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Columbus Sprawl Serves Lattes Graveside to Captive Rush Hour Audience

“Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last 50 years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading” – James Howard Kunstler, from his book The Geography of Nowhere


 

In the City of Pickerington the final resting place of a veteran who fought to end slavery has become surrounded by overwhelming traffic and besieged by over-priced coffee. A handful of living veterans grumbled, angered to see a Starbucks seemingly built over night was now practically on top of the Civil War veteran’s small cemetery. But once again the concerns of loyal and proud citizens were too late as developers and retailers had struck again.

Will police body cameras usher in a new surveillance regime?

Since the beginning of the recent protest movement around the deaths of multiple unarmed African American men at the hands of police in multiple states there has been a push for police to wear body cameras. In the Tamir Rice and  John Crawford III cases here in Ohio, video exists in the public sphere that clearly shows what happened. Yet in both cases the policeman who pulled the trigger is still free to roam the streets and still feeding at the public trough.

   This push has come from within some sectors of the civil rights movement, from private police groups involved in repressing demonstrations, and from the White House itself. A  closer look at body cameras, their packaging and companion products, and manufacturers yields a vista of constant public surveillance.

Marvel’s Secret Wars Presents a New Crisis

Comics fandom has known since last October’s New York Comic Con that Marvel’s big crossover event for 2015 will be called Secret Wars. Now Marvel has finally revealed what that will entail, and, like any good summer comics event, it’ll have a lasting impact on the Marvel Universe. But this one won’t just shake up who’s on what teams. The upcoming Secret Wars storyline will overhaul the Marvel Universe on a scale reminiscent of DC’s 80s epic Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The name “Secret Wars” is hardly new, and it harkens back to the 80s as well. The original Secret Wars was a 12-issue story that pulled characters together from across the Marvel Universe to, well, primarily sell toys – Mattel wanted a cohesive theme and storyline for their Marvel action figure series. The story introduced a godlike being called the Beyonder who snatched up Earth’s greatest heroes and villains and pitted them against each other. It’s still a fondly-remembered story (less so its sequel, Secret Wars II) and not a bad place to mine for a little nostalgia.

U.S. government tried to give nuclear plans to Iraq and nobody cares

This cable was submitted as evidence by the prosecution in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a trial in which Sterling was convicted on entirely circumstantial evidence of leaking to a reporter that the CIA had given nuclear weapons part plans (with flaws added) to Iran. The cable makes crystal clear that the CIA proposed to do the same with Iraq.

 

There are only two nations beginning with a vowel and containing in adjectival form five letters: IRAQI and OMANI. The United States has neither worried about slowing down a nuclear weapons program in Oman nor sought to concoct reasons for a war on Oman. Iraq is of course a different story.

“American Sniper" and the Spiritual Decline of the American Empire.

The Columbus Free Press recently printed a movie review of “American Sniper”, the Clint Eastwood directed film portraying Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) in a positive or at least a conflicted character. The movie is a huge box office success in America, bringing in $217,092,013 in the first 5 weekends.
 

The review by Richard Ades printed in this paper concludes with this gem: “The real-life Kyle was celebrated as a hero. Despite its occasional whiff of dramatic manipulation, American Sniper makes a compelling argument that he deserved the label. “


Unlike the review printed in this paper, American Sniper has been savaged by progressive voices throughout the country.

 

The best of the reviews is by “Killing Ragheads for Jesus” by Chris Hedges, which begins with this excellent introduction:

 

Students save Palestine

In proposing that Congress Members boycott or walk out on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned speech to Congress, expected to push for sanctions if not war on Iran, activists are drawing on actions engaged in by college students in recent years, as they have boycotted or walked out on or disrupted speeches by Israeli soldiers and officials on U.S. campuses. Netanyahu's noodle-headed move -- oblivious, apparently, to the U.S. government's effective evolution into a term-limited monarchy -- may provide a boost to both the movement to free Palestine and the movement to prevent a war on Iran.

Peace activists sometimes marvel at how young people have taken up environmentalist activism (with very little emphasis on the environmental destruction caused by militarism). Why, antiwar activists ask, don't young people get active opposing wars?

Ah, but they do. They are increasingly active, organized, strategic, bold, courageous, and determined about opposing a particular war: the ongoing war that the government of Israel wages -- with U.S. funding and support -- on the people of Palestine.

Healing the criminal justice system

“It’d be really hard to have a higher recidivism rate than we have in Cook County.”

Maybe this is the place to start a brief meditation on changing the world, or at least Chicago . . . known to some of its residents as “Chiraq.”

The speaker is Elena Qunitana, executive director of the Adler Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice, which, in partnership with Roosevelt University’s Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation, recently completed a study on Cook County’s dysfunctional juvenile justice system.

What we’re doing isn’t working, justice-wise, order-wise, sanity-wise. The state of Illinois is bankrupt and yet its jails are full to bursting, at a cost, per occupant, equal to or greater than the cost of luxury suites at its ritziest hotels. And 90 percent of the teenagers who enter the system come back within three years of their release. This is no surprise: The system is a spiral of entrapment, especially for young men of color.

Dear Syria: From One Refugee to Another

Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.

Back then, Zarefah was six. Her father died in a refugee camp in a tent provided by the Quakers soon after he had been separated from his land. She collected scrap metal to survive.

My grandmother Mariam, would venture out to the ‘death zone’ that bordered the separated and newly established state of Israel from Gaza’s refugee camps to collect figs and oranges. She faced death every day. Her children were all refugees, living in shatat – the Diaspora.

My mother lived to be 42. Her life was tremendously difficult. She married a refugee, my dad, and together they brought seven refugees into this world - my brothers, my sister and myself. One died as a toddler, for there was no medicine in the refugee camp’s clinic.

Double Film Review: ‘Violent’ flick focuses on man who hopes to avoid violence and Belgian mom tries to dodge unemployment

A scene from the movie "Most Violent Year"

There likely have been hundreds of films about men trying to tear themselves away from a life of crime. The scenario invariably involves taking part in one last “job” that goes horribly wrong.

Are you ready for a film about a man who tries to avoid falling into a life of crime in the first place? That, essentially, is the subject of A Most Violent Year.

Abel Morales (the chameleonic Oscar Isaac) is a naturalized immigrant trying to make his mark in home heating oil. It’s an industry that—in New York City in 1981, at least—appears to be up to its exhaust ducts in corruption.

In an early scene, Morales and his lieutenant, Andrew Walsh (Albert Brooks), make a down payment on an oil-storage facility. It’s a hazardous undertaking because Morales will lose his investment if he can’t come up with the rest of the money in 30 days.

Success is far from assured, as his competitors seem determined to force him out of business. Time after time, his trucks are waylaid by robbers who attack his drivers and steal his oil. One driver, a fellow immigrant named Julian (Elyes Gabel), ends up in the hospital.

CIA Leak Trial: “This Case Is Not About Politics” [sic]

 

By

Continuing to deliberate as this week gets underway, the jurors in the CIA leak trial might ponder a notable claim from the government: “This case is not about politics.”

The prosecution made that claim a few days ago in closing arguments — begun with a somber quotation from Condoleezza Rice about the crucial need to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Of course prosecutor Eric Olshan was not foolish enough to quote Rice’s most famous line: “We don’t want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud.”

During the seven days of the trial, which received scant media coverage, Rice attracted the most attention. But little of her testimony actually got out of the courtroom, and little of what did get out illuminated the political context of the government’s case against former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling.

A heavy shroud over this trial — almost hidden by news media in plain sight — has been context: the CIA’s collusion with the Bush White House a dozen years ago, using WMD fear and fabrication to stampede the United States into making war on Iraq.

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