Forum Post: Why Did Police Beat an Elderly Man for Jaywalking?
Posted 10 years ago on Jan. 23, 2014, 3:49 p.m. EST by LeoYo
(5909)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Why Did Police Beat an Elderly Man for Jaywalking?
Wednesday, 22 January 2014 15:12 By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21394-why-did-police-beat-an-elderly-man-for-jaywalking
84-year-old Kang Wong is recovering today from a brutal attack on the streets of New York City.
Wong’s attackers jumped him as he jaywalked across a busy street in Manhattan, threw him up against a wall, and left him with cuts all across his face that have since been sealed up with four metal staples.
The attackers then brought Wong to the nearest police station, where he was booked on charges of jaywalking and resisting arrest.
Kang Wong’s attackers, you see, were New York City cops.
That city’s police commissioner, Bill Bratton, has said that excessive force wasn’t used in his arrest, but that statement doesn’t really face up to much muster. It’s pretty clear that the cops overreacted.
Wong doesn’t speak any English, and if it looked like he was resisting the officers in question, that’s almost certainly because he didn’t understand a word they were saying.
Understandably, his family now plans on pressing charges.
Wong’s brutal arrest is outrageous in its own right, but it also speaks to the broader problem of police brutality in this country. In some places, police culture is very professional; in others it’s just plain militaristic.
I know this from personal experience.
Back in 1996, the Olympics were coming to Atlanta. Just like right now, with Sochi trying to ramp up their security, Atlanta needed more security for the Olympics than was available from just the local police.
At the time, I was writing a novel about a private detective, and shadowing an Atlanta PI, a now-longtime friend named DeWitt Wannamaker, who has held a variety of jobs in law enforcement.
The Georgia Police Academy had opened their doors to civilians that year with an “executive protection” training course for people who’d work for Olympic athletes and visiting VIPs, and DeWitt got me into the course. I ended up not only completing the course but getting licensed for two years as a private detective in the state of Georgia.
Most of the guys going through the course were small-town cops who’d never had any professional training at all, and what I discovered was that there are a lot of really good, really dedicated, and really smart people who aspire to or work in law enforcement.
I also discovered that there are a small number of yahoos who are just really, really excited about the chance to get a gun and a billy club and have the legal authority to kick the stuffing out of people. I encountered one of those guys in the “hand to hand” part of the Academy’s course, and still remember the bruises.
It’s cops like that who do things like beat up an 84-year-old man for jaywalking and it’s cops like that who crack open a protestor’s head at an Occupy Wall Street protest.
Part of this, I believe, has to do with how we talk about law enforcement in the United States. We don’t solve crime, we “fight” it; we don’t have a campaign to stop drug addiction, we have a “War on Drugs.”
We tell cops that they’re in a battle with crime, and then they act accordingly: like soldiers, not public servants.
It shouldn’t be any surprise, then, that the number of SWAT team deployments - something unheard of when I was growing up - jumped from around one hundred in the 1970s to over 50,000 in 2005.
While we’ve turned our public servants into warriors, we’ve started to give up - at the federal level, at least - on the whole idea of community policing.
The federal Community Oriented Policing Services program, or COPS, which provides resources for local police forces around the country was initiated in 1994 during the Clinton administration as part of an effort to put 100,000 police officers on America’s streets.
The idea was to get officers out into the community where they could form relationships with everyday people and act more like teachers than soldiers.
Madison, Wisconsin Police Officer Katie Adler is a great example of the kind of person the COPS program was meant to create.
She is a neighborhood officer in the crime-ridden North Side area of Madison. Unlike regular patrol cops in Madison, neighborhood officers are put in at-risk communities to help make a difference and build relationships with citizens in the hopes preventing future crime.
Officer Katie, as everyone calls her, is beloved in the communities that she patrols, so much so that kids follow her wherever she goes. She’s even inspiring children in the communities to become police officers when they grow up.
But the promise of every neighborhood having an Officer Katie is becoming increasingly unlikely.
That’s because ever since the Bush administration, funding for the COPS program has been continually slashed by hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 2010, $792 million was allotted in the form of federal grants under the COPS program for local police forces across the country; by 2012, that number shrank to just $199 million.
We need to reverse this trend and ramp up funding for community policing.
Programs like COPS encourage law enforcement agencies to do more than just catch criminals. They encourage them to work with communities to create a culture of trust that breaks down the barrier between cops and civilians. They also encourage police officers, police officers like Katie Adler, to work towards solving the root causes of crime as opposed to just trying to stop its symptoms.
Not all police officers are bad guys. The vast majority, in my experience, actually want to do good by their community. But it’s clear that by turning our law enforcement agencies into battalions, we’ve created an environment where violence is both more acceptable and more likely.
If we really want to prevent people like Kang Wong from being brutalized at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect them, then we need to totally rethink what it means to be a police officer in America.
Part of this means drawing down wasteful and ineffective initiatives like Nixon’s War on Drugs that do nothing but alienate already vulnerable communities from law enforcement.
But we need to go bigger than that. We need to make a commitment to funding the COPS program so that police work is seen not just as a way to catch the bad guys, but as a way to serve communities all across the country.
We also need to pay police as professionals and hold them to professional standards just like we do other professions.
This won’t stop all police brutality, but it will definitely go a long way towards making sure that our streets become less of a battle zone and more of a place where we can all learn to live with each other in peace.
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication.
Gar Alperovitz: "Understanding the Imperialist System Changed My Life"
Thursday, 23 January 2014 11:08 By Paul Jay, The Real News Network | Video Interview
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21405-gar-alperovitz-understanding-the-imperialist-system-changed-my-life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=71PunJSeY0Q
TRANSCRIPT:
JAY: So it's somewhere along the line here that you start looking into and questioning the whole use--Americans' use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II.
ALPEROVITZ: Yes. I started my PhD thesis on how Americans during World War II--this was at Cambridge; I was at the University of Cambridge--how Americans during World War II began to plan for organizing and controlling the global economic system. They wanted to run it. And they wanted to run it for lots of reasons, capitalist reasons, but also ideologically they thought it would--this was the way to make for a democracy, liberty, freedom. That was all part of the ideology. And I was looking at how they planned that.
And they did plan it. They had a whole theory of what we call globalization now. And free market things you see today are extensions of that theory. And they had control. Everybody else had been defeated. So when I was--I was interested in that founding period.
And as I went through it, it became clear in 1945 that they ran into the Russians in Eastern Europe. And how do you control the European economy if the Russians are there? That's what I was studying.
And it turns out there are discontinuities in the negotiations over Europe in the spring of 1945. The U.S. gets very tough: we're going to have to move our troops to Japan; we'd better have a showdown with the Russians now before we move. And then all of a sudden they relax and they start being very nice to the Russians. And why did that happen is what really intrigued me. Not explained.
Well, what happened is the secretary of war came into the president's office and he says, now is not the time (in April 1945) to have a showdown. Wait for a few months and I'll give you something better--namely, the atomic bomb.
JAY: Alright. We're going to do a whole segment on this, 'cause Gar wrote a very important book on the whole question of was there any real military reason for using the atomic bomb at the end of the war, and that's going to be part two of this interview. So we're not going to get into the whole story of the bomb now, but we'll do it in the next part.
But just in terms of your own thinking about the world and what you would be doing with your life, was this a pivotal moment when you kind of realize (and to give--this is a spoiler for the next thing) that the bomb--there were no real military reasons, you conclude, and this is a rather cynical use of the bomb? What does that do to your feeling about America and what you're going to do with your life?
ALPEROVITZ: Well, the atomic bomb story turns out to be part of it. But it was deeper, because if you look back at the history of American imperialism, there are millions and millions of people who suffered under the 100 years of the [incompr.] So I was building up to it; and indeed the bomb was the crescendo, but I had been building up to a different understanding long before that. So it crystallized something.
We're going to talk about this later, but the most significant moment was after the bomb was used. After the Japanese publicly surrendered (Radio Tokyo) but before the papers had arrived, they ordered the largest bombing raid in world history--1,400 bombers. And that tells you something about the culture and the ideology in the ongoing intensity of the system that was generating all this and the culture behind it.
So it's deeper than the bomb decision. It's really implicated in the culture and the institutions.
JAY: So the process leading up to and this, as you say, as the crescendo, your understanding of the use of the bomb, this completes a phase, at least, of your radicalization, can I say?
ALPEROVITZ: Yes, in some sense. Yes.
JAY: And what's your experience during the Vietnam War?
ALPEROVITZ: Well, I was involved in the Senate at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which laid the basis for expanding it, and it was obvious to me that this was a phony.
JAY: Okay. Really quickly, for some of our younger viewers, just a ship, an American naval ship gets blown up in the Gulf of Tonkin.
ALPEROVITZ: Attacked.
JAY: Gets attacked, I'm sorry. Not blown up. Gets attacked. And later we learn that this was essentially what they're now calling a false flag operation.
ALPEROVITZ: Yeah. It was--there was--something happened in the Gulf of Tonkin off of Vietnam. Some speedboats or--it probably didn't actually do much damage, if any. And that was the excuse, just as we went into the Iraq War, for what was called the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave the president authority to go to war in Vietnam. And it was a phony. It's now known to be a phony. But it seemed to me and to several people working in the Senate it was a phony at the time, and I happened to write the legislation to try to limit it. We got it up and we got the majority leader to say, yes, this has got to be limited, making a record, which is supposed to mean the interpretation of the law. But we didn't get a vote, so it was--you know, it was a gesture to try to limit it.
They were going to war. They understood what they were doing. And it was just like going into the recent war in Iraq. It was a calculated move, and they wanted to go, and they did it.
JAY: And what do you do?
ALPEROVITZ: Well, I was finishing up in the Senate. My book on the atomic bomb came out in 1965, the 20th anniversary. I was still working in the Senate. It was front page of The New York Times, front page of The Washington Post, saying the U.S. dropped the bomb to scare the Russians, which is the major, slightly overdramatic interpretation. And I was working in the Senate. So it was a remarkable moment.
The reviewer in The New York Times was Clinton Anderson, who was the chief--had been in Truman's cabinet. He was the chief of the nuclear lobby. And he reviewed it. And I ran into him one day in the Senate, and he said, oh, I didn't realize you were Gaylord Nelson's assistant; I would have written a different review, son. It's the way the game is played.
JAY: I mean, what you did is question something rather at the core of the postwar American narrative. This is not America the good guy defending peace and democracy and such; this is--America's using a weapon of mass destruction to make a political point.
ALPEROVITZ: That's right. That's the argument. And I think that's--most people around the world understand that, and a good part of the American historical community understands that, though it still debated.
Most historians now agree the bomb was totally unnecessary. They understand that, both in advance and in retrospect. Yes, in retrospect for sure, and in advance the intelligence estimate said the war could end easily. We know that now. And then a number of historians agree, and around, outside United States far more, that to threaten the Russians, implicitly threaten the Russians was a big part of the decision.
But at that moment, that was big news and shocking and very dramatic.
JAY: Well, you're accusing the president and the military leadership of slaughtering tens of thousands of people.
ALPEROVITZ: Hundreds of thousands.
JAY: Hundreds of thousands of people.
ALPEROVITZ: Civilians.
JAY: Civilians, and then unleashing a weapon that--I know some of the critique of this is there may have been as many people killed in conventional bombing, but it opened the door to the use of this kind of weapon that begins what, you know, could have been and still might be the end of the world.
ALPEROVITZ: And unnecessarily, without reason. Not--you mentioned the civilian leadership and the military. So far as we know, the military didn't want to do it. All the major generals, all of them, with one minor exception, and all of the admirals involved went public after the war saying the bomb was totally unnecessary--Eisenhower, McArthur. Admiral--the chief of staff of the president, the very conservative Admiral Leahy, and a good friend, went public saying it was barbaric. LeMay, Curtis LeMay, the tough Air Force general, went public saying this was totally unnecessary. The military, so far as we can tell, was not for this.
JAY: So this was all driven by Truman.
ALPEROVITZ: By Truman and his secretary of state, Byrnes, who was coming out of diplomacy, not out of the military. The military was--many of them were shocked by it.
JAY: But now you write this. You're in the Senate. You have unraveled, you know, one of the most important myths of Americanism. Vietnam War. Then what?
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21405-gar-alperovitz-understanding-the-imperialist-system-changed-my-life
I see jaywalkers everyday. They could pay a $250 fine for that. Police may know jaywalking, parking violations, traffic violations, but civil rights, stand your ground and life or death situation assessment are different matters.
This is the coldest winter in years. Record low temperatures dot the Northeast and the Midwest. Local police are called regularly to clear out restaurants, coffee houses, libraries, public areas all around New York City. In Flushing, NY McDonald's called the police to remove senior citizens that have been in the restaurant beyond a 20-minute seating limit. This incident was reported in the New York Times. A cashier socked a customer over a Happy Meal in Brooklyn, recently, according to the New York Post. Should anyone consider they have a right to resist being forced out into sub-freezing temperatures in a civilized, egalitarian, democratic society?
FightingMcDonald's for the Right to Sit for more than 30 minutes
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/nyregion/fighting-a-mcdonalds-for-the-right-to-sit-and-sit-and-sit.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
McDonald Employee Slugs Customer
http://nypost.com/2014/01/22/suit-mcdonalds-cashier-slugged-me-over-sandwich/
Are the police supposed to serve and protect: the public, the individual, both or neither? Assume local police are supposed defend, support, and protect the US Constitution.
In particular the RNC 2004 was held here in New York City. It seemed that NYPD was protecting the Republican Party image in front of national media while violating the civil rights of hundreds of ordinary people in New York.
Did NYPD object to RNC 2004 coming to New York City for the obvious reasons? If there was an orange alert, which means high risk of terrorist attack, New York City should have denied permission for Republican Party to convene here in 2004 jeopardizing the lives and safety of over 8 million New Yorkers, along with the heads of the Republican Party and American government. The RNC would have to find another venue where there would be less probability of terrorist attack, danger and damage, such as having something closer to a green alert, which means a low risk, for example Carson City, Nevada, which may have been at lower risk of attack.
If New York had denied permission for RNC to be held here then business would have gone on as usual, no one would have had to take time to protest RNC 2004 being held here, New Yorkers would not have had their civil rights violated, Democrats would not have lost another election, and New York City would not have to pay an $18 million settlement.
RNC 2004 in New York City projected a false image that the Bush policies and administration were successful, that Bush was doing a good job, and he deserved 4 more years. The same image from Carson City would be harder to sell with balloons, confetti in the desert.
How can the local police know how to serve and protect anyone if they don’t know when they are violating civil rights of hundreds of people? They don’t know or they don’t care. The Commissioner doesn’t know or doesn’t care. The attorneys for the city don’t know or don’t care. They are just following orders. The public has to wait nearly a decade for a verdict on the obvious. The City of New York denies any wrong doing. The City that doesn’t own up to mistakes, or know right from wrong. The city of New York has agreed to pay $18m to settle a civil rights claim from hundreds of protesters who were rounded up and detained in overcrowded and dirty conditions after they rallied outside the 2004 Republican National Convention. The settlement, between city hall and almost 500 individuals, brings to an end a long-running sore between the overwhelmingly peaceful protesters and the New York police department (NYPD) that had been pursuing aggressive surveillance and detention tactics in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. More than 1,800 people, including teenagers and many uninvolved bystanders, were caught up in the massive police sweep outside the convention that was held to mark the nomination of George W Bush for a second presidential term. The deal, announced by the law department of the city of New York on Wednesday, does not come down on either side of the argument. It admits no liability on the part of the NYPD, noting that for nine years City Hall and the police department “had vigorously defended all these lawsuits, maintaining that the conduct of the police had at all times been constitutional”.
NYC Settles Class Action in RNC 2004 Complaint
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/new-york-agrees-settlement-2004-republican-convention
Kang Wong, the New Yorker victimized by the jaywalking scandal, will sue New York City for $5 million. The police didn’t know roughing up an 84-yr old would lead to a complaint against them.
Jaywalker senior will sue
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-man-ticketed-jaywalking-file-5b-lawsuit-article-1.1592002
Kang hadn’t committed an armed robbery, hadn’t used a bogus credit card to purchase merchandise, hadn’t been caught drawing graffiti. He was accused of jaywalking. Something thousands of New Yorkers do everyday with little thought about it.
If the Mayor of New York City announces there is an advisory that people should seek shelter, stay indoors, do no unnecessary travel until further notice. Will the public comply voluntarily? Should hotels and other open businesses be expected to open their doors and permit anyone that approaches to enter and stay until the emergency is over?
North Carolina Complaint Alleges Excessive Force by Police in Schools
Monday, 27 January 2014 09:35 By Susan Ferriss, The Center for Public Integrity | Report
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21463-north-carolina-complaint-alleges-excessive-force-by-police-in-schools
Just days after the Obama Administration urged schools to back off harsh school discipline, a federal civil rights complaint filed in North Carolina this week alleges that school police have “violently tackled” students, pepper-sprayed teens and handcuffed, interrogated and arrested students on baseless accusations without informing them of their rights or calling parents.
The complaint filed Wednesday on behalf of eight Wake County, N.C. students recounts multiple incidents of alleged abusive police behavior, most of them involving African-American students. One alleged incident mentioned in the complaint resulted in the arrest of seven students last spring for disorderly conduct or assault after a prank involving a water balloon fight.
The incident at a Wake County public high school in Raleigh last May sparked public outcry, as media reports revealed what some parents considered an excessive police reaction. As a local TV station reported, a parent who tried to approach a school principal and talk about what he thought was excessive manhandling of students said he was confronted by officers, threatened with being Tasered and then arrested for second-degree trespassing.
“We leave those decisions up to the Raleigh PD,” a school spokeswoman told local media when asked if she thought arrests were excessive.
A slightly built 15-year-old student who was not arrested was also interviewed by local television and showed how he was bruised and scraped —and went to a hospital — after an officer forced him down on the ground.
The complaint filed Wednesday describes a host of additional allegations previously unknown to the public.
In 2011, according to the complaint, an 11th grade boy identified as T.W. was pulled out of a line while waiting for his new class schedule, asked to prove he was a student and pinned against a wall by two officers as a teacher tried to confirm to the officer that the boy was indeed a student.
An officer took the boy into the principal’s office and searched him, told him to take off his shoes and began to interrogate him about drugs and demand information about drugs — for which he allegedly told the boy he could get paid, the complaint alleges.
The boy was suspended from school for having a lighter, the complaint says, and given “a citation to adult criminal court for interfering with a police investigation.” The boy and his mother had to make four court appearances, the complaint alleges, during which the school officer told the judge that he had approached the boy initially because he looked old to be in school. Charges were dropped.
The boy — whom the complaint says continued to be harassed by the officer — eventually dropped out of school.
The complaint also alleges that a 16-year-old with severe emotional and learning disabilities was manhandled and handcuffed by a police officer during two minor incidents when he became agitated — in spite of an individual learning plan advising that the boy was best calmed by walking him through hallways and speaking to him.
The boy also was arrested after a brief altercation with a student who had bullied him, the complaint says, and put into a holding cell at a jail with adults until after 11 p.m. — all without the school informing his parents.
The complaint is filed against the Wake County Public School System, the Raleigh Police Department and a number of other law enforcement agencies. It asks for intervention from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, whose educational opportunities section has been investigating other complaints of excessive discipline and harsh policing around the country.
The Wake County school system said its leadership is reviewing the complaint and had no immediate comment. The Raleigh Police Department said in a statement it hasn’t received the complaint, so “it is too soon to know if comment on behalf of the department would be appropriate.”
“Over the course of the past five years,” the complaint claims, “the unregulated use of law enforcement officers to address school discipline matters has resulted in thousands of Wake County Public School System students, predominantly African-American students and students with disabilities being deprived of their educational rights and sent to juvenile or criminal court as a result of minor misbehavior that occurs at school.”
The complaint also says that “even though SROs (school resource officers) patrol schools on a daily basis and can have significant, life-changing impacts on the lives of students … there are no comprehensive regulations in place that clearly define the roles and limitation of law enforcement officers in addressing student behavior.”
More than a dozen organizations filed the complaint, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation and several university law clinics in the state.
The complaint says that no data has been maintained or released documenting how many students have been referred to adult court from school — which can result in permanent records for students.
In North Carolina, minors 16 and 17 are automatically referred to adult court, which jeopardizes students’ ability to put allegations of infractions behind them that should have been dealt with at school, without police involvement, groups that filed the complaint say.
Complaints about spiraling school suspensions and excessive school police intervention have been building nationally in recent years.
On Jan. 8, the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education jointly released federal guidelines — an unprecedented move — explaining and urging the use of alternatives to suspending and expelling students.
Disciplinary action that removes students for low-level infractions, research has shown, often fails to correct behavior and leaves students further behind academically, and more disengaged.
School police, the guidelines urge, should have well defined roles and limits and not get involved in routine disciplinary matters. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, in unveiling the guidelines, that “most exclusionary and disciplinary actions are for non-violent student behaviors, many of which once meant a phone call home.”
The Center for Public Integrity has investigated reports of questionable police tactics nationally inside schools, including incidents involving police in California and Utah who rounded up students who were all Latino or black — and had not been accused of any wrongdoing — but who were interrogated, forced to pose for mock mug shots and asked for information that was put into files.
North Carolina has already fallen under scrutiny because of complaints that black students have been suspended at greater rates than white students for the same types of infractions of school disciplinary policies, as the Center has reported.
This story was published by The Center for Public integrity, a nonprofit, investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
Gar Alperovitz: Nuclear Attack on Japan Was Opposed by American Military Leadership
Friday, 24 January 2014 10:35 By Paul Jay, The Real News Network | Video Interview
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21425-gar-alperovitz-nuclear-attack-on-japan-was-opposed-by-american-military-leadership
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-F4Fd0uPC3I
TRANSCRIPT:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
This is Reality Asserts Itself. We're continuing our series of interviews with Gar Alperovitz.
Now, this series is going to be primarily about America after capitalism, which is a book that Gar wrote, and we're going to take a look at what his thinking is on that. But Gar, as we learned from part one--and if you haven't watched part one, you should--he wrote a PhD thesis and then a book that led to a whole reopening of the debate or discussion about just why America dropped the nuclear bomb that ended the war with Japan after World War II. And we're going to do one segment on the basic outline of that thesis, and a little bit more about how that affected his thinking.
So thanks for joining us again, Gar.
GAR ALPEROVITZ, COFOUNDER, DEMOCRACY COLLABORATIVE: Thanks for having me.
JAY: And one more time, Gar is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and the cofounder of the Democracy Collaborative. He's also the author of several books, including America beyond Capitalism, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, and his most recent, What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution.
So thanks for joining us again.
ALPEROVITZ: Thank you.
JAY: So let's jump to the chase about the bomb. Your basic thesis was that Japan had already--essentially was ready to negotiate its surrender, and the bomb was not necessary to end the war. The contrary narrative is the bomb saved thousands of American lives, and this is war, and this is what you do in war in order to save your soldiers.
ALPEROVITZ: Yes. I think it's very clear now that the atomic bomb was totally unnecessary. The reason I say that is the intelligence studies which were available to the president in July 1945--the bomb was used in August--said very clearly that when the Russians entered the war in Japan--and we had asked them to come help, and they were about to help, the first week of August--that's the date they were supposed to come in. When that happens, this will precipitate a collapse and a crisis in Japan. They're already trying to get out of the war. They know they can't face the Russian army and us. That will end the war. The only thing you need to do is be sure to say you're not going to harm their emperor, because he's a god in their culture. And if you give that kind of assurance when the Russians come in, the war is over. American policy leaders understood that. They know that. Every historian whose studied it knows these documents are now available. So they had it available.
And more important than that, the invasion, which might have cost 25,000 lives, 30,000--that's the estimates (it was later exaggerated to 1 million)--couldn't take place for another three months because of the weather, because of getting troops. So it was easy to test whether or not the intelligence was correct. The Russians were coming in. And we knew they were going to--everyone said that the war was going to end. That was the top military understanding. And they used the bomb anyway.
So I think that's--the story is pretty clear now. Most historians know the bomb was unnecessary. There is a big debate about why it was used.
JAY: Well, that was my next question. So if it's to make a political point, what's the point?
ALPEROVITZ: Well, the documents are less clear about this, but what looks to be--there are many, many documents that say, look, this is going to give me "a hammer on those boys", meaning the Russians. That's the president talking. Another one says this is the--.
JAY: This is Truman.
ALPEROVITZ: Truman. His secretary of war says, this is the "master card" of diplomacy against the Russians, the atomic bomb. There are many, many documents that strongly suggest--particularly the secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, understood that the bomb was more a diplomatic tool than a military tool. The chief of staff of the U.S. Army and the Combined Chiefs, General Marshall, said, this is not a military decision. It has nothing to do with the military. It may be a diplomatic, political, other kind of decision, but it's not a military decision.
So, interestingly, the military--and I mentioned this, I think, in our last discussion--virtually all the major American military leaders went public after the war saying the atomic bomb was totally unnecessary. Some called it barbaric. The president's chief of staff went public. Can you imagine the chief of staff saying--and he was a good friend of the president--said, this is barbarism. I wasn't taught to kill children and women. So that's very clear.
The strongest evidence is--and you can't prove this with the available documents--that it was mainly aimed at the Russians because they wanted to use it as political pressure and a political weapon, both in Eastern Europe and in Asia, where the Cold War really was started.
JAY: And even though the Americans had been asking the Russians to get involved in Japan for a long time, it must have not been something they wanted, "The Russians Win the War with Japan"--that would not be a headline they would like to see.
ALPEROVITZ: Right. And, indeed, they wanted them in because the bomb was a theory until it was tested--might not work. Who knew? And how well would it work? So they were begging the Russians to come in. And the instance it worked, they went ahead and used it.
Moreover, they had planned to give the emperor assurances so that they could end the war quickly. And as soon as the bomb worked, they took that out of the documents, too, that they asked the Japanese to surrender. It made a big propaganda thing. But they took out the key point that we wouldn't harm their emperor-god. And everyone knew if you did that, they would keep fighting forever.
So it's not a very--it's a very unpleasant story about American diplomacy, to say the least.
JAY: Yeah, and the psyche and the potential sociopathy of the presidency and the opening of decades of Cold War that often brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
ALPEROVITZ: Yup. It's the beginning of it all.
The thing that I think's important to understand, because these people were ordinary human beings--the president, his secretary of state, they were not evil guys. They were caught up in an ideology that somehow, if we followed American strategy, we could save the world from another war, and the Russians are, they believe, communist devils. So they were operating out of a framework of ideology that dominated their thinking to the extent that 300,000 civilians were burned unnecessarily, killed. But it's a mistake to see them just as bad guys. Much more important is: how does American corporate capitalism develop that ideology? And what does it really take to reach much deeper than good guys and bad guys?
JAY: There's a great deal of detail one can get into on this, but--and as I say, we're going to get into kind of other themes in the rest of the interview. But one part of this I think is important, because you can see it show up again and again in other examples. Your book established things fairly definitively. And since, there have been other books that have established and reinforced your findings, there have been other research. As you say, I think most historians that have studied this have come to the same conclusion, that the bomb wasn't necessary to end the war.
The mass media narrative, the educational narrative is the exact opposite. Any article that talks about this talks about the bomb saved American lives in such and such. Your entire critique is as if it never happened in most mass media.
ALPEROVITZ: Mass media is true. Some--they're now having--I get high school inquiries all the time from students who are being asked to write papers about this, and they're being given--they wouldn't get to me unless they were being given my research materials and so forth. So in various parts of the country, there's something going on, and particularly the younger generation. But the mass media, except for one program done by ABC that I happened to work with and consult with, Peter Jennings, before he died, opened up this issue just once.
JAY: And this is the media just knowing that their job is to make sure the American narrative is not questioned, the official narrative doesn't get challenged?
ALPEROVITZ: No, I think what happens--.
JAY: Or are they ignorant of the work?
ALPEROVITZ: Partly ignorant. I think what really happens is there are right-wing historians who, of course, disagree, and they write big, long books. And here's another book--even though this is the common view in many parts of the world now outside the United States, the media people are caught between this guy and that guy, and they take the cautious road. They don't know enough of the--they don't want to make the judgments. They don't want to dig deep enough into it.
JAY: But there's also partly not wanting to believe that your president is capable of such a thing.
ALPEROVITZ: I think so, yes. That's part of it as well.
JAY: I mean, I remember having a discussion/debate with a relative of mine just before the Iraq War, and I was saying, there is simply no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Just listen to Hans Blix. He's saying there's nothing there. Blix keeps saying, if you know where they are, tell me; I'll go find them. And he--you know, this relative looks me in the eye and says, there is just no way I can believe that my president knowingly would start a war based on a lie. As much is he didn't like Bush, he votes Democrat, he just couldn't believe--.
ALPEROVITZ: That's right. I think that is true. I think you put your finger on something. It's very hard to believe that people would have actually done this, because it is such a brutal and vicious thing to do.
It goes further. And here's how. This is what really caught me up. After the atomic bombs were used, after the Japanese had surrendered publicly (Radio Tokyo) but before their formal papers had passed--the war was over--the United States ordered, the president ordered the largest bombing raid in world history, 1,400 bombers. It did more damage than probably Hiroshima. But the sense that people would actually do that--. I remember putting that on my mirror [incompr.] I just couldn't believe it either.
JAY: And how do the right-wing historians rationalize this?
ALPEROVITZ: They just ignore it. It's just ignored.
JAY: This idea that my president could never do such a thing, it's a narrative that's so protected--. You must know the example of--it came out in the Johnson tapes that Nixon had deliberately scuttled Johnson's negotiations with the North Vietnamese. And Johnson was very close to an end of the Vietnam War, and Nixon sends an emissary to the North Vietnamese saying, if you sign with Johnson, I'm the next president. I'm not going to go along with the agreement, but I will make the deal with you. And so the North Vietnamese don't make the deal with Johnson, and, of course, Nixon doesn't make the deal, and tens of thousands of Americans are killed, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodians. And same thing; I mean, people say, well, could--would a president of mine really deliberately do such a thing? And the answer is: yeah.
ALPEROVITZ: Yep. It is--and case by case. Some of them would--and some of them believing it was the right thing to do. I mean, that's Truman. Truman thought he was doing good, not bad.
So that's--see, that's what gets really--they actually do it. It's very hard to believe. And then, how did they [incompr.]
JAY: But Truman worked--you know, he's Roosevelt's vice president. Roosevelt says, we can work with the Russians. Roosevelt did work with the Russians. There's a whole culture of--you know, even with--I mean, Wallace is on the outs by then, who was--had previously been Roosevelt's vice president. But, I mean, it wasn't such a--you know, but we had not gotten yet to McCarthyism and such. You know, Truman didn't have to go there. But there's a very deliberate attempt to create this hysteria.
ALPEROVITZ: Yes. What Truman was--Truman was very different from Roosevelt from the beginning. I mean, during the war he publicly, in the Senate, made a speech saying, what we should do is aid the Russians so they can kill more of the Nazis and aid the Nazis to kill the Russians. I mean, he had a very different mentality, and his secretary of state had a different mentality. The whole Roosevelt crew was dumped out as soon as Roosevelt died, and that mentality came into office. It took them a long while to bring the country with them on lots of issues. It took them two or three years to really get the country behind them, because the country didn't buy that. That was not accepted.
JAY: Now, we were talking about the role of the media in kind of keeping to this official narrative. And I saw in The New York Times just the other day, there's a story about Syria, and there's a paragraph in the article, Syria having used chemical weapons, da-da-da-da-da. Now, as far--unless I missed something here, there is still no evidence that the Syrian government used the chemical weapons. Now, I'm fully--could believe that they could. I have no great illusions about Assad and the Syrian government. But as far as I know, there's no evidence. And, in fact, there's lots of evidence that it might have been somewhere on the opposition side used them. But it's just--it's that paragraph's in the article, the Syrian government used chemical weapons ba-pa-da-bup-bup-ba, and it becomes the narrative.
ALPEROVITZ: Yes, it does. I mean, on these issues the easy way to go for the press is to go that direction rather than to dig and oppose the conventional wisdom or the presidential--. And that gives them access. If you start raising questions--Seymour Hersh has been having trouble because he's trying to raise these issues that--you know, the great investigative journalist is now having trouble getting some of his things out and he's publicly going to using the London Review of Books.
JAY: It's still the echo of the Cold War, isn't it? Like, if you get off the official narrative, then what's your agenda?
ALPEROVITZ: Yeah.
JAY: You know, you've got your own political agenda. And, you know, there's still this, you know, kind of Cold War mentality.
ALPEROVITZ: You know, and journalists wanting to protect their access to key people in the government, who they need, they think, to get their stories rather than to dig, dig, dig. It's best not to raise certain issues.
JAY: Right. Okay. We're going to move on now to the next segment, where we're going to look at this--what Gar has been spending most of his time for the last few years working on, which is what would a new economy look like and what would America after capitalism look like, and also how do we get there.
So please join us for the next segment of Reality Asserts Itself with Gar Alperovitz on The Real News Network.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
the police are first defenders of the state, despite overwhelming unjust laws and full prisons, they will have to choose between their family and feeding or put protesters and passengers in jail. if you were in their shoes, which choice would we make? take some money or take some pride
The Chinese may have gotten this correct: Kill a chicken to scare the monkeys.
Hence: Beat the old man to scare those contemplating disobedience. Nuke Japanese cities twice to scare the Soviets.
what an incredible money making scheme scaring the planet has become, was it always that way? acts of betrayal and violence are not news.
Tell that to the worst drought stricken California in recorded history.
ALSO:
NOVA Killer Typhoon
What made Haiyan so destructive, and how can we prepare for the next monster storm?Watch Now
nato 3 know too http://freethenato3.wordpress.com/
Some States Have a Sneaky Plan to Stop the NSA
Thursday, 23 January 2014 09:56 By Kevin Mathews, Care2 | Report
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21397-some-states-have-a-sneaky-plan-to-stop-the-nsa
What are outraged American citizens to do after the federal government has pretty much decided to do nothing to fix the unconstitutional NSA spy program? Get the states involved! A handful of states across the country have already begun devising plans to thwart the dubious agency with state laws, including stopping the NSA facilities’ water and electricity access.
So far, six states (Missouri, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, and Indiana) have introduced bills that target the NSA. Though they all differ somewhat, each state's bill would impede NSA operations within their boundaries.
In Washington, for example, the bill would attack the NSA on multiple fronts:
State and local officials would be barred from providing information or “support” to the NSA.
The NSA would be forbidden from researching and recruiting at state universities.
Evidence collected by the NSA would be inadmissible in state courts. Businesses that have contracts with the state would not be allowed to conduct business with the NSA in any capacity; companies that disobeyed would lose their contracts and face criminal charges.
Access to water and electricity provided by the state would be cut off altogether.
The last one is particularly a doozy since the buildings would be unable to operate without power and water. NSA’s facility in Utah, for example, requires 1.7 million gallons of water each day. (Forget the warrant-less surveillance for a moment – can we get some eco activists on their case?) Presumably, the NSA would seek these pulled resources from private companies instead, but it would certainly make things more complicated for the agency.
That’s precisely the point, anyway. If the states can’t eliminate spying and mass data collection on innocent citizens altogether, they can at least put up obstacles that may deter them. Will the federal government still find it worthwhile to spy on citizens in a particular state when officials aren’t allowed to assist them? How about when the evidence they’ve gathered is ultimately banned from the courtroom?
Remarkably, participating states are seeing bipartisan support for these retaliatory steps. Though the NSA may be a contentious issue, opponents are hardly divided by party lines. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have taken issue with the assault on the Fourth Amendment and are willing to work together to protect constitutional rights.
As Mother Jones points out, it’s not unprecedented for states to take issue with national agencies. Colorado and Washington don’t work with the Drug Enforcement Administration to pursue marijuana smokers. Meanwhile, California passed its own laws to prevent turning over illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration for likely deportation.
It’s too soon to project whether the states will have any success getting these anti-NSA bills through their respective state legislatures – even critics of the program may be too shy to disobey a federal agency on this issue. Nonetheless, the early action has been enough to inspire additional bills, with politicians in Arizona, Utah, and Michigan indicating that they’re preparing to introduce similar legislation. If even just a couple of the states can put these bills into action, it will speak volumes on a symbolic level.
If President Obama isn’t willing to put a stop to this alarming program, it’s nice to see that many on the state level are set on honoring the U.S. Constitution – even if it means shutting the lights off by literally cutting off its electricity.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
How Antiwar Activists Robbed the FBI, Got Away With It, and Exposed Massive Covert Surveillance
Friday, 24 January 2014 09:16 By Betty Medsger, Knopf | Book Excerpt
For more than 40 years, the burglars of an FBI satellite office in a Philadelphia suburb were never arrested or discovered. Now, a gripping narrative, "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI," reveals the identities of the anti-war activists who carried off the 1971 heist and exposed a national covert FBI operation aimed at the surveillance of dissidents and the suppression of First Amendment rights.
Get the just-released book from Truthout here.
"Burglary" is a fascinating and inspiring story of protestors who robbed the FBI -- how they pulled it off -- and how they exposed the agency's illegal surveillance and suppression of individuals who challenged government policy. A few years later, largely as a result of the reporting of Medsger and others – as well as the death of Hoover (who was feared by members of Congress and presidents alike) – restrictions were put on the FBI's surveillance operations of citizens who expressed opinions at odds with official US policy.
Whether those prohibitions are still being observed or have been partially replaced with the new hi-tech surveillance symbolized by the NSA remains an open debate. There have been examples in recent years of infiltration of progressive activist groups, most recently in the Occupy movement, by law enforcement officials. The role of the FBI in these cases and keeping files on dissenters at this time remains murky, in large part because there appear to be few people in the legislative or executive branch interested in opening up the issue of domestic surveillance.
Of course, all that changed in terms of public discussion of the issue with the Edward Snowden NSA revelations of domestic monitoring, but how that shakes out (given President Obama's extremely limited and calculated "reforms") remains to be seen.
Betty Medsger, a former Washington Post journalist and the author of "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI," however, takes us a back to a time of Hoover's obsession with black leaders and students being Communists for advocating Civil Rights and the effort to squelch anyone who challenged DC group think.
As Medsger wrote in a recent Washington Post article about her new book:
On March 24, 1971, I became the first reporter to inform readers that the FBI wanted the American people to think there was an "FBI agent behind every mailbox." That rather alarming alert came from stolen FBI files I had found in my own mailbox at The Washington Post when I arrived at work the previous morning....
The first file I read grasped my attention. In it, FBI agents were encouraged to increase interviews with dissenters "for plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox...."
Every document told a story about FBI power that was unknown to anyone outside the FBI. One, signed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on Nov. 4, 1970, had two subject headings — "Black Student Groups on College Campuses" and "Racial Matters." It was the first of numerous FBI files I would receive from the anonymous burglars over the next two months that revealed Hoover's programs targeting African Americans. The files revealed that African American citizens were watched by FBI informers everywhere they went — the corner store, classrooms, churches, bookstores, libraries, bars, restaurants. Every FBI agent was required to hire at least one informer to report to him regularly on the activities of black people. In the District, every agent was required to hire six informers for that purpose. On one campus in the Philadelphia area, Swarthmore College, every black student was under surveillance."
An accomplished journalist, Medsger writes a fascinating story about Americans living comfortable lives willing to risk going to jail in order to expose a national program aimed at undermining democracy. After the burglary and the distribution of the purloined incriminating files, the perpetrators disappeared: i.e, until now.
The following is the first chapter of The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI:
http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/21420-how-anti-war-activists-robbed-the-fbi-got-away-with-it-and-exposed-massive-covert-surveillance
Federal Oversight Board: NSA Program Ineffective and Illegal
Friday, 24 January 2014 10:45 By Jessica Desvarieux, The Real News Network | Video Interview
http://truth-out.org/news/item/21428-federal-oversight-board-nsa-program-ineffective-and-illegal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=T8mlXeUf9ts
TRANSCRIPT:
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.
An independent government advisory board released a report Thursday calling the NSA's bulk phone data collection program, or Section 215, both illegal and ineffective. They also recommended that mass surveillance program be ended. The five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board voted three to two to endorse the sharp rebuke to President Obama. As you remember, the president gave a major speech last week, where he defended the programs but also promised to reform some of them.
Also on Thursday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden took part in a live Twitter Q&A, and he addressed the panel's findings. One participant asked Snowden, "Do you think that the Watchdog Report by Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board will have any impact at all?" Snowden responded, "I don't see how Congress could ignore it, as it makes clear there is no reason at all to maintain the 215 program."
Now joining us to get into all the details is our esteemed panel.
We have Ray McGovern. He's a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven U.S. presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
We also have Kirk Wiebe. He's a former NSA senior intelligence analyst and an NSA whistleblower who worked with the NSA for more than 32 years.
Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us.
J. KIRK WIEBE, FMR. SENIOR INTELLIGENCE ANALYST, NSA: Thank you. Good to be with you, Jessica.
RAY MCGOVERN, EX-CIA ANALYST: Most welcome.
DESVARIEUX: So, Ray, let's start off with you. Give us your reaction to this independent government panel's sharp rebuke of the NSA's bulk phone metadata collection program.
MCGOVERN: Well, your lead-in there quoting Ed Snowden is exactly right. As usual, he's got it exactly on the ball here. That's why whistleblowers keep us free.
This destroys the president's argument that this bulk collection is, quote, useful and, quote, legal. This board, which is an independent board set up after the 9/11 Commission, has said it's useless and it's illegal and, hello, it should be abolished. Now, they've looked at it. It's a 238-page report. This is the authoritative answer. And it sort of corroborates what the president's own review panel said when it said zero--zero--terrorist events were prevented by this bulk collection. And the fact remains that all these charges to the contrary are proven, well, lies, actually.
DESVARIEUX: Kirk, I'm sure that you agree. Did you find anything surprising in the board's findings?
WIEBE: No. I found the boards--I've only read the synopsis of the report. I haven't actually read the 200 and some odd pages of it. I would like to do that. But based on what I've seen, it is absolutely spot on and it's excellent. The only disappointing fact was that two of the members dissented. And that is a bit disconcerting to me, inasmuch as Bill Binney and I, who know this problem just about as well as anyone, had actually provided input to that board and showed them that it wasn't necessary to bulk-collect data on innocent people in order to find bad people.
DESVARIEUX: We should also note that the White House disagreed with the board's assessment of the program's legality. And National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden had this to say about the board's assessment. Quote, "Consistent with the recent holdings of the United States district courts for the Southern District of New York and Southern District of California, as well as the findings of 15 judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on 36 separate occasions over the past seven years, the administration believes that the program is lawful." Ray, is the program lawful? And what about the constitutionality of it all?
MCGOVERN: Well, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution says, "The right of the people to be secure ... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Now, probable cause, dragnet, vacuum cleaner surveillance, does that mean that we're all probably criminals or all probably terrorists? I don't think so. And the legal theories--you know, this reminds me of George Bush when he went out as president, his exit interview. They said, well, you approved waterboarding. How come? And what did he say? The lawyers told me it was okay. So you can always get a lawyer to tell you it's okay.
And the two lawyers that dissented, guess what? They worked for Bush in the Department of Justice. So it's just as likely as not that they knew of these rulings that said, well, sure, the Fourth Amendment, you know, you can put that over there for a while. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, 9/11, 9/11, terrorism, terrorism.
And the odd thing--it's a kind of humorous thing--is that one of the women lawyers that was in the Justice Department, is now on the panel, she said, you know, it's very difficult. She said, we didn't rule on the--we don't say whether it's legal or illegal, but just think of what will happen if we tell the counterintelligence or the counterterrorist people that they've been violating the law all along. That would be a terrible blow to morale. Well, that's hardly a legal reason to keep the truth from people who are violating the Fourth Amendment still as we speak.
DESVARIEUX: And we should note that the president actually knew what this panel's assessment was prior to making his speech last week. What's your response to that, Kirk?
WIEBE: As I watch the reactions of the president, people like Feinstein and Rogers, the more I begin to entertain the idea that none of this is truly about national security in terms of worrying about the American people being attacked by another terrorist organization or something like that, the more it makes me suspicious that there's something else at stake that people in positions of power value very much, and that's inside information about people that they can use for their own purposes.
DESVARIEUX: Okay. And do these findings at all validate NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden? What would be your take, Ray?
MCGOVERN: Well, of course they do. Without Snowden having revealed all these things, we would still be oblivious.
This is really J. Edgar Hoover on steroids.
And with respect to what Kirk just said, I would just underline that.
You know, it's not really a case of the security services being out of control. It's a case of the security services being in control and a president with a weak backbone bending to them. Otherwise, why would he continue a program known to be ineffectual, actually counterproductive? And why would he still claim it's legal when he should know better? After all, he's a constitutional lawyer.
DESVARIEUX: Kirk, I'll let you have the final word.
WIEBE: We're in a constitutional crisis. People need to understand that. This isn't just a debate. We're in a crisis. People need to make their voices heard if any of this bothers them. It isn't whether you personally are doing anything wrong. You don't get to decide that. The government does. The government has no business collecting all your information and storing it as if you will be guilty one day and they want to be in a position to find out about it.
DESVARIEUX: Alright, gentlemen. Very well said. Thank you so much for joining us.
MCGOVERN: Most welcome.
WIEBE: My pleasure. Thank you.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
Video showing cop forcibly cutting woman's hair weave makes waves
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/02/01/22536283-video-showing-cop-forcibly-cutting-womans-hair-weave-makes-waves?lite
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
By Elisha Fieldstadt, NBC News
Disturbing new video showing a Michigan police officer hacking off the hair weave of a young woman arrested in November is stirring controversy on social media.
In the video, Charda Gregory, 23, of Detroit is tied in a restraining chair by four officers in Warren, Mich., before a female officer rips and cuts at her long braids. Gregory appears to protest and react physically, but the officer doesn’t stop until the entire weave is removed from her head.
Gregory was arrested for allegedly damaging a motel room and police car in suburban Detroit, but charges against her were dropped, according to NBC affiliate WDIV.
Police Officer Bernadette Najor, who administered the violent haircut, said she did so because weaves pose a suicide risk, WDIV reported. Najor was suspended and later fired.
At the time, Warren Police Commissioner Jere Green said Najor clearly violated policy.
“There’s a real simple thing: it’s called right and wrong. And to me this is something that I won’t tolerate, I don’t think the citizens of Warren will tolerate it,”he said. "We are always in the process of reviewing things that happen and trying to make ourselves better and more responsible to the people we work for."
Those other officers did not stop the hair-cut - why were they not fired? Just sayin - they didn't stop it - so aren't they also guilty for their part?
[Removed]
Hmmmmm good question - lemme thimk about this a moment . . . was it one of the Koch boys? No no don't answer . . . . silly me............
noted
violent solutions in policy