2 JUL 2024 · Jeremy Kuzmarov - Warmonger - How Clinton's Malign Foreign Policy Launched the US Trajectory from Bush II to Biden Nov 17, 2023 During the 2016 presidential election, many younger voters repudiated Hillary Clinton because of her husband's support for mass incarceration, banking deregulation and free-trade agreements that led many U.S. jobs to be shipped overseas. Warmonger: How Clinton's Malign Foreign Policy Launched the Trajectory from Bush II to Biden, shows that Clinton's foreign policy was just as bad as his domestic policy. Cultivating an image as a former anti-Vietnam War activist to win over the aging hippie set in his early years, as president, Clinton bombed six countries and, by the end of his first term, had committed U.S. troops to 25 separate military operations, compared to 17 in Ronald Reagan's two terms. Clinton further expanded America's covert empire of overseas surveillance outposts and spying and increased the budget for intelligence spending and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA offshoot which promoted regime change in foreign nations. The latter was not surprising because, according to CIA operative Cord Meyer Jr., Clinton had been recruited into the CIA while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and as Governor of Arkansas in the 1980s he had allowed clandestine arms and drug flights to Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries (Contras) backed by the CIA to be taken from Mena Airport in the western part of the state. Rather than being a time of tranquility when the U.S. failed to pay attention to the gathering storm of terrorism, as New York Times columnist David Brooks frames it, the Clinton presidency saw rising tensions among the U.S., China and Russia because of Clinton's malign foreign policies, and U.S. complicity in terrorist acts. In so many ways, Clinton's presidency set the groundwork for the disasters that were to follow under Bush II, Obama, Trump, and Biden. It was Clinton--building off of Reagan--who first waged a War on Terror ridden with double standards, one that adopted terror tactics, including extraordinary rendition, bombing and the use of drones. It was Clinton who cried wolf about human rights abuses and the need to protect beleaguered peoples from genocide to justify military intervention in a post-Cold War age. And it was Clinton's administration that pressed for regime change in Iraq and raised public alarm about the mythic WMDs--all while relying on fancy new military technologies and private military contractors to distance US shady military interventions from the public to limit dissent. Jeremy Kuzmarov talks to Ed Opperman about his surprising and highly researched new book. Book

2 JUL 2024

2 JUL 2024

2 JUL 2024

2 JUL 2024 · When Steve Smith set out to hitchhike from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to Canada’s west coast back in 1968, he was just an eighteen-year-old hippie with an appetite for adventure. But a short way into his journey, a reckless decision to steal a car landed him in police custody. Afraid of getting caught with the two tabs of acid in his pocket, Steve popped them into his mouth. It was one of the worst decisions of his life. Mistaking his drug trip for a mental breakdown, the authorities placed him in Ontario’s notorious Oak Ridge mental health facility. While there, not only did he find himself shoulder-to-shoulder with people like notorious child killer Peter Woodcock and mass murderers Matt Lamb and Victor Hoffman, he also fell into the hands of someone worse: Dr. Elliot T. Barker. Over the next eight months, Barker subjected Steve and the other patients to a battery of unorthodox experiments involving LSD, scopolamine, methamphetamines, and other drugs. Steven also experienced numerous other forms of abuse and torture. Following his release, Steve continued to suffer the aftereffects of his Oak Ridge experience. For several years, he found himself in and out of prison—and back to Oak Ridge—before he was finally able to establish himself as a successful entrepreneur. Once he began investigating what happened to him during his youth, not even Steve was prepared for what he would discover about Barker, Oak Ridge, and one of the darkest periods in Canada’s treatment of mental health patients. The question remains: Was Oak Ridge and Dr. Barker trying to cure psychopaths or trying to create and direct them?

1 JUL 2024 · Dr Mic Hunter - Honor Betrayed: Sexual Abuse in America's Military Jul 31, 2023 In Honor Betrayed, Dr. Mic Hunter probes beyond the headlines to reveal the reality of sexual abuse in the military. The culture of the military's training is to turn recruits into those who follow orders without question. Honor Betrayed describes in detail the gross realities of the hostile, uber-masculine, dehumanizing environment our young men and women confront. Most vulnerable to sexual abuse are minorities-particularly women and homosexuals. Included are first-person accounts from American servicewomen and men who were sexually abused by their comrades, including one woman whose case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunter also explores the tacit acceptance of these incidents in the military to the recent prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. Book : Honor Betrayed: Sexual Abuse in America's Military

1 JUL 2024 · John Tinker - Free SpeechIn 1965, five students from Des Moines  wore black arm bands to school to protest America's involvement in the  Vietnam War. Those strips of cloth became the subject of a case that  went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because of those Iowa  students, the right of all American students to express their political  opinions was strengthened.In the 1960s, the United States began sending troops to Southeast  Asia. The nation of Vietnam had been divided into two parts, with North  Vietnam friendly to Communist China on its northern border while South  Vietnam looked to the United States for support. The United States  feared that if communists from North Vietnam took control of South  Vietnam, communism would soon overrun all of Southeast Asia.Some Americans opposed sending American soldiers to Vietnam. In their  opinion, the war cost too many American lives and too much money. In  1965, a group of Des Moines high school and junior high students met at  the home of Christopher Eckhardt to make plans to protest the United  States' participation in the Vietnam War. The students agreed to wear  black armbands the following week to protest the deaths of American  soldiers in the war.Word of the planned protest spread. School principals were afraid  that student protests would disrupt classrooms and school activities.  They passed a ruling prohibiting armbands. They said that any students  wearing them would be sent home and not allowed back to classes until  the armbands were gone.On December 16, five students wore armbands to school despite the  principals' rule. Three of students, Christopher Eckhardt, Christine  Singer and Bruce Clark, were from Roosevelt High School. John Tinker  attended North High School and his sister, Mary Beth, went to Harding  Junior High.Christopher Eckhardt recalled that several students threatened him,  "I wore the black armband over a camel-colored jacket. The captain of  the football team attempted to rip it off. I turned myself in to the  principal's office where the vice principal asked if 'I wanted a busted  nose.' He said seniors wouldn't like the armband." A school counselor  told Christopher that colleges would not accept him if he was a war  protestor and might need to find a new high school if he did not remove  the arm band.When the five students refused to remove the armbands, they were  expelled from school. They returned after Christmas break without the  armbands but wearing all black clothes.The Des Moines School Board met to review the principals' rule. They  supported the ruling because they decided that principals needed the  authority to keep order in the schools. The Vietnam War was becoming a  very emotional issue across the country, and school officials were  afraid that there could be disturbances at school if protest symbols  showed up in class.The case did not end there, however. In March 1966, John Tinker, Mary  Beth Tinker, Chris Eckhardt and their parents filed a formal complaint  in U.S. District Court arguing that the students' rights had been  violated. The District Court dismissed the case, as did a Federal  Appeals Court. The case finally reached all the way to the United States  Supreme Court on Nov. 12, 1968.The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of all  American citizens to freedom of speech. But does that freedom apply to  high school and middle school students in Des Moines, Iowa? The Supreme  Court said it does! The Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that students and teachers continue to have the right of free speech  and expression when they are at school. They do not "shed their  constitutional rights at the school house gate," Judge Abe Fortas wrote  in the Court's ruling.Does this mean that school officials do not have the right to  maintain order in the schools or to prevent things that disrupt classes?  No, the Court said. Schools can still restrict students' actions or  expressions when there is enough reason to believe those actions would  disrupt the school or invade the rights of other students. However, just  because an opinion is unpopular or makes other students or teachers  uncomfortable, school officials cannot prevent students from sharing  their views. In the Tinker case, the Court ruled, school officials had  not proved that the students' armbands would significantly disrupt  classroom or school activities.The Tinker case is a very important decision protecting student  rights. Because five Des Moines students were brave enough to stand up  for an unpopular position, all American students enjoy greater freedom  to express their opinions.

1 JUL 2024

1 JUL 2024 · Art Bell was a radio legend. His call in shows were, are still are, the stuff of fantasy and nightmare. Bell himself was a expert showman, who could create something out of nothing; a simple call detailing an otherwise mundane situation, event or experience could be turned into a must listen, appointment radio. Such was the tale of Mel's Hole. A listener called in talking about a hole he had found on his land; this hole, claimed the caller, was bottomless. Despite attempting to discover the depth of the aperture, it was never established. From minor things like domestic garbage and rubble, cars and vans, even industrial waste seemed to be swallowed up by this seemingly endless void. The caller didn't want to give his precise location, as he didn't want tourists trampling all over what was effectively his land and livelihood. However, as the story grew so did the bizarre circumstance. The Military eventually turned up, took possession of the area and left the owner with no access; bizarre things started happening in and around the area. Call built on call, and with each embellishment the listenership grew, agog for the next detail which may just solve the mystery. Except... none of this had definitive proof. No pictures, video or other supportive evidence was ever produced, at least nothing substantive. Eventually, the caller 'sold' the land and disappeared, and the mystery was left to grow in the bright combination of imagination and silence. The truth is, no one knows what Mel's Hole actually was; was it a endless pit or was it just a clever gimmick with a suitably ambiguous name designed to boost ratings whilst not actually existing? Whichever it was, Art Bell took the simple narrative and turned it, over a suitably events driven period of time, into an urban legend which made him and his show internationally famous. It is possibly the second most searched for clip on the Bell Archive and other search engines, triggering theories, imagination and wild, wild solutions. It was a radio marketers dream. This is the story of Mel's Hole.

1 JUL 2024 · Ryan Singleton, a 24-year-old aspiring writer and filmmaker left his home in Atlanta, Georgia for what was supposed to be a weekend trip to Los Angeles in early July 2013 and hoped to jump start his acting career. On July 6, 2013, Ryan Singleton rented a car and drove to Las Vegas. On his return trip to Los Angeles, the vehicle broke down in the Mojave Desert on July 9th and two California Highway Patrol officers spotted him walking on the road, picked him up and dropped him off at a rest stop or convenience store near Baker, California Singleton called a friend to pick him up, but that friend was a three-hour drive away. Singleton made a purchase and walked outside the store and vanished. When his friend arrived, Singleton was nowhere to be found. A missing persons report was filed. On September 21, 2013, Ryan's body was found by two joggers/hikers with his heart, lungs, kidney, liver and eyes missing about two miles from the convenience store where he was last seen in an area that had been extensively searched by detectives and investigators.