obviously, we’re not going to wade into a local law enforcement matter. I would refer you to the Justice Department and local law enforcement at this point,” the President said in a statement (read by his propaganda minister Press Secretary Jay Carney), explaining why Obama wasn’t pushing for Federal action.  http://www.thegrio.com/politics/white-house-comments-on-trayvon-martin-a-local-law-enforcement-matter.php#46786377

The White House released the above statement just three days ago on March 19, 2012. (That’s three weeks and two days after the Murder!) To understand just how much President Obama himself was Covering Up, read Pam Spaulding’s story about it from the previous day. The comments section there is also enlightening, with more info from Pam. http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/03/18/trayvon-martin-gunned-down-for-carrying-skittles-while-black/

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! reported that the Sanford “Police love” vigilante George Zimmerman. Philosopher Askia N’diaye, a student at Syracuse University, succinctly explained why President Obama decided to Conspire to Cover-Up this Murder (which under strict enforcement of the law would require his arrest for his after-the-fact criminal efforts that allowed the confessed killer to escape – except that the President cannot be arrested). http://yourblackworld.net/2012/03/featured-bloggers/a-college-student-expresses-reasons-why-obama-should-but-won%E2%80%99t-intervene-for-trayvon-martin/

Before looking at why and how the above Conspirators are culpable in this Murder Cover-Up, listen to some of the evidence they had: Zimmerman’s Racist phone calls to the Sanford Police, calling Trayvon Martin a “fucking coon,” http://axiomamnesia.com/2012/03/20/george-zimmerman-calls-trayvon-martin-fcking-coon-911-call-audio/ and saying of Martin and all Blacks: “These assholes always get away with it!” http://antiintellect.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/these-assholes-always-get-away/

After picking up Skittles at the store, Trayvon was on his cellphone with his girlfriend, telling her about his fear of his Stalker/Murderer when he was killed. http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-martin-death-friend-phone-teen-death-recounts/story?id=15959017#.T2iIwI60zJw Axiom Amnesia posted the cell phone calls to his girlfriend, and Zimmerman’s repeated complaint calls against people of the wrong race, and the horrifying police 911 recordings of the actual Murder: You can hear the child screaming for his life for a long time. You can hear the neighbor urging the Police to do something while the child screams. You can hear the Police receptionist delay and delay and delay sending any help – until finally you hear the gunshot that finally shuts that Black child up for good! No more crying! http://axiomamnesia.com/2012/03/16/trayvon-martin-911-calls-audio/

Apparently taking advantage of the Presidentially imposed delay, Zimmerman fled. Then, just two days ago, Obama’s Justice Department and FBI announced that they were not investigating the case yet, but they will soon. (They will because of the excessive intense breaking publicity, obviously not because of the justice issues involved.) Late in the day March 20, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, not the Criminal Division (obviously not) http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/mar/20/federal-prosecutors-to-investigate-florida-teens announced that it “will” launch an investigation in the future. http://perezhilton.com/2012-03-21-us-department-of-justice-and-fbi-will-investigate-trayvon-martin-killing-because-local-cops-refuse#.T21SNo60zJx

That same day, just two days ago, the FDLE announced that it might want to ask some questions too. Maybe. As long as everybody else is doing it now. Just to make it look good. http://www.huliq.com/12092/trayvon-martin-shooting-department-justice-fbi-launch-investigation Here is Amy Goodman’s report released the morning of March 20. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/20/walking_while_black_florida_police_resist

Then, just yesterday criminally negligent Sheriff Bill Lee temporarily stepped down, after the Sanford City Commission voted 3-2 “No Confidence” against him. In 1998, Lee received an award for valor from Eslinger, who is still Seminole County Sheriff. The Sheriff makes clear that he is not investigating because it is morally right, only to restore calm. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/os-trayvon-martin-sanford-chief-20120322,0,2419134.story

Then, just last night the local prosecutor recused himself http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/trayvon-martin-state-attorney_n_1374206.html and the Florida Governor and Attorney General finally announced that a Special Prosecutor “will” investigate for the state in the future. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/03/fla-city-manager-to-discuss-trayvon-martin-case/1#.T2xvH460zJx News finally came today that a Florida state grand jury “will be” impaneled in the future to determine if Zimmerman will be charged with Murder. http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/03/grand-jury-to-hear-trayvon-martin-case-mull-charges-against-georhttp://perezhilton.com/2012-03-21-us-department-of-justice-and-fbi-will-investigate-trayvon-martin-killing-because-local-cops-refuse#.T2zJLI60zJw

Then, just tonight, the US Federal Government’s propaganda organ PBS’s Washington Week reported that the FBI will [in the future] listen to the tapes that Axiom Amnesia listeners have been listening to all along.

According to Democracy Now!, Trayvon’s body was thrown into a morgue as unidentified, even though the Police had his cellphone and the phone company had its records. All of the officials and agencies I cited above were according to law obligated to press charges sooner than this! Here’s a timeline of the Murder, events leading to it, and the fallout since. Note how long the authorities failed to act. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/trayvon-martin-case-timeline-of-events/

Note that yesterday CBS propagandistically reported that this case is about “self-defense,” and the Mayor claimed he was surprised that Zimmerman wasn’t arrested. CBS also reported here that Zimmerman was cooperating with Police. (I guess that means that Police Conspired to help him escape.) Mayor Triplett said that this case has strained trust. Trust in him and in others. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57402925/mayor-strained-trust-in-sanford-doubts-in-case/

At a rally of thousands in Sanford yesterday Reverend Al Sharpton spoke out against the injustice. http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/22/2708829/boisterous-crowd-at-sharpton-led.html Here are Trayvon Martin’s grieving parents speaking about the Atrocity on this morning’s Democracy Now! (At 2:45 on this video.) http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/23/headlines

Investigations are finally beginning now. They waited until the Murderer could escape, so obviously their plan is not to seek justice. Obviously not. They are trying calm the masses, quell publicity, and Cover Up the crimes committed by President Obama and his co-Conspirators regarding this Murder. Florida Police claim that a barbaric state law Legalizes Murders like this, so there was no need to push the investigation. Zimmerman’s not a suspect. Meanwhile, a “Million Hoodies March,” or several of them, have formed spontaneously to cry out for justice. Trayvon was wearing a hoodie when he was Murdered.

Florida laid groundwork for this travesty long ago: In college in 1976 I campaigned against a very similar law, proposed by Florida’s then-Attorney General Robert Shevin, who was also pushing Governor Reuben Askew to sign Death Warrants in his newly-designed-to-skirt-the-Supreme-Court-ruling execution regime. But Askew was truly an ethical man: He refused to sign the Death Warrants, and when Shevin’s “Shoot-to-Kill Bill” passed, Askew vetoed it. (Duplicitously, Shevin came out against his own Bill, when it became clear that Askew would veto it.) Shevin of course had political ambitions to run for Governor. He didn’t win, but the next Florida Governor, Bloody Bob Graham, did sign lots of Death Warrants, opening the floodgates of blood across the country, even though the USA had only allowed one execution in the previous decade when Graham started his killing career, often against Blacks. Graham’s reign of terror led to the nationwide execution regime we have now. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1291&dat=19760623&id=JhVUAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FY0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6449,6863735

One reason 20 states have already passed the “Shoot-to-Kill Bill” (now re-named the “Stand-Your-Ground Bill), is that the National Rifle Organization wields extraordinary influence [which most Americans consider Bribery] over all politicians. And no politician likes money more than President Obama. (Remember the Virginia Tech Massacre? Obama said nothing about Gun Control afterward, even though, for at least 25 years in Marvel Comics, unsavory characters have been “going down to Virginia” to get guns.) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/23/column-debusmann-idUSL1E8EN3IG20120323 Florida has a particularly tight relationship with the NRA. http://www.thegrio.com/specials/trayvon-martin/nra-relationship-with-florida-a-big-reason-zimmerman-remains-free.php Now, here in “Liberal” Massachusetts, a Democratic legislator has proposed a similar Shoot-to-Kill Bill for Massachusetts. (We have Black people wearing hoodies in Massachusetts too, you know!) http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/03/massachusetts_weighs_bill_to_e.html

While this is really not about defending oneself (obviously not), seeing this as a solely a racial problem is also incorrect. It is about the incompetence and criminal culpability of the entities I named in paragraph 5, above. It is about the illegal violence that marks the national Police Crisis in this country. Police in Florida are allowed to Torture and Murder. They do it a lot. That is one reason I am an exile from Florida, the land that I love.

We saw this Fascist impulse in the violent repression the Occupy movement, with peaceful protesters Tortured by the thugs of Barack Obama, California Governor Jerry Brown, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. All three were elected as Democrats! They  don’t know what the word means! Obviously not!

Like in this case, Obama, Brown, Cuomo, and other Governors, and all their respective Attorney Generals and other law-enforcement underlings, are all guilty of Covering Up the Torture, for not charging any of the police who Tortured people on international television. We see these same criminal far-Right tendencies in President Obama’s Atrocities in Yemen, Bahrain, Honduras, and the Maldives. A big part of the problem is that people are trying to limit perception of what the problem actually is: We have a President who generally opposes Human Rights, and he’s leading from behind as our country marches off to the far Right in lockstep-goosestep.

One reason we have such a Police Crisis is the Fascistic philosophy running rampant within the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, and police across the nation; and the Obama Administration allows them undue influence on policy. Throughout Florida, citizens know that all White policemen who aren’t Catholic are Klansmen. In Florida, we always assumed that it’s that way all over the country. The Ku Klux Klan is the military arm, the political Terrorist arm of Freemasonry.

Klansmen working out of the Masonic lodges in and around Seminole County were involved in many Lynchings and Racist Murders throughout Florida since 1920. My recently deceased friend Tom Reece witnessed the St. Petersburg, Florida, White Masonic lodge in the 1920s launching the Klan in St. Petersburg. Here’s a story I wrote about a Klan Rally I attended in St. Pete. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2010/06/29/senator-byrds-death-made-me-think-of-klansmen-i-have-known/

Many Government officials and police are Masons. Sources tell me some names in this case are connected through those lodges to that tradition of Racist political Terrorism: Masons of Seminole County and police from through were involved in at least three horrifying Ku Klux Klan actions in the Christmas-New Years holidays of 1922-23:

1. First, in Perry, Florida, Klansmen met in the White Masonic lodge, then burned the Black Masonic lodge and carried out a human sacrifice, burning a crucified Black man to death. After one of those creosote-soaked log crosses is burned, no corpse is found nailed to it. But in 1990 I spoke to a Nazi “skinhead” in Tampa who told me he had seen a dead Black man nailed to a cross. He said the shock of seeing it made him quit the Racist club.

2. On New Years Eve, they went to the White Masonic lodge at Gainesville, Florida, and met with Klansmen there. They held a widely attended Klan Rally that got glowing reviews in the local papers. They then they drove West on Highway 24, through Rosewood, to the White Masonic lodge in nearby Sumner, Florida. Here’s a story I wrote this month about the Rosewood Massacre. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/03/10/kony-2012-50-million-join-murderous-lynch-mob-propaganda-to-shout-death-squads-do-your-duty-tanist-must-die/

3. They met at the White Masonic lodge in Sumner, then went to Rosewood and Murdered everyone they could find. They burned the town to the ground, starting with the Black Masonic lodge. Its ashes and some of its artifacts were recently unearthed. http://www.freemasoninformation.com/2010/07/rosewood-masonic-lodge-discovered/

Here’s a report about Rosewood, including a photograph of the burning, presumably taken by a proud Murderer. http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/rosewood-massacre-1923 Rosewood was part of a Racist wave sweeping the country in the 1920s, and part of a Fascist impulse sweeping the world. It was part of a national Racist killing spree, spread through police departments and White Masonic lodges. The KKK controlled the Democratic Party in the 1920s, and shortly after the Rosewood Massacre, very shortly before his very suspicious death, President Warren G. Harding, already a Freemason, joined the Ku Klux Klan, according to Stetson Kennedy. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2229/was-warren-harding-inducted-into-the-kkk-while-president

This chart shows the Rosewood Massacre’s relationship to the Racist Lynching movement then going on. http://www.displaysforschools.com/rosewoodrp.html The Republican Convention will be down there in the heart of Klan territory this summer, Tampa, Florida, where I lived for many years. Be careful if you go down there for the Convention.

URGENT Immediate Action Needed! Help Prevent Obama’s Goons from Further Torturing US Rights Observers in Bahrain — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

URGENT: Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party member and longtime peace activist Paki Wieland of Northampton was just arrested and detained in Bahrain for peacekeeping, along with other American activists. If you want to help, please call the State Department and demand action: (202) 647-6178 – They keep track of how many calls they receive. I’ll suggest a script later in this post.

Paki is part of an international peacekeeping force – Witness Bahrain – and after a couple days of teargassing, was picked up. She’s in a detention center with five other US citizens. The group is being provided with Consular support. The State Department is withholding details, reportedly because of a privacy act. https://witnessbahrain.org/2012/02/six-us-citizens-arrested-in-bahrain-to-be-deported/

To understand the danger Paki is in while being locked up by our US puppet, remember that, a few days ago, President Obama’s forces Tortured political hunger strikers in Bahrain by cruelly firing teargas into their cells. http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/1/headlines/bahraini_protesters_on_hunger_strike_tear_gased_in_prison_cells

The six American International Observers with Bahrain Witness were arrested for approaching the square where the protests began a year ago. This is part of President Obama’s attempt to crush the Arab Spring and prevent democracy in Bahrain. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/03/15/democratic-party-strikes-again-obama-thugs-torturing-and-murdering-peaceful-bahraini-democracy-advocates/

President Obama’s spokesperson addressed the issue of the detentions, but said nothing of the Torture inflicted on Americans and Shiites by Obama’s puppet Government there. The statement tacitly condoned Torturing Paki and the others. And President Obama just appropriated more Torture devices and equipment to the Slave-rich Fascist regime of Bahrain. http://article.wn.com/view/2012/01/27/Obama_administration_selling_new_arms_package_to_Bahrain/ And: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1439/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8442

I know Paki, and have long admired her career as an activist. She works at it tirelessly. She was on the recent aborted flotilla from Greece to Gaza. She does not deserve to be Tortured or imprisoned for standing up for freedom. Indeed, the President and the US Military shouldn’t be so cowardly: They too should stand against this heinous brutal repression! http://answerpot.com/showthread.php?2716647-Paki+Wieland+left+today+to+join+Gaza+Flotilla

You may remember a day earlier, two other activists from Witness Bahrain were deported. http://my.firedoglake.com/thecallup/2012/02/13/video-us-backed-bahrain-arrests-deports-2-us-human-rights-observers-as-1st-anniversary-of-democracy-protests-nears/

Why can’t President Obama tolerate democracy in Bahrain? I’m glad you asked me that question! Because 56% of the people there are Slaves, who aren’t citizens. And 85% of the citizens are Shiites, the people protesting. And even most of the Sunni Muslims there have few rights. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/17/tiananmen-update-obama-thugs-torture-journalists-activists-and-murder-pro-democracy-protesters-in-yemen-bahrain/

The US Fifth Fleet is docked in Bahrain, to our disgrace. You see, with Slavery prevalent in Bahrain, if the US servicemen weren’t cowards, they would immediately free the Slaves. They would immediately free the US observers. They would not tolerate the suppression of democracy.

If they’re just going to sit there cowering, disgracing our country, trembling on their ships in Bahrain’s harbor as people are Tortured and Assassinated for trying to have a democracy, then those cowards are not worthy of being called “US servicemen.” Every one of them should get a Court Marshall and a Dishonorable Discharge. They’re making us famous as a nation of cowards!

President Obama’s puppet forces (called ODS – for Obama Death Squad) have killed scores of people in Bahrain, just for seeking freedom. They have Tortured and imprisoned hundreds. The “security” forces have attacked their own people. After those attacks, doctors and nurses who helped the wounded were tried and imprisoned as Political Prisoners. (See 6:33 of the following clip). http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/28/wife_of_bahraini_political_prisoner_condemns

The ODS conducted Pogroms, killing Shiites and destroying their homes, bulldozing entire neighborhoods of Manama, the capital. http://www.demotix.com/photo/669738/shia-homes-destroyed-bahrain

I’ve been writing blogs about the Bahrain Atrocities for at least a year. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/02/18/our-international-shame-the-5th-fleet-quit-disgracing-the-us-and-get-the-hell-out/

Please call the US State Department and demand action. The State Department keeps track of how many people call, and someone listens to the responses. The State Dept. number is (202) 647-6178. And as for what to say, just look above in this article, and complain about what you don’t like.

Please share this post as much as you can as fast as you can! Hurry! Lives WILL be lost, but the sooner we draw attention to it, the sooner the madness may be contained. Email this article to your Congressperson and your news sources. Spread the news.

Our Congressman [Paki's and mine] is James McGovern, the absolute leader in the US Congress on not supporting political repression in Bahrain. President Obama is the leader of the side that is supporting the political repression. http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-to-tawakkul-karman-for-resisting-obama-saleh-massacres-of-peaceful-protesters-premeditated-murders-democracy-suppression/

Jim McGovern deserves credit for his brilliant leadership on this issue. Call him to thank him, and to get action: Here are his office numbers: (508) 831-7356, (508) 460-9292, (508) 431-8025, (508) 677-0140, (202) 225-6101 (please call more than one of them).

McGovern is already working about on stopping the Pogroms and the Torture of Political Dissidents and Health Care Workers in Bahrain, but he may not know that one of his constituents is now held there, has been Tortured, and is in grave danger.

Email the International Criminal Court at the Hague and ask it to empower Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón to indict US President Barack Obama and Sheikh Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa (the Bahraini King) under Article 15 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court for Crimes Against Humanity: Their Atrocities in Bahrain against the Bahraini people, and against more than one million Slaves held there, and against the foreign Observers. otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int

Here is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/icc/statute/part-a.htm

Fracking Industry, Shale Pipeline, Weapons Industry, Siemens & The Nation mag (?!) Introduce MSNBC’s New Far-Right Propaganda show — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

I just watched the debut of MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes show. Let me be the first to say, what a disgusting piece of salesmanship! The fracking commercial so authoritatively showed how fossil fuel companies intend to drill under our drinking water sources, because they’re so nice and green. Pollution/Weapons manufacturer General Electric and Microsoft/Bill Gates own MSNBC. Advertiser Siemens is also in the Pollution business.

The most striking thing about this sham pretending to be Journalism was its censorship. MSNBC and other media blacked out news coverage of the Occupation of Wall Street (censorship that Keith Olbermann complained about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4QUePfHFQY&feature=player_embedded). They blocked out the Facebook photo of the bloodied Tortured face of a protester held face down on pavement by a brutal officer. They ignored the twelve protesters massacred today by President Obama’s puppet’s marksmen in Yemen. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44650358/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/#.Tn3fqU9ZbJw

Of course, I’ve heard Hayes shill in the past. I saw him triumphantly glowing on the Rachel Maddow Show, reactionary to President Barack Obama’s boasts about his order for Premeditated Murder of a Muslim, a member of the Bin Laden Oil Dynasty of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. But it troubles me to see The Nation magazine endorse Right-wing propaganda. This show is another cheerleader for the Obama reelection campaign.

So, here we have a magazine that’s nominally Progressive (it does publish the brilliant reporting of Jeremy Scahill), but when faced with the magazine’s Editor-at-Large Chris Hayes’s decision to go to work for a political campaign one year and two months before the election, The [presumably nonpartisan] Nation, instead of dismissing Hayes from his post for the Conflict of Interest, wished him luck and sent a guest from the magazine for his first show, to help push the Right-wing propaganda. http://www.thenation.com/article/161562/congratulations-washington-editor-chris-hayes-msnbcs-new-host

(This is not the first time The Nation has veered off to the Right way too far for my comfort. In the 1872 US Presidential Election campaign and before it, President Ulysses S. Grant and the Radical Republicans crusaded for Black [male adult] suffrage. But The Nation magazine, newspaper publisher/Presidential candidate Horace Greeley, and the Liberal Republicans insisted that Black people who were illiterate should be barred from voting. What’s “Liberal” about that?! It’s not Liberal: Sometimes words are used to deceive.)

Most of the two-hour Chris Hayes show consisted of several guests sitting around a table pushing MSNBC’s Party line for the week. [That's the Party line of the Republicrat Party.] Hayes’s guests made the exact same points as talking heads on MSNBC’s other shows did this week. Some were the same people. Their message was “we need Obama.” The Nation‘s commercials claim that it has “Liberal bias,” but here it is supporting a far-Right candidate more than a year before the election, without even bothering to find out who the Left-wing candidates are. That’s “bias” alright, but not “Liberal bias.”

MSNBC’s shows (the ones that aren’t Right-wing propaganda about cops and prisons) all opine that Obama, with his warring against all Muslim countries, his endorsement of Slavery and massacres ignored by US troops in Bahrain, his attacks on Human Rights, his deadly criminal treatment of Haiti/Somalia/Yemen … every MSNBC show claims that only this neo-Fascist nightmare can save us from terrible stupid crazy Tea Partiers.

MSNBC’s been claiming that for a long time. Now, they’re overtly campaigning for Obama, and it’s still a year and two months before the election: MSNBC doesn’t even know who the Liberal candidates may be, but it’s forcefully trying to trick naive Liberals and uninformed college students into falling for the MSNBC/Obama Campaign: “It’s-Fascist-or-Crazy-or-Nothing!”

(Wednesday evening, MSNBC was forced against its will to start covering the Troy Davis execution by firedoglake shaming them, and Democracy Now! reporting on it. MSNBC host Al Sharpton was missing from his own show at 6 pm: He was on Democracy Now!, down in Georgia, trying to save Troy Davis’s life. Here’s my MyFDL Diary on the subject at the time: “Racist Premeditated Murder Pits KKK, Obama Democrats & MSNBC against Pope, Carter, Tutu, Sessions, Barr, Basic Human Decency” http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/09/21/racist-premeditated-murder-pits-kkk-obama-democrats-msnbc-against-pope-carter-tutu-sessions-barr-basic-human-decency/ Both Rachel Maddow and Chris “the Dumb Guy” Matthews had to – “unexpectedly,” she said – come back on the air and cover the Davis Murder, during the time slots when their shows would usually re-air the earlier broadcasts. On Matthews’s 7 pm show, he had endorsed Davis’s killing. On the Troy Davis’s Death Certificate, the cause of death is listed as “Homocide.”)

The panel on the Chris Hayes show lamented the Republican crowd cheering Rick Perry’s boasts of Premeditated Murders [Capital Punishment]. But for some reason, none on the panel compared it to the Democratic crowd cheering Obama’s boasts of Premeditated Murder [Targeted Assassination] of a Muslim. (Rachel Maddow also used the Perry death cheer incident for misleading Right-wing propaganda, which I’ll cover in a different Diary.) One Hayes show graphic showed the top ten countries in executions, with the US in the middle of those. The Obama regime’s puppet far-Right dictatorships in Yemen and Somalia also made the top ten. So, instead of fifth, if you include its satellites, the US is third.

http://ourtimes.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/executions-in-2008/

To be balanced, guests on the show made sure to note that the Death Penalty can be good. One panelist, Ezra Klein, noted that that the “Death Penalty doesn’t work … ” but then went on to insert Right-wing propaganda “… the way Communism doesn’t work.” He said that Communism failed everywhere it was tried. This brings me to longstanding propaganda in this country: That Communism=Left. I have here on my desk a 1940 reprint of “A Popular Essay In Marxist Strategy and Tactics” written in 1920 by V.I. Lenin. The book is titled “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder. Lenin obviously detested the Left.

So, Lenin, who founded the Soviet Union, was no Leftist. Stalin who succeeded him purged the Left. Later leaders locked up poets Yevgeny Yevteshenko and Alexander Ginsberg, for being too far Left. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/720049/posts “Red” China’s Cultural Revolution purged artists, free thinkers, Leftists. What was “tried” in the Soviet Union and China was far-Right dictatorship, and propaganda. I don’t want it.

No one on the Hayes panel pointed out that Mitt Romney, the candidate who beats Obama in head-to-head polls, is the one major candidate to the Left of Obama. I say this having lived under both of them for several years, Romney here in Massachusetts, and Obama here in the United States.

Romney signed the world’s first Gay Marriage bill into law. Last I heard, Obama is still against it. Romney enacted the most far-Left health care law of any state in the US (though Vermont has passed us on that by now). Obama enacted the most far-Right health care policy of any country in the world. In one of the debates, Romney spoke out against the Wars and said he doesn’t want citizens who make under $100,000/year to pay any taxes at all. Obama is a warmonger and wants citizens who make under $100,000/year to continue paying Social Security tax at a rate that’s at least ten times as high as what he and his fellow millionaires pay. In fact …

… If you paid taxes on less than $100,000 in earnings in 2009, then you paid a 55-times-higher rate in Social Security taxes than President Obama did. Oh, but Obama said he wants to end that unfair disparity, in 2019! He knows it’s unfair and he wants to fix it someday, long after he’s out of office, after he and his contributors have made money on the unfairness for almost another decade. As I said, I’ve lived a long time under both of them: Mitt Romney is far to the Left of Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, Romney like Obama is quite – how can I put this diplomatically – truth challenged. We heard two things about Mitt Romney here before he ran for Governor. People warned that he was a Mormon. But actually, that never came up in his governing at all. Others bragged of his “bringing the Olympics to Utah.” But to me, that didn’t seem like something to brag about: Utah was famous as home to a Conservative religion, but to get the Olympics people on the International Olympic Committee were Bribed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympic_bid_scandal (Don’t get misread me – I support Jill Stein for President.)

When Chris Hayes fills in for Rachel Maddow, one can tell that their words are exactly the same: There’s no difference. It’s seamless. They even look the same. We can see that on MSNBC, we don’t have actual reporters or journalists or editorials, we don’t have Rachel or Chris, the real person; we have someone reading a script from the propaganda arm of a weapons manufacturer, trying to manipulate us into thinking and doing things profitable to the Weapons Industry.

That reminds me, tomorrow morning on Up With Chris Hayes, he’ll talk with someone about the Constitutional Convention Conference. This Conference fills me with great hope, the reason for which I’ll write about in a separate column; but Hayes will not be reporting on how Progressives can uses Article Five Constitutional Conventions to take over. No, he’ll be talking to Koch brothers ally Mark Meckler.

The name of the show is Up With Chris Hayes. I say “Down with Chris Hayes!” What a load of crap!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44650358/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/#.Tn3fqU9ZbJw

http://www.thenation.com/article/161562/congratulations-washington-editor-chris-hayes-msnbcs-new-host

http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/09/21/racist-premeditated-murder-pits-kkk-obama-democrats-msnbc-against-pope-carter-tutu-sessions-barr-basic-human-decency/

http://ourtimes.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/executions-in-2008/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympic_bid_scandal