Human rights for even Anders Breivik

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Eric Verlo

In retrospect, awarding the newly elected Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize was about as smartly ambitious as it gets. Everyone knows humanitarians don’t do it for the reward. A Nobel Prize is wasted if there’s not some eligible sociopath who might be influenced with the pressure to behave themselves. President Obama’s Nobel medal was an experiment in paying it forward. Who knows how much more bloodthirsty Obama might have gotten with his drones had not the Nobel committee tried to extort him with its higher expectations? The Nobel award givers took a lot of ribbing for their foolishness from those of us who weren’t idealist enough. AND SO IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE when Norway’s mass murdering overachiever Anders Breivik sued his jailers for abusing his human rights because he wasn’t getting sufficient visitors in his cushy prison suite, that the Norwegian supreme court would rule Breivik was right.

Of course they did. If you’re not going to give a death sentence to a crazed bigot who guns down 76 children, if you’re not going to throw him in a hole but instead give him a spacious accommodation, if instead of a life sentence you let him pursue university studies and limit his incarceration to twenty some years, then you don’t want to isolate your prisoner from human contact if it might appear even as a semblance of solitary confinement. Because lesser cultures do that.

Lesser capitalist flagship states isolate, execute and torture. I so appreciate that Norway wants to set a high bar, but I despair that the land of Guantanamo and waterboarding and indefinite detention and ILLEGAL detention and rendition and extrajudicial assassination and no habeus corpus can’t even see this bar to reach it.

Police take poetic license with wanted posters of New York prison fugitives

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Eric Verlo

LOOKIT! New York authorities have issued fresh images of escapees David Sweat and Richard Matt. You might wonder where they got photos more recent than the last mug shots, which was the last time the prison break fugitives were in custody. Plus the news coverage has been unequivocal that authorities haven’t seen the wayward prisoners since.

It turns out the latest images are called “PROGRESSIVE PHOTOS” depicting how the convicted murderers are supposed to look at ten days into their freedom quest. Authorities are assuming they haven’t reached razors, so each has a ten-day shadow; and police artists have Photoshopped t-shirts over the original penitentiary vestments. But the photo manipulation didn’t stop there. The original mugshots were taken in identical environments, but these renditions feature distinct atmosphere changes, both darker.

The younger David Sweat is now lit with harsh florescent lights as one might encounter him in a convenience store or in YOUR GARAGE. Sweat’s pores are exposed like one might observe from inappropriate intimacy. Sweat’s receding hairline now looks more like hair plugs, as if his first stop after Dannemora was to a hair club for men. Sweat’s original friendly demeanor has been replaced with a calculated desperation. I’m guessing police artists have a PS morph tool labeled “John Wayne Gacy”.

Sweat’s brother-art-thou, alleged lothario Richard Matt, is now bathed in the incandescent light of YOUR BEDROOM.

I’m sure wanted posters have always afforded sheriffs the discretion to paint fugitives as menacing as needed. Photo manipulation is another animal altogether. It’s not poetic license, it’s character assassination. And it’s extrajudicial. Sweat and Matt are guilty of a nonviolent jailbreak. Until we can offer them justice — run boys run.

Gary McKinnon escapes US torturers, by staying outside US borders

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Eric Verlo

US efforts to extradite Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange and UK hacker Gary McKinnon, the latter thwarted today by UK courts, point to a puzzling question. Should it matter where accused are charged or tried if the US is looking for justice? The activities of both men are essentially curtailed by house arrest, so why is a timetable frustrated? Probably what the US can only achieve by extradition, where the public eye prevents CIA rendition, is INDEFINITE DETENTION. In American hands, that also includes psychologist-crafted “we don’t torture” torture. In effect, the Department of Justice has defined being within US borders as differential enough in the correctional scheme of things. House arrest in the UK is not a sufficient deterrent to would-be leakers and hackers apparently, US declared adversaries must be remanded to where the Empire already has its dissidents contained, in the custody of US borders.

No evidence to hold Sabar Lal Melma in Guantanamo, but enough to kill him?

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Image of Melma undarkened and flipped to shed menacing demeanor Hard to imagine we’d come to look at Guantanamo as a lesser evil. Gitmo held terror suspects without charges, indefinitely, secretly, and tortured them, to death sometimes. At least they and their families back home were safe from the pretext of a drone strike or special ops night raid. The targeted assassination of released 5-year Guantanamo alumn ISN 801 Sabar Lal Melma in Afghanistan raises the question: what constitutes enough cause to send a death squad after a suspected illegal combatant? The US didn’t have the evidence to bring charges against Melma, who was finally released in 2007 after an outpouring of Afghan voices vouched for his innocence, yet the US military retained suspicion enough to send NATO commandos into his home this weekend to execute the former detainee in front of his kids. It would seem if Obama has a problem with Guantanamo, it’s that illegal rendition and imprisonment is not extrajudicial enough.

Love is the Reason, with grammatical advice, from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Eric Verlo

I once saw a British TV spot for Hamlet Cigars which featured an oddball posing in a photo booth, but so endearingly. For years on, when asked to smile, I affected his toothy grimace, thinking my rendition channeled but transcended his comically unbecoming turn. I channeled nothing of it, each time, I can confirm.

Now I’ve traced my abuse of adverbs, not to this song, but to the spirit in which Broadway lyricist Dorothy Fields used THREE to frame the verses of Love is the Reason from the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In this song showstopping comic Shirley Booth advises her younger sister on love, ornamenting her insight with the authority-robbing qualifiers, meant to be irrelevant. Aspire as I might to stop, HANDILY I am my parody.

Love is the Reason
Each line is echoed by the chorus
(Parentheses indicate where reply varies)

Spoken: Suppose your mother never stood in a dark vestibule with your father, they might never have had to get married. Why do you suppose they did it? It was love.

Love is the reason you was born,
Love was the gleam in Papa’s eye.
People suddenly meet, People suddenly fit,
People suddenly hit, And brother, that’s it!

PERSONALLY Love is a kick right in the pants,
Love is the aspirin you buy.
If you’re flappin’ your fins, If you’re climbin’ a wall,
There must be a reason for it all. (What is the reason for it?)
Love is the reason for it all!

Love is a night you can’t recall,
Love is that extra drink you drank.
Love’s a shot in the arm, Love’s a poke in the ribs,
Buyin’ bottles and bibs, And fillin’ up cribs.

OBVIOUSLY Love is an old established trap,
Ten million suckers walk the plank.
If you land on your tail, Ev’ry time that you fall,
There must be a reason for it all. (Who needs a reason for it?)
Love is the reason for it all!

Love is a toothache in your heart,
Love is a gentlemanly pinch.
Love is stubbin’ your toe, Mashed potatoes with lumps,
Wearin’ very tight pumps, Or catchin’ the mumps.

GENERALLY Love is a blow below the belt,
Love is a holdin’ in a clinch.
If you shut your big mouth When his relatives call,
There must be a reason for it all. (Who needs a reason for it?)
Always the teasin’ in the hall; (Hallways are lovely for a call;)
Call it the season, I say, love is the reason for it all.

Coppelia and the Viennese Hesitation

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Eric Verlo

If you are hardwired with a cultural affliction like mine, if you find yourself with a compulsive affinity for the waltz, I’ll wager you will also be a sucker for what’s called the Viennese Hesitation. It was just such a hook that led me to a Slav melody that immersed me into a ballet called Coppélia, two days ago, and I still haven’t surfaced.

Any fan of ballet, or parent whose child has studied dance, will know about this beguiling comic classic. To the rest of us unwashed, Coppélia or The Girl with Enamel Eyes, draws a blank, likewise even of its composer, Leo Delibes. Most of us outside the world of dance think ballet is all nutcrackers and swans, or the usual literary themes transposed to choreography. What are ballets but silent films to opera’s talkies? In today’s terms, ballet scores were the first soundtracks, and if you find new film scores overwrought, you might be delighted to alight on Delibes and his clever heroine, yes, Swanilda.

The title character Coppélia is actually a doll, the creation of aging Dr. Coppelius in his efforts to fashion his idealized bride. Seated in a window above the square, the mechanical beauty entrances the village boys, in particular Swanilda’s suitor Franz, so it falls to the assertive girl to break the spell. Hilarity ensues. Or, beyond the traditional lighthearted reading…

You may not recognize the name Delibes, but you know his Mazurka. And I’ll bet you can hum his Pizzicato (a divertissement from Silvia) in its entirety. Tchaikovsky said if he’d fully appreciated Delibes’ mastery of composing for the ballet, he would not have dared write Swan Lake.

If you’d like to share my Coppélia experience, I’d love to curate it for you. Start with the Royal Ballet production available on Youtube, mostly because the entire performance is there, and its intertitles explain the plot. There are more lauded productions, but Youtube has enough of their highlights to satiate without testing your patience with Netflix. That said, you’ll want to put the 1994 Lyon Ballet adaptation to the top of your queue now, because we want to save that for last.

The 2000 Royal Ballet production provides an ideal example of a classic interpretation of COPPÉLIA on a Disney budget. The comedy is writ large enough for opera glasses in the nosebleed seats. The choreography is traditional with a Sorcerers Apprentice perfection to it. The costumes are precisely Galician, where this adaptation of a Hoffman tale is set, an agrarian village in a region now part of the Ukraine, but in 1870 belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The red boots go to the Hungarian wine makers who dance the Csardas, and the black boots to the Mazurka dancers returning from the wheat harvest.

Unfortunately the Royal Ballet appeared satisfied to play to the popular misconception that the story of Coppélia is a trifle. I’ll suggest as a rebuttal the 2001 production staged by the National Ballet School of Paris, where the students were clearly able to imbue the lovers with emotion and spirit. This Swanilda is danced by a 16-year-old ballerina, by coincidence the same age as the Italian-Parisian who originated the part before she succumbed to disease after the 18th performance, during the Prussian siege of Paris.

The student production dispenses with Act III, which was all divertissements as you’ll have noted, beautiful musical scenes, but extraneous to the plot, although the love story looses the enchanting La Paix (Peace) variation and the Dance de Fete pas de deux. But they manage to sneak in Act III’s La Fileuse into a dance.

By the way, in my opinion this production makes the very best of the aforementioned hesitation, basically a hanging pause. There’s a suspended hesitation inherent in every waltz, Viennese or otherwise, but Delibes renders this one monumental. In the Theme Slav in question, the fickle Franz punctuates each break with an entreaty, and each time Swanilda resumes her dance. Other choreographies of the Them Slav don’t even slow for those moments, some notably expunge the hesitations from the score altogether.

(Note: If you are curious about the solo for Franz interposed into this variation, it’s a short Scena taken from Act II of Delibes’ 1866 ballet The Source.)

You can compare and contrast or not, but I will suggest checking on other Swanildas to flesh out the flirtations, coy games and lovers quarrels of Act I. For example, ?do not miss Lucia Lacarra of the Munich production, in particular this less coy prelude to the Ballade de L’epi.

For a heartier rendition of the first folk dance, check out the 1993 Kirov Ballet Mazurka.

You will want to see Lisa Parvane of the 1990 Melborne Ballet, in the denouement of Act II, made to dance for Coppelius’ amusement, the Boléro Spanish dancer, and Gigue referred to as the Scottish reel, (actually “Gigue” pronounced in French is Jig), but mostly for the cathartic finale, where the mad Coppelius does not merely mourn the broken mechanical doll, as Delibes’ score makes clear, his heart breaks.

Where the students of Paris may have glossed over the old man’s loss, they did grasp the sociological theme of this tale, natural versus unnatural love, nature versus industrial modernity. The violin Ballade de L’Epi, where a spear of wheat is shaken to reveal if you’ve found true love. We know it as plucking the daisy. But where we’ve come to leave the outcome to chance, in a farming community the answer is sought from nature. Green grains will remain silent until they’re ripe and ready for harvest. This concept is faithfully conveyed by the students, as was the sequence which preceded it, where the tinkerer’s labors to animate his lone world are derided while the villagers anticipate the next day’s social festivities.

If you’re still looking for what makes COPPÉLIA more than a silly tale, you’re ready for the absolutely mesmerizing modernized interpretation filmed by the Opera Ballet de Lyon.

Lyon is not coincidentally France’s industrial center, and here the Coppelius malaise is contemporary. Ballet purists appeared to be aghast, and isn’t that the surest sign of a heretical message? Extracts one and two are online and make obvious this production pulls COPPÉLIA right back from the purgatory of children’s repertory. And here it helps I think to know the tale they’re supposed to be telling, to see what they really have to say. The peasants of Lyon are today much the wiser to the false reality foisted upon them by industrial culture. Their Mazurka is a silent glare. Swanilda’s waltz is a childish mocking of the inanimate Deneuve clone.

While some have describe the Lyon staging as a new twist on the tale, I’d say it’s a brilliant reexamination that gets to the core of why Coppélia became an immediate classic in the first place.

An aside about the Theme Slav. Like Offenbach and other contemporaries composing for the ballet, Delibes borrowed from folk melodies to inform his dances. His partner Saint-Leon returned from travels in Eastern Europe praising this popular melody he had overheard. The Slavic theme turned out not to have folk origins at all, but was a piece by composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, actually Poland’s national composer, author of numerous ballets and operas. Delibes gave credit where it was due, and the Slav melody stands out from among the indigenous varieties. At seven minutes it is Coppélia’s longest sequence. But it was Delibes who lent it the memorable hesitation motif which permeates the score.

In the Lyon production the musical hesitation comes in an early variation, a dramatic leap that already feels like it will haunt me forever.

COPPÉLIA celebrates the strength and wisdom of women, and nature, to overcome a young man’s hesitation, where that of the old man may be doomed, and his technology damned.

It’s the 9th anniversary of our illegal prison: Close Guantanamo Asshole!

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Is that disrespectful? IS THAT BEING TOO IMPOLITE? Is that showing INSUFFICIENT DEFERENCE TO THE TORTURER-IN-CHIEF? –who promised to close Guantanamo two years earlier but avers now because he was not allocated the funds to lock-up the prisoners elsewhere, or can’t find courts for his kangaroos, because this president thinks don’t do illegal detention, rendition and torture means don’t do it where we can see you. CLOSE IT. Take Gitmo’s remaining operating budget and fly the whole camp home. THEN, then hold a huge gala fundraiser, several million dollars a plate, where all your warmonger and torture cronies and their spouses can hold a raffle for one lucky couple to MAYBE be granted amnesty against charges of war crimes. How’s that for an exit strategy? Last chance. THEN take the sum raised as an offering to the freed detainees, prostrate yourself to beg their forgiveness –how could you not mean it?– and dare not begrudge even one of the unfortunate souls who might demand your heads on a platter in the bargain. IN THE MEANTIME, I’ll think on whether I’m showing disrespect.

John B. Spencer’s lost Christmas lyric for Will Your House Be Blessed?

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Gathering songs for a Christmas compilation, I went looking through different versions of “Will This House be Blessed?” by John B. Spencer. While the forgiveness spirit is in keeping with the season, everyone else’s cover lacked whatever it was I remembered tied the song literally to Christmas. I finally found Spencer’s original recording and there it was, an Easter reference actually, but too much irreligious specificity apparently for subsequent renditions.

Everybody since Spencer omits his last verse, instead repeating the first, which they also alter to “Let it go, let it go” and not “Let him go.”

For the record, versions by Harry Manx, Richard Thompson, and Martin Simpson et al. go by the more assuring title, absent the question mark, ONLY THEN WILL YOUR HOUSE BE BLESSED.

But here’s how John B sang it:

Let him go, let him go, let him go, go, go
Let your sword of vengeance rest.
?Do the blind lead the blind??
Don’t be cruel to be kind.?
Only then will your house be blessed.

Turn your cheek, turn your cheek?
Turn your other cheek,?
Make your mercy manifest.?
When the hawk and the dove?
Fly in circles ’round your love,?
Only then will your house be blessed.

Offer prayer, offer prayer,?
Offer one small prayer?
To your uninvited guest.?
Don’t deny him his right,?
Make him welcome through the night.
?Only then will your house be blessed.

Pull the nails from the cross.
Pull the cross from the hill.
Lay the body and soul to rest.
May the blood that’s been spilt
–Drown your guilt.
Only then will your house be blessed.

Your father’s Lili Marlene, specifically

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Eric Verlo

On the subject of historical misconceptions, you might say I’m hugely sentimental. So the tale of Lili Marlene catches me up like a honey trap. What does the name conjure for you? A Nazi Mata Hari? A fictional musical persona beloved by soldiers on both sides of the Good War? While even antiwar sentiments wax nostalgic about its universal love-conquers-all popularity, the WWII melody evokes romantic memories fueled by dueling propagandas. And when a victorious meme writes the history, it can erase its footprints, leading from what was effectively a literary rape.

A recent folk reference for example, an otherwise impeccably adroit Lili Marlene Walks Away, about Marlene the streetwalker, leaves me just sick in the heart.

The historical narrative has it that Lili Marlene was actually Lili and Marleen, two girlfriends for whom German soldier Hans Liep pined from the trenches of WWI. With unchivalrous poetic license Liep conflated the two and penned a love poem as it might have been written to him, “signed, Lili Marleen.” Two decades later a German composer set the words to music and then came the outbreak of the next war. The original recording by Lale Anderson was a flop until broadcasts to the front lines over Radio Belgrade captivated homesick Wehrmacht soldiers and eventually the lovelorn battling on both sides. Lili Marlene emerged the most popular song of all time, translated in as many languages as fought in the war. Was this owed to a universal empathy toward the pangs of love, or was it the appeal of a truly catchy melody and lyrics carefully crafted to suit the moment? And how did Lili’s character become redefined?

For the German audience, the character of Lili Marlene did not change. For some the song lost its sheen for having been co-opted by the Third Reich war machine. But even as the singer’s living embodiment of “Lili Marleen” became tarnished by her Faustian-won fame, the title role of “Lili” remained the non-fictional love interest with whom her soldier lover spent every furtive off-duty moment, revisited in memory and in anticipation. Concurrent translations across the European continent stuck to the same essential theme, owing no doubt to listeners being in the main multilingual. They understood enough of the original German not to be sold another Lili Marlene. English was another story, but the Allies didn’t start it.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels at first banned the song because he saw it as demoralizing to soldiers enduring the deprivations of war. He referred to Lili Marlene as “The tearjerker with the death-dance smell” until its popularity reached a critical mass even he couldn’t stop. When opposing forces seemed also to succumb to the song’s wiles, Goebbels sought to intensify the poison’s venom.

The original German lyric was written in an ambiguous voice, either that of the soldier or his faithful girl, revisiting their every last moment together and the promise of more. Even as the imagery may have been accepted as a soldier’s fantasies, the singer’s female gender was consistent with the voice of his lover’s reassurances. As a result, the original singer came to personify the character Lili Marleen. For soldiers of every side the voice they heard was that of “Lili Marlene.”

The popular account goes that when Allied soldiers were observed singing along to Radio Belgrade, an English lyric was ordered post haste lest American GIs and British Tommies be singing in German. Rarely mentioned is that the seduction interrupted had been in English.

A recent compilation of nearly 200 different renditions of Lili Marlene gives an unprecedented look into the WWII propaganda battle waged over control of the Lili Marlene narrative. Many of the key recordings have reached Youtube.

When the Germans surmised that Allied soldiers wanted to do more than whistle along, a lyric was devised for them which changed the ambiguity of the narrator to the first person. YOUR Lili Marleen became MY Lili Marlene. And oddly, but for reasons un-mysterious obviously, the vocalist remained a woman. The English version was supposed to be a translation after all, and no one was under any illusion that the song’s original appeal with soldiers was not owed to the enchantment of the chanteuse.

The plodding, dripping sentimentality of the melody also lent well to marches. Lili Marleen, in English, Marlene, was an ideal tonic for a war long on effort and deprivation.

An American GI today could still be forgiven for hearing Lili Marlene and saying: those aren’t the lyrics I remember. Late and post war USO tours effaced the earlier Nazi radio broadcasts. There was a German English version before the British and American after that, when Lili of the home front became the seductress became the whore.

If the song conjures an American image at all, it’s Marlene Dietrich, who subsequently claimed the song for her own, perhaps why it’s named Marlene and not Marleen, I don’t know. But her vampy rendition colors interpretations to this day. An American film star from the 30s, Dietrich is still mistakenly remembered as a reformed German double agent, possibly the Axis Sally propagandist who originated her namesake song. To my mind, familiarity would be the only reason to favor Dietrich’s rendition of Lili Marlene. The original 1938 German and its first English incarnation in 1942 were both by Lale Andersen, easily the most moving. But Marlene Dietrich wasn’t selling love, or was, to be more precise.

The lyric to the original German recording translates thus:

In front of the barracks, in front of the main gate,
Stood a lamppost, if it stands there still,
So will we see each other there again,
By the lamppost we’ll stand,
As before, Lili Marleen. As before, Lili Marleen.

Our two shadows looked like one.
That we were so much in love, at a glance anyone could see.
And everyone will see it,
When we stand by the lamppost,
As before, Lili Marleen. As before, Lili Marleen.

(The motif of female narrator was conceded by a 1943 BBC propaganda rerecording made for broadcast back to Germany. Instead of a love song, the lyric became a war-weary rant where a hoarse-throated middle-aged “Lili” calls for an uprising against Hitler. Loosely translated it went:

Maybe you’ll die in Russia, maybe you’ll die in Africa,
You will die somewhere, that’s what your Führer wants.
But if you see us again, where will this lamppost be?
In another Germany.
Your Lili Marleen.

The Führer is a oppressor, that’s what we all see,
Making every child an orphan, every woman a widow,
It’s all his fault, I want to see? him at the lamppost,
Hang him up at the lamppost.
Your Lili Marleen.

)

The German propagandists were more insidious with their subversion of Andersen’s 1942 recording, sticking closely to the original setting, shifting the narrator squarely to the male, relegating Lili not just to the third person but to the past, and interjecting heaping doses of sentimentality:

Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate,
There I met Marleen every night at eight.
That was a time in early Spring,
When birds all sing, then love was king
Of my heart and Marleen’s, of my heart and Marleen’s.

The next verse begins with a cringe-worthy overstep of a military put-down, perhaps however to divert critical faculties from the real manipulation. Even though the song is now in English, the soldiers expect it serves German propaganda. Disarmed by the amateurish mocking of “retreat,” the listener is vulnerable as the rest of the lyric preys on a soldier’s insecurity about his sweetheart’s fidelity, the longer the war years become interminable. The subject is the usual propaganda leaflet fare, but animated with the potency of music. Faithful “as before” became “time would part” Marlene.

Waiting for the drumbeat, signaling retreat,
Walking in the shadows, where all lovers meet.
Yes those were days of long ago,
I loved her so, I couldn’t know
That time would part Marleen, that time would part Marleen.

The pace leadens to deliver the fatal pronouncement, again the anticipation of reunion becomes perseveration and lament:

When I heard the bugle, calling me away,
By the gate I kissed her, kissed her tears away.
And by the flick’ring lantern’s light,
I held her tight, t’was our last night,
My last night with Marleen, my last night with Marleen.

The last verse repeats the first, which I omitted earlier. It’s a call to action, obviously absent the original, “Now is the time-” meaning desertion into the aforementioned shadows, “to meet your-” and I must admit to be unsure of a transcription. From Andersen’s accent to the unclear recording quality of her backup chorus, it’s difficult to determine whom Lili wants the soldier to meet. “Your girl” and two other words which rhyme with girl, the first begins with P, the last with S.

Still I hear the bugle, hear its silv’ry call,
Carried by the night air, telling one and all:
Now is the time to meet your pearl,
To meet your girl, to meet your soul,
As once I met Marleen, my sweet Lili Marleen.

Your girl, not Lili Marleen. She’s gone, a love lost to regret. In their German-accented affected English, the male chorus appeared to provide a mocking echo “Now is the time to meet your death.”

Needless to say it was imperative that while Radio Belgrade reached the English and American soldiers in North Africa and Italy, the Allies had to record an antidote. A first version by a Brit kept with the romantic original:

In the dark of evening, where you stand and wait,
Hangs a lantern gleaming by the barrack gate.
We’ll meet again by lantern shine
As we did once upon a time.
We two Lili Marlene, we two Lili Marlene.

Our shadows once stood facing, a tall one and a small.
They mingled in embracing, upon the lighted wall.
And passers by could see and tell
Who kissed my shadow there so well:
My girl Lili Marlene, my girl Lili Marlene.

But that didn’t address the problem of demoralization, Goebbels’ original concern shared by military commanders no matter which side: soldiers overtaken by depression.

Plus the Allies needed less a song about the girl back home than one about the German lass awaiting the Yankee conqueror. Who are we kidding? Lili Marlene’s German voice did not invoke thoughts of home so much as a foreign woman taunting, however innocent, from behind enemy lines. Eventually those lands would be overrun, her lover to die in their defense, Lili to await the last man standing. How many soldiers listened to Radio Belgrade and did not fantasize about cuckolding their adversary with his beloved Lili Marlene? The Allied troops needed a Lili of not-unfaithful character, but one available to them. It was no big leap for an American lyricist to transform Fritz’s Lili, faithfully waiting for him under the lamppost, to “Lili of the Lamplight,” the only type of German woman with whom American GIs would be able to get near, a prostitute.

Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate,
Darling I remember the way you used to wait.
Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me, you’d always be
My Lili of the lamplight, my own Lili Marlene.

You’ll always be mine? My love? No, my lover by the lamplight. In the new scheme, the mentions of love and tears become sublimated by kisses, caresses, whispers of tender nothings and feet waiting in the street. Sung to the Allied troops as they marched unto Berlin by a husky voiced vamp. That’s your Lili Marlene.

Nominate Julian Assange for a Nobel? Time Person of the Year? No, jail him.

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Eric Verlo

I Am Just Sick. Julian Assange arrested, denied bail, confined to a UK jail cell deemed unsuitable for Bush, Blair or their murderous peers. Britain even assured Israel that its war criminals could visit England without fear of politically motivated arrest warrants. So much for the Assange-is-Mossad rumor. Arrested for what? Publishing evidence of governments conspiring against their peoples’ interests, in their own words? Really, what’s next for our pretense of Democracy?

No, it was accusations of sexual impropriety, technically. Rape and molestation being the corporate media’s chosen translation of how Swedes might describe a consensual sexual encounter gone off, according to post-coital television interviewees, turned insufficiently feminist-sensitive. Do I sound flippant? Two women in Sweden, described as groupies, of activist pedigree it’s alleged, one elder cementing the resolve of the younger, shall we call them Lewinsky and Tripp, accusing Assange of disrespecting their gender.

They play right into the stereotype I have of single-issue advocates who can’t get past affronts to their own personal agendas. Whatever Assange’s transgressions, is not the fate of the western world, the awakening of its public participants in the balance? Though Swedish authorities originally dismissed the accusations, the pair is determined to interrupt Wikileaks’ Cablegate to school Assange in his bedside manner?

Whether instigated by intelligence operatives or not, the charges made by the two women have been the only hooks which authorities have been able to get into Assange. Will extradition to Sweden to answer police inquiries lead to US rendition to a secret facility? Should we hope that at the very least the Brits resist US pressure to interrogate Assange, or affect the operation of Wikileaks by coercion and duress?

We must hope the Assange’s colleagues can secure Wikileaks before their sysadmin is tortured for his access codes.

Hearing the New York Times assail the character of Julian Assange as having delusions of grandeur, I’m reminded of how a centuries earlier ruling class rid themselves of the populist scourge Napoleon. Defeated once, Napoleon was able to escape banishment and had but to set foot on French soil and with only the force of his personality he was able to reconstitute his campaign to free the European citizenry of their despotic monarchs. Defeated again, Napoleon was too popular to execute and so was banished again. This time, it’s alleged, a heroic loyalist submitted to be contaminated with syphilis and thence to infect and ground the upstart Napoleon for good.

The remaining Wikileaks crew is at greater risk than Julian Assange, lacking his media visibility, they could be disappeared without fanfare. But that’s evidently a fading misconception of mine. Assange’s high profile hasn’t helped him.

Ghailani innocence proves Guantanamo can’t trust US civilian courts to uphold terrorism threat charade

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was acquitted of all significant terrorism charges. The victory/defeat is being hailed as a setback to efforts to close the illegal US detention facility. Come again? Apparently President Obama can end torture renditions to Guantanamo if he can be assured that kangaroo courts elsewhere can keep the alleged evildoers from roaming free. OR Ghailani’s acquittal could cement the precedence set by the hundreds of innocents already released from US extrajudicial detention, that not even a court of law will assert these men are guilty. America’s Islamic-blood-thirsty press, led by NYT, WP & LAT, are whining that Ghailani’s confession was determined inadmissible because it was obtained under torture, or as they put it, “torture.”

Surprise! In anticipation of further incriminating Afghan leaks, Wikileaks Julian Assange charged with rape

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Where the CIA cannot yet use predator drones, it retains character assassins. Sweden’s authorities confirm that accusations of rape and molestation (!) made against Julian Assange in the Swedish tabloid Expressen will require the Wikileaks founder to report to police.
UPDATE: Prosecutors now say suspicions were unfounded.

Much to the consternation of its citizens, Swedish police have collaborated with CIA renditions, and the Swedish press is not outside of the reach of the Zionist media.

Wikileaks has video of Granai Massacre

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is officially a wanted man. After the arrest of whistleblower Bradley Manning for leaking the Collateral Murder video, the Pentagon announced it is hunting Assange “to talk to him” about 260,000 diplomatic cables which Army Specialist Manning is purported to have passed along as well. Appealing for fans to create Wikileak support groups worldwide, Assange confirmed possession of sensitive material to which he could only allude earlier: the US military’s own video of the “Garani Massacre” (sic), its 2009 airstrike and coverup of the killing of over 140 Afghan civilians, most of them children. Within hours, the claim and Assange’s appeal, were removed from the Wikileaks website.

Assange’s announcement has been propagated by journalists in the Wikileaks email circle, but strangely the call for creating a network of support groups, “Friends of Wikileaks is being given no traction.

The hasty typo of “Garani,” uncorrected, doesn’t serve the cause either. As a keyword, Garani brings up only Assange’s recent Tweet. All news references of the original incident are indexed under “Granai.” Or of course Julian Assange’s earlier codeword, Project G.

That the media is so casual about describing the Wikileaks founder as subject of an “international manhunt” is unfortunately disarming. Assange has had to cancel an appearance in Las Vegas, and a later keynote engagement for 2600 in NYC. Oh hw funny. Pentagon Papers whisleblower Daniel Ellsberg is warning the Assange is facing very real danger of rendition, interrogation, disappearance, even assassination by US drone. The excitement builds?

You can do more than watch Assange dodge missile strikes like Flash Osama. Contact Wikileaks about enlisting as friend or supporter, not just spectator.

Below is the original email from Julian Assange:

WikiLeaks may be under attack.

You were generous enough to write to us, but we have not had the labor resources to respond.

Your support is important to us. Please read all of this email to understand what is going on. We apologize for not getting back to you before. It is not through any lack of interest on our part, but an enforced lack of resources.

One of our alleged sources, a young US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has been detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held without trail. Mr. Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscious and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani.

The Garani massacre, which we are still working on, killed over 100 people, mostly children.

Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy’s engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.

Mr. Manning was allegedly exposed after talking to an unrelated “journalist” who then worked with the US government to detain him.

Some background on the Manning case:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/state-department-anxious/

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/143011.htm

[ note that there are some questions about the Wired reportage, see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677 ]

WikiLeaks a small organization going through enormous growth and operating in an adverserial, high-security environment which can make communication time consuming and the acquisition of new staff and volunteers, also difficult since they require high levels of trust.

To try and deal with our growth and the current difficult situation, we want to get you to work together with our other supporters to set up a “Friends of WikiLeaks” group in your area. We have multiple supporters in most countries and would like to see them be a strong and independent force.

Please write to [email protected] if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions.

We also have significant unexpected legal costs (for example flying a legal team to Kuwait, video production. Collateral Murder production costs were $50,000 all up).

Any financial contributions will be of IMMEDIATE assistance.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support

Please donate and tell the world that you have done so. Encourage all your friends to follow the example you set, after all, courage is contagious.

Julian Assange
Editor in Chief
WIKILEAKS

With Obama reversing Iraq withdrawal, Obamapologists put sissy in Sisyphus

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Was it news to you? The Iraq withdrawal is off. The war that launched America’s first black president GOES ON. Didn’t the new Dissembler in Chief campaign to end the Iraq War, sort of, or uh, eventually? Skeptics were ostracized and accused of not stepping up, hope-wise. What’s next, Obama’s Tink dies if we all don’t clap our hands in obeisance, chanting “we believe”? If American voters were upset about Guantanamo, Endless War on Terror, torture, rendition, corporations indemnified of their abuses –take your pick– you wouldn’t know it now. Were you hoping to see Bush and Co prosecuted? What did you think of the President standing by as his SCOTUS nominee gushed about the preeminence of the rule of law.

ACLU defends Freedom of Speech: that of yours, mine, Nazis or corporations

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- The local Springs ACLU chapter is challenging the national office’s position on the recent Citizens United victory and I’m torn. I am as anti-corporate as the next rabid class-war insurgent, but the longstanding corporate personhood abomination is a separate abuse than the oppression of civil liberties. It’s clear that one impacts the other, but until we clarify who’s a “who,” the ACLU is determined to exclude no one from First Amendment protection. Make sense?

When and if the immortality advantages of corporate trusts can reigned in, the political power of the individual will be more secure. But an opposite Citizens United verdict would have left American individuals with limits on their speech. You don’t pass respiratory restrictions in Pigville just because the Big Bad Wolf is in town. You charge him with threatening illegal acts, etc, before you abridge the rights of all citizens in the name of security.

In social justice type affinity groups, I certainly believe there are times when the grassroots have to wag their dog gone somnolent. More often however, dissension generates from a malignant insurrection against the founding principles with which the provincial members have lost sight. My experience has been that local ACLU groups, Denver included, are exaggeratedly vigilant about asking “is this a civil liberties issue?” for fear of being seen to address a problem that has become politicized.

Defenders of the last administration for example were desperate to prevent activists from getting the support and sponsorship of established advocacy groups like the ACLU.

Lamentably, believe it or not, some ACLU self-obstructionists differentiate human rights abuses from civil liberties. They see the issue as “partisan.” Because critics of the Patriot Act are often Democrats, Republicans find themselves tasked with defending it. Likewise, illegal war, war crimes, rendition, illegal detention, etc, are also too partisan to address, even as they constitute affronts to the civil liberties of all.

It’s become very clear to me that both Denver and Colorado Springs chapters are dominated by conservative voices who restrict local ACLU activities to conducting public discussion groups, as opposed to speaking out about federal and local abuses which are usual targets of the national office.

The upcoming forum on Corporate Personhood, this Thursday night at Shove Chapel at Colorado College, is clearly outside the purview of civil liberties, but may have escaped our local ACLU’s conservative corporatists explicitly because it goes against the ACLU leadership.

To my mind however, the event will serve two goods. One, we take on corporations, and two our action alerts ACLU Washington about the rotten apples in our midst. Obstructionists are perhaps ever present, but headquarters might generate some guidelines about how to further root them out. A simple essay test about “what are civil liberties” would suffice for me. The next member who points to an ACLU talking point and avers “I don’t see how this is a civil liberties issue” gets the boot.

The most pathetic recurring argument is that the ACLU should only concern itself with the Civil Liberties of “Americans.” The National ACLU has of course argued for the rights of foreign nationals, even those living overseas who have been targets of extradition, as well as peoples of foreign lands under the jurisdiction of American authority; leased properties such as oversees bases for example, and entire nations we’ve invaded. Where should borders demarc free-of-liberties-zones?

The same critics of course show no qualms about US military forces subjugating other peoples in the name of “Freedom” without thought that our liberation of capitalist forces should come with some protections. Pax Americana minus the Americana Bill of Rights.

Challenged about its public support of the Citizens United case, the ACLU offered this unapologetic explanation:

“The ACLU has consistently taken the position that section 203 is facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it permits the suppression of core political speech, and our amicus brief takes that position again.”

The fallout has been heated, but I’ve enjoyed the parallels drawn to the infamous occasion when the ACLU protected the right of Nazis to march in the predominantly Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie Illinois. Yes the ACLU will fight for NAMBLA, Nazis and corporations, and no one bats an eye at the affinity of the three.

The 2009 Amicus Brief which the ACLU filed in support of Citizens United is viewable online (PDF), here are the preface sections:

AMICUS CURIAEBRIEF OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL
LIBERTIES UNION IN SUPPORT OF APPELLANT
ON SUPPLEMENTAL QUESTION

INTEREST OF AMICUS

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nationwide, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with more than 500,000 members dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality embodied in the Constitution and our nation’s civil rights laws.

For the past three decades, the ACLU has been deeply engaged in the effort to reconcile campaign finance legislation and First Amendment principles, from Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), where we represented our New York affiliate, to McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003), where the ACLU was both co-counsel and plaintiff, to Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230 (2006), where we were lead counsel. In addition, the ACLU has appeared as amicus curiae in many of this Court’s campaign finance cases, including FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (“WRTL”), 551 U.S. 449 (2007).

As framed by the Court’s reargument order, 2009 WL 1841614 (2009), this case presents fundamental questions concerning the constitutionally permissible scope of campaign finance regulation that this Court first confronted in Buckley and subsequently revisited in McConnell and WRTL. The proper resolution of that delicate balance remains an issue of substantial importance to the ACLU and its members.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

The broad prohibition on “electioneering communications” set forth in § 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), 2 U.S.C. § 441b(b)(2), violates the First Amendment, and the limiting construction adopted by this Court in WRTL is insufficient to save it. Accordingly, the Court should strike down § 203 as facially unconstitutional and overrule that portion of McConnell that holds otherwise.

This brief addresses only that question. It does not address the additional question raised by this Court’s reargument order: namely, whether Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990), should be overruled. However, if Austin is overruled and the ban on express advocacy by corporations and unions is struck down, then the ban on “electioneering communications” in § 203 would necessarily fall as a consequence.

Even if Austin is not overruled, § 203 is unconstitutional precisely because it extends beyond the express advocacy at issue in Austin. The history of the McConnell litigation, as well as campaign finance litigation before and after McConnell, demonstrates that there is no precise or predictable way to determine whether or not political speech is the “functional equivalent” of express advocacy.

The decision in WRTL correctly recognized that the BCRA’s prophylactic ban on “electioneering communications” threatened speech that lies at the heart of the First Amendment, including genuine issue ads by nonpartisan organizations like the ACLU. But the reformulated ban crafted by this Court in WRTL continues to threaten core First Amendment speech. Its reliance on the hypothetical response of a reasonable listener still leaves speakers guessing about what speech is lawful and what speech is not. That uncertainty invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. It will also lead many speakers to self-censor rather than risk sanctions or undertake the expense of suing the FEC prior to speaking, especially since most suits will not be resolved until long after the speech is timely and relevant.

In short, § 203 was a poorly conceived effort to restrict political speech and should be struck down.

Osama bin You

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Spanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares doesn’t accept US apologies for using his likeness in an artist rendition of what the CIA warns its bogeyman Osama bin Laden may look like. The leftist politician finds it hard to believe it’s a simple mistake his mug appears on the latest wanted poster, and wonders what might have been the result if a less-known face had been used. It’s funny enough to laugh at the perceived ineptitude of American intelligence agencies, until you’re stopped at the airport, bundled off to a black site to be tortured, or find yourself a lightening rod for drone missile strikes.

We can ask what were they thinking, or ponder one of the classic traits of state terrorism. Authoritarian brutality applied rationally threatens only the culpable. Harsh consequences meted inexplicably repress everyone.

We Are United For a Peaceful Obama

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Eric Verlo

ACACIA PARK, 5PM- COLORADANS FOR PEACE are not alone urging President Obama to escalate his attention to the antiwar mandate given him by the American voters. Michael Moore & Keith Olbermann have made eleventh hour pleas, and the nation’s prominent antiwar activists signed a collective letter to President Obama (see below). Here are the national organizations taking to the streets tomorrow:

United Against Afghan Escalation, Women Say No To War (Code Pink), No Escalation in Afghanistan (UFPJ), Veterans Oppose Troop Build-up (IVAW), US Labor Against War, A.N.S.W.E.R., Stop the Escalation (World Can’t Wait), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Just Foreign Policy, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, The Peace and Justice Resource Center and Voters for Peace.

The letter composed by the National Assembly:

President Barack Obama?
The White House?Washington, D.C.
November 30, 2009

Dear President Obama,
With millions of U.S. people feeling the fear and desperation of no longer having a home; with millions feeling the terror and loss of dignity that comes with unemployment; with millions of our children slipping further into poverty and hunger, your decision to deploy thousands more troops and throw hundreds of billions more dollars into prolonging the profoundly tragic war in Afghanistan strikes us as utter folly. We believe this decision represents a war against ordinary people, both here in the United States and in Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan, if continued, will result in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of U.S. troops, and untold thousands of Afghans.

Polls indicate that a majority of those who labored with so much hope to elect you as president now fear that you will make a wrong decision — a tragic decision that will destroy their dreams for America. More tragic is the price of your decision. It will be paid with the blood, suffering and broken hearts of our young troops, their loved ones and an even greater number of Afghan men, women and children.

The U.S. military claims that this war must be fought to protect U.S. national security, but we believe it is being waged to expand U.S. empire in the interests of oil and pipeline companies.

Your decision to escalate U.S. troops and continue the occupation will cause other people in other lands to despise the U.S. as a menacing military power that violates international law. Keep in mind that to most of the peoples of the world, widening the war in Afghanistan will look exactly like what it is: the world’s richest nation making war on one of the world’s very poorest.

The war must be ended now. Humanitarian aid programs should address the deep poverty that has always been a part of the life of Afghan people.

We will keep opposing this war in every nonviolent way possible. We will urge elected representatives to cut all funding for war. Some of us will be led to withhold our taxes, practice civil resistance, and promote slowdowns and strikes at schools and workplaces.

In short, President Obama, we will do everything in our power, as nonviolent peace activists, to build the kind of massive movement –which today represents the sentiments of a majority of the American people–that will play a key role in ending U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Such would be the folly of a decision to escalate troop deployment and such is the depth of our opposition to the death and suffering it would cause.

Sincerely, (Signers names listed in alphabetical order)

Jack Amoureux, Executive Committee
Military Families Speak Out

Michael Baxter
Catholic Peace Fellowship

Medea Benjamin, Co-founder
Global Exchange

Frida Berrigan
Witness Against Torture

Elaine Brower
World Can’t Wait

Leslie Cagan, Co-Founder
United for Peace and Justice

Tom Cornell
Catholic Peace Fellowship

Matt Daloisio
War Resisters League

Marie Dennis, Director
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Robby Diesu
Our Spring Break

Pat Elder, Co-coordinator
National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth

Mike Ferner, President
Veterans For Peace

Joy First, Convener
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

Sara Flounders, Co-Director
International Action Center

Sunil Freeman
ANSWER Coalition, Washington, D.C.

Diana Gibson, Coordinator
Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice

Jerry Gordon, Co-Coordinator
National Assembly To End Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupation

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence

David Hartsough
Peaceworkers San Francisco

Mike Hearington, Steering Committee
Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, Atlanta

Larry Holmes, Coordinator
Troops Out Now Coalition

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D., Executive Director
Fellowship of Reconciliation

Hany Khalil
War Times

Kathy Kelly, Co-Coordinator
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Leslie Kielson , Co-Chair
United for Peace and Justice

Malachy Kilbride
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

Adele Kubein, Executive Committee
Military Families Speak Out

Jeff Mackler, Co-Coordinator
National Assembly to End Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, Chair-Elect
World Parliament of Religion

Michael T. McPhearson, Executive Director
Veterans For Peace

Gael Murphy, Co-founder
Code Pink

Michael Nagler, Founder
Metta Center for Nonviolence

Max Obuszewski, Director
Baltimore Nonviolence Center

Pete Perry
Peace of the Action

Dave Robinson, Executive
Director Pax Christi USA

Terry Rockefeller
September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows

Samina Sundas, Founding Executive Director
American Muslim Voice

David Swanson
AfterDowningStreet.org

Carmen Trotta
Catholic Worker

Nancy Tsou, Coordinator
Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice

Kevin Zeese
Voters for Peace

And Michael Moore’s letter:

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.” Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?

Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.”

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son.

We’re counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore

I want Obama to win a JUSTICE prize

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Then our Nobel Laureate can restore Habeas Corpus, stop rendition and torture, repeal the Patriot Act, confess to illegal wars, war crimes and crimes against humanity, end all occupations, smash the weapons trade, pursue antitrust action against banks and multinational monopolies, abolish the Fed, IMF, World Bank and WTO, renounce globalism and free trade neoliberalism, own up to climate change and third world plunder, initiate restitution for US misrule, and #prosecutebushnowgoddamnit!

Obama is no over-hyped Messiah

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Critics on both sides of Barack Obama’s premature Nobel Prize peddle the same cynical caricature of our new president, as messiah figure likely overburdened by our expectations. It’s a self-defeating setup that didn’t fool the Nobel panel. Obama is not Jesus, he’s Caesar.

I don’t mean to belittle the Son of God, but Obama’s throne has a far greater vantage point to deliver this world from the yoke of the evil empire. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is a sort of Pay It Forward award to the man who holds the fate of so many in his hands.

You don’t have to believe Obama is the Second Coming, nor even that he’s a good man. So far he’s played Dubya’s apprentice to a tee. But what can you do? Obama’s vainglourious Basterds have everyone by the throat. The Afghans, the Iraqis, the Pakistanis, live but by the grace of his drones, or the whim of his rendition interrogator-torturers. American activists abut his militarized police, American sick expire while on hold with his third party death panels.

The Nobel Prize could be another medal to pretend this American Emperor heralds a break from injustice as the US redoubles wreaking havoc. Or, it could be mankind’s last best only hope to appeal, if not to Obama’s sense of humanity, to his vanity. Is the 2009 Nobel Laureate going to escalate killings and predations on the poor? The choice is Obama’s.

The growing criticism of Barack Obama’s record of inaction furthers the misconception that Obama is a mere figurehead, an affirmative action spokesman to give the US a kinder, gentler image. In fact, Obama sits in the little dictator’s seat. It’s lost no power since the days of Bush.

You might argue that Bush was mere Howdy Doody to powerful oligarchs behind the scenes. Obama may be pulled by the same strings. But unless the puppet masters choose to reveal themselves, a puppet can pretend they don’t exist. And a real flesh and blood man puppet can utterly efface them. I believe the Nobel committee is hoping to appeal to just that man.

Obama doesn’t need Congress, majority or no, nor the American People, nor the corporate media, to decide what he wants to do. He’s not stuck to overturning the tables of the money-changers, or leading by example by dying for us on a cross. Obama doesn’t have to render unto Caesar, he is Caesar. The most powerful there ever was, although I can’t think now if there ever was a good one. The Norse were in no position then to bait one with a peace prize. Here’s hoping.

ADDENDUM:
Barack and Michelle Obama sent out this response to the surprise honor, trying a little false flattery of their own. Here’s the last paragraph:

This award — and the call to action that comes with it — does not belong simply to me or my administration; it belongs to all people around the world who have fought for justice and for peace. And most of all, it belongs to you, the men and women of America, who have dared to hope and have worked so hard to make our world a little better.

Most of all, the men and women of America? Oh My Gosh Honey, Obama is talking about you and me.

Yes we can, host the 2016 Olympics

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Eric Verlo

President Obama came into office with quite a checklist:
Stop war-making,
Close Guantanamo,
End renditions/torture,
Rescind the Patriot Act,
Restore the rule of law,
Address global warming,
Reform US health care,
Re-regulate bankers,
Talk to Iran, and doubtless many other items, including
Secure the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.

Are his handlers staking the measure of his success on the last one?

Could Bush have bettered Obama?

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Eric Verlo

David Swanson describes for Tomdispatch what a GW Bush third term would have looked like. He paints a horror story continuation of all the policies which drove voters in 2008 to elect anybody but Bush. But did we? ABB Obama is proving to be quite the reliable steward of Bush’s policies of war, torture, rendition, and mercenaries, minus the public outcry. It’s change we can’t quite put our finger on.

Sean Hannity & the Global War OF Terror

Posted on May 9, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The quicker we get Sean Hannity waterboarded the better. But we can hope for better than merely shutting him up about whether or not waterboarding is torture. Let’s figure out WHAT we can waterboard him for!

Is there a secret we want to extract from Sean Hannity? Or is there just something he’s done for which America could feel comfort in exacting redress? Wouldn’t that be the real point of torture? And actually, not to draw Hannity’s blood, but to extrude the shit from his colleagues looking on, who might fancy themselves next, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, et al.

I understand Hannity already has a volunteer to administer the procedure, what we really need is the person to direct it. To issue the thumbs up or thumbs down, irrationally, to heighten the torment.

Hannity has volunteered to subject himself to what he considers no more than fraternity hazing. Olberman has offered $1,000 for ever second Hannity lasts. Which I predict will be calculated in fragments of the first second. A subject of waterboarding can hold his breath, but the torturers will start the clock by forcefully expelling that reserve. Waterboarding begins when the victim gasps for air, and inhales water instead.

The media debate around waterboarding asks two questions. Is waterboarding torture? And does torture work? Both questions are flawed. The first is simply an insult, the second is misdirected.

Perhaps the average American is disconnect enough from reality to question whether the unimaginable can be. If you’ve never stepped into the sea, you can speculate that water is not really wet. Fast-food eating television viewers can wonder, does the stove burn?

Does torture work? Of course it does. To wonder if torture is an effective method of interrogation is to get the question entirely wrong.

In one debate about the efficacy of torture, the FBI claims the with one terror suspect they were making gains with psychological methods until the CIA seized custody in order to give the waterboard a try. Apparently with no success, after which the FBI had another promising run interrupted by another CIA inter-department rendition. Sound like the ol’ good agency, bad agency interrogation ploy to you?

Ignored in the torture efficacy assessment is the absence of a control sample. Did the subject have anything to reveal? How unfair to judge an interrogator if his subject doen’t have a secret to crack. And even that misses the point. What is the purpose of torture? Is it to extract information, such as learning of ticking time-bombs to save innocent lives, or is it about preemptive subjugation of people?

To torture someone is to terrorize them with their own helplessness under the thumb of brutal inhumanity. Torture is directed less against the terrorized subject themselves, than the public looking on. Torture is terror. It get the predicate reversed in the phrase “Global War On Terror.” Terror is the subject not the object; actually the objective. It’s the Global War OF Terror. In our GWOT, torture is an important weapon in the US arsonal, and of course it works. Against brave people, it “works” solely to provoke them.

Black Pirates meted Southern Justice

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Dutch NATO forces rescued 20 hostages off the coast of Africa last week without loss of life. They thwarted a pirate attack, confiscated the booty, but must release the captured pirates owing to International Maritime Law. Contrast this with American cowboy rules of engagement.

Several US Navy warships faced a solitary lifeboat on which three teenage Somali pirated held hostage Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips. The covered lifeboat remained tethered to the stern of one of the Navy ships while negotiations, we’re told, progressed.

Going into day three, before the American TV audience could lose interest, US Navy Seals rescued the captive Phillips at a cost of a 100% casualty rate to the pirates. Although the DoD did not initially want to reveal its anti-pirate tactics, spokesmen have admitted that the “daring rescue” was in effect three precisely-simultaneous sniper shots to the heads of the three captors. The fourth pirate already having been entrusted to the US ship’s custody for medical care. The captain freed, the wounded pirate’s collateral was thus gone, and his grant of safe-passage was rescinded.

The official story is that US infrared imagery revealed that the American captive’s life was in danger. One of the pirates was holding a gun to his head, and this act prompted the snipers to intervene. Negotiations, apparently, were not proving fruitful. I’m guessing that this account reflects the exact opposite of what happened. The navy snipers had been holding their fire until the moment Captain Phillip was NOT in a pirate’s crosshairs.

Although the Somali pirates were just teens, I bet they knew from brutal experience, what most of us know from violent television, that holding your gun to a hostage’s head is the only way to prevent your rivals from gunning you down. Trapped in a lifeboat, the pirates knew that high powered US weaponry would be trained upon each of their heat silhouettes. The moment their captive was not in the predicted trajectory of the crossfire, nor threatened by a collateral death-spasm squeeze of a trigger, the pirates would be toast.

The rescue operation began with a greater-than-three number of US snipers aiming weapons at the little boat. The more the better, to assure that at every instant, complicated by the rocking and turning of the lifeboat in the waves, at least one sniper could claim one pirate, without the hostage laying vulnerable to leeward bullets. The images in the sniper scopes were wired to a director’s console, where the determination could be made when all three targets were spoken for, and the order could be given to fire. The last hurdle remained for the pirate who held his gun on the hostage to drop his guard for just an instant, lest he squeeze off a round into the hostage. Wanna bet that’s what happened?

Great marksmanship, no question. Plenty of training no doubt. We can take nothing away from the heroism shown in braving responsibility for jeopardizing Captain Phillip’s life. It is probably also a common law enforcement strategy. Although that doesn’t make it legal.

Unless the US Navy releases the targeting footage, we are unlikely to confirm the true sequence of events. But where the pirate’s gun was pointing makes a difference. The Navy is explaining that it acted because Phillips’ life was at stake. Otherwise, shooting people who are not shooting at you is considered underhanded.

The Dutch navy forces bay have bellyached that they had to turn loose their captured pirates, instead of leaving them imprisoned somewhere, but the Dutch had seized them in Somali waters, where the pirates operate as their nation’s only Coast Guard. The Dutch NATO commandos prevented an attack, and liberated the detainees being held by the de-facto Somali border agents, and their directive ended there.

The US on the other hand, executed three “Somali Pirates,” regardless the varying degree of culpability the individuals might have had.

Without a day in court, that’s extra-judicial murder. If you consider these were three African youths, it looks like a lynching.

Let’s take note, by whose account to we know what happened out on the high seas? Do we know even that these were pirates? Says who? I am simply playing devil’s advocate. Do we know these four youth weren’t stowaways? Perhaps they had been Shanghaied and attempted an escape via the Maersk Alabama’s lifeboat. Do we know what happened really? That’s what courts are there to decide.

Everything the American TV audience knows is from the mouths of the US military. What do we know? These youths might have been human-trafficking cargo, en route to or from war zones. They might have broken free, running straight into the Maersk’s convenient cover story that all inconvenient incidences can be labeled pirate attacks. Have we anybody’s word who has not been lying to us about war crimes everywhere, about the use of torture, about the true magnitude of renditions and secret prisons?

These black youths might just as well have been the captive sex slaves of the porky white contractor mercenaries who were planning to kill them while in the act of buggering them, but the damn Negroes slipped free. So the Navy Seals had to come play cleaner to the embarrassing mess. I exaggerate to emphasize: what the fuck do YOU know?!

“This is how the USA handles pirates” was basically our statement. Americans stateside cheered and grabbed their dicks. But overseas, and on the seas, the sentiment is much more wary. The US Navy has escalated the war on piracy. Now the rules of engagement for both sides is going to be shoot first, ask questions later.

Are the Somalis quaking in their pirate boots? When the news hit about what the Navy Seals did, the self-styled privateers of the Somali Coast redoubled their attacks on foreign ship traffic.

From Iraq to Afghanistan to Palestine, Occupation is a Crime!

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Eric Verlo

A.N.S.W.E.R. has 7 Reasons to March on DC. We can borrow them!
– The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening.
– 350,000 U.S. troops and US-paid contractors still occupy Iraq.
– Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with backing of Washington.
– Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the policy of renditions.
– Air strikes on Pakistan are killing an increasingly number of civilians.
– The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually.
– More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed.

7 Reasons You Should March on the Pentagon on March 21, 2009

1
The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening. President Obama announced last week that another 17,000 troops are on their way to Afghanistan. Only 18 percent of Afghanis support this escalation and only 34 percent of the people of the United States approve of the added troops despite the president’s popularity, according to the Washington Post/ABC poll announced on February 17, 2009. This is a colonial war. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was not involved in the decision to add more occupying troops into his country. Rather, he was “informed of the deployments in a telephone call with Obama” on February 17, according to the Washington Post (February 18, 2009).

2
About 350,000 U.S. troops and U.S.-paid private contractors (mercenaries) still occupy Iraq. The Iraqi people want the occupation to end. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is insisting that only two of the 14 combat brigades in Iraq exit in 2009. The war and occupation of Iraq costs $430 million each day. If the U.S. government were to end the military occupation, any and all future Iraqi governments would return to a position of political independence from the economic and political dictates of the United States. Iraq’s anti-colonial legacy has created a political reality that prohibits the country from becoming like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia–an out-and-out dependency on U.S. imperialism. That is the real reason that the U.S. government fears a complete disengagement from Iraq and an end to its military occupation.

3
Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with the full backing of Washington. The U.S. government has continued to fund Israel’s war and blockade against the people of Gaza. The Pentagon provided the funding, and technical and logistical support for the establishment of the Israeli war machine, including its massive cluster and white phosphorous bomb arsenal, and the country’s large cache of nuclear bombs.

4
The new Justice Department has announced that it will continue the policy of renditions, meaning the CIA and Pentagon will capture and kidnap individuals anywhere in the world and transfer them to other countries. “The Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.” (LA Times, Feb. 1, 2009)

5
The new administration has stepped up the air strikes that are killing an increasingly large number of Pakistani civilians. Unmanned drone bombing attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty and are creating an ocean of resentment and anger inside of Pakistan. The U.S. government has no right to carry out these drone bombing strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The people of the United States would not accept the legitimacy of other governments ordering air attacks in the United States. We must openly and loudly reject such tactics by the government that speaks in our name and spends our tax dollars for such aggression.

6
The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually. This is greater than the combined total of most of the other countries in the world, including all the NATO countries, and Russia and China. Some label this “waste spending” because it spends precious resources to build exotic and high cost weapons, a new generation of nuclear weapons, and space-based war fighting capabilities, while filling the coffers of the big investors (i.e., the biggest banks) in the war corporations. Pentagon contracting is often based on guaranteed “cost-plus” contracts that reward price gouging since corporate profit is based on a fixed percentage above their expenses. Another label for this process is “extreme corruption” and theft from the public treasury.

7
More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed. Nine million families are either in foreclosure or are at risk of foreclosure this year, according to the statistics just released by the government. Forty-seven million people are without health care. College tuition hikes are soaring and millions of students are at risk of being forced out of school. The people want change. They don’t want a simple tweaking of Bush’s criminal foreign policies. They want to put people’s needs before corporate greed. They want an end to wars of aggression that are wreaking havoc, death and destruction abroad, and diverting urgently needed resources in the service of semi-colonialism and Empire.

Obama’s coverups

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Tony Logan

obama koolaid Obama is covering up for George Bush’s Administration use of torture as policy. He wants to have it both ways, first claiming that he is changing policy, then in engaging in the old policies of ‘rendition’ and coverup of torture of POWs held by the US military. But there is yet another coverup underway, and that is how Obama is covering up for George Bush’s illegal support for the illegal actions of Israel in Gaza and elsewhere (remember Lebanon?). He may want to repeat the same under his own Administration? From MSNBC:
Obama administration defending Bush secrets.

You see, Obama’s Administration is all about coverups and trying to put a new face on the same old policies of the Republican Party, whether it be with his domestic or his foreign policies. Pretending to leave Iraq yet staying there. Pretending to stop US government made torture, yet continuing to engage in all the activities that use it (occupations of Afghanistan, attacks on Pakistan, continued worship of the military-industrial complex’s God GWOT). Obama is clearly one of the most duplicitous presidents the US has ever had. He is continuing the Federal Government give away’s to the corporate world, too.

And Number One on Obama’s coverup foreign agenda is continued coverup of what the Israeli game plan is all about, simply because it is the US government game plan also. Obama is continuing Cheney’s and the neocon’s program of trying to restructure the entire Middle East into a more compliant region for continued US domination and control of the peoples and the natural resources of the region. Oil is still the name of the game and Israel is still the US bulldog enforcer.

Obama needs to cover for Israel’s crimes since he plans to use their crimes to help further the US government’s own crimes. The US under Barack Obama is firmly on the side of Israel’s ethnic cleansing program in both Israel proper and in the Occupied Territories, and these are Obama’s coverups of the Bush Administration as much as how he is trying to coverup for Bush by keeping torture records secret, keeping executive privilege intact, and so on. There is no change beyond the superficial change of faces and parties in the White House.

Military-industrial war games shall continue and Barack will now direct them. Just don’t buy these Obama coverups if you want real change to ever occur? Don’t let him coverup for the use of torture nor the use of Israel’s military machine.

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