Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 45

Madoff the Killer?

A second son of Bernie Madoff has died at a very young age, of lymphoma, at 48.  His brother committed suicide not long ago when he was 46.

In a 2013 interview with People magazine, Andrew partially blamed the stress brought on by his father’s wrongdoing for the return of the lymphoma, which had been in remission until the scandal exploded. “One way to think of this is the scandal and everything that happened killed my brother very quickly," he said. "And it’s killing me slowly.”

“I will never forgive him for what he did,” Andrew said. “He’s already dead to me.”

Our Nuclear (Dysfunctional) Family

Every year, the venerable Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists publishes a country-by-country survey for the world's nuclear weapons stockpiles and sites.  I've been following this for over 30 years.  It always makes for fairly depressing reading, as one may assume, from the lack of media attention lately, that those stockpiles have been drastically reduced, approaching zero, in recent years.  That's hardly the case.

Their summary this week in the new report:

As of mid-2014, the authors estimate that there are approximately 16,300 nuclear weapons located at some 98 sites in 14 countries. Roughly 10,000 of these weapons are in military arsenals; the remaining weapons are retired and awaiting dismantlement. Approximately 4,000 are operationally available, and some 1,800 are on high alert and ready for use on short notice. The largest concentrations of nuclear weapons reside in Russia and the United States, which possess 93 percent of the total global inventory. The United States today stores nuclear weapons at 18 sites, including 12 sites in 11 states in the United States and another six sites in five European countries. There is considerable uncertainty about the number of Russian nuclear weapons storage sites, but the authors estimate that Russia today stores nuclear weapons permanently at 40 domestic locations. 

Of course, especially on this subject, the devil is in the details.   For example:

The United States is the only nuclear-armed state that deploys nuclear weapons in other countries [5 in Europe]. Approximately 180 non-strategic nuclear bombs are stored in underground vaults beneath 87 aircraft shelters at six bases in five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) for delivery by US and NATO fighter-bombers. 

And:

Pakistan has a rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal of 100 to 120 warheads and an increasing portfolio of delivery systems.

Anything on Israel is always interesting because 1) they won't even admit they have long had nuclear weapons 2) from media coverage you'd think they didn't and thus would be at the mercy of Iran if the latter did gain some warheads.  So here:

Israel is a wild card because of the opacity of its nuclear weapons program. Like other nuclear-armed states, however, Israel has been modernizing its nuclear arsenal and probably also its storage facilities. Israel’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances, but are estimated to include 80 to 85 warheads. 

My book on how it all began in 1945 and U.S. "cover-up" since. 

All Sides Now

There's a little-noted new Joni Mitchell memoir--in the form of lengthy conversations with a writer--that reveals amazing (and often depressing) details about the demons she has faced, some we knew about, others not, going back to childhood polio, young unwed mother and missing daughter, stalking, various very difficult illnesses down to the present day, disgust with American culture, and on and on. 

She lost her drive and doesn't follow projects through to conclusion. She's forgetful and can't remember what she just said, Marom writes.

If she's out walking and has a thought she wants to remember but no notebook, she won't remember when she gets home.

"There are times when it's directly attacking the nervous system, as if you're being bitten by fleas and lice. It's all in the tissue and it's not a hallucination. It was eating me alive, sucking the juices out. I've been sick all my life."

More Steno from 'NYT' Jerusalem Bureau

And today, another in a string of dozens of biased reports from the 'NYT' bureau in Israel over the past months, which for good measure appears to break the paper's rules on quoting anonymous sources on two levels--the source is the only one in the entire article, and his or her remarks are clearly "self-serving."  And there's this outrageous claim, with no fact-checking or counter, referring to where Hamas rockets were aimed and landed:  "The official said he believed that still others were fired intentionally at the local Palestinian population, 'from what I saw in the systems.'”

Of course, this is latest excuse for the mass civilian casualties in Gaza.  It's not enough for the Israelis to claim that schools and hospitals were often hit by misfiring Hamas rockets.  Not it must be claimed that in some cases Hamas, for some reason, wanted to hit its own people.  But, of course, Kershner does not probe--just, as so often, plays the stenographer.

 Even her citation of photos that allegedly show possibly rocket launching sites at  --in previous cases, the schools in question were abandoned, not actively sheltering refugees at the time. Perhaps in these two cases, that's different--but given Times' track record, I would doubt it. 

Give Me Mo'Ne

The Little League "superstar" throws a strike when she throws out first pitch at Dodgers game last night.

Masters of Sexism

The "Daily Show" segment last night on the Sen. Gillibrand's charges of "inappropriate behavior" by boys on Capitol Hill.


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Two More Exonerated

In my email box just now, from a D.C. publicity firm (my book on death penalty here).  Update:  Supreme Court Justice Scalia had singled out McCollum as being especially worthy of state murder. 

LUMBERTON, N.C. — On Tuesday, two men, including North Carolina’s longest serving death row inmate, were exonerated and released from prison after serving 30 years for a rape and murder they did not commit.

New DNA evidence, which proved their innocence, prompted a Robeson County judge to dismiss all charges against Henry Lee McCollum, who was living under a death sentence, and his half-brother, Leon Brown, who was serving a life sentence for the rape. Both are severely intellectually disabled and were teenagers – McCollum 19 years old, Brown just 15 - at the time of their arrests in 1983.

McCollum and Brown were released after a hearing Tuesday morning in Robeson County Superior Court, in which the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, an independent state agency, detailed the results of its investigation, including DNA testing of items found at the crime scene. The Commission found that none of the items could be traced to McCollum or Brown. Instead, critical DNA evidence matched another individual named Roscoe Artis, a convicted rapist and murderer who lived less than 100 yards from where the victim’s body was found.

Lawyers for the two men said the new testing leaves no doubt about their clients’ innocence.  “It’s terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years,” said Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, who has represented McCollum for 20 years. “Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for execution. He would become so distraught he had to be put in isolation. It’s impossible to put into words what these men have been through and how much they have lost.”

Oliver's Army

Good new piece assessing John Oliver's surprising triumph in HBO weekly show.  No need to compare to Stewart and Colbert--and John has a full week to prepare, not one day--but all of the points here are good.  It's not just execution but choice of normally hands-off dry subject matter, enlivened, one sample via here.

When Movie Studios Threatened to Exit California For Florida

Excerpt from my book The Campaign of the Century on Upton Sinclair's amazing race for governor of California in 1934--which changed the state, Hollywood, and politics in America forever.   This covers 80 years ago today, just days after the famous author and Socialist, in a shock, had just swept the Democratic primary to gain the party's nod for governor.

Upton Sinclair, who was heading East on a train to meet the President at
Hyde Park, did not share Franklin Roosevelt's skepticism about
fundamental change. He thought he could make California over, turn
it upside down. That's precisely what worried motion-picture execu-
tives. Rumors circulated in Hollywood that leaders of the film industry,
meeting privately, had vowed to close down operations and move back
East if EPIC became a reality. Now the moguls were about to go public
with this threat. Variety prepared a front-page story that promised to
produce panic not only in Hollywood but across California when it hit
the newsstands on Tuesday.
 
Today that seemed very far away, as Hollywood, feverish and self-
fascinated as ever, passed its final idyllic hours before trouble came to
paradise. The holiday weekend barely slowed the juggernaut of movie
production. After a momentary downturn in the early 1930s, business
was booming. Movie attendance shot up 15 percent in 1934, and most
studios had increased their earnings 100 percent over the previous year.
MGM showed a profit of about $1.5 million for the second quarter alone.
Dozens of stars, old and new, brightened the Hollywood skies. Emigre
writers and directors arrived nearly every day—some escaping impover-
ishment or chilly weather on the East Coast, others fleeing Hitlerism in
Europe.
 
Unpredictable but profitable, Hollywood was, in the words of Walter
Winchell, "a nut farm on a paying basis." It was hard for even the daily
trade papers to keep track of all the activity.  C. B. DeMille, whose
“Cleopatra” had just opened in New York, contemplated “The Crusades.”
MGM rushed ahead with a sequel to its successful “The Thin Man.” Over on the Left side of town, King Vidor was finally ready to serve up “Our Daily Bread,” and Charlie Chaplin would soon start shooting his long-awaited film set in a factory.
 
Putting his own political troubles aside—he had just been branded a
Communist sympathizer—Jimmy Cagney starred in “The Perfect Week-
end.” Garbo shot “The Painted Veil.” Shirley Temple seemed to finish a
movie every month as the studios attempted to exploit her sudden
preeminence at the box office.

California's first drive-in cinema was set to open September 9.
"This is the theatre," Variety explained incredulously, "at which patrons
 view the show from seats in their automobiles."
 
With so much sunshine to enjoy, gossip to absorb, and money to
make, why would the moguls, most of whom had fled the dark and dirty
East Coast years ago, give it all up because of one crackpot politician?
Producers and high-bracketed Hollywood salary earners, according to
Variety, feared that under Upton Sinclair's EPIC scheme, taxation
would fall "particularly heavy" on the film industry. And so "switching
of much film production from California to New York" was now being
contemplated.
 
How would the readers of Variety react? Would they pigeonhole this
report as fact, rumor, or propaganda? Would they even care enough to
take it seriously? Contrary to popular perception, the number of high
rollers in Hollywood was minuscule. Of the thirty thousand movie
workers and movie-makers, perhaps only i percent fit this bill. The great
mass of bit actors, assistant directors, prop makers, sound men, and
wardrobe people each made less than three thousand dollars a year.
Hollywood was, in addition, notoriously—proudly—apolitical. Its so-
cial consciousness was admittedly askew. It was a town where the only
discussion of the Tom Mooney case revolved around what kind of movie deal the convict might get when he emerged from San Quentin; whose concerns about Nazism extended little further than Germany's threat to ban Shirley Temple's latest picture.

Will Rogers didn't call Hollywood "cuckooland" for nothing.

When Movie Studios Theatened to Exit California For Florida

Excerpt from my book The Campaign of the Century on Upton Sinclair's amazing race for governor of California in 1934--which changed the state, Hollywood, and politics in America forever.   This covers 80 years ago today, just days after the famous author and Socialist, in a shock, had just swept the Democratic primary to gain the party's nod for governor.

Upton Sinclair, who was heading East on a train to meet the President at
Hyde Park, did not share Franklin Roosevelt's skepticism about
fundamental change. He thought he could make California over, turn
it upside down. That's precisely what worried motion-picture execu-
tives. Rumors circulated in Hollywood that leaders of the film industry,
meeting privately, had vowed to close down operations and move back
East if EPIC became a reality. Now the moguls were about to go public
with this threat. Variety prepared a front-page story that promised to
produce panic not only in Hollywood but across California when it hit
the newsstands on Tuesday.
 
Today that seemed very far away, as Hollywood, feverish and self-
fascinated as ever, passed its final idyllic hours before trouble came to
paradise. The holiday weekend barely slowed the juggernaut of movie
production. After a momentary downturn in the early 1930s, business
was booming. Movie attendance shot up 15 percent in 1934, and most
studios had increased their earnings 100 percent over the previous year.
MGM showed a profit of about $1.5 million for the second quarter alone.
Dozens of stars, old and new, brightened the Hollywood skies. Emigre
writers and directors arrived nearly every day—some escaping impover-
ishment or chilly weather on the East Coast, others fleeing Hitlerism in
Europe.
 
Unpredictable but profitable, Hollywood was, in the words of Walter
Winchell, "a nut farm on a paying basis." It was hard for even the daily
trade papers to keep track of all the activity.  C. B. DeMille, whose
“Cleopatra” had just opened in New York, contemplated “The Crusades.”
MGM rushed ahead with a sequel to its successful “The Thin Man.” Over on the Left side of town, King Vidor was finally ready to serve up “Our Daily Bread,” and Charlie Chaplin would soon start shooting his long-awaited film set in a factory.
 
Putting his own political troubles aside—he had just been branded a
Communist sympathizer—Jimmy Cagney starred in “The Perfect Week-
end.” Garbo shot “The Painted Veil.” Shirley Temple seemed to finish a
movie every month as the studios attempted to exploit her sudden
preeminence at the box office.

California's first drive-in cinema was set to open September 9.
"This is the theatre," Variety explained incredulously, "at which patrons
 view the show from seats in their automobiles."
 
With so much sunshine to enjoy, gossip to absorb, and money to
make, why would the moguls, most of whom had fled the dark and dirty
East Coast years ago, give it all up because of one crackpot politician?
Producers and high-bracketed Hollywood salary earners, according to
Variety, feared that under Upton Sinclair's EPIC scheme, taxation
would fall "particularly heavy" on the film industry. And so "switching
of much film production from California to New York" was now being
contemplated.
 
How would the readers of Variety react? Would they pigeonhole this
report as fact, rumor, or propaganda? Would they even care enough to
take it seriously? Contrary to popular perception, the number of high
rollers in Hollywood was minuscule. Of the thirty thousand movie
workers and movie-makers, perhaps only i percent fit this bill. The great
mass of bit actors, assistant directors, prop makers, sound men, and
wardrobe people each made less than three thousand dollars a year.
Hollywood was, in addition, notoriously—proudly—apolitical. Its so-
cial consciousness was admittedly askew. It was a town where the only
discussion of the Tom Mooney case revolved around what kind of movie deal the convict might get when he emerged from San Quentin; whose concerns about Nazism extended little further than Germany's threat to ban Shirley Temple's latest picture.

Will Rogers didn't call Hollywood "cuckooland" for nothing.