INQUIRER: The crowd surrounding the Frank L. Rizzo statue Saturday afternoon seemed to be in a time warp, as the former Philadelphia mayor’s entourage and admirers came out to pay their respects. The Quaker City String Band played as dignitaries arrived on foot and in cars, some following the motorcade that came down Broad Street from Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheltenham to the Municipal Services Building, across from City Hall. Saturday marked 20 years since Rizzo died of a heart attack while campaigning for a third term as mayor, a job he had held from 1972 to 1980. Even in death, the former police commissioner, who would have been 90, has continued to inspire many Philadelphians. Those who knew him and worked for and with him remain loyal to this day. “I loved him,” said Jody DellaBarba, Rizzo’s secretary and aide during his last campaign, handing out old memorial cards. MORE

RELATED: Lynne Abraham read from the book The Sayings of Chairman Frank: Or, I Never Saw My Mother Naked. Rizzo, known for a blunt persona that rallied some and riled others, often used violent imagery in his statements. Of his challenge from political rival Tom Foglietta, he said: “Listen, Foglietta couldn’t beat me in South Philly if I gave him the voting machines tonight. Councilman Foglietta, if you had any sense, you could take a reading of the crowd here today and go home and slit your throat,” Abraham read, drawing much laughter. MORE

TIME: Philadelphia’s tough-talking Democratic mayor, Frank Rizzo, has long been as hard on syntax as he is on the “vermin” he blames for his city’s problems with crime and decline. During his campaign for a second four-year term in 1975, for instance, the blustery former police chief offered Philadelphians a typically unpunctuated promise: “Just wait after November you’ll have a front row seat because I’m going to make Attila the Hun look like a f*ggot.” MORE

FRANK RIZZO: “I like art. It was us Italians who started most of it.”

RELATED: In the spring of 1969, four activists from the Philadelphia chapter of the Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) were arrested for plotting to blow up the Liberty Bell after the police found bomb-making materials in the refrigerator of their West Philly apartment. According to the police, the planned destruction of the Liberty Bell was part of a larger plot hatched by a network of student radicals to destroy national landmarks across the country. The shocking news spread quickly when footage of the police search of the apartment — captured by a KYW film crew invited by police to document the raid — and the ensuing arrests made the evening news. The Daily News trumpeted news of the plot in two separate cover stories with the blaring headlines: COLLEGE REBELS HELD AS RAIDERS FIND ‘MAKINGS OF BOMB’ and REBEL STUDENT PLOT TO BLOW UP PHILA. HISTORICAL SHRINES REVEALED BY POLICE. Once again, a potentially tragic incident of domestic terrorism was narrowly averted, it seemed, thanks to the aggressive due diligence of the Philadelphia Police Department and its take-no-bull commissioner Frank Rizzo. There was just one problem: There was no plot to blow up the Liberty Bell and there were no bomb-making materials, aside from what the police brought with them. But for the two long years the case kicked around the courts — long enough to put the SDS out of business in Philadelphia — none of that really mattered.

Forty years later, Rizzo and just about everyone on the police and prosecution side of the case are dead and buried. But all four of the accused SDS activists — Steve Fraser, Richard Borghmann, Jane “Muffin” Friedman and Paul Milkman — continue to insist there never was a plot to blow up the Liberty Bell, that the Philadelphia SDS was loudly and proudly avowedly non-violent, and the cops planted the bomb-making material to discredit their politics and scare off potential sympathizers. The judge overseeing the case seemed inclined to agree and eventually threw the case out after two years of pre-trial hearings. But by then it was too late, the Philadelphia SDS, having been successfully tarred as a dangerous terrorist organization, was dead in the water, along with their ambitious social justice agenda for improving schools, housing and job prospects for the city’s downtrodden.

“The backlash happened very quickly, by the time I got out of jail and went back to the Penn campus people were scared of me,” says Friedman, one of the four SDS members arrested that day. “When I tried to organize a rally in support of us people would back away from me when they saw me coming like I was some kind of mad bomber.” To fully understand the significance of the case, it must be placed in the wider context of Philadelphia police’s war on perceived subversives in the late ’60s — the way they systematically harassed, intimidated and brutalized ‘uppity blacks’ and white collegeboy troublemakers — under Frank Rizzo’s leadership. Rizzo routinely invented or exaggerated these threats to scare the public and amass political power, resulting in two contentious and deeply divisive terms as mayor in the 1970s. The bogus Liberty Bell Bomb Plot bust was just the latest in a series of trumped up arrests of activists by the police department’s Civil Disobedience Unit, which was created the early ’60s to protect the constitutional rights of demonstrators while keeping the peace. Upon the appointment of Rizzo to police commissioner in 1967, the CDU became an blunt instrument of surveillance, intimidation and infiltration used to neutralize political dissent. MORE

THE GOOD NEWS FLOWER HOUR: The Phantom Plot To Blow Up The Liberty Bell

[Illustration by ALEX FINE]

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Iran, 2009. Millions take to the streets to protest what is widely perceived to be a stolen election, despite the prevailing threat of arrest, bodily harm and a body count that currently numbers a dozen protesters shot dead by government forces. And still, day after day, the Iranian people take to the streets to protest the gross violation of their democratic rights. Rewind. The year is 2000. The place is Florida in the immediate aftermath of a presidential election — Bush vs. Gore. The initial tally has Bush ahead by a mere 300 votes, a margin so narrow it triggers a mandatory machine recount. Chaos ensues, lawyers and activists for both sides descend on Florida amid widespread allegations of voting irregularities and voter suppression. Gore asks for a hand recount in four heavily democratic counties. A hand recount, though undoubtedly more accurate, is time-consuming and painstakingly slow, rendered all the more so by confusing butterfly paper ballots and dangling chads.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who also serves as co-chair of Bush’s Florida campaign, announced she would reject any revised totals if they were not turned in by November 14. The Florida State Supreme court extends the deadline to November 26th. At this point, the Supreme Court of The United States intercedes and, in a decision that continues to cast a shadow over the high court, declares the Florida court’s extension of the recount deadline is unconstitutional, effectively putting Florida in Bush’s electoral win column and making him the 43rd President of the United States, despite having lost the popular vote. The will of the people is ignored. Oddly, the nationwide reaction to what was effectively a coup d’ tat by judicial fiat is muted. Unlike Iran, there would be no mass demonstrations in the streets of American cities. All of which begs the question: Why?

THE GOOD NEWS FLOWER HOUR: Can’t Happen Here?

1. U.S. Election Theft Less Obvious

In Iran, Ahmadinejad won by a landslide, garnering 10 million votes than he did in 2005. In Florida 2000, the margin was razor thin, and the final result drawn out over six agonizing weeks of procedural bureauracy and legal challenges, lawsuits and counter-lawsuits.

2. U.S. Media Propaganda Machine Far Superior

Iran has a state-run media, which, by definition has a huge disadvantage in convincing the public that it is fair, balanced or even remotely truthful. In the U.S., media is owned by private corporations, giving it the aura of independence even when its reporting what the government wants it to report, as it did in the run up to the Iraq war.  In Iran, nobody trusts the state-run media or doubts for one second that it is anything other than a megaphone for the regime. In America, the notion that the mainstream media is a tool of social control is disguised by false debates about which network is more fair and balanced, and which network is the most trusted name in news.

3. US Government Is Better At Keeping Its People Under Control

In Iran, dissenters are arrested and imprisoned. In America, instead of arresting dissenters, we marginalize and discredit them, exiling their opinions to the lunatic fringe of public discourse. In Iran, the public is intimidated by paramilitary goon squads who roam the streets armed with truncheons, cracking open the skulls of anyone who steps out of line. In America, the public is pacified by television which keeps the populace fat, lazy, ignorant and contented, drunk on meaningless entertainment and distracted by 24-7 celebrity gossip and wall-to-wall sports coverage.

4. When You Got Nothing, You Got Nothing To Lose

In America, life is a long, slow get-rich-quick scheme, a breathless marathon sprint on the hamster wheel of material pursuit and wealth accumulation, prodded relentlessly by the near-pornographic allure of the brass ring that will remain forever just out of reach for all but the tiniest minority. To get off the hamster wheel for even one afternoon of marching in the streets is to risk falling hopelessly behind in the race towards ever-elusive upward mobility. In Iran, 53% of the population lives below the poverty line.

5. Plus, All These Reasons…

In America, 50% of the population is over the age of 35, and dug in deep to the status quo, with most steeply leveraged into acquiescence with mortgages, tuition costs and the mortal fear of losing health insurance coverage. In Iran, 70% of the population is under the age of 30. It was only 30 years ago that the Iranian people last overthrew their oppressors. In America, that hasn’t happened in 230 years. In Iran, if you are unhappy with your lot in life and direction of the country, you blame the government; in America, you blame yourself. In Iran they take to the streets, in US they take anti-depressants.

Do something.

NEW YORK TIMES: This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done. Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.) MORE

THE GOOD NEWS FLOWER HOUR #25: Reefer Madness Reality Check

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The savage drug war in Mexico. Crumbling state budgets. Weariness with current drug policy. The election of a president who said, “Yes — I inhaled.” These developments and others are kindling unprecedented optimism among the many Americans who want to see marijuana legalized. Doing so, they contend to an ever-more-receptive audience, could weaken the Mexican cartels now profiting from U.S. pot sales, save billions in law enforcement costs, and generate billions more in tax revenue from one of the nation’s biggest cash crops. Said a veteran of the movement, Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance: “This is the first time I feel like the wind is at my back and not in my face.” MORE

RELATED: DRUG TEST: Frisking The Inky’s NJ Medical Marijuana Story For The Straight Dope On The War On Drugs

As you may have heard, Woodshop Films/Scrapple TV founder Marc Brodzik, our partner in New Media crime, has been awarded a Pew Grant for media art. We could not be more proud or horny. For those unfamiliar with the Big Man, here’s his Pew bio:

Marc Brodzik, media arts
Born 1967

Marc Brodzik is a documentary filmmaker interested in filming portraits of the common man.  In a recent documentary he focuses on small family owned coal mines and the struggles they face to stay in business in today’s market dominated by large corporations. His work has been screened at the Philadelphia Festival of Independence, the Annapolis Film Festival, MD., the Philadelphia Film Festival, and the Waterfront Festival, Saugatuck, Mich. Brodzik received his Associates Degree in Illustration and Advertising from the Philadelphia Art Institute.

On a related note, here’s a special report from the Good News Flower Hour called WHO’S AFRAID OF BILL AYERS. Enjoy.

The Good News Flower Hour #24

SPECIAL REPORT: GNFH #23

Today is SAY NO TO U.S. TORTURE POLICY Day. We made this reminder so you don’t forget. You’re welcome.

RELATED: Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.  MORE

RELATED: A former U.S. general said graphic images of rape and torture are among the photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse that President Obama’s administration does not want released. The Telegraph said the photos relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. The newspaper said the images in the photos were backed up by statements from Taguba’s report into prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. MORE

RELATED: There are those who argue that U.S. officials who authorized waterboarding and who performed waterboarding should not be held criminally accountable, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. government prosecuted Japanese military personnel who waterboarded U.S. POWs during World War II. Their reasoning goes as follows: Since the president’s attorneys redefined torture to mean only those actions that threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs, waterboarding did not meet that redefinition. What about rape? It would seem that rape, like waterboarding, would not meet the Bush administration’s redefinition of torture. Rape doesn’t threaten death or serious injury to bodily organs. Should U.S. officials who authorized enhanced interrogation techniques be let off the hook for rapes committed by U.S. officials as part of enhanced interrogations of detainees? That of course begs the question: Were people raped as part of the U.S. government’s enhanced interrogation techniques? Well, think back to the Abu Ghrab photos and videos, which depicted sordid sexual acts being committed by U.S. personnel on Iraqi prisoners. You may have forgotten that there was a particular set of photos and videos that were never released to the public because they depicted acts that were apparently much worse than anything that was shown in the photos that were released. Therefore, U.S. officials decided to keep those particular photos and videos under lock and key. MORE

RELATED: Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.” MORE

RELATED: President Obama directed his national security adviser and senior Cabinet officials yesterday to examine whether the government keeps too much information secret. In a memo, Obama acknowledged that too many documents have been kept from the public eye for years and affirmed that he remains “committed to operating with an unprecedented level of openness.” Obama asked national security adviser James L. Jones to canvass executive branch officials about their procedures for handling classified information and to make recommendations about better information sharing. Instructions to Jones made specific reference to Bush administration orders that delayed automatic declassification dates, eliminated a presumption of declassification that dated from the Clinton administration and reclassified some information that had been made public. MORE

RELATED: Misconceptions and distortions about torture by former Vice President Cheney and other former Bush administration officials are, if nothing else, impressive for their hubris. In a speech last Thursday, Mr. Cheney asserted that “tough” or “enhanced” interrogation methods were legal, essential, effective, and were not torture. Mr. Cheney is wrong. Waterboarding, exposure to extremes of heat and cold, sexual humiliations and several other cruel and inhuman methods documented to have been used on known or suspected terrorists are forms of torture. My perspective is not theoretical. It is based on nearly 20 years of experience as a physician examining and caring for individuals from all over the world who endured torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment or punishment and studying the health consequences of such trauma. This includes Tibetan monks tortured because of their demands for independence, African students tortured because of calling for democracy, and most recently, former detainees from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Mr. Cheney derides the Obama Administration for using “euphemisms that strive to put an imaginary distance between the American people and the terrorist enemy.” He then goes on to repeatedly invoke the euphemism of “enhanced” interrogations instead of torture. This term infers a seemingly benign and improved means for eliciting information. It is neither. MORE

RELATED: Keith Olbermann’s offer for a donation if Sean Hannity undergoes waterboarding is off the table, the money gone instead to radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller’s charity of choice after Mancow’s disquieting experience with the interrogation technique. Muller said Wednesday he volunteered to be waterboarded last week to prove that the controversial technique isn’t torture. Instead, he said the experience showed he was wrong. “I thought I was going to die,” he said. […] “I was laughing about this, that it was a stupid radio thing,” Muller told Olbermann. “I thought I could go 30 seconds. I’ll hold my breath. Big deal, they’ll sprinkle water. It is a big deal. It’s torture.”MORE

Collateral News: The Good News Flower Hour #22

This week we examine the strange art of Donald Rumsfeld’s holy war. Enjoy.

RELATED: This Sunday, GQ magazine is posted on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy. MORE

GQ: The Bizarre Holy War Art Of Donald Rumsfeld

A special edition, look for it later today.

The Good News Flower Hour #21
…has been CLASSIFIED for your protection.

The Good News Flower Hour #20
This week: The last pig in Afghanistan, shit blowing up in Pakistan, anal torture in the UAE, face transplants in the USA, and Joe the Plumber is an assclown. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll come as you are. Promise.

This week: The last pig in Afghanistan, shit blowing up in Pakistan, anal torture in the UAE, face transplants in the USA, and Joe the Plumber is an assclown. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll come and go. Episode 20 coming later today.

The Good News Flower Hour #19
The week that was in just five minutes! Prepare to smile. You know you wanna.

The Good News Flower Hour #18
Oh noes!