Chris Hedges's Blog, page 238

Stop Politicizing the Military, Pentagon Tells White House

SEOUL, South Korea—The Pentagon has told the White House to stop politicizing the military, amid a furor over a Trump administration order to have the Navy ship named for the late U.S. Sen. John McCain hidden from view during President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Japan.

A U.S. defense official said Patrick Shanahan, Trump’s acting defense chief, is also considering sending out formal guidance to military units in order to avoid similar problems in the future.

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Beware the Hero Worship of John McCain



by Scott Ritter

Shanahan confirmed details about a Navy email that said the White House military office wanted the USS John McCain kept “out of sight” when Trump was in Japan about a week ago. The internal Navy email came to light last week, triggering a storm of outrage.

Trump, who long feuded with McCain, has said he knew nothing about the request, but added that “somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK? And they were well-meaning, I will say.”

According to Shanahan spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino, Shanahan told his chief of staff on Friday to speak with the White House military office “and reaffirm his mandate that the department of defense will not be politicized.” Buccino said the chief of staff reported back that he delivered the message.

Shanahan told reporters traveling with him to South Korea on Sunday that he is not planning to seek an investigation by the Pentagon’s internal watchdog into the matter “because there was nothing carried out” by the Navy. He added that he still needs to gather more information about exactly what happened and what service members did.

“How did the people receiving the information — how did they treat it,” Shanahan said. “That would give me an understanding on the next steps” to take.

Shanahan did not detail what those steps could be, but a defense official said Shanahan is considering a clearer directive to the military about avoiding political situations. The goal would be to ensure there is less ambiguity about how the military should support VIP events and how service members should respond to such political requests, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Shanahan also said that he spoke with McCain’s wife, Cindy, a few days ago. He declined to provide any details.

The order to keep the Navy destroyer out of sight reflected what appeared to be an extraordinary White House effort to avoid offending an unpredictable president known for holding a grudge, including a particularly bitter one against McCain.

The McCain incident has dogged Shanahan throughout his weeklong trip to Asia, even as he tried to deal with critical national security issues involving the eroding U.S. relationship with China and the continuing threat from North Korea.

Shanahan, who has been serving in an acting capacity since the first of the year, has yet to be formally nominated by Trump as permanent defense chief. His speech to a major national security conference in Singapore on Saturday was a chance to audition for the job on the international stage.

A formal nomination has been expected, and Congress members have said they believe there will be a hearing on his nomination in the next month or so. The McCain issue is sure to come up, but it’s not clear how it may affect either his nomination or confirmation by the Senate. It may well depend on what steps he takes to respond to the matter in the coming days.

Asked what he has learned about the incident so far, Shanahan said he was told that despite the White House request, the Navy did not move the ship and that a barge that was in front of it was moved before Trump arrived. He said that a tarp that had been draped over the ship’s name was removed, but that it was put there for maintenance, not to obscure its identity.

Asked directly if members of his senior staff were aware of the White House request before the president’s visit, Shanahan said he’s been told they did not know. He also has said he was not aware of the request and that he would never have authorized it.

What is still unclear, however, is who at the Pentagon may have known about the request and either agreed with it or chose not to discourage it. It’s also not clear whether Navy leaders deliberately chose the McCain crew as one of the ships to be on holiday leave during Trump’s visit, or if other measures were taken to ensure that the McCain was not visible from where the president stood when he arrived on the USS Wasp to make remarks.

The warship , commissioned in 1994, was originally named for the senator’s father and grandfather, both Navy admirals named John Sidney McCain. Last year, the Navy rededicated the ship to honor the senator as well.

Biden Declares LGBTQ Rights His Top Priority

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden declared Saturday that the Equality Act would be his top legislative priority, an effort to enshrine LGBTQ protections into the nation’s labor and civil rights laws.

The former vice president shared his hopes of signing the legislation as part of a keynote address to hundreds of activists at the Human Rights Campaign‘s annual Ohio gala on the first day of Pride Month. In a half-hour at the lectern, his remarks ranged from emotional tributes to his audience and their personal endurance to condemnations of President Donald Trump.

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Joe Biden Is Not the Pragmatic Choice for 2020



by Sonali Kolhatkar

“It’s wrong and it is immoral what they’re doing,” Biden said of the Trump administration. Among other Trump polices, he cited attempts to bar transgender troops in the U.S. military, allow individuals in the medical field to refuse to treat LGBTQ individuals, and allow homeless shelters to refuse transgender occupants.

“Just like with racial justice and women’s rights, we are seeing pushback against all the progress we’ve made toward equality,” Biden said.

The Equality Act would address many such discriminatory practices. It recently passed the Democratic-run House, but will not become law under Trump and the Republican Senate. That means LGBTQ residents in dozens of states are still subject to various forms of discrimination that are either specifically allowed or not barred by state law.

“It will be the first thing I ask to be done,” Biden said.

Biden spoke in Ohio, a political battleground he was visiting for the first time since beginning his bid, on the same day that more than a dozen of his rivals were in San Francisco for the California Democratic Convention and a massive MoveOn.org conference. By the end of the weekend, 14 candidates will have addressed thousands of activists in California, which has more than 400 delegates to the 2020 convention, about a fifth of what it will take to win the nomination.

Among them, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, nodded to Biden’s absence with subtle jabs.

“Some Democrats in Washington believe the only changes we can get are tweaks and nudges. … Some say if we all just calm down, the Republicans will come to their senses,” Warren said, an allusion to Biden’s recent prediction that Republicans will have “an epiphany” once Trump leaves office.

Biden made no mention of his rivals, with his go-it-alone itinerary and his message signifying his burgeoning confidence at his position atop the pack of 24 presidential hopefuls.

Campaigning in a Midwest battleground is no surprise for Biden. One of the prevailing arguments for his candidacy is that his moderate, deal-making, “Middle Class Joe” brand offers Democrats their best shot to win back the industrial belt that Trump wrested from the party in 2016.

Yet the HRC event offered both Biden and his audience a chance to go beyond that simplified framing of the 2020 landscape.

“The thing that gets overlooked when the story is written about Ohio and the Midwest is that we’re incredibly diverse,” said Shawn Copeland, HRC’s Ohio director.

Copeland said HRC has identified about 1.8 million “equality voters” in Ohio, including 400,000 LGBTQ citizens, plus their family members, friends and other allies. Trump got 2.84 million Ohio votes to Hillary Clinton’s 2.4 million in 2016.

Biden, meanwhile, used the forum to underscore his long alliance with HRC and LGBTQ activists — a key to Biden’s contention that he’s more progressive than the party’s left flank acknowledges.

The former vice president visibly enjoyed recalling the 2012 presidential campaign when he announced his support for same-sex marriage before his boss, President Barack Obama, had done so.

Biden recalled that most political observers “thought I had just committed this gigantic blunder.” He said he’d let Obama know beforehand what might be coming. “I told the president if asked, I was not going to be quiet.”

The rest of his remarks were less jovial, as Biden lamented the widespread discrimination that still exists in the U.S. and abroad. Noting recent killings of black transgender women, he roared: “It’s outrageous. It must, it must, it must end. The fastest way to end it is to end the Trump administration.”

He lowered his voice as he listed the percentage of LGBTQ children and teens who attempt or consider suicide. “I don’t have to tell you how hard it is for these kids, because many of you were these kids,” he said, “the terror in your heart as you spoke your truth.”

Several Democratic hopefuls have addressed HRC state dinners this year. National officials with the organizations say they’ve worked with the campaigns and the state organizations to schedule the occasions.

A Biden campaign statement issued before the speech said the choice to go to Ohio proves Biden wants to have conversations about LGBTQ rights “not just on the coasts of this country, but in the heartland and with any and all Americans.”

The venue also allowed him to push back, at least indirectly, at some of the jabs from California. He reminded the audience that he campaigned for many of the freshman House Democrats who helped the party to a net gain of 41 seats — mostly by winning swing or GOP-leaning districts.

“We didn’t have to be radical about anything,” he said. “They talked about basic, fundamental rights.”

With the resulting House majority, Biden noted, the Equality Act has gotten further than ever before.

___

Justice Department Readies Antitrust Probe of Google: Reports

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Justice Department is readying an investigation of Google’s business practices and whether they violate antitrust law, according to news reports.

The search giant was fined a record $2.72 billion by European regulators in 2017 for abusing its dominance of the online search market. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission made an antitrust investigation of Google but closed it in 2013 without taking action.

Now the Justice Department has undertaken an antitrust probe of the company’s search and other businesses, according to reports by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Bloomberg News. They cited unnamed people familiar with the matter.

Justice Department spokesman Jeremy Edwards declined to comment Saturday. Google declined any comment.

Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., has faced mounting scrutiny as regulators around the world have focused on tech companies’ business practices over the past year. In addition to the 2017 record fine, European regulators also slapped a $1.7 billion penalty on the company in March for barring websites from selling ads from rivals alongside some Google-served ads near search results.

Google says it has now ended that practice.

The company made changes voluntarily when the FTC shut down its investigation, including letting advertisers use information from their Google ad campaigns to create campaigns with rivals.

But an FTC staff report that was released years later showed that the agency staff had urged the presidentially appointed commissioners to bring a lawsuit against Google. That never happened.

Google commands the lead in digital ad revenue by a wide margin, controlling 31.1% of global digital ad dollars, according to eMarketer’s 2019 estimates. Facebook is a distant second with 20.2%.

Politicians and outside antitrust analysts have expressed concern in recent years that Google controls too much of the digital ad process. It makes the technology, hosts the largest search site where ads appear and collects data from all ad campaigns that it runs.

12 Victims Mourned in Shooting at Virginia Beach City Building

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.—The 12 people who were fatally shot in a Virginia Beach government building were remembered Saturday during a somber news conference and prayer vigil as officials sought to put the focus on those who died and not the gunman.

Police Chief James Cervera identified the assailant as DeWayne Craddock, who was employed for 15 years as an engineer with the city’s utilities department. He declined to comment on a motive for Friday’s rampage, which ended with Craddock’s death in a gun battle with police. City officials uttered his name just once and said they would not mention it again.

City Manager Dave Hansen said he had worked for years with many of the dead, 11 of whom were city employees. The 12th was a contractor trying to get a permit.

Their names and photos were projected on a screen as Hansen read aloud biographical information that included their hometowns and years of service.

“They leave a void that we will never be able to fill,” he said.

Chaplains and family assistance workers worked through the night to notify relatives — a job that Hansen described as “the most difficult task anyone will ever have to do.”

One of the dead employees had worked for the city for 41 years. Six worked in the same department as Craddock, though authorities have declined to say if anyone was specifically targeted or if the suspect had issued threats before. The victims were found throughout the building, on three floors, police said.

Authorities have said Craddock opened fire indiscriminately. Four other people were wounded, including a police officer whose bulletproof vest saved his life.

The suspect was armed with a .45-caliber handgun with a noise suppressor, police said. Cervera said Saturday that more weapons were found at the scene and at his home.

Two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that the gunman made multiple legal firearm purchases recently, and the guns recovered at the scene were purchased legally. The officials were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The building was open to the public, but security passes were required to enter inner offices, conference rooms and other work areas. As a current employee, Craddock would have had the pass to enter the inner offices, Hansen said.

Asked how secure the building was, the police chief said that government buildings must balance access with security.

“It’s an open government building. Citizens have the right to access open government buildings. Employees have a right to access their work site,” he said.

Craddock, 40, was a professional engineer who had graduated from Denbigh High School in nearby Newport News in 1996 and joined the Army National Guard, according to a newspaper clip from the time. He received basic military training and advanced individual training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He later graduated from Old Dominion University with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering.

The 11 city employees who were killed were identified as Tara Welch Gallagher, Mary Louise Gayle, Alexander Mikhail Gusev, Katherine A. Nixon, Ryan Keith Cox, Joshua A. Hardy and Michelle “Missy” Langer, all of Virginia Beach; Laquita C. Brown and Robert “Bobby” Williams, both of Chesapeake; and Richard H. Nettleton of Norfolk and Christopher Kelly Rapp of Powhatan. The 12th victim, Herbert “Bert” Snelling of Virginia Beach, was a contractor filling a permit.

Craddock appeared to have had no felony record, which would have made him eligible to purchase guns.

Joseph Scott, an engineering technician with the public utilities department, said he had worked with Craddock before and had a brief interaction with him Friday. Scott said he saw him in the men’s restroom about five minutes before the shooting.

“He was in there brushing his teeth, which he always did after he ate,” Scott said. “I said ‘Hey, how you doing? What are you doing this weekend?’ It was just a brief conversation.”

Scott said he left for the day right after and learned of the shooting when a co-worker and then his son called him asking if he was OK.

“I couldn’t believe that it happened,” he said.

Scott said he worked in a different division from Craddock, whom he described as quiet, polite and a “nice guy.” Scott said he thought Craddock was in good standing at work and had never heard negative reports about him.

Scott was among about 200 people who attended a Saturday prayer vigil for those killed. The crowd included city workers, community leaders and residents who just wanted to offer hugs and condolences. Many people openly sobbed or dabbed their eyes with tissues. Gov. Ralph Northam also attended.

“We grieve with you,” Northam said. “We are all in this together.”

Scott said he, his wife and several other people prayed for the shooter.

“He was a human too, and his family is hurting too,” Scott said. “He’s not evil … he was just another guy who had problems.”

Craddock’s neighbors said police swarmed the neighborhood of modest townhomes Friday in Virginia Beach. Some said he had lived there for at least 10 years.

Several neighbors said Craddock was a clean-cut member of the neighborhood association board whose wife had left him some years ago.

___

Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano, Michael Biesecker, Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C.; Denise Lavoie and Michael Kunzelman in Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Jonathan Drew in Durham, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Viking Ship Captain Arrested in Deadly Budapest Boat Crash

BUDAPEST, Hungary—A Hungarian judge on Saturday ordered the formal arrest of a captain whose Viking river cruise ship collided with a sightseeing boat on the Danube River, sinking the tourist boat and leaving seven South Koreans dead and 21 other people missing.

Authorities said water levels in Budapest are expected to fall quickly in the coming days, helping efforts to salvage the wreckage that may still contain victims’ bodies.

The judge ordered the 64-year-old Ukrainian captain of the Viking Sigyn cruise ship formally arrested for 30 days. He said the captain could be released on bail — subject to him wearing a tracking device and remaining in Budapest — but prosecutors are appealing that decision.

The Viking ship collided Wednesday evening with a much smaller sightseeing boat carrying 35 people, most of them South Korean tourists, in Budapest, the capital. Seven people were rescued.

Divers so far have been unable to even approach the wreckage of the 27-meter (88 ½ foot) tour boat due to high water levels, strong currents and murky waters. A Hungarian military ship has been anchored at the site to help the salvage operation.

The captain is suspected of endangering water traffic causing a fatal mass disaster, which carries a sentence of 2 to 8 years.

“The substantiated suspicion is supported by the report from the scene, photographs, video recordings and more,” the court said, adding that the suspect must be available for authorities investigating the deadly crash.

The captain, identified only as Yuriy C. in line with Hungarian laws, has been in custody since Thursday. His lawyers dispute that their client made any mistakes leading to the collision, which took place under a heavy rain and with restricted visibility on the river.

Defense lawyer Gabor Elo said there are no grounds to consider his client a suspect in the case, arguing that the prosecution’s request for the arrest was motivated only by the fact that the captain is a Ukrainian citizen.

Elo said his client “is very sorry that he was involved in such an accident in which so many people lost their lives or are missing.”

Hungarian police spokesman Kristof Gal said the seven confirmed victims, all South Koreans, have been identified with the help of South Korean authorities by using finger and palm prints and showing photos to relatives.

Some victims’ relatives and friends on Saturday visited the site of the collision under the city’s Margit Bridge, one of the seven main bridges over the Danube in Budapest, close to the neo-gothic Hungarian parliament building. Flowers tributes and candles have been placed along the bridge.

High spring water levels have so far hampered recovery efforts for the missing but Hungarian authorities hoped that would soon change.

Water management authorities said Saturday the Danube River’s water levels will soon peak at around 5.9 meters (19 feet, 5 inches) and fall to about 4 meters (13 feet) by the middle of next week. It added that no rainfall affecting water levels was expected in the next six days.

___

AP Writer Dusan Stojanovic contributed.

An Unabashed Tribute to ‘The Warriors’ on Its 40th Anniversary

In the 40 years since its release, Walter Hill’s “The Warriors,” celebrated in midnight showings and online tributes, has morphed from trash to cult to, according to The Guardian’s Charles Bramesco, “classic.” Trash, cult, classic—that sounds about right. Thanks to its many reincarnations as a director’s-cut DVD, video game and graphic novel, “The Warriors” is better known today than it was the year it was released. Its enduring influence can even be seen in the latest commercial for Taco Bell.

But in the spring of 1979, the critical establishment reacted as if a cold, wet corpse had been dumped on its doorstep; it was the rare occasion when critics from the mainstream New York Times and the alternative Village Voice were in full agreement: They hated “The Warriors.” Conservatives, particularly nationally syndicated columnist Max Rafferty, called the film “violence purely for the sake of violence.”

An editorial by Desmond Ryan in The Philadelphia Inquirer called it “a sickening film that glorifies gang warfare and brutal violence … [and] has left a bloody trail of real-life mayhem and death in its wake. … In hundreds of cities across the U.S., the depraved violence shown in this movie has been blamed for inciting young people to fight, rampage and kill. …”

The hysteria was fanned by a trailer that, to a background of the throbbing score from “The Terminator” (“The Warriors” score was still in progress), warned, “These are the armies of the night. They are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City.”

“The Warriors” had just two high-profile defenders. In the March 5, 1979, issue of The New Yorker, film critic Pauline Kael stunned staid readers when she wrote, “’The Warriors’ is a real moviemaker’s movie: it has, in visual terms, the kind of impact that ‘Rock Around the Clock’ did behind the titles of ‘Blackboard Jungle.’ …The physical action is so stylized that it has a wild cartoon kick to it, like Yojimbo and the best Kung-Foo movies. The fighting is so exhilaratingly visceral, and so contrapuntal in the Oriental-martial-art-dancing manner that you have no thought of pain or gore.”

The movie had another, even more famous, supporter. After screening “The Warriors” at Camp David, President Ronald Reagan phoned lead actor Michael Beck to tell him he just had “enjoyed it immensely.”

***

The path of “The Warriors” to B-movie immortality began in 401 B.C., at the battle of Cunaxa, when Prince Cyrus challenged his brother, Artaxerxes II, for the throne of the Persian Empire. Cyrus won the battle but got himself killed, and 10,000 Greek mercenaries were stranded in a hostile land more than a thousand miles from home.

Gen. Xenophon rallied the Greeks and led them through deserts and mountains, fending off the Persian army and barbarian tribes, each with their own distinct dress and weapons. After a Homeric march, they reached Greek cities at the Black Sea, where they raised the cry “Thálatta, thálatta!” (“The sea—the sea!”). Xenophon later retired and wrote a best-seller, “Anabasis”—often translated as “The March Up Country.”

Cut to New York, 1960. An aspiring writer, Sol Yurick, quits the Department of Welfare—trust me, this will all come together—and, drawing from his experiences with what were then called juvenile delinquents, writes “The Warriors,” about a crew from Coney Island and their terrifying night returning home on subways and back streets as they fight police and rival gangs.

On the subway ride to a gang meeting in the Bronx, one of the Warriors pulls out a comic book, a Classics Illustrated—for those of you under the age of 40, those were the original graphic novels—about Greek warriors fighting their way through enemy territory to the sea and safety. The story, of course, is “Anabasis,” and the kid feels a kinship with the Greek heroes.

There was never an “Anabasis” comic from Classics Illustrated, but, as Yurick commented in the 2006 reprint of his novel, “It would have made a great comic book.”

Filmmaker Walter Hill thought so, too. He told me in an interview that he saw the story as “a kind of animated comic book.” (The DVD version of the film begins with comic panels, as Hill originally intended.) The film quickly establishes its own identity. Andrew Laszlo’s cinematography transforms New York into a phantasmic world of neon night-glo colors reflected on shiny wet pavement; it’s a demented, neo-impressionist vision. Barry De Vorzon’s throbbing synthesizer score is the oral equivalent, the music synchronized to the beat the garishly clad gang members tramp on the way to the Bronx.

The gangs are a nightmare of diversity: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, some—like the Warriors—racially mixed, and, in one of the film’s biggest surprises, female (there’s a suggestion that the most physically imposing gang is all-gay). Like the Persian tribes the 10,000 Greeks fought, each has its own signature outfit and weapons.

The Boppers, the most stylish, wear tan slacks, black shirts and metallic magenta vests with 1940s-noir fedoras; the Savage Huns dress in drab olive green, like Chinese proles; the Electric Illuminators wear bright yellow-gold silk jackets with their emblem emblazoned across the back. The Baseball Furies, from the Bronx, wear Yankees-style pinstripes (Hill wanted to use the team’s logo, but a terrified George Steinbrenner said no) and carry bats. The biggest gang, the all-black Gramercy Riffs, wear orange karate shirts and sunglasses—at night. In one of the film’s bizarre jokes, their weapon is the hockey stick.

The High Hats suggest another literary influence. Decked out in black pants with suspenders, long-sleeved, red-striped pullover shirts, corpse-white makeup and black top hats, they look like the descendants of the natives led by Daniel Day-Lewis’ Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.” That film was based on Herbert Asbury’s highly fictionalized 1927 account of 19th-century New York street thugs. Hill’s movie seems more inspired by Asbury’s book than Yurick’s; “The Warriors” is “Gangs of New York” on amphetamines.

In the film, Cyrus (played by an unknown actor, Roger Hill) is focused on the big picture. If they stop fighting each other and unite, the gangs, led by a man of vision, would rule the city.

Cyrus’s speech, with its signature phrase, “Can you dig it?!” enthralls the delegates.

But Cyrus is murdered by Luther, leader of the Rogues, a gang that rides in a graffiti-splattered hearse. When police storm the park, nightsticks swinging, Luther puts the blame on the Warriors, who must, as one of them puts it, “juke our way back to Coney” under cover of night.

***

“The Warriors” is the ultimate New York night film—only one scene, a terrific brawl in a subway station men’s room—was shot on a set. Every scene except the final one was shot after dark. But despite its reputation as the ultimate New York street gang movie, it has little to do with real street gangs or the real New York.

A Californian, Hill knew little about the city and re-created it with a touch of fantastic realism rather than the hyperrealism of Scorsese. Hill used New York as a movie set, arranging locations to suit his story. The gang meeting at the beginning, supposedly in the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park, was shot in Riverside Park. The Warriors flee from there, through the magic of cinema, to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Union Square station was really the cavernous Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop in downtown Brooklyn.

“The Warriors” takes place in an alternative universe populated almost exclusively by gangs and cops. There are no more than two dozen “civilians” in this world, all glimpsed from a ghostly distance. The streets aren’t just devoid of traffic, but of parked cars (except when one is needed as a target for a Molotov cocktail). Where, you wonder, do these people go during the day? Where do the Rogues park their hearse? Or the skinhead Turnbull ACs their battered bus?

There are practically no guns in this New York, so the gangs must invent more ingenious ways of creating mayhem. And, except for some weed that the Lizzies share with the Warriors, there are no drugs. It seems like a comforting thought until you realize that these characters are this way without the use of stimulants.

Contrary to its reputation, there is practically no graphic violence of the kind that was routine in action movies 40 years ago. There’s no blood, but there is nihilism, or, as film critic Jake Horsley wrote in “The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery 1958-1989,” “a genuine comic book nihilism, to sell us the sheer joy of destruction.”

There’s also an element of ultimate sport. It’s an action movie grafted to the theme of a baseball game. The Warriors take the subway to an event in the Bronx, then the rest of the plot is built around their attempt to round the bases—I’d say second base was the Baseball Furies in the Bronx, home of the Yankees—and get home. The rival gangs are the other team, and the guys in blue, the cops, are the umpires who are trying to take them out of the game for breaking the rules.

Watch the Warriors clash with the Furies, the most famous action sequence in the movie:

There’s even an announcer, a DJ who reports on the Warriors’ progress between records. The DJ, whose full face we never see, was Lynne Thigpen, who died in 2004 after a career in stage and film, best known as the judge in “Anger Management.”

One of the intriguing mysteries of “The Warriors” is exactly where she is broadcasting from and for whom? Is there some kind of underground FM radio station that takes requests from street gangs?

***

The journey of “The Warriors” into pop culture legend was aided by rapper Sean John Combs, more famously known as Puff Daddy, who used Cyrus’ “Can you dig it?” as a sound bite. (In recent years, Stephen Colbert has parodied it three times.) The most famous line from the film, though, wasn’t in the script: it was improvised by David Patrick Kelly, who played Luther, the leader of the Rogues. To the clinking of soda bottles, Luther wails, “War-ree-yors, Come out to play-ay. War-ree-yors, come out to play-ay!” Fans of the Golden State Warriors often use the chant while waiting for their team to take the boards.

Luther is an engaging psychotic. “What are you so happy about?” snarls one of his gang. “I’m havin’ a good time!” he shrieks. When asked why he shot Cyrus, he responds with my all-time favorite explanation for unhinged behavior: “No reason, I just like doin’ things like that!”

Stardom eluded all the young cast, though several had long careers in TV and film. Kelly and James Remar (Ajax, strong boy of the Warriors) starred in scores of productions and worked together in Hill’s “48 Hours.” But Michael Beck, the blond war chief Swann—as chiseled as a young Viggo Mortensen when he landed the film’s plum role—had the misfortune to be cast in his next film with Olivia Newton-John in the horrid musical “Xanadu,” which threw a bucket of ice water on his career. Deborah Van Valkenburgh (a desperate street girl who takes up with the Warriors) was a New York stage actress when she was cast by Hill; she became a familiar face in movies and TV.

The only actor to achieve real acclaim was Mercedes Ruehl, who won a Tony in 1991 and an Oscar in 1992 for “The Fisher King.” She’s the undercover cop who busts Ajax after the fight with the Furies.

The director has had the longest career. Hill went on to direct, among others productions, HBO’s “Deadwood.”

Yurick, who died in 2013, insisted that “The Warriors” “is not the best of my books.” But thanks to the movie, it’s the only one likely to be remembered. Yurick meant the title of his novel to be taken ironically; Hill meant for it to be taken literally. The movie shows us what the kid reading the Classics Illustrated comic understood, even if the novelist didn’t—namely that anyone, no matter how squalid their life, can be a hero for just one night.

 

At Least 11 Dead in Shooting at City Building in Virginia

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.—The Latest on a shooting at a municipal center in Virginia Beach (all times local):

6:55 p.m.

Police say 11 people have been killed and six others injured in a mass shooting at a municipal building in Virginia Beach.

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The Weaponization of Everyday Life



by

Police Chief James Cervera said Friday that a shooter opened fire and shot “indiscriminately” at workers inside an operations building in the Virginia Beach Municipal Building Friday afternoon.

Cervera said police returned fire, killing the suspect. He said the suspect was a longtime employee of the city’s Public Works Department. One of the people shot is a police officer.

___

6:40 p.m.

Hospital officials say six people have been wounded in a shooting at a municipal center in Virginia Beach.

Sentara Healthcare said on its Twitter account that five people were taken to Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital and a sixth patient was taken to Sentara Princess Anne Hospital after the shooting just after 4 p.m. Friday. The company said the sixth patient was being transferred to the Level 1 Trauma Center at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

Virginia Beach police said a suspect was taken into custody after the shooting. They said they believe there was only one shooter.

___

5:11 p.m.

Police in Virginia Beach say a shooting at a municipal center has left multiple people wounded. They say a suspect has been taken into custody after Friday afternoon’s shooting and they believe there was only one shooter.

There was no immediate word on the extent of injuries.

Ordinary Chauvinism and a Little-Known Massacre

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“The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide”
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“The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide”

A book by Julian Herbert. Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney

If you’re not familiar with 47-year-old Julian Herbert, you should be. Herbert is a literary magician of the highest order, a talented and innovative Mexican writer who writes with a biting rawness and candor. He is both a man of the street and a poet, a tough guy who has somehow managed to hold on to a piece of his tortured heart. Herbert reminds me of W.G. Sebald, another seductive illusionist, but Herbert has none of Sebald’s elitism or paranoia. Herbert is a wild man of sorts, provocative and challenging, perhaps to cover some sort of deep-seated insecurity.

In his searing memoir “Tomb Song,” he sits in a dilapidated hospital room in Mexico, his laptop wobbling on his knees, as he watches his mother die. Herbert’s mother was a prostitute. He never knew his father. His many siblings, all with different fathers who never stayed around, have scattered and he alone has come to comfort his mother. He enjoys having her to himself. She has been his one true love. He falls in and out of a half-sleep, finding himself remembering moments shared with his mother. There was a magical morning when she taught him how to write. But there were horrendous scenes too, of desolation and abandonment that have never left him.

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He believes that writing will save him now. He will write her story and his own, and somehow through writing it the pain of these awful days will pass. He hopes so. His conflicting feelings about his mother is mirrored in his feelings about Mexico: He is open about the disgust he often feels with all that is Mexico, and yet he is unashamed to admit his attachment to his country.

Herbert’s memoir seems to be a precursor to his new book, “The House of the Pain of Others.” It allows us to understand the forces that drive him. “The House of the Pain of Others” attempts to dissect a genocide that took place in Torreon, Mexico, in 1911. The victims were hundreds of unarmed Cantonese Chinese immigrants who were brutally murdered, dismembered, and thrown into a mass grave with reckless abandon. Herbert attempts to discover all he can about this event, which for the most part has been erased from Mexican history. He never explains why he chose this undertaking, but we sense it is intricately tied to his search to understand himself and Mexico, and the poisons that still shatter the landscape.

Herbert finds some locals in Torreon who have heard about the massacre and speak to him nervously. Others laugh self-consciously. Many remain silent when he asks them directly if they know anything about what happened to the Chinese over a century ago. We realize, as we watch him watching others, that the victims have been silenced twice—at the moment of their gruesome deaths, and then again in Mexican memory.

The Cantonese immigrants who lived in Torreon at the time were railroad laborers, launderers, salesclerks, shoemakers, traders, and fishermen. They brought poppies with them to Mexico for the production of opium. The Mexicans were known not to be pleased with their presence. Many, Herbert claims, thought the Chinese to be dirty, uncouth, superstitious, unfriendly, and without humor. The Mexican Revolution was going on and some thought their deaths were simply collateral damage. But Herbert strongly suspects that this is a lie, that the Chinese immigrants were assassinated for no reason at all. He struggles to grasp what that says about the perpetrators of such a tragedy. What that says about Mexico and about himself. He knows this genocide is representative of something far more sinister and pervasive than what happened on that particular night, and he struggles to maintain the courage to really look at it head-on.

He examines the scanty evidence available to him. The first Mexican historian to write about the genocide, Eduardo Guerra, did so very briefly in 1932. Juan Puig added more context in 1992 but his account was challenged in 2005 by a doctoral student named Marco Antonio. But Herbert puts little credence in any of these accounts, sensing the distortions that run through their stories. Genocide resists deconstruction, particularly by the descendants of the perpetrators.

Herbert ponders the Mexican connection with violence. Their reckless flirtation with Nazism during the 1930s. Their ongoing obsession with wrestling and soccer. Even the “tropical sexuality” that often morphs into a carnal, degrading violence. He senses the reactionary impulses of his Mexican countrymen that still pulse beneath their faint cries for freedom and democracy. He wonders about the church’s effect on all of this. Do they constrain the barbarism or somehow encourage it? He is cognizant of the rampant xenophobia, chauvinism, and the regional antagonisms that have only grown more hostile with time. As he continues with his investigation, Herbert seems to make many around him uncomfortable with his inquiries.

He sometimes resorts to speaking to taxi drivers about the genocide. They look at him quizzically and say little. He sometimes imagines he can see the feet of the dead Chinese tramping through the city, and wonders if anyone else sees them too. He is envious of something elegant and restrained about the Chinese, but they seem foreign and unknowable. He is drawn to Confucianism, with its world so “complex and sublime that poets emerged who wrote verse of elegant simplicities that were Talmudic in their hidden complexities. ….” But he is more familiar with Mexican bleakness and pessimism.

Ultimately, Herbert comes to the conclusion that this slaughter was simply the result of a barbaric chauvinism that still simmers now, and that one day back in 1911 it erupted into total madness. He explains, “Pretending that the slaughter of the Chinese is completely at odds with local chauvinism would be like saying it’s impossible to get fries in a burger joint.” Could it really be that simple?

Herbert can’t let the mysteries that sparked this genocide go, and we can’t either. But we start to wonder about Herbert and what he isn’t able to see. He never really sees the Chinese people, dead or alive. They are merely phantom limbs for him, ghostly appendages that allow him to tell his story and the story of Mexico—an ugly story of chauvinism, machismo, and obtuseness blighted by bursts of violence.

 

 

New Hampshire Becomes 21st State to Abolish the Death Penalty

Legislators in New Hampshire voted Thursday to do away with the death penalty, joining 20 other states that have made capital punishment a thing of the past. In a  16-8 vote, the state’s Senate overrode Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto of a measure to abolish the practice, which state Sen. Melanie Levesque called “archaic, costly, discriminatory and violent.”

The death penalty repeal bill passed New Hampshire’s House and Senate last year, but lawmakers couldn’t muster enough votes to override Sununu’s veto.

According to Mother Jones, “New Hampshire is the latest to join the growing trend of states abolishing or putting a moratorium on the death penalty. Last year, Washington’s supreme court ruled the practice unconstitutional, and in March California Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium, providing a reprieve for the 737 inmates on California’s death row.”

New Hampshire’s death penalty—unlike California’s—was largely in name only. The last person executed in the state was Howard Long, who was hung in 1939 for the sexual abuse and murder of children. The state’s death row has only one inmate—Michael Addison, a black man, who has been on death row since 2008 for the 2006 murder of Michael Briggs, a white police officer.

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Addison’s case stirred controversy due to some of the circumstances of his sentencing. As Mother Jones notes, in addition to being the only person on death row for the past 11 years in a largely white state, court documents allege that Addison suffered from an intellectual disability.

John Brooks, who was tried around the same time as Addison, was a white multimillionaire who hired a hit man to kill his victim. Brooks received a life sentence without possibility of parole.

New Hampshire state Sen. Martha Hennessey, a Democrat, said, “I am grateful to the many survivors of murder victims who bravely shared their stories with the Legislature this session, many of whom told us that the death penalty only prolongs the pain and trauma of their loss.”

Ady Barkan’s Dying Quest for Social Justice

On April 30, activist Ady Barkan came to Capitol Hill from his home in California to advocate before Congress for a Medicare-for-all bill. The legislation, he said from his wheelchair, was “the only solution to what ails the American health care system.” It was the first-ever hearing for Medicare-for-all legislation, but that’s not what made this moment poignant. The voice wasn’t Barkan’s, but that of a computer, which read his testimony for him. One of the most important activists in America today can barely speak or move.

In 2016, Barkan was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a terminal illness that kills motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, eventually impacting the sufferer’s ability to walk, to eat, even to breath. “I never thought I’d be in this position,” he explained in a CNN op-ed in 2017. “A year ago, I was healthy, taking morning runs on the California coast and looking forward to a new life with my newborn son, Carl.”

Not knowing how much time he had left, Barkan threw himself into activism, turning, as a Politico profile described it, “his body into a kind of campaign tool, laying it in front of members of Congress, news cameras and activists to inspire action for health care, immigrants and the election of progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

He traveled frequently to Capitol Hill—to defend the Affordable Care Act, advocate for immigrant rights and against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, and to protest against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 with a coalition of progressive groups including the Center for Popular Democracy, for which he is an organizer. He’d been an activist for years, but his work gained a new urgency; at the same moment his health was in danger, the government had begun actively working to dismantle funding and programs that millions of Americans like him depend on.

“I have ALS. I am dying,” Barkan told a rapt crowd in the lobby of the Hart Senate building during one protest, back when he could still speak. “But when we come together our voices echo so loud through the halls of Congress, out to the Supreme Court, up Pennsylvania Avenue, all the way to Wall Street.” A few minutes later, as Vox reported at the time, he was arrested, an occurrence he told Politico has happened at least seven times in the past two years, including at the confirmation hearings for now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

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Barkan first gained national attention when he approached Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., on a plane in December 2017. In an 11-minute video filmed by a fellow passenger, Barkan presses Flake to vote against the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: “You can be an American hero, you really can. You’re halfway there. If the votes match the speech, think about the legacy that you will have for my son, and your grandchildren, if you take your principles and turn them into votes.” Barkan added, “You can save my life.”

Flake ended up voting for the bill, but the popularity of the video and Barkan’s words “you can be an American hero” allowed the Center for Popular Democracy to create “Be a Hero” a campaign to elect Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, candidates who would fight for health care, for equitable economic policies and to protect immigrants. (Many of the protesters at Kavanaugh’s hearings were wearing Be a Hero T-shirts.) Ultimately, the “Be a Hero” campaign succeeded in helping Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives.

According to Politico, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a letter to Barkan after the election, wrote: “Your passion for saving our health care and charting a new path for progressive change were an inspiration throughout the campaign … your labor of love helped us win the House.”

Barkan traveled across the country to do so, putting his body and his declining health on the line. His continued presence implied, without having to say it: If this man in a wheelchair is putting his life and body on the line every day, what can you do?

The work takes a toll, and Barkan doesn’t sugarcoat the impact. “Everything is harder,” he told Vox in 2017. “Getting in and out of the van where they put you [when you are arrested], getting up and down from the chair to walk to fill out my Miranda rights form. Carrying my stuff back to the hotel from the jail. Standing in the cold last night. But those are minor problems at the moment.”

Barkan’s condition has declined rapidly since, according to the Politico profile. He’s relying on various forms of adaptive technology to finish his memoir, due in September. He can’t speak to Carl, who recently turned three. But with whatever time he has left, Barkan is making it count. As he said at the Medicare-for-all hearing in April, “We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to win what we really deserve. “No more half measures. No more health care for some. We can win Medicare-for-all.”

For his tireless activism, his sacrifice and his refusal to accept half measures, Barkan is our Truthdigger of the Month.