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.

Al-Qaeda combat-tourism deluxe pkg?

Posted on April 20, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Combat-tourism has never been more accessible, by simply enlisting with state forces you have a license to hunt in a war zone. Today’s ROE pretty much mean open season. If you can’t make the military commitment, negotiate a contract with a private mercenary firm where the conditions are riskier but the limit on civilians is irrelevant. How long before real adventurers can hire safaris to bag the most coveted trophy according to world-sentiment, a US soldier? Al-Qaeda al-Shmaeda –no need to join a West-hating jihad– I’m talking about embedding with a military contractor who shoots both ways.

Who knows that this doesn’t happen already? Assuming US military affiliated contractors have scruples about which direction their paid bullets fly, those suffering agency oversight can subcontract their authorized black-ops missions, dropping paying-customer Rambos into the field as insurgent terrorists.

Assuming no scruples addresses why hired-guns are reviled in the first place. Neither defending their home, their honor, or a nationalist construct like “Freedom,” mercenaries go to war for the money. If a privateer contracts himself to Big Oil, or corporate whomever, what qualms should he have to serve Joe Blow Adventure-seeker who simply wants to bag some arrogant American Armies of One?

Actually, US casualties serve the war machine more effectively than US victories when you consider the bigger picture.

The scenario is a win-win-win. US corporate partners can charge the Pentagon $1K/day for the manpower, the DoD can expense it in their “surge” development budget, and a combat-tourism subcontractor can charge you for the thrill of pulling the trigger. I can already see the posting on Craigslist or Ebay, a fortnight’s trek with Xe Xtreme LLC, all the GIs you can shoot, we supply the AK47s and RPGs, what am I bid?

For the homicidal veteran dishonorably discharged –we can only wish– longing to get back to the action, for the Dubai bachelor who has everything, for the Great White Hunter who faces too many warrants for poaching endangered predators. These already comprise the mercenary contractor corps. The elite combat enthusiast with something to prove wants to put Kevlar in his cross-hairs. The more invincible the US forces pretend, the higher the allure.

Good news that image is fading.

State Terrorism raises the terror stakes

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged this response to the Moscow subway blombings: “The measures to fight terrorism should be expanded, they should be more effective, more harsh, more cruel, if you please.” Conceding, I believe, that in challenging state repression, it is the insurgent-variety terrorist who defines appropriate and just.

What Russian law enforcement measures hadn’t proven sufficient against the Chechen rebels and their present leader Dokku Umarov? Quoth Medvedev: “We have torn off the heads of the most odious bandits, but clearly this was not enough.”

Thinking outside the bomb, in the box

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Eric Verlo

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOMB is a clever antiwar appropriation of Taco Bell’s inventive twist, but since when does imitation break from a box? And does “the bomb” mean what it used to? By the look of their logo, the TOTB activists are not talking about the A-bomb, nor bunker-busters, nor smart-bombs, nor predator drones. Intentionally or not, they’re invoking the proverbial cartoon explosive, wielded by anarchists or other insurgents, the only means by which social uprisings have ever transcended the box.

“The bomb” was the feared Armageddon of the early nuclear age. More recently, “Food Not Bombs” conflates bombs with militarism because modern war-making, aka peace-keeping, is dominated by aerial bombing. Returning to “bomb” in the singular insinuates nukes, or the mutually-assured destructiveness of endlessly reciprocated violence. So let’s see the bomb depicted more as a nuclear warhead or an artillery shell.

Intrinsic to the plea for nonviolence is the determination to subdue the military instinct with transcendence. And when have proponents of nonviolence exerted jurisdiction over anyone but themselves? Lead by example they cry. We will defeat the barbarians by not becoming barbarians ourselves. Turn the other cheek, the meek shall inherit the earth. I rather suspect, quoth Camelot: “It’s not the earth the meek inherit, it’s the dirt.”

To warmongers I say: think. In of itself, thinking is outside the box enough for you. To peaceniks: exchanging the challenges of human reality for a spiritual realm, is a religious balm that dates to antiquity, about as inside the box as it gets.

Rush is right. Make him pay for Haiti.

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Reading 538’s excellent qualified defense of Pat Robertson‘s accusation that Haiti really had made a pact with the devil, I am prompted to weigh in behind Rush Limbaugh’s hypocritical rant that the American public has already paid enough for Haiti’s relief, “it’s called the US Income Tax.” Well it’s true. It is the role of government to see after the suffering among us. Of course you’d think conservatives like Limbaugh wouldn’t highlight that role while images of disaster haunt us, because they’re the ones behind depleting the aid coffers. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich alone could have relieved Haiti, Katrina and every Tsunami in between without costing tearful American TV viewers one extra dime of credit card debt.

The Haitian rebels made this prayer to their god in 1791. European slave owners might conclude an insurgent god would be their devil. This prayer was recited by rebellion priestess Boukman at the Bois Caiman (Bwa Kayiman). French speakers can read it in Creole.

The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts.

The Toussaint Louverture Project is an online documentation of our western hemisphere’s only successful slave uprising.

Just as the USA still refuses to let Cuba free its people from our tyranny after 40 years, so did the Western powers fight to keep Haiti from success, lest their free slaves inspire ours.

William Blum – Anti-Empire Report

Posted on January 6, 2010 by NMT

Here’s William Blum’s latest essay, on Lincoln Gordon, Brazil, Cuba, and the 2009 Nobel Laureate, reprinted from www.killinghope.org.

THE ANTI-EMPIRE REPORT
By William Blum, January 6, 2009

The American elite

Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon’s diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington’s on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil’s military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)

In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)

Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."

Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:

MANN: I hope you’re as happy about Brazil as I am.

LBJ: I am.

MANN: I think that’s the most important thing that’s happened in the hemisphere in three years.

LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.¹

So the next time you’re faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" … "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America’s past. In its present. In its future. They’re the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.

And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."

Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners

In November I wrote:

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He’s holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in … not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".² A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.³

Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee’s ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.

The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That’s anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?

Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.⁴

For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better — more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy.

It’s not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here’s Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."⁵

Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references?

Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.

More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here’s the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:

"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. … Under Cuban law … a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of ‘dangerousness’."

That sounds just awful, doesn’t it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don’t use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".

The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we’re bringing democracy to Cuba just as we’re bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.⁶

The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s "political prisoners" are such dissidents.

The Washington Post story continued:

"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period.

What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people’s needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.

"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."

What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.

"Access to some Web sites is restricted."

Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can’t imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully."

According to a well-documented account⁷, Sánchez’s tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.

"’Counterrevolutionary activities’, which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."

Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for … for what? In most cases there’s no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don’t accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".⁸

There’s no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.⁹ It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.

Notes

Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 ^↩

ABC News, December 17, 2009; Washington Post, December 19, 2009 ^↩

Washington Post, December 25, 2009 ^↩

Stop NATO, "2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World", December 30, 2009. To get on the StopNATO mailing list write to r_rozoff@yahoo.com. To see back issues: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/^↩

Reuters, December 25, 2009 ^↩

For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009 ^↩

Salim Lamrani, professor at Paris Descartes University, "The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez", Monthly Review magazine, November 12, 2009 ^↩

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/democ.htm ^↩

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ^↩

Identity of CIA bomb victims spill forth

Posted on January 4, 2010 by Eric Verlo

US forces in Afghanistan suffered an unprecedented setback this weekend when a suicide bomber was able to blow to smithereens a gathering of CIA operatives in an outpost in Khost Province. Seven agents were killed and six injured, and a great tragedy is that these covert deaths, like that of the security contractor killed with them, are not counted as official casualties of war, to weigh against the public conscience for us to wonder, was it worth it? These were professional killers and torturers whose names are now withheld to protect their families.

But some Americans –God bless them– will not be denied the deification of their downed warriors, and so some families have gone public about the loss of their mercenary kin. Thus we have names, and Facebook memorials, to the men and women who commit the clandestine crimes for which the rest of the world holds us accountable. But first, a word about what they were doing.

Forward Operating Base Chapman caught my attention because that’s the kind of military post which protects the celebrated school building projects of Greg Mortenson, and Khost Province is one of his territories. It turns out that the US Army is also busy [re]-building schools, and boasts 53 in Khost. Also, for reasons of deteriorating security, FOB Chapman was no longer housing US military, but instead was strictly for private firms contracted to the reconstruction, except now journalists are at liberty to say that the camp was always known to be “not regular” — code for CIA.

“Although Chapman was officially a camp for civilians involved in reconstruction, it was well-known locally as a CIA base. Over the past couple of years, it focused on gathering information on so-called high-value targets for drone attacks, the unmanned missile planes that have played a growing role in taking out suspected terrorists since President Barack Obama took office. The Haqqanis were their principal target.

” ‘That far forward they were almost certainly from the CIA’s paramilitary rather than analysts,’ said one agent.”

So FOB Chapman was used for a drone command post. Not controlling drones, but gathering intelligence about where to target their missiles. I’d be curious that what had been an “underground gym” for US soldiers, where the dozen CIA officers were meeting their informant/surprise-bomber, wasn’t being put to an altogether more menacing function by the CIA. Obviously on this particular occasion it was a briefing room/wake.

It’s conjectured that the CIA at FOB Chapman was targeted because the local Taliban had suffered one too many CIA drone attacks. Other accusations emerge that the CIA had recently killed Afghan detainees while in custody, in their effort to break the Haqqani network. One reporter’s source phrased it: “Those guys have recently been on a big Haqqani binge.”

The CIA is not releasing the name of the bomber, reportedly an informant “candidate,” but strangely his name is being reported in the Arabic press. He was a Jordanian doctor named Khalil Abu Hammam Mellal Al-Balawi, of the Beer Al-Saba’a family, codenamed “Abu Dajana Al-Kharasani,” a supervisor on the Al-Hisba internet forums, where so-called official al-Qaeda communications are regularly transmitted. His identity might explain how a visit with this “informant” warranted the attendance of a dozen agents, including a high ranking officer from Kabul and the Khost station chief.

The station chief was reported to have been an agent in Afghanistan for 14 years, since the days of the so-called Alec Station which was tasked with tracking the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. She was a loving mother of three, so it’s possible her identity is being concealed until her family can be extracted from the region.

The first agent to be identified publicly was Harold Brown Jr., 37, of Bolton, Mass., whose father thought he worked for the State Department. Before the “State Department,” Brown worked for Science Applications International Corp.

The next to be identified was Scott Michael Roberson, 39, of Akron, Ohio. He was a policeman when he wasn’t a CIA security officer. Robertson co-founded the Metro Atlanta Police Emerald Society and was a member of the Iron Pigs, a national motorcycle club for police and firefighters.

Another of the CIA agents wasn’t American at all, but a member of the Jordanian royal family. The body of Capitan As-Sharif Ali bin Zeid Al Awn has been returned to Jordan with much pomp and ceremony, without an official report of the incidence of his death, the family unable to explain what he was doing in Afghanistan, except to deny accusations that he was employed by the CIA.

The lone non-CIA victim was security contractor and former Navy SEAL, Jeremy Jason Wise, 35, of Virginia Beach. Wrote the WSJ: “Today, the CIA and President Obama acknowledged that seven of those killed were CIA agents. No one would say who employed the eighth American.”

(Except he was really the seventh American, because one of the dead was a Jordanian.)

UPDATE: It’s now revealed that Jeremy Wise was employed by Xe/Blackwater, who admit now that two of the CIA victims were Blackwater.

With suicide bombers all over the news, from the successful to the pantywaist, as blogs spill over with nuke-em-all comments which reveal Americans seem perfectly comfortable with the idea that peoples are collectively accountable for the deeds of criminals among them.

Or the deeds of insurgents aka freedom fighters, about whom you or I might disagree.

US Blackwater goons for example, have been let off the hook for the Nisour Square atrocity in Iraq. According to our neoliberal world order, Iraq should be able to track miscreants with drones, and since we refuse to bring them to justice, lay waste entire American neighborhoods and schools if informants report they are nearby.

I’ve certainly always argued that Americans are all of us responsible for the crimes our government is committing. Even with our combatant criminals killed in battle, I’m not sure that the people who cheered them on don’t still owe their victims responsibility.

Drones vulnerable to P2P filesharing?

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The WSJ headline screams “Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones … Iranian Backing Suspected.” Hmm. Why Iran — because insurgents can’t afford $25.99 SkyGrabber software? Captured Iraqi laptops have evidence of intercepted video feeds, not code. The hacking term is no misnomer. Instead of calling the footage “hijacked” or “received,” the data is described as “stolen” and “pirated,” which would seem to betray an inviting vulnerability to SkySoftware’s reach. Are they saying there’s a UAV feed that can be harvested by a distributed file-sharing exploit? Imagine a drone-watch network for nabbing unwarranted military surveillance: DroneWire. By going after too many birds with this story, the DoD confirms its armed unmanned vehicles are patrolling not just Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Yemen and Somalia, where our distributed representative Democracy has no legal authority to conduct extrajudicial assassinations.

Who is making a list, checking it twice

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I know, right? Why won’t her boyfriend take his new Playstation online, where obviously all the fun is? “What’s wrong with him?!” The Sony PS3 spokesman commiserates, but he’s an interested party. So what’s up? Well, we have a clue this week with the Xbox.

By the way, I find Sony’s choice of spokesperson discordantly subversive. I’m guessing marketers of the PS3 have found their target audience watches the Mac vs. PC commercials and identifies with PC.

In a sudden move that has exasperated Xbox users, Microsoft decided that all its game consoles which have been modified to play software obtained through alternative delivery systems (piracy) will now automatically be blocked from their online system.

It make sense, but is it appropriate? If you’ve modded your car, for example to run on another fuel in addition to gasoline, would gas stations have the grounds to shut you out? And it’s not like you put a sticker on it advertising the modification. How would they know?

I think Microsoft’s violation lies more in a Terms of Use contract which permits them to query your machine for your personalizations. What right have they to tell you what you can or cannot do with your equipment, regardless whether you bought it from them? You didn’t rent it. Next are they going to dictate with which peripherals you are allowed to connect it, or atop which pedestal you must behold it?

You may not feel the video gamer’s pain, but look who’s doing the smack-down. What would happen if Microsoft decided to apply the same policy to copies of its operating systems, or office software?

Could it be coming? Google is criticized for knowing too much about internet users as they search the web. The companies who make browsers, including Microsoft, of course know where you go online. Imagine what Microsoft knows about what you do offline. And they are now asserting jurisdiction over your hardware. What if you wanted to turn off your computer, instead of putting it to sleep where it might still be answering queries about you? Maybe Microsoft will decide its Terms of Use won’t let you.

Microsoft hasn’t been above integrating spyware into its applications, creating stealth logs whose existence its programmers deny, even as users wonder why the files regenerate themselves after they’re deleted. Microsoft Windows’ unceasing security vulnerabilities are due entirely to the software exploits it leaves so that its programs are inter-compatible.

If that’s not enough, Microsoft counterinsurgent teams load malware into community open source projects, to give Windows company looking crummy.

Apple too is guilty of overreaching its intellectual rights authority. It recently stopped Psystar from adapting the OS X to work on PCs. And it disabled an element of its Snow Leopard 10.6 release to thwart a Hackintosh adaptation of Mac’s OS for netbook users.

Social justice, peace and reparations

Posted on November 6, 2009 by NMT

Stop U.S. Occupation and War inside U.S. and Abroad! We demand the end of U.S. support for the colonial government of Israel and recognition of all rights of the Palestinian people. We demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Middle East. We demand the removal of U.S. troops and contractors from Colombia and an end to counterinsurgent intervention in Venezuela and South America.

Subcomandante Marcos on LA OTRA

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Reading more about the Tohono O’odham, I came across this speech by the EZLN’s masked leader Subcomandante Marcos, delivered at a 2006 tribal gathering of SW Native American insurgents. It’s about the other Mexico, in solidarity with the other Americas: “La Otra.”

Compared his words to President Obama today telling the tribal summit in DC: “You will not be forgotten.” Sounds like a eulogy.

Doesn’t it? Or simply another white man’s empty promise. It appears to me that Obama is playing the forked tongue white man to Americans of every color, giving them assurances that they are now in good hands, yet turning his back on them all when the speeches are through. It’s Obama the great equalizer, making sure that all Americans, Red, White, Brown and Black, get treated like they’re black.

EZLN: A Meeting with the O’odham
By Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

La Otra – The Other Mexico
October 26, 2006

Bueno, Compañeras and Compañeros:

First we just want to thank the Monroy family, who is receiving the Sixth Commission and the Karavana’s compañeros, who are giving us lodging here, in… Rancho el Peñasco is it called? Thank you Compañeros and Compañeras. And thank you to all of you who have endured the six hours that we have been here, and I hope you have a little patience for what I am going to say.

We especially want to thank the traditional O’odham authorities. Don José, Doña Ofelia – I don’t see her anymore – Is Doña Ofelia still here? No? Brenda, Doña Brenda? They’re not here either, what a pity. Doña Alicia? Well, that’s what happened to us. The traditional authorities went away and we came to listen to them. No? But Don José is here, as I want to bring a message from the indigenous Zapatista communities to the Tohono O’odham people, and also for the Navajo and Cherokee people.

What the compañero, the Purépecha chief Salvador said, from the National Indigenous Congress, also represents our thinking. The traditional O’odham chief, Doña Ofelia, pointed out something that we already see in the papers. That thing that a few people are promoting here, the National Indigenous Convention, is a lie. It is really directed by someone who was an official under President Vicente Fox, and later was unemployed and is now involved with the National Indigenous Convention, which is really a movement to support López Obrador. The Indian peoples don’t interest them. The documents, which they are presenting, which those people are distributing, make no mention of the San Andrés Accords, which have cost blood and death not just to Zapatistas, but to more than 40 Indian peoples, tribes and nations of Mexico, who are in agreement with that struggle. We are in agreement with what was expressed by Doña Ofelia, the O’odham traditional authority.

“We are Zapatistas. We live in the last corner of this country. We are of Mayan roots. We are people of Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque and Mam roots.” And it is our custom at times to speak, when we speak with other Indian peoples, to use a symbolic language with tales and legends – ”sometimes we speak about our history, our goals, with tales, legends and symbolic language, and in this time that we have this message for the O’odham and Navajos and Cherokees, we take this root.” To pass on this message that the Compañeros sent me to tell you, we will use that resource. Our elders, our chiefs, say that the gods made the world, that they made the men and women of corn first. And they specifically put the heart of corn in them. But the corn ran out and some men and women didn’t get a heart. The color of the earth ran out, and they began to look for other colors. Then, the heart of corn touched people who are white, red or yellow. So there are people here who don’t have the dark color of indigenous people, but they have the heart of corn, so they are here with us. Our oldest ones say, our chiefs, that the people who didn’t get a heart, took care of it later, they occupied the empty space with money, and that it doesn’t matter what color those people have, they have a heart that is the green color of money. And our old ones also say that, every once in a while, the land seeks to protect its O’odham Representative Doña Ofeliaand Subcomandante Marcos children, the men and women of corn. And that a time comes – which is when the night is the most difficult – when the land gets tired and needs those men and women to help it live.

They were killing our people with diseases, we were going to disappear, just like the Kiliwa people are disappearing, a few hundred kilometers from here where we are, where there are only 54 families left. And of them, only four speak the Kiliwa language here in Mexico, on this side.

We want to say to the O’odham nation, to the Navajo – I don’t know if Michelle is still here? No, not her either, well, we don’t have any messenger, I hope that someone tapes it… pardon me, Michelle. What happened is that in our land, our chiefs – I am a Subcomandante, because I am not the chief – my chiefs are men and women like Doña Ofelia, like Don José, 100 percent indigenous. And it fell on me – together with other compañeros – to do other work.

We were already dead and we were called upon to become warriors, according to our legend. And as we were dead, we became what we are: shadows. And in a strict sense we are that: “shadow’s warriors or warriors of the shadows.” And January 1, 1994, on the wall of a bank in San Cristóbal de las Casas, appeared a sign that we painted which said: here we are the forever dead, dying again, but now to live. And that was the message that we were giving to the rest of the world: that in this country and on this planet, one had to fight and be willing to die to be able to survive.

In the story that we are telling – or what they ordered us to tell you – the land protected us after the Spanish invasion, and it made us survive and resist the North American invasion, and it made us live. And after the invasion of money or big capital, the land that made us survive is at the point of dying, precisely because of those above. If you think that they are going to conform themselves to seeing us as poor people, without schools, without medicine, you are wrong: they want us to disappear completely.

For entire decades we have been living with diseases, without education, scratching the earth to be able to take some produce from it. Now they also want that land. The Escalera Nautica will mean the total disappearance of the Yoreme, the Mayo, Cucapá and Yaqui peoples from the whole coast of Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California and Baja Sur, for hotel and tourist businesses. There’s not going to be anything more than deceit from the government, for the Yoreme, the Yaqui, the O’odham, the Cucupá and the Kiliwa.

The governments and those who lead them want that land to convert it into a commodity. If we permit that, this land is going to be destroyed. And that which protected us, that made us survive, is also going to die. And if that land and that world die, there will be no reason to fight, or to live, or to study.

What we are proposing here is that we have to unite as Indian peoples. Land dies the same way in O’odham, Navajo, Cherokee, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Purépecha and Náhuatl territory, and we must unite, but not only in Mexico, but on the whole continent.

They, those who are up above, have already shown for hundreds of years, for centuries, that the only thing that they have done has been to destroy the earth. No more – “no more that’s enough” – it’s sufficient. Now we have to take the land’s destiny and its defense into our hands. Don’t leave it one minute more in the hands of the rich. We, those who have the color of the earth and hearts of corn, without regard to our skin color – we have to do it, because if we don’t, the whole world is going to disappear.

To the one who has money, what’s happening is not important. O’odham and Navajo territory is now a territory of death. Your fields, where your culture flourishes, is where poor Mexicans are killed, families who try to cross to the other side. The O’odham and Navajo people cannot permit that. You know that they are converting our lands, besides, into their garbage can: we are their garbage dumps. Toxic wastes, nuclear wastes, are not going to the residential zones, not in New York or Washington: they are going to Indian lands. And land is like the human body; one cannot inject poison into one part without affecting the rest. They think that they will only poison O’odham and Navajo land. They are going to poison everything and they are going to destroy it.

As the National Indigenous Congress compañero said: “we came to invite you, not to ask the government, but to get rid of it.” Not to be praying that the North American and Mexican governments respect O’odham territory, which is divided by the borderline. And we know that the borderline crosses through your people’s ceremonial center. We want that border to disappear, so that once again the O’odham, Navajo and Cherokee nations exist, as well as our peoples, because they already demonstrated that they cannot conduct this world and take it to a good end. We have to do it, not just for our Indian peoples, but for all humanity. Therefore, we say that our struggle is for humanity and against neoliberalism.

We wanted to invite you to join this movement, which is called the Other Campaign, so that as Indian peoples, the history of each 100 years is not repeated again. It is going to be repeated, but one part is going to change.

In 1810, we struggled for independence against Spanish power; in 1910, against the landowner’s power. In 2010 – and even before – we will struggle against the power of money. But, differently than the 200 and 100 years before, now the Indian peoples will have to be respected. The same thing will not occur again: that another comes to power and the Indian peoples disappear again, or suffer the same poverty and scorn. Therefore, as Indian peoples, we form separately inside of the Other Campaign, and separately we talk to each other and separately we make agreements.

Those who are up there above, compañeros and compañeras of Sonora – Yaquis, Yoremes, Cucapás, O’odham – are only going to deceive you. They are going to buy off one or two of you, they are going to take them on a trip – like traveling around with those who distributed the paper just now – around the world, but their people are going to disappear. And if you are the leaders, it is certain, they are going to take you to hotels, or to the conventions those that the politicians have, but your people are going to disappear. And photos of your leaders are going to come out in the newspapers, but the garbage dump is going to poison your land.

And there will be many gatherings and declarations, but our poor Mexican men and women are going to continue dying on Navajo land, or on the land of the O’odham. Those things are not going to change if we continue believing in those above.

And that’s what the Sonoran government is going to do, after this meeting you are going to see it. It is going to declare that it will resolve the indigenous problem, it is going to seek you out and it is going to invite you to the big hotels; it’s going to give you good food, and it is going to put papers in front of you to sign. It is going to give you some aid and some credit. But nothing, absolutely nothing, is going to change in your territories.

The San Andrés Accords, which are the ones that represent the agreement of more than 40 peoples, tribes, nations and neighborhoods of the Indian peoples of Mexico, they say one thing that everyone forgets they say: that indigenous territory is indigenous. No one can do anything in indigenous territory if the community doesn’t accept it. Not putting a garbage dump, or a hotel, not even crossing through your territory without permission from the authorities – which is certainly what the compañera Ofelia was complaining about, and about which we also complain.

That is what we are saying wherever we go. And in this case, we were thinking that we were only going to talk with the O’odham people, or with Indian peoples, but how good it is that you arrived from many places. And especially, the people who are struggling on the other side in the United States, also with Indian peoples, and also with this injustice, this war of annihilation there is against the undocumented.

A little while ago when we were coming here, we crossed the border, there in Sonoyta, we crossed over on the other side and later we returned because we had to come here. But the big extension of the desert was seen and I was thinking – I imagined what all the compañeros from the Karavana – what it was going to mean crossing that desert, without food. If the heat or the cold doesn’t kill you, the Minutemen kill you, or the ranchers, or the motorcyclists, or La Migra. And no one was going to take count, not even the university studies. If we, as Indian people, do not unite… We are proposing a continental gathering of all the original peoples of these lands, in October of the coming year, when 515 years of the “discovery” are completed. Now it was good! 500 years are enough to show that they couldn’t.

And if the governments of the United States or Mexico didn’t see us when we were few, we will see if the world doesn’t see us when all the Indian peoples of this continent – from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska – unite and begin to tell of all the injustices and struggles. And that gathering is going to be in Northwest Mexico, near the border – which does not exist for us – in other words near the Oodham, Navajo, Cherokee, Cucapá, Kiliwa, Yoreme, Yaqui land, where we have been all these days. In a few days, we are making agreements with each other and taking votes, perhaps next month this call that we are proposing will come out.

That is more or less what we want to tell you. I hope you can pass the message to the traditional chiefs: Ofelia, Brenda, Alicia – Don José is here – Michelle: I ask a favor that you pass it to the Navajo people, the compañera with the Cherokee people.

We only ask you that, we are going to talk directly among ourselves and make an agreement. The next time that we come my chiefs will come, I will not come, they sent me first to see how it was. I report to them and then they will come, those that command me, because that is our way.

That is what we want to say, compañeros and compañeras. Many thanks, Good Night.

Uzi Landau doesn’t steal Palestinian homes because there is no such thing

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- Israeli PR envoy Uzi Landau addressed CU Denver students today, the majority of whom were antagonistic to his message. Denver policemen lined the walls, altar and choir loft, as Landau went on about the mortal threat which “extremist” Islam poses to Judeo-Christian civilization. Landau likened Iran to Nazi Germany and Ahmadinejad to Hitler, but had no comparison for the nefarious and subversive terror plots which Iran has been foisting on the free world. I’m thinking perhaps, like the CIA or Mossad?

Landau entered the room strangely like a Mafia don, flanked by an entourage of black coats and security. A well dressed man and a woman who an hour earlier had been loitering behind me as I protested outside, and whom I took to be Russian when I heard them speak to each other, now appeared as part of Landau’s party.

Due to the sudden snowfall, the campus closed for the afternoon. As a result, the turnout for Landau’s speech was sparse. The security detail of Denver and campus police officers which subjected attendees to metal detectors and bag searches, and kept vigil from the sidelines, would have been disproportionate even if all the seats had been filled. One got the impression that law enforcement were there to assure the audience stayed awake and respectful. Policemen could be seen conspicuously conferring about the seating area occupied by activist Glenn Spagnuolo and his colleagues. When Glenn rose and walked forward to queue for the microphone, a handful of the officers adjusted their positions accordingly.

Glenn was responsible for pulling together voices to oppose Uzi Landau’s appearance. Glenn had a personal connection to Landau, having worked in the occupied territories like Rachel Corrie, and knew the activist who was ultimately killed by a bulldozer working under orders of Uzi Landau. Subsequent to that event, Glenn was deported to Jordan.

When Glenn announced the protest against Landau’s visit, the CU organizers were faced with additional security costs, for which they had no budget. Attempts were made to negotiate calling off the protest. Ultimately the Israeli embassy fronted the funds for the added police.

You might ask, against whom were the officers protecting Uzi Landau? Considering audience members had already been search for weapons, were the police trying to prevent a citizen’s arrest?

The good news, Israeli PR envoy Uzi Landau is not a very good speaker. His heavy accent and habit of letting his voice trail off confident the audience is hanging on his words, makes Landau a fortuitous emissary for those cheering against a military attack upon Iran. The bad news is that landau is as far right as they come, and if he’s reaching sympathetic ears, there are too many racist Americans without any understanding of international law.

I was surprised to discover that this Israeli minister’s talking points were no more nuanced than the flack we receive at this website from IDF Internet Megaphone trolls. Landau reflected the same disrespect for the people from whom lands were taken, and are still being taken. He argued that soldiers must be permitted to target insurgents regardless the civilian casualties.

Landau spoke confidently without batting an eye about the plight of Palestinians. He justified increased Israeli settlements based on Israel’s better record of land stewardship, and of course, he argued that anti-Semitism nugget: why should there be any lands forbidden to Jews? Specifically, to paraphrase: “If Israel can be 20% Palestinian, why cannot the Occupied Territories be 20% Jewish?”

Because Israel then builds walls around settlements and claims more land.

To his credit, Uzi Landau was entertainingly pugilistic in his response to audience questions. Instead of ignoring comments being made out of turn, he took them on, so confident and self-righteous he was about Israel’s actions. Even in Gaza, even in the context of over 60 years of occupation. But to Landau, the Palestinian Problem is dismissed easily. Palestinians don’t exist. They didn’t exist, they didn’t accept the offers of statehood when given the chance, their opportunity past, they never were.

Landau accused his detractors of offering no facts. He, on the other hand, came equipped with facts. One fact of his, from history: Even before it was declared a Jewish nation by the UN, the land of Israel had been in continuous possession of the Jews. So called “Palestinians” only came to the area for the jobs the Israelis offered them.

One of the best questions posed had to do with borders. If G-d promised the holy land to the Jews, which land was that precisely, as defined by what borders? For example, the UN granted land to inaugurate the nation of Israel. It didn’t include Jerusalem, nor much of to what Israel is laying claim. Does the “promised land” encompass more than Israel has even now? What can be the expected boundaries of Israel’s assumed birthright?

Dr. Landau didn’t dwell long on this polemic, except to say with a smile: “that will depend on our neighbors.”

Armed UAS drones need no defending

Posted on October 26, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I was curious about the etymology of the term “drone” applied to military (& DHS) Unmanned Aerial Surveillance aircraft, these days, mostly Armed. Obviously Armed UAS are not named after the stingless unproductive bees whose task it is to impregnate the queen, nor lazy idlers, nor clueless computer sales techies, nor thankless menial worker drones. Anyone who’s been around Radio Controlled model planes knows drones are named for the sound they make, a steady drone as they labor across the sky. While military aerial surveillance predates the Wright Brothers, and RC model airplanes have been around for half that time, it took the advent of asymmetric warfare to open the window to military drones. Their constant buzz offering the most intractable reason.

By “asymmetric” I do not mean the US intelligence code for off-textbook warfare, for counter-insurgency methods outside von Clausewitz etiquette. I mean the inherency they obscure, war between foes lopsided.

Look at a drone’s design. It’s more Gossamer Condor than military aircraft. Obviously an unmanned vehicle comprises fewer mechanical systems because it doesn’t need to propel, nor sustain, a crew of human beings. It might need less armature for the same reason, except of course, today’s drones are of high value in their own right. So why no armament?

Why too, no powerful jet engines or swept wings for aeronautic superiority? This drone looks about as robust as a paper glider. Laymen can distinguish bombers from jet fighters, as they can trucks from a race cars. I’d say the military drone resembles more a stick insect than its accidental namesake the bee. Do Armed UASs have no need for evasive maneuver capability?

I’ll ask another obvious question, why do drones carry no customary insignia designating to whose side it belongs? In particular this element would be of primary importance when encountered by other aircraft.

But a drone doesn’t encounter enemy aircraft, nor allied aircraft who might confuse it for belonging to an adversary, because drones operate where aerial supremacy is already absolute. The key to a drone’s military usefulness is that there is no opponent to shoot it down.

An Armed UAS can drone all it wants, taking its sweet time laying siege to defenseless objectives and other targets of opportunity. The US Predator or Reaper models can glide when they want to surveil in silence, although otherwise their motors project their presence with the deliberate imposition of a school hall monitor. It is more efficient to deter the placing of IEDs than to try to catch insurgents in the act.

Meanwhile all civilians are terrorized by the sound, associating it with sudden, unpredictable and often unjustified destruction and death.

The WWII German Stuka dive bomber had inverted gull wings which were thought to produce a horrifying wail as the notorious aircraft attacked city populations, Guernica among them. In fact the sound was produced by a siren the Nazis called Jericho’s Trumpet, mounted purposefully to spread fear on the ground. Like modern drones, the Stuka were not designed to fend off attackers from the sky.

Before the fighter planes of WWI, artillery spotters would rise in balloons to survey the enemy trenches. From these tethered balloons, artillery strikes could be directed with increasing accuracy. These remote eyes in the sky were the rudiments of aerial surveillance, the precursors to today’s Armed UAS. The balloons were manned obviously, and they weren’t armed, but the spotters they held aloft were despised much as drones are today. When WWI biplanes eventually came along to pick off the balloonists like sitting ducks, the soldiers in the trenches were jubilant.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had been fortified by the US military. We’d helped the Taliban destabilize the region, to force Russia’s hand in rushing to restore order to its southern neighbor. We wanted to draw the Russian troops in before we assisted the Afghan insurgency with the real weapons it needed to combat their invaders’ superior fire power. When Bin Laden’s Mujihadeen and the Taliban got US Stinger Missiles, the Russians could no longer deploy their helicopter gunships with impunity and the end drew near.

Eventually whoever drew the US into its war on Islam, is going to start distributing the means to take the US out. It might be Stinger Missiles or a modern equivalent. Eventually someone will develop sympathy for the victimized Muslims of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza (add Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc) and help them flick the killer drones from the sky.

Would attacking the drones provide retribution enough, knowing that the real operators are safe in virtual cockpit command centers located safely within US homeland borders. Would it be sufficient to keep clearing the skies of drones, or will our victims have to weed US drones from the roots?

Will the drones prove as easily replaceable as GIs? The American Public keeps count of its lost soldiers, but in no way has this stanched the flow of fresh reinforcements. We do not count expended ordnance, or expensive equipment fallen casualty. Would such tallies discourage the war mongers or encourage weapons industry stockholders?

The American public has shown itself mostly contemptuous of the economic-draft soldiers who man today’s volunteer army, the deaths accumulate, but working poor are expendable. What about those who joined the military to clean up their act? We don’t want those back. After years of war, the public is already seeing too much PTSD, without contemplating bringing all of it home.

Perhaps instead Americans will react to a casualty list of aeronautic losses, maybe for reasons of pure economics. How many helicopters and jets we are losing adds to the federal deficit. But the losses of big equipment might offer the same decision making information we glean from the higher value chess pieces. Rooks and knights represent offensive capability. Hopes for victory or a draw hinge on which of those you have left. No one capitulates based on a count of their pawns. The cumulative tallies will reflect which way the tide is going. Military drones may be worth zero lives, but their destruction will signal an insurgence indomitable.

How to spot a Jap in Afghanistan

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Eric Verlo

This is an excerpt from the WWII training manual “HOW TO SPOT A JAP.” Can you doubt our military blimpnecks aren’t giving the same xenophobic advice about how American servicemen should be sizing up their robe-clad insurgent adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

Posted on September 11, 2009 by NMT

A post-911 perspective by Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!

High Country Earth First Denver Meeting

Posted on May 20, 2009 by NMT

High Country Earth First is hosting the EF! ROADSHOW, in DENVER, May 25-26: Monday 2pm in Cheesman Park, and Tuesday 6pm at the Gypsy House.

Four ongoing EF! projects in Colorado: DENVER: Stop I-70 Expansion through North Denver; SAN LUIS VALLEY: Halt gas drilling in Baca National Wildlife Refuge: and WESTERN SLOPE: Red Cliff mine campaign and Feral Futures (May 24 – June 7).

From “Rockslide,” High Country Earth First!

The need for resistance in solidarity with the wild has never been louder or clearer than it is today; the EF! roadshow is a great tool for growing that resistance. There are countless examples to draw from in the story of radical movements before us: militant labor organizing tours, anti-fascist resistance recruitment and international speaking tours to build cross-border solidarity. The origin of Earth First! itself is credited to a few roadshows that kicked it all off in the early 1980s. We are building on this tradition; akin to a fellowship crossing Middle Earth to amass insurgents to face Mordor head-on.

List-serves and websites aren’t enough
This Roadshow’s primary intention is to strengthen our radical grassroots ecological network. For almost 30 years, we have been an organized voice bridging conservation biology with grassroots community organizing, road blockading and eco-sabotage. In the past 5 years we have seen numbers and experience-level in the EF! movement decline drastically. Yet, our place has never been more urgent. New groups are popping up across the country, but they are detached from many of the groups, history, and skills that came before them. We can’t afford to stumble and make the same mistakes over again.

We are at the tail end of a decade where corporate globalization rooted itself in the US and spread across the planet like a plague. And now that the reality of climate change is finally sinking into the mainstream consciousness, the same superpowers that pushed so-called ‘free trade’ policies to exploit wild nature more efficiently are promoting carbon trading in attempt to make a profitable industry out of the disasters they’ve created. The spineless Big Green environmental NGOs are scrambling for crumbs and cutting deals with the industry for shallow public relations victories. Earth First! must rise and recognize that it’s presence is a strong component of making the broader environmental movement truly effective. We are its spine, or as an EF! co-founder, Howie Wolke, has put it, we are the lions of a movement ‘ecosystem’. Our niche is critical, and its presence (or absence) is felt deeply by our surroundings.

We need to reconnect the multi-generational aspect of Earth First! that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. We need to broaden our network’s base—from radical rural grandparents to revolutionary urban youth. We need re-establish lost relationships with scholars and scientists who resonate with us. We need to re-inspire musicians and artists to contribute their passion to our battles.

When it comes down to it, solid movements are based on strong personal relationships; and real relationships don’t go very far over the internet. We need face-to-face interaction to build trust with—and support for—each other.

From EF! Here is a glimpse of ongoing local and national campaigns and projects related to EF!. They could all use your support in a variety of ways—from fundraising to showing up in person. Please contact the organizing groups directly to find out what they need most:

Northern California Redwood Defense
Since the fall of Maxxam/Pacific Lumber, forest defenders in the Redwoods have been directing attention on another logging empire: Green Diamond Resource Company (formerly Simpson). In the last 10 years they have clear-cut 52,000 acres of Northern California forests. They are killing off endangered Spotted Owls and have aspirations to sell off thousands of acres in Humboldt County for Salmon killing suburban development. We have set up multiple treesit villages to oppose the destruction, and we need your help TODAY.
www.efhumboldt.org

Appalachian Anti-Mountain Top Removal
The presence of coal plants are threats to the lives within both the human community and the mountain ecosystem. One of the most biologically flourishing areas of the world is being environmentally and socially impoverished by companies practicing mountain top removal. Mountain top removal clogs streams, destroys forests, threatens biodiversity and forces coalfield residents into the unjust choice between income and well-being.
www.blueridgeef.com

Stop I-69 in Indiana
I-69 is a NAFTA superhighway, already constructed from Canada to Indianapolis and projected to extend down into Mexico. This highway is intended for the mass transportation of goods and resources, to further exploit workers and the land, and to lessen companies’ accountability in terms of human and environmental rights. In 2008, they began construction of this road through southwestern Indiana, which will evict hundreds of rural families, destroy hundreds of acres of land, and devastate the habitats of countless species of animals, including the endangered Indiana Bat. www.stopi69.wordpress.com

Fight Development in the North Woods of Maine
The largest piece of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi is under attack. Plum Creek, the nation’s largest corporate landowner, is in the process of rezoning 20,000 acres of the Moosehead Lake region in Maine for luxury house and resorts, while trying to balance it off with a fraudulent conservation easement plan. This plan would still allow timber harvesting, commercial water extraction and the building of new infrastructure, among many other ecologically devastating practices. www.maineearthfirst.wordpress.com

Defend the Last Free-Roaming Wild Buffalo in Montana
The Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) is the only group working in the field, everyday, to stop the slaughter and harassment of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo. Volunteers from around the world defend buffalo on their traditional winter habitat and advocate for their protection. Our daily patrols stand with the buffalo on the ground they choose to be on, and document every move made against them. Tactics range from video documentation to nonviolent civil disobedience. www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

Fight new Copper Mines and Roads in the Deserts of Arizona
Chuk’shon Earth First! is fighting the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, which is greenwashing itself by claiming a need for increased copper extraction for the solar panel industry. The group is also opposing the expansion of I-10, part of the Department of Transportation’s “Corridors of the Future” program to increase capacity of global industrial commerce. The proposed I-10 Bypass would bisect wild/rural lands and facilitate more sprawl between Tucson and Phoenix. www.chukshonef.wordpress.com

Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project (BMBP) formed in 1991 to increase regional and national awareness of the Blue Mountains ecosystems, to ensure the protection for and reintroduction of diverse native wildlife species, to promote ecologically sound restoration and address the root causes of ecological and community instability. They have trained countless EF!ers is forest monitoring. They are one of the country’s premier grassroots ‘paper-wrenchers’, filing legal challenges that help make our blockades successful. They can be reached at 541-385-9167

Stop Florida Power & Light from trashing the Everglades
Everglades Earth First! (EEF!) have been battling FPL’s plans to build the country’s largest fossil fuel power plant in the Loxahatchee Basin; a headwaters to the remaining Everglades ecosystem. EEF! Is also challenging over 500 miles of new gas pipelines and 2 new Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facilities. Get more details: www.evergladesearthfirst.org

Stop Gas Drilling in Western New York
There is a proposal on the table to begin one of the largest fossil fuel exploration projects in the country. This project would result hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions, along with the impacts of pipelines, power plants, and new LNG storage facilities. Get in touch with Shale Shock: www.shaleshock.org

Bank of America, Stop Funding Coal!
A national campaign is well underway to stop Bank of America (BoA), who is the largest investor to Mountain Top Removal coal mining. The company recently offered lip-service to address their support for the coal industry, but have made no real steps towards cutting ties with King Coal. With BoA locations in cities across the U.S., this campaign can easily be supported in a decentralized fashion. Give ‘em hell! For more info: www.ran.org

No 2010 Olympics
The Native Youth Movement and other First Nations groups in occupied Canada have called for full-scale resistance to the Winter Olympics proposed in British Colombia. The Olympics proposal includes a mess of development, ski-resorts and infrastructure on indigenous land. Learn more at: www.no2010.com

Root Force
This project is a research database and strategic think tank for direct action intended to target corporate/colonial infrastructure, such as: roads, dams, power plants, and mines. Their website offers background information on transnational companies, government agencies and their local affiliations across the United States. www.rootforce.org

Well, well, another “No Civilians Targeted” LIE exposed…

Posted on May 9, 2009 by Brother Jonah

The Pentagon is now saying “OOPS” and while they’re not retracting yesterday’s LIE, they’re modifying the statement to say that there were “more” civilians being killed and wounded in Afghanistan (and Pakistan with “unofficial” U.S. assistance) than they expected.

Still recycling their dogma that the “insurgent” Resistance groups are “hiding behind civilians”.

Well, let’s see, the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the Chicago Great Lakes Naval Station, the Joint Reserve Base in the DFW metroplex, the 18+ Military installations in the Denver area, (including us) the El Paso/Juarez metro area with its more than 3 million people…

I guess the U.S. Military is “hiding behind civilians” too.

The doctrine the U.S. and its Puppet States are using to justify murdering civilians in Georgia, South Ossetia, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, the list goes on and on…

Could just as easily have been used by the Redcoats to justify burning down Boston and shooting any who tried to escape, (if they had so chosen) with the bullshit that “Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson are ‘hiding behind civilians’…”

Or Baltimore, or Richmond, or Philadelphia, or New York City…

They DID use that rationale to attempt to exterminate American Indians with biological warfare, and the United States Army did the same thing using the same rationale.

Sand Creek, the Little Ouachita, the Little Big Horn (only Custer got his murdering Bitch Ass and those of his men EXECUTED in that one… Eat it and smile, racist Bitches!!) and even several repeats of the Smallpox Blanket bio-terror attacks perpetrated by the United States Army against AMERICANS.

All of them targeting “unlawful combatants”.

And all the murderous Corporate Terrorists say “Amen”…

As usual…

Jesus Killed Mohammed, every last one

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Eric Verlo

With attention now drawn on the evangelical skinheads running amok with the US military’s Big Stick, reporter Jeff Sharlet relates a story in this month’s Harpers, which showcases the fundamental irreligiosity of the capital “C” Crusaders.

The episode Jesus Killed Mohammed takes place in Samarra, Iraq, in 2004, where rascally US Christ fans succeed in goading their crosstown rivals into taking a shot at them, the sooner to be dispatched to the Islamic hereafter by the Christ Gang’s overwhelming firepower. The operation involved painting “Jesus Killed Mohammed” across the side of their Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and having their translator poke his megaphone out the top, giving Arabic voice to the insolent taunt, shouting it up and down the neighborhood until no one was left to speak up for Mohammed.

???? ??? ?????

The affair reminded me of the Monty Phython skit about the world’s deadliest joke being appropriated for military use across the WWI trenches, which was, if you remember, immediately fatal, combined with the sacrilegious 2005 GWOT strategy which drew so much flak to US special forces in Afghanistan when soldiers burned Taliban corpses to draw enemy ire. The Intelligence Service calls it “tickling:” provoking your opponent into an emotional response to reveal his position. In the Afghan case, the US team violated Geneva Conventions against mutilating the dead. In Sammara the only code protecting the sensitivities of the indignant Muslims was probably the boxing rule forbidding blows below the belt. Perhaps it was the very indecency of the concept which most elicited snickers from the American perps.

In operation JESUS KILLED MOHAMMED, the 1/26 Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division led by Lieutenant John D. DeGiulio, under instructions from the 10th Special Forces Group who called themselves “the Faith element,” drove their Bradleys along the streets drawing fire, one shot at a time, from virtually every door. After each shot rang out, the Bradley would summarily aerate each residence and its inhabitants until “Jesus Killed Mohammed” did not offend anymore.

As Sharlet noted, every Iraqi home is permitted one AK-47 for self defense, so answering the US force’s insolence did not reveal you to have been an insurgent. The infidels were biting their thumbs at the Iraqis from behind impregnable armor, to respond with small arms fire was entirely a matter of honor, and suicide.

ANZAC

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Brother Jonah

I was going to do a short teach-in at the EcoFair today, (along with selling my Eco Jewelry) but i’ve got a mucked up arm.
More on that later. Short story, I didn’t go.

But today was also ANZAC Day, sort of an Australian, Canadian and New Zealand version of Veterans Day.

Veterans day here commemorates the end of the war.

ANZAC day is the first engagement by Australian and NZ troops under Aussie and NZ officers (also Canadian and Irish) at a place called Suvla Sud al Bar at Gallipoli… against the Turks.

To put it mildly, it was a straight up fuck-job.

They got mauled.

So did the Turks, because that’s what war is all about.

The British Army had decided to put the “colonials” into the fight right there…

With an amphibious invasion. One which they quickly learned they didn’t know how to run.

That was the guys at the top, like Winston Churchill. He resigned his command and took a field posting.

Remorse, yes, shame, yes… didn’t bring back the kids who were, as the song says

“in five minutes flat, we were all blown to Hell,
Nearly blew us back home
to Australia.

But the band played “Waltzing Matilda”
As we stopped
To bury our slain

We buried ours,
and the Turks buried theirs…
Then we started all over again

and some of them were kids.

The oldest surviving ANZAC died in 2002, while the ~~Liberation~~ Violent Takeover of Afghanistan was going on.

He was 102.

When he joined the Australia-New Zealand Auxilary Corps of the British Army he was 14.
He was 15 when he went to Gallipoli.

Some of our Young Friends who say we unnecessarily pick on the Devilpups and Young Marines and JROTC and Boy Scouts, which ranch-raise the kids to become Cannon Fodder, should contemplate that.

Their leaders will probably wire them up to call us Hate Speech Propagandists for pointing that out.

Screw their leaders.

I was going to sing the songs “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” “Gallipoli” and “Green Fields o’ France” and play the pipes lowly, actually my flute, and sing it too, Flowers o’ the Forest.

I’ve seen the smilin’
of Fortune beguiling
I’ve witnessed her pleasure
an’ found her decay…

Sweet was it’s blessing
Kind it’s caressing
But now ’tis fled,
tis fled..
Far away…

I’ve seen the forest
adorned in the foremost
wi’ the flowers o’ the forest
most pleasant and gay.

Sae bonnie was their bloomin’
their scent, the air perfumin’

but now they are withered,
an’ a’ wae’ed away…

I’ve seen the mornin’
wi’ gold the hills adornin’

The dread tempest formin’
before parting day…

I’ve seen tweed silver streams
Glitterin’ in the sunny beams.

Grow drownly an’ dark
as they
Rolled on their way.

O, Fickle Fortune!
Why such cruel sportin’

an’ why thus perplex us
poor sons of the day?

Thy frown cannot fear me
Thy smiles cannot cheer me…

For the Flowers o’ the Forest
are all wae’ed away….

At the end of “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”

and the old men
still answer the call…
But as year follows year
more old men disappear…

Someday no one will march there

At all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzin’ Matilda
you’ll go a-waltzin’ Matilda with me.

An’ their ghosts may still be heard
as ye march by that billabong…

Who’ll go a-waltzin’
Matilda wi’ me…

Waltzing Matilda is the unofficial national anthem of Oz-land.

The title refers to a backpack on a stick called a waltzing Matilda since it jerks about so much as you’re carrying it.

The song is about a homeless guy who stole a sheep (Capital offense in British Subjugated Australia at the time) and when the so-called “authorities” tried to take him prisoner he drowned himself instead.

They taught us part of the song, translated into American-recognizable speech, when I was in fourth grade.

Didn’t tell us what the song was about.

I didn’t get to do my teach-in at the EcoFair so I’m doing it here.

“The Flowers o’ the Forest” is funerary and memorial song.

At Scots and Irish funerals and their Canadian and ANZAC derivatives, they play it.

A lone piper usually.

The original was in Scots Gaelic and refers to Yet Another time the English marched into Scotland and massacred a whole bunch of Scotsmen.

Effectively wiped out a generation of young Scots.

They justify it on the grounds that the Scots weren’t a militarized, centralized, highly organized Fascist State thus it’s ok for the Militarily Superior British to do as they please with them.

Might Makes Right.

Where that connects to Australia is the British would round up Scots and Irish “insurgents” and “unlawful combatants” and ship them to Slave Colonies in Australia.

The homeless guy in Waltzing Matilda was a descendant of the deportees.

The “authorities” wanting to hang him after a “fair and impartial” Kangaroo Court hearing (where did you THINK the term came from?) were British Regulars working for the very rich, as usual.

If you want to do a music search on it or the other songs, they’re worth a listen.

You’ll also get links to the full stories behind them.

I mucked my arm pretty badly in November, had a slight accident involving my bicycle.

and the ground and my elbow making violent contact therewith.

I thought at the time that it wasn’t anything serious but now I have to go around with my arm in a sling until the orthopaedists check it out.

Means I can’t ride the bike, so I had to walk to the grocery store today.

I also use my cane for support, and with one hand on the cane and the other in a sling I go from being badly disabled to being downright helpless. Took a lot longer than it usually would and pretty much wiped me out for the rest of the day.

So I didn’t get to go down to the EcoFair.

Ah, well, more opportunities later.

One man’s Guerrier, another’s Terroriste

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Eric Verlo

WELL LOOKY WHAT I FOUND! Published in France just after the war, this book is about “LES TERRORISTES.” Can you tell by the cover art, who play the title role?

USA POST-2001: America designates its war zone detainees as EPWs, or “Enemy Prisoners of War,” because to call them POWs would confuse public sympathies. To the average American, “P.O.W.” commemorates the GI captivity experience in Vietnam or Korea. When a soldier of ours is caught, that’s a POW. To grant both sides equal status would be to humanize our enemy. Of course, POW used to mean all “Prisoners Of War,” ours and theirs, in WWII days, before, and as mentioned in all international conventions.

We label the people of Iraq or Afghanistan who resist our occupation, as insurgents. Be they Bathists or Taliban, we call their cause an insurgency, not a resistance, because that would confuse American public affection for the French Resistance: La Resistance! Every nation in Occupied Europe had a resistance movement, and the WWII archetypes are still fresh. Occupiers equal Germans. Collaborators equal cowards, traitors, Qwislings, Vichy. Resistance fighters equal the heroes.

Since then, American occupations, of postwar France for example, have avoided mention of their assigned task. In Germany and Japan, US soldiers are merely “stationed” there. In countries which we’ve invaded, like Vietnam, Americans denied being the despised occupiers, we were advisors, protectors, etc. And the populations who opposed our military administration were insurgents, and if they attacked us by unconventional means, they were terrorists!

In Iraq as well as Afghanistan, the American spectator can discern that al-Qaeda has been the only named terrorist organization, yet Sunni, Shiite, and Taliban fighters are all called terrorists. Militant Islam is considered terrorist, Hezbollah and Hamas liberation movements are called terrorist, even the Somali pirate brigands are being condemned as terrorists.

So who were “Les Terroristes” of Occupied France? The book cover heeds us to “Souvenais-vous!” Never forget them. The book is full of their pictures and accounts of their brave deeds. Most of them fell to the Nazis, to firing squads and Gestapo tortures. The brave Terroristes were the scourge of the German Occupation, rooted out and almost eradicated before the last year of the war. The Nazis called them “terrorists,” they were LA RESISTANCE!

Suddenly colored television

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Immediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term “Nine Eleven” was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying “last Monday,” or “last week Monday,” before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme.

Television has become colorized, and much more vigorously than Ted Turner might have ever intended.

Have you noticed? On post-Bush television, Black is the new focus of equal-time. When pundits are summoned, now there’s a black person among them. Nothing wrong with this development. Whatever years of seasoning these new African-American faces may lack, they make up for by being visibly brighter than the vacuous white-breads they replaced. There must be an entire class of Anglo-Saxon communication majors who are lamenting the great lost entitlement of 2009.

It’s a fine development, though certainly limited in its generosity. The proportion of African Americans to the total population, is vastly smaller than the new TV ratio. Conversely, over half the US public is progressive. But still almost zero percent of the corporate media personalities reflect that.

Where did all these colored faces come from? Had they been training in the wings, for just this contingency? It’s a wise move on the part of the networks. President Obama and his family would be looking pretty dark against the sea of white Washington DC. Someone could confuse him for security or kitchen staff, but for the media framing of black commentators to remind White America that there is no cause to panic, the new American lens is colorblind.

It should be, but is it? White man still looks upon dark-skinned people as requiring domination. American urban blacks are to incarcerate, African blacks are to rescue, and insurgent/Muslim/pirate blacks are to lynch. I’m not sure we don’t really long to lynch the bunch of them, if AIDS isn’t thinning their number fast enough for our taste.

Obama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They’re not poor blacks after all. They’re the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys.

Okay, so the corporate media wants to project an urbane sophistication about integrating racial harmony into its facade. We hope, I suppose, that by portraying it so, they can make it so. I think we have to wonder if that’s the real manipulation.

The day after September 11, the term “Nine Eleven” was coined before most of us knew what even happened. Flights were grounded anticipating more attacks. How curious that the experts were calling it “9/11” when it might still have turned out to be 9/11 – 17 or other. They’d gotten the memo about how to frame the “world-changing” development, complete with its catchy catchphrase.

Obama is just such another media campaign, to assuage the darker-skinned world that the Great White West comes in peace, see look, we love our Darkies. We respect them, we ask their advice, we put them up in the White House.

This year’s Clio Award, the advertising world’s Oscar, for best campaign, went to Barack Obama. What does that tell you about the collective effort involved, and the focused objective of the marketing?

Papieren Bitte? Just your shoes please

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Most people can easily conjure the cinematic image of Gestapo officers blocking train passengers, demanding “Your papers please.” That such a scene could ever develop in America, haunts citizens opposed to national identity cards or embedded microchips. But with modern surveillance methods as pervasive as cellphones, perhaps today’s state security services have less need to verify who we are. I’ll assert the US Department of Homeland Security is charged more with making Americans feel the heavy boot print of authoritarianism.

I think that in the wake of 9/11, this nation has indeed mobilized a “papers please” law enforcement policy.

The proof is there in black and white in the Patriot Act; you can see it in the Civil Liberties-free zone which immigration officers have been empowered to enforce to 100 miles inland from our borders; and you can see it at our airports. Last night’s 60-Minutes questioned the punitive aspects of the TSA measures to which today’s airline passengers are subjected. Less surprisingly, CBS also suggested their probable ineffectiveness.

Having just paid a holiday visit to DIA, I was inclined to see more. Yes, this is another holiday post.

Credit where credit is due? It’s no coincidence this is about shoes.

Papieren Bitte
First, I’d like to deconstruct the film mythology, which originated in wartime, from Hollywood Home Front propaganda meant to demonize the Hun. Certainly the trench-coated SS officer, or leather-jacketed Gestapo detective, asking for your documents, cut a villainous figure. But they were, in reality, as out of the ordinary as today’s FBI or CIA agents. Have you ever happened upon a one of those?

More often by far, during WWII, the job of asking for a traveler’s “Legitimacion” was assigned to the gendarmes of the occupied countries, or to the collaborators who’d been deputized. These were ordinary constables and men who otherwise were unfit to serve in combat. Old frumps, maligned and bitter. If you can picture the run-of-the-mill TSA troll, you see where I’m going.

Public Transportation
Where travelers a half-century ago were taking trains, today the public city-to-city lattice is airborne. Today we queue for planes, not trains. And instead of producing our “papers” –I should say, IN ADDITION to producing our papers– we are required to remove our shoes, all sorts of articles, submit to searches, and refrain from carrying certain items, in order to thread the needle that allows us access to public travel. I’m not sure if today’s security screening isn’t the equivalent of the depiction of the 40s silver-screen.

Before you argue that I’m being alarmist, please consider that most Germans during the war, indeed the overwhelming majority of citizens of occupied Europe, had little to fear by being asked for their documents. You or I are not insurgents on the lam, nor aspiring bomb-throwers. We do not fear being sent to Guantanamo.

Indeed, you might remember, the movie heroes who sweated the Nazi checkpoints were always resistance fighters, saboteurs, or escaped Allied prisoners. Today, ask yourself how an enemy of the USA would fare trying to use an airport. If you have become aware now that our US Homeland does not show reticence to torture, or disappear, persons of interest, would modern airport security be any less a terrifying prospect for people who may not be in lockstep with the ever rogue-ideology of the current global administrators?

And so, what was the main purpose of policemen monitoring the trains of occupied Europe? To prevent illegal travel, or to deter the thought of sedition? Both. But those were the days of imperfect intelligence.

Today, we know that even the 9/11 hijackers were tracked well in advance of their boarding at Boston Airport. Since then, we know that intelligence agency Fusion Centers also parse the surveillance data of persons of mere tangential interest. We know that the NSA records all phone calls. We know the telecoms are doing something for which they are very insistent about receiving preemptory immunity.

Potential terrorists/hijackers have everybody on their tail.

The TSA fat bastards are for the rest of us.

Airport Fear-mongering
Do you remember the days when you could linger as you dropped off your loved ones at the airport? You could wait with them, or you could meet them as they walked off the plane. Now you are greeted by concrete barriers at the curb, you can’t help anyone with their bags. America’s airports have become high security zones, unwelcoming to all.

Permit me to interject the observation that there has not been a single domestic airport attack to justify the draconian measures which have impacted American tranquility. We abide being yelled at, for absolutely no reason except the scare-phrase “Remember 9/11.” Remember the Maine? Remember Pearl Harbor? Japanese Internment Camps anyone?

If you are the traveler, you have to strip yourself of dignity before a thick-necked tin-pot. Now airports are even replacing the metal detectors with X-ray gateways. You are required to raise your arms for a virtual strip search, where digital images of your nakedness are reviewed by the airport security. Official TSA statements explain that these digital records go no further than their desks.

You can choose to believe that, or believe that all our faces are being blurred, or that our corresponding identities are not matched with the images.

(A digression on the subject of intelligence files:
Meanwhile, consider that the NSA is recording ALL satellite borne phone calls. International and domestic. They get around the “wire-tapping” restrictions by addressing it as “packet collecting.” To their devices, it’s an altogether new technology, thereby unencumbered by civil right legislation protection.

Our imaginations cannot fathom how spooks can listen to all the world’s satellite calls, but their imaginations know that someday the software will be developed to accomplish that task. Won’t they be kicking themselves later if they hadn’t stored as much as they could of our conversations BEFORE anyone suspected all telephones were eavesdropped upon?

-By the way, did you miss the memo that every cellphone is capable of being an eavesdropping device, even when it’s not engaged in a phone call? Would it be beyond the pale to imagine that if a near infinite number of calls are recorded, another near infinite amount of off-line talk is being aggregated in addition? If you can store more on your iPod than you can read in 100 lifetimes, supercomputer storage can probably lap your imagination by 100 to the 100th, I’m just thinking.)

Respect Authority
Well look at me, I’m only underlining where the DHS is happy to have us all place emphasis. FEAR. The security at today’s airports won’t keep box cutters off of airplanes, but it will keep a citizenry from daydreams of dissent.

So much ado,
And not enough DO? You already know what to do. Respect authority? Disrespect false authority! Take a lead from Comrade al-Zairi, you too can make it about the shoes.

We’ve all of us, you know it, mouthed to ourselves the defiant retort, rehearsed for if and when that imaginary Nazi hits us up for our papers: “Papers? I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”

From LA, I remember a variant which Hispanics directed at La Migra. They wished.

Anyone WITH papers can defy authority with the full confidence that comes from “I am an American” impunity. But can undocumented immigrants say it? Can Middle-Eastern-looking gentlemen say it? Not hardly.

YOU CAN.

My brave little fantasy insurgent, why not offer that rebel yell to the TSA? Tell them you don’t need to remove your stinkin’ shoes! (Double- entendre unintended.) They won’t let you on the plane, but that’s where beloved Capitalism provides your audience.

Put your courage where your mouth is
Let the airlines hear your rebel yell. “We don’t need your stinkin’ airplane!” If they don’t remove the Beirut decor concrete barriers, if they don’t send the TSA mini tyrants packing, if they don’t let you travel with toiletries of your damn choosing, you’re not going to take their stinkin’ flights.

If they’re not going to let you park up close to the terminal, where you used to be able to park but now those spaces are let out to valet parking outfits, you’re not going to visit their airport. Period.

Is there anywhere that you need to go in a hurry, besides out of the country for a long, long spell?

Drive, it’s still free
If you’re going to stick around, boycott the airlines. Use your car.

As has been demonstrated at Arizona checkpoints –as seen on YouTube– a car and a video camera can get you anywhere unmolested. If you are stopped at an DHS “immigration” checkpoint, you hold the upper hand. You can persist in being let to pass without answering a single question. If they detain you, you have a lawsuit. In your car, you can say with impunity still “I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”

Buffalo Bill Lives at Fort Cody Nebraska

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Eric Verlo

FT CODY, NEBRASKA- On I-80 as you pass North Platte, sits the Fort Cody Trading Post, home of the Free Buffalo Bill Museum Emporium. What had been the Ogallala, Neb, Sioux Trading Post, moved in 1969 to follow the travelers rerouted from Hwy-30 to the new interstate, and changed its focus from the Native American to the Ugly American.

Buffalo Bill Cody earned his moniker by eradicating America’s buffalo herds. Over a million buffalo were killed each year during the 1870s. According to the museum, Mr. Cody labored to feed a sudden East Coast appetite for buffalo tongue, and a fad for buffalo fur coats. The display confessed: “Unfortunately the buffalo carcasses were left to rot on the plains.”

History books had been less forthcoming. They record that Cody was hired by the railroad builders to supply food for their workforce. He and his team were contracted to supply twelve buffalo a day. Does that come a little shy of a million? Accounts also wink at the risk Cody ran of coming against unfriendly Indians while engaged in the task.

When BB Cody wasn’t scouting for the railroad and the US cavalry, he was touring the world to exhibit the red skinned savage. Fort Cody featured a miniature 20,000 piece, hand-carved, animated model of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

On an opposite wall, among a fantastic collection of western guns, clothing and cowboy gear, was an undated tintype depicting Bill posing with fellow scouts, cradling his favorite rifle which he called “Lucretia Borgia.”

In recent years, government documents have revealed a different story. It turns out the white men leading the charge westward were frustrated that the Plains Indians had what looked like an unlimited food supply. The buffalo kept them clothed and fed, and the nomadic tribes followed the herds like their own moveable orchards. One of the strategies to force the Native Americans from their land was to eliminate their source of food, and basically their livelihood.

Most Americans have been kept oblivious to this version of history. Should we doubt that most of the participants were keenly aware of the strategy, if perhaps indifferent to the fate of the red savage? Does it matter?

Under the pretext of building a security wall in Palestine, Israel is separating the Palestinians from their olive orchards, often by uprooting the orchards outright. American troops in Iraq have destroyed date palm orchards using the excuse of having to clear the populated areas of cover for insurgents. In Vietnam, defoliants were used to despoil large areas, rendering them incapable of yielding food. Troops also poisoned wells. It’s called the scorched earth policy, and by the way, it’s a war crime.

If Americans don’t come to terms with the crimes we committed here, or are committing elsewhere, how can we expect our soldiers to find cause to refuse the orders next time? The public’s consent is always being manipulated by having to hold a certain regard for the soldiers. Out of respect for the memory of its veterans, in current events, to “support the troops.” After a point, we have to lay the blame with both commanders and perpetrators. Vietnam was genocide. Iraq is genocide. Those over there are doing it.

Ft Carson shredding casualty records

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Eric Verlo

IS THE US-ARMY-BEDMATE-GAZETTE GOING TO REPORT THIS STORY? Salon Magazine was leaked helmet-cam video showing the 2006 deaths of two US soldiers in Ramadi, by friendly fire, which the US Army is still attributing to Iraqi insurgents. Within hours of breaking the story, soldiers working in Fort Carson offices were ordered to shred the documents relating to the slain PFCs. Fortunately Salon was leaked this development as well.

Watch the video. Pay no heed to the warnings of graphic violence and profanity. What the tape reveals is the inanity of all the soldiers’ conduct. First, a very imprudent peek through a window at a US tank, which more than likely prompted the tank to fire. As a result, the helmet wearer is knocked to the floor, a soldier on the floor above is wounded (and dies), and another on the roof is killed. What followed was discussion about whether the tank had fired the single round, countered by the commanding officer repeating that the official attribution would be mortar fire until a report proved otherwise. Despite that fact that all the soldiers coming up to the commander are reporting that the tank had fired, and he tells them “I agree with you–.” Also, during the entire sequence no other shot is heard.

It will be interesting to see what Fort Carson intended to accomplish by shredding the records of PFCs Albert Nelson and Roger Suarez. In particular because some of the documents were spirited aside and sent to Salon. Was the Army intending to produce revised versions to support their official report of the soldiers deaths?

Iraqi POW sentenced for resisting US

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Hold your fucking horses of the Apocalypse! Can you believe this red, white, our colors don’t smell, shit? An Iraqi fighter is sentenced to hang for killing three US soldiers? We’re condemning normal acts of war because they make American crimes look bombastic in comparison? The crime committed in this case, is a military injustice.

Why charge this Iraqi? For killing his US adversaries in 2006, or for showing unsportsmanlike behavior in how he killed them? Do we hold the same standard for our killers in uniform? Do we overlook the conduct of US predator/reaper drone virtual-pilots sniping at foreign civilians from video consoles stateside?

The world has been shown that US soldiers can kill, rape, burn, torture, go on homicidal rampages, on duty or off, and pass go, and collect $200. Our private mercenaries are allowed to do worse apparently, and not even the Iraqi people can object.

In fact, negotiations on the US lease agreement of occupied Iraq have stalled over the Iraqi demands to be able to hold US soldiers accountable for crimes they commit at least while not on official duty. Forget on. Those are war crimes. Those crimes will be accountable one day to a world court, and there’s no statute of limitations. Speaking of which, prosecuting an enemy for his right to defend himself and his homeland is in itself a war crime. The Iraqi insurgent resistance fighters and the Iraqi people are protected by the laws of war. Iraq is an occupied country, trying to fend off its invaders.

To execute this Iraqi will be a further war crime, but what care we? In for a penny, in for 1.2 million Iraqis. Sue us.

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