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The Get-Well Card I Sent to a Koch Brother |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7118"><span class="small">Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Saturday, 17 May 2014 09:48 |
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Gibson writes: "Rather than simply being outraged by the greed of the Koch Brothers, we should instead see their greed as a profound sickness and pray fervently for oligarchs like the Kochs to get better, for the sake of our country and the world's future generations."
David Koch. (photo: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters)
The Get-Well Card I Sent to a Koch Brother
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
17 May 14
“The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous mini-mall or start a coup or try to become a rockstar and you think, “They'll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your mini-mall becomes a lesion.”
– John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars”
 ather than simply being outraged by the greed of the Koch Brothers, we should instead see their greed as a profound sickness and pray fervently for oligarchs like the Kochs to get better, for the sake of our country and the world’s future generations. I'm including this message in a get-well card I'm mailing to David Koch's Manhattan apartment, which is his primary residence. Feel free to write a similar letter and mail it to:
David Koch
740 Park Avenue
Floors 4 and 5
New York, NY 10021
Dear David,
Think back on the spiritual experience you had when surviving an early nineties plane crash that killed 34 people. What purpose were you kept alive to fulfill? I’ve asked myself the same question since last fall, when I somehow escaped a late-night fire that consumed everything I own in under three minutes and displaced 30 other housemates. Did we both miraculously survive these tragedies to work for the benefit of a small handful of tremendously wealthy individuals, or for the lasting good of society?
Your father, as you say, was “paranoid about Communism.” I imagine his vision of Communism was a populace living under the thumb of a corrupt government that took their homes, their rights, and forced them to labor eternally for meager wages with no ability to speak against it. Now compare that nightmare scenario to today’s America.
Millions have been made homeless by fraudulent foreclosure schemes. Globalization has eliminated millions of good-paying jobs. Most of the few job openings left are in part-time, minimum wage labor in the fast-food industry. Politicians are more interested in fundraising for their own re-election than in meeting the needs of their constituents. Americans who nonviolently assembled in public spaces three years ago and spoke against these injustices had their constitutional rights brutally suppressed by the state with tear gas, flash grenades, batons, and pepper spray. Your father’s picture of 20th-century Communism has come to 21st-century America. We both know this isn’t the nation the founding fathers, or your father, envisioned. Ask yourself – are you using your vast wealth to prolong this nightmare, or end it?
Your wealthy father raised you to respect hard work, and had you spend one hot summer driving a spade into Oklahoma ground that didn’t want to crack. That story reminded me of one hot, humid summer on my grandfather’s farm in Bourbon County, Kentucky, when I threw bales of hay into a loft, and knocked down a fence with a sledgehammer and crowbar to make room for a new one. Even though I’m middle-class and you’re the second-wealthiest man in New York City, we share a kinship through our upbringing. We both love this country and want to see it flourish. We’re also both spiritually-inclined people.
In Nichiren Buddhism, in which we chant Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo to manifest a higher life condition and have a human revolution, one of the ten worlds we experience is the world of hunger, where no matter how much we have, it’s never enough to satisfy. The tenth world, Buddhahood, can be achieved by anyone, no matter how much evil they may have done. Imagine if you were no longer hungry, renounced your past causes, changed your karma, and had such a human revolution!
Devote your estate to lifting people out of poverty, and advocate for a government that respects fundamental human rights and basic needs. Honor your father’s anti-dictatorial ideals by demanding an end to the authoritarian policing and intrusive surveillance that’s akin to Czarist Russia, not the United States we were born in. Use your influence on politics to push for an economy that’s powered not by finite resources dug up from underground, but by the wind, the sun, and the water. Your company would be a leading innovator in developing and propagating these technologies and would be profitable beyond measure. Your name would be celebrated worldwide for ages, and you would leave a legendary legacy that would make Americans proud to speak your name long after you’re gone.
I’ll be continuing to pray for your human revolution. Get well soon.
All the best,
Carl
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Drone Lawyer: Kill a 16-Year-Old, Get a Promotion |
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Saturday, 17 May 2014 09:45 |
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Benjamin writes: "If you think that as a United States citizen you're entitled to a trial by jury before the government can decide to kill you - you're wrong. During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, David Barron was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to legally justify killing American citizens with drone strikes."
David Barron testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination hearing, Nov. 20, 2013 in Washington, DC. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Drone Lawyer: Kill a 16-Year-Old, Get a Promotion
By Medea Benjamin, Common Dreams
17 May 14
 f you think that as a United States citizen you’re entitled to a trial by jury before the government can decide to kill you–– you’re wrong. During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, David Barron was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to legally justify killing American citizens with drone strikes. If you’re wondering what the justification for that is, that’s just too bad – the legal memos are classified. Sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it? What’s even more suspicious is that now the Obama Administration wants to appoint the lawyer who wrote that legal memos to become a high-ranking judge for life.
Disturbingly, this is not the first time that the president has rewarded a high-level lawyer for paving the legal way for drone strike assassinations. Jeh Johnson, former lawyer at the Department of Defense, penned the memos that give the “okay” to target non-US citizen foreign combatants with drones. His reward? He’s now the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. These Obama nominations are eerily reminiscent of the Bush-era appointment of torture memo author Jay Bybee to a lifetime position of a federal judge.
Barron, a Harvard law professor and former legal counsel at the Department of Justice, was recently nominated by President Obama to the lifetime position of a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals—just one step below the Supreme Court. While at the Department of Justice, Barron wrote at least 2 secret legal memos justifying the use of lethal drones to kill Americans suspected of involvement in terrorist activities.
Should someone who has done such immense damage to the rule of law and our moral sensibilities be awarded with a judgeship on the First Circuit Court?
The Attorney General has conceded that four Americans located outside the United States have been killed by drone strikes since 2011. One of those killed was Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was attacked while in a tribal region of Yemen in September 2011. Then Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, was shamefully killed in a drone strike in rural Yemen two weeks later.
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that Americans suspected of committing crimes deserve to have charges brought against them, to have a chance to surrender or be captured, and to be given a fair trial. If they cannot be captured and refuse to surrender, they could be tried in absentia. But Barron helped set a terrible precedent that American citizens have no right to a judicial process—something that human rights advocates around the world have been fighting for since the signing of the Magna Carta 800 years ago.
How can Barron be a judge if he does not understand the deeply valued laws of our land, laws that include habeas corpus and the right to a fair trial? As stated in the Bill of Rights: the Fourth Amendment guarantees that a person cannot be seized by the government unreasonably, and the Fifth Amendment guarantees that the government may not deprive a person of life without due process of law. A judge is supposed to uphold the Constitution, yet Barron has already torn it down.
In an op-ed supporting Barron’s nomination, law professors Charles Fried and Laurence Tribe argue that Barron didn’t order the strikes or design the legal framework for their authorization. Certainly he didn’t order the strikes, but his job as acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel was precisely to provide legal opinions to the President, opinions that became the legal foundation on which the strikes were based.
Some Senators said they would not proceed with Barron’s nomination until they got access to the memos he has written about drone strikes. “This nomination cannot go forward unless this body — every member of this body — is given access to any and all secret legal opinions this nominee wrote on this critical issue,” Grassley said. The White House responded by allowing all interested Senators to go to a secret chamber to read “all written legal advice issued by Mr. Barron regarding the potential use of lethal force against US citizens in counterterrorism operations.” This pretense of transparency is meaningless, though, because Senators won’t be able to publicly question and challenge Barron about the memos unless they are declassified.
That’s why some senators, including Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Rand Paul, are insisting that the memos be made public. That’s all well and good, since we—the public–certainly should have the right to read them. It makes no sense for legal memos to be considered secret national security documents. Even the courts have said as much, when a federal judge in April 2014 ordered the administration to release the legal analysis to the public (an order the administration has so far ignored).
But the Senators should go further and state that David Barron is simply not fit to sit on the bench to interpret our Constitution.
In the hopes of moving our nation back to one that respects, honors and upholds the rule of law, we are pushing the Senate—particularly Majority Leader Harry Reid—to kill Barron’s nomination. Senator Rand Paul is one of the few Senators challenging Barron’s nomination. “I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens,” he wrote.
Unfortunately, now that the administration has placated Senators by giving them access to Barron’s memos, he will most likely be be confirmed. There is one good thing that could come out of this, though – the sparking of a much-needed national conversation about drone warfare and U.S. policy on the use of killer drones. Does the use of drone strikes that often hit innocent people and incite hatred towards Americans actually ensure our safety, or trigger greater danger? In the meantime, we should urge our Senators to push for the public release of these classified drone memos and should oppose the appointment of David Barron. We don’t need a judge on the bench who has already shown his disregard for the Constitution and for the rights of American citizens. Tell your Senator to vote “no” for drone lawyer David Barron.
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The Girl Who Sparked Brown v. Board of Education |
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Saturday, 17 May 2014 09:37 |
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Bloch writes: "While the decision in this case, Brown v. Board of Education, has received the most ink over the last six decades, the stories and people behind the landmark decision are even more vividly compelling and inspiring than the sea-changing unanimous ruling itself."
A drawing of Barbara Rose Johns from the Morton Museum in Farmville, Va. (art: Morton Museum)
The Girl Who Sparked Brown v. Board of Education
By Nadine Bloch, Waging Nonviolence
17 May 14
 ixty years ago on May 17, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and declared separate was not equal for public schools and was therefore unconstitutional. While the decision in this case, Brown v. Board of Education, has received the most ink over the last six decades, the stories and people behind the landmark decision are even more vividly compelling and inspiring than the sea-changing unanimous ruling itself.
The five cases that composed this hearing came from four states and a district — Virginia, Kansas, Delaware, South Carolina and the District of Columbia — and were all sponsored by the NAACP. The Delaware case was the only one in which the lower courts actually found discrimination unlawful; the other four cases ruled against the parents and students who were suing for equality and desegregation.
Although the Supreme Court case is named after the suit from Kansas, it is the Virginia fight that stands out. It was the only case sparked by the students themselves, which opened up space for their parents and NAACP elders to fall in behind.
History books, if they mention this backstory at all, talk about the student walk out at R.R. Moton High School led by 16-year-old junior Barbara Rose Johns on April 23, 1951. While that fact alone is impressive, the planning and organization that went into pulling off the action is pure inspiration.
In many ways, Moton High School in Farmville, Va., was representative of the situation across great swaths of the United States in 1951. In comparison to its white counterpart across town, this school that served blacks was underfunded, undersupplied and dilapidated. More than 450 children were enrolled at the school, which was designed to hold only 180. The building had no gym, no cafeteria and no indoor plumbing. As many as three classes were being taught at the same time in the cramped auditorium; others were held in old school buses parked on site.
Conditions were so bad that the state government offered money to improve the school in 1947, but the all-white county school board refused to accept it. Instead, the county built several tar paper shacks — referred to as “chicken coops ” — that were hot in warm weather, cold in the winter and did not have enough desks.
Parents and educators in the black community had tried to get changes implemented and a new school built, but nothing substantive was forthcoming from the white powers that be. And the risks of organizing were serious under Jim Crow, ranging from casual threats to loss of employment, injury and lynching.
When 16-year-old Barbara Rose Johns approached her teacher about the situation, she was told to “do something about it.” It’s likely that Barbara was also inspired by her uncle, the civil rights leader Rev. Vernon Johns, and others in her family who valued education.
Sometime in the winter of 1950 Barbara had an idea.
“The plan was to assemble together the student council members,” she said. “From this, we would formulate plans to go on strike. We would make signs and I would give a speech stating our dissatisfaction and we would march out [of] the school and people would hear us and see us and understand our difficulty and would sympathize with our plight and would grant us our new school building and our teachers would be proud and the students would learn more and it would be grand.”
With this vision in mind — and with the knowledge that those who did not have a vision to sustain their risky and courageous scheming might be more of a liability than an asset — she began organizing in secret with four other students. By early spring in 1951, they strategically built a coordinating caucus of 15 trusted students who had key ties to different communities of the student body. They kept the date of their event quiet until their decision the evening before. At times the group even sent out false information to head off any interference from so-called Uncle Toms, the name for those who would undermine them. The plan was to trick the principal to leave the building, then call an assembly so that all of the students could decide together to march out to petition the county superintendent for a new high school.
They were bold, smart and somewhat fearful of ending up in jail. So they asked a brother of a student in the core group who was home from college what they should do if they were arrested and held in jail.
“And he said, ‘how many students are in your school?’” John Stokes recounted to the civil rights oral history project “Voices of Freedom.” “We said 400-something. He said, ‘how big is the Farmville jail?’ And we knew then we were on a roll. And the rest is history.”
On April 23, the decoy phone call came that a couple of truants were causing trouble at the bus station downtown, and the principal left to take care of business. Quickly, the core students distributed forged announcements from the principal calling for an immediate school assembly in the auditorium. The planning caucus was gathered on stage; everyone was paying attention. After the caucus leaders asked the teachers to leave the auditorium, Barbara laid out the plan to go out on strike in protest of overcrowding and inadequate facilities. It was reported that almost all of the more than 450 students were supportive, even though the principal returned and tried to talk them out of it. They marched down to the county courthouse to air their grievances, but because of segregation, the white press and whites in general didn’t take much notice.
The next day, when the student strike committee tried to meet with the school superintendent, they were refused and threatened with retaliatory expulsions.
By this point, Barbara and her crew were in touch with the local NAACP leadership and supportive clergy. At first, the elders were not encouraging; all the efforts aimed at getting equal facilities nationally were going nowhere, and the difficult work of fighting segregation was widely seen as the more effective path. Committing to the work of desegregation would serve to show the NAACP that the students were serious and worthy of support; otherwise, the NAACP would not be involved.
The students had to take a vote on this, as they did with all decisions, and it was a hard one. As Stokes remembers, they didn’t go on strike for integration but rather for the seemingly simpler demand of better educational facilities and opportunities. They were keenly aware of the value of their existing teachers and their tight-knit, supportive community, and they rightly feared losing these benefits in the process of desegregation. After a difficult meeting, the central caucus voted to commit to integration — passed by only one vote — thereby allowing the NAACP to take the case.
With NAACP support, one of the largest ever community-wide meetings was held in the local civil rights church. Parents were asked to sign up to show support for the students and the lawsuit ahead. The white press also finally decided to cover this meeting — even though it had refused the students’ requests to report on the previous three actions. Knowing that having white media at this sensitive meeting would be difficult, the students turned the journalists away.
At one point, one of the respected adults raised objections to moving forward. Again it was Barbara who spoke out and rallied the crowd to not listen to “any Uncle Toms,” prodding the assembled students and parents into taking a courageous step for the community. Although described as very quiet and lady-like, when it came to this issue, Stokes said that “she became a tiger … put on gloves and started fighting.” Buoyed by the student’s commitment, the parents and students collectively decided to strike until the end of the school year and to support the lawsuit.
A month after the walkout, the NAACP filed the case — Dorothy E. Davis et al v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia — and Barbara was sent to live with relatives in Alabama out of fear for her safety.
Later, this case on appeal became part of Brown v. Board of Education. The story of Prince Edward County’s resistance to quality education for all of its residents, however, does not end there. The county is more widely known for what it did in response to Brown v. Board of Education than for the student activism that preceded it. After the ruling, the county defunded and closed its public schools in 1959 in order to resist desegregation. It wasn’t until 1964 when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the county to operate a public school system that the schools were reopened.
Today, the town of Farmville is still working through issues of racial equality with the help of Moton High School, which has been converted into a civil rights museum. On April 23, current high school students held a commemorative event reenacting the march from Moton to the court house to honor the courageous student strike of 1951.
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Jane Kleeb vs. the Keystone Pipeline |
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Saturday, 17 May 2014 09:34 |
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Elbein writes: "Terry Van Housen had a question. What he wanted to know from the 30 or so other Nebraska farmers and ranchers gathered in February at the York Community Center was this: What do you do with 10,000 dead cows? That was the number of cattle Van Housen figured could be at risk if the Obama administration permitted the proposed 1,700-mile XL leg of the Keystone pipeline to cut across their state."
Jane Kleeb is the head of the anti-pipeline group Bold Nebraska. (photo: Courtesy Bold Nebraska)
Jane Kleeb vs. the Keystone Pipeline
By Saul Elbein, The New York Times
17 May 14
 erry Van Housen had a question. What he wanted to know from the 30 or so other Nebraska farmers and ranchers gathered in February at the York Community Center was this: What do you do with 10,000 dead cows?
That was the number of cattle Van Housen figured could be at risk if the Obama administration permitted the proposed 1,700-mile XL leg of the Keystone pipeline to cut across their state. Bulldozers would dig a trench not far from Van Housen’s feedlot, completing the final phase of the Keystone project and streamlining the current flow of oil from the bitumen mines of Northern Alberta toward refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. If the pipe were to leak, Van Housen said, his cattle could die.
“Can we put [those cows] on trucks and send them to Canada?” suggested Max Nelson, a stooped retired rancher who raised his hand every 10 minutes to pose other hypothetical disasters: a spill polluting the water supply of West Omaha, say, or compromising the hydroelectric dams on the Platte River.
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