Casino Senator Guatemala

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater. House-keeping:

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Let’s dig in!
Since the coronavirus was the one big story last week, I’m going to do away with the “Main Course” division this week - these are all “sides” in the sense that I have a feeling many people missed these developments.

Biden-probe subpoena

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) canceled a planned vote to issue a subpoena in its investigation into Hunter Biden and his work in Ukraine. Johnson informed the committee that instead of subpoenaing former consultant Andrii Telizhenko, he will issue a subpoena to the Democratic public relations firm he worked for: Blue Star Strategies.
Although Johnson said the subpoena vote was canceled to give senators time to “receive additional briefings,” a Ukrainian source (Chief editor of The Odessa Review Vladislav Davidzon) told CNN that the subject of the subpoena, Telizhenko, offered him cash to lobby Republican politicians to speak out against Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts - specifically Ukrainian lawmaker’s attempts to censure two media networks for “broadcasting Russian propaganda.”

In October 2018, the same month that lawmakers voted in favor of a resolution to sanction the two stations, Telizhenko wrote to Davidzon, asking: "Have a question do you or your father have contacts with US Senators? I really need a favour for witch (sic) I can pay up to 5k."
...After expressing concerns about how the new Ukrainian proposals could shut the broadcasters down, Telizhenko then says: “My question is is it possible to get an official comment on a Senators (Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham for example) website next week about this situation of censorship in Ukraine? Really important for me and need fast.”

Ranking member on the committee, Sen. Gary Peters, opposed subpoenaing Telizhenko because he warned that the investigation could be tainted by Russian disinformation. The revelation that Telizhenko has indeed worked for Russian interests seems to substantiate his concerns.

• Sen. Murphy’s strategy: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) formally requested the inspectors general for the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Archives investigate whether those agencies are selectively cooperating with Republican-led efforts to “investigate” Joe and Hunter Biden — while refusing cooperation with Democratic oversight efforts directed at Trump.

Politicizing intelligence

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence provided its first briefing to Congress since the previous DNI, Joseph Maguire, was fired by Trump for allowing his aide to tell Congress that Russia was acting to boost his re-election chances. The current acting-DNI, Ric Grenell, backed out of briefing Congress himself, reportedly because he did not want to discuss issues that make President Trump angry. Instead, his office was represented by William Evanina, the top counterintelligence official at the ODNI.
The latest briefing provided information contradictory to Maguire’s briefing, confusing and frustrating House members. Grenell’s office told Congress that the Kremlin is not “directly aiding any candidate’s re-election or any other candidates’ election.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reportedly confronted the ODNI officials, accusing them of politicizing critical intelligence and providing insufficient and contradictory information about Russia’s interference.

Russia ramps up interference

While the Trump administration continues to hide and spin intelligence, the media reports that Russia continues to interfere in the U.S. political system. According to seven current officials, the Kremlin is increasing efforts to inflame racial tensions in America as part of its ongoing operation to influence the November elections.

...Now, Russia is also trying to influence white supremacist groups, the officials said; they gave few details, but one official said federal investigators are examining how at least one neo-Nazi organization with ties to Russia is funded. Other Russian efforts, which American intelligence agencies have tracked, involve simply prodding white nationalists to more aggressively spread hate messages and amplifying their invective. Russian operatives are also trying to push black extremist groups toward violence...

Last week, Facebook and Twitter announced they had discovered a Russian-led network of professional trolls outsourced to operatives in Ghana and Nigeria. The network’s 71 Twitter accounts, 49 Facebook accounts, and 85 Instagram accounts were removed.

“These 71 removed accounts, operating out of Ghana and Nigeria and which we can reliably associate with Russia, attempted to sow discord by engaging in conversations about social issues, like race and civil rights,” said Twitter’s safety team in a statement.

Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter requesting that the EU introduce additional sanctions against “Putin’s Chef” Yevgeny Prighozin to deter him and the Kremlin from interfering in elections this year.

“As the presidential election in the United States draws closer, our concerns about foreign interference have intensified...The U.S. and European Union should be unified in facing this common threat and take concrete measures to isolate this malign actor and his affiliated firms. This includes sanctions, but also a joint diplomatic approach to urge that countries avoid engaging with Mr. Prigozhin, Wagner and any other organization associated with him."

Purge continues

Acting-DNI Ric Grenell imposed a hiring freeze at the ODNI starting last week, ordering a review of the agency’s personnel and mission:

Some current and former officials said they saw the effort as an attempt to oust intelligence officers who disagreed politically with Mr. Trump. Those officials questioned why Mr. Grenell, in the job temporarily, would undertake a large-scale reorganization, particularly one that previous directors had considered but put aside…Kashyap Patel, an aide in the director’s office who was transferred last month from the White House [and former aide to Representative Devin Nunes], is involved in the review…

The White House is also holding up the nomination of Kathryn Wheelbarger for one of the Pentagon’s top intelligence jobs because she is not considered sufficiently loyal to Trump. Wheelbarger, who has been serving as acting assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs since November 2018, is nominated to become the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.

The post that Wheelbarger would fill is one of 21 senior positions at the Pentagon that are empty or filled on a temporary basis, a record high for the Trump administration.

In the middle of a global pandemic, one of the lead response agencies is losing its chief: Mark Green is set to resign from the U.S. Agency for International Development at the end of the month. Green will be replaced by USAID Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick, a Trump loyalist.

FEC nominee confirmation

Last Tuesday, the Senate held a confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to the Federal Election Commission, James “Trey” Trainor. It’s been over two years since Trainor was first nominated to fill the seat left empty by Republican Commissioner Lee Goodman in 2018. Then, last year, the commission’s vice chairman, Matthew Petersen, resigned, leaving only three members in place. The FEC needs a minimum of four members to take actions like investigating campaign finance violations, enforcing rules, and issuing fines.
Trainor is a controversial nominee with a history of advancing partisan gerrymandering and past work for Trump. After the Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, Trainor worked with gerrymandering expert and Republican strategist Thomas Hofeller to successfully implement redistricting maps in Texas that were previously ruled to be discriminatory. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the following at Tuesday’s hearing:

“He has worked closely with Thomas Hofeller, notorious for masterminding Republican gerrymandering schemes, to redraw maps that significantly disenfranchise minority voters at the local level. Mr. Trainor’s former law firm described him as being ‘intimately involved’ in Texas’s 2003 redistricting, which the Supreme Court deemed in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Mr. Trainor has argued the Voting Rights Act has become a political tool.”

Schumer also quoted Trainor as saying in 2017 that political donations should be anonymous.

“The Republicans have nominated someone who wants to roll back Citizens United, which the overwhelming majority of the American people support, public disclosure of who’s giving,” Schumer said, adding: “It’s amazing.”

Trainor faced pressure to recuse himself from overseeing any campaign finance matters involving Trump, because he served as a legal adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign team. Ranking Senate Rules and Administration Committee Member Amy Klobuchar pressed Trainor:

“So you’re not going to just recuse yourself from the beginning on a Trump matter?” Klobuchar asked, visibly surprised.
“No, not as a blanket recusal, and I don’t think that there is anyone at the commission currently who has a blanket recusal,” Trainor said. “I think we should all follow the same rules and guidelines.”

Judges finally speak out

U.S District Judge Lynn Adelman, of Wisconsin, published an article in the Harvard Law and Policy Review titled “The Roberts Court's Assault on Democracy.” Adelman takes Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to task for joining the court’s hard right justices in “undermining American democracy” by “carrying out a sustained assault on the right of poor people and minorities to vote” and “reinforcing the enormous imbalance in wealth and political power that has developed in recent decades.”

He described Roberts' 2005 Senate confirmation testimony as "misleading" and declared that "the Roberts Court has contributed to insuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals."

Adelman also attacks President Trump for helping the Republican party continue policies that worsen wealth inequality:

Although he ran as a populist and promised to promote policies that benefited ordinary people, upon taking office Trump almost entirely reversed course. He appointed mostly wealthy far-right Republicans and their supporters to his cabinet and to key positions in his administration… Trump also supported a tax bill that provided big benefits to the country’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals and virtually nothing to the majority of American taxpayers.
...Because Congressional Republicans depend on a relatively small number of wealthy donors to stay in power, their major public policy goal is to do whatever makes such donors happy.

Last week, another prominent member of the judicial community publicly blasted the Chief Justice: Former Hawaii District Judge for 27 years James Dannenberg submitted his resignation from the Supreme Court Bar to Roberts. In a public letter, Dannenberg criticized Roberts for “allowing the Court to become an ‘errand boy’ for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.”
“I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have,” Dannenberg’s letter to Roberts begins.

The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others… More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.
...The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.
...I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.

Important court rulings

McGahn and border wall
The full bench of the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals announced on Friday that it will rehear the House’s appeal for Don McGahn’s testimony, vacating the three-judge panel’s previous ruling that judges can’t resolve subpoena disputes between the executive branch and Congress. Arguments are set for April 28.
The same court will also take on the House’s challenge of Trump’s emergency declaration to use over $6 billion of federal funds to fund his southern border wall even though Congress only appropriated $1.375 billion. Trump-appointed judge Trevor McFadden dismissed the House’s initial lawsuit last year.
Mueller’s grand jury
In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Justice Department must allow Congress access to secret material collected by Mueller’s grand jury in its Russian interference investigation. Judges Judith Rogers and Thomas Griffith - Clinton and W. Bush appointees, respectively - found that the House’s impeachment investigation is a legal judicial process that exempts Congress from secrecy rules that typically shield grand jury materials. The Appeals Court decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Trump appointee Judge Neomi Rao dissented, saying the House did have legal grounds to ask the court to enforce the subpoena since the impeachment investigation has ended. Rao has taken Trump’s side in virtually every case she’s heard.

it’s hard not to see the trap Rao has built around Congress. Her Mazars opinion claims that Congress has only one path it can use to investigate President Trump. Then, when Congress traveled down the very same path that Rao identified in Mazars, Judge Rao invents a new limit — suggesting that Congress may only get one shot at an impeachment inquiry. Moreover, as Tatel suggests in the Mazars majority opinion, Rao appears to have invented the constitutional limit she placed on congressional investigations out of thin air.
The Atlantic’s David Frum wrote that Rao’s Mazars dissent was “wild talk that would shut down almost all congressional investigations.” Maybe that’s the point — at least as long as Trump is in the White House.

Food stamp cuts
Friday evening, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell issued an injunction preventing the Trump administration from implementing a rule change that would force nearly 700,000 Americans off food stamps.

"Especially now, as a global pandemic poses widespread health risks, guaranteeing that government officials at both the federal and state levels have flexibility to address the nutritional needs of residents and ensure their well-being through programs like SNAP, is essential," Howell wrote.

Trump cases

The Washington Post reported that District Court Judge Lorna Schofield ordered Trump and his three adult children to “search through 15 years of business records for materials that could inform a lawsuit alleging they profited by promoting a marketing scam targeting vulnerable investors.”

Trump is being sued by four people who say they were duped into joining the multilevel marketing company ACN years ago because of his endorsement. The suit characterizes ACN as a pyramid scheme and accuses Trump of having made misleading claims as a paid pitchman prior to his presidency. All four say they suffered financially as a result.
...In this case, unlike in others, he has not asserted presidential immunity as a defense, and his legal team has already turned over a number of documents.

Atlantic City officials announced they will soon be filing an injunction in Superior Court to demolish the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino tower because it is an “imminent hazard.” The city’s mayor, Mary Small, told the press that chunks of the building’s concrete and stucco facade are actively raining onto nearby streets.

“We could have had a fatality,” Small said. “Things will not be tolerated in the city of Atlantic City.”

The crumbling building has been owned by billionaire and Trump-ally Carl Icahn since 2016, though it has been closed since 2014.
Icahn endorsed Trump for president in 2016 and financially supported his campaign. Icahn also served as special economic adviser on financial regulation to Trump briefly in 2017, leaving amid concerns of conflicts of interest. In one of many concerning incidents, it was reported that stock for CVR Energy, in which Icahn has 82% ownership, doubled after President Trump's election, increasing $455 million in value.

• Don’t miss: Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year. “In the early 90s, Donald Trump judged the world’s biggest modelling competition - since hit by allegations of abuse… The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models. Some of these allegations amount to sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation of teenage girls; others are more accurately described as rape.”

Trump profiting off presidency: Week 164

• CNN: Hotels, clubs and restaurants owned by Trump or bearing his name have billed various federal agencies and personnel more than $1 million since he became the Republican nominee for president...About half of the documented expenses involve the U.S. Secret Service, which has been charged more than $600,000 by various Trump properties between September 2016 and August 2019.
  
• CREW: Taxpayers paid President Trump’s Doonbeg resort $15,144.94 for Secret Service lodging during Vice President Mike Pence’s September 2019 trip to Ireland… We can now say definitively that Pence’s detour not only cost taxpayers extra due to large transportation costs, but also that the bill subsidized one of Trump’s struggling businesses.
  
• CREW: On March 7, less than two weeks after President Trump returned from an official visit to India, the business he still owns and profits from made an announcement: it would now ship Trump-branded products to India. This appears to be a clear violation of the Trump family’s pledge of no new foreign business during the Trump presidency, and an invitation for corruption... India is joined on the announcement by Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland (which we must note is still technically part of the United Kingdom) and Germany.
  
• ProPublica: The Trump Organization paid bribes, through middlemen, to New York City tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s, according to five former tax assessors and city employees as well as a former Trump Organization employee. Two of the five city employees said they personally took bribes to lower the assessment on a Trump property; the other three said they had indirect knowledge of the payments.
  
• New York Times summarized by HuffPo: President Donald Trump’s campaign manager is quietly channeling money to Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, and Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle… The family benefits are linked to a network of politically connected private companies — operating with the support and help of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — that have charged roughly $75 million since 2017 to the Trump reelection campaign, the Republican National Committee and other Republican clients
  

States, elections, and environment

• Ecowatch: A federal judge in Alaska ruled late Wednesday against a Trump administration plan to open 1.8 million acres of America's largest national forest to logging. The Forest Service plan targeted part of the Tongass National Forest on Prince of Wales Island.
  
• Press release: The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration today for failing to decide whether 241 plants and animals across the country — from the Midwest’s golden-winged warbler to Venus flytraps in the Carolinas — should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit, filed in district court in Washington, D.C., is one of the largest ever under the Act and seeks to undo years of illegal inaction by the Trump administration.
  
• NYT: A New York man who threatened to kill Representative Ilhan Omar in a hate-filled call to her office was sentenced to a year and a day in prison… Mr. Carlineo admitted to making the threatening call, and described himself as a patriot who loved Mr. Trump and hated “radical Muslims in our government,” according to the criminal complaint.
  
• ProPublica: The Republican National Committee has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to contractors closely connected to the organization’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. One contract went to her husband’s insurance company. Two others went to businesses whose executives recently donated to Ronna for Chair, a largely inactive political action committee that McDaniel controls.
  
• CNN and NYT: Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was arrested in Texas on a charge of driving while intoxicated… [Also,] The New York State attorney general has issued a cease-and-desist order to Alex Jones, the conservative radio host, alarmed by false claims on his website that his diet supplements and toothpaste could be used to fight the coronavirus.
  

Immigration news

• Politico: Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday he was unaware of any indication from his agency that physical barriers along America’s borders would help halt the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. — contradicting an assertion President Donald Trump made earlier in the day.
  
• The Guardian: Doctors are concerned the spread of coronavirus to the US’s prison-like immigration detention centers is inevitable and will hit a system blighted by overcrowding and medical negligence… Dr Josiah Rich, an epidemiologist at Brown University, said one tool the US government has to prevent the spread of coronavirus is to release some of the 43,990 people in immigration detention, while their legal cases are being processed. People are held in these detention centers for civil immigration violations, not criminal charges, and the government can release them unless they are considered a danger to the community.
  
• NPR: The U.S. Supreme Court delivered the Trump administration another win on one of its signature immigration policies on Wednesday, allowing it to continue the controversial "Remain in Mexico" policy across the entire southern border. The policy, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols, requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their day in U.S. immigration court. That has led to roughly 60,000 migrants getting sent back across the border since MPP was first implemented in January 2019.
  
• NPR: Hundreds of asylum-seekers who reach the Texas-Mexico border aren't getting a chance to make their case in U.S. immigration court. Instead, the migrants — mostly women and children — are put on planes to Guatemala and told to ask for asylum in that country.
  
• CNN: In explosive audio obtained through the work of a leading human rights group and released by CNN, a Trump administration attorney is heard finally admitting what experts and advocates have been insisting from the start: Remain in Mexico, the administration policy forcing tens of thousands of vulnerable asylum-seekers to wait for their U.S. immigration court dates in Mexico, is in fact dangerous.
  
  • “I think what I’m hearing from the government is, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like it,” the judge said, according to the audio. “What I’m hearing is, that well everybody has to take that risk and that chance, and you get kidnapped, you get kidnapped, that’s the risk you take for being in Mexico, and wanting to apply for asylum here in the United States … I don’t think it’s humane. But we’re talking about human beings and lives. It’s not a piece of paper in my opinion. And I really don’t like what I just heard.”
• Washington Post: Pregnant woman dies after falling from border wall, a sign of migrants’ desperation… A year ago, during the height of the family migration surge, the couple probably would have tried to turn themselves in to seek asylum, he said. But an array of new restrictions imposed by the Trump administration is driving border-crossers to take more risks, migrant advocates say.
  

1. The Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas, has two sections of the Berlin Wall in its Trinity Corridor.
2. This portion of the Berlin Wall, located in front of St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa, was given to former South African President Nelson Mandela in the 1990s.
3. Children play in a park in Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain, where a section of the Berlin Wall resides.
4. This colorful portion of the Berlin Wall resides at The Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War in Culver City, California. It was painted by French-born and Berlin-based artist Thierry Noir.
5. The French municipality of Courbevoie bought this piece of the Berlin Wall back in 1990. It sits on display in the La Defense business district and includes a painting by famed German artist Kiddy Citny.
6. The Blloku district of Tirana, Albania, unveiled this portion of the Berlin Wall as part of a memorial to honor victims of communism in the country.
7. In addition, a segment of the wall resides outside the Imperial War Museum, in London, England.
8. The Royal Engineers Museum, in Gillingham, England, also holds a portion of the Berlin Wall.
9. Sections of the Berlin Wall stand as historical remnants in the Cold War exhibition of the Royal Air Force Museum, located in the village of Cosford, England.
10. A three-ton portion of the Berlin Wall is on permanent display at the Armory in Seattle, Washington.
11. Chapman University, located in Orange, California, has one of the largest displays of the Berlin Wall on a university campus. The section of the wall is surrounded by an Abraham Lincoln quote which says, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
12. Plaza Berlin was built in coordination with the German Embassy of Guatemala and the Municipality of Guatemala in Guatemala City. The large space holds three sections of the Berlin Wall, a fountain made with Venetian mosaics brought by German residents in the country, and stunning panoramic views of the city.
13. Ten segments of the Berlin Wall are on display outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California. The structure weights 25 tons.
14. The European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, also contains original pieces of the Berlin Wall.
15. Here, a chunk of the Berlin Wall can be seen through lush trees in Yokohama, a Japanese city that sits south of Tokyo.
16. This 12-foot-tall portion of the Berlin Wall is on display at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California. It is covered with red, white, and blue graffiti on the side that faced democratic West Berlin while the side facing East Berlin remains unpainted.
17. In this photo, schoolchildren can be seen walking near a piece of the Berlin Wall that sits on display in Battery Park in New York City.
18. When visiting the Vatican Gardens of Vatican City, you'll come across a slab of the Berlin Wall that was allegedly won by former Ferrari motor sport director Marco Piccinini during an auction in 1990. He gifted it to the Vatican in 1994.
19. In 1990, the Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie (Checkpoint Charlie Museum) in Berlin presented this segment of the wall to the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center in Moscow, Russia. It was decorated by artists and rises above the lawn near the museum building today.
20. Local artists will often paint portions of the wall. Here, Victor Landeta, a street artists, spray paints a portrait of Nelson Mandela on a segment of the Berlin Wall in Kleinmachnow, Germany.
21. Oddly enough, a section of the Berlin Wall was installed into the men's restroom of the Main Street station Casino, Brewery and Hotel, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The wall is protected by glass and can be observed by female visitors with the help of the area's security guards.
22. There's another segment of the wall in Buenos Aires at the garden of San Martin palace, the headquarters of Argentina's Foreign Ministry.
23. In 1991, Perfil Group, an Argentinian news company based in Buenos Aires, bought 20 segments of the Berlin Wall. The segments represent symbols of freedom to the company and stand protected behind a sheet of glass in the company's lobby.
24. A piece of the Berlin Wall resides in Ein Hod, Israel. Ein Hod was founded in 1953 by a group of artists and remains an art-centered community where around 150 artists and their families reside.
25. This portion of the Berlin Wall traveled from Hamburg to Miami Dade College's Wolfs Campus in Miami, Florida, last year. On the day of its unveiling, around 1,500 people gathered at the campus with German flags to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall.
26. If you happen to be at Chicago's Western Brown Line L Station, located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, look out for an 11-foot-tall and 4-foot-wide portion of the Berlin Wall. The piece was given to the city by the Senate and City of Berlin as a commemorative relic.
27. This piece of the Berlin Wall has been on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, since 1990.
28. These four pieces of the Berlin Wall stand in Indonesian sculptor Teguh Ostenrik's workshop, located in Depok, Indonesia. Ostenrik brought the four original sections to Indonesia in 1990.
29. The Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism in Washington, D.C., houses eight 12-foot-high concrete sections of the Berlin Wall. Next to them, you'll find a three-story East German guard tower that used to be located near Checkpoint Charlie.
30. In 2004, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced the creation of an open plaza area in Seoul, South Korea, that would be known as Berlin Square. With three segments of the Berlin Wall, street lights from Berlin, benches, and German trees, the Plaza has been built to stand as a symbol of hope for the reunification of North and South Korea.
31. This 12-foot section of the Berlin Wall was given to Olympic champion Usain Bolt by the city of Berlin after he broke the world records in the 100 and 200 meter finals of the World Athletics Championships in 200229. The gift sits at the Jamaica Military Museum and Library in Kingston.
32. "The Day the Wall Came Down" is a statue in the George H.W. Bush Library, in College Station, Texas. The statue depicts horses bolting for freedom over six broken segments of the Berlin Wall.
33. Three segments of the Berlin Wall were gifted to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City by the Federal Republic of Germany. The illustration displays a boy and a girl meeting over the wall.
34. Over the years, segments of the Berlin Wall have been gifted and sold to countries around the world. Here, portions of the Wall are up for sale at a storage yard in Teltow, Germany.
35. The East Side Gallery is approximately a one-mile portion of the Berlin Wall in Berlin, Germany. The gallery is filled with symbolic artwork, like this one of a car breaking through the wall.

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Quote of the Day

All the stores will open up if you say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall motherfucker, this is a stick up!

— Amiri Baraka, "Black People!"
Word of the Day
Motherfucker — An epithet recalling slave days. If you were a slave, it was likely that the master was sexually assaulting your mother on a regular basis. To call someone in power a motherfucker is to cast light on the genealogical ties that connect those who currently hold power with the brutal history upon which this society was built.
Such a charged word insinuates itself into every context; it becomes an intensifier that can modify anything. Thus many foes of the powerful have become known as bad motherfuckers—including the Motherfuckers, short for Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, the self-professed "street gang with analysis" that sought to push the counterculture of New York City towards armed insurrection at the end of the 1960s.
563 [BC] — Gautama Siddharta The Buddha. He lives.
1341 — Petrarch crowned poet laureate, steps of capital in Rome.
1614 — Death of Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as "El Greco," painter.
1695 — Johann Christian Gunther lives. Briefly studied medicine at Wittenberg; then, disinherited by his father in 1719, who opposed his poetical ambitions, he will compose his greatest work, Leonorenlieder, a confessional poem in which he pleads to his father for mercy.
1712 — US: New York City slave revolt suppressed, 21 are executed.
1798 — Ramón de la Sagra y Periz, anarchist, lives (1798-1871).
1819 — Walter Scott begins dictating The Bride of Lammermoor as gallstones make the act of writing impossible.
1826 — US: Secretary of State Henry Clay & Senator John Randolph, who accused Clay of striking a "corrupt bargain" to steal the 1824 Presidential election from Andrew Jackson, fight a duel in Virginia. Like most politicians, they both missed.
1864 — US: 13th Amendment passes, abolishing slavery. Does not include wage slavery.
1871 — Robert Louis Stevenson, 21, walks with his father & tells him he is abandoning a career in engineering for writing.
1872 — US: Colville Indian reservation created east of Columbia River; after white farmers pressure the government, a second reservation, on less arable land, is designated instead.
1873 — Merdre! Merdre! Alfred Jarry lives. French poet, novelist, playwright, freelance scoundrel & author of Ubu Roi, a forerunner of the Theatre of Absurd. Among other accomplishments, was Pablo Picasso's weapon supplier (Picasso used the pistol to shoo away bores) & making his mark on 'Pataphysics' (the acceptance of every event in the universe as an extraordinary event). Died of alcoholism & tuberculosis.
1877 — Italy: In the township of Letino (Matese) the "Gang of Matese" hand the city clerk an official notice before giving a speech, burning land deeds, & heading off to liberate yet another town:

"We the undersigned declare to have occupied, arms in hand, the municipal building of Letino in the name of the social revolution."

— Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, Pietro Cesaré Ceccarelli
1885 — Panama: Yes, We Have No Ripe Bananas? US Troops invade, to "protect US interests."
1888 — France: Launching of the daily newspaper of the possibilistes, " Le Parti ouvrier," which became a weekly magazine of the Allemanist tendency in 1890.
1894 — Raffaele Schiavina (1894-1987) lives. Schiavina collaborated on many anarchist newspapers (in Italian). He was imprisoned & later expelled from the "land of the free" in 1919 for anti-war activities. In Paris, he participated in the defense of Sacco & Vanzetti. Schiaviana was imprisoned (Italy) & harrassed (France) numerous times before returning to the US where he published, for 45 years, the weekly magazine "Adunata dei Refrattari" (longest lasting paper of the Italian-American anarchist movement).
Among his noms de plume: Cesare; Nando; Michetta; Calibano; Max Sartin; Labor; Manhattanite; Bob; Juan Taro; X.Y.; R.S.; & M.S.
1898 — Maurice Bowra lives, Kiukiang, China. Among his Greek translations is Pindar's Pythian Odes.
1902 — Guatemala: Eruption of Santa Maria volcano leaves 1,000 dead.
1909 — US: Federal court in Buffalo, NY invalidates the citizenship of Jacob A. Kersner, Emma Goldman's legal husband; threatens Goldman's claim to US citizenship & results in cancellation of Goldman's trip to Australia.
1909 — American novelist John Fante lives.
Stricken with diabetes in 1955, its complications brought about blindness in 1978 & leg amputations, but John continued to write by dictation.
The key figure in Fante's resurrection was novelist/poet Charles Bukowski, who discovered one of his books in the public library while "starving & drinking & trying to be a writer," & who subsequently described Fante as his "god."
By the late 1970s Bukowski was an international success & in a position to urge his publishers, Black Sparrow Press, to reissue Ask the Dust, "the finest novel written in all time."
Despite his near invisibility, Fante still maintains a strong cult following. He remains a favorite of readers who enjoy bohemian urban fiction in the vein of Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, & Knut Hamsun.
[In the last few years he is becoming widely recognized internationally as an outstanding 20th century novelist.]
1913 — US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Liberal Woodrow Wilson becomes the first US President since George Washington to appear before Congress.
1916 — US: Emma Goldman gives a lecture on birth control at the New Star Casino, in NY, for which she is arrested & put on trial on the 20th.
1926 — England: Emma Goldman lectures in Norwich (part of a series on dramatists begun on March 25th).
1937 — Canada: United Auto Workers (UAW) strike at General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario, for recognition.
1937 — Spain: In "Ideas," Jaime Balius' article entitled "Let's make revolution," he critically argues,

"if [Companys] had a larger contingent of armed forces at his disposal, he would have the working class back in the capitalist harness."

1938 — Big Band leader Joseph "King" Oliver dies.
1939 — Trina Schart Hyman, author & illustrator, lives.
1939 — Emma Goldman sails for Canada, arriving in Toronto on April 21, where she establishes residence.
1942 — André Girard (known as Max Buhr) (1860-1942) dies. Anarchist militant & trade unionist.
1945 — France: Congress of the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL), in Toulouse (April 8-9th). Participants include Victor García, who assumes responsibility for publishing the journals "Ruta" & "Solidaridad Obrera", puis de secrétaire de la IJA (Jeunesse Anarchiste Internationale).
1946 — League of Nations assembles for last time, passing a motion declaring themselves to be — dare we say — out of their league?
1950 — J. D. Salinger's best known short story, "For Esmé — With Love & Squalor" appears in "The New Yorker."
1950 — Spain: José Lluis Facerias, anti-fascist guerrilla, blows up the Lonja police station in Barcelona. Facerias was a veteran leader of the anarchist action groups, operating since the end of the Spanish Revolution in 1939.
1952 — US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Truman orders US Army to seize the nation's steel mills to avert a strike. The act was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court on 2 June.
1956 — US: Six recruits at Parris Island Marine Base drown when their drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon, disciplined them for "minor disorderliness" by marching them into a tidal swamp. He taught 'em good.
1959 — France: Felipe Alaiz de Pablo (1887-1959) dies, exiled in Paris. Anarquista & journalist. Director of "Revista de Aragon", writer for "El sol de Madrid," "Heraldo de Aragon," "La Revista Blanca," "Solidaridad Obrera" de Valencia & Sevilla. Published novels & works on anarchism & translations.
1960 — Folksinger Odetta appears at Carnegie Hall.
1966 — US: Pole Cats? Last poll tax outlawed by Federal courts.
1966 — US: The Jefferson Airplane opens at California Hall on Polk Street, Frisco.
1966 — US: Show & Tell Time? "Time" magazine asks on its cover, "Is God Dead?"
1967 — US: Nashville Black uprising, April 8-10th, following Carmichael's speech at Fisk University; (Tennessee House of Representatives calls for Carmichael's deportation from the state?)
1973 — Spanish painter & communist Pablo Picasso dies, Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes, France.

Drink to me.

— Picasso's last words

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

1973 — US: A Harris Poll reports 51% of Americans support the American Indian Movement (AIM) protesters occupying Wounded Knee, South Dakota; 21% support the federal government.
1974 — Hammerin' Hank Aaron hits 715th home run, beats Babe Ruth's baseball record. His run at the record got him much hate mail & numerous death threats by whites.

"Throwing a fastball to Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak the sun past a rooster."

— Curt Simmons, pitcher
1977 — Argentina: Adriana Gatti is today "disappeared" by government security forces.
Adriana (8-9 months pregnant) was previously kidnapped from her home on March 31, but was set free on that day. Today is not so fortuitous.
Her father, Gerardo Gatti, an Uruguayan anarchist labor militant, was also "disappeared" by the Argentine government in 1976 — tortured & put up for ransom before being murdered.
1978 — Gaston Leval dies. Son of a French Communard, anarchist syndicalist, combatant & historian of the Spanish Revolution of 1936.
1984 — US: CinemaScope? With a nod to George Orwell, desperately trying to crawl his way back from a political oblivion unpresidented in American history, Dick "The Trickster" Nixon avows:

"It's the media's responsibility to examine the President with a microscope... but when they use a proctoscope, it's going to far."

1984 — US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader acting President Ronnie Reagan's Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger says

"The United States is not mining the harbors of Nicaragua."

— an indefensible lie.
1986 — US: The Motion Picture Association of America rules that all movies that refer to illegal drugs will be given nothing below a PG-13 rating.
1988 — The self-extinguishing armchair is invented. Gone but not forgotten!
1993 — Sweden: Women in Black demonstrate in solidarity with their Serbian sisters, Lund.

We dressed in black. We knew that despair & pain needed to be transformed into political action. Our choice of black meant that we did not agree with everything that the Serbian regime was doing. We refused their language which promotes hate & death. We repeated:
"DO NOT SPEAK FOR US, WE WILL SPEAK FOR OURSELVES "

1993 — World Court orders Serbs to cease genocide in Bosnia. Why oppose genocide only in Bosnia you ask??
1993 — Germany: "Libertarian Days" April 8-12th, held for the second time at the University of Frankfort, including the "Libertarian Book Fair."
1995 — US: 1,000 Jobs With Justice Washington state activists in Bellingham, Tacoma, Olympia, Seattle & Yakima rally against the Republican "Contract With America."
2001 — US: The head of National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations demands an apology Saturday from Jay Leno for his comment that Hizzoner Rudolph Giuliani is "fascist" for appointing a "decency" committee on art.
In a departure from his usual schtick, Leno on Thursday labeled Giuliani a "fascist" for appointing a decency commission to determine whether certain pieces of art are offensive.
The comedian compared Giuliani's efforts to Adolf Hitler's crusade to remove what he called "degenerate art" from German museums in the early years of the Third Reich.
2002 — US: Court Overturns Book Store Order.
The Colorado Supreme Court refused to order a bookstore to turn over its sales records to police, overturning a lower court decision demanding the records as part of a drug investigation.
The First Amendment & the state Constitution "protect an individual's fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference,'' the court ruled.
The decision overturns a Denver district judge who ordered Tattered Cover Book Store owner Joyce Meskis to tell police who purchased two books on drug manufacturing from her store.
The Tattered Cover, one of the country's largest independent bookstores, was assisted in the case by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.
2003 — US: Baseball Hall of Fame president cancels a planned celebration for the 15th anniversary of "Bull Durham," citing recent comments by film co-stars Tim Robbins & Susan Sarandon as potential dangers to US troops in Iraq. The celebration was to take place April 26 & 27. In protest of the cancellation, on the 11th sportswriter Roger Kahn cancels a planned appearance at the baseball museum.
2003 — Iraq: Deaths of three journalists in Baghdad: Two American air to surface missiles hit the Qatar satellite station Al Jazeera's office in Baghdad, killing a reporter & wounding a cameraman. The nearby office of Arab satellite channel Abu Dhabi is also hit. Al Jazeera accuses the US of attacking Arab media to hide facts. Meanwhile a US tank fires into the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where most remaining foreign journalists are based, killing two cameramen.
2010 — Chile: Renaming Santiago International airport for poet Pablo Neruda nixed.