Patrick's Notebook

Authored by Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com

A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to (Someone Like) You…

There once lived an odd little man – five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet – who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30 years later, as one of this country’s most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist dissidents.

Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America’s “Banana Wars” from 1898 to 1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.

A teenage officer and a certified hero during an international intervention in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900, he would later become a constabulary leader of the Haitian gendarme, the police chief of Philadelphia (while on an approved absence from the military), and a proponent of Marine Corps football. In more standard fashion, he would serve in battle as well as in what might today be labeled peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, and advise-and-assist missions in Cuba, China, the Philippines, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, France, and China (again). While he showed early signs of skepticism about some of those imperial campaigns or, as they were sardonically called by critics at the time, “Dollar Diplomacy” operations — that is, military campaigns waged on behalf of U.S. corporate business interests — until he retired he remained the prototypical loyal Marine. » Read the rest of this entry «

Authored by Tulsi Gabbard via TheHill.com

Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.

A “news article” published last week in The Washington Post, which set off yet another manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to “sow division,” but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own — by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign. » Read the rest of this entry «

Authored by Alan Macleod via MintPressNews.com

The Supreme Court set a dangerous precedent when it ruled in favor of the US Border Patrol in the cross-border murder of a young teenage boy who was shot in the face by an overzealous agent.

Unidentified people embrace during the funeral of Sergio Hernandez, 15, at the cemetery in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, June 10, 2010. | AP

June 2010, 15-year old Sergio Hernandez was playing a game with his friends in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico when a U.S. Border Patrol officer Jesus Mesa shot him in the face, killing him instantly. Mesa fired from El Paso, Texas on the American side of the border into Mexico. In court, he claimed that the teenage boy had attacked him, pelting him with stones, and he feared for his life. Video footage of the incident, however, clearly contradicted his account. Mesa had caught one of Hernandez’s friends, and while apprehending him, shot Hernandez twice as he ran away.

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that the deceased child’s family could not sue the U.S. for damages, effectively setting a precedent that American officials can kill with impunity. The investigation ruled that Mesa had indeed acted in self-defense when he fired through the militarized U.S.-Mexico border. Like many Supreme Court rulings, the decision was split down liberal-conservative lines, with new Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh carrying the day 5-4. The court decided that the teenagers’ games along the border represented a national security threat to the United States and that because Mesa fired from one country into another, it was an international incident and beyond its purview. The more liberal judges – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – rejected this framing and offered a dissenting opinion. Nevertheless, the majority decision sets a precedent that police, ICE agents and other border security forces could use in the future. » Read the rest of this entry «

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I’m in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on. » Read the rest of this entry «

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute

“Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts… We forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. It’s his birthday we’re celebrating. Don’t let us ever forget that. Let us ask ourselves what He would wish for most. And then, let each put in his share, loving kindness, warm hearts, and a stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.”—The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them? » Read the rest of this entry «

by Tyler Durden via ZeroHedge.com

In what’s already being hailed as a defining and explosive “Pentagon papers” moment, a cache of previously classified documents obtained by The Washington Post show top Pentagon leaders continuously lied to the public about the “progress” of the now eighteen-year long Afghan war.

The some 2,000 pages of notes from interviews of senior officials who have shaped US strategy in Afghanistan confirm that “senior US officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false… hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable,” according to the bombshell Post report.

The internal interviews and statements were unearthed via Freedom of Information Act request and span the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. The trove further confirms that US leaders knew vast amounts of money was being wasted in a futile attempt to “Westernize the nation”.

Watchdog groups commonly estimate total US spending on the war has hit $1 trillion by end of 2019. More importantly, America’s ‘endless war’ has cost at least 2,351 American lives and over 20,000 wounded. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Liam Sigler and Chris Talgo from HeartLand.org

Mediocrity has become normalized and institutionalized.

The United States is in the midst of an educational crisis. Test scores are plummeting, education spending is unsustainable, and the vast majority of American students are ill-prepared to thrive in the high-tech workplace of the future.

Given this sorry state of affairs, the question arises: How did the American education system, once the envy of the world, fall into such a decrepit state? Like most things in life, the answer is actually quite simple: The United States education system no longer prizes and cultivates its most talented students, and the American education system has become a bloated, bureaucratic leviathan that misallocates resources at a colossal level.

Neglecting the Gifted

It seems like common sense: the hard-working, productive, intelligent employee is promoted, while his less hard-working and not-as-smart office mate stays put. Yet, in an astounding and absurdly naïve decision, the American education system has all but abandoned this fundamental model for success.

In essence, American schools operate on the idea that students’ feelings trump their intellectual abilities. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a universal dumbing-down of the curriculum, and a reluctance to distinguish the intellectually gifted students from their common peers. » Read the rest of this entry «