The health issues associated with fracking just keep piling up. The
unconventional gas drilling method, officially known as hydraulic fracturing,
not only damages the environment by injecting toxic chemicals into the ground,
which poisons groundwater, interrupts natural water cycles, releases radon gas
and causes earthquakes, but it has also been connected to numerous health
conditions, including asthma, headaches, high blood pressure, anemia,
neurological illness, heart attacks and cancer.
But perhaps most heartbreaking is the effect that fracking may have on
babies. Studies have linked fracking to increased infant mortality and low birth
babies. Now researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
have found that expectant mothers who reside near active fracking sites in
Pennsylvania have a higher risk of giving birth prematurely and having high-risk
pregnancies.
The retrospective cohort study, which was published
online on September 30 in the journal Epidemiology, analyzed electronic
health record data on 9,384 mothers living in northern and central Pennsylvania
linked to 10,946 neonates from January 2009 to January 2013. The researchers
found that expectant mothers living in the most active fracking areas were 40
percent more likely to give birth prematurely, i.e., a gestation period of less
than 37 weeks. In addition, those pregnant women are 30 percent more likely to
have a high-risk pregnancy, a label that refers to a variety of factors that
include excessive weight gain and high blood pressure.
"Prenatal residential exposure to unconventional natural gas development
activity was associated with two pregnancy outcomes," write the researchers in
the study's abstract,
"adding to evidence that unconventional natural gas development may impact
health."
Today, Pennsylvania is one the most
heavily fracked states, and the rapid development of the practice has
occurred in just a few years: In 2005, there were no producing wells. In 2013,
there were 3,689.
"The growth in the fracking industry has gotten way out ahead of our ability
to assess what the environmental and, just as importantly, public health impacts
are," said study leader Brian S. Schwartz, a professor in the Department of
Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School.
"Our research adds
evidence to the very few studies that have been done showing adverse
health outcomes associated with the fracking industry."
It should be noted that while the study shows a correlation between fracking
and negative maternal issues, it does not establish any causation as to why
pregnant women who live near active wells experienced worse outcomes. However,
Schwartz points out that there is some kind of environmental impact associated
with every facet of the fracking process, from increased noise and traffic to
poor air quality — all of which can increase maternal stress.
"Now that we know this is happening, we'd like to figure out why," Schwartz
said. "Is it air quality? Is it the stress? They're the two leading candidates
in our minds at this point."
While the impacts of fracking on public health are far from fully understood,
early research should be incorporated in policy decisions about how best to
regulate the industry.
"The first few studies have all shown health impacts," said Schwartz.
"Policymakers need to consider findings like these in thinking about how they
allow this industry to go forward."
The United States criminal justice system could be improved if we sell
poor people convicted of crimes into slavery, according to Republican
presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
The former Arkansas
governor weighed in on our nation’s current criminal justice system
during an appearance yesterday on Mickelson in the Morning, a leading
Iowa radio program.
Host Jan Mickelson began by bemoaning that
the “criminal justice system has been taken over by progressives.” In
order to fight back, he argued, conservatives should look to the
biblical Book of Exodus. “It says, if a person steals, they have to pay
it back two-fold, four-fold,” Mickelson explained. “If they don’t have
anything, we’re supposed to take them down and sell them.”
Before becoming an antigovernment “sovereign citizen,” Rick Van Thiel
worked as a porn star, male escort and sex toy inventor in Las Vegas.
Now Van Thiel is in jail there, accused of practicing medicine
without a license and claiming to have performed dozens of abortions,
circumcisions, castrations, root canals, even cancer treatments.
Meanwhile, the FBI, the Southern Nevada Health District and the Las
Vegas Metropolitan Police Department are attempting to locate more than
100 former “patients” of the sovereign citizen-physician who calls
himself “Dr. Rick.”
His
patients — treated in a ramshackle trailer described as a scene from a
horror movie — likely were drawn in by his ads promoting holistic
medicine and natural remedies and denouncing conventional medicine,
vaccinations, the pharmaceutical industry, GMO's and government
interference with health care.
One of Van Thiel’s former patients, ABC News reports, is Devon Campbell Newman, who was arrested in August 2013 as part of an alleged sovereign citizen plot to kidnap and kill police officers.
As reported then by Hatewatch, Newman, 67, was arrested with
convicted sex offender David Allen Brutsche, 42, who said he was willing
to kill police or “anyone that tries to stop the cause of liberty.”
Newman pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge and received
probation after agreeing to talk with investigators about receiving
cancer treatment from Van Thiel. That now seems to suggest Van Thiel has
been on investigators’ radar for at least two years, apparently while
they worked to build a strong criminal case against him.
He will be in court later this month in Las Vegas – acting as his own attorney, a frequent practice for sovereigns.
“We do NATURAL REMEDY RESEARCH for the purpose of increasing quality
and span of life, one human being at a time,” Van Thiel claims on one of
his websites. “Unlike the American medical industry's toxic
drug-dealing doctors, we don't see you as your disease.”
Like other extremists, Van Thiel claims chemtrails are evidence the U.S. government is secretly poisoning its citizens.
Van
Thiel claimed he performed abortions, removed sebaceous cysts, treated
sexually transmitted and life-threatening diseases and provided ozone
treatments at “unbeatable prices” in exchange for Bitcoins, gold and
silver and firearms.
“I contract privately with people [and] do not contract with
government employees of any kind,” he said in advertising his medical
services.
“Prior to becoming a professional doctor, I was a sex machine
inventor, swinger, BDSM master, porn actor and producer for 14 years, so
I've seen it all,” Van Thiel wrote on his site. He claims the title
“Dr. Rick” is a nickname, “not intended to infer state sanction or
Rockefeller drug pushing training.”
“The purpose of this site is not to beg for FDA endorsement or to
diagnose or treat disease, it is to help you make informed decisions
necessary to take control of your own life and health, and now to care
for it in the manor [sic] you decide is best for you,” a passage on the
site reads.
The ongoing investigation of David “Rick” Van Thiel and his
associates rekindled on Aug. 7 when the City of Las Vegas business
licensing officials received a complaint about an unlicensed medical
practice in a residential neighborhood located near the intersection of
Owens Avenue and Nellis Boulevard.
FBI agents, armed with a federal search warrant, raided the property
on Sept. 30 and shut down the illegal medical practice that day, the Las
Vegas Journal-Review reported.
Van Thiel, 52, was arrested Oct. 2 and currently is being held in the
Clark County Detention Center on state charges of practicing medicine
without a license; possession of a firearm by a felon; possession of
illegal drugs and illegally providing illegal drugs. He also may face
federal charges.
At the site of his unlicensed clinic on Monroe Avenue, police located
video surveillance towers outside a residence. They searched the home, a
semi-truck container, three storage sheds, a motor home and a trailer
where authorities said they believe illegal medical procedures were
carried out.
Authorities have not divulged if they found evidence during the search linking Van Thiel to the sovereign citizen movement – labeled by the FBI as one of the most-significant domestic terrorism threats in the United States.
Names of people Van Thiel illegally treated and names of prospective
patients reportedly were among more than 140 pieces of evidence,
including computers and hard drives, seized during the search, the Las
Vegas newspaper reported.
Investigators also seized a quantity of illegal steroids, about 10
vials of blood thinner, IV bags possibly containing blood and assorted
medical equipment from the trailer.
The Las Vegas newspaper interviewed a former patient who said she
sought holistic treatment for insomnia at Van Thiel’s clinic, but was
shocked at what she discovered when she entered the gated compound.
“There were multiple trailers in the backyard and clutter
everywhere,” the woman told the newspaper, describing “people sitting
around, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, in what looked like a
campground.”
“I was scared,” the former patient said. “A million things were
crossing my mind. I'm like freaking out inside. It looked like something
out of a horror movie.”
In a jailhouse interview, Van Thiel told the Las Vegas newspaper
that, after serving four years in prison for battery, he intended to
return to the porn film industry, where he was called “Rick Spindall.”
But when he learned his porn video footage and equipment had been
stolen, Van Thiel said he “decided to go into the medical field,” taking
the name “Dr. Rick.”
Authorities say Van Thiel never went to medical school and certainly
isn’t a physician. But he is an ex-con who’s served prison time in
California and Nevada for battery, robbery, attempted robbery, burglary
and assault.
He’s also been deeply involved in the sometimes violent sovereign
citizens movement – which has deep roots in Nevada and Utah – since at
least 2012, public court documents reveal.
In January 2012, court records show, Van Thiel was arrested for
soliciting prostitution and being a felon who failed to register his
address. That arrest came after an undercover Las Vegas police woman
paid him $200 to have anal intercourse with a male escort at an upscale
Las Vegas hotel resort and casino.
After that arrest, Van Thiel filed a federal civil damages suit
against the arresting officer and other unnamed Las Vegas police
defendants, acting as his own attorney, which is typical of sovereigns.
In language often invoked by sovereigns, he claimed in the lawsuit
that Las Vegas police had violated his constitutional rights as a
“natural born People of the United States of America.” Because natural
born people are sovereign, Van Thiel said in court filings he had a
constitutional right to make his living in any manner he chooses -- even
as a male prostitute and escort.
Less than eight months later, however, he moved to dismiss the
lawsuit he filed, opting apparently to be a self-styled doctor instead
of a self-styled attorney.
On one of his medical websites, he said his nickname is “not intended
to infer state sanction or Rockefeller drug pushing training.” The
purpose of his Internet site, Van Thiel said, “is not to beg for FDA
[U.S. Food and Drug Administration] endorsement or to diagnose or treat
disease.”
Since his arrest, Van Thiel has told reporters in jail interviews that he learned medical procedures by watching YouTube videos.
On another site, he admits to performing illegal abortions,
explaining, “I didn't make the decision to perform abortions lightly,”
but “was talked into it” by a woman who “actually begged me into doing
an abortion for her by convincing me that she messed the baby up with
drug and alcohol abuse.”
Women contemplating an abortion, he said, should ask themselves, “Is
the baby you're about to have going to be your baby to love, raise as
you see fit, and enjoy … or is this new life going to be born and
immediately doomed to be another citizen, i.e. property of the people
that call themselves ‘government?’”
The government, he claimed, is composed of “looting parasites” who
will claim they have the legal right to “expropriate your child …
because you refused to allow your child to be injected with toxic
vaccines” or favor home schooling.
Van Thiel contends prostitution and practicing medicine shouldn't be
regulated by the government because they involve “only consenting
individuals.” He claims to have studied health and anatomy for 28 years,
telling the Las Vegas paper he “has treated hundreds of patients.”
“When I work with people, it's a deal between me and them, not a deal between me, them and the government," Van Thiel told Las Vegas station KVVU-TV.
Van Thiel claims on his website that he treats “morgellons,” a
delusional symptom in which patients claim they are infested with
disease-causing agents. “Dr. Rick” says the ailment “should be called
Genetically Modified Organism Disease” that is a secret government
“bio-weapon that has been unleashed on humanity via genetically modified
food and Geo-engineering (chemtrails).”
“The only way people will ever stop getting morgellons,” he claimed,
is “when the [U.S. Air Force] stops attacking us with it and when people
stop eating genetically modified food. That is unless you are just so
spiritual that you move the chemtrails out of your path.”
It
was nearing closing time in March last year when a manager at Boffi
Georgetown dispatched a series of alarmed messages. Observing two men
yelling outside the luxury kitchen and bath showroom, Julia Walter
reached for her phone and accessed a private messaging application that
hundreds of residents, retailers and police in this overwhelmingly
white, wealthy neighborhood use to discuss people they deem suspicious.
“2 black males screaming at each other in alley,” Walter wrote. “. . . Help needed.”
One
minute later, a District police officer posted he would check it out,
and Walter felt relieved. But as weeks gave way to months and the
private group spawned hundreds of messages, Walter’s relief turned to
unease. The overwhelming majority of the people the app’s users cited
were black. Was the chatroom reducing crime along the high-end retail
strip? Was it making people feel safer? Or was it racial profiling?
These
are questions being asked across the country as people experiment with
services that bill themselves as a way to prevent crime, but also expose
latent biases. The application “SketchFactor,” which invited users to
report “sketchy” people, faced allegations of racism in both the
District and New York. Another social network roiled Oakland, Calif.,
when white residents used Nextdoor.com to cite “suspicious activity”
about black neighbors. Taking it even further was GhettoTracker.com,
which asked users to rate neighborhoods based on whether they thought
they were “safe” or a “ghetto.”
Now “Operation GroupMe” is
stirring controversy in Georgetown. In February of last year, the
Georgetown Business Improvement District partnered with District police
to launch the effort, which they call a “real-time mobile-based
group-messaging app that connects Georgetown businesses, police officers
and community members.” Since then, the app has attracted nearly 380
users who surreptitiously report on — and photograph — shoppers in an
attempt to deter crime.
The correspondence has
provided an unvarnished glimpse into Georgetown retailers’ latest effort
to stop their oldest scourge: shoplifting. But while the goal is
admirable, the result, critics say, has been less so, laying bare the
racial fault lines that still define this cobblestoned enclave of tony
boutiques and historic rowhouses that is home to many of Washington’s
elite.
Since March of last year, Georgetown retailers have
dispatched more than 6,000 messages that warn of suspicious shoppers. A
review by the Business Improvement District of all the messages since
January — more than 3,000 — revealed that nearly 70 percent of those
patrons were black. The employees often allege shoplifting. But other
times, retailers don’t accuse these shoppers of anything beyond seeming
suspicious.
“Suspicious shoppers in store,” an American Apparel
retailer said in April last year. “3 female. 1 male strong smell of
weed. All African American. Help please.”
“What did they look
like?” a True Religion employee in May last year asked an American
Apparel retailer who had reported a theft. “Ratchet,” the American
Apparel worker replied, using a slang term for trashy that often has a
racial connotation. “Lol.”
“Suspicious tranny in store at Wear,”
reported one worker at Hu’s Wear in May. “AA male as female. 6ft 2.
Broad shoulders.” Tranny means transsexual in the app-users’ jargon.
The
retailers have also uploaded hundreds of pictures to the chatroom, many
of which they took clandestinely. Since March last year, the images
have shown more than 230 shoppers, more than 90 percent of whom are
African American. “Known thieves,” one retailer wrote beside pictures of
three African American women, without specifying any evidence. “Look
out.”
It’s unclear what effect, if any, such correspondence has
had on crime in the area. Some retailers say the community feels safer
and more connected. But it has precipitated “relatively few arrests,”
said Joe Sternlieb, chief executive of the Georgetown Business
Improvement District, which organized the group. He added: “It’s
impossible to know what’s working and what’s not to deter crime.”
People
who know about the group are nervous to talk about it. District police
declined numerous requests for comment. Some retailers wouldn’t discuss
the group. Others would, but only on the condition of anonymity.
“It’s
such a volatile issue that it’s not a good idea to be on the record,”
explained one man who requested that he only be identified as a
Georgetown retailer. “Every headline in the country is about officers
and the race issue, and it’s a terrible issue and [this] is a delicate
balance. . . . Shoplifting has always been an issue and as
long as there’s stores, lower-income people are going to have a higher
tendency to steal.”
The price of security
On
any given weekend, the shops and restaurants of Georgetown hum with a
sense of commerce.
Established as a port town, Georgetown once marked an
important stop in Mid-Atlantic shipping routes for transporting slaves.
Eventually, those freed slaves founded a thriving community of 4,000
black Georgetown residents — before economic, social and legislative
forces ushered their exodus.
By 1972, only around 250 black
people lived in Georgetown. According to 2010 Census data, 3.7 percent —
or roughly 800 — of the 20,464 residents of the Georgetown, Burleigh
and Hillandale neighborhoods are African American. Whites account for 81
percent.
When Georgetown University senior Liv Holmes first
moved to the neighborhood, the racial disparity made her feel especially
conspicuous.
Other students, she said, would sometimes ask her
if she went to Howard University, a historically black university. Or,
she said, M Street retailers would suggest she couldn’t afford their
merchandise.
“We are racially profiled, for sure,” said Holmes,
who grew up in Upper Marlboro, Md., where blacks outnumber whites 2 to
1. “As I walk into a store, the assumption is to follow me around. . . .
When you feel that person is over the top of your shoulder, you do feel
like you’re being racially profiled, and you will leave the store and
say, ‘I won’t give you any of my sales.’ ”
But then, in 2012, she
took a job at one of those M Street stores. Within months of working at
Sunglass Hut, she saw her first shoplifter. It happened so fast, Holmes
said, there was little she could do. And in those moments, she said,
she would have liked to have had some way to tell the other stores what
had happened. “Sometimes, letting others know, ‘Hey, we just got jacked’
is a good thing,” Holmes said.
The Georgetown business community
has long tried to broaden communication among stores and enable what
Holmes had wanted. But nothing ever seemed to work. Phone trees. E-mail
lists. Block captains. All failures. Every store fended for itself.
“We
were looking for ways to share information as quickly as possible,”
said John Wiebenson, a Georgetown Business Improvement District
official. And nothing was quicker than the GroupMe application, which he
calls a “valuable tool” in preventing shoplifting.
But 18 months in, some residents wonder: Is the price this new tool exacts too high?
Self-policing the postings
That
was a question Leslie Hinkson, a Georgetown sociology professor who
studies race and inequality, tried to answer on a recent afternoon. She
had known about the group for months and had scrolled through most of
the messages. It’s almost like an sociology experiment, she said.
The
group has codified its own language and operating culture. African
Americans are referred to as “aa.” Hundreds of images of unaware African
Americans circulate in the group.
“We should be honest here,”
Hinkson said. “Crime does occur in Georgetown. And quite often when
people describe the perpetrators of those crimes, they’re usually young
men of color. But that doesn’t mean every person of color is an
automatic suspect.”
To be fair, police officers and others
frequently press each other for more details, or correct users who veer
into stereotyping. One person in July reported that “3 aa males
currently in zara smelling of weed.” One officer advised him to “call
911.” But then another replied, “That’s not a crime.”
Or initial
assumptions would turn out wrong. In February, an employee at Hu’s Wear
surreptitiously snapped a photograph of a tall, elegantly dressed
African American man wearing distressed jeans, a gray scarf and a long
brown coat. “AA male,” the retailer said. “He just left. Headed towards
29th St. About 6 foot. Tats on neck and hand. Very suspicious, looking
everywhere.”
An employee at Suitsupply saw the message. He
recognized the man. But he was no shoplifter. “He was just in
Suitsupply,” the employee wrote. “Made a purchase of several suits and
some gloves.”
Another time, a black American Apparel employee
wearing orange took a selfie in which she smiled, framing a shopper in
the background. “Look out for these girls,” she said in an accompanying
message. “Known thefts.”
“Good job on the pics!” said a Benetton employee. “Only known thieves would smile for the camera.”
“Yea,” an American Apparel manager said. “Not to be confused, girl in orange is our employee.”
Officials
with the Georgetown Business Improvement District said they’re aware of
what they call “questionable postings.” So they have passed out
brochures establishing guidelines on how to use the application to
communicate concern without offending. Retailers may panic when they see
suspicious behavior and dispatch messages bereft of details, Wiebenson
said.
The group ultimately got to be too much for Julia Walter,
the showroom manager at Boffi. She was one of the first people to post
that March evening last year, but has since turned off the application.
Too many messages, she said, too much “racial profiling.”
“Not
every African American person who comes to the showroom is suspicious,”
she said. “And it made me super uncomfortable that [the messages] made
me sometimes look differently at African Americans when they come here —
and I don’t want to do that. I hate profiling just because they’re a
certain ethnicity, but unfortunately, it’s the reality of what’s
happened."
Terrence McCoy covers poverty, inequality and social justice. He also writes about solutions to social problems.
John McCone came to the CIA as an outsider. An industrialist and an
engineer by training, he replaced veteran spymaster Allen Dulles as
director of central intelligence in November 1961, after John F. Kennedy
had forced out Dulles following the CIA’s bungled operation to oust
Fidel Castro by invading Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. McCone had one overriding
mission: restore order at the besieged CIA.
Kennedy hoped his management
skills might prevent a future debacle, even if the Californian—mostly a
stranger to the clubby, blue-blooded world of the men like Dulles who
had always run the spy agency—faced a steep learning curve.
After JFK’s assassination in Dallas in November 1963, President
Lyndon Johnson kept McCone in place at the CIA, and the CIA director
became an important witness before the Warren Commission, the panel
Johnson created to investigate Kennedy’s murder. McCone pledged full
cooperation with the commission, which was led by Chief Justice Earl
Warren, and testified that the CIA had no evidence to suggest that Lee
Harvey Oswald, the assassin, was part of any conspiracy, foreign or
domestic. In its final report, the commission came to agree with
McCone’s depiction of Oswald, a former Marine and self-proclaimed
Marxist, as a delusional lone wolf.
But did McCone come close to perjury all those decades ago? Did the
onetime Washington outsider in fact hide agency secrets that might still
rewrite the history of the assassination? Even the CIA is now willing
to raise these questions. Half a century after JFK’s death, in a
once-secret report written in 2013by the CIA’s top in-house
historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency
acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and
other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary”
information from the Warren Commission.
According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who
died in 1991, was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency,
intended to keep the commission focused on “what the Agency believed at
the time was the ‘best truth’—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet
undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” The most
important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its
1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of
CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots
with the Mafia.
Without this information, the commission never even knew
to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or
elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.
While raising no question about the essential findings of the Warren
Commission, including that Oswald was the gunman in Dallas, the 2013
report is important because it comes close to an official CIA
acknowledgement—half a century after the fact—of impropriety in the
agency’s dealings with the commission. The coverup by McCone and others
may have been “benign,” in the report’s words, but it was a cover-up
nonetheless, denying information to the commission that might have
prompted a more aggressive investigation of Oswald’s potential Cuba
ties.
Initially stamped “SECRET/NOFORN,” meaning it was not to be shared
outside the agency or with foreign governments, Robarge’s report was
originally published as an article in the CIA’s classified internal
magazine, Studies in Intelligence, in September 2013, to mark the
50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. The article, drawn from a
still-classified 2005 biography of McCone written by Robarge, was
declassified quietly last fall and is now available
on the website of The George Washington University’s National Security
Archive. In a statement to POLITICO, the CIA said it decided to
declassify the report “to highlight misconceptions about the CIA’s
connection to JFK’s assassination,” including the still-popular
conspiracy theory that the spy agency was somehow behind the
assassination. (Articles in the CIA magazine are routinely declassified
without fanfare after internal review.)
Robarge’s articlesays that McCone, quickly convinced after
the assassination that Oswald had acted alone and that there was no
foreign conspiracy involving Cuba or the Soviet Union, directed the
agency to provide only “passive, reactive and selective” assistance to
the Warren Commission. This portrait of McCone suggests that he was much
more hands-on in the CIA’s dealings with the commission—and in the
agency’s post-assassination scrutiny of Oswald’s past—than had
previously been known. The report quotes another senior CIA official,
who heard McCone say that he intended to “handle the whole (commission)
business myself, directly.”
The report offers no conclusion about McCone’s motivations, including
why he would go to lengths to cover-up CIA activities that mostly
predated his time at the agency. But it suggests that the Johnson White
House might have directed McCone to hide the information. McCone “shared
the administration’s interest in avoiding disclosures about covert
actions that would circumstantially implicate [the] CIA in conspiracy
theories and possibly lead to calls for a tough US response against the
perpetrators of the assassination,” the article reads. “If the
commission did not know to ask about covert operations about Cuba, he
was not going to give them any suggestions about where to look.”
In an interview, David Slawson, who was the Warren Commission’s
chief staff investigator in searching for evidence of a foreign
conspiracy, said he was not surprised to learn that McCone had
personally withheld so much information from the investigation in 1964,
especially about the Castro plots.
“I always assumed McCone must have known, because I always believed
that loyalty and discipline in the CIA made any large-scale operation
without the consent of the director impossible,” says Slawson, now 84
and a retired University of Southern California law professor. He says
he regrets that it had taken so long for the spy agency to acknowledge
that McCone and others had seriously misled the commission. After half a
century, Slawson says, “The world loses interest, because the
assassination becomes just a matter of history to more and more people.”
The report identifies other tantalizing information that McCone did
not reveal to the commission, including evidence that the CIA might
somehow have been in communication with Oswald before 1963 and that the
spy agency had secretly monitored Oswald’s mail after he attempted to
defect to the Soviet Union in 1959. The CIA mail-opening program, which
was later determined to have been blatantly illegal, had the code name
HTLINGUAL. “It would be surprising if the DCI [director of central
intelligence] were not told about the program” after the Kennedy
assassination, the report reads. “If not, his subordinates deceived him.
If he did know about HTLINGUAL reporting on Oswald, he was not being
forthright with the commission—presumably to protect an operation that
was highly compartmentalized and, if disclosed, sure to arouse much
controversy.”
In the 1970's, when congressional investigations exposed the Castro
plots, members of the Warren Commission and its staff expressed outrage
that they had been denied the information in 1964. Had they known about
the plots, they said, the commission would have been much more
aggressive in trying to determine whether JFK’s murder was an act of
retaliation by Castro or his supporters.
Weeks before the assassination,
Oswald traveled to Mexico City and met there with spies for the Cuban
and Soviet governments—a trip that CIA and FBI officials have long
acknowledged was never adequately investigated. (Even so, Warren
Commission staffers remain convinced today that Oswald was the lone
gunman in Dallas, a view shared by ballistics experts who have studied
the evidence.)
In congressional testimony in 1978, after public disclosures about
the Castro plots, McCone claimed that he could not have shared
information about the plots with the Warren Commission in 1964 because
he was ignorant of the plots at the time. Other CIA officials “withheld
the information from me,” he said. “I have never been satisfied as to
why they withheld the information.” But the 2013 report concluded that
“McCone’s testimony was neither frank nor accurate,” since it was later
determined with certainty that he had been informed about the CIA-Mafia
plots nine months before his appearance before the Warren Commission.
Robarge suggests the CIA is responsible for some of the harsh
criticism commonly leveled at the Warren Commission for large gaps in
its investigation of the president’s murder, including its failure to
identify Oswald’s motive in the assassination and to pursue evidence
that might have tied Oswald to accomplices outside the United States.
For decades, opinion polls have shown that most Americans reject the
commission’s findings and believe Oswald did not act alone. Four of the
seven commissioners were members of Congress, and they spent the rest of
their political careers badgered by accusations that they had been part
of a coverup.
“The decision of McCone and Agency leaders in 1964 not to disclose
information about CIA’s anti-Castro schemes might have done more to
undermine the credibility of the commission than anything else that
happened while it was conducting its investigation,” the report reads.
“In that sense—and in that sense alone—McCone may be regarded as a
‘co-conspirator’ in the JFK assassination ‘cover-up.’”
If there was, indeed, a CIA “cover-up,” a member of the Warren
Commission was apparently in on it: Allen Dulles, McCone’s predecessor,
who ran the CIA when the spy agency hatched the plots to kill Castro.
“McCone does not appear to have any explicit, special understanding with
Allen Dulles,” the 2013 report says. Still, McCone could “rest assured
that his predecessor would keep a dutiful watch over Agency equities and
work to keep the commission from pursuing provocative lines of
investigation, such as lethal anti-Castro covert actions.” (Johnson
appointed Dulles to the commission at the recommendation of
then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy.)
The 2013 report also draws attention to the contacts between McCone
and Robert Kennedy in the days after the assassination. In the wake of
the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, the attorney general was asked by his
brother, the president, to direct the administration’s secret war
against Castro, and Robert Kennedy’s friends and family acknowledged
years later that he never stopped fearing that Castro was behind his
brother’s death. “McCone had frequent contact with Robert Kennedy during
the painful days after the assassination,” the report says. “Their
communication appears to have been verbal, informal and, evidently in
McCone’s estimation, highly personal; no memoranda or transcripts exist
or are known to have been made.”
“Because Robert Kennedy had overseen the Agency’s anti-Castro covert
actions—including some of the assassination plans—his dealings with
McCone about his brother’s murder had a special gravity,” the report
continues. “Did Castro kill the president because the president had
tried to kill Castro? Had the administration’s obsession with Cuba
inadvertently inspired a politicized sociopath to murder John Kennedy?”
The declassification of the bulk of the 2013 McCone report might
suggest a new openness by the CIA in trying to resolve the lingering
mysteries about the Kennedy assassination. At the same time, there are
15 places in the public version of the report where the CIA has deleted
sensitive information—sometimes individual names, sometimes whole
sentences. It is an acknowledgement, it seems, that there are still
secrets about the Kennedy assassination hidden in the agency’s files.
Philip Shenon, a former Washington and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is author, most recently, of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.
Native American advocacy groups have pushed to change
Columbus Day to Native American Day or Indigenous People's Day.
Pictured: Lakota spiritual leader Chief Arvol Looking Horse attended a
demonstration against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in January 2015.
AFP/Getty Images
As people around the United States celebrate Columbus Day
Monday, with government offices and most schools closed, many others
will be hosting festivities for an alternative celebration: Native
American Day. The relatively new holiday, celebrated in cities and towns
across the country, was started as a way to honor the indigenous people
who were living in North and South America long before the arrival of
Christopher Columbus in 1492.
At least nine cities in the U.S. will
be officially celebrating "Indigenous Peoples Day" this year,
including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul,
Minnesota, and Olympia, Washington, the Associated Press reported. Many
of the festivities on this day involve celebrating traditions specific
to the tribes of the region as well as educating other people about the
culture and history of Native Americans.
The Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, landing
in what is now the Bahamas in 1492. Columbus since has been credited
with discovering the New World. Indigenous people from tribes across
North and South America have protested his title as discoverer, pointing
out that they had lived in the Americas long before 1492. Some
scientists estimate the indigenous people in the Americas arrived at
least 12,000 years ago.
Columbus' journey led to thousands of Europeans from across the
continent leaving to come to the Americas to make their fortunes. As
more and more settlers arrived, the Europeans often used force to push
Native Americans off their land. Europeans also brought with them many
diseases to which the native population never had been exposed and to
which they had no immunity, such as smallpox and measles. As many as 20 million Native Americans died in the centuries following the arrival of European settlers.
As a result of this painful history, many Native American activists
have been pushing to have the name of the holiday officially changed for
more than four decades. Advocacy groups focused on getting city
councils to pass the resolution separately from a federal government
that has not made the change.
"For the Native community here, Indigenous Peoples Day means a lot.
We actually have something," said Nick Estes, an Albuquerque resident
who organized celebrations for the holiday following its recent passage
by city government, the AP reported.
"We understand it's just a proclamation, but at the same time, we
also understand this is the beginning of something greater," Estes said.
We could honestly stop talking right here, because the story—and the
jokes—write themselves. Her name is Raven hyphen alternate spelling of
“Simone,” complete with what could be considered a gratuitous accent
mark (it does not change the pronunciation of "Symone/Simone," it is
there for decoration; she essentially has the equivalent of plastic
furniture covers at the end of her name,) and yet she feels compelled to
punch down at those who also have names that are also Black as a dice
game at a church fish fry, but may not have hit the faux French mark as
well as her own.
Only a blindfolded person with no sense of smell being
asked to hold a plate of meat and walk into a den full of dogs could
match her lack of self-awareness.
How dare you, Raven hyphen alternate spelling of “Simone?” Sitting
there with a head full of colorful weave, the same sort of hair that was
“ghetto,” “tacky,” “low-class” and “unacceptable” until it made it’s
way until the pages of mainstream fashion magazines? And using
“Watermelonandrea” as your example, playing off the same racist language
used by people who have done us so much harm?
Moment of honesty: I won’t pretend that I always had the best attitude
about what are often called “’hood” or “ghetto” names. When I was
younger, I thought names like “Tamika” and “Keisha” were fine and
pretty, but I didn’t much care for those that had harder consonant
sounds and apostrophes.
And I maintain that prior to the UPN show,
“Moesha” wasn’t anyone’s name and it sounded like what a White TV writer
thought a Black girl’s name would be (and her daddy’s flat-top did not
match her name. This makes sense if you think about it.) That’s not to
say I’m a big fan of names that we typically think of as super European
either; my siblings and I have African names and I thought that was the
way to go for all of us. Well, actually, though “Jamilah” is considered to be a Swahili
name, it’s origins are Arabic and it is extremely common in Islamic
countries. So is my daughter’s name, Naima. So now we are two
generations deep into non-Muslim women carrying Muslim names; who on
Earth would I be to shame someone who created a name for her own child?
Isn’t that part of our polyglot African-American Blackness, this ability
to create culture on the fly and to take what we can find of our
African roots and make it into something that is uniquely ours?
The whole world is trying to tear us apart and you want to discount the value of some other Black person because
she, TOO, has a Black name, Raven hyphen alternate spelling of
“Simone?”
You got the nerve. Meanwhile, even White folks are naming
their kids things like “Raekwon,” “Dapper” and “Hummincomingatcha” these
days, but okay.
But even before I came to fully embrace the importance of these names
and our ability to name ourselves as we see fit, I always understood
that behind a “La,” “Sha” or “Ty” name was my brother or sister. What
would posses a Black person to say “I’m not going to hire someone with a
name like that,” when so much greatness has come from people with names
like that? Wasn’t Raven hyphen alternate spelling of “Simone” just on
Empire with Jussie Smollett, Taraji P. Henson and the artist formerly
known as Terrence Dashon Howard? Didn’t she bounce on the knee of
Phylicia Rashad?
Didn’t a good chunk of her fortune come from playing
Galleria Garabaldi in The Cheetah Girls franchise? And isn’t’ she
sitting across the damn table from Whoopi “EGOT” Goldberg?
What a
sad disappointment she has become at nearly 30.
We can’t have a hierarchy of Black names. You are either with your
family, or you aren’t. Being named “Naima” or “Aaliyah,” “Asha,” or
“Imani,” doesn’t make you better or more sophisticated or more African
than someone named “Shatasha,” and the people who are dumping Shatasha’s
resume in the trash because of her name are happy to throw yours in
there too, boo. And when a Black Becky Jane shows up in person, her
resume just might be joining them. Name your kids (or yourself) what you
see fit, but don’t write off your own people because you don’t like
what they ask the world to call them.
If Watermelonandrea can’t find work as Raven hyphen alternate spelling
of “Simone’s” personal assistant, she can come work for me. It won’t pay
as much, but at least she won’t have to deal with an insufferable sense
of self-loathing and anti-Black pathology in her boss’s every word.
The family of Jerame Reid of Bridgeton, N.J., who was killed by police in 2014
Todd S.Burroughs for The Root
Thousands of African Americans gathered Saturday at the National Mall
in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Million
Man March amid calls for reforms to the flawed criminal justice system,
and changes within the Black community itself to help stem the tide of
violence.
Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, who launched the
first march, is slated to lead the anniversary event called "Justice or
Else."
The Root is there:
Scores of marchers gather at the National Mall Todd S. Burroughs for The Root
Marchers carry memorial placards
Todd S. Burroughs for The Root
John Kasich had quite a gaffe filled week. First, he demeaned, and
then was condescending to female college voters in Richmond, Virginia.
Now, he's touched on reducing benefits for Social Security recipients, telling seniors to "get over it"....
What is it with the GOP candidates? "Get Over It".... "Stuff Happens" ....
John Kasich has just disqualified himself from being president of the
United States. He wants to decrease taxes for corporations and the
ultra wealthy while calling for a reduction to Social Security benefits.
(CNN)—Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Friday that a New Hampshire
audience member would "get over" cuts to Social Security payments as a
result of his reform plan -- and the left is already pouncing on the
comment.
He asked audience members to raise their hands if they were far from
receiving Social Security, asked them if they knew yet what their
initial benefit would be and then asked them if they would be bothered
if it were a little lower for the good of the country.
One person said it would be a problem.
"Well, you'd get over it, and you're going to have to get over it," Kasichjoked.
What he considers funny and what I consider funny are two different
things. Maybe he could supply our seniors with the dog and cat food
they'll be eating with reduced benefits. The problem with these right wingers is they have started to believe their own propaganda.
Then he doubled down and went for cuts to Medicare/Medicaid as well:
"You're on Medicare and you want me to ignore the fact that
its going broke, you're not going to like me," he told the audience,
adding later, "I'd rather have people be in a position where they're
aggravated with me so I can accomplish something, than have them love me
and accomplish nothing, okay. I'm not there to run a popularity
contest."
Social Security is paid from taxes that are only collected on the
first $125k of income, if they got rid of the FICA tax cap so that all
income paid FICA taxes, there would be NO social security issues at all.
So when Kasich bellows: "We can't balance a budget without
entitlement reform. What are we, kidding?" It's just a complete lie.
Getting rid of the FICA tax cap wouldn't affect anyone earning less than
$125k (you're already paying it) and would make those who are earning
more pay their fair share for living in this country and having access
to the benefits of living in this country.
For reference, a 2012 article where getting rid of the tax cap would
bring in $100 Billion per YEAR and make Social Security solvent for 75
years.
A gaffe is when a politician accidentally says what they are really
thinking...and that is what is truly scary about all 16 Republican
clowns that are running for the highest office in the land.
Members of the SAG-AFTRA union have overwhelmingly approved a measure
authorizing an "interactive media" strike that could have wide-ranging
impact on the availability of professional voice talent for video game
projects. The union announced today
that 96.52 percent of its members voted in favor of the strike. That's
well above the 75 percent threshold that was necessary to authorize such
a move and a result the union is calling "a resounding success."
Despite the vote, union members will not strike immediately. Instead,
a strike can now be called whenever the union's National Board decides
to declare it. Armed with that knowledge, SAG-AFTRA will be sending its
negotiating committee back to talk with major game publishers, including
EA, Activision, Disney, and Warner Bros., which are signatories to a
current agreement with the union.
After their old agreement technically expired at the end of 2014,
both sides have failed to reach a new understanding in negotiation
sessions in February and June. SAG-AFTRA is looking for a number of
concessions from the game industry, including "back end bonus" royalties
for games that sell at least two million units, "stunt pay" for
"vocally stressful" work, and more information to be provided about
projects before time-consuming auditions are scheduled.
If a strike were to go through, publishers would be forced to look
outside of the 150,00 member union for any voice acting work on
projects going forward. That might be tough, as any actor crossing the
picket line would likely have trouble finding future work in the many
SAG-AFTRA affiliated productions across film, TV, radio, or games.
Major
voice talent, including former Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter, Mass Effect 3 "FemShep" voice actress Jennifer Hale, Borderlands Tiny Tina voice actress Ashly Burch, Metal Gear Solid Vamp voice actor Phil Lamarr; and Firefly Online voice actor Wil Wheaton have publicly supported the strike.
Kyle Orland
/ Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in
video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science
degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC
area.
More from Reelblack's 2010 interview with MR. PAUL MOONEY. In this
clip, he talks about the difference between being half-African and
half-Black, DNA, his Rip Van Winkle screenplay, Willie Lynch and the
fear Black women instill in their sons. A Reelblack exclusive. Special
thanks: Helium Comedy Club. Cam + Edit: Mike D.
Blindspot is an American crime drama television series created by Martin Gero, starring Jaimie Alexander and Sullivan Stapleton. The series was ordered by NBC on May 1, 2015, and premiered on September 21, 2015.
Blindspot focuses on a mysterious tattooed woman who has lost her memory and does not know her own identity. The FBI discovers that each tattoo contains a clue to a crime they will have to solve.
A defenseless and rather
adorable three year old boy became the center of racist and abusive
Facebook comments after a white Georgia man decided to sneak a selfie
with the child and post it to his page for all his trollish friends to
lampoon, implying that the child was a slave and referring to him as
“sambo.” Photo Credit: Facebook
Zellie Imani of the Atlanta Black Star first reported on the Facebook post by Geris Hilton — real name Gerod Roth — and the ensuing backlash:
“I’ll feed you, but first let me take a selfie,” wrote one of Hilton’s Facebook friends.
“I didn’t know you were a slave owner,” wrote a commenter named Emily Irene Red.
“Send him back dude those fuckers are expensive,” another Facebook user, by the name of Dylan Kleeman, reportedly wrote.
Commenter Tim Zheng described the young child as “feral.”
The boys mother, Sydney Jade, was a coworker of Hilton’s and took to social media to defend her child, Cayden:
This
Cayden Jace! The love of my life, the apple in my eye, my EVERYTHING.
All this lovely personality wrapped up into one small person’s body.
When people hear about him, these are the pictures I want them to know
about. Not that disturbing image and its comments. We are above all of
this nonsense that has been going on. Cayden and I truly appreciate all
of the love that we have been shown in the last 24 hours. You guys warm
my heart, more than words could ever express. This little guys has every
piece of my heart, he is my world and #HisNameIsCayden.
Hilton’s
employer, Michael Da Graca Pinto of the Polaris Marketing Group, said
little Cayden visits his office every afternoon after daycare, adding
“he’s sat at my dinner table,” before announcing that Hilton was now a former employee.
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who's in the top tier of the GOP's 2016 contenders, holds some unusual beliefs. In defending creationism, he has said Satan is behind the Big Bang theory and the promotion of evolution, and he has embraced and endorsed
a paranoid McCarthyesque conspiracy theory that claims nefarious
Marxists for decades have infiltrated every echelon of American
society—including PTAs—in order to destroy the United States.
But, it
seems, Carson's conspiratorial worldview goes beyond all this.
In a talk
he gave a year ago, Carson, who is a Seventh-day Adventist, indicated
that he accepts a dark prophecy rendered a century and a half ago by a
founder of his church. She claimed that as part of the End Times (the
apocalyptic period when Jesus Christ supposedly will return and battle
with the devil), a time will come when Seventh-day Adventists will be
imprisoned by the government and even put to death merely for observing
the Sabbath on Saturday, not Sunday.
Some background: The Seventh-day Adventist Church traces back to the
1820's, when William Miller, a veteran of the War of 1812, told people
that Jesus Christ was heading back to Earth in 1843 or 1844. After "the
Advent" didn't occur, Miller's followers didn't give up. They concluded
that he had gotten the date wrong, and the church continued. A crucial
part of its theology was that the Sabbath starts on Friday night and
concludes on Saturday at sundown.
This Saturday Sabbath was no small
point. Ellen White, one of the founders of the religion who, according
to church doctrine, was a prophet,
dwelled on the persecution of Seventh-day Adventists for Saturday
worshipping in many of her writings, and repeatedly claimed that the
Sunday Sabbath was the "mark of the beast"—that is, Satan's doing. In
one of her books, Love Under Fire, she charged
that the Roman Catholic Church had changed the day of worship from
Saturday to Sunday and that this had led to Christians "worshipping the
beast and his image." (Such sentiments may have led some to believe the
Seventh-day Adventist Church is anti-Catholic or anti-papal.)
And in the
1800's, as some Christians advocated and some states enacted "Sunday
laws" that made it illegal to do business on Sundays (in order to
promote this day as a time for churchgoing), Seventh-day Adventists considered these moves as an act of persecution against their religion.
"I don't know what role the Lord has for me
in all this. I do know—and looking at prophecy—that the United States
will play a big role," Carson told a crowd of fellow Seventh-day
Adventists.
In her writings, White was not only looking backward. She was—and
remains—a visionary prophet for Seventh-day Adventists. In her book, The Great Controversy,
she peered ahead and provided her take on the Book of Revelation and
the coming "final conflict" between Satan and Jesus Christ. And the
Sabbath, she declared, would be a key element of this titanic clash.
During the ultimate conflagration, White noted, Satan would "plunge
the inhabitants of the earth into one great, final trouble. As the
angels of God cease to hold in check the fierce winds of human passion,
all the elements of strife will be let loose. The whole world will be
involved in ruin more terrible than that which came upon Jerusalem of
old." In this period of anarchy, corruption, and disaster, millions
would turn to religion, but "in the great drama of deception," Satan
would pretend to be Jesus Christ, and, with the Catholic Church and many
Protestant denominations falling for the ruse, much of the world would
end up worshiping a false and evil god who commands people to mark
Sunday as the holy day.
Seventh-day Adventists would have an especially hard time in this stretch. Governments, White foresaw,
would enforce the "observance of the false sabbath." She noted, "As the
defenders of truth refuse to honor the Sunday-sabbath, some of them
will be thrust into prison, some will be exiled, some will be treated as
slaves." She added that those who do not obey will even be sentenced to
death. In fact, as Jesus Christ and Satan wrestle to decide the fate of
the world, she predicted, the Sabbath will be the "final test"
separating those who serve God from those riding with Satan.
The picture is clear. The End Times will bring about a sweep of false
religiosity and the persecution of Christians who stick with the
Saturday Sabbath. And this has made many Seventh-day Adventists highly
sensitive about any actions that may be interpreted as discouraging
Saturday worship.
It's a belief that some Seventh-day Adventists continue to spread. In
a 1983 book that was something of a condensed version of White's The Great Controversy, JanMarcussen, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, wrote
that during the final Armageddon, "the whole wicked world is really
angry. They've decided that those who honor God's Sabbath of the Bible
are the cause of the horrible convulsions of nature and they determine
to blot them from the earth! The date is set. When the clock strikes
midnight on a certain day, God's obedient people will be sentenced to
death!" (But Seventh-day Adventists need not worry. Just as Satan is
about to enforce the death decree, "God steps in to save His people.")
In 2008, Marcussen declared that observing the Sabbath on Sunday "is the biggest hoax the world has ever seen."
As a former member of the church who became a critic put it
a few years back, "I remember vividly when minister Jan Marcussen…came
to our church with a pile of newspaper clippings purporting to show the
imminence of a national Sunday law. He solemnly held up his hand and
declared to the congregation that it would happen so soon that a child
could count the number of months. That was 19 years ago."
So does Ben Carson believe that when the big spiritual bang comes,
his co-religionists will be rounded up, imprisoned, and executed? Though
he frequently cites his faith in God when he speaks publicly and
campaigns, he has not discussed this core tenet of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church.
But about a year ago, he did refer to it when he was a
guest sermonizer at a Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia. Asked
to describe the political landscape of the United States, Carson noted
that most people in the United States were afraid to declare their
faith. He then continued:
I don't know what role the Lord has for me in all this. I do
know—and looking at prophecy—that the United States will play a big
role, that there has to be a return first to a religious awakening, and,
more than likely, any persecution, particularly of the Sabbath, will
come from the right, not from the left.
Here's the video:
This was a brief comment, but in front of a Seventh-day Adventist
crowd, he mentioned prophecy, which has a well-defined meaning for this
audience, and what he said jibed with White's prediction: In the End
Times there would be a (false) religious awakening and persecution of
Christians who stick to the Saturday Sabbath. Interestingly, Carson said
this persecution would be waged by conservative forces—a notion
consistent with White's fixation on the Catholic Church as the lead
player in the Sunday Sabbath conspiracy.
Asked by Mother Jones whether Carson believes in the Sabbath
persecution prophecy and thinks Seventh-day Adventists will at some
point be considered criminals, arrested by government forces, and
ultimately sentenced to death, a spokesman for the candidate said in an
email that this was "not a fair interpretation at all." He added,
"Trying to twist a person's faith is quickly becoming a favorite sport
of the left. That kind of intolerance exposes who they really are, not
what they claim to be. He never mentioned prophecy, you did." When Mother Jones
followed up by noting that Carson indeed had referred to "prophecy" and
Sabbath "persecution" in the video, the Carson spokesman replied by
sending the original statement, but with the false claim that Carson had
not mentioned "prophecy" now excised.
Even though political candidates often emphasize their faith, the
specific religious beliefs of office seekers are usually not
scrutinized. But Carson has made a series
of anti-Muslim comments, and as a fellow seeking the presidency, Carson
might fairly be asked about his penchant to believe in extreme
conspiracies and whether he truly fears a plot to criminalize Saturday
worship and use state force to round up Seventh-day Adventists and
others who don't wait until Sunday to commemorate the Sabbath. Carson,
who has said
present-day America "is very much like Nazi Germany," has forthrightly
stated that he believes Satan has pushed the theory of evolution and
embraced the notion that commies have secretly infested the schools,
media, and government of the United States. If his dark vision of the
world extends further, he probably ought to share it with the voters.
Washington Bureau ChiefDavid Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook. RSS
In the early 1900's, Lewis Hine left his job as a schoolteacher to
work as a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee,
investigating and documenting child labor in the United States. As a
sociologist, Hine was an early believer in the power of photography to
document work conditions and help bring about change. He traveled the
country, going to fields, factories, and mines—sometimes working
undercover—to take pictures of kids as young as four years old being put
to work.
Partly as a result of Hine's work (as well as that of Mary Harris Jones, who Mother Jones is named after), Congress passed the Keating-Owens Child Labor Act
in 1916. It established child labor standards, including a a minimum
age (14 years old for factories, and 16 years old for mines) and an
eight-hour workday. It also barred kids under the age of 16 from working
overnight. However, the Keating-Owens Act was later ruled
unconstitutional, and lasting reform to federal child labor laws didn't
come until the New Deal.
In 2004, retired social worker Joe Manning set out to see what had
happened to as many of the kids in Hine's photos as he could find. He's
documented his findings—showing the lives of hundreds of subjects—on his
website, MorningsOnMapleStreet.com.
Breaker boys who worked in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Company, South Pittston, Pennsylvania
A group of breaker boys in Pittston, Pennsylvania. The smallest is Sam Belloma.
A young driver in Brown Mine in Brown,
West Virginia. Hine said the boy had been driving one year, working from
7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily.
A tipple boy working at Turkey Knob Mine in MacDonald, West Virginia.
A trapper boy working in the Turkey Knob
Mine in Macdonald, West Virginia. The boy had to stoop because of the
low roof. This photo was taken more than a mile inside the mine.
Drivers in a coal mine in West Virginia
Vance,
a trapper boy, was 15 years old when this photo was taken. He was paid
75 cents a day for 10 hours of work. His job was to open and shut this
door. Because of the intense darkness in the mine, the writing on the
door was not visible until plate was developed.
A view of Pennsylvania Coal Company's Ewen
Breaker in South Pittson, Pennsylvania. The dust was so dense at times,
it was difficult to see, Hine wrote. A man sometimes stood over the
boys, prodding or kicking them, the photographer wrote.
Noon at Pennsylvania Coal Company's Ewen Breaker in South Pittston
A young leader and a driver for the
Pennsylvania Coal Company worked in Shaft #6 in South Pittson. The
workers are Pasquale Salvo and Sandy Castina.
At the end of the day, workers for the
Pennsylvania Coal Company waited for the cage to go up at Shaft #6 in
South Pittson, Pennsylvania. The small boy in front is Jo Pume, a
nipper.
A photo of a miner boy named Frank as he
was going home. At the time, he was about 14 years old. He had worked in
the mine for three years helping his father pick and load. He was in
the hospital one year, after his leg was crushed by a coal car, Hine
wrote.
Workers at the end of the day in a
Pennsylvania coal mine. The smallest boy, near the far right, is a
nipper. On his right is Arthur, a driver. Jo, on Arthur's right, is a
nipper. Frank, the boy on the left end of the photo, is a nipper and
works a mile underground from the shaft, which is 5,000 feet down.
James O'Dell helped push these heavily
loaded cars. He appears to be about 12 or 13 years old, Hine wrote.
James worked at Knoxville Iron Co.'s Cross Mountain Mine, which is in
the vicinity of Coal Creek, Tennessee. James had been there four months.
Shorpy Higginbotham was a greaser at
Bessie Mine in Alabama, working for the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron
Company. Hine said the boy told him that he was 14 years old, but Hine
suspected the boy wasn't telling the truth. At work, Shorpy carried two
heavy pails of grease and was often in danger of being run over by the
coal cars.
A greaser at Bessie Mine in Alabama
Harry and Sallie. Harry was a driver for
the Maryland Coal Co. Mine, which was near Grafton, West Virginia. Hine
said the boy was afraid of being photographed because he might be forced
to go to school. Harry was probably 12 years old, Hine wrote.
Tom Vitol (also called Dominick Dekatis)
was photographed in Hughestown Burough, Pittston, Pennsylvania. He
worked in Breaker #9 and was probably younger than 14 years old, Hine
wrote.
