By Gilbert Mercier and Dady Chery

We might never learn the motive behind the Boston Marathon bomb attack on Monday, April 15, which is reported to have killed three people and injured more than 170. It could be as simple as an unhinged individual going postal on tax day or a sinister  message to Americans from a foreign national illustrating the proverb “You can run, but you can’t hide.” In any case, the improvised explosive devices (IED) were amateurish and ineffective at causing maximum casualty. According to investigators, the crude IED were made from rigged pressure cookers loaded with gunpowder, nails plus ball bearings, and triggered by egg timers. The clumsy work suggests an unbalanced individual rather than an organization. Nevertheless, all day Monday and Tuesday the United States and world media talked about a “terrorist attack,” and the story became the only story. What matters more, however, is the way the incident will be exploited worldwide by policy makers and their media sycophants.

Boosting fear and paranoia to reinforce the global police state

Overall, the tragedy is a minor incident in the scope of world affairs. Around the same time: in Iraq for example, a wave of bomb attacks killed 50 people and injured 300; in Afghanistan, 30 people at wedding party were killed and about 90 wounded because a US bomb missed its target. Nevertheless the Boston bombing has already raised the level of fear and paranoia. Just like 9/11 was used to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the start of the global war on terror, the Boston Marathon incident will be exploited by repressive governments to justify an ever-growing war economy that benefits the industrial-military complex. Private security and surveillance companies will thrive even more, and US citizens may expect the Department of Homeland Security to grow into a bigger monstrosity. One can easily foresee that, at upcoming big crowd gatherings such as sporting events, drones of  all functions, shapes and sizes — some presumably designed to look like hummingbirds — will fly overhead to protect us from ourselves. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, many young Americans joined the military with the fervor of naive patriotism. With unemployment still high, it is likely that the Boston marathon incident will lure more young men and women into becoming cannon fodder for the war machine.

A story to hide others: Guantanamo, CISPA and Bradley Manning

Before the Marathon incident, the top news stories in the United States suggested that Americans might be regaining their senses and worrying about the erosion of their civil liberties. A foremost concern was the free dissemination of information and protection of privacy. Earlier this year, the Cyber Intelligence Protection Act (CISPA) was reset into motion by an executive order and a vow from President Barack Obama, during his State of the Union address, to “strengthen cyber defenses by increasing information sharing.” CISPA is about to be put to a vote in the House of Representatives. If passed in its current state, it will allow companies to collect the confidential e-mail and web-browsing histories of private individuals and share the information with the government, including its military and intelligence agencies, ostensibly to counter cyber threats.

To the US government, the epitome of a cyber threat is Pfc Bradley Manning. Mr. Manning has been detained for over a year without trial and more than 1,000 days without a conviction for blowing the whistle about US attacks on Iraqi and Afghan civilians. He is charged with espionage, not because he knowingly shared classified information with a foreign agent but because some of his information was published online and might have been used by a hostile foreign agent for some unspecified nefarious purpose. Mr. Manning enjoys considerable sympathy, and it is not lost on the internet community that some of the charges against him represent an attack on all online publishers, who obviously have no control over who uses their information.

For what seemed to be the first time since 9/11, Americans began again to express publicly their sympathy toward some Muslim foreign nationals. In a New York Times editorial of April 14 that was exceptional for allowing an incarcerated Muslim to present his plight directly to the US public, Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel detailed some of the horrors he suffered in Guantanamo during his 11 years of detention there without trial. The story was damning. More than half of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo are on a little-publicized hunger strike that started over two months ago, and 16 of them, including Moqbel, are being force fed. One man weighs only 77 pounds. Moqbel, whose weight has dropped to 132 pounds, describes that: “During one force-feeding the nurse pushed the tube about 18 inches into my stomach, hurting me more than usual…. It was so painful that I begged them to stop feeding me. The nurse refused…. When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. [Extreme Reaction Force] team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding.”

Comments about the editorial were overwhelmingly sympathetic; the readers recognized, not only that prisoners everywhere are entitled to decent treatment, but also that Moqbel, in particular, has never been charged with or found guilty of anything. This outpouring of sympathy stopped as suddenly as the Boston Marathon explosions, which are presumed, without proof, to have been orchestrated by a Muslim.

International ramifications either real or manufactured

There are already some alarming signs of the ways the Boston Marathon tragedy might be used in a broader geopolitical context. On Wednesday, April 17, The Times of Israel  announced that police chief Yohanan Danino and “other police officers” left the Jewish state on Tuesday to help the FBI with the Boston Marathon investigation. This is the highest ranking police delegation ever sent overseas by Israel. President Shimon Peres, during a foreign diplomatic gathering, expressed his condolences and jumped on the opportunity to crank up the terror narrative. “Today the real problem is terror, and terror is not an extension of policy: their policy is terror, their policy is to threaten. Terrorists divide people, they kill innocent people,” said Peres.

This intrusion of Israel into an investigation that the FBI should handle with the Boston Police indicates that the case will likely expand. Allegations — legitimate or not — might soon materialize to link the case to Iran or organizations like Hezbollah. To keep the global war on terror in the limelight is to lull the public into docility despite the continuous assaults on its civil liberties and human rights. So long as terror can regain its place as the number one public-opinion priority, CISPA may be implemented with the blessings of a large majority of US citizens, Bradley Manning may stay in prison, and Guantanamo may remain open.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Aaron Tang.

Withdrawing the US military from Afghanistan: the number one job for Hagel and Kerry

Just like in Vietnam, the war in Afghanistan is a quagmire, and unquestionably Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hagel are the most qualified politicians in Washington to understand this. Both know that the war is unwinnable on the battlefield. The Afghanistan war is the United States’ longest military involvement, and it is a war of attrition against an elusive enemy. If Kerry returned from Vietnam resolutely opposed to the war and was very vocal about it in 1971, this was not the case for Hagel. But lately, Hagel’s positions on America’s war adventures have been an anomaly in Washington. He has consistently voiced his opposition to the troop build ups in Iraq pushed by the Bush administration and rubber stamped by the US Congress. But even if Hagel has some good intentions, he will certainly face serious opposition from the military leadership at the Pentagon. In a recent report assessing the readiness of Afghan troops, the Department of Defense estimated that very few divisions are ready to fight the Taliban. Another enormous job, related to defining a coherent exit strategy from Afghanistan, will be for Kerry and Hagel to repair the damaged US relationship with Pakistan.

Will Kerry and Hagel bring a more balanced US policy in the Middle-East?

The main opposition to Hagel’s nomination came from groups and individuals close to Israel. On February 14, an online magazine called the Washington Free Beacon alleged that back in 2007, Chuck Hagel  called the State Department “an adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister’s office.” In a town where Israel, through groups like AIPAC, has so much power, this unconfirmed statement attributed to Hagel immediately became fodder for pro-Israeli Senators such as Lindsey Graham to delay Hagel’s nomination by several days. The founder and editor of the online publication is Michael Goldfarb, and he is also the main strategist behind a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel, which is anonymously financed but is rumored to be an offshoot of AIPAC. During the last election cycle, the Emergency Committee for Israel financed advertisements against politicians considered to be “not supportive enough of Israel.” AIPAC and the Netanyahu administration will not be happy about Mr. Hagel’s confirmation. Hagel’s views on Iran, notably, are considered too soft and conciliatory.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran, less on the agenda?

Chuck Hagel’s arrival at the Pentagon might be a welcome change from his predecessor, former CIA chief and pro-Israel Clitonite Leon Panetta. As a poison parting gift to his successor, Panetta gave an alarmist exclusive interview to the Wall Street Journal in early February about the “growing threats” from Iran. Panetta accused Iran of smuggling small but very effective “man-pad” anti-aircraft weapons to its neighboring allies, namely the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. If Panetta’s 19-month run as secretary of defense was a period marked with a focus on preparation of military action against Iran, Hagel’s focus should be different, unless he is forced to do otherwise. Chuck Hagel is highly skeptical of military operation in Iran, and when Hagel was Senator of Nebraska he even voted, in 2007, against labeling Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

With the 2013 flu season peaking from now until April, a question at the top of the debate pile is whether or not to receive a flu shot. Some argue that by not getting yourself vaccinated, you are putting another at risk of exposure to the disease. Others argue that if vaccinations work, then why worry over if others around you have had their flu shot or not? The media and Internet are abuzz with information about the flu, how you catch the flu, what to do to prevent the flu, what you can take to help treat the flu, but you have to dig deeper to find a list of the ingredients in the actual flu shot.

So what’s the big deal with the components that make up the flu shot if it helps to prevent the aches, pains and overall discomfort of the disease? According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), here is the generalized short-list of ingredients and their purpose for being in a flu shot:

The controversial ingredient that most anti-vaccine advocates fight against is the use of Thiomersal — commonly called Thimerosal in the United States — which is a heavy-metal (mercury) based preservative that is believed by some in the medical field to bring the onset of Autism in otherwise healthy children. Thimerosal is highly toxic if inhaled, ingested or in contact with the skin and is extremely detrimental in aquatic environments and causes long term effects in aquatic organisms. The CDC states “Today, except for some flu vaccines, none of the childhood vaccines used routinely in the United States contain mercury (thimerosal) as a preservative. Although no evidence suggests that there are safety concerns with Thimerosal, vaccine manufacturers stopped using it as a precautionary measure. Now it is contained in very tiny amounts only in multi-dose vials of flu vaccine. Thimerosal is necessary in vaccines that come in multi-dose vials because they require that each individual vaccine dose be drawn from the vial with a new needle and syringe. With each needle inserted, there is the potential for introducing microbes into the vial.”

But what the CDC is not reporting is that each pharmaceutical company uses a different chemical cocktail, so unless the consumer knows exactly what manufacturer prepared the administered vaccine shot, one cannot be guaranteed to be receiving a Thimerosal-free vaccine. And even if one did know the exact details of the origin of the vaccine, the other preservatives might not be mercury but still be toxic to the body nonetheless.

Take for instance the Begrivac Influenza vaccine (split virion, inactivated) from Wyeth that comes with this fact sheet. It is recommended for children 6 months and older, one i.m. injection, size of dose smaller for 6-36 months, booster dose recommended for children who have not previously been vaccinated. The listed ingredients include chemicals that are harmless such as sucrose, potassium dihydrogen phosphate, sodium phosphate dehydrate, and magnesium chloride hexahydrate; chemicals that are harmful in high concentrations but harmless in low levels, such as low concentrations of potassium chloride and traces of diethylether and formaldehyde; and the chemicals/proteins below that, even in low amounts, can potentially cause adverse reactions from some of the people inoculated:

Polymyxin B. “Polymyxin B is a mixture of polymyxins B1 and B2, obtained from Bacillus polymyxa strains. They are basic polypeptides of about eight amino acids and have cationic detergent action on cell membranes. Polymyxin B is used for infections with gram-negative organisms, but may be neurotoxic and nephrotoxic.”

Polysorbate 80. “Polysorbate 80 is a skin or sense organ toxicant and has been known to cause cancer in animals.”

Egg protein. In many cases, eggs are used in vaccine production. “At 5-6 days of incubation, the microorganism is inoculated into the yolk sac of the embryonated eggs, which are harvested after death of the embryo at 12-15 days. Egg-related allergy is common, particularly in children with asthma or general allergies, and may be as high as 40% in children with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis. The risk of egg-related allergy after vaccination depends on the presence of egg protein in the final product. For example, influenza vaccine is manufactured using the extra-embryonic fluids of chick embryos and contains measurable quantities of egg proteins.”

Virus: Influenza virus antigens. Proteins from the influenza virus.

The above influenza vaccine is just one of many pharmaceutical CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccines for children. True, it contains no Thimerosal, but it does contain potentially unsafe compounds even though it is ruled to be safe. And what about the doses for adults and the elderly?

In the cases of vaccines that contain aluminum or mercury compounds, it is important to keep in mind that such heavy metals can lead to future health problems, especially if you receive the flu shot annually. According to FAQ Heavy Metal Detox, some effects of exposure to heavy metals are:

“The Brain – calcium levels in the brain affect cognitive development.”

“The Central Nervous System – neurotransmitters are chemicals released by neurons for communication within the CNS. Impaired release of calcium-dependent neurotransmitters result in depressed levels of hormones norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine. The release of neurotransmitters is related to: mood, sexuality, emotion, motivation, digestion, and muscle control. There is a correlation between calcium levels and degenerative CNS diseases.”

“The Skeletal System – Skeletal Osteodystery due to disruption of calcium levels in bones.”

“The Cellular System – Impaired cellular nutrition and energy production as related to the disruption of cellular calcium-sodium ATP pump processes.”

“The Endocrine System – The thyroid, hypothalamus, and the pituary glands are organs that can be negatively impacted by mercury and other heavy metals. Developmental delays, behavioural and learning disabilities, decreased IQ and attention span, mental retardation, and autism can be the results.”

So choose wisely when deciding how to prepare for the flu season ahead. Research shows that the shots are only up to 65 percent effective and could be the wrong strain for your area. Some great alternatives to injecting a flu shot would be to boost up your or your child’s immune system ahead of time with probiotics, organic teas and spices and foods rich with anti-oxidants.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one and six by Eneas de Troya.

The internet lost a major figure in the person of Aaron Swartz on Friday January 11. Swartz, who was facing a possible 50 years in prison and $4 million fine for downloading the contents of JSTOR from an MIT computer, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old. Swartz is credited with co-authoring RSS1.0 when he was 14 and being one of the co-founders of Reddit, but his most important contributions to the internet have been his staunch commitment to the free dissemination of information and along with this, the protection of privacy. Swartz was a creator of Tor2Web, a founder of Open Access as well as the Demand Progress movement that successfully fought the Internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA). I spoke to Carlos Gomez, who has been involved with the MIT hacker culture since the 1980’s, more specifically about Aaron Swartz and what he stood for.

Dady Chery
Co-Editor in Chief, News Junkie Post

Dady Chery. Aaron Swartz is credited with Tor2Web. Would you explain this contribution? How important is it?

Carlos Gomez. Tor2web is an anonymizer based on a volunteer network. It works as follows. Every request for a web page requires an addressee and a return address, and you need this return address, because the page requested needs to know where to send the information. So how do you get anonymity? Let’s say you are writing a snail mail requesting a document. The upper left corner has the return address; the middle of envelope has the delivery address. You obviously need these two pieces of information. So this envelope goes to a postman who picks it up, the local post office, a central office, etc., and gets passed along many times before it reaches its final destination. Without opening the envelope, anyone who handles it knows where it’s going to and where it came from. Suppose instead, you took the letter, put the “TO” and “FROM” addresses inside it and encrypted the whole thing, and then put that letter in an envelope that had the address of a trusted person instead who knew how to decode it. That person could open the letter, decode the TO and FROM addresses, put it in a new envelope, encrypt it again and forward it. And this could be done any number of times, until the final address is that of the final recipient. Each recipient would only know the previous and next person in the chain. The Tor browser performs the electronic equivalent of this manual encoding/decoding/shuffling of envelopes automatically and transparently for any user of TOR.

DC. How do you know that Tor itself can be trusted?

CG. The TOR software is open-source, meaning that every line of the software is published and open for inspection. While you yourself may not be enough of a geek to verify personally that the software works as intended, you can rely on a large network of highly paranoid geeks who have already minutely examined this code for you. This is in sharp contrast to Internet Explorer or Safari, the default browsers that come preloaded in Windows and Apple computers, respectively. These proprietary browsers are totally black-box, and could be forwarding every syllable directly to the CIA, for all you know. The principles of open source, most eloquently described by Richard Matthew Stallman (rms),  are a foundation of free information. People who use software should know its contents and be able to share it and modify it for their personal preference. When you buy a car or anything else, you are entitled to modify it any way you want. You might void the warranty, but you’ll never get arrested.

DC. But if you publish the source, doesn’t this mean that anyone can steal it?

CG. Yes. The same way anyone can plagiarize “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Whoever heard of a work of literature covered under copyright being encoded to keep people from plagiarizing it? It is outrageous that software can be covered by copyright at all. Software is not literature. It is much more like an invention and is more aptly covered by patent law. Of course, patents also require that the principles of any invention be completely explained and accessible. Before patents, inventors used to protect their intellectual property by simply keeping the principles of operation secret. This solution inhibits the growth of engineering knowledge. Patent law is a contract in which the public grants an inventor monopoly rights for a limited term in exchange for a full disclosure of the principles of the invention. Under patent law, every competent individual is ready to exploit the technology as soon as the patent expires, enriching and extending it to the benefit of the general public. It is expected that during the monopoly period, the inventor will be able to recover all of his costs of development plus a reasonable profit. Intellectual property protection of closed-source software tries to have it both ways: they get the protected monopoly, yet the public does not receive the full access to technology that is the public’s side of the bargain.

DC. Some say that Swartz’ opposition to SOPA/PIPA made him some very powerful enemies who felt that he was encouraging the theft of their intellectual property.

CG. SOPA/PIPA was meant to protect rights that corporations should not be allowed to have. Copyright laws were developed to protect the livelihood of authors — not the corporations that buy the right to an author’s work. By this reasoning, there is no sense to a copyright outliving its author, since no amount of incentive would entice that author to further efforts. Furthermore, copyrights should be held by real persons, never by corporations, which should have to license the copyright from a living person. The rise of digital media was never envisioned by the original authors of copyright law, and the control of pliant legislators by powerful media conglomerates have led to extensions of copyright law that are totally inconsistent with the original intent of these laws. The only justification that serves the public for a legal protection of “intellectual property” is that this protection ultimately increases, rather than inhibits, access to information.

DC. Aaron Swartz got into legal trouble for downloading JSTOR documents from an MIT computer. What is JSTOR, and do you think this information should be public?

CG. JSTOR is a repository of classic literature from a large variety of fields. This information is typically scanned because it predates digital publishing. Much of this literature is from publicly-funded research. Scientific publications differ from other literature in that they are meant to be applied to future research. In the case of publicly-funded research, taxpayers cannot derive the full benefit of what they have paid for unless they get unfettered access to it. The journals that claim ownership did not pay for the research, did not pay for the authors to write the papers, and did not even pay for the reviews. So their sole, extremely dubious, claim to the ownership of papers is based on their ability to coerce some poor sucker into signing their work over to them for free: the suckers in questions being the authors, the reviewers, and the tax-paying public. Why should we pay to have anybody, including somebody, say, in Ghana, who could not afford the extremely expensive journal fees, be able to get this freely? Science is completely global. It is in the taxpayer’s benefit, not only to have this information available to other taxpayers, but also to have it available to everybody. Another scientist in some unexpected place could be the one who takes the research to the next level. The more eyeballs, the more minds get access, the more robustly science develops. Pure research is founded on the free exchange of information. Anything less than total access means that everyone is being cheated. Period. The taxpaying public, authors and reviewers give up their intellectual property rights specifically so that the information can be made most widely available and applied. Usurpation of these property rights by the journals is theft.

Stallman, who is known for the phrase “Information wants to be free!” carried the concept of free information well beyond software. He invented the concept of “copyleft”, which is a copyright that is taken, not to restrict access to intellectual property but instead to guarantee free access by preempting corporate copyright claims. Swartz’s open access movement basically calls for scientists to take copylefts on their publications rather than surrender their copyright to the journals.

DC. Any thoughts about MIT’s role in Swartz’ troubles?

CG. It is ironic that MIT the institution is so hostile to the ideals of hacker culture, with which many creative people who work for MIT, including Stallman and web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are so closely associated. MIT people have been absolutely instrumental to hacker culture, whose contributions have greatly enhanced MIT’s reputation. Project Athena, for example, which brings academic online courses to the whole world for free is an honor to MIT and a great example of free exchange of information.

DC. What do you think would be a fitting tribute to Aaron Swartz?

CG. Amend the copyright law to say:

1. Any publicly funded research, past or present, is ineligible for copyright protection.

2. Software is not covered under copyright law but properly falls under patent law as an invention.

Read the complete text of Aaron Swartz’ Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, in his own eloquent words.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Sage Ross. Photograph two by Mike Licht and photographs five, six and seven by Donkey Hotey.

It seems like everyone who is paying attention to the fiscal cliff debate has an opinion one way or another about the benefits and disadvantages of the Tuesday night passage of the Senate Bill. The compromise that was agreed upon can be described as a barrel filled with pork for both Democrats and Republicans and their corporate sponsors, being that earmarks and tax breaks for corporations are included amongst the illusion of fiscal relief for the middle and lower classes.

For the left, the tax increases on the super-rich, who make up approximately 0.9 percent of the American population (those individuals earning more than $400,000 or $450,000 per household), was a victory but still managed to fall short of the Obama campaign promise of raising taxes on the top two percent (individuals earning more than $200,000 or $250,000 per household). For the right, the numbers must have added up, seeing as quite a few house Republicans voted in line with the Democrats. This tax increase on rich folks from 35 percent to 39.6 percent will create about $600 billion in revenue over the course of ten years, but with congress’ track record being as shoddy as it is, who knows what programs or misuse it will go to, you know: like the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program), where taxpayer money went directly to the banks and CEOs but not to the millions of underwater homeowners that it was designed to assist to avoid foreclosure. But don’t worry, this money will surely not go towards paying down our world-record national debt of $16.4 trillions that was not even addressed by the bill. Economists have predicted that all the expenditure this bill allows will raise the national debt to $20 trillion during the next ten years.

Let us take a look at what else this bill will do to the economy and the American people. For starters, the bill extends for another year Goldman Sachs and Bank of America’s tax break by moving their headquarters to the “Liberty Zone”, a post 9/11 area where the World Trade centers once stood. This tax provision was created to help revitalize Lower Manhattan’s small businesses but instead helped out these two mega-bailed-out banks and helped to subsidize the construction of luxury apartments. Goldman Sachs alone was reported to have received $1.6 billion in tax free financing of its new building.

The Extension of the Active Financing Exception of Sub-part F is a very fancily-worded trade tax loophole; it extends a bill created in 1997 that allows American companies to avoid paying taxes on income from certain transactions called “active financing.” This loophole, a credit of up to $9 billion, basically encourages American companies to move overseas and thus outsource employment from Americans. One of the biggest corporations to abuse this loophole is General Electric (GE).

Hollywood catches a break with a subsidy called “Extension of special expending rules for certain film and television productions,” meaning that corporations such as Disney will continue to receive tax breaks for filming three-quarters of their films in the United States and get more tax breaks if they film in an underprivileged area, costing taxpayers about $150 million dollars.

NASCAR gets a tax break of $43 million over the next two years to encourage new tracks and racing facilities to be constructed so they can compete with other theme parks. The clean-energies provision will not only provide subsidies to “green energy” production such as wind power, but also help to keep the coal-mining industry afloat by calling Indian Land coal clean, at $1.2 billion a year for ten years.

Credit for Expenditures for Maintaining Railroad Tracks provides a tax credit of $331 million dollars for short-line railroads to help offset the cost of maintaining railroad tracks they own or lease. The ongoing fear is that these rails would discontinue due to maintenance issues, thus interrupting the shipping process.

Some of the seemingly better points of the new bill are that Unemployment Benefits and its tiers have been extended, at least for another year, but expect a raging debate about it again upon its expiration. Taxes will stay as is for the middle class for now; but counter-productively, the lowered payroll tax that was implemented in 2011 expired on Monday and will go back to 6.2 percent, up from 4.2 percent. This two percent increase will leave about 160 million American workers with smaller paychecks and, in turn, will surely cause a decrease in economic stimulus (which was why the payroll tax was decreased in the first place), seeing as the average household will be out of about $35 to $180 a week, depending on its income.

For lower-income families, Earned-Income Credit, Child-Tax Credit and other college-tuition credits will still hold true for at least another five years, and the Child-Dependent Care Tax Credit will become permanent, relieving parents in need of childcare by up to 35%. But still, the payroll-tax increase will stun this fragile class, along with almost every working family in the United States. So what do we have to thank congress and our president for? If corporations didn’t have loopholes like the Active Financing tax dodge, billions of dollars could have been generated back into America’s economy and could have possibly avoided layoffs and thus halted the rise in Unemployment-Benefit requests by keeping our factories open and not shipping our jobs over to third-world countries. If real living wages were paid out by corporations to the lower-income workforce, then maybe there would be no need for any Earned-Income Credit and other tax credits. If congress and the presidents (past and present) had any ethics at all, these looming fiscal collapses could have canceled each other out or never have existed in the first place.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, three, four and five by Peter Patau. Photograph two by Gilbert Mercier.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Gilbert Mercier.

By Dady Chery and Gilbert Mercier

Solving problems with violence is as American as apple pie

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has become public enemy number one amongst left-leaning Americans since the most recent incident of random shooting. Is blaming the NRA a convenient way for Americans to avoid some necessary soul searching: a refusal to address the deeply-rooted cultural problem of violence being the preferred method of conflict resolution and most popular source of entertainment in areas that include sports, movies, TV, and video games? In essence, violence provides the backdrop to nearly all aspects of life in the United States. The government has glamorized violence by conducting endless wars, maintaining a gargantuan prison system, and keeping the death penalty legal. The US economy has increasingly become a war economy since 2001, and the business of death is booming. Recruitment centers for the US military are popping up in every high school and shopping mall. Television and cinema advertisements for the Marines have the slick and sexy look of Hollywood trailers. “Be all you can be!” says Uncle Sam, who carefully omits from his sales pitch that the main requirements for the job are the willingness to kill and get killed.

Can one blame the NRA when the US president runs a kill list from the White House?

A couple of days after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, president Obama’s approval rating jumped up more than five percent. Mr. Obama was proud and excited to take responsibility for the extrajudicial killing: “shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda.” Everywhere, newspaper headlines shouted “We took him out!” and the US public glowed from the pleasure of doing away with their favorite bogeyman. Killing people for the US federal government has become a quite simple affair that can even be done remotely, as in a video game, with drones that reach anywhere in the world from Yemen to Pakistan. The countless innocent victims of these drone attacks are called “collateral damage.” Most people in the US could care less about them, the understanding being that it is all right to kill people who had the bad luck to go to a market, mosque, or wedding at the wrong time.

So a man loses his job and kills his boss and numerous colleagues at his place of work.  This has become so common that it is called “going postal,” or more politely, “workplace violence.” Every year, more than 10 Americans on average are gunned down in such workplace killing sprees. The enemy is quite close, especially for women. For example, of 429,729 homicide FBI files examined by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, 13,670 (or 3%) were cases in which a husband killed his wife. Thus, in their more intimate roles as jilted lovers or unloved sons, a small fraction of men murder not only their mates or parents but also everyone else who happens to be nearby at the wrong time.  Why should collateral damage be solely the purview of the President? After all, he is considered to be the country’s ultimate role model. And why should Americans be surprised by an endemic violence problem when their role model, their foremost example of what one does with power, runs an assassination program directly from the White House?

Guns and America: A love affair

One week after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mr. Wayne LaPierre broke the NRA’s silence with a press conference. LaPierre argued that only more guns in the hands of “good guys” could stop America’s killing spree.

“I call on Congress today to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. Innocent lives might have been spared if armed security was present at Sandy Hook. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said LaPierre. Besides this “good guy with gun” versus “bad guy with guns” argument, reminiscent of a John Wayne Western movie cliche, LaPierre blamed the mass shootings on popular culture like “vicious, violent video games” such as ‘Bulletstorm’, ‘Grand Theft Auto’, ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Splatterhouse’ and on movies such as ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Natural Born Killer’ for “portraying life as a joke and murder as a way of life. In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing on ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes,” added LaPierre.

The supposed adverse effect of popular culture on vulnerable minds is a perennial argument that gets brought up after each shooting, although the details vary. But this argument is about as sound as blaming a flood on the movie “Waterworld.” Violence is ubiquitous in American life, and it is quite natural that it should pervade American fantasies and popular culture.

Who are LaPierre’s “good guys?” Might they be the policemen who routinely criminalize and kill innocent black youths in urban centers? Might they be part of the growing security sector? Or could they be the teenage students who meet a life-size cardboard cutout of a machine-gun toting soldier at the entrance to their high schools every day? One moment of impatience about growing into full adulthood is all it takes for them to sign away their lives. Thus the dear children survive elementary school, junior high school, and finally high school, only to be sent off to kill people in places like Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There they learn not to distinguish those who are defending their countries from invasion from those who either cannot fight (like children and the elderly) or choose not to fight. The cost is their very soul. Many return hollowed out and suicidal.

A culture of death

By far the most violent practice of the US is capital punishment, in which a person is made completely defenseless and then killed in cold blood by the state with the collusion of its citizens. The shooters, who are well aware of this, typically conclude their sprees in a quick suicide, thus depriving the state of the sadistic process involving a protracted stay on death row and numerous appeals. The practice of the death penalty is all the more gruesome for its discrimination based on race and the innocence of many of those killed.  An Innocence Project study in 2011 discovered that, of 230 individuals exonerated in the US by DNA Testing, 17 had been sentenced to die.

For US presidential candidates, the support of capital punishment has become a rite of passage: the ultimate proof of their willingness to kill the innocent so as to support an expansion of US wars and weapons sales. Former US President Clinton suspended his presidential campaign so he could return to Arkansas to make sure Ricky Ray Rector was executed. Rector was so mentally impaired and clueless about his fate that, before his execution, he asked the guards to save his pecan pie “for later.” On the evening of George W. Bush’s inauguration as Governor, the state of Texas executed Mario Marquez, who was brain damaged and had the skills of a seven-year old; later, when Mr. Bush was a presidential candidate, he mocked Karla Faye Tucker in an interview a year after her execution. On November 6, while Mr. Obama celebrated his reelection with an elated public by hugging his wife, mentally-ill Oklahoma inmate Garry Allen, who had been watching the election with great enthusiasm, was executed.

The violence of the state, domestically and abroad, is pervasive. It is celebrated: even sexy. Violence breeds more violence and, in a sense, we have become collateral damage.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, two, three and seven by United States Marine Corps. Photographs five and six by Joe Loong.

The Pentagon released a sobering report on Monday December 10, on the war in Afghanistan. The report was ready before the United States presidential election in early November but not made available to “respect” the election cycle. The delay from the Pentagon can only be viewed as an attempt by the Obama administration to keep the bleak findings of the report from the American public before they went to the polls. During the election charade, the 11-year war in Afghanistan, like any other meaningful US foreign-policy topic, was conveniently ignored by both candidates. The war is unpopular, and it has slowly but surely become the forgotten war, even though 68,000 US troops are still involved in Afghanistan’s quagmire.

Endless war or transition to a Taliban takeover

The raw numbers are grim, as the prospect of a real withdrawal by the US  in 2014 seems increasingly unlikely, unless the Obama administration declares victory and shortly afterwards just lets the Taliban take over. According to the Pentagon, only one of the 23 brigades of the Afghan National Army would be able to operate without NATO support. According to official data from the Department of Defense, since 2001, the conflict has cost US taxpayers more than $500 billion, and 2,146 American troops have died. In this war of attrition, thousands of NATO troops have already died and will keep dying in vain.

The Pentagon report spans from April 1 to September 30, 2012. “During the reporting period, enemy initiated attacks (EIAs) were up one percent compared to the same period last year. The campaign continued to face challenges including a rise of insider attacks. The insurgency’s safe havens in Pakistan, the limited institutional capacity of the Afghan government, and endemic corruption remain the greatest risks to long-term stability and sustainable security in Afghanistan. The Taliban-led insurgency and its al-Qaeda affiliates operate from sanctuaries in Pakistan. Although the insurgency’s kinetic capabilities have declined from their peak in 2010, the insurgents remain resilient and determined, and will likely attempt to regain lost ground and influence through continued assassinations, intimidation, high-profile attacks, and the emplacement of IEDs ( improvised explosive devices). Widespread corruption continues to limit the effectiveness and legitimacy of the Afghan government,” says the 172 page Pentagon report. US taxpayers should know that, according to the Pentagon, the estimated cost of the report or study for the Department of Defense was around $161,000 for the 2012 fiscal year. This included $23,000 in “expenses” and $138,000 in “DOD labor.”

Lesson from Vietnam: Defeating a skilled and determined guerrilla army is militarily impossible

History is not America’s forte. The United States of America suffers from amnesia when it comes to the valuable lessons that the country should have learned from Vietnam. If people had done their research in Washington before impulsively invading Afghanistan in 2001, they would have reconsidered their actions after learning that nobody has ever defeated recent history’s best guerrilla force: the Pashtuns. The Taliban are mostly Pashtuns, and this fearless tribe has won the well-deserved reputation of providing a “burial ground” for empires. They did this with the British empire and, in the 1980s, with the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration played a pivotal role in arming and funding what he called Afghanistan’s “freedom fighters” when they were taking on the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union. A few decades later, Reagan’s freedom-fighter friends became the Taliban. Washington never made an effort to understand the Taliban and the reasons why they are such a tough and resilient enemy.

The late French President General Charles de Gaulle once said: “You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.” De Gaulle was correct in his assessment of America’s geopolitical IQ. More than 50,000 US troops died in vain in Vietnam to maintain an illegitimate and corrupt government, all in the name of countering the danger of communism’s “domino effect.” Three million Vietnamese were killed in that conflict. The same cold-war rationale was at play when Reagan was a crucial ally of Osama Bin Laden and his friends. This absurdly short-sighted, one-train-behind, US foreign policy is now being applied to Afghanistan, Pakistan — with the drone attacks — and of course Syria, where the US is de facto supporting a Talibanization of the country.

By Andrea Egizi

Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern seaboard a month ago and left a path of destruction from the Caribbean to the Northeastern United States. In its wake, thousands of residents have been stranded without power, food, clean water, lodging and heat. Those who have been displaced have either been staying with relatives, moved into temporary Red Cross and FEMA shelters only to be relocated to either far off private shelters and churches, or thrown onto the streets.

The mission statement of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is to “support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain, and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate all hazards.” For those who have become victims of this never-before-seen super storm, most likely will disagree with this mission statement and response time of FEMA. One such hard hit area is Atlantic City. This East Coast gambling Mecca is a densely populated tourist region on the northern most point of Absecon Island and is know for it’s transient population of the casino industry. Before the storm reached the coast, the whole barrier island chain was issued a mandatory evacuation and ended up taking a direct hit from the storm sustaining major wind damages and over 80 percent of the island was flooded. The result has been a housing nightmare for not only homeowners, but for the poorer renting residents and who are being denied and/or have pending FEMA checks due to landlord illegalities such as unregistered/unlicensed multiple family homes and single rooms for rent.

These legitimate candidates for FEMA relief are the hub of the denials and have to resort to staying with family members or go to the shelters. The Red Cross set up several temporary shelters in offshore high schools for anyone who lived in mandatory evacuation areas but had to be closed a week later to allow for the schools to reopen. Those leftover evacuees were then shipped to the FEMA assigned Atlantic City Convention Center where the connecting Sheraton Hotel and the large convention room would be used as lodging families. Sadly, the Convention Center and Sheraton shut down with one days notice after being open for only a little over a week. Many of the families moved onto the local homeless shelter where overcrowding and sanitation has been an on going issue.

Kristopher Irizarry-Hosekema, a displaced and disabled Atlantic City resident who suffers from MS and seizures, spent a few days in the Convention Center with his service dog, Birdie. “The Convention Center looked like a police state,” Irizarry-Hokesema said. “There were local and state police; even corrections officers, but no FEMA workers to be found except for two men who were taking applications for disaster relief. I had many questions on what was going on and received no answers, only heckling from the police when I threatened to go to the press about the incompetence of FEMA when I found out that volunteers and supplies were being turned away at the door when they were desperately needed.”

Meanwhile in Freeport Long Island, Sandy destroyed massive amounts of public and private property and and left 90 percent of the city without power for up to three weeks. A local homeowner, who would rather remain anonymous, had FEMA reject her claim for disaster relief via mail ironically the same day FEMA workers finally made it to her home to survey the damage after a week of clean-up had already begun. The letter, the homeowner claimed, noted that she and her husband were not eligible for compensation because they lived in a flood zone and was required to have flood insurance. FEMA claimed the insurance money would be enough to cover all the damages. “We only had a basic flood insurance policy,” the homeowner said. “The insurance company only wants to pay us $9,000 when the damage to our home is somewhere around $80,000. We had to pull up all the carpets, get rid of all our furniture and fix the foundation not to mention the clean up of all the sand and mold left behind.”

In Queens New York, a similar story has emerged. The Rockaways has been described as the worst hit region of the hurricane where 111 homes burned to the ground and damage was widespread across the entire peninsula. An optional evacuation order was placed and many residents stayed put in their homes thinking Sandy was going to be a dud like Irene was fourteen months prior. The hurricane and fires swept the Rockaways and desperate residents were left stranded with no immediate help arriving. Entire communities were out on the beach keeping warm with bonfires and were running short on what little supplies they had left. FEMA again was a no-show. Instead, homegrown community initiatives came into configuration with a neighbor-helping-neighbor feel to it. One of he first to arrive was the Occupy Movement inspired Occupy Sandy Recovery.

They were able to put boots on the ground and organize supply drives almost immediately after the hurricane struck using boardwalk stores ruined by flood-waters as food, water and clothing distribution centers along with first aid stations with volunteer nurses. Greenpeace arrived shortly after that with solar powered trucks used for charging stations so families could get in touch with loved ones. Even the Hallowed Sons Motorcycle Club out of Brooklyn were offering help in other hard hit areas on Staten Island by cooking hot meals and offering neighborhood protection from looters. “We walked around neighborhoods asking people what they needed,” said Diego Ibanez, a Sunset Park resident and Occupy Sandy Organizer, “and people thought we were FEMA. When we told them we were volunteers and had nothing to do with FEMA they were completely shocked. They were even more shocked at our quick response and to receive help and supplies from everyday people and not the government.”

When FEMA finally arrived days later, they set up in the affluent neighborhood of Belle Harbor in the Rockaways. They approached members of the different relief groups and asked questions about their relief efforts. “FEMA made it clear to us that they were all about private property and showed very little empathy towards the situation the community was in,” added Ibanez. “They even left behind two FEMA surveyors when the announcement was made to evacuate the Rockaways for the Noreaster that was going to hit. The two wayward FEMA workers came to us in a panic when they realized they were left behind. We fed them and arranged their transportation off the peninsula.”

FEMA’s response has been highly criticized by those who have been affected on the East Coast. Food, bottled water, generators, shelter, clothing and gasoline shortages have been reported all throughout the hurricane zone when the FEMA warehouse in Atlanta Georgia remains stocked to the gills and has had plenty of notice of the impending storm. Reports of FEMA’s Camp Freedom For Hurricane Sandy Relief in Oceanport, New Jersey have suggested incompetence at every level. The press has been turned away from entering the camp and reports from inside have said that there is limited heat and sanitation. It was also reported that once the press was catching wind of the dire conditions at the camp, the wi-fi and other electricity had been restricted.

President Obama had the photo shoot of his career posing with Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in Brigantine two days after the storm. Christie sang the praises of the Commander in Chief for his ongoing hurricane relief efforts and turned his back on his own political party less than a week before the presidential election. At that early stage of the recovery, no one knew exactly the immensity of the damage zone and Obama was able to keep face with the majority of the liberal press on his side. But where is Obama now? Where are the millions of dollars he set aside for hurricane relief? Where are the FEMA checks for victim losses?

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, FEMA’s reaction was no different under the Bush administration than with the Obama administration. The similarities are so obvious and yet are going undetected by the mainstream-Obama praising media. Are the blinders on so tight that they can’t see that volunteer and professional help was turned away when they were needed the most? Or that government staffed distribution centers were not set up and running beforehand? And how about the federal funds that were mishandled for the victims? Then President Bush was completely trashed by the media for being cold and insensitive to the poor of New Orleans and yet President Obama seems to be getting the free pass. In his 2008 election speeches, Obama talked and talked about accountability. Well now Mr. President, we need you to be held accountable for your failures of one of your top government agencies.

Editor’s Note: Andrea Egizi is a journalist who focuses mainly on issues of ethics, equality and human rights. She is currently working on a novel. Photographs two, three, four and five of Sandy’s immediate aftermath by Dr. Pavloff. Photographs one, six, seven, eight and nine of Katrina’s aftermath by Gilbert Mercier.

“I am for truth, no matter who tells it. I am for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.” Malcom X

This statement from Malcom X applies directly to Bradley Manning and his courageous decision to put his life and freedom on the line to bring critical information to the public. November 27, 2012 is an international day of action in solidarity with Bradley Manning. Besides the United States, protests will be held in England, Canada, and Australia. In the US and England, the event is organized and sponsored by Veterans for Peace. During a hearing scheduled tomorrow, the defense for Manning intends to argue that all charges should be dismissed on account of “unlawful pretrial punishment.”

Attorney David Coombs will shed light on the abuse perpetrated on Private Manning while he was incarcerated in Quantico, Virginia. The charges to be presented by Coombs are well known, documented, and very damaging to the US military. Private Manning was held for nine months in solitary confinement under conditions described by UN chief rapporteur on torture Juan E. Mendez as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.”

It has been two and half years since Manning was taken into custody while serving in Kuwait. Bradley Manning was charged, because of the release to Wikileaks, with “aiding the enemy”: a capital offense for which he could be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. When Manning was transferred from Kuwait to Quantico Brig in July 2010, the US army issued the following statement:“Preferral of charges represents an accusation only; Manning is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty. The case will be processed in accordance with normal procedure under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

However, the US military, and by extension the US government, have acted with complete disregard for their own legal framework. Manning was denied “a speedy trial,” as stipulated in the military code, and the codified rule of 120 days maximum became 635 days. Manning was also subjected to well-documented illegal pretrial punishment. The United States of America, under the Obama administration, often lectures other countries on their human-rights and justice-system records. But this is fundamentally hypocritical, considering the flagrant disrespect of basic principles of justice or even international laws exercised by the current and previous US administrations. Despite promises made by candidate Barack Obama all the way back in 2008, Guantanamo is still “open for business.” If the Bush administration was rightly condemned by the international community for its CIA rendition and torture programs, the Obama  administration is currently running an extensive  assassination program in total breach of countries’ sovereignty. The fate of Bradley Manning should be a concern for anyone who values truth and justice. In a real democracy, to expose the truth about war crimes should not be a crime but instead be praised as a public service.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Save Bradley Network.