First, click on John Lennon and enjoy the montage, or continue reading with the music

For many of us who are privileged to have lived a lifetime without war as a daily experience, we can gently drift away to this iconic song, with images so appropriate for this time of year, and a world filled with troubled waters... and to empathize, from within the safety of philosophical distance, with all those millions fleeing our escalating wars-from-a-safe-distance, and other behaviors, such that this time of year offers them only deeper suffering and trauma.

A recent Danish news segment briefly focused on refugee fathers in Sweden, who'd fled the Islamic State horror in northern Iraq. They'd spent grueling months, with death along the way, to seek refuge for their children, still trapped back there...

This is a Danish public TV (DR) synopsis of that reportage. Since it's in Danish, here is a translation of the significant sentences:

"The [Swedish] migration authorities," says Omar Ali to SVT, "have explained to me just how difficult it is for an Iraqi to obtain a residence permit, and to then bring my family [still in worn-torn Iraq] to be here with me. It feels awful to go back to Iraq, but I'm forced to do it...

"I risked my life for my children's future [to come to Sweden]. I do not want my kids to have to experience the same life I did with war, death and failed governments."

Sweden, like Denmark, and ever more in Europe, has just passed laws that will forbid family reunions for refugees until 1 or more years have passed, pretty much cuts in half all public support, and even concentrates refugees into police-monitored camps. It's rather difficult for those of us with a fact-based conscience not to feel sadness and anger as grieving parents described what they were feeling as they decided to take a flight back to that horror, so they could at least try to care for and protect their children.


This was from November, just before Sweden passed its anti-immigration/refugee racist laws

And now, as we approach Christmas, Scandinavia's biggest consumer pig-out

From the Dec.18, 2015 Washington Post
For the full story, click on the title
Denmark wants to seize jewelry and cash from refugees

"In recent months, Denmark has taken a fairly harsh stance toward refugees. In September, for example, authorities published an ad in Lebanese newspapers carrying an unmistakable message to foreigners who might think about seeking asylum: Don't come to Denmark.

Now, the country is debating another and even more extreme step: The government is considering a law that would allow authorities to confiscate jewelry from refugees entering the country. The proposal is almost certain to pass Parliament.

"It is pretty telling about the current Danish policies that [some] are not quite sure whether this is a hoax or not," said Zachary Whyte, an asylum and integration researcher at the University of Copenhagen. In this case, it's real.

"The bill presented on 10 December 2015 provides the Danish authorities with the power to search clothes and luggage of asylum seekers — and other migrants without a permit to stay in Denmark — with a view to finding assets which may cover the expenses," the Danish Ministry of Integration said in an email to The Washington Post.

The law would also impact refugees already in the country. It is included in an asylum policy bill that is expected to pass Parliament in January and would be set to take effect by next February. Police authorities would be allowed to seize valuables and cash amounts they deem expensive enough.

According to the Integration Ministry, "the new rule on seizure will only apply to assets of a considerable value." Foreigners are expected to be able to "keep assets which are necessary to maintain a modest standard of living, e.g. watches and mobile phones. Furthermore, assets which have a certain personal, sentimental value to a foreigner will not, as a main rule, be seized unless they have [considerable] value."

A story from Germany... (click on image to go to "Thousands of refugees crammed into airport hangars in Berlin, Germany")




Imagine

John Boehner, the lachrymose Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, immediately after having accomplished a years-long attempt to have the leader of the Catholic Church deliver an unprecedented speech before the Congress of the U.S., abruptly announces that he will resign his seat, effective around the Halloween festivities. He suggests that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy should succeed him.

Representative McCarthy of California, unknown on the national stage, turns out to be a political lightweight who frequently finds it difficult to utter a simple declarative sentence in the English Language. On an occasion when he did speak clearly, he caused a political tsunami within the Republican Party – and a joyous exhalation among the Democrats. In a TV interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, McCarthy energetically allowed that the now-long-in-the-tooth select committee to investigate the Benghazi occurrences was established for the purpose of wounding Hillary Clinton, should she seek the presidency.

Even after seeming to have become a pariah among his peers, McCarthy's ascendancy still appeared to be a done-deal. The media were expectantly in attendance outside the closed doors of a meeting of the forty or so members of the House Freedom Caucus, where ostensibly McCarthy was to have been endorsed in his bid to succeed Boehner. When the doors were flung open, a smiling Kevin McCarthy emerged with the announcement that he was withdrawing from the Speakers contest. All hell broke open! Just before this, a curious letter was circulated among the House members. It cautioned that anyone whose post-5 p.m. activities could not hold up to scrutiny should not seek the speaker position. Even more curiously, soon thereafter, a rumor was circulated about an extra-marital relationship between Kevin McCarthy and Congresswoman Renee Elmers. It seemed curiously insignificant at the time, but when McCarthy was smilingly announcing his withdrawal before the assembled media, oddly, he called attention to the presence of his family. In fairness, to date, no one has challenged McCarthy's stated reasons for his withdrawal.

What has all of this got to do with Louis Farrakhan and the Great Pumpkin? Well, Boehner is known for his orange-tinted pallor; and McCarthy is from California, the home of the O.C. (Orange County) and the bridge with the golden hue. That takes care of the pumpkin, but what about Farrakhan? That is not the end of the pumpkin references – or Farrakhan.

Remember the Tea Party? It did not just slink into obscurity. It is Halloween-costumed as the above-mentioned House Freedom Caucus. It is further embodied in the personages of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson and Donald Trump. The purpose of the Tea Party is to oppose Barack Obama definitively, with the intention of embarrassing him and de-legitimizing him as president. The Tea Party had become so negatively branded that it had to go underground. That unholy clutch of House members responsible for government shutdowns and the like, merely changed its name. The presidential candidates just do not mention that name.

Barack Obama's election caused panic among the residual racists within the moneyed classes and the Republican Party. They took note of the gender, age and ethnic-minority coalition responsible for Obama's election and -- instead of doing the politically savvy thing of pursuing those same groups – they set out to hobble their ability to exercise their due franchise at the polls. Republican-controlled state legislatures conspired and issued bills that would gladden the hearts of the Dixiecrats. Their aim was to make it as difficult as possible for those offending classes of people to vote. Some of those laws collapsed under court challenges, but others remain. The Tea Party, which emerged under the patina of grass-roots, actually was underwritten by racist Big Money. Ergo, the strategic withdrawal of the stained nomenclature. The financial support is still there.

Louis Farrakhan addressed crowds on the Washington Mall, celebrating the anniversary of the Million Man March. Baked within Farrakhan's high-flying and sometimes fantastical rhetoric, is a solid kernel of truth, too-often muted in our embarrassed, national conversation on race. Farrakhan fills in the uncomfortable scenes of history that we leave blank. That is why, although race is the underlying factor in the House leadership crisis, there is no mention of same in the news reports. Why? Because, under the direction of the Big Pumpkin, everyone is festooned in festive disguise, just in time for the Halloween Hijinks!

***** ***** *****

A nation with secrets untold,
Allows untrue myths to be told.
The Great Pumpkin said,
You could lose your head.
"Don't bother me now; I'm too old."

The demise of the Fairness Doctrine has haunted me since 1987, when it was stricken down by Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler. You may be forgiven if you're not familiar with the niceties of the Fairness Doctrine itself, but you'd have to have been locked in a darkened, sound proof room these last 27 years to be unaware of the the flood of communications woes its repeal has unleashed.

Since then, everything from hate radio to cable news, from infomercials to native advertising, from mere partisan journalism to blatant propaganda have been foisted on us, all masquerading as objective reporting. I could spend an hour on each of these topics and never exhaust them.

For now, though, I want to focus on the one positive aspect of broadcast deregulation, and that is this: Almost nothing you see in the national media is true. In fact, the more stridently mainstream media insists that a thing IS true, the more you may be reliably and comfortably assured that it is not.

"Yes, yes," I can hear you grumbling. "I know all that. What's your point?" Simply this. Since forever, but especially since the first Democratic debate, nearly every national news outlet has fallen all over itself to proclaim Secretary Clinton the heir apparent to the Oval Office, the people's choice and the "most qualified" Democratic presidential candidate.

Now, given that 90% of ALL media in the US is controlled by 6 corporations, and given that Big Media moguls seldom support candidates whose views are not in lock step with their own, you'd think that this widespread and outspoken corporate approval of Mrs. Clinton would be concerning to thoughtful Democratic and Liberal voters. But you'd be wrong. It hasn't been. Not really.

I continue to be amazed at the adulation being heaped on a person who sat on the board of directors of Walmart for six long years, who has exonerated Wall Street and the big banks of any blame for the recent worldwide economic meltdown, who has publicly poo-pooed the notion that repealing Glass-Steagall had anything to do with causing that disaster and who has a history of supporting corporate giveaways and 'free trade' agreements like NAFTA and TPP.

Sadly, with each passing day, it appears that George Orwell was right all along. "The people will believe what the media tell them they believe." I continue to hope that, in this one instance, at least, he'll be proved wrong. I hope, instead, that the scales will fall from the eyes of the deluded, that they will see the error of their ways and recognize Mrs Clinton, talented, intelligent and capable though she may be, for the political poison pill I greatly fear she is.

Consider a side effect of the lawlessness, cruelty and disrespect for human rights thath has now become the signature of ICE, local Police, the National Guard, and even the United States Marine Corps since they have been deployed on American soil in violation of The Posse Comitatus The issue I have yet to see addressed anywhere is the long-term impact on our citizenry.

It has been documented all over the world, in many different times and conflicts, that when inhumane tactics are used on a civilian population, that population becomes radicalized and prone to see counter violence as the only viable alternative.

There’s no reason to believe that it will be any different here, if the behavior by those who are supposed to protect and serve, continues to intimidate and oppress. We witness on a daily basis people being harassed, beaten and kidnapped by men in unmarked cars and vans. And then these people are sent to prisons all over the world, with Habeas Corpus seeming as relevant as the archaic Latin you might hear in a Catholic mass.

What can be naturally expected is that people, especially the young, will begin to engage in what some will consider legitimate civil disobedience and others as terrorist activities. The  only real question is, who can blame them?

The quote "When the law is wrong, resistance becomes duty" is attributed to Thomas Jefferson. It reflects the concept of civil disobedience, where individuals intentionally break unjust laws to challenge them and advocate for change. This idea is rooted in the belief that there is a higher moral law that should guide our actions, even when it conflicts with human-made laws. Judicial scholars also consider it embedded in what is defined as the "spitit" of the US Constitution.

While Gandhi is renowned for his advocacy of nonviolent resistance, he didn't believe it was the correct approach in all circumstances. He famously stated that if faced with the choice between violence and cowardice, he would choose violence.

In the 1960s, the reaction to Police brutality in this country was the creation of groups like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and the Brown Berets. When the brutality increased and became even more severe, the result was the formation of groups like Students for a Democratic Society, which morphed into the Weather Underground and FALAN, both of which practiced violence as the only means they saw for real change.

Ignoring convention and law, entering into homes without warrants, failure to identify names, not wearing badges, and using unnecessary force, set an example to a population that the rule of law no longer exists, so they should fight back “by whatever means necessary”.

As recently as a year ago, most people who were pushing Second Amendment rights were those with right wing politics… That is now starting to change dramatically.

Trump has been calling the peaceful protests in San Diego, Los Angeles and now around the country an insurrection, which is laughable. If he continues on this course, it will soon be a self fulfilling prophecy, whether intended or not.

Ask yourself this; how long would you watch your parents, your spouse, your children, your friends, or your neighbors be dragged away like this before you picked up a stone… Or a Molotov cocktail… Or a gun?

Make no mistake, I am not calling for violence at this point… What I am saying, is that if law-enforcement continues down the path of the wannabe dictator, paraphrasing California Governor Gavin Newsom, thus violating the Constitution, and soon, the repercussions are inevitable.