CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down: Uncensoring Kent State – 10 March 2014

Almost 44 years after Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of unarmed Kent State students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four, wounding nine and galvanizing anti-war protests nationwide; four years after newly uncovered forensic evidence refuted the longtime government claim the Guard’s actions were prompted by a sniper but no command-to-fire; and two years after the Justice Department declined to reopen the case, despite that evidence, citing “insurmountable legal and evidentiary barriers” – a claim critics called “beyond ludicrous” – the Kent State Truth Tribunal is traveling to Geneva next week to the 25th Session of the UN Human Rights Committee to seek justice for the victims of Kent State. Arguing that the stunning events at Kent State continue to represent “a glaring example of government impunity….when lawful protest was pushed into the realm of massacre,” tribunal members want a credible, impartial investigation of U.S. government complicity – likely including the FBI and COINTELPRO – in the killing of peaceful protesters, or at the very least an acknowledgement the government has failed to hold any agency responsible. They cite ongoing examples of the same lack of accountability, often despite egregious abuses: the growing militarization of police forces, the violent suppression of protesters and the Occupy movement, the recent revelations of FBI surveillance of 1960s anti-war activists, the omnipresent, probably illegal abuses of the NSA. With video, photos and remembrances of that chilling day.

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Greedy Bankers Who Screwed Everyone Are Finally On Trial, Just Not In This Country – 6 February 20124

This week in Dublin, three former executives of the now-defunct Anglo Irish Bank went on trial for illegal practices that eventually crashed the economy, leading to an 85 billion euro bailout by the government – aka still-angry taxpayers. Years in the making, the complex trial is expected to last up to six months, involving 24 million documents, 800 witness statement and over 300 jury volunteers who have been warned they won’t be chosen if they’re too peeved to be “fair,” even though the banksters evidently weren’t. Particularly damning have been tape recordings of the executives laughingly discussing the bailout amount, which one says he “picked (out) of my arse.” This should and could have been done here, and many of us are in fact – hope against hope – still waiting for it to be done here.

www.commondreams.org / link to original article

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Glitter As Terrorism – 19 December 2013

For the first time, police have charged environmental activists with staging a “terrorism hoax” after Oklahoma protesters against fracking and tar sands unfurled a pair of banners covered in glitter – which cops described as a “biochemical assault.” Many see the arrest of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance activists on anti-terrorism charges, which carry a prison sentence of up to ten years, as part of a trend of increasingly aggressive tactics by law enforcement against environmental protesters. The surreal police report ominously cited the “unknown substance” as cause for alarm. And never mind “the covert way (the protesters) presented themselves.”

“A lot were dressed as somewhat transient-looking individuals. Some were wearing all black…Inside the banners was a lot of black powder substance, later determined to be glitter.”

www.commondreams.org / link to original article

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Celebrating The Right Of The People To Be Secure In Their Persons, Houses And Effects – 15 December 2013

In honor of Sunday’s Bill of Rights Day, a group of activists have hung an anti-NSA banner over a prime bit of real estate: the road right outside NSA headquarters at Maryland’s Fort Meade. Along with the action by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, NSA employees are facing other pressures: Even the Obama-appointed panel of largely insiders is said to be urging curbs on (though continuation of) surveillance, and their bosses sent them home for the holidays with talking points to assuage disgruntled relatives – you know, “NSA’s mission is of great value to the Nation,” NSA performs its mission the right way,” that sort of thing. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at family get-togethers. With more protest ideas from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and other groups.

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Ask J.P. Morgan: When Will You All Go To Jail? – 16 November 2013

Annals of Obliviousness: The brilliant minds at J.P. Morgan came up with the idea of a question-and-answer session on Twitter using the hashtag#AskJPM, evidently unaware that everybody hates them. Hilarity ensued. Some samples: “As a  young sociopath, how can I succeed in finance?” “How can a company spend $100,000,000 per day on legal expenses and not be a criminal enterprise?” “Can I have my house back?” “Is it true that, while you don’t always spit on poor people, when you do, you have perfect aim?” “Did you have a specific number of people’s lives you needed to ruin before you considered your business model a success?” and “Where do babies come from?” After the insults started streaming in, JP Morgan “cancelled” the Twitter session, evidently unaware that you can’t cancel Twitter. Good times.

Read the tweets and rest of the story at: www.commondreams.org / link to original article

 

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Ask J.P. Morgan: When Will You All Go To Jail? – 15 November 2013

Annals of Obliviousness: The brilliant minds at J.P. Morgan came up with the idea of a question-and-answer session on Twitter using the hashtag#AskJPM, evidently unaware that everybody hates them. Hilarity ensued. Some samples: “As a  young sociopath, how can I succeed in finance?” “How can a company spend $100,000,000 per day on legal expenses and not be a criminal enterprise?” “Can I have my house back?” “Is it true that, while you don’t always spit on poor people, when you do, you have perfect aim?” “Did you have a specific number of people’s lives you needed to ruin before you considered your business model a success?” and “Where do babies come from?” After the insults started streaming in, JP Morgan “cancelled” the Twitter session, evidently unaware that you can’t cancel Twitter. Good times.

Read the whole article and tweets:  www.commondreams.org/ link to original article

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Just Eat It: Big Money Spends Millions To Convince Washington It’s None Of Our Business What We Put In Our Mouths – 11 November 2013

A disheartening but predictable loss for GMO labelling in Washington, where Monsanto, DuPont and other big corporate interests jumped in and spent millions, sometimes evidently illegally, to defeat Initiative 522 to label groceries containing genetically engineered ingredients. In a repeat of last year’s campaign in California, food, biotech and agribusiness giants barraged voters with ads and mailers to convince them labelling would raise prices and overwhelm their wee brains with too much information about what it is they’re putting in their and their children’s bodies – that, despite polls showing that over 90% of Americans actually support such labelling. In other words, they spent an estimated $30 a head to convince people they don’t think what they thought they think. Sigh. Colbert had the best response to the sorry spectacle, insisting it’s un-American to question if there’s any food in your food and quoting Fox News on the terrible consequences of no GMOs, especially on seedless watermelon – “You know what happens then – the seeds come back” – even though, actually, seedless watermelon isn’t genetically modified, but hey, who needs facts when you have fear? With some substantive strategizing for how to beat them next time around.

Read the whole story and see video: www.commondreams.org / link to original article

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – If A Tree In The Forest : Another ‘Oil Field Incident’, Again By Koch, Goes Mostly Unreported – 31 October 2013

Amidst new revelations that some 750 pipeline spills, many in remote areas in North Dakota, have gone largely unreported within the last year comes news of Tuesday’s spill of 17,000 gallons of crude from a Koch-owned pipeline near Austin, Texas. Alarmingly brief Texas reports say it was discovered during a “routine aerial inspection,” the cleanup has begun, the cause is unknown, as is the timeline for fixing it, and Koch Pipeline Co. – which has already paid the largest fines ever for over 300 spills in six states affecting many thousands of people – has “notified the appropriate federal and state regulators.” So not to worry, even if Congress is currently debating speeding up and otherwise easing requirements for getting approval for such pipelines. Question: If a pipeline built by conscience-free, profit-driven mega-corporations starts oozing toxic oil in the boonies and nobody sees, hears or notices it for some time – and calls aforementioned corporation on their sins – what will become of us?

www.commondreams.org/ link to original article

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – Special Prosecutor To Probe Wisconsin’s Non-Recall Of Walker – 24 October 2013

Welcome to John Doe Act 2, wherein Wisconsin has appointed a special prosecutor to look into allegations of campaign violations and other misdeeds by Scott Walker and his well-funded friends during last year’s unsuccessful recall election. The probe, which is following up on a number of leads revealed during an earlier John Doe that saw six Walker cronies convicted

www.commondreams.org/ link to original article

CommonDreams – Abby Zimet – AIG CEO Says Getting Yelled At On Blogs For Obscene Bonuses Is Just Like Getting Hanged From A Tree By Your Neck Till You’re Dead – 25 September 2013

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were both right. Rich people, and most notably CEOs of rapacious companies, are different from us: They have not just more money, but more arrogance, grandiosity, moral blindness and self-delusion. Thus do we have Robert Benmosche, the CEO who took over AIG after it helped crash the global economy and then got bailed out by $700 billion from taxpayers, telling the Wall Street Journal that the uproar over insane bonuses to executives despite their utter incompetence was “just as bad and just as wrong” as lynching blacks in the South, and why were all those people “out there with their pitchforks and their hangman nooses” calling them bad names which is pretty much the same as being brutally murdered. Benmosche’s paranoid idiocy comes just as several other poor victimized CEOs have whined about how public anger at their privilege is just sour grapes and people should just suck it up and besides it’s just like Nazi Germany, which you can really sort of see, except, you know, for the concentration camps. The kicker: The WSJ profile on the oblivious Benmosche was titled, “At AIG, Benmosche Steers a Steady Course…Focuses on Core Mission,” with the lynching analogy cut from the main story and buried in a later blog post, neither of which mentions that actually not only did he not get lynched, but he didn’t save the insurance giant – we the people did, and still wish we didn’t.

See pictures and the rest at:   www.commondreams.org / link to original article