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If Paris Killers Had Western Media on Their Side

Some killings are reported on in a slightly different manner from how the Charlie Hebdo killings have been. Rewriting a drone killing as a gun killing (changing just a few words) would produce something like this:

Freedom Fighters Gun Strike in Europe Is Said to Have Killed 12 Militants

PARIS, France — At least 12 foreign militants were believed to have been killed in a freedom fighter gun strike in the North Paris tribal region on Wednesday morning, a Liberation security official said.

The Liberation official said guns fired 128 precision bullets into a compound in the Cafe Au Lait subdistrict at 6:40 a.m. The area is close to the headquarters of numerous French businesses.

“The guns targeted a base of a French commander known as Francoise, killing 12 French militants. Two militants are wounded,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media.

King and LBJ square off in fascinating historical drama

Selma gives us our first glimpse of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) while he’s preparing to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Given our memories of King as the inspirational leader of the Civil Rights Movement, you might expect him to say something profound and high-minded. Instead, he complains to his wife (Carmen Ejogo) about the formal tie he’s forced to strap on for the occasion.

That’s one way Selma distinguishes itself from the average historical drama it could have been. Rather than turning King and other luminaries of the period into cardboard heroes, it renders them as recognizable human beings.

The other way Selma distinguishes itself is by delving into the arguing and strategizing that went on behind the scenes as King fought to secure voting rights for black Americans. Director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb have put together an illuminating account of the events leading up to a massive demonstration he organized to promote those rights: the 1965 march from Selma, Ala., to the capitol building in Montgomery.

President Obama's Keystone XL veto threat

When the news arrived from the White House yesterday that Barack Obama would veto the proposed Keystone pipeline bill, I thought back to a poll that the National Journal conducted of its “energy insiders” in the fall of 2011, just when then issue was heating up. Nearly 92% of those insiders thought Obama’s administration would approve the pipeline, and almost 71% said it would happen by the end of that year.

Keystone’s not dead yet -- feckless Democrats in the Congress could make some kind of deal, and the president could still yield down the road to the endlessly corrupt State Department bureaucracy that continues to push the pipeline -- but the President's veto threat shows what happens when people organize.

By pledging to veto the Keystone XL bill, President Obama took an important step towards backing up his climate talk yesterday, and we should applaud that. He showed the kind of courage that will be needed to stop this pipeline and begin to turn the tide against the fossil fuel industry.

Turning our backs

Oh, the moral force of a snub.

Several hundred cops turn their backs on New York’s mayor as he eulogizes one of their own, killed in the line of duty, and the media have another us-vs.-them story to report. Bill de Blasio’s in trouble, accused of playing politics with the lives of heroes. And, of course, the story goes no deeper than the dramatic accusation.

As the sign of a lone protester at the officer’s funeral proclaimed: “God bless the NYPD: Dump de Blasio.”

There’s nothing like a good, righteous condemnation to stop a national discussion. Criticizing police tactics means contributing to an anti-police atmosphere. End of debate.

Personally, I view the snub, by some New York police, as de Blasio’s red badge of courage more than his moral condemnation. He stood for something outside the zone of official righteousness. He met with protesters. He ended stop-and-frisk, the tactic of warrantless street searches that primarily targeted blacks and Hispanics. He told his biracial son to “take special care in any encounter he has with police officers,” in other words, refused to sugarcoat a pragmatic truth.

Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower

The trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, set to begin in mid-January, is shaping up as a major battle in the U.S. government’s siege against whistleblowing. With its use of the Espionage Act to intimidate and prosecute people for leaks in “national security” realms, the Obama administration is determined to keep hiding important facts that the public has a vital right to know.

After fleeting coverage of Sterling’s indictment four years ago, news media have done little to illuminate his case -- while occasionally reporting on the refusal of New York Times reporter James Risen to testify about whether Sterling was a source for his 2006 book “State of War.”

Risen’s unwavering stand for the confidentiality of sources is admirable. At the same time, Sterling -- who faces 10 felony counts that include seven under the Espionage Act -- is no less deserving of support.

Presidents Are Gods

A former Governor of Virginia is expected to be sentenced to a long stay in prison. The same fate has befallen governors in states across the United States, including in nearby Maryland, Tennessee, and West Virginia. A former governor of Illinois is in prison. Governors have been convicted of corruption in Rhode Island, Louisiana, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Connecticut, and (in a trumped-up partisan scam) in Alabama. The statewide trauma suffered by the people of states that have locked up their governors has been . . . well, nonexistent and unimaginable.

VA is Producing a Generation of “Legally” Addicted Junkies

There is a mental health epidemic in our midst and it is happening to some of our best people.

While the United States government continues its eternally self-defeating War on Drugs, the Veterans Administration (VA) is producing junkies at an exponential rate. But the drugs they are taking are legal. And one side-effect doesn’t last long because you won’t be around to suffer – its suicide. No surprise is that one veteran commits suicide every hour, this according to the VA.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the number one affliction affecting our nation’s Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans. And after rotating countless patients through every single antidepressant and antianxiety medication that modern psychiatry has to offer, the VA says they have a cure.

The VA believes the most successful medication prescribed for combat PTSD is the benzodiazepine. A class that includes Xanex, Valium, Klonopin, and Adavan.

Ohio Inspector General Resists Investigating Massive Rigging of Workers’ Compensation Premium Rates

A two-part series in the Sept. and Oct. issues of The Free Press reported on the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) setting employers’ insurance premiums illegally and unfairly for many years. The violations were revealed in the class-action lawsuit of San Allen v. Buehrer, in which Ohio’s 8th District Court of Appeals in May affirmed BWC’s liability to Ohio employers.

In November, the trial judge in the case, Richard McMonagle of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, approved a $420 million settlement agreed to by BWC and the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

McMonagle had ruled in 2012 that BWC knowingly violated state law and acted unfairly in setting hundreds of thousands of Ohio employers’ workers’ compensation premium rates. The illegal rates were imposed on employers for over 15 years, until the lawsuit forced the agency to stop in 2009. BWC’s records submitted at trial indicated its conduct caused many thousands of employers to close due to shockingly high – and completely illegal – premium increases.

SKULKING AWAY FROM A FAILED WAR

“The only good Talib is a dead Talib.”

These words, uttered half a decade ago by the head of intelligence for the NATO coalition force in Afghanistan, summon a far earlier American savagery. As the American empire affects to close the door on its war with Afghanistan, the words also serve as a sort of doorstop propping open our further intervention in this broken country.

The war isn’t really ending. Some 18,000 foreign troops will stay in Afghanistan, almost 11,000 of them American, under a new mission called “Resolute Support.” U.S. forces will also have “a limited combat role as part of a separate counterterrorism mission,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Incredibly, we’re not letting go. We’re just disappearing the combat mission into global background noise.

The Challenge of the Islamic State and U.S. Policy

What to do about the political mess in the Middle East and the rise of the Islamic State and related political movements?

Shortly after the end of World War II, the Western powers and the whole world began to recognize that the age of explicit colonial domination was over, and dozens of colonies were let go of and took political independence.

It is now past time for the United States and other world powers to recognize that the age of neo-colonial military, political and economic domination, especially in the Islamic Middle East, is decisively coming to a close.

Attempts to maintain it by military force have been disastrous for ordinary people trying to survive in the affected countries. There are powerful cultural currents and political forces in motion in the Middle East that simply will not tolerate military and political domination. There are thousands of people prepared to die rather than accept it.

U.S. policy will find no military fix for this reality.

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