This Can't Be Happening!

Federal authorities publicly plot encouraging bounty hunters to kidnap a fugitive black radical from a foreign country for return to prison in the U.S. to achieve long-delayed justice.

This sounds like the FBI action on May 2, 2013 in placing former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur on its “Most Wanted Terrorists” list – the first female to have that dubious distinction.

Shakur was convicted of killing a New Jersey State Trooper during a May 1973 incident on the NJ turnpike, where one of her companions was killed and another captured. Once known as JoAnne Chesimard, she escaped from a NJ prison in 1979 and was granted political asylum in Cuba in 1984 where she lives today.

While Shakur,65, occasionally criticizes racist inequities in the U.S. – comparable to that of many politicians including Barack Obama prior to this election of U.S. President – she does not actively advocate or engage in terrorism.

Yet many contend she is a ‘terrorist’ because of her armed resistance decades ago to American racism that included police brutality – a deadly offense Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. decried twice in his seminal 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech. A May 10 editorial in the conservative Washington Times declared Shakur had to “pay for her crimes” suggesting Cuba send her to a cell in Guantanamo Bay – the U.S. torture prison located on land the U.S. illegally occupies in Cuba.

Although federal authorities did double the NJ state reward for the capture of Shakur to $2-million when placing her on their “Most Wanted” terrorist list exactly forty-years after that 1973 incident, the bounty hunter incident referenced above occurred before the widely condemned listing of Shakur.
Assata Shakur as she appeared when arrested (under the name JoAnne Chesimard) and as she looks today in exile in Cuba

 
I saw the masked men
throwing truth into a well.
When I began to weep for it
I found it everywhere.
- Claudia Lars (El Salvador)
 

Those of us who have struggled for peace and justice over the past decades don’t have much to celebrate these days. But the news from Guatemala that a female judge -- Yasmin Barrios -- was able to successfully manage a trial in that benighted nation and convict former President Efrain Rios Montt of genocide is something to rejoice about. It suggests it’s no longer business as usual in Latin America -- especially vis-à-vis the United States.

The big stick of North American imperialism from Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan appears to be dwindling in size. The sentencing of a Guatemalan president to 80 years in prison for employing scorched earth tactics against native Mayan Indians is an amazing milestone -- and an incredible story to boot.

Following a 1954 US-directed coup that overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz for his efforts at agrarian reform, the tiny Central American nation descended into a condition that can only be characterized, for the native Mayan people, as a state of Hell-on-Earth. The fact that President Rios Montt undertook his systematic slaughter of many thousands of Mayan peasants with the endorsement of Ronald Reagan only makes the conviction that much sweeter.

.

In the photograph, at left, Ronald Reagan, “the Great Communicator,” meets with Rios Montt, who is holding a document titled “This government has the commitment to change.” At the time, Reagan said Rios Montt was "a man of great personal integrity and commitment" who wanted to "promote social justice." At right, is a line of bodies from one of the Guatemalan army's massacres of people who, no doubt, were deemed "communists" and, therefore, inhuman and justifiably slaughtered like vermin.

Army General Efrain Rios Montt became president of Guatemala thanks to a coup in March 1982. He was, then, deposed by another coup in August 1983. This was a time when Mr. Reagan was hypnotizing the American people with his aw-shucks, soothing Hollywood narcotic speech tones.

I was visiting my mother
When I passed this really old guy in the hall
Who bore a slight resemblance to my father
(Who looked like a street person
On a bad day in his last years,
Or an old testament prophet
With his beard permanently stained
At the corners of his mouth)
And I almost asked him for his blessing
When he looked up at me
Through his eyebrows and said,
“Go take care of your mother”.
I knew what he meant.
He meant everyone’s mother.
I could see that he was a wise man,
So I said,
“Are we going to make it?”

In a late but happy surprise, ThisCantBeHappening! has learned that two of its founding members, Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington, Jr., were winners of a pair of this year's Project Censored awards.

Dave Lindorff and Linn Washington: Maybe not 'ones for the book,' but making waves just the same

Each year Project Censored's judges select the 25 issues that they believe were most censored or poorly reported on by the corporate media. More than one news organization or writer can win an award in any particular story category. For some reason, both Dave's and Linn's stories, though selected by the judges, were left out of the group of winners listed in the organization's annual book, Censored 2013, but today Project Censored Director Mickey Huff discovered the oversight and corrected it, listing and linking both articles by the two journalists on the organization's website.

Linn's winnng piece reported on how Wachovia Bank had knowingly laundered millions of dollars of cartel drug money, but when caught by federal regulators, was only hit with a fine, and no criminal charges, with its executives skating free. He made the key point that at the same time, thousands of people caught with a small quantity of drugs for their own use are languishing in the nation's prison. The article was titled Too Big to Do Time?: Fed Wrist-slap for Wachovia Bank Makes a Farce of the Drug War. It ran in this publication last May 27.

Dave's award was for an article that appeared first in the online edition of The Nation magazine. Titled Colleges Withhold Transcripts from Grads in Loan Default, it ran on March 30, 2012.

To view the Project Censored award pages for these articles, you can go here and here.

ThisCantBeHappening! now can claim four Project Censored awards, which is not bad for a little news organization that has no budget, can't pay its writers, depends upon donations from its readers, and has been banned by Truthout!. (Earlier awards, both won by Dave, were for an article about government planning preparations for restoring the draft and an article exposing US military use of depleted uranium munitions in the 2011 air attacks on Gaddafy troops in Libya.)

The Project Censored Awards are honors, but don't come with any cash. We'd like to suggest that our readers help us celebrate by sending us some financial support, which is badly needed here at TCBH!. You can use the Paypal button on the right of the masthead, or send a check made out to "Dave Lindorff/TCBH" at POB 846, Ambler, PA 19002. (We'll probably blow the first donation on a bottle of champaign or a few bottles of beer to celebrate, but the rest will go straight into subsidizing our journalism work at TCBH!)

A 21st century psychotherapist steps into a time machine and comes out in Atlanta in 1855. Having no other marketable skills, he hangs out a shingle and promises new remedies for mental illness. A well-dressed gentleman knocks on the door and inquires if the psychotherapist might come to his plantation to examine the slaves.

“Most of them are well satisfied with their position and work hard within their natural limitations,” says the gentleman. “But a few appear to suffer most severely with drapetomania, dipsomania and dyaesthesia aethiopica. Even after whippings, they continue to defy my rules, either by subterfuge or outright defiance. I do not understand their affliction, which is cause for much suffering among them and financial losses for myself.”

After looking up drapetomania (compulsive running away), dipsomania (compulsive drinking) and dyaesthesia aethiopica (compulsive avoidance of work) in the latest journals of negro behavior, the psychotherapist goes to the plantation and convinces the psychotic slaves to talk with him for 50 minutes each week.

“I think I know what the problem is,” says the psychotherapist after a few months of research. “Your slaves had unhappy childhoods because they come from dysfunctional families. Their parents were often absent and even when they were around, they didn’t appreciate their children for their true selves. In some sense, your slaves are living in the past, acting out childhood fear and anger that is deeply buried in the unconscious.”

“And what do you recommend as a remedy?” says the gentleman.

“The best psychology has to offer right now is continued brutalization, on the theory that their race is incapable of deeper insight,” says the psychotherapist. “I think the evidence  indicates that re-traumatizing the already traumatized is ineffective for a small number of stubborn cases, as you have discovered. For the stubborn cases, I would suggest another form of therapy...”

If the 21st century psychotherapist was Freudian, he might now recommend years of talk therapy for the slaves until they had a clear understanding of their parents and siblings.

If the psychotherapist was Jungian, he might recommend dream journals and more creative outlets for the slaves so they could get insight from active imagination.