While the Trump administration blusters and tries to discredit the brave staffer who blew the whistle on Trump’s politically motivated extortion of the president of Ukraine, 90 former top brass in national security have issued an open letter in support of the whistle-blower. Released on Oct. 7, 2019—just before a second whistle-blower came forward—the letter emphasizes that revealing wrongdoing is the right thing to do, and that the individual involved deserves protection from retaliation.

The people who signed on to the letter are a who’s who of national security — some who are refugees from the current administration that doesn’t value expertise, thoughtful decision-making or moral responsibility, and many from previous administrations that — for the most part — did (or pretended to). Listed among them are marquee names like Brennan and Clapper, who had served in different roles under both the Obama and Bush administrations. The letter isalso signed by former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and former Senior Director for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council Javed Ali, along with a number of other former Defense Department, State Department and CIA officials.

Some of the signatories had even worked under the Trump administration, including James Nealon, who served as the assistant secretary for international engagement at the Department of Homeland Security until he resigned in February 2018 over the government’s immigration policies, as well as Roberta Jacobson, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico until she resigned in May 2018, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who was a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia until resigning in July 2018.

The letter speaks for itself. Here it is in its entirety:

We are former national security officials who proudly served in a wide array of roles throughout the U.S. Government,” they wrote. “We are writing about the Intelligence Community whistleblower’s lawful disclosure, which was recently made public. While the identity of the whistleblower is not publicly known, we do know that he or she is an employee of the U.S. Government. As such, he or she has by law the right — and indeed the responsibility — to make known, through appropriate channels, indications of serious wrongdoing. That is precisely what this whistleblower did; and we applaud the whistleblower not only for living up to that responsibility but also for using precisely the channels made available by federal law for raising such concerns.

“A responsible whistleblower makes all Americans safer by ensuring that serious wrongdoing can be investigated and addressed, thus advancing the cause of national security to which we have devoted our careers. What’s more, being a responsible whistleblower means that, by law, one is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation. Whatever one’s view of the matters discussed in the whistleblower’s complaint, all Americans should be united in demanding that all branches of our government and all outlets of our media protect this whistleblower and his or her identity. Simply put, he or she has done what our law demands; now he or she deserves our protection.”

The post 90 top US national security pros say whistle-blower did the right thing appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In St. Louis, bad behavior by police responding to protests about…previous bad police behavior—has sparked another form of protest: the publicly published protest letter.

Actually, there are two letters: One, from the ACLU, admonishes the St. Louis City Police Department to use restraint when confronting protesters. Another, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, demands that all charges be dropped in the case of the improper arrest, during a street protest, of a fully credentialed reporter who was covering the event.

Here are excerpts from each of the letters:

ACLU

On Friday, the ACLU of Missouri sent each of your offices a letter. We implored you to remind law enforcement to allow the community to continue to express its outrage, pain and grief by protecting their First Amendment right to protest.

They didn’t.

We know there were sporadic moments of violence and vandalism – these are not covered by the Constitutional right to protest. However, outside of these moments, officers broke their vow to protect the public by engaging in illegal activities and actions that violated policies of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and agreed-upon rules of engagement made during 2014 protests.

The letter notes that ACLU of Missouri trains legal observers to monitor demonstrations for violations of civil liberties and Constitutional rights. It then lists some of what the legal observers saw police officers doing, including:

• Attacking people indiscriminately with gratuitous use of pepper spray, pepper balls, rubber bullets, and tear gas when no apparent illegal activity had occurred.

• Excessively using of force, including violent arrests that caused injuries.

  Deploying chemicals, such as tear gas and pepper spray, without warning.

• Deploying tear gas on routes where people were leaving.

• Arresting people with questionable probable cause.

• Illegally searching bags and other possessions.

• Not wearing name tags and not identifying themselves.

• Blocking access to public spaces without apparent cause of officer safety, ongoing investigation, or public safety hazard.

• Forcefully blocking recordings of police conduct in public spaces at safe and reasonable distances.

• Selectively enforcing access to public spaces.

• Entering safe spaces against policy and with questionable probable cause.

• Using intimidating displays of force, explicitly contrary to agreement prior to release of verdict.

Calling these behaviors “unacceptable,” the ACLU urges city officials to require police officers to follow proper procedures, including:

• To not use chemical weapons, such as pepper spray and tear gas, without following the proper protocols to ensure the protection of constitutional rights.

• Officers’ nametags should be visible at all times for police accountability.

• To wear their body cameras and have them turned on at all times.

• Not use force against protesters absent a real and immediate threat of physical harm to others.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The protest letter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch comes in response to the arrest of Mike Faulk, a reporter who was clearly displaying his credentials, during a roundup of demonstrators in the City of St. Louis.

The Post-Dispatch condemned the “inappropriate and highly disturbing” arrest of one of its journalists on Sunday during a mass arrest by St. Louis police officers, and demanded that the city drop charges against him.

The letter, written by attorney Joseph E. Martineau, of the Lewis Rice law firm, said officers should have released Faulk immediately after recognizing he was covering a story, and allowed him to keep working.

Instead, he was arrested with “unneeded and inappropriate force” that caused injury to both legs, his back and wrist. Faulk was “forcefully pushed to the ground by police officers and a police officer’s boot was placed on his head.” After his wrists were bound with zip ties, a police officer “deliberately sprayed him in the face with pepper spray, mace or some other stinging substance.” At some point, an officer reviewed the contents of Faulk’s phone.

Inside the jail, the letter said, jail personnel denied Faulk’s repeated requests for medical attention. The city counselor’s office charged Faulk with failure to disperse, and he was released on $50 bail. He returned to the newsroom limping, knees bloodied and pepper spray still on his skin.

The city’s failure to establish a protocol to recognize and respect the rights of journalists gathering news was “a grave mistake,” the letter said.

In a comment published in the Post-Dispatch as the letter was making its way to city officials, the newspaper’s editor, Gilbert Bailon said:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists and other credentialed news media provide critical information to the public. When St. Louis police arrested Mike, after he fully identified himself while covering the protests, they violated basic tenets of our democracy. Additionally, the physical abuse he suffered during the arrest is abhorrent and must be investigated. The Post-Dispatch is calling for our city leaders to immediately implement policies that will prevent journalists from being arrested without cause.

So, is the pen [aka keyboard] actually mightier than the sword [aka pepper spray, Mace, plastic wrist ties]? Let’s hope so. Otherwise, our democracy is in deep peril.

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Now that the Electoral College has failed—not unexpectedly—in its wished-for mission to stop a demagogue from becoming President of the United States, we need to think more practically. Are there any techniques that have worked in other eras or in other democracies threatened by demagogues?

Unfortunately, reading up on the world history of demagogues, I’m finding very little comfort. As we enter this new period in American history, I’m looking for precedents that can give us hope and/or help guide us to a way—if not to oust him—to at least blunt Donald Trump’s power to permanently damage our country over the next four or eight years.

The answers can only be described as slim pickins. History offers few definitive strategies for derailing a demagogue. In fact, historians observe that democracy itself breeds demagogues.

What’s a demagogue?

Just to be clear, here are some definitions of demagogue.

… a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power. Dictionary.com

… a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument. Merriam-Webster

…a political agitator who appeals with crude oratory to the prejudice and passions of the mob.  Collins English Dictionary

Another way to identity a demagogue by his/her campaign behavior, says Time magazine:

 If the would-be leader promises to give, restore, provide, insure, or enhance a country but never asks the citizens to sacrifice, pay, serve, or simply work, then this leader is a potential demagogue.

I think we can all essentially agree that Donald Trump fits all of these definitions and descriptions.

History lessons

History is not much help. On the depressing side, Michael Signer, of the University of Virginia says:

…The lesson of history with demagogues is they are as slippery as eels and they’re quicksilver and they’re chameleons…Different rules apply.”

Another observer has coined the term the “Demagogue Doom Loop.”  He describes it this way:

…The demagogue [creates] a vicious circle. More and more people have to be excluded, demonized, scape-goated, for the dwindling social product to be rationed out in stable increments to whomever is still included. This is the end.

The end. It is the doom loop of a civilized society. Once a society enters this phase, it cannot get out, short of war, revolution, or catastrophe — all of which bring sure ruin. There is no example in history of a society entering the Demagogue’s Doom Loop and stopping it before it is ruined.

You don’t have to dig very deep or be a serious historian to be able to point to 20^th Century examples of demagogues who ruined their countries and/or hurt their own people. Argentina had Juan and Eva Peron [sometimes described as demagogues who were very entertaining while being dangerously undemocratic]. Zimbabwe is still ruled by Robert Mugabe. We are all aware that it took a world war to rid Italy, Germany and the rest of the world of Mussolini and Hitler.

And to war, revolution and economic catastrophe, we must unfortunately add assassination. Obviously, we don’t want those to be the solutions. None of those are acceptable paths to ending the rule of a demagogue. So, is that all there is?

Demagogues’ rise to power offers clues to possible end games, We have learned—and are learning once again in 2016—that demagogues thrive when we are cynical about truth, writes Michael Signer:

[Demagogues] …start to deflate when we put faith back again in public reason. The American people, in the end, always choose that demagogues are beneath them.  [Editor’s note: Except this time, apparently.]

…The original demagogue in Athens was named Cleon. Everybody thought he smelled bad. He was the son of a tanner, I think, and he was a general and he was sort of bombastic and vulgar. Vulgarity comes up a lot with demagogues. Their critics, who miss them, always think that they’re just beneath, but they win by being beneath because there is a level that they’re operating at that those critics – not only that they don’t like, they just don’t  understand, and that’s their glide path.

…the medium really is the message. When you give him the space to be an emotional entertainer, then he is winning that day, by definition.

…So I think that people need to shake him out of that mode with tough, demanding questions and by confronting vacuums of fact or policy where they are and highlighting threats to our constitutional principles. The media, when they say, well, I’m just being objective and I’m gonna just let him bluster on in my interview with him and not truly confront him because I’m being objective, it’s not being objective. It’s being a conspirator….

A hopeful example from the McCarthy era

As Sen. Joseph McCarthy ran rampant with accusation of communist infiltrators in the US, one Senator stood up to him and ultimately stopped him. Here’s a brief description what one courageous Senator did:

In 1954, Vermont Senator George Flanders introduced a resolution to censure McCarthy in the U.S. Senate. The resolution itemized 46 complaints. In the end, the Senate recommended censure on two counts: that McCarthy had obstructed a Senate subcommittee attempting to investigate him, and had denounced a fellow senator, “without reason or justification,” and acted in an “inexcusable” and “reprehensible “ manner toward a witness before his investigating committee. Eventually, that tactic worked, and McCarthy was discredited.

..Time Magazine called the outcome “a ringing reassertion of the U.S. Senate’s dignity,” and a “new landmark in U.S. government.”

Flanders later described his actions this way–in a statement we call could learn from::

“It became clear that in the outside world McCarthy was the United States and the United States was McCarthy.  The conviction grew that something must be done about him, even if I had to do it myself.”

As is often the case with nefarious individuals, the ultimate defeat was not for the big-name crime, but for less spectacular misbehaviors. [In a somewhat similar outcome, 1930’s crime kingpin Al Capone ultimately went to jail not for the many murders he ordered, but for tax evasion.]

Is this the path to defeating Trumpism? The answer is unclear. So far, his most egregious behaviors have been met with a resounding “ho-hum” by his apologists and staunch supporters. Latching on to the most recent outrageous development—and hoping that this is the one that will finally bring him down—is proving to be little more than an exercise in magical thinking.

Our best hope, I think, is vigilance, moral and ethical courage, and a commitment to actively resist anything that further erodes democracy in this country or endangers the world. It will take gumption and grit—and being present, both in mind and in body—to stand up to Trump’s inevitable misbehaviors, his flouting of law, and his dangerous policies. Democratic politicians need to think bigger than their next re-election campaign and find their calling in saving our democracy, not just their own power base. They need to stop being the party of nice–stand up, scream bloody murder, use every trick in the book—and some that may not yet have been invented—to block the damaging domestic and international moves that Trump and his minions are planning. The stakes are too high for “wait and see” and “can’t we all just get along.”.

One potential game-changer exists within Trump himself– hubris. That character flaw—so obvious in Trump—has been the downfall not just of Shakespearean protagonists, but of many powerful people. Maybe Trump will self-destruct. We—individual citizens, an awakened press, and new political leaders–should do everything we can to hasten that outcome by refusing to normalize behaviors that should clearly be unacceptable.

What can individuals do

History professor Timothy Snyder recently published a helpful list of guidelines for surviving in Trump’s America. Here are some of the practical steps that we all can take:

…Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

…Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Send more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media…

…Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

…Take responsibility for the face of the world.  Notices the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

Writing articles like this one is a form of resistance–the one where I am most comfortable. I plan to do a lot more of this. I encourage others to contribute your own thoughts on blogs, in letters to the editor, and on social media. You don’t have to write the definitive treatise on Trumpism or any single issue. You don’t have to be a history professor or the head of a social-justice organization to make your voice heard. Just make your presence and your outrage known by commenting on articles you read or things you have observed. Be sure to let your elected representatives–even Republicans!–know what you’re thinking. It’s not as scary as it sounds, and even the most cynical politicians know that voters voices count. We’ve all said–at various times in our lives–that we’re going to get more politically active. But it’s risky to put yourself on the line, right? This is the time to take that risk.

I’m going to add other forms of protest–less comfortable for me–to my own activities, as well: First up, the Women’s March on St. Louis on Jan. 21, 2017.

Who’s in?

The post How do you stop a demagogue? No easy answers appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite writers, and she has to tour with a bodyguard because she dares to speak out about environmental degradation in our country. Here’s something she wrote about how those of us who voted for the candidate who won the most votes MUST protest.

The article in The Guardian is called, “Trump Changed Everything: Now Everything Counts.”

We have to protest despite being raised to respect and accept political change. We did that with George W when Gore really won, and what did it get us? A firestorm of wars in the Middle East. It’s too late to play nice. Everything that holds us together is at risk.

The post Kingsolver: It’s too late to play nice appeared first on Occasional Planet.

By what standards should we judge our next president? Maybe there are more choices than what I’m about to propose, but so far, I see two main options: Go high, or go low.

We know what low looks like

We’ve already seen how the low-expectation game plays out, and it’s not pretty. Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, and on Election Day, voters gave Donald Trump a pass because he’s “not a traditional politician.” The bar was extremely low. He got away with statements, language and actions that would have sunk any other candidate’s ship in a single news cycle.

Judging from what we saw in the campaign, and in the early days of the transition, it’s clear to me that continuing to hold Trump to a lower set of standards—and giving him time to climb the steepest learning curve of any President ever—will inevitably lead to negative outcomes for Americans, for our reputation in the world community, and for the well-being of our planet. Early moves set the tone and the standard, and they’re hard to undo.

The only case that I can make for low expectations is this: If Trump is allowed to be a part-time president, with weekends off [as if that could even happen] in his New York tower, maybe he’ll do less damage. And maybe, if he continues to appoint inexperienced political hacks—on the basis of their loyalty to Trump—to the big jobs, there will be such internecine warfare and incompetence in the cabinet that nothing will get done.

That scenario, though, is probably just wishful thinking. It’s already clear that Republican Congressional leadership (and I use that term extremely loosely) are licking their chops. They know that Trump is a know-nothing guy with no interest in ideas or learning, who is easily manipulated—often by the last person who whispers in his ear. They are gleefully preparing for four years of enacting the right-wing agenda that they’ve been pushing for decades. All they have to do is to flatter Trump, feed his need for adulation,, and hand him a pen. His lack of knowledge, experience and diplomacy make him a perfect patsy.

Letting him off the hook because he’s a newbie—granting him immunity while he gets on-the-job training—is a terrible idea. There’s just too much damage that can be done if we’re not holding his—and Congress’s feet to the fire.

Going higher

The better strategy would be to hold him to the standards we have tried to apply to all previous presidents. While it’s very tempting to simply take to the streets to protest the man himself, I think we would do much better to make our protests specific to the policies he announces and the actions he takes, either on his own or at the urging [manipulation] of his advisers. Anyone who threatens to take away health insurance from 20 million people deserves a march on Washington. When potential puppet-master Paul Ryan introduces a bill to privatize Medicare, we must fight back.

But, in a subtler way, we should also hold the next president’s feet to the fire on some basic standards of behavior. So, in broader terms, I’d like to suggest the following 10 higher standards for presidential behavior. [In no particular order, and not intended to be comprehensive. Additional suggestions are welcome.]

1. A serious and engaged approach to the presidency. The willingness to put in the hours of study, serious [and even contentious] discussion, and overtime that it takes to make the highly impactful decisions that a president much make.

2. The willingness to appoint and listen to people who may not agree with you. The character to work with people based on their experience, knowledge and proven ability—rather than on their personal loyalty.

3. The self-awareness to know when you don’t have enough information to make an educated decision, and the willingness to seek counsel and help.

4. A commitment to governing for the common good. The understanding that being “the president for all Americans” is not just a slogan, it’s a mandate. The character to forego personal gain for the good of society as a whole, and to see your policies and actions in the context of how they will impact the greater society—now and in the future.

5. The temperament to slow down, to think before reflexively acting, and to wait until you have enough facts and context to make meaningful, carefully thought-out moves on the world stage or domestically.

6. The insight to see whose ideas and advice are the best for the country at-large, and to distinguish between advisors who have a broader vision for our country and those who are motivated by personal gain or ideology. The common sense to appreciate and reward ideas and policies that will improve life for as many people as possible.

7. The strength to say no—and to have people say “no” to you as well. The core strength to accept legitimate criticism from people close to you, from others in government, and from the press.

8. The humility to change course when a decision turns out to be detrimental to the country at-large, or to individuals. A sense of personal and professional accountability for actions and words, and the ability to take responsibility for mistakes.

9. A commitment to transparency and communication. The courage to face difficult questions from the press, and the patience to answer them thoughtfully. The willingness to share information about yourself—as other presidents have—with the people to whom you are accountable.

10. The grace to be a unifier and healer, through words and actions.

Gee, this sounds a lot like the “Serenity Prayer,” doesn’t it? The difference is, of course, that I don’t actually pray, and I’m not asking a deity to grant us these characteristics and behaviors in our next president. In fact, I recently saw a Facebook meme in which the writer parodied the Serenity Prayer by saying, “I’m no longer accepting the things I can’t change; I’m changing the things I can’t accept.”

I’m calling for Americans–and world leaders–to demand better from Trump that what we saw in the campaign. [I really don’t think he’s got it in him. We’ve seen “the real” Donald Trump. But crazy things can happen.] In any case, we have to make it clear that the behaviors and words that some people excused during the campaign are totally unacceptable for a President.

My list of presidential standards also sounds, to me, a lot like what we’ve experienced during the past eight years, as Barack Obama has served America with a level of intelligence and classiness that we’ve come to think of as the norm. Let’s do our best to hold the next president to those same standards of behavior. And cry foul—loudly and unashamedly– when he doesn’t.

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The post High expectations vs low expectations in a Trump presidency: Let’s go high appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It is amazing to see Trump voters complaining about peaceful protests. How many of them were silent when Trump spewed his hatred, and encouraged his followers to beat up people who were peacefully protesting at his rallies? How many of them spoke out when Trump silently watched his supporters kick the wheelchair of a young boy? Did any of them ask Trump to stop his racism, or misogyny, or xenophobia, or anti-Semitism, or his blatant hatred of Mexicans and Muslims? Did any of them get angry watching Trump smile as his supporters yelled “Lock her up” and he promised to have Clinton prosecuted?

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I recently had the misfortune of hearing KMOX radio [in St. Louis] while in the car. (Except for some Cardinals games, I haven’t listened to them in years– I stopped when they started carrying Rush Limbaugh.)

There was a “Roundtable discussion” with four people, one woman, one black male, and two extremely conservative (to put it mildly) white males discussing the upcoming grand jury announcement and the news conference to announce some agreement on “rules of engagement” for the protestors. These two men were complaining about who are these people to make agreements like this and how can they be given the right to inconvenience others and they’re holding the whole community hostage. And by the way, in the segment I heard, they never actually said what the agreed-to rules are, which are just some common sense guidelines protecting the protestor’s Constitutional rights while saying the police will do what is necessary to protect life and property. These guys made it sound like the rules call for outrageous unlawful anarchy.

It never even occurs to these jerks to ask themselves who THEY are to complain and question the protestors. That’s because they are two upper class conservative white males who have been given the privilege of having a microphone on a station that thinks carrying Limbaugh is a community service. THEY are the reason protestors are needed! One of them, State Senator John Lamping, got elected (extremely narrowly) by promising to be a moderate Republican who could work with both parties, and then when in office, was a right-wing extremist. Who is HE to lecture on morals and ethics?

The rules were put forward by a coalition of many groups, some longstanding, some new. They pulled themselves together and have become an effective voice for people who have previously been silenced and treated like they don’t matter. Like all citizens, they have the right to petition the government. Neither of these guys would have any problem with an ad hoc group from Ladue demanding gates for their subdivision. And I suspect both of them would have been telling the black residents of Montgomery not to inconvenience the white bus riders.

Yes, I want the protests in and around Ferguson to be peaceful. I don’t want people injured or businesses harmed. But this group of awakened citizens have reached the point where they feel non-violent civil disobedience is the way to be heard, and I sympathize with them.

And yes, I also think they need to register and vote. Of course, in Missouri, that means they might be able to elect some people who will be trivialized and treated like dirt by officeholders like John Lamping. Building support for the cause around here is going to be a long slow process.

The post After Ferguson: Who makes the rules? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A few day ago many sources reported on the efforts of the Missouri KKK to get in on the Ferguson action. The white-robed bubba contingent promised that “we will use lethal force as provided by Missouri Law to defend ourselves.” Some racist thugs propose to bring guns to counter the perceived threat posed by folks who are fired up by a long history of police brutality and are declaring that they won’t take it anymore. Anybody surprised by this turn of events?

On the same note, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports today that Ferguson protestors are gearing up for the furor that will probably erupt when the grand jury issues what many expect will be a white-washing of Darren Wilson’s role in the shooting of Michael Brown. According to the report, one faction is exhorting protesters to “pack side arms.” So, if anybody takes this advice to heart, more guns will be added to the lethal mix. I expect that the protestors, with considerably more justification than the KKKers, also claim that they’re concerned with self-defense – and given the over-reaction that the relatively minor episodes of violence in Ferguson have inspired, it’s hard to deny the force of the sentiment.

The KKK types are citing Missouri law to justify their rush to the shootout at the OK Corral. While the Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 563-031, that they cite does attempt to spell out when one may legally defend oneself with lethal force, it doesn’t – on my reading at least – seem to justify folks who are absolutely not threatened by the protests to show up, wave their guns, and fan the flames. But it’s easy for sanctimonious dimwits who want to assert their dominance and pretend that they speak for “the good people of St. Louis County of all races, colors and creeds” to misinterpret such laws with potentially disastrous consequences.

And as for any protestors who may “pack” sidearms, I think that concealed and open carry are now legal, right? While I suspect that Missouri’s very permissive gun laws were intended to enable white folks who have an exaggerated fear of African-Americans rather than angry African-American protestors, the law doesn’t make those distinctions.

Anybody who is surprised by these developments hasn’t been around the proverbial block too many times. The upshot is that we live in a state where laws have been written to encourage mayhem. The sad thing is that I suspect that these laws owe their existence in part to the fear and loathing that lots of white folks feel towards their black fellow citizens.

And it’s the various traditionally entrenched manifestations of that fear and loathing that has created the Ferguson situation in the first place. Now we’ve got Big Daddy Jay Nixon shaking his finger at protestors and telling us all to hell with police brutality, he won’t tolerate any rioting black folks. Nor should he, but, when he’s addressing the community shouldn’t he at least give a nod of the head to the abuses that left people so angry that they take to the streets? And shouldn’t he let folks like the KKK know that he won’t tolerate any ugly, self-proclaimed “sleeping giants” who want to use Ferguson as an excuse to sling their lethal cudgels? I was visiting in California when I heard Nixon’s speech on the topic and I, a white, middle aged woman, felt like he was waving a red flag meant to incite a currently quiescent bull. No wonder the KKK feels empowered.

And while I’m at it, I haven’t seen a thing in the Post-Dispatch about the KKK’s threats. Did I just miss it? Did they not report on it because it’s potentially inflammatory? But why then did they report on the protestors who “stated plans to ‘make a few fires to stay warm’ – but without the need for firewood.” That isn’t inflammatory (no pun intended)? That doesn’t excite people like the KKK? If the story is fit to print, print both sides.

[Editor’s note: This article was originally posted on Show Me Progress.]
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Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s declaration of a “state of emergency” in Ferguson is bad news in many ways, but I’ve been struggling with finding a way to express my outrage. Then, yesterday, someone did it for me.

In a short interview on CNN, Ferguson activist Tory Russell—one of the founders of Hands Up United—said it all.

Asked by CNN interviewer Brooke Baldwin for his response to Governor Nixon’s state of emergency declaration, Russell said:

I live in one of the poorest zip codes in the state. I constantly live in a state of emergency. People—black and brown bodies walking down the street—I don’t think that’s a cause for a state of emergency.

If you look at the unemployment rate in Missouri and St. Louis—that’s a state of emergency. If you look at homeless veterans who sleep at [St. Louis City] Mayor Slay’s City Hall—that’s a state of emergency, not black and brown bodies hitting the floor and being chalked down or even chanting. I can’t understand it.

[Note: In that last section, Russell was referring to a demonstration over the weekend during which protesters lay down in the street and had their bodies outlined with chalk, to symbolize black victims of police shootings.]

Gov. Nixon’s action is not only premature, it’s downright inflammatory, and as Russell said so well, it’s misdirected. And when asked why he did it and whether he’s the person who will be in charge and accountable for the consequences, Gov. Nixon couldn’t even come up with a coherent explanation.

To hear his babbling, incomprehensible, hem-and-haw backpedaling response to the simple question of “who’s in charge here,” listen to the sound bite below.

Based on what they’ve just said, I’ll take Tory Russell  over Jay Nixon any day of the week.

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The post The real state of emergency in Ferguson appeared first on Occasional Planet.

There was a saying popular among anti-war protestors of the 1960s. Just because you’re paranoid, don’t think they’re not out to get you.

We have even more reason to wonder about who is spying on our personal conversations today because technology can practically read our minds. For those of us exposed to the futuristic novels of the 1970’s and 80’s, the model is already in our heads. We just have to change the names and characters.

The reason I’m thinking about this right now is because I happened to hear a segment on NPR recently about the Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich. He wrote a symphony during the Stalin era that mightily displeased those with the power to dictate what music should sound like. They preferred something rousing and militaristic. Dmitry was condemned and almost sent to a gulag.

So, very cleverly, he wrote another symphony more to the liking of the militarists in power but with a subtext recognizable as satire by lovers of great music. Saved from the gulag, he went on to greatness.

Do you believe in odd coincidences? They seem to jump out at me constantly. The day after I heard the story on NPR about Shostakovich, James Risen was on Jon Stewart’s show. Risen writes for the New York Times and has been researching topics that the militarists in our country would rather he didn’t. For that, he and other journalists have been harassed, forced to pay thousands of dollars in attorney fees, and might possibly end up in jail. Yes, there are people in power in our country who dictate how the music should sound.

Risen was on The Daily Show to talk about his new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War.

One reviewer sums the book’s intent this way:
Still, his core message resonates. “We have scared the hell out of ourselves,” he quotes an expert on terrorism as saying. That conclusion is a fitting epitaph for the first decade of the current century. Mr. Risen certainly makes the case in this book that America has lost much in its lashing out against terrorism, and that Congress and the people need to wake up and ask more questions about the political, financial, moral and cultural costs of that campaign.

In another odd coincidence this past week, I happened to find in a pile of articles a review of Risen’s earlier work on how America was lied into war in 2003. He wrote in 2006 that there was plenty of evidence that Iraq had closed down its program to develop nuclear weapons, but the people who tried to get that information to the top level of decision-makers were silenced. None of that testimony was included in the National Intelligence Estimate that was used to convince Congress to vote for war in 2002. The demonstration of “evidence” by Secretary State Colin Powell at the UN in February 2003 was manufactured to fit a plan already written by Bush administration militarists.

We all know the expression “stretching the truth.” In Greek mythology, there is a character named Procrustes who offers travelers a meal and a bed for the night. If the wayfarer doesn’t fit the bed, Procrustes makes him fit by either stretching him on the rack or chopping his legs off. Hold that thought.

In a Fox News interview during the early days of the 2nd Iraq War, Vice President Cheney said that we would look back “ten years hence” and see that we had fundamentally changed the course of history in the Middle East. I think we can all agree that that life has changed for millions of families in Iraq as well as many other countries in that region. Most of us do not think the situation is much of an improvement for the vast majority of citizens in those war torn countries.

But, if the goal was to replace communism as the enemy which served the military so well during the Cold War with a new, equally difficult to define enemy, the opening of the tinder box in the Middle East has served its purpose.

President Obama inherited multiple foreign policy disasters. He has tried to wind down American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that doesn’t serve the purposes of the national security state and the war profiteers. Sen. Mitch McConnell set out to make Obama a one-term president. He couldn’t pull that off, so he set in motion the next best thing. Destroy the credibility of the man in the White House who wants to keep Americans out of other people’s wars.

Our democratic process has turned into what one writer for Salon calls kabuki theatre, a “pantomime: the fading shadow of a system that in essence, if not in law, has nearly reached a complete stop.” The writer concludes that the self-proclaimed oldest democracy in the world lacks the basics of real self-government: unfettered access to the polls, accountability to the voters by politicians, competition among candidates to discern the people’s will and real options for those who feel they are not being heard. (Salon, 11/4/14, Elias Isquith)

Examples abound of politicians ignoring the will of the people. Whether it’s raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, making it easier for bright young people to afford post-secondary education, or facing the racial disparities in our culture, our appeals fall on deaf ears.

Power is so concentrated at the top and the oligarchy is doing such a good job of fencing off anyone who objects, we, the people, don’t stand a chance. When the 99% rose up in 2011-12, what happened? They were tolerated briefly until it became apparent that they might actually build an influential constituency. Their big mistake was to take on Wall Street. That had to be nipped in the bud, and so the “occupiers” were ridiculed in the media, made to look like bums and fools in the evening news, and eventually saw their encampments destroyed by the police. That wasn’t just in NYC’s Zuccotti Park either. Some of us attended events held at Kiener Plaza in St. Louis and brought food and blankets to the protesters camped out there. Under the guise of concern for the health and safety of the citizens, the City of St. Louis decision-makers ordered the encampment destroyed.

Two things are happening right now that deserve our attention. President Obama is insisting that Congress authorize spending billions more on the “war on terror” which will include sending a few thousand more Americans into harm’s way in Iraq. Nowhere in the discussion do we hear how we were misled into opening that Pandora’s box in 2003. Is the media forbidden to do historical analysis? Or do they choose to turn a blind eye to what a disaster our policies have been in that region? If people like James Risen are being harassed for documenting the lies that we were sold in 2003, how is that different from the kind of pressure applied to Russian dissidents during the Stalin era?

Locally the story to watch is a plan to eliminate Kiener Plaza as an amphitheater for rallies, protests and public meetings. The powers-that-be want to fill in the area below ground, cover it over with grass and, in truth, bury it. The “reasons” given are a real stretching of the truth. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have been watching the takeover of our democratic system by people as ruthless as Procrustes. Sadly, the majority of citizens prefer to ignore what is happening right under their noses. So Mitch McConnell, the man who vowed to destroy the Obama presidency and any hope we might have for some semblance of economic and social justice, will control the most important deliberative body in the world. Here in Missouri, we will be entertained by the puppets in Jefferson City who work for what a cartoonist in the Gilded Age called “malefactors of great wealth.”

A few of us will continue our attempts to explain to voters what is happening while they are not paying attention. It’s the least we can do for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. But it’s much more complicated than that.

The post When politicians dictate how the music should sound: Lessons from Shostakovich appeared first on Occasional Planet.