When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die

Kent State University Massacre - 4 May 1970

Dr. Glenn Frank, Professor of Geology, Kent State University, was a hero on 4 May 1970.

Four students lay dead and nine others wounded following 13 seconds of rifle fire by Ohio National Guardsmen (ONG). Hundreds of students stood in shock and bewilderment on the KSU campus Commons and in surrounding parking lots that day.

Dr. Frank knew he had to do something to try to de-escalate the situation or the Guard would likely advance again on the defenseless, unarmed students and unleash another volley of death. So he and a few other faculty colleagues ferreted out the Kent State University administration and ONG Brig. Gen Robert Canterbury and begged for permission to talk with the students.

Then Dr. Frank pleaded with the students, saying, “…even if you've never listened to anyone in your whole lives… please listen now. Please disperse… because otherwise there will be another massacre…”

Because of Dr. Frank's efforts no one else died that day and the students left the Commons and the university safe from gunfire but unprepared to deal with the aftermath of the murders they had witnessed.

Ohio Gov. Rhodes and ONG Gen. Del Corso Fan the Flames
KSU was in chaos on 4 May 1970, because Ohio Gov. James Rhodes came to campus the day before. In a press conference he unleashed a tirade against the students, calling them “worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes … They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America, he continued. I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.”

Then he stated that he would get a court injunction banning future protests and left the impression that something like martial law had been declared. Then he departed the KSU campus.

Rhodes actually did neither. But, the Guardsmen and their officers, the university administration and the student protesters did not know that. Rhodes did accomplish inciting Guardsmen and the general public against the students and muddling the "chain of command" so that no one really knew who was in charge.

That night, Sunday, 3 May, students confronted Guardsmen demanding that the Guard leave their campus. Several students taunted the Guard and were bayoneted.

The previous Friday, 1 May, KSU students and students at other universities, such as Yale, protested President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the expansion of the war in Vietnam. That night, KSU antiwar student leaders moved their protests from campus into the nearby downtown Kent bar area where students and local townspeople faced off – renewing past confrontations, albeit with a new excuse to tussle.

The confrontations got uglier than normal on 2 May. That’s when Kent mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency and called Gov. Rhodes for state assistance. Rhodes ordered the ONG to Kent.

It was also on 2 May that ONG Adjutant General Sylvester Del Corso issued a prescient foreshadowing statement that "sniper fire would be met by gunfire from his men". After the massacre, Maj. Gen. Del Corso and his subordinates repeatedly declared that sniper fire had triggered the fusillade. (1.)

Who Set Fire to the Old ROTC Building?
As the Guardsmen arrived on the evening of 2 May they found the old, boarded up Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) building on the Kent State University in flames. It is unclear who set the building on fire. It may have been anti-war protesters, but it also could have been someone seeking to have the protesters blamed. “Fortunately” Kent State officials had already emptied the old wooden building and were planning to raze it.

Protesters were celebrating the building's destruction as firefighters arrived. The protesters, who included both students and non-students, jeered the firefighters and even sliced the hoses that the firefighters were using to extinguish the flames. The Guard reestablished order using tear gas and bayonets.

From eyewitness accounts, the burning of the ROTC building at Kent State was completed by undercover law enforcement determined to make sure it could become the symbol needed to support the Kent State war on student protest.

FBI Undercover Informant and Provocateur
Unlike the 60s and 70s, we now know through several Freedom of Information Act disclosures that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered infiltration of and outright compromising of a multitude of organizations and groups which he deemed “subversive”. Among them were: antiwar organizations and student organizations, such as Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers, American Civil Liberties Union, Southern Christian Leadership Conference labor unions, civil rights organizations, and many, many others.

In fact, from photos and film evidence and even FBI pay records, we know for certain that FBI undercover informant / provocateur Terry Norman was on the payroll and active at KSU during the antiwar protests using the cover of a photographer.

“According to Dr. Elaine Wellin, an eyewitness to the many events at Kent State leading up to and including May 4th, there were uniformed and plainclothes officers potentially involved in managing the burning of the ROTC building. Wellin was in close proximity to the building just prior to the burning and saw a person with a walkie-talkie about three feet from her telling someone on the other end of the communication that they should not send down the fire truck as the ROTC building was not on fire yet.” (2.)

Blunder After Blunder
What followed is now known as one of the biggest series of blunders ever committed by the United States military: egregious failures of preparation, communication, leadership, equipment and tactics.

The next day, Monday, 4 May 1970, student antiwar protesters went ahead with a planned 12 noon antiwar rally on the campus Commons. The protest had been planned the previous Friday. KSU administrators said that they told the protest leaders to cancel the rally but word didn’t get out to the student population. Also, classes were not cancelled and KSU administrators told students to go to class, just like any other day, even though the Guard remained on campus.

Seeing the scheduled peace rally about to begin, the highest ranking Guard officer on campus, Brig. Gen Canterbury, ordered the students to immediately leave the area. When they did not respond, Gen. Canterbury ordered tear gas fired toward the students. Then while a multitude of "non-rally-participating" students were going to classes or just enjoying the warm spring day on the Commons, Gen. Canterbury ordered his troops to “lock and load” their M1 rifles (with live ammunition) and advance to disperse the students, most of whom were more than 300 feet away.

The Guardsmen Were Ordered to Fire
To this day no one knows who ordered the Guard to fire on the students. For years the Guardsmen, ONG officers and the State of Ohio maintained that no one ordered the troops to fire. Then in May 2010, a tape recording surfaced proving that the order to fire was given.

"John Mangels, science writer at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, commissioned forensic evidence expert Stuart Allen to professionally analyze a tape recording made from a Kent State student’s dormitory window ledge on May 4, 1970, forever capturing the crowd and battle sounds from before, during, and after the fusillade."(See video below.)

 "The cassette tape—provided to Mangels by the Yale University Library, Kent State Collection, and housed all these years in a box of evidence admitted into lawsuits led by attorney Joseph Kelner in his representation of the Kent State victims—was called the 'Strubbe tape' after Terry Strubbe, the student who made the recording by placing a microphone attached to a personal recorder on his dormitory window ledge. This tape surfaced when Alan Canfora, a student protester wounded at Kent State, and researcher Bob Johnson dug through Yale library’s collection and found a CD copy of the tape recording from the day of the shootings. Paying ten dollars for a duplicate, Canfora then listened to it and immediately knew he probably held the only recording that might provide proof of an order to shoot. Three years after the tape was found, the Cleveland Plain Dealer commendably hired two qualified forensic audio scientists to examine the tape."

"But it is really the two pieces of groundbreaking evidence Allen uncovered that illuminate and provide a completely new perspective into the Kent State massacre."

"First, Allen heard and verified the Kent State command-to-fire spoken at noon on 4 May 1970. The command-to-fire has been a point of contention, with authorities stating under oath and to media for more than forty years that 'no order to fire was given at Kent State,' that 'the Guard felt under attack from the students,' and that 'the Guard reacted to sniper fire.' Yet Allen’s verified forensic evidence of the Kent State command-to-fire directly conflicts with guardsmen testimony that they acted in self-defense."

"The government claim—that guardsmen were under attack at the time of the ONG barrage of bullets—has long been suspect, as there is nothing in photographic or video records to support the 'under attack' excuse. Rather, from more than a football field away, the Kent State student protesters swore, raised their middle fingers, and threw pebbles and stones and empty tear gas canisters, mostly as a response to their campus being turned into a battlefield with over 2,000 troops and military equipment strewn across the Kent State University campus."

"The other major piece of Kent State evidence identified in Allen’s analysis was the 'sound of sniper fire' recorded on the tape. These sounds point to Terry Norman, FBI informant and provocateur, who was believed to have fired his low-caliber pistol four times, just seventy seconds before the command-to-fire." (3.)

"Mangels wrote in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 'Norman was photographing protesters that day for the FBI and carried a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model . . . five-shot revolver in a holster under his coat for protection. Though he denied discharging his pistol, he previously has been accused of triggering the Guard shootings by firing to warn away angry demonstrators, which the soldiers mistook for sniper fire."

"Video footage and still photography have recorded the minutes following the 'sound of sniper fire,' showing Terry Norman sprinting across the Kent State commons, meeting up with Kent Police and the ONG. In this visual evidence, Norman immediately yet casually hands off his pistol to authorities and the recipients of the pistol show no surprise as Norman hands them his gun."

Nixon Promulgates Alleged Student Protester Sniper Fire “Alternative Fact” 
"Yet the Kent State 'sound of sniper fire' remains key, according to White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, who noted President Richard Nixon’s reaction to Kent State in the Oval Office on May 4, 1970:

'Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman told him [of the killings] late in the afternoon. But at two o’clock Haldeman jotted on his ever-present legal pad 'keep P. filled in on Kent State.' In his daily journal Haldeman expanded on the President’s reaction: 'He very disturbed. Afraid his decision set it off . . . then kept after me all day for more facts. Hoping rioters had provoked the shootings—but no real evidence that they did.' Even after he had left for the day, Nixon called Haldeman back and among others issued one ringing command: 'need to get out story of sniper.'" (4.)

It has taken 46 years to arrive at this understanding of what happened on 4 May 1970 at Kent State University. We still do not know who ordered the Guardsmen to fire their weapons that day. 

This We Do Know
1. After promising that he would end the Vietnam War, President Nixon expanded it and invaded Cambodia. When protests erupted on college and high school campuses across the nation, he branded student protesters as “bums” and accused students of “blowing up campuses”. His Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew, chimed in calling universities “circus tents or psychiatric centers for over-privileged, and under-disciplined, irresponsible children of the well-to-do blasé permissivists.” Then without proof – he claimed a student sniper shot at the Guardsmen and continued laying full blame on student protesters for creating violence at KSU. He then further obfuscated the facts and used KSU as a rallying point in support of his political agenda.
2. J. Edgar Hoover orchestrated and carried out a vicious, relentless campaign against Americans of all flavors whom he deemed undesirable, including the KSU student protesters.
3. Ohio Gov. Rhodes ordered the Ohio National Guard to the City of Kent and Kent State University, incited them against the students, left the KSU campus in a leadership muddled, did not obtain an injunction stopping further campus protests / closing the campus, nor declare martial law as he said he would do.
4. ONG Maj. Gen. Sylvester Del Corso, sent his ill-equipped troops to Kent (the Guard did not have nor were they trained with nonlethal weapons - only M1 rifles and bayonets), incited his troops to fire and bayonet the students, and personally “baited” student protesters and returned thrown rocks at them.
5. ONG Brig. Gen Canterbury ordered his troops to load their weapons with live ammunition, move on the students, even though the overwhelming majority were not participating in the 4 May noon peace rally, forced the students back into the fenced in practice football field thus trapping his own troops with no clear escape path, then ordering them back up the nearby hill where they were ordered to “turn, point and fire” at the students, murdering four and wounding nine others.
6. As recently as April 2012, in spite of the new evidence - the tape, photos and film - the federal government still refuses to reopen the cold case murders of Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer.

Why the Kent State Massacre Matters Today
In the Trumpian era of “alternative facts” and demagoguery we are ever slipping and sliding deeper and deeper into our own Fascist-American quicksand where our leaders mislead, confuse issues and make up “facts” to feed their narcissistic addiction and never-sated power and wealth appetite.

Kent State offers one more jarring lesson for us here, as well, built on a foundation of innocent blood. It is one which the KSU administration displayed for all to see and hear, if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear (a wish I fervently make for Dan Adamini, disgraced former Marquette County Republican Party secretary and "conservative" radio commentator). That is their decision not to accept sculptor George Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac.

Segal’s sculpture is a contemporary version of Abraham and Isaac “in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard.”

In other words Segal is mirroring our willingness to sacrifice our own children to our gods, whoever or whatever they are. I fear many will continue the practice, cheerfully following the whims of our current president.

After commissioning it in 1977, Kent State refused the sculpture in 1979, saying that it “depicted violence”.

It is now on display outside of the Princeton University Chapel as part of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by a partial gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund.

Please go here for Paul Keane’s* illuminating and thought provoking words about Segal’s Abraham and Isaac.

*Paul D. Keane, Teacher, M.A. (1972, Kent State University), M.Div. (Divinity School, Yale University) and M.Ed. recently passed. He taught English at Whitcomb High School and Hartford High School, Connecticut.


The Day the 60s Died

KSU Rare Audio Recording from May 4th 1970 - 12:24pm

References
1. "Inexcusable": Investigating Kent State, Kainah, Daily Kos, 5 June 2006, See: 
AkronBeacon Journal newspaper investigative report, May 24, 1970.
2.The Project Censored Show on The Morning Mix, “May 4th and the Kent State Shootings in the 42nd Year,” Pacifica Radio, KPFA, 94.1FM, May 4, 2012 live at 8:00 a.m., archived online at VmP. For Wellin on ROTC, see recording at 28:45.
3. Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings, John Mangels, 8 Oct 2010, The Plain Dealer.
4.Uncovering the Kent State Cover-Up, Laurel Krause and Mickey Huff, counterpunch.org, 27 Sept 2012.
5. Akron Beacon Journal Pulitzer Prize reporting, Kent State University, 4 May 1970.
6. Kent and Jackson State, Susie Erenrich

Closure

Sculptor George Segal and his sculpture in memory of students slain and wounded at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen, entitled: In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State-Abraham and Isaac.

What is needed today, yet remains as elusive as time itself?

Closure.

Every day, in the era of Trump, we struggle between virulent ideology and uncommon sense. Each day brings more deaths due to incompetence and one of mankind's most often sounded ideological excuses for inhumanity, "...it's us vs. them".

It has been 50 years since Ohio National Guardsmen murdered four and wounded nine unarmed students on the campus of Kent State University. Please go here for the story: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die.

It is 50 years later, and we are still sacrificing our children to the god of "us vs. them" as John "Derf" Backderf's recent graphic novel, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, depicts.*

Art credit: One page from Derf Backderf's book*. See Publisher's Weekly review here: Four Dead in Ohio: Derf Backderf On Kent State, Rob Kirby, 4 Feb 2020.

It is shocking to realize how we have ended up back where we started in 1970.

Back then, we were a nation deliberately manipulate and divided by politicians wielding their “us vs. them” weapon. The war in Vietnam had gone on for years well before Nixon’s extension into Cambodia. It was that “illegal” addition to the American blunder in Southeast Asia that led to student protests throughout the nation, including Kent State.

Protesting for an end to the war was conflated by the Nixon administration and Republican Party supporters as an attack on the ‘Silent Majority”, the “blue- and white-collar workers the "Forgotten Man of American politics" and on Americanism, the mainstream “us vs. them” philosophy of the time.

Sounds markedly like, Make America Great Again, does it not? That is because it is. It is just recycled “us vs. them”.

KSU "closure" will finally begin when, together, the student body, the Kent State University administration, the State of Ohio and the people of Kent, Ohio, bring back to campus George Segal’s statue, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac.

Segal was commissioned in 1977 by KSU to create a memorial statue honoring the 4 May 1970 tragedy. But, in 1979, his work was refused by KSU administration as "too violent".

KSU needs to hold the memorial statue's dedication ceremony along with a Native American smudging or “cleansing”. Both of which should have been done back in 1979. It would be a major step forward for KSU, Ohio, the United States and humanity. It will help us confront one of our deepest, darkest truths: our national willingness to sacrifice our youth. When we do, perhaps, we will free ourselves of that terrible, haunting demon.

Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac can be found displayed outside of the Princeton University Chapel. This description is attached to it:

The artist depicts contemporary versions of Abraham and Isaac in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard. Though Abraham looks poised to strike his son, the artist emphasized that Genesis 22 ends without tragedy, as Isaac is spared.

I hope that it works out that way for us today, the Genesis 22 way, and we spare our children the inevitable tragic outcome of a USA once again driven by "us vs. them".

Until then, I will be looking for the KSU – our USA - smudging ceremony, offering this prayer:

Native American Smudging Prayer

May your hands be cleansed
that they create beautiful things
May your feet be cleansed
that they take you where
you most need to be
May your heart be cleansed
that you may hear
its message clearly
May your throat be cleansed
that you might speak rightly
when words are needed
May your eyes be cleanse
that you might see the signs
and wonders of this world
May (we) and (this) space
be washed clean by the some
of these fragrant plants
And may this same smoke
carry your prayers to
the spiraling heavens

*WKSU, Kent State’s public radio station, is doing good work. This programming is an excellent step forward.

Justice for Our Children

 

Sculptor George Segal and his sculpture in memory of students slain and wounded at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen, entitled: In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State-Abraham and Isaac.

“Is dissent a crime?”, asked Arthur Krause, the father of 19-year-old Allison Krause, one of the slain KSU students. “Is this such a reason for killing her? Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees deeply with the actions of her government?”

Fifty-one years ago, four Kent State University students were murdered, and nine others wounded by a tsunami of incompetent leadership and bigoted politics. Back then, as today, the people of the USA were wrapped up in a cultural straight jacket of disdain and intolerance for their own youth.

“KSU was in chaos on 4 May 1970, because Ohio Gov. James Rhodes came to campus the day before. In a press conference he unleashed a tirade against the students, calling them “worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes … They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America, he continued. I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.”

“Then he stated that he would get a court injunction banning future protests and left the impression that something like martial law had been declared. Then he departed the KSU campus.”

“Rhodes actually did neither. But, the Guardsmen and their officers, the university administration and the student protesters did not know that. Rhodes did accomplish inciting Guardsmen and the general public against the students and muddling the "chain of command" so that no one really knew who was in charge.”

“That night, Sunday, 3 May, students confronted Guardsmen demanding that the Guard leave their campus. Several students taunted the Guard and were bayoneted.”

“The previous Friday, 1 May, KSU students and students at other universities, such as Yale, protested President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the expansion of the war in Vietnam.”

Please go here for the whole Kent State Massacre story:

When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die, DownriverUSA, 24 Feb 2017

https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-demagogues-incompetence-rule.html

Silently Sacrificing our Children, DownriverUSA, 19 Feb 2018

https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2018/02/silently-sacrificing-our-children.html

Closure, DownriverUSA, 3 May 2020

https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/closure.html

Here We Are Again - 50 Years Later, DownriverUSA, 29 May 2020

https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/here-we-are-again-50-years-later.html

Why the Kent State Massacre Matters Today

In the Trumpian era of “alternative facts” and demagoguery we are ever slipping and sliding deeper and deeper into our own Fascist-American quicksand where our leaders mislead, confuse issues and make up “facts” to feed their narcissistic addiction and never-sated power and wealth appetite.

Kent State continues to offer lessons for us today… lessons we continue to disregard.

The KSU administration has still not accepted sculptor George Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac. A work of art they commissioned.

Segal’s sculpture is a contemporary version of Abraham and Isaac “in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard.”

In other words Segal is mirroring our willingness to sacrifice our own children to our gods, whoever or whatever they are. I fear many will continue the practice, still cheerfully following the whims of our past president.

After commissioning it in 1977, Kent State refused the sculpture in 1977, saying that it “depicted violence”.

Violence, indeed. That, after all, is still what we are all about.

In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac is now on display outside of the Princeton University Chapel as part of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by a partial gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund.

Please go here for Paul Keane’s* illuminating and thoughtprovoking words about Segal’s Abraham and Isaac.

*Paul D. Keane, Teacher, M.A. (1972, Kent State University), M.Div. (Divinity School, Yale University) and M.Ed. recently passed. He taught English at Whitcomb High School and Hartford High School, Connecticut.

Silently Sacrificing our Children

Photo credit: Johanne Rahaman for HuffPost

We’ve done nothing since 4 May 1970.*

That’s when our leaders sanctioned the murder of four students and wounding of nine others. 

Many other students died before KSU, thousands died after, and more die nearly every day.

To this very day our leaders are willing to sacrifice our youth for their own benefit.

Sculptor George Segal’s, In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac

It’s a story as old as Abraham and Isaac - the one told in the Bible. Except, today, we the Abraham (s) are not killing our children to prove our love to God. We are killing them, letting them be slaughtered… for… what? Some false sense of security? For money? Or, is it because we really don’t love them? Better our children die than we die?

The Kent State Massacre was a tipping point that sparked outrage on hundreds of college and high school campuses throughout the nation. May 4, 1970 pushed “clean-shaven-short-haircut, youth” into protesting for fear of losing their lives while at school.

Because their kids were fearful of “death on campus”, a multitude of “silent majority” parents and grandparents became fearful, too. Together they melded into a tsunami of change that forced the heartless, bought-out elected officials and unelected war hawks into withdrawing from Vietnam.

Still, the kids made it happen.

We were the kids then.

Future voters at South Broward High School have left classes to protest for better gun control. pic.twitter.com/AgpKRsrNwI

— Sebastian Murdock (@SebastianMurdoc) February 16, 2018

Today, our grandkids are forced to fill the leadership and moral vacuum we have neglected.

Please, dear God. Please help these young people. Please give them the strength and determination to do what we have failed to do. Please help them stop the carnage.

“I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours,” Novell said. “It was about guns. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns and this is about all the people who had their life abruptly ended because of guns.” - Carly Novell, 17-year-old Stoneman Douglas high student.

Florida High School Students Stage Walkout To Protest Gun Violence, Ryan Grenoble and Sebastian Murdock, Huffington Post, 16 Feb 2018.

“Now is the exact time to talk about gun control, say students from a high school near Parkland.”

“They’re furious about political stonewalling, and most of them aren’t yet old enough to vote.”

“Two days after a gunman used an assault-style rifle to kill 17 people at a nearby school, the students of South Broward High School protested in solidarity. Just a couple of dozen miles down the road in Parkland, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was still sealed off as investigators pored over the horrors inside.”

“About 50 teenagers gathered on the street Friday, rallying around the common causes of gun control and school safety ? two issues politicians continue to ignore even though polls show most Americans support them.” Please go here for more of the story.

*Why the Kent State Massacre Matters Today

Excerpt from: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die, Ron Baker, Downriver USA, 24 Feb 2017.

In the Trumpian era of “alternative facts” and demagoguery we are ever slipping and sliding deeper and deeper into our own Fascist-American quicksand where our leaders mislead, confuse issues and make up “facts” to feed their narcissistic addiction and never-sated power and wealth appetite.

Kent State offers one more jarring lesson for us here, as well, built on a foundation of innocent blood. It is one which the KSU administration displayed for all to see and hear, if only we had eyes to see and ears to hear (a wish I fervently make for Dan Adamini, disgraced former Marquette County Republican Party secretary and "conservative" radio commentator). That is their decision not to accept sculptor George Segal’s In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham and Isaac. 

Segal’s sculpture is a contemporary version of Abraham and Isaac “in an allegory for the May 4, 1970, tragedy at Kent State University. A poignant visualization of humankind's struggle between ideology and paternal love, it mirrors the conflict that led to the death of four students at the hands of the Ohio National Guard.”

In other words Segal is mirroring our willingness to sacrifice our own children to our gods, whoever or whatever they are. I fear many will continue the practice, cheerfully following the whims of our current president.

After commissioning it in 1977, Kent State refused the sculpture in 1977, saying that it “depicted violence”.

It is now on display outside of the Princeton University Chapel as part of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by a partial gift of the Mildred Andrews Fund.

Please go here for Paul Keane’s illuminating and thought provoking words about Segal’s Abraham and Isaac. 

Lies Too Big To Fail – Kent State PDF version

Sacrificing Our Children

 

Sculptor George Segal and his sculpture in memory of students slain and wounded at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen, entitled: In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State-Abraham and Isaac.

There are happenings that change everything. 

Occurring in a flash, they are hurricane-like, erasing everything we thought we knew and forcing us into a totally unanticipated, dystopian understanding of our world. Once experienced, we can never go back.

For me, one life-altering moment, 13-seconds long, occurred on 4 May 1970, with the murder of four and wounding of nine Kent State University students. 

Those 13 seconds erased my naïve understanding of myself, my nation, our leaders, and our values. I began to understand that we are a people willing to sacrifice our children for nothing but cult identity membership and feeding our narcissistic egos.

Still, in one way the times have not changed. 

In the 1970s, the “silent majority” willingly sacrificed their children to the Vietnam War god. 

Today, we willingly sacrifice our children to the AR-15 god. 

Only the name of the god has changed. The willingness remains.

This Easter, my prayer is that our eyes and ears will open and that the Peace of Christ, pax Christi, will infuse us all with acceptance for each other.

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you” (John 14:27).

Thousands of students walk-out in protest for gun control
The NewsChannel 5 Network in Nashville

Links in this Post

When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-demagogues-incompetence-rule.html

Closure
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2020/05/closure.html

Sculptor George Segal and his sculpture in memory of students slain and wounded at Kent State by Ohio National Guardsmen, entitled: In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State-Abraham and Isaac.
The Bound and the Unbound: Oedipus, Isaac, and Jesus
http://boundandunbound.blogspot.com/

Professor “Why”

A collection of Clovis point replicas and casts in the archaeology lab at Kent State University.
Credit: Kent State University

This story is about our societal hubris.

For some unknown reason, we humans need to feel that we are currently at the highest state of intelligence, productivity, creativity, etc. And, that those who came before were, at least, less than we. That they were not as advanced. That they knew less about our world and our universe. After all, we have cars, TVs, the Internet, rockets, weapons of mass destruction, and the Kardashians. They didn’t.
We have “progressed”.

There is a professor at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, who asks, “why”, and then goes about uncovering, “how”, too. His is a specialist in “experimental archaeology”.

“Dr. Metin Eren's experiments focus on making sense of ancient weapons littered across the Americas, illustrating how humans first settled the Western Hemisphere: through careful preparation, long-term planning, and refined technology.”

Refined technology? Yes.

Those olden people weren’t as dumb as we tend to think. And, we, obviously, are not as smart, either.

“Already he has cracked one longtime mystery. In the early 1900s, archaeologists found unusually shaped arrowheads in North America, with grooves carved from the base halfway to the head's tip. They first appeared over 13,000 years ago and spread rapidly across the continent, but existed nowhere else. Researchers were puzzled why the grooves were carved, with speculation running from religious rituals to mere decoration.”

“That's where experimental archaeology came in. By testing the pressure at which the arrowheads would crack using a $30,000 crusher and computer models, Eren discovered the grooves act as a shock absorber. It allows the arrowhead's thinned base to crumple slightly and absorb energy upon the arrow's impact, making the head less likely to break.”

“Archaeologists call it the ‘first truly American invention.’”

“In their most recent article published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Eren and his co-authors from Southern Methodist University (Brett A. Story, David J. Meltzer and Kaitlyn A. Thomas), University of Tulsa (Briggs Buchanan), Rogers State University (Brian N. Andrews), Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri (Michael J. O'Brien) explain the flint knapping technique of "fluting" the Clovis points, which could be considered the first truly American invention. This singular technological attribute, the flake removal or "flute," is absent from the stone-tool repertoire of Pleistocene Northeast Asia, where the Clovis ancestors came from.”

Please go here and here for the whole story.

Metin Eren, Archaeologist

KSU Students Didn’t Shoot First & Didn’t Shoot Back

KSU students try to help wounded student, 4 May 1970.

 A few days ago Dan Adamini, Marquette County (Michigan) Republican Party secretary, Tweeted:

"Violent protesters who shut down free speech? Time for another Kent State perhaps. One bullet stops a lot of thuggery." (sic)

In a separate Facebook post, he said, "I'm thinking that another Kent State might be the only solution...They do it because they know there are no consequences yet."

The comments were in response to protests at the University of California Berkeley regarding a scheduled speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, the senior editor of the right wing website Breitbart.

Due to the outrageousness of his comments Adamini was forced to offer a public apology. A day or so later, he was also forced to resign his R party position and surrender his right-wing local radio gig.

For most people, I guess, that settled the incident and it’s been retired from the public domain.

However, the Kent State Massacre can not be retired to obscurity because it remains one of the many unsolved cold crimes of the J Edgar Hoover era.

For bringing media attention, however brief, to the Massacre, we owe Mr. Adamini an ironic “thank you”.

I will post more about the Kent State Massacre tomorrow.

As for now, nearly 47 years after the murder of four students and wounding of nine others, the proof has been uncovered and those responsible for murder need to be held accountable.

The Ohio National Guard soldiers were ordered to fire on the students.

The students had no weapons. They did not torch the ROTC building. They did not fire first nor did they return the Guard’s fire. They just died, were paralyzed and wounded that spring day. 

Will Fascists Take the U.S. this Election?

by Ron Baker

Personally, I've tried to ignore Donald Trump.

But, for me at least, his win in the New Hampshire primary now makes him a legitimate Republican candidate. Why? Because 97,188 (53%) of Republican voters chose him.

Much to my dismay, I am now forced to consider him what he rightfully has become - a viable candidate for the Presidency of the United States. This man can actually win the election.

So, what does he believe?

Noting his speaking style, lack of substance and pandering to basic fears, Trump seems to be more akin to past Fascists than recent American politicians.

Dr. Robert Paxton, Professor Emeritus of History, at Columbia University, the leading “Fascism expert”, recently described Trump as a self-indulgent demagogue speaking on behalf of oligarchy rather than a Fascist. He listed the determining characteristics for the Fascist label as: "drawing openly upon Nazi symbolism and employing physical violence".*

Unfortunately, all we have to go on is Trump’s campaign rhetoric and his personal “style” - his “mobilizing passions”, as Dr. Robert Paxton calls them.

Another leading expert on Fascism, Dr. Richard Steigmann-Gall, Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, points to Dr. Paxton’s work and concludes differently:

“In spite of his recent insistence that he’d need to see “identically colored shirts” to take the question of Trump seriously, Robert Paxton has been one of the most persuasive advocates for taking a deeper view. Weary of the “bestiary” approach of describing fascism by its appearances, in his magnum opus from 2004 The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton seeks instead to explain how fascism understood itself; the social traction of fascism as a political movement; and what kinds of political and economic conditions were necessary for it to grow and eventually succeed. Rather than presenting a series of unalterable criteria that read like a check-list, Paxton shows how fascism develops in context, embodying and taking advantage of a series of “mobilizing passions” to build and maintain a following.  The leading of these passions include:

• An overwhelming sense of crisis that cannot be solved by traditional methods; 
• The subordination of the individual to the group and the maintenance of group purity; 
• The group’s belief that it is a victim; 
• The need for the authority of a natural chief, whose qualities and instincts rise above abstract reason; 
• The use of exclusionary violence as part of an effort to reverse perceived decline. 

“In all of these ways, Trump not only reveals that he is indeed fascist, but perhaps even more importantly that his followers – even as some of them are in the habit of describing their own enemies on the left as “fascist” and who have loudly professed their disinterest in a caudillo – are actively seeking fascist solutions to problems that ail them.”

Conclusion
Following his New Hampshire win, Mr. Trump has become the exemplar of the 21st Century American Fascism movement. The question remains, Will Fascists Take the U.S. this Election?

*Is Fascism Back?, Robert O. Paxton, Project Syndicate, 7 Jan 2016
Dr. Paxton is Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, the author of The Anatomy of Fascism, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, Parades and Politics at Vichy, and Vichy France and the Jews.

**One Expert Says, Yes, Donald Trump is a Fascist. And It’s Not Just Trump, Richard Steigmann-Gall, Tikkun.org, 5 Jan 2016 
Dr. Richard Steigmann-Gall is Associate Professor of History at Kent State University, where he served as the director of the Jewish Studies Program from 2004 to 2010.  He has published widely on fascism, Nazism and antisemitism.  His book, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, came out in 2003 through Cambridge University Press.

Historical Perspective

Rachel Maddow (12/9/2015) Donald Trump policy ideas, with fascism. Video not accesilbe. Please go here for the story: Is America ready to use the term “fascist” in our political discourse? Rachel Maddow explores how Donald Trump has mainstreamed extremism
America is slowly coming to grips with Trump's flirtation with fascism VIDEO, Sophia Tesfaye, Salon, 9 Dec 2015. Stay with Maddow a couple of minutes to see the historical connections.

No Gangs Allowed

 

Art credit: Chandler (Arizona) Police Gang Enforcement Unit

No doubt you are as relieved as I am that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer seems to have been “protected” by the Michigan State Police and the FBI. The "Wolverine Watchmen" militia* murder/kidnapping plot of the Governor and an attack on a Michigan State Police facility was recently  foiled.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer saved countless Michigan lives because she stood up to Tea Party Republicans in the Michigan State Legislature and Mr. Trump during the COVID plague. She has proven to be a strong, intelligent stateswoman. A leader some people can't seem to appreciate. 

It certainly hasn't taken a whole lot of brain power to predict that something like this attempted plot was going to happen at the hands of crazed Trump zealots who have been repeatedly called to violence by Mr. Trump.

Additionally, it is good to note that the FBI for once used their “undercover” agents for the “good”. 

You may recall that the FBI has a terrible track record of doing the opposite, as do several other federal agencies. There are a multitude of instances, from the 60s, 70, 80s, 90s and even up to today, when FBI leadership used their undercover people for unlawful, evil purposes against protesters, e.g. Kent State, civil rights activists, BUS, etc., through COINTELPRO - the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program.

Each day, as Mr. Trump becomes more unhinged, his toy brown shirts, i.e. Proud Boys and other white supremacists’ groups, become more empowered.

Bad times seem to be ahead because win or lose Mr. Trump's “boys” will be out looking for Democrats and people of color to beat and murder. We truly are on the edge of disaster.

By the way, don't allow these white supremacists’ groups credibility by referring to them as, "militia*". They are lawless gangs akin to the street gangs infesting our cities and neighborhoods. Instead of white hoods and sheets, they wear camo outfits, preen about, leeching off the real thing - the sworn, Constitution-honoring military, both officers and enlisted.

* Militia - a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency; or a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities in opposition to a regular army; or all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.

Generally unable to hold ground against regular forces, militias commonly support regular troops by skirmishing, holding fortifications, or conducting irregular warfare, instead of undertaking offensive campaigns by themselves. Local civilian laws often limit militias to serve only in their home region, and to serve only for a limited time; this further reduces their use in long military campaigns.

Let's talk about Michigan, lost causes, and a sense of purpose....

Beau of the Fifth Column - 9 Oct 2020 

The Election: Wake Up. Listen to the Stories.

by Gary R. Baker, Senior Lecturer, English Composition, University of Akron

Around nine o’clock on the evening of November 8, a friend from college days at Kent State University called me to say that the election results were not going well. He was offering a gentle warning. As we talked, Trump built up his lead in the Electoral College, and the US map grew red and then redder. I told my friend that support for Hillary Clinton in the West – in Colorado – but especially California plus Oregon and Washington – would save the day. Before election day, I had assumed that Clinton would win in a very close vote. I was worried that Trump might win the popular vote with Clinton winning the Electoral College – thus giving Trump “evidence” that the system was rigged against him.

I stayed up much too late that night. I even took my radio to bed with me to continue to listen to the results. Trump’s victory in the Electoral College left me stunned – a bit punch drunk – and on the edge of nausea for several days. I have been trying to figure out what happened and why. What does this election mean? What do we do now?

Donald Trump (with Rudy Giuliani) visited the University of Akron during the Fall Semester. He spoke at the JAR (the arena named for the late Ohio Governor, James A. Rhodes). That day excitement was building. University police were evident – standing next to their cars in the area around the JAR. Just west of the arena, TV trucks with satellite dishes stood ready to beam the rally to the world.

Many tables and small “Trump Stores” were being set up on campus and on the sidewalks bordering the campus. Plenty of wares were laid out – buttons, bumper stickers, baseball caps. The messages on the merchandise were not filtered. One button with Hillary Clinton’s face said, “Life’s a Bitch, So Why Vote for One?”

People planning to attend the rally were walking on campus. They were happy and excited – looking forward to the rally. They looked like working people. They looked like people from smaller towns. They didn’t appear to be students or members of the faculty. Their numbers grew. The line formed near the entrance. The line started to stretch.

Later that afternoon, I watched the rally inside the JAR via a video feed from my laptop in my apartment. It was scheduled to begin at 7 PM. Around 6:10, Rudy Giuliani was warming up the crowd. His energy level hit a peak. His adrenaline was pumping. Every seat and every space was taken. “We planned to start at 7. But the arena is full. It’s packed. The line to get in is not getting any shorter. It keeps growing. So we’ve decided to start. Why wait?” And he proceeded to introduce Donald Trump.

Under spotlights, Trump walked into the arena from a side door to loud, on-going applause. During some of his rallies, Trump had happily encouraged security people or police to throw out protestors – not this time. No protestors appeared in the arena. He went smoothly through his speech. At the end of his speech, he walked down a long line of bleachers. People leaned forward and reached out to shake his hand or to ask him to autograph a T-shirt or Make American Great Again baseball cap. Women came up to him. One woman with her teenaged daughter. Black men. Younger and middle aged white men. He slowly made his way to the side door he had entered earlier. He had many conversations with people along the way.

Look at the faces of the people. To understand what’s going on, we need to look not so much at Trump but at the people. Their faces showed enthusiasm and affection and a willingness to hope. Their faces showed a confidence in Trump that he was someone who heard their stories and felt their concerns on a gut level. To understand what’s going on, we need to listen not so much to Trump’s words but to the stories the people are speaking about their own lives.

Trump carried Ohio. No doubt about it. Clinton carried the urban areas; however, Trump cut into her lead in those traditionally Democratic areas. He swept non-urban counties. Most of the state map ended up “red”.

Trump won a majority in the Electoral College. But Clinton won the national popular vote by around 2,000,000 – the second time in sixteen years that the outcome of the Electoral College vote did not square with the national popular vote.

What Now?

To understand what’s going on, we need to look not so much at Trump but at the people. Their faces showed enthusiasm and affection and a willingness to hope. Their faces showed a confidence in Trump that he was someone who heard their stories and felt their concerns on a gut level. To understand what’s going on, we need to listen not so much to Trump’s words but to the stories the people are speaking about their own lives.

Trump carried Ohio. No doubt about it. Clinton carried the urban areas; however, Trump cut into her lead in those traditionally Democratic areas. He swept non-urban counties. Most of the state map ended up “red”.

Trump won a majority in the Electoral College. But Clinton won the national popular vote by around 2,000,000 – the second time in sixteen years that the outcome of the Electoral College vote did not square with the national popular vote.

We have to hear each other. We have to hear the stories. We have to hear the stories about each other’s lives and the work we do.

The Democratic Party must become the party of working people again – working people of all races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and geographic locations. As working people, we have overlapping and shared identities.

We must work for fairness and justice in our elections. If we keep the Electoral College, we need to reform it. Perhaps we should follow a form of proportional representation within each state to assign electoral votes – rather than the tradition of winner-take-all. We must work for fairness in the drawing of Congressional and state legislative districts. Let’s put an end to gerrymandering. Some states have taken action already and have established non-partisan or independent commissions. California is one of those states. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission has been operating for several years. Take a look at http://www.wedrawthelines.ca.gov/faq.html.

To make democracy work, we must vote in elections. But between elections we must be like Argus, as James Madison explained. We have to watch the individuals elected and appointed. We have to watch each branch of the government. We must stay awake and aware.

But – so important – we must watch out for each other – especially the most vulnerable, the most exposed to political and economic winds, the people with the least amount of power and the least amount of money in their own hands.    

References and Photo Credits

1. Entertainment Fort Smith
2. Election Results, Ohio, The New York Times
3. Mother Kindness, DownriverUSA
4. Everyday Hero is Next to You , DownriverUSA

What is the Price of Teacup Stupid?

Early this morning the thought occurred to me that a high price is being paid by a few brave souls for the idea of freedom. Libyan rebels are among the latest to risk everything for a taste of the dream. They join the courageous brotherhood and sisterhood anchored in the world-wide annals of freedom-seeking heroes.

Freedom’s price is high. It respects no national boundary and its fee continues to be paid everyday.

You may remember that long before the Libyan Freedom Fighters and the Arab Spring there was the June, 1989, massacre at Tiananmen Square. The Chinese army killed hundreds of unarmed, freedom-seeking students.

Long before Tiananmen Square, I vividly remember the 1963 Birmingham police dogs ferociously tearing at a black boy as well as the 15 Sept 1963 church bombings in the good ole southern USA. Four children died that day: Addie MaeCollins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Denise McNair (11). Doubtlessly unaware, still, they were Freedom Fighters, too, and they did pay the supreme price.

Bill Hudson's image of Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs was published in The New York Times on May 4, 1963. Then with the Associated Press (AP), Hudson captured the photo on 3 May. Gadsden was a bystander who had been grabbed by the sunglasses-wearing police officer, while a German Shepherd lunged and ripped at his chest. The photo appeared above the fold, covering three columns in the next day's issue of The New York Times, as well as in other newspapers nationwide. Author Diane McWhorter wrote in her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution that Hudson's photo that day drove "international opinion to the side of the civil rights revolution." Hudson’s photo became seared into my memory. I’ve never forgotten it. Another person saw the photo, too. President Kennedy told a group of people at the White House that The New York Times photo made him "sick." Kennedy called the scenes "shameful".

Thirty years or so before the 4 May 1970 Kent State University murders at the hands of the Ohio National Guard (left), the Japanese signed the book of international atrocities — multiple times. It is estimate that 300,000 people were brutally murdered by the Japanese during the Rape of Nanking, (I apologize. The photos I've found were way to brutal for me to post).

Human Rights it seems are always on the short end of the stick, especially when wealth and land are in the mix. Historians estimate that Georgians, Carolinians, Virginians, and Alabamians forced more than 100,000 Native Americans from their homelands and onto the Trail of Tears following the discovery of gold in the 1830s. The state of Georgia had already declared all laws of the Cherokee Nation null and void after June 1, 1830, and also prohibited Cherokees from conducting tribal business, contracting, testifying against whites in court, or mining for gold. Cherokee leaders successfully challenged Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Count, but President Jackson refused to enforce the Court's decision. Thousands died along the Trail of Tears.

Later, on 29 Dec 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, the US Army needlessly slaughtered more than 100 women and children out of fear of Native American religious empowerment.

You may be thinking: “Well, all that was in the past. Today we’re more enlightened. We respect the human rights of people.”

Not so.

In a throwback to the Fugitive Slave Act and the Jim Crow era, the state of Alabama has enacted (Sept, 2011) a law that is so inhumane that four Alabama church leaders, an Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop and bishop, have sued to block it on the grounds that it criminalizes acts of Christian compassion, making potential criminals of anyone who may work or live with undocumented immigrants or show them kindness. Why are we tolerating these modern-day atrocities?

It actually gets worse.

Today, led by recently concocted teacup stupidity and old-fashioned religious self-righteousness, the Republican Party is about to plummet the USA into a New Dark Age. Willfully ignorant, the Republican Party teacup people have rewritten our national history to serve their flavor of denial and impose the same-old-same-old ethnic / religious intolerance on the rest of us.

This time, unfortunately, a few teacupers are congressionally empowered. Brash, loud and with nothing personally invested, they are readily squandering our national, hard-won freedoms to remove one black man from office and force the rest of us to bend to their religious dogma.

Only a few years ago, my father’s Army unit fought from Normandy to Germany in continuous combat. By December, 1944, they were freezing in summer uniforms as they helped relieve our surrounded troops at Bastogne. Still, those hardened combat vets were sickened when they helped “liberate” Nazi death camps.

As a child, I remember him screaming in night terrors. Only now, years later, have I begun to understand that perhaps it was more than horrendous combat that he relived each night.

Today, a significant sector of Japanese society denies the WWII atrocities took place at all. And, the same is true about the Holocaust. Likewise, the tea-cup people already have proven that they are willing to risk everything our fathers and mothers worked and fought for just to keep a black man down.

The real question is whether the rest of us are willing to surrender our souls and squander our national heritage by allowing a minority of tea-cup-stupid people to continue on the road toward total economic collapse, unemployment levels which will exceed the Great Depression, and a home foreclosure rate never seen before in the United States. I hope not. The price paid in blood by our fathers and mothers is just too high to stand by and allow that to happen.

There are at least two bright spots.

First, a while ago, before the tea-cup-stupid people started dumbing-down America, Congress was close to adopting a bipartisan reform that would have enabled millions of immigrants stranded by the failed immigration system to become legal. And, despite the dictates of the Republican Party leadership, a few Republican representatives and senators found the courage to work for the good of the nation. Second, earlier this year, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles) came up with a bipartisan start on a real solution to our current economic mess.

My point is that there is reason to hope when our elected people actually work for the good of the people instead of their own personal benefit. We must make Congress pull their combined heads out of their rear ends and resolve our nation’s problems. Now.

As it was in 1963 for the Civil Rights Freedom Fighters, our last hope may be one final, massive march on Washington to demand that Congress pay attention to job creation; adopt a housing plan that brings relief for what’s left of the middle class by bringing mortgages into line with depressed housing values; end outrageous, criminal foreclosures; and put the white collar criminal “brokers” in jail for stealing the nation’s wealth.

Karma Really Is a Bitch

I’m old enough to remember a multitude of “incidents” that occurred over the past 60 years that claimed the lives of many people and changed the lives of millions of Americans. In all cases they began as nonviolent protests but ended in bloodshed. They were protests against war, against the draft and centering around civil rights, voting rights, education, jobs, fair housing, equal opportunity and equal pay.

Today, in large part due to the Freedom of Information Act, we know that the FBI and / or other "security services" played a “provocative role” in nearly every incident, with undercover agents and / or paid informants inciting violence and, in some cases, even supplying weapons, ammunition and explosives.

Here are just a few of the targets and the locations:

Who
Anti-Vietnam war protesters; civil rights movement nonviolent workers; Kent State University students; Youth International Party; Jackson State students; Black Panthers; Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Students for a Democratic Society; draft protesters; Veterans Against the War; Branch Davidians; MOVE.

Where
Ruby Ridge; Waco; Watts; Hough; Detroit; Chicago; West Philadelphia; Kent; Jackson; and every town in the U.S.A. that drafted her children and sent them to "war".

In a way, I find it interesting that I’ve lived long enough to see a payback of sorts. As we used to say, “the worm has turned” and the conservatives, the supposed “law and order people” are eating their own.

Here’s the whole story:

The FBI Targeted the Left with Devious Tactics for Years—Now Trump Is Giving the Agency the Same Treatment, Jefferson Morley, AlterNet, 6 Feb 2018.

“The conservative Bureau is stunned to face its own anti-democratic tactics.”

"The release of a Republican memo trashing the senior Justice Department has given the FBI a taste of its own medicine: a mendacious and misleading attack designed to impugn dissent and confuse democratic discourse, all dressed up in the righteous rhetoric about the American way."

"From 1958 to 1974, the FBI routinely engaged in this sort of activity against its perceived enemies. The notorious Cointelpro—Counterintelligence Program—targeted civil rights, antiwar and other leftist groups for infiltration, disruption and destruction. Now that the president and his allies are giving the FBI the Cointelpro treatment, the Bureau and its leaders are indignant, understandably so."

"The Association of FBI Agents protested the release of the memo, written by House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as unfair to its members."...

more... here.

Please download background info, Lies Too Big To Fail (PDF)

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Fortunate Son - 1969

Evil Returns 2

 

After seeing Thom Hartmann’s recent video recapping Trump’s intentions when he wins office, I am sincerely frightened for our future. Rise & Fall of the Second Trump Reich - A Cautionary Tale 

For me, the only time that I remember feeling such fear was in 1970 after the Kent State murders and seeing Cleveland TV news reports of some Kent, Ohio townies demanding that the Ohio National Guard bayonet all KSU students. Please see my article: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents Die

Way back in high school I had already determined that I didn’t want to be used by the “powers that be” as an instrument for killing people. But with the draft board I had no standing as a “conscientious objector” because of my family’s traditional religious affiliation and because of the Selective Service Lottery, I knew I would be drafted after graduating from the University of Akron. 

Seeing no alternative, I enlisted because the Army agreed to let me become a medic after graduating.

In the Army while traveling, we were required to wear our uniforms and I remember people openly hostile toward us, calling us “baby killers”. I also remember one “friend” calling me a coward for not going to Canada to escape the draft. 

The times were troubled and confusing. Yet back then we (the young people) knew that our elders would not hesitate to sacrifice us to the gods of war in order to make themselves wealthy.

Too, on my mind, I remembered that my family members came to the U.S. and fought in the Revolutionary War. One received a land grant in exchange for his service. And. since the 1800s, my ancestors have served our nation in the U.S. military and/or as medical personnel in nearly every conflict or war.

As a result,  I have never thought of abandoning the U.S. and to this day seriously maintain my Army enlistment oath to, “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”.

Today, I am a worried old man. Should Mr. Trump be re-elected, will I be forced to take up arms to defend my nation, my heritage, and my oath?

God help us all.

The Costs of Two U.S. Blunders

Today we remember the 2,974 people who perished at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on the UA and AA flights during the 9/11 disaster, as well as the 4,343 survivors and first responders who have died in the years since due to illnesses caused by exposure to toxic dust and fumes from the site. These are the thousands of first responders, rescuers, firemen/women, police, iron workers and construction workers. (1.)

Sadly, most Americans stop there. (2.) 

We tend not to include additional major losses resulting from 9/11.

For instance, total dead, including civilians, during the Iraq war is estimated to be between 600,000 to as many as 1 million. “As of 2021, 9.2 million Iraqis are internally displaced or refugees abroad.” (3.)

In Afghanistan, "The current crisis (Sept 2021) comes on top of the 2.2 million Afghan refugees already in neighbouring countries and 3.5 million people forced to flee their homes within Afghanistan's borders." (4.)

These wars were not “paid” by increasing taxes as the Korean and Vietnam wars were. The Bush administration reduced taxes for the wealthy and borrowed to finance the wars. The approximate cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is now estimated to eventually cost American taxpayers nearly $6.5tn. That includes veteran benefits and interest payments through 2050. (5.)

Finally, who did benefit from the two wars - wars which most would say are clear blunders; entered into through outright lies; and characterized with the United States committing international war crimes?

You already know the answer: The U.S. defense contractors. (6)

"In the year to June 2020 the big five accounted for nearly a third of the $480bn obligated by the Pentagon to defense contractors." And, to ensure their cash cows, the defense industry spent, "...over $2.4bn lobbying Congress since 2001, and made direct campaign contributions to most members." (7.)

Do you really believe we are the nation spreading democracy throughout the world? I don't. The proof is clearly in the results of the past 20 years. 

In fact, we have become the opposite — a Doppelganger U.S. — selling weapons of war and seeding death and misery.

Sources

1. 20 Years Later: The Lingering Health Effects of 9/11
https://www.asbestos.com/featured-stories/9-11-lingering-health-effects/

2. Iraq: the Human Cost http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/

3. Iraqi Refugees https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/refugees/iraqi

4. Afghanistan: How many refugees are there and where will they go? 
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58283177

5. Americans could owe $6.5 trillion for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and that's just the interest https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-iraq-wars-debt-6-trillion-interest/

6. Military spending: 20 companies profiting the most from war
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/02/21/military-spending-defense-contractors-profiting-from-war-weapons-sales/39092315/

7. Where did the $5tn spent on Afghanistan and Iraq go? Here’s where 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/11/us-afghanistan-iraq-defense-spending

You will find these articles interesting.

1. About 9/11 truth: Remembering 9/11 – 2,974 WTC Murdershttps://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2014/09/remembering-911-2974-wtc-murders.html

2. About recent American History seen from an “old guy's perspective”: Lies Too Big To Fail (Parts I, II, & III) https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2014/08/lies-too-big-to-fail.html

3. About Kent State University and truth: When Demagogues & Incompetence Rule Innocents 
https://downriverusa.blogspot.com/2017/02/when-demagogues-incompetence-rule.html