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.

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So this is the USN “crackerjack” work uniform blouse, from behind. Notice the two stars on a broad field of blue. That’s, according to my brother the Sailor, symbolic. The stars stand for the two times the USN fought the Royal Navy, and won. The extra large field is to make room for more stars as needed. A wonderful imperial gesture, yes? “We are mighty, you shall obey us!”
 
Then there’s BP. Which was founded as an adjunct to the Royal Navy and had the Royal Navy and even the U.S. Navy fight to secure their supply sources, which, surprise surprise surprise, none of which are actually in England. The propaganda bit they put out when they helped launch World War One, “That small nations might have the same rights as the Great Powers…” purest bullshit. Then as now, it was all about the Rich getting richer and using the blood and labor of the poor to do it. The kicker of it came down this past spring… when British Petroleum, that ol’ devilish offshoot of the British Royal Navy, Bitch-slapped the U.S. Navy in American territorial waters. Guess you kids in Uncle Sams Canoe Club should take those stars off?

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Activist Bruce Gagnon reports that Jeju Island villagers face eminent attack today from US and South Korean navy who’ve been determined to seize the Jeju coast for an Aegis destroyer base in the American bid for a militarized encirclement of China. Local antiwar ally Sung-Hee Choi is among the peaceful resisters anticipating today’s crackdown under cover of Korean tensions over another disputed island, and facing the usual western media blackout.
12/27 UPDATE

Norway’s AFTENPOSTEN newspaper claims to have received the entire cache of Cablegate diplomatic cables. So far they’ve restricted themselves to releasing correspondence relating to US-Norwegian relations, revealing particular Norwegians doing America’s bidding, from those with “strong pro-US instincts, to another considered by “some very senior U.S. officials” to be “weasily.”

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So the predicted backlash of BushCoNomics War on Education is coming out.
“Throwing money at” education was deemed inefficient and ineffective.
Making sure that schools which were struggling to educate the next generation of Coolies and Cannon Fodder for the Corporate machine, not performing well enough, were to be cut off from federal funding, leaving the Corporate Compassion of the local business, be it Massey Energy or GM or Martin-Marietta, or Tidewater Oil, Or The Army… to pick up the slack.It was to be a National Implementation of “The Texas Model” pushed by George, Jeb and Neil Bush.
Twelve years of this Noble Experiment by (first) two states which have a standardized statewide curriculum, set by the governor of each state, the governors happened to be sons of a bi.. err Ex-President, yeah, that’s the ticket, and have another brother who sells textbooks.
It’s just a coincidence that the “Educational Resources” provider McGraw-Hill publishing, for whom Neil works as a salesFreak poured millions of dollars into the state campaigns of George and Jeb, and George’s Anointed Successor Rick Goodhair, who in turn used their positions to buy school textbooks for EVERY FREAKIN’ SCHOOL DISTRICT in their two very large states. No conspiracy there, no sir!
And poured more millions into the National “no child left behind” campaign, which also (just a coincidence, mind you, nothing to see here citizens, keep moving, nothing to see) purchased, with the even larger Federal budget, even more of their products. Products designed not to make children more educated in “elitist” disciplines like arts, music, THINKING LOGICALLY but to better prepare them for McWalMart Jobs and of course being infantrymen, to serve the Rich and kill other soldiers and other workers who don’t cooperate with the Agenda of the Very Rich. Like having enough non-Rich people able to pass the ASVAB tests and join the Army and spill their own blood for the Rich so the Rich don’t have to spill THEIR own blood.

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Merry Christmas! This time a purported Terrorist War on Christmas. The clock is ticking with the Cablegate revelations. Can the propagandists kick us into warp fear beyond the reach of Wikileaks?

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It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren’t even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them.
 
The children were in their beds. Their beds were in the room next to ours. Mamma and I were in our beds. Mamma wore a kerchief. I had my cap on. I could hear the children moving. We didn’t move. We wanted the children to think we were asleep.

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The Memphis Homeland Security fusion center has a map listing the Tennessee ACLU as a “Terrorist Event.” Compound that with what a ranking senator (R-AL) has called the “ACLU DNA.” It goes beyond semantics when the label of terrorist means by executive order suspects can be detained without charges, indefinitely and without an enforceable standard of human rights. Think twice about those giving credence to Vice President Biden’s categorization of Wikileaks as more terrorism than journalism. On the lighter dark side, the CIA has set up a Wikileaks Task Force (WTF), prompting comedian Andy Borowitz to suggest the more apt Stop Terrorists From Uniting (STFU).

Remember when Apple pretended to be the defiant sledgehammer to 1984? Today as Julian Assange swings the hammer, Apple joins its big brothers on the giant screen as it removes the Wikileaks app for iPones and iPads. Did you think there were any heroes in the corporate firmament? Amazon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, now Apple, nobody wants YOU to get un-manipulated news. But here Steve Jobs has missed an innovation bigger than he has ever rolled out. For man’s innate curiosity about himself, Wikileaks has become the reason to get up in the morning. Every new day is a chance to learn or confirm something you intuited about the facade erected around you. Odd, but isn’t that what the NEWS used to do?

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PUEBLO, CO – Self-published self-abuser Phillip R. Greaves is going to Disneyland! Do I mean Disney World –because the molestation e-book author is being extradited to Florida? Naw. Thanks to the gung-ho deviant-phobic Florida Polk County Sheriff, the Amazon-banned-infamous, now civil-liberty-abridged, self-scribed child-lover will be jerking off all the way to the bank. Greaves’ The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure is accused of violating obscenity laws and haven’t we been down this road before? Freedom of speech, what’s indecent, Larry Flynt, Nabokov, to name the obvious?

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Former Weatherman Bill Ayers, now a respected professor of education, was recently nominated for emeritus status but ran into trouble when a right wing blogger complained that a 1970 underground publication coauthored by Ayers, Prairie Fire, had been dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert F. Kennedy. (Let’s not leave aside the possibility that lone Sirhan was the fall guy in a conference room full of CIA operatives, the immediately the suppressed narrative, which would make Sirhan a victim among the 209 other anti-imperialist heroes to which the Weather Underground wanted to dedicate their efforts.) While hindsight might reveal the WUO to have erred with some of its honorees, it seems likely the majority might be worthy of a following up.

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We call it the Iraq War, as we did the Vietnam War, but America’s wars aren’t so-named in the host countries. It’s the Iraq Invasion, not War, and Afghanistan Invasion really, now Occupation, Decimation and Holocaust. Journalist filmmaker John Pilger subscribes to the theory that if a public is let to see the horrors of war, it will refuse to participate. His new documentary THE WAR YOU DON’T SEE traces US and UK efforts since WWI to propagandize war. Amid interviews with news bureau chiefs who he holds culpable for hyping war, Pilger shows censored footage which could have turned public opinion. I have to wonder if a simple sequence of an Iraqi home subjected to a US raid, in particular the focus on a young daughter’s anxiety, would not have broken just enough American hearts.

Media voices this morning are positively giddy with Obama’s extension of tax cuts for the rich. Probably anticipating a hefty Christmas bonus. Today would be a good time to apologize to Debby Downers you vilified in ’08 because they cautioned that Barack Obama was not the change you wanted to believe in.
I wasn’t among them, I didn’t have the temerity to rain on everyone’s hopeful desperation. Today I have to laugh. LAUGH. We traded in a thieving bumbler for a hypocritical lying bore who’s only changed gears on corporate graft, a higher gear. The heist Obama just pulled for America’s rich leaves absolutely no question whom he serves. I mean, he can pretend to be thwarted at every turn, the wars, Guantanamo, DADT, but in this case, he’s plain shilling for the other side, telling regular Americans this is a good deal for them.

First, connoisseurs of the history of Jesus would know that He was born in a barn. Nothing about flying reindeer, dancing snowmen, or a huge elf.
Or trees. There was a little bit of Grinchiness this year on the part of the U.S. Forest service, because of the global warming, the massive swarm of pine bark beetles that spawned, and the weakened conditions of the trees due to warmer temperatures and less water. One of the largest sections of Christmas Tree Harvesting the White River National Forest
Not, of course, going to affect COMMERCIAL tree-slaughter anytime soon, because the Timber companies have a big lobby and some impressive corporate ties to even MORE corporate lawyers and lobbyists. And they don’t give three shits about whether there’ll be forests in 50 years. Greedy Bastards is just a good start at describing them and the list gets uglier from there.
Then there’s the Christmas Tree in Abu Dhabi, UAE. at The Emirates Hotel. 45 feet tall and crusted with 14 MILLION dollars worth of ornaments. Ornaments like watches, necklaces, bracelets, rings… Everything to tickle the fancy of your average Corporate Traveler.
Remember the Corporate Partners of the tree-killing industry?
Like the Oil industry….

You know how the Adam Smith/Reagan/Ayn Rand brainwashed disciples preach that “A rising tide lifts all boats”.
What they don’t mention is the Rich have it rigged so their Wage Slaves can’t afford a God-Damn boat. They’ll also get some Really Stupid Morons like the TeaBags and any other non-wealthy person Retarded enough to do their bidding, tell the rest of the working class that there actually IS opportunity if only we save enough money from our slave-wage jobs to invest, we’ll get a whole $50 a week from our 401k if we work ourselves to death putting millions of times that much in the pockets of the Rich Bitches.
All y’all who say otherwise, boy Howdy! The professional liars who work for the Filthy Rich Pigs sure got YOU!
Problem is you bastards are too God-Damn DUMB to know it.
You’ll even voluntarily go to other countries and kill other working class people so your Rich Masters can rob them the same way they rob YOUR dumb asses. They’ll even tell you you’re fighting for “freedom” and that you’re giving the people you’re slaughtering an “opportunity” and “civilization”
Yeah, you’re giving them the opportunity and freedom to be good little Civilized Slaves who don’t talk back.just like your retarded slave ass, and your children who you’re selling into the same slavery.Or if they don’t accept that “opportunity” you’ll kill them. In a “civilized” manner of course. And their kids. What’s up with the babykilling, you realize that once you slaughter some kids’ families right in front of them they’ll hate you forever? Worried that once they get big enough to pick up a gun they’ll blow your Slave-Soldier sons and daughters to Hell, to join you?
That’s what your Leaders say. There’s a quote that’s attributed to Custer, and Chivington, and Sherman, “Nits make lice”.
The reason it’s attributed to so many is your Leaders echo each other. A LOT.

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It seems just an election ago that Candidate Obama objected to the Bush Tax Cuts which launched a new gilded age. Now that those grievously unfair giveaways are up for extension, President Obama is not just a cheerleader, he’s the pitcher, with relief pitcher Clinton in the final inning. Obama pushed so hard to close this deal, even the GOP, the supposed heavies, were able to log their opposition. To the “compromise” — an extenuating detail future campaign ads can omit.

Poverty spread in County since 2000.
Oh My. The Gagzette is now recognizing that there are actual poor people in the city.And County.
That’s the shocking part of the news.
For those who aren’t in Colorado Springs, and don’t know, that would sound like they’ve got their heads buried so far up their colons that they just didn’t actually realize, well… that’s part of it but not the whole story. The whole story is their journalistic commedy act is like Fox Lite and they steadfastly deny that the same market forces that concentrate the vast majority of the wealth into the hands of a tiny minority of the people, would just by a bizarre co-inky dink mean that the wealth is snatched from the hands of those who are subsequently labeled “The Poor” and “The Workforce” and “those scurvy beggardly welfare bums”. Adam Smith with his “Invisible Hand” crap strikes again.
Oh, and it happened during the reign of Emperor George the 2nd, aka the Chimpleton. Whose first act as president was to cut taxes for the richest, eliminated some corporate tax debt, cut regulatory “excesses” like the half measures which were designed to keep the Rich Bitch vermin from poisoning our land, water, air and food. The Supply Side his own daddy once called “Voodoo economics”.

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With “bandits” who prey on “illegals”. Aside from the racist snipe about La Migra actually PROTECTING the poor stupid “illegals” in a paternalist… nah “Fraternal” manner, kind of like an elder sibling, a Big Brother if you will.
The only bandits I know of who routinely prey on migrant workers are American. Like the Minutemen. Funny, too, how any other group of organized and experienced Bandits would want to rob the guys coming in, which would be their only shot at them. But coming in, they would be fairly close to broke. You’d make more money robbing a 7-11. Or dealing drugs, and if a measurable fraction of the hysteria generated by among others, propagandists for the Border Patrol and propagandists for the MinuteTards, were true, then the big money would be in dope.
Or smuggling workers.
Shaking down the workers leaving, going back, eh. They’d be catching these really neat Mexican owned bus lines like Coches Del Norte. Get on the bus in LA or Houston or Nueva Jork and ride all the way to downtown Juarez or Matamoros or TJ. In a bus that rivals Greyhound for comfort. You wouldn’t have the problem of smuggling yuurself back. The choke-point only points one direction.

A taste of things to come, Silvio, a not very gentle reminder that your adoring public don’t really like you. In case there’s need for further reminders, remember when you got hit in the face with a church? Sweet.

The British anarchists showed the way.
Kettling, by the way, is the full scope of the ‘free speech zone” bullshit the pigs like to publicize. “Free” speech but only in an area enclosed by a wall of police armor, clubs, tear gas, pain weapons, and of course conveniently far far away from witnesses like the so-called “free” press.
And when the “free” press actually do wander too close to the “Free’ speech zone, they’re arrested for inciting a riot.
But the Brits showed the way, last week, successfully mobbing Prince Charles’ car, frightening him and his beard Camelface. errr “bride Camilla” yeah, that’s the ticket. And the method is simple in its brilliance and brilliant in its simplicity.

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screams of the wounded men,
writhing in pain.
Details work day and night
burying the slain..
all their murders done
in Christ’s Holy Name,
Jesus looks down, and He weeps…
Jesus looks down
and He weeps.
Ok, so that story bugs me every year, they tell it ad nauseum, about the British and Germans taking a couple of hours break from slaughtering each other, in the name of God, at the battle of the Somme. From the German trenches comes the melody “Stillich Nacht, Heilig nacht” Then some Tommies in their trenches start singing it in English, more Germans and more Englischers join in…
An impromptu Christmas party just congeals in the middle of No Man’s Land. They sing songs, exchange gifts, show pictures of their families to one another…
And then go right back to slaughtering each other.
As you may have guessed, it’s time for my annual Christmas on War uncelebration. I go to fetch my e-mail, there’s a flash animation of a black Jeep SUK involved in a battle, a dual advertisement because they’re also hawking a video “game” called Call of Duty – BlackOps. where the mission apparently is to go in and assassinate as many locals as possible and kidnap their leaders to take them to a CIA dungeon for torture. It’s made into a Triple Offense because they’re hawking the SUV and the game, As Christmas Presents
Happy birthday to the Prince of Peace.

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Army Doctor from Greeley Colorado is contesting his orders to Greater VietRaquiStan based on the Retarded conspiracy theory advanced by Fox news and everybody else who is upset that a Black man is president of the United States.
People who protested being sent into the meat-grinder based on the very real fact that Killing Babies and Other Humans is inherently immoral, no such media adulation. Gee, I wonder what makes the Kolorado Klan Kolonel so special? Couldn’t be any inherent racism among “conservatives” right?
Hey, I don’t have MY original birth certificate either. If the birthers wish to question MY citizenship they can goddamn do it at gunpoint.
…on their way to kissing my ass. They’d have to do it five or six on one, too, because that’s the level of their courage.
When they say they’re not Racists they lie. Seems they do a whole lot of lying. A characteristic trait of cowards.
They didn’t question McCain on the issue of HIS birth circumstances. McCain is obviously white.

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Although reporting of the CableGate leaks is taking a backseat to Julian Assange’s arrest, the Wikileaks media powertrain has grown into a monster truck. Nothing like a jailed dissident to illuminate tyranny. And of course the oppressiveness of the private sector is unveiling itself, as Assange points out from jail: “We now know that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are instruments of US foreign policy. It’s not something we knew before.” If not a revelation, it’s confirmation.
 
BREAKING– Unprecendented: British judge allows tweeting from the courtroom. Accruing list includes London Times correspondent Alexi Mostrous, ABC’s Jim Sciutto, transparency author Heather Brooke, at http://twitter.com/notmytribe/assange-trial.

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Stalled. A retaliation, perhaps, for the filibuster on the Tax/Unemployment “deal”.
Mixed feelings on the first. I mean, sure, take away inequality. But this reminds me of something Cicely Tyson said in a movie, concerning the integration of the Army, “Oh, Lord, we’re in trouble now They done found out we make good soldiers”.
Dehumanizing treatment one way, and dehumanizing the other way.
Maybe it’s a way the Wrong Wing can get rid of gay PEOPLE on the cool. Instead of just rounding folks up and gassing them, like the Nazis did, just get them to voluntarily go and shoot at people who are guaranteed to shoot back.