Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 85

Clashing with Springsteen

Didn't know Bruce did virtually my favorite Clash song on recent tour...with Morello.

Dresden

Somehow it's fitting, for Beethoven, given his life and beliefs, that the most glorious music ever presesnted here, in its greatest performance, to mark firebombing of Dresden.

Joe the Shooter

Latest from the esteemed former congressional candidate Joe D. Plumber, aka Sam Wurzelbacher.       He was elaborating on his earlier claim that the parents of the Isla Vista murdered kids ought to shut up and not threaten his gun rights, or something. 

-Whistles don’t protect women from rape – a Glock does!
-When armed men come into your house to steal, a baseball bat doesn’t cut it. Unless you have an automatic-baseball bat. I want one of those – email me.
-When a nut-job decides to go on a killing spree and the cops are 5 to 15 minutes away, you are screwed unless you are carrying a Colt.
-And – this is the most important one:
Guns are mostly for hunting down politicians who would actively seek to take your freedoms and liberty away from you. Google “Hitler, Mao, Kim Jung Il, Castro, Stalin” just for starters.

Screwing Up State Murder--and Halting it

Update:  Federal judge in Ohio halts all executions there to allow study of lethal injection issues. 

Earlier: Good Mother Jones piece on the new uproar after the botched Oklahoma execution--focusing on the "incompetents" and ethically challenged individuals who administer lethal injections.  Excerpt below.  I will not that important history and background on all this is found in my recent ebook on the death penalty, Dead Reckoning, and my book with Robert Jay Lifton, Who Owns Death?

Historically, lethal injection has been plagued with problems just like those that occurred in Lockett's case, and they are due in large part to the incompetence of the people charged with administering the deadly drugs. Physicians have mostly left the field of capital punishment; the American Medical Association and other professional groups consider it highly unethical for doctors to assist with executions. As a result, the people willing to do the dirty work aren't always at the top of their fields, or even specifically trained in the jobs they're supposed to do. As Dr. Jay Chapman, the Oklahoma coroner who essentially created the modern lethal injection protocol, observed in the New York Times in 2007, "It never occurred to me when we set this up that we'd have complete idiots administering the drugs." 

Ode to Joy

One of coolest Apple ads ever, with famed classical conductor/composer.  Imagine what Ludwig could have done with this.  "The Backlight Sonata"?

The Lite of Brian

Best comment on Brian Williams today (after Snowden interview) from Marc Cooper via Facebook:  "Two observations about this interview. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by Snowden's thoughtfulness and openness. I must admit I found Brian Williams to be excellent. It only underlines how AWFUL his nightly news cast is. If he gave us an intelligent hour like this every weeknite he'd be a legendary journalist instead of a thinly veiled game show host."

Summer In and Out Of the City

Boston Globe picks a hit song for every summer since...1914, and adds video in many places.  So we go back to the "Macarena" and "I've Got You Babe" (but no "Satisfaction" or "Like a Rolling Stone" or "Summer in the City") and backward to "Jambalaya" and Tommy Dorsey and Bessie Smith and Irving Berlin...  One silly season sample:

More Gunplay in Isla Vista

Report today from Santa Barbara Sheriff.  Punchline: all guns and ammo legally owned.

Isla Vista - May 28th, 2014:

On Tuesday, May 27, 2014, at approximately 2:30 pm, Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to an apartment in the 6500 block of Pardall Road for a gunshot that had come through the reporting party’s apartment wall.  Deputies arrived and found that a bullet had been shot through the wall from a connecting apartment, deflected off of a TV stand and lodged into the adjacent wall, narrowly missing the resident inside.  Deputies went to the suspect’s apartment and contacted the lone resident, identified as 21-year old Kevin Tym (UCSB student).  When questioned, Tym admitted that he was playing with his legally owned handgun and accidentally fired a Glock 17, 9mm round through his neighbor’s wall.  During a search incident to arrest, Tym was found in possession of 7 firearms and approximately 1000 rounds of ammunition.  In addition, he was found in possession of high capacity assault rifle magazines.  All of the firearms were legally owned by Tym. 
All of Tym’s firearms, ammunition and magazines were seized.  Tym was arrested and booked into jail for a violation of 246.3 PC – Negligent discharge of a firearm and 32310(a) PC – Possession of high capacity magazines.  His bail was set at $2,500.

Kerry Tells Snowden to 'Man Up'

More here. 

WASHINGTON (AP) –  Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden a fugitive and challenged him to "man up and come back to the United States."

Kerry was asked about Snowden in a nationally broadcast interview in the wake of an interview in which Snowden said he never intended to be holed up in Russia but was forced to go there because Washington decided to "revoke my passport."

Asked about this, Kerry replied on NBC's "Today" show: "Well, for a supposedly smart guy, that's a pretty dumb answer, after all."
Snowden, a former NSA contract analyst, leaked a massive volume of NSA documents to the media.

"If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States," Kerry said, "we'll have him on a flight today." Kerry said Snowden should "stand up in the United States and make his case to the American people."

In his interview with NBC anchor Brian Williams, a portion of which was broadcast Tuesday, Snowden said he was "trained as a spy" and argued that he had a much larger role in U.S. intelligence than the government has acknowledged. "I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover overseas," he said.

Kerry said, "A patriot would not run away. ... He can come home but he's a fugitive from justice."
"Let him come back and make his case," the secretary added. "If he cares so much about America and he believes in America, he should trust the American system of justice."

"I think he's confused," Kerry added. "I think it's very sad. But this is a man who has done great damage to his country."

Father of Shooting Victim Won't Quit

We posted the amazing angry video of Richard Martinez, father of Isla Vista shooting victim Chris, a few days ago, and updated his continuing statements since as he's asked everyone to join the fight vs. guns.  Tonight there's a new Wash Post piece, that includes this.

He’s asking members of Congress to stop calling him to offer condolences but nothing more for the death of his only child, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, who was killed in the rampage Friday in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“I don’t care about your sympathy. I don’t give a s--- that you feel sorry for me,” Richard Martinez said during an extensive interview, his face flushed as tears rolled down his face. “Get to work and do something. I’ll tell the president the same thing if he calls me. Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me.”

Saying “we are all to blame” for the death of his 20-year-old son, Martinez urged the public to join him in demanding “immediate action” from members of Congress and President Obama to curb gun violence by passing stricter gun-control laws.

And this:

Martinez vowed that he’s not going away. He said his training as a lawyer explains, in part, why he has not retreated from public view as many parents do after such a tragedy.

“We are tough people,” Martinez said of himself and Christopher’s mother, Caryn Johnson Michaels, a deputy district attorney in San Luis Obispo. (The couple separated when Christopher was young.) “Caryn was in charge of the sex crime unit. We fight.”