Osama bin Laden’s books. They could do you more good than they did him.

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Eric Verlo

Last week the CIA decided
to declassify the list of books found in Osama bin Laden’s last hideout when Seal Team Six made their raid. There were 39 titles, which the press has categorized as heavy on conspiracy theory. That’s true, untrue, and unsurprising if you consider the official White House line is that the US does not support illegal coups. These authors beg to differ, including the unimpeachable Noam Chomski. Other investigative standouts include William Blum, Greg Palast, John Perkins. The list did not include publication dates or editions, just author and title. A closer inspection of the list is revealing.

(This is part one of a continuing series.)

It would be more accurate to describe Osama bin Laden’s bookshelf as history, mostly contemporary with notable exceptions. For example, bin Laden’s reference on Christianity and Islam in Spain 756-1031 was published in 1889 with the full title “The Relations and Mutual Influences of Christianity and Mohammedanism During the Khalifate of Cordova.” In 1889 European perspectives on the Moorish occupation appear dramatically antisemitic.

The history of The US and Vietnam 1787-1941 begins with Thomas Jefferson’s first interests in trading for rice with “Cochinchina”. Written by a former ambassador, it was published in 1990 by the National Defense University Press. The Best Enemy Money Can Buy is about the symbiotic relationship between the US military industrial complex and Russia’s.

Some of bin Laden’s “books” such as Michael O’Hanlon’s Unfinished Business were staple-bound publications from US policy think tanks. I’ll review those and the various intelligence agency exposés in subsequent posts.

Here are the 39 titles listed alphabetically:
The 2030 Spike by Colin Mason; A Brief Guide to Understanding Islam by I. A. Ibrahim; America’s Strategic Blunders by Willard Matthias; America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ by Michel Chossudovsky; Al-Qaeda’s Online Media Strategies: From Abu Reuter to Irhabi 007 by Hanna Rogan; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast; The Best Enemy Money Can Buy by Anthony Sutton; Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century by Bev Harris; Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier; Bounding the Global War on Terror by Jeffrey Record; Checking Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions by Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson; Christianity and Islam in Spain 756-1031 A.D. by C. R. Haines; Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies by Cheryl Benard; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins; Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Committee of 300 by John Coleman; Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert; Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance (only the book’s introduction) by C. Christine Fair and Peter Chalk; Guerrilla Air Defense: Antiaircraft Weapons and Techniques for Guerrilla Forces by James Crabtree; Handbook of International Law by Anthony Aust; Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky; Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer; In Pursuit of Allah’s Pleasure by Asim Abdul Maajid, Esaam-ud-Deen and Dr. Naahah Ibrahim; International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific by John Ikenberry and Michael Mastandano; Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II by William Blum; Military Intelligence Blunders by John Hughes-Wilson; Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification. Joint hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session, August 3, 1977. United States Congress Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky; New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin; New Political Religions, or Analysis of Modern Terrorism by Barry Cooper; Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward; Oxford History of Modern War by Charles Townsend; The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy; Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum; The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall (1928); Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins; The Taking of America 1-2-3 by Richard Sprague; Unfinished Business: U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21stCentury by Michael O’Hanlon; The U.S. and Vietnam 1787-1941 by Robert Hopkins Miller; “Website Claims Steve Jackson Games Foretold 9/11,” article posted on ICV2.com.

Iwo Jima, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Memorial Day

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Eric Verlo

There appears to be no more popular symbol of American patriotism and resiliency than the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. Do Americans think Mount Suribachi overlooked Pearl Harbor? (As if Hawaii in the mid-Pacific was even US manifest destiny). Of the USA’s far flung “possessions” Iwo Jima was not among them. As usual the US Marines were laying claim to lands of others, of the Japanese. It had as much to do with protecting our freedom as Montezuma and Tripoli.

Pearl Harbor wasn’t our first 9/11

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Eric Verlo

Before Pearl Harbor, there was Remember the Maine (Spain’s sneak attack), before that Americans were admonished to never forget the Alamo (Mexico’s sneak attack). After Pearl Harbor, the sneak attack that conscripted US public opinion into WWII, there was the Gulf of Tonkin (Viet Cong sneaks), among countless false flags calculated to mobilize a peaceful population to support retaliations that would otherwise be acts of aggression. The Third Reich had its Reichstag Fire and fabricated depredations on German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland to justify launching war. Whatever happened at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, immediately branded “Nine Eleven”, launched the West’s overt War on Islam. It’s Yellow Journalism 101, but Americans never seem to learn. A Japanese flotilla traversing the Pacific to launch a suprise attack on the US fleet, unbeknownst to US intelligence, is as improbable as the collapse of the steel WTC towers. That our fleet’s capital ships, the aircraft carriers were off on maneuvers, leaving only aging battleships to be bombed, gives December 7th something of the odor of 9/11’s Building 7. Roosevelt’s legacy was haunted by accusations of “conspiracy”, of having sacrificed the unsuspecting servicemen’s lives to protect corporate oil interests extending beyond the Pacific. In view of the lives expended since, both military and innocent, to preserve the reaches of empire, what’s so hard to believe?

WWII air veterans of Doolittle Raiders celebrate 71 years of bombing civilians

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Eric Verlo

Doolittle nose-art
I read 30 Seconds Over Tokyo when I was still a war-playing kid, before I would understand the mischievous consequences of the Doolittle Raiders B-25 bombers deploying without their bombsights. This was to prevent US war-making advantages falling into enemy hands but it also precluded dropping bombs with accuracy. I’m pretty certain the account for young readers also didn’t explain why over a quarter of the squadron’s bombs were of the incidiary cluster variety. Readers today know what those are for. Doolittle claimed to be targeting military sites in Japan’s capitol, but “invariably” hit civilian areas including four schools and a hospital. Of the American fliers captured, three were tried and executed by the despicable “Japs”, who considered the straffing of civilians to be war crimes. After the war, the US judged the Japanese officers responsible, as if their verdict was a greater injustice against our aviators’ “honest errors”. Today we rationalize our systemic overshoot policy as “collateral damage”.

Every year since WWII, Doolittle’s commandos are feted for their milestone bombing mission. This Veterans Day is to be the last due to their advanced ages. But it is fitting, because isn’t it time Americans faced what we’re celebrating? There’s no denying it took suicidal daring, but the Doolittle Raid inaugurated what became a staple of US warfare, the wholesale terrorizing of civilians from on high, with impunity and indifference. To be fair, the American public has always been kept in the dark. American aircraft have fire-bombed civilians at every diplomatic opportunity since 1942, and a Private Manning sits in the brig for trying to give us a chance to object.

We now know that the Doolittle Raid didn’t turn the tide, nor shake Japanese resolve. It was a retalliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, intended to boost US morale as if to say, America wasn’t defeated. Kinda like why and how we struck back at Afghanistan after 9/11, just as indiscriminately.

The “Mark Twain” ersatz bombsight
substitute bombsight The Norden bombsight was a closely guarded US secret weapon. An airstrike without it would today be like lobotomizing so-called smart bombs, and deciding to opt for imprecision bombing. The official army record recounts that a subsitute sighting mechanism was improvised for the raid, dubbed the “Mark Twain” and judged to be effective enough. Now a bad joke. Indochina and Wikileaks-wisened, we know the mendacity of that assessment. The vehemently anti-imperialist, anti-racist Twain would not have been honored.

Twain satirized Western so-called Enlightenment thus: “good to fire villages with, upon occasion”.

Post-postwar hagiographies of the raid have suggested the improvised bombsight was better suited to low-altitude missions than the Norden model. That conclusion is easily dismissed because the device was used only for the Doolittle run and never after. The sight’s designer, mission aviator C. Ross Greening, offered a explanation for why he named the device after Mark Twain in his pothumously published memoir Not As Briefed. He didn’t.

The bombsight is named the “Mark Twain” in reference to the “lead line” depth finder used on the Mississippi River paddle wheelers in bygone days.

Because its design was so simple, we’re left to suppose. Greening’s bombsight was named for the same “mark” which Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted as his celebrated pen name. I find it disingeneous to pretend to repurpose an archaic expression whose meaning was already eclipsed by the household name of America’s most outspoken anti-imperialist. Who would believe you named your dog “Napoleon” after a French pastry?

We are given another glimpse into Greening’s sense of humor by how he named his plane, the “Hari-Kari-er” ready to deal death by bomb-induced suicide. Greening’s B-25 is the one pictured above, with the angelic tart holding a bomb aloft. Greening’s plane was another that carried only incendiary ordnance.

Much was made of the sight’s two-piece aluminum construction, reportedly costing 20 cents at the time compared to the $10,000 Norden. This provided the jingoist homefront the smug satisfaction perhaps, combining a frugality born of the Depression with the American tradition of racism, that only pennies were expensed and or risked on Japanese lives.

War Crimes
Targeting civilians, taking insufficient care to avoid civilian casualties, using disproportunate force, acts of wanton retaliation, and the use of collective punishment are all prohibited by international convention. They are war crimes for which the US prosecutes adversaries but with which our own military refuses to abide. Americans make much of terrorism, yet remain blind to state terrorism. Doolittle’s historic raid, judged by the objective against which it is celebrated as a success, was an act of deliberate terrorism.

Forcing the Japanese to deploy more of their military assets to protect the mainland sounds like a legitimate strategy, except not by targeting civilians to illustrate the vulnerability, nor by terrorizing the population, one of Doolittle’s stated aims. He called it a “fear complex”.

It was hoped that the damage done would be both material and psychological. Material damage was to be the destruction of specific targets with ensuing confusion and retardation of production. The psychological results, it was hoped, would be the recalling of combat equipment from other theaters for home defense, the development of a fear complex in Japan, improved relationships with our Allies, and a favorable reaction in the American people.

There is no defending Japan’s imperialist expansion in the Pacific, and certainly not its own inhumanity. The Japanese treated fellow Asians with the same racist disregard with which we dispatched Filipinos. While Americans point in horror at how the Japanese retalliated against the Chinese population for the Doolittle Raid, we ignore that Doolittle purposely obscured from where our bombers were launched, leaving China’s coast as the only probably suspect.

To be fair, most of Doolittle’s team was kept in the dark about the mission until they were already deployed. I hardly want to detract from the courage they showed to undertake a project that seemed virtually suicidal. But how long should all of us remain in the dark about the true character of the Doolittle Raid?

Out of deference for the earlier generation of WWII veterans, those in leadership, certain intelligence secrets were kept until thirty years after the war. Unveiled, they paint a very different picture of what transpired. The fact that the US knew the German and Japanese codes from early on revealed an imbalance not previously admitted, as an example.

About the Doolittle Raid, much is already openly documented, if not widely known. The impetus for the raid was public knowledge, the evidence of its intent in full view.

BY DESIGN
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, American newspapers were already touting offers of cash rewards for whoever would be the first to strike back at Japan. President Roosevelt expressed a deliberate interest in hitting the Japanese mainland, in particular Tokyo, to retaliate for the Japanese strike against Pearl Harbor, never mind it had been a solely military target.

Plans were made to exploit the Japanese homeland’s vulnerability to fire, as ninety percent of urban structures were made of paper and wood. Writes historian William Bruce Jenson:

In his “confidential” meeting with reporters back in November, Marshall had declared that the US would have no cavil about burning Japan’s paper cities.

For the Doolittle Raid, a bombing strategy was developed to overwhelm the fire department of his target, the Shiba ward.

A former naval attache in Tokyo told Doolittle: “I know that Tokyp fire department very well. Seven big scattered fires would be too much for it to cope with.”

As lead plane, Doolittle’s role was to literally blaze the way. Fellow pilot Richard Joyce told Nebraska History Magazine in 1995:

The lead airplane, which was going to have Doolittle on board as the airplane commander, was going to be loaded with nothing but incendiaries -2.2 pound thermite incendiaries- in clusters. They drop these big clusters and then the straps break and they spray, so they set a whole bunch of fires. He was to be the pathfinder and set a whole bunch of fires in Tokyo for pathfinding purposes.

Doolittle’s report outlined his objective more formally:

one plane was to take off ahead of the others, arrive over Tokyo at dusk and fire the most inflammable part of the city with incendiary bombs. This minimized the overall hazard and assured that the target would be lighted up for following airplanes.

Greening paints the most vivid picture, of burning the Japanese paper houses to light the way:

Doolittle planned to leave a couple of hours early, and in the dark set fire to Tokyo’s Shiba ward … the mission’s basic tactic had been that Doolittle would proceed alone and bomb a flammable section of Tokyo, creating a beacon in the night to help guide following planes to their targets.

Doolittle’s copilot Lt Richard Cole, told this to interviews in 1957:

Since we had a load of incendiaries, our target was the populated areas of the west and northwest parts of Tokyo.

After the bombers had left on their raid, and before news got back about whether or not they accomplished it, the Navy crew on the carrier USS Hornet already sang this song, which went in part:

Little did Hiro think that night
The skies above Tokyo would be alight
With the fires that Jimmy started in Tokyo’s dives
To guide to their targets the B-25s.
When all of a sudden from out of the skies
Came a basket of eggs for the little slant eyes

Incendiaries

Most of the bombers were loaded with three demolition bombs and an incendiary cluster bomb. Some of the planes carried only incendiaries. According to Doolittle’s official report of the raid, here were some of their stated objectives:

Plane no. 40-2270, piloted by Lt. Robert Gray:
thickly populated small factories district. … Fourth scattered incendiary over the correct area

Plane No. 40-2250, Lt. Richard Joyce:
Incendiary cluster dropped over thickly populated and dense industrial residential sector immediately inshore from primary target. (Shiba Ward)

“The third dem. bomb and the incendiary were dropped in the heavy industrial and residential section in the Shiba Ward 1/4 of a mile in shore from the bay and my tat.”

Aircraft 40-2303, Lt Harold Watson:
the congested industrial districts near the railroad station south of the Imperial Palace

AC 40-2283, David Jones:
the congested area Southeast of the Imperial Palace

Even though the planned night raid became a daytime mission, Doolittle did not alter his original role, intended to light the way for the following planes. His target remained the Shiba District of Tokyo. His own plane: “changed course to the southwest and incendiary-bombed highly inflammable section.”

Doolittle’s report included a description of the incendiary bombs:

The Chemical Warfare Service provided special 500 incendiary clusters each containing 128 incendiary bombs. These clusters were developed at the Edgewood Arsenal and test dropped by the Air Corps test group at Aberdeen. Several tests were carried on to assure their proper functioning and to determine the dropping angle and dispersion. Experimental work on and production of these clusters was carried on most efficiently.

As has become an aerial bombardment tradition, crews were let to inscribe messages on the bombs about to be dropped. Accounts made the most of these chestnuts: “You’ll get a BANG out of this.” And “I don’t want to set the world on fire –only Tokyo.”

These details, which reveal the intentions of the raid, were not made known to the public immediately. The Doolittle Raid was planned and executed in secret, with US government and military spokesmen denying knowledge of the operation even in its aftermath. The first word to reach the American public came from the New York Times, citing Japanese sources:

Enemy bombers appeared over Tokyo for the first time in the current war, inflicting damage on schools and hospitals. Invading planes failed to cause and damage on military establishments, although casualties in the schools and hospitals were as yet unknown. This inhuman attack on these cultural establishments and on residential districts is causing widespread indignation among the populace.

This report was dismissed as propaganda. When Japan declared its intention to charge the airman it had taken captive with war crimes, the US protestations redoubled. The accusations were belittled even as our own reports conceded to the possibilities.

Lieutenant Dawson’s Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was the first published account of the raid. Printed less than a year after the event, wartime-sensitive details such as the phony guns made of broomstick handles poking out the back were left out. Targets were also not specified, but a candor remained, probably intended to be threatening. Lawson described the 500-pound incendiaries as “something like the old Russian Molotov Breadbasket”, and related US naval attache Jurika’s advice:

“If you can start seven good fires in Tokyo, they’ll never put them out,” Jurika promised us. … “I wouldn’t worry too much about setting fires in flimsy-looking sections of Tokyo,” he said. “The Japanese have done an amazing job of spreading out some of their industries, instead of concentrating them in large buildings. There’s probably a small machine shop under half of these fragile-looking roofs.”

“Flimsy” became Lawson’s keyword for the residential areas. Here Lawson described dropping his third and fourth bombs, when he saw their corresponding red light indicators:

The third red light flickered, and, since we were now over a flimsy area in the southern part of the city, the fourth light blinked. That was the incendiary, which I knew would separate as soon as it hit the wind and that dozens of small fire bombs would molt from it.

I was satisfied about the steel-smelter and hoped the other bombs had done as well. There was no way of telling, but I was positive that Tokyo could have been damaged that day with a rock.

Our actual bombing operation, from the time the first one went until the dive, consumed not more than thirty seconds.

Thus: Chance of hitting civilian homes: 50/50.
Charges of Excessive Force could be expected, because
blame the victim for being weaker than: a rock.
Care taken to avoid innocent casualties: 30 seconds.

In a later afterword, Lawson blamed Tokyo for having insufficient bomb shelters.

After the war, US occupation forces recovered Japanese records which documented the losses attributed to the Doolittle Raid: fifty dead, 252 wounded, ninety buildings. Besides military or strategic targets, that number included nine electric power buildings, a garment factory, a food storage warehouse, a gas company, two misc factories, six wards of Nagoya 2nd Temporary Army Hospital, six elementary or secondary schools, and “innumerable nonmilitary residences”.

Strafing
Japan accused the fliers of indescriminate strafing civilians. The US countered that defending fighters were responsible for stray bullets when their gunfire missed the bombers. That’s very likely, except the raiders were candid about their strafing too. Lawson:

I nosed down a railroad track on the outskirts of the city and passed a locomotive close enough to see the surprised face of the engineer. As I went by I could have kicked myself for not giving the locomotive’s boiler a burst of our forward 30-calibre guns, then I remembered that we might have better use for the ammunition.

A big yacht loomed up ahead of us and, figuring it must be armed, I told Thatcher to give it a burst. We went over it, lifted our nose to put the tail down and Thatcher sprayed its deck with our 50-calibre stingers.

Greening’s account of firing on a sailor, raises the moral ambiguity of air warfare with which few airmen grapple. By virtue that technology allows it, combatants become slave to a predetermined outcome:

When we attacked the next patrol boat, a Japanese sailor threw his hands up as if to surrender. I guess he expected us to stop and take him prisoner. We shot him and left this boat smoking too.

The Medals
Friendship Medals exchanged between Japan and the US found themselves requisitioned for Doolittle’s Raid:

Several years prior to the war, medals of friendship and good relationship were awarded to several people of the United States by the Japanese government. In substance these medals were symbolic of the friendship and cooperation between the nations and were to represent the duration of this attitude. It was decided by the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Frank Knox, that the time was appropriate to have these medals returned. They had been awarded to Mr. Daniel J. Quigley, Mr. John D. Laurey, Mr. H. Vormstein and Lt. Stephen Jurkis.

After arrangements had been made and the medals secured, a ceremony was held on the deck of the Hornet during which the medals were wired to a 500 lb. bomb to be carried by Lt. Ted Lawson and returned to the Japanese government in an appropriate fashion.

Lawson’s plane no 40-2261 dropped that bomb on an “industrial section of Tokyo” omitting to mention that Japan’s industry was still a post-feudal cottage industry.

“The medals were subsequently delivered in small pieces to their donors in Tokyo by Lt. Ted Lawson at about noon, Saturday, April 18, 1942.”

–Mitscher, M.A. Letter Report to Commander Pacific Fleet.

“Through the courtesy of the War Department your Japanese medal and similar medals, turned in for shipment, were returned to His Royal Highness, The Emperor of Japan on April 18, 1942.”

–Knox, F. Letter Report to Mr. H. Vormstein

America doesn’t remember 9/11

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Eric Verlo

Despite jingo media browbeating, Americans don’t remember 9/11. Or not how they’re supposed to. On the eleventh anniversary of the mystery of September 11, 2001, the political candidates mired in Election 2012 have decided not to commemorate Nine Eleven, because wouldn’t that be a wild card? Americans remember 9/11, but differently -and there’s the problem for politicos who adjust their pandering according to how it will be received by the electorate. You only want to Remember the Alamo or the Maine or Pearl Harbor if the public remembers the jingoist version of events, not what really happened come-to-light. In which case you don’t want a public remembering at all.

Never Forget 9/11, much less decode it

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Never Forget 9-11 illustrating airliner flying from Pentagon to Twin Towers Never Forget What? The Alamo? The Maine? The Lusitania? Pearl Harbor? Every example of a tragedy our government exploits has turned out to be a fraud. Interesting company then for Nine Eleven… Although the traditional syntax is “Remember the–“. Usually “Never Forget” has been proprietary to Holocaust remembrance. Curious they’d want to dilute the tag line for a mere few thousand WTC victims. It makes me sick at heart. The event was seared into our memories, television broadcast at half mast for days afterward the better to sober the public to a terrorist attack’s ramifications. So WHY must we Never Forget? Revenge? Of course it’s shorthand for “Never Forget, Never Forgive.” You want an eye for an eye? How about vigilance? To prevent an alleged 9/11, we might be best to NEVER FORGET what got us here, brutal imperialist abuse heaped on the rest of the world. That’s the perspective it would be good to remember. Never forget Bhopal. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib, Gaza and Cast Lead. “Never Forget 9/11” is one of the first slogans trotted out at anti-Palestinian rallies. Curiouser and curiouser. So I’ve got more ships for you: Never forget the USS Liberty, or the Mavi Marmara.

As to 9/11, never forget that you haven’t been let to get to the bottom of it. But you don’t have to tell people not to forget something they know. “Never Forget” is for propagandists worried their brainwash is leaking.

Rufus, Caccini, Kosma, French Chanson

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Rufus Wainright’s GOING TO A TOWN (-THAT’S ALREADY BEEN BURNED DOWN in which he famously sings “I’m so tired of America”) replicates, it’s true, the jazz progression of AUTUMN LEAVES, and websmart-asses have pointed out the piano part is actually identical to the accompaniment of AVE MARIA by Baroque composer Giulio Caccini. At best reflecting Wainright’s unconscious classical pedigree. Fail.

I write at this late date because I looked it up once, and spent the equivalent effort retracing my steps when my curiosity outpaced my memory. This time I’m posting what I found for my own future reference. Just as the internet now substitutes for knowing, it serves as my backup for memory. Technicians no longer have to learn how, they have to know where to look it up online. You no longer have to remember it either, so long as the answers remain there.

Anyone who agrees with Earl Okin that French popular music has followed an endless downward spiral with the minor key fugues of Michel Legrand, has perhaps film composer Joseph Kosma to blame. The Hungarian born Kosma wrote the scores to the greatest French classics, among them RULES OF THE GAME, THE GRAND ILLUSION and CHILDREN OF PARADISE. It was from a 1946 Marcel Carne film that LES FEUILLES MORTE emerged, whose jazz chords perhaps doomed the melodic melancholy of the French to mordant sentimentality.

When Giulio Caccini’s “Ave Maria” was unearthed in 1970, anyone with an musical ear might have wondered how the exhausting blue chord progression found itself in the hands of a Baroque composer. The musical malaise was so distinctly contemporary to the 70s, coincidentally when the piece was supposedly rediscovered. Of course it turns out it hadn’t.

The Ave Maria appropriated by Rufus Wainright was written by Russian composer Vladimir Vavilov in 1970 attributed to “Anonymous” I’ll wager because he didn’t want to take credit for it either. Somebody else decided it would have more luster if thought to have come from a more pious age. Now it’s called “Ave Maria by Giulio Caccini” by Vavilov, although the association is absurd. This composition was a thoroughly natural denouement to Kosma’s French Blues. Ave Maria loses none of its divine beauty, though its provenance was a hoax. The joke is on the many prominent recording artists who thought they were channeling holy canon.

Anniversaries can have meaning

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Eric Verlo

They’re trotting out the geezers to remember Pearl Harbor, like the Maine and the Alamo before it –but not the USS Liberty, or Salvator Allende’s 9-11. Since they show no reticence beating memorialized horses, I’ll commemorate a real tragic anniversary. John Brown was hanged December 2, 1859, one hundred and fifty years ago, by craven assholes whose descendants still will not own up to their inhumanity.

Germany the victim, Japan the victim, America the victim, Israel the victim?

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Tony Logan

victim What happens when imperialist states put on airs of victim-hood? First an imperialist state defined is simply a country that holds property of other nations, cultures, or religions, or a country that desires to do so. Or both covets new property and holds old properties of others, as the case of the United State so amply demonstrates.

Imperialist states are rarely to never satisfied with their actual criminal take in profits. But what happens when countries that are imperialist, develop in their populations the notion that they are somehow also the victims and not the aggressors, as has happened to Germany, Japan, the US, and Israel, as just a few most prominent examples to mention?

As one might remember from History lessons at school, Germany and Japan had populations of elites that began to feel that they were victimized by the other imperialist nations, whom all already had colonies to exploit. Japan wanted China to make up for that, and Germany wanted to compete with Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium in the imperialism arena, too. The German people chafed at having been given bad conditions by these other Powers post World War One, and they began to think that they were victims of a conspiracy, a conspiracy that denied them their just status, a conspiracy that exploited them financially and had thrown the majority of Germans into poverty.

Shoot to the US, which after the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan was where the US began to rally its population around the idea that America was the Grand Victim of conspiracy. Later the Americans dropped the only atomic bombs ever used on people, and they dropped them onto civilian Japanese. Everything went over smoothly morality wise for the Americans because they had convinced themselves they were victims. In fact, the American government then became the preachiest government ever seen around anywhere, as it began to define war crimes as being always the actions of others, and never themselves.

Now with 9/11, it is as if another dose of victim-hood has become injected into the modern US population.

‘We’re victims!’, shouts the American crowd once again. We must be allowed to do anything without the slightest recriminations against us, because? ‘We’re victims! We are targets from a criminal conspiracy!’ They are talking about Muslims now. The word the more direct Victim-hood fanatic uses is ‘Islamofascsits’ as code for Muslims. Yes, well that was what the Germans were convinced by Hitler to believe, too. Except the criminal conspiracy supposedly was from the Jews.

In WW2 the Jewish European population actually were victims. Most did not escape alive either. Certainly the Jewish population were victims much more than the Americans, the Germans, or the Japanese ever have been. Further, they were not people of an imperialist nation at the time when that happened. Many Jews found that status of having no imperialist nation (Homeland) impossible to maintain and tolerate without changing the situation to try to obtain an imperialist state of their own. They succeeded.

‘We, the Jews, are victims!’

Well, the Jewish survivors of the European Holocaust obtained their imperialist state, obtained their weaponry, and eventually obtained their nuclear arms. How prideful they became, and started to imitate the Americans themselves. They began to think of themselves as the country of the Mighty Mouse. They began to think of themselves as the Mighty Mouse that not only had been victimized before, but would always be victimized by those angry at their thefts of other people’s property and land. This Jewish sense of always feeling that they were about to be victimized again began to grow side by side with the Americans’ sense of the very exact same. So here we are today… Another imperialist nation feeling themselves the eternal Victim.

There is much destruction on the horizon and the people who will cause it consider themselves to be the victims of others. That’s the way it always is with imperialist nations, too. It is the mass psychology of the self-righteous Mob at work. Aggressors that see themselves as Victims will lash out at those that see through the ruse. They will lynch, they will bomb, they will burn alive The Other. The victim imperialist country always see themselves as The Pure surrounded by vicious animals. But it is always themselves that become The Rabid.

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!”

Stop the Senate of would-be thieves!

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Call your Band of Thieving Senators now to tell them you don’t want to give $700 Billion –more honestly likely to be $5 Trillion– to the robber bankers of Wall Street! Telephone Colorado Senators Ken Salazar at 202.224.5852 and Wayne Allard at 202.224.5941 NOW. Why not call OBAMA too! (phone: 202-224-2854) Tell them you want them to consult with at least ONE economist of repute! At least one analyst not on the corporate payroll. As he promised yesterday, Michael Moore suggests a 10 PART PLAN, only IF pressure can be brought to bear right now to stop the Senate bill.

Friends,

The richest 400 Americans — that’s right, just four hundred people — own MORE than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. 400 rich Americans have got more stashed away than half the entire country! Their combined net worth is $1.6 trillion. During the eight years of the Bush Administration, their wealth has increased by nearly $700 billion — the same amount that they are now demanding we give to them for the “bailout.” Why don’t they just spend the money they made under Bush to bail themselves out? They’d still have nearly a trillion dollars left over to spread amongst themselves!

Of course, they are not going to do that — at least not voluntarily. George W. Bush was handed a $127 billion surplus when Bill Clinton left office. Because that money was OUR money and not his, he did what the rich prefer to do — spend it and never look back. Now we have a $9.5 trillion debt. Why on earth would we even think of giving these robber barons any more of our money?

I would like to propose my own bailout plan. My suggestions, listed below, are predicated on the singular and simple belief that the rich must pull themselves up by their own platinum bootstraps. Sorry, fellows, but you drilled it into our heads one too many times: There… is… no… free… lunch. And thank you for encouraging us to hate people on welfare! So, there will be no handouts from us to you. The Senate, tonight, is going to try to rush their version of a “bailout” bill to a vote. They must be stopped. We did it on Monday with the House, and we can do it again today with the Senate.

It is clear, though, that we cannot simply keep protesting without proposing exactly what it is we think Congress should do. So, after consulting with a number of people smarter than Phil Gramm, here is my proposal, now known as “Mike’s Rescue Plan.” It has 10 simple, straightforward points. They are:

1. APPOINT A SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO CRIMINALLY INDICT ANYONE ON WALL STREET WHO KNOWINGLY CONTRIBUTED TO THIS COLLAPSE. Before any new money is expended, Congress must commit, by resolution, to criminally prosecute anyone who had anything to do with the attempted sacking of our economy. This means that anyone who committed insider trading, securities fraud or any action that helped bring about this collapse must go to jail. This Congress must call for a Special Prosecutor who will vigorously go after everyone who created the mess, and anyone else who attempts to scam the public in the future.

2. THE RICH MUST PAY FOR THEIR OWN BAILOUT. They may have to live in 5 houses instead of 7. They may have to drive 9 cars instead of 13. The chef for their mini-terriers may have to be reassigned. But there is no way in hell, after forcing family incomes to go down more than $2,000 dollars during the Bush years, that working people and the middle class are going to fork over one dime to underwrite the next yacht purchase.

If they truly need the $700 billion they say they need, well, here is an easy way they can raise it:

a) Every couple who makes over a million dollars a year and every single taxpayer who makes over $500,000 a year will pay a 10% surcharge tax for five years. (It’s the Senator Sanders plan. He’s like Colonel Sanders, only he’s out to fry the right chickens.) That means the rich will still be paying less income tax than when Carter was president. This will raise a total of $300 billion.

b) Like nearly every other democracy, charge a 0.25% tax on every stock transaction. This will raise more than $200 billion in a year.

c) Because every stockholder is a patriotic American, stockholders will forgo receiving a dividend check for one quarter and instead this money will go the treasury to help pay for the bailout.

d) 25% of major U.S. corporations currently pay NO federal income tax. Federal corporate tax revenues currently amount to 1.7% of the GDP compared to 5% in the 1950s. If we raise the corporate income tax back to the level of the 1950s, that gives us an extra $500 billion.

All of this combined should be enough to end the calamity. The rich will get to keep their mansions and their servants, and our United States government (“COUNTRY FIRST!”) will have a little leftover to repair some roads, bridges and schools.

3. BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE LOSING THEIR HOMES, NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL BUILD AN EIGHTH HOME. There are 1.3 million homes in foreclosure right now. That is what is at the heart of this problem. So instead of giving the money to the banks as a gift, pay down each of these mortgages by $100,000. Force the banks to renegotiate the mortgage so the homeowner can pay on its current value. To insure that this help does no go to speculators and those who have tried to make money by flipping houses, this bailout is only for people’s primary residence. And in return for the $100K paydown on the existing mortgage, the government gets to share in the holding of the mortgage so that it can get some of its money back. Thus, the total initial cost of fixing the mortgage crisis at its roots (instead of with the greedy lenders) is $150 billion, not $700 billion.

And let’s set the record straight. People who have defaulted on their mortgages are not “bad risks.” They are our fellow Americans, and all they wanted was what we all want and most of us still get: a home to call their own. But during the Bush years, millions of them lost the decent paying jobs they had. Six million fell into poverty. Seven million lost their health insurance. And every one of them saw their real wages go down by $2,000. Those who dare to look down on these Americans who got hit with one bad break after another should be ashamed. We are a better, stronger, safer and happier society when all of our citizens can afford to live in a home that they own.

4. IF YOUR BANK OR COMPANY GETS ANY OF OUR MONEY IN A “BAILOUT,” THEN WE OWN YOU. Sorry, that’s how it’s done. If the bank gives me money so I can buy a house, the bank “owns” that house until I pay it all back — with interest. Same deal for Wall Street. Whatever money you need to stay afloat, if our government considers you a safe risk — and necessary for the good of the country — then you can get a loan, but we will own you. If you default, we will sell you. This is how the Swedish government did it and it worked.

5. ALL REGULATIONS MUST BE RESTORED. THE REAGAN REVOLUTION IS DEAD. This catastrophe happened because we let the fox have the keys to the henhouse. In 1999, Phil Gramm authored a bill to remove all the regulations that governed Wall Street and our banking system. The bill passed and Clinton signed it. Here’s what Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain’s chief economic advisor, said at the bill signing:

“In the 1930s … it was believed that government was the answer. It was believed that stability and growth came from government overriding the functioning of free markets.

“We are here today to repeal [that] because we have learned that government is not the answer. We have learned that freedom and competition are the answers. We have learned that we promote economic growth and we promote stability by having competition and freedom.

“I am proud to be here because this is an important bill; it is a deregulatory bill. I believe that that is the wave of the future, and I am awfully proud to have been a part of making it a reality.”

This bill must be repealed. Bill Clinton can help by leading the effort for the repeal of the Gramm bill and the reinstating of even tougher regulations regarding our financial institutions. And when they’re done with that, they can restore the regulations for the airlines, the inspection of our food, the oil industry, OSHA, and every other entity that affects our daily lives. All oversight provisions for any “bailout” must have enforcement monies attached to them and criminal penalties for all offenders.

6. IF IT’S TOO BIG TO FAIL, THEN THAT MEANS IT’S TOO BIG TO EXIST. Allowing the creation of these mega-mergers and not enforcing the monopoly and anti-trust laws has allowed a number of financial institutions and corporations to become so large, the very thought of their collapse means an even bigger collapse across the entire economy. No one or two companies should have this kind of power. The so-called “economic Pearl Harbor” can’t happen when you have hundreds — thousands — of institutions where people have their money. When you have a dozen auto companies, if one goes belly-up, we don’t face a national disaster. If you have three separately-owned daily newspapers in your town, then one media company can’t call all the shots (I know… What am I thinking?! Who reads a paper anymore? Sure glad all those mergers and buyouts left us with a strong and free press!). Laws must be enacted to prevent companies from being so large and dominant that with one slingshot to the eye, the giant falls and dies. And no institution should be allowed to set up money schemes that no one can understand. If you can’t explain it in two sentences, you shouldn’t be taking anyone’s money.

7. NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD BE PAID MORE THAN 40 TIMES THEIR AVERAGE EMPLOYEE, AND NO EXECUTIVE SHOULD RECEIVE ANY KIND OF “PARACHUTE” OTHER THAN THE VERY GENEROUS SALARY HE OR SHE MADE WHILE WORKING FOR THE COMPANY. In 1980, the average American CEO made 45 times what their employees made. By 2003, they were making 254 times what their workers made. After 8 years of Bush, they now make over 400 times what their average employee makes. How this can happen at publicly held companies is beyond reason. In Britain, the average CEO makes 28 times what their average employee makes. In Japan, it’s only 17 times! The last I heard, the CEO of Toyota was living the high life in Tokyo. How does he do it on so little money? Seriously, this is an outrage. We have created the mess we’re in by letting the people at the top become bloated beyond belief with millions of dollars. This has to stop. Not only should no executive who receives help out of this mess profit from it, but any executive who was in charge of running his company into the ground should be fired before the company receives any help.

8. STRENGTHEN THE FDIC AND MAKE IT A MODEL FOR PROTECTING NOT ONLY PEOPLE’S SAVINGS, BUT ALSO THEIR PENSIONS AND THEIR HOMES. Obama was correct yesterday to propose expanding FDIC protection of people’s savings in their banks to $250,000. But this same sort of government insurance must be given to our nation’s pension funds. People should never have to worry about whether or not the money they’ve put away for their old age will be there. This will mean strict government oversight of companies who manage their employees’ funds — or perhaps it means that the companies will have to turn over those funds and their management to the government. People’s private retirement funds must also be protected, but perhaps it’s time to consider not having one’s retirement invested in the casino known as the stock market. Our government should have a solemn duty to guarantee that no one who grows old in this country has to worry about ending up destitute.

9. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY. Turn off the TV! We are not in the Second Great Depression. The sky is not falling. Pundits and politicians are lying to us so fast and furious it’s hard not to be affected by all the fear mongering. Even I, yesterday, wrote to you and repeated what I heard on the news, that the Dow had the biggest one day drop in its history. Well, that’s true in terms of points, but its 7% drop came nowhere close to Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market in one day lost 23% of its value. In the ’80s, 3,000 banks closed, but America didn’t go out of business. These institutions have always had their ups and downs and eventually it works out. It has to, because the rich do not like their wealth being disrupted! They have a vested interest in calming things down and getting back into the Jacuzzi.

As crazy as things are right now, tens of thousands of people got a car loan this week. Thousands went to the bank and got a mortgage to buy a home. Students just back to college found banks more than happy to put them into hock for the next 15 years with a student loan. Life has gone on. Not a single person has lost any of their money if it’s in a bank or a treasury note or a CD. And the most amazing thing is that the American public hasn’t bought the scare campaign. The citizens didn’t blink, and instead told Congress to take that bailout and shove it. THAT was impressive. Why didn’t the population succumb to the fright-filled warnings from their president and his cronies? Well, you can only say ‘Saddam has da bomb’ so many times before the people realize you’re a lying sack of shite. After eight long years, the nation is worn out and simply can’t take it any longer.

10. CREATE A NATIONAL BANK, A “PEOPLE’S BANK.” If we really are itching to print up a trillion dollars, instead of giving it to a few rich people, why don’t we give it to ourselves? Now that we own Freddie and Fannie, why not set up a people’s bank? One that can provide low-interest loans for all sorts of people who want to own a home, start a small business, go to school, come up with the cure for cancer or create the next great invention. And now that we own AIG, the country’s largest insurance company, let’s take the next step and provide health insurance for everyone. Medicare for all. It will save us so much money in the long run. And we won’t be 12th on the life expectancy list. We’ll be able to have a longer life, enjoying our government-protected pension, and living to see the day when the corporate criminals who caused so much misery are let out of prison so that we can help reaclimate them to civilian life — a life with one nice home and a gas-free car that was invented with help from the People’s Bank.

Yours,
Michael Moore

P.S. Call your Senators now. Here’s a backup link in case we crash that site again. They are going to attempt their own version of the Looting of America tonight. And let your reps know if you agree with my 10-point plan.

Not Sons of Bitches, Dems are bitches

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Eric Verlo

When the Democrats were the minority they seemed so weak. Now in the Majority they’re positively wimps. Pundits tell us it’s a lack of leadership. Why would the corporate media overlook who’s at the whip? It would seem clear that the corporations writing the legislation, funding the campaigns, and paying for the free lunch, are driving the agenda. The GOP is paid to play the white hats, and when a bill is unpopular, the Dems are pushed forward to play the creeps.

On the proposed bailout ripoff, the Dems were not the sons of bitches, they’re just the bitches. I heard a Dem scare-mongeree explain that in spite of loathing the idea of a solution which benefited the wrong people, the bailout was our only option. “All economists agree we have to do this” he said, ignoring quite a few who have urged the opposite. The interviewer interrupted to announce, this just in, the vote had failed and as a result the DOW had plunged by 700 points. She wanted his response: “Oh. My. God.”

As Bush and his GOP team stand in the shadows, the Democrats are thrust forward to “lead” the support for this criminal legislation. Whether the bill won or lost, either way the Democrats would come out looking like shits.

I’m reminded about how an invading army flushes out defenders still hiding. Send your captives into the buildings to spring the booby-traps. Make them open the doors to draw the fire. Among thugs in prison the dirty work is done by the bitches.

Except for Democracy Now, the media won’t report the authentic Democratic efforts to lead. Here’s Dennis Kucinich on the floor of Congress speaking against the bailout and asking: why, why why:

“The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered.

Why aren’t we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren’t we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers’ money?

Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren’t we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess?

Why aren’t we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren’t we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?

“Why aren’t we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren’t we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren’t we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street?

Isn’t it time for fundamental change in our debt based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks?

Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? Wall Street is a place of bears and bulls. It is not smart to force taxpayers to dance with bears or to follow closely behind the bulls.”

Michael Moore is more charitable about the Democrats’ actions yesterday. Here’s his update:

Friends,

Everyone said the bill would pass. The masters of the universe were already making celebratory dinner reservations at Manhattan’s finest restaurants. Personal shoppers in Dallas and Atlanta were dispatched to do the early Christmas gifting. Mad Men of Chicago and Miami were popping corks and toasting each other long before the morning latte run.

But what they didn’t know was that hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday morning and decided it was time for revolt. The politicians never saw it coming. Millions of phone calls and emails hit Congress so hard it was as if Marshall Dillon, Elliot Ness and Dog the Bounty Hunter had descended on D.C. to stop the looting and arrest the thieves.

The Corporate Crime of the Century was halted by a vote of 228 to 205. It was rare and historic; no one could remember a time when a bill supported by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat. That just never happens.

A lot of people are wondering why the right wing of the Republican Party joined with the left wing of the Democratic Party in voting down the thievery. Forty percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans voted against the bill.

Here’s what happened:

The presidential race may still be close in the polls, but the Congressional races are pointing toward a landslide for the Democrats. Few dispute the prediction that the Republicans are in for a whoopin’ on November 4th. Up to 30 Republican House seats could be lost in what would be a stunning repudiation of their agenda.

The Republican reps are so scared of losing their seats, when this “financial crisis” reared its head two weeks ago, they realized they had just been handed their one and only chance to separate themselves from Bush before the election, while doing something that would make them look like they were on the side of “the people.”

Watching C-Span yesterday morning was one of the best comedy shows I’d seen in ages. There they were, one Republican after another who had backed the war and sunk the country into record debt, who had voted to kill every regulation that would have kept Wall Street in check — there they were, now crying foul and standing up for the little guy! One after another, they stood at the microphone on the House floor and threw Bush under the bus, under the train (even though they had voted to kill off our nation’s trains, too), heck, they would’ve thrown him under the rising waters of the Lower Ninth Ward if they could’ve conjured up another hurricane. You know how your dog acts when sprayed by a skunk? He howls and runs around trying to shake it off, rubbing and rolling himself on every piece of your carpet, trying to get rid of the stench. That’s what it looked like on the Republican side of the aisle yesterday, and it was a sight to behold.

The 95 brave Dems who broke with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were the real heroes, just like those few who stood up and voted against the war in October of 2002. Watch the remarks from yesterday of Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Dennis Kucinich. They spoke the truth.

The Dems who voted for the giveaway did so mostly because they were scared by the threats of Wall Street, that if the rich didn’t get their handout, the market would go nuts and then it’s bye-bye stock-based pension and retirement funds.

And guess what? That’s exactly what Wall Street did! The largest, single-day drop in the Dow in the history of the New York Stock exchange. The news anchors last night screamed it out: Americans just lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the stock market!! It’s a financial Pearl Harbor! The sky is falling! Bird flu! Killer Bees!

Of course, sane people know that nobody “lost” anything yesterday, that stocks go up and down and this too shall pass because the rich will now buy low, hold, then sell off, then buy low again.

But for now, Wall Street and its propaganda arm (the networks and media it owns) will continue to try and scare the bejesus out of you. It will be harder to get a loan. Some people will lose their jobs. A weak nation of wimps won’t last long under this torture. Or will we? Is this our line in the sand?

Here’s my guess: The Democratic leadership in the House secretly hoped all along that this lousy bill would go down. With Bush’s proposals shredded, the Dems knew they could then write their own bill that favors the average American, not the upper 10% who were hoping for another kegger of gold.

So the ball is in the Democrats’ hands. The gun from Wall Street remains at their head. Before they make their next move, let me tell you what the media kept silent about while this bill was being debated:

1. The bailout bill had NO enforcement provisions for the so-called oversight group that was going to monitor Wall Street’s spending of the $700 billion;

2. It had NO penalties, fines or imprisonment for any executive who might steal any of the people’s money;

3. It did NOTHING to force banks and lenders to rewrite people’s mortgages to avoid foreclosures — this bill would not have stopped ONE foreclosure!;

4. It had NO teeth anywhere in the entire piece of legislation, using words like “suggested” when referring to the government being paid back for the bailout;

5. Over 200 economists wrote to Congress and said this bill might actually WORSEN the “financial crisis” and cause even MORE of a meltdown.

Put a fork in this slab of pork. It’s over. Now it is time for our side to state very clearly the laws WE want passed. I will send you my proposals later today. We’ve bought ourselves less than 72 hours.

Yours,
Michael Moore

Do you remember Pearl Harbor?

Posted on December 7, 2007 by Eric Verlo

December 7 is the day that lives on in infamy, when a Japanese naval force traveled across the Pacific unobserved by ships or planes, under the nose of our intelligence network, to catch the US fleet napping early one Sunday morning. Fortunately the newer more valuable American ships, including all our aircraft carriers, had quietly been sent on maneuvers.
Japanese attempt at SHOCK AND AWE, our permission slip to go to war

The sneaky nature of Japan’s attack, combined with her similar blitz on our colonial possessions in the Pacific, made War With Japan an easier sell to isolationist Americans who were redoubled in their resolve after the disaster of our unnecessary participation in WWI. It’s conjectured that FDR knew about the Attack on Pearl Harbor, but understood that only such infamy would prompt our public to cry for revenge.

Whether or whatever Roosevelt knew, he is blamed certainly for having given the Japanese no alternative but to attack. The US was asserting itself as lone strong man in the Pacific, with expansionist designs of its own, and had issued an ultimatum to Japan that we would brook no territorial ambitions of theirs. We’d already cut off Japan’s access to oil, American volunteers were already fighting Japan in China, and our bases stood in their way in the Philippines. America had assumed Spain’s stewardship responsibilities over the Philippines just as the Filipinos were about to seize their independence.

So Japan was goaded into trying to hobble our Pacific fleet, hoping to smack down our bullying tone. But they clobbered only our older ships and unwittingly unleashed an industrial giant, which our leaders knew, and they would learn, would prove unstoppable.

Never forget remember no thinking

Posted on August 3, 2007 by Eric Verlo

A commercial van passes our noon vigil on occasion, its driver giving us one of our diminishing no-confidence gestures. On the back window of the van is a “9-11” sticker of the twin towers, the American flag and the admonition ALWAYS REMEMBER. Frequently I’ve seen this slogan prefixed with NEVER FORGET, so we know the dullards they are addressing.

Do you REMEMBER THE ALAMO?
Hot headed American expansionists moved to annex Mexican land and their “sacrifice” at San Antonio legitimized American Manifest Destiny over Spain’s.

Do you REMEMBER THE MAINE?
An American battleship blew up in Cuba, fueling the jingoist call to take Spain’s remaining colonies for America. The Maine was later found to have exploded from the inside.

Do you REMEMBER THE LUSITANIA?
The German U-Boat sinking of an innocent ocean liner brought isolationist America into the First World War. It turns out the Lusitania was bringing US-made weapons and ammunition to England.

Do you REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR?
The Japanese sneak attack galvanized public support to fight WWII. FDR knew about the coming attack, sent the most important ships out on maneuvers, and stood down to play the victim.

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin with which we contrived an excuse to attack the Vietnamese? Remember WMDs? Remember the Sudetenland? False-flag ops all. Always remember. Never learn.

We should really be worried now

Posted on February 28, 2007 by Tony Logan

The ventriloquist turned toward his public and said with a wide smile that it was the dummy who was calling the ‘conference’ and not himself. We should really be worried now. The US has ‘decided to ‘attend’ the conference that its dummy has called. I am referring to the announcement that the Iraq PM is calling for a regional conference on March 10 in Baghdad.

How reasonable. If it’s broke, let’s try together to fix it. Does this seem like the Bush and Cheney we know? We’re about to get neo-conned again I rather think. This so called regional conference is not for real. One could expect that Iran and Syria would be totally berated by the US if they attended, so why even respond? The new US strategy is merely to pass blame for the Iraq mess off themselves and onto the countries they next desire to attack. Possibly with nuclear weapons. But first, let’s conference! How sweet….

Yes, the US government we have is so very reasonable. It wants peace with Iran and Syria. But what do those rogue maniac Muslim states do? You know that they’re not reasonable, and right about now, we can suspect that ‘they’ will do a ‘Pearl Harbor’ on the innocent ol’ USA, led by innocent ol’ Oily Dick Cheney. We’re innocent he will shout! We tried to hold out the olive branch,but they only knew how to try to scalp us. These Muslim nuclear seeking monsters must be stopped, before they al quaeda us yet again.

Will our neighbors worry about torture and renditions then? Will they nobly oppose the hysteria by holding up pieces of paper, the US Constitution? Old Glory will become Oh Hysteria, we’ve been attacked yet again! Imagine your neighbors livid with rage as the one or two of us try to protest what will be ordered in ‘response’? It’s a scary day ahead. My God, we’re under attack! Nuke ’em! Lynch mobs will be back in style once again.

A Pearl Harbor timeline

Posted on December 7, 2006 by NMT

I found this timeline which addresses the lead-up to what Franklin D. Roosevelt knew would be a day to live on in infamy. His.
Japanese attempt at SHOCK AND AWE, our permission slip to go to war

1904 – The Japanese destroyed the Russian navy in a surprise attack in undeclared war.

1932 – In the Grand Joint Army-Navy Exercises, 152 aircraft carrier planes caught the defenders of Pearl Harbor completely by surprise. It was a Sunday

1938 – Admiral Ernst King led a carrier-born airstrike from the USS Saratoga successfully against Pearl Harbor in another exercise.

1940 – FDR ordered the fleet transferred from the West Coast to its exposed position in Hawaii and ordered the fleet remain stationed at Pearl Harbor over complaints by its commander Admiral Richardson that there was inadequate protection from air attack and no protection from torpedo attack. Richardson felt so strongly that he twice disobeyed orders to berth his fleet there and he raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel, also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941.

7 Oct 1940 – Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an 8 point memo on how to force Japan into war with US. Beginning the next day FDR began to put them into effect and all 8 were eventually accomplished.

11 November 1940 – 21 aged British planes destroyed the Italian fleet, including 3 battleships, at their homeport in the harbor of Taranto in Southern Italy by using technically innovative shallow-draft torpedoes.

In a letter of January 24, 1941, the Secretary of the Navy advised the Secretary of War that the increased gravity of the Japanese situation had prompted a restudy of the problem of the security of the Pacific Fleet while in Pearl Harbor. The writer stated: “If war eventuates with Japan, it is believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the Fleet or the Naval base at Pearl Harbor. . . . The dangers envisaged in their order of importance and probability are considered to be: 1) air bombing attack; 2) air torpedo plane attack; 3) sabotage; 4) submarine attack; 5) mining; 6) bombardment by gunfire.” The letter stated the defenses against all but the first two were then satisfactory.

The Secretary of War replied February 7, 1941. Admiral Kimmel and General Short received copies of these letters.

11 February 1941 – FDR proposed sacrificing 6 cruisers and 2 carriers at Manila to get into war. Navy Chief Stark objected: “I have previously opposed this and you have concurred as to its unwisdom. Particularly do I recall your remark in a previous conference when Mr. Hull suggested (more forces to Manila) and the question arose as to getting them out and your 100% reply, from my standpoint, was that you might not mind losing one or two cruisers, but that you did not want to take a chance on losing 5 or 6.” (Charles Beard PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE COMING OF WAR 1941, p 424)

March 1941 – FDR sold munitions and convoyed them to belligerents in Europe — both acts of war and both violations of international law — the Lend-Lease Act.

23 Jun 1941 – Advisor Harold Ickes wrote FDR a memo the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, “There might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia.” FDR was pleased with Admiral Richmond Turner’s report read July 22: “It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum will lead promptly to the invasion of Netherland East Indies…it seems certain she would also include military action against the Philippine Islands, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war.” On July 24 FDR told the Volunteer Participation Committee, “If we had cut off the oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war.” The next day FDR froze all Japanese assets in US cutting off their main supply of oil and forcing them into war with the US. Intelligence information was withheld from Hawaii from this point forward.

14 August – At the Atlantic Conference, Churchill noted the “astonishing depth of Roosevelt’s intense desire for war.” Churchill cabled his cabinet “(FDR) obviously was very determined that they should come in.”

On October 16, 1941, the Commanding General, Hawaiian Department [Short], and the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel], were advised by the War and Navy Departments of the changes in the Japanese Cabinet, and of the possibility of an attack by Japan on Great Britain and the United States.

18 October – diary entry by Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes: “For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan.”

November 24, 1941, the Chief of Naval Operations sent a message to Admiral Kimmel in which he stated that in the opinion of the Navy Department, a surprise aggressive movement … by the Japanese . . . was a possibility.

November 27, 1941, the Chief of Staff of the Army informed the Commanding General that hostilities on the part of Japan were momentarily possible.

On the same day (November 27, 1941) the Chief of Naval Operations sent a message to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, which stated in substance that the dispatch was to be considered a war warning.

November 28, 1941, the Commanding General received from the Adjutant General of the Army a message stating that the critical situation required every precaution to be taken at once against subversive activities.

The Navy Department sent three messages to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet; the first of December 3, 1941, stated that it was believed certain Japanese consulates were destroying their codes and burning secret documents; the second of December 4, 1941, instructed the addressee to destroy confidential documents and means of confidential communication; and the third of December 4, 1941, directing that in view of the tense situation the naval commands on the outlying Pacific islands might be authorized to destroy confidential papers.

On December 6, the Japanese government began sending a long message to its diplomats in Washington. The last part of that message arrived in the early-morning hours of December 7. Japanese diplomats Nomura and Kurusu prepared for a final meeting with Secretary of State Hull, knowing that they were being ordered to break off all negotiations with the U.S. What they didn’t realize was that the same message had been decoded and rushed to President Roosevelt and to the high commanders of the U.S. Army and Navy. The U.S. was now aware that Japan might strike somewhere in the Pacific, but a warning did not reach Pearl Harbor until nearly 8:00 a.m., Hawaii time. By then, Nomura and Kurusu were in Secretary Hull’s office, and Japanese bombs were falling onto the neat lines of U.S. warships in Pearl Harbor’s “Battleship Row.”

At about noon E.S.T. (6:30 a.m. Honolulu time) December 7, an additional warning message indicating an almost immediate break in relations between the United States and Japan, was dispatched by the Chief of Staff. . . . The delivery of this urgent message was delayed until after the attack.

The Commanding General [Short], the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel] and their principal staff officers considered the possibility of air raids. Without exception they believed that the chances of such a raid while the Pacific Fleet was based upon Pearl Harbor was practically nil.

World Trade Center vs. Silent Partner

Posted on July 17, 2006 by Eric Verlo

WORLD TRADE CENTER, Oliver Stone’s sentimental take on 9/11 heroism comes out this summer. I have nothing against a story which describes the travails of two New York City cops and their families caught up in the World Trade Center collapse. But Stone’s timing with the release of this movie is unfortunate. With the upcoming elections, the only rallying cry the Republicans have anymore is 9/11. What a time for Stone to wax patriotic. And I think the absence of his usual political curiosity offers a silent aquiescence to the official line. Too bad.

For anyone who feels they absolutely need a jolt of 9/11 heroism, might I suggest the documentary 9/11 aired on CBS and made by the Naudet brothers, the French filmmakers who inadvertantly captured the first tower being hit. Talk about harrowing viewing. They went inside the WTC to witness the second strike and were still inside when the opposite tower collapsed. (That’s why the video of the first plane was so late to emerge. Filmmaker and film were nearly destroyed in the rubble.)

I’d like to recommend an altogether different classic: THE SILENT PARTNER, an unforgettable 1978 sleeper hit starring Elliot Gould and Christopher Plummer. Don’t take my word for it, this thriller shares some striking plot points.

Plummer plays bank robber Harry Reikel who is thwarted in his first attempt to rob the bank at which Gould’s Miles Cullen is a bank teller. Deciding to await a better opportunity, Reikel discards the deposit slip upon which he’d written his directives, this is a robbery, etc. While tidying the lobby, Miles discovers the imprint of Reikel’s message on the deposit slip beneath. He reacts with alarm, but goes home to consider the opportunity knocking and hatches a plan.

(What did the US security advisor do with the memo titled “Bin Laden determined to strike inside the US?”)

The next day at work Miles waylays as much money as he can from the bank vault. When the forecasted robbery occurs, he gives Reikel some of the money, later declaring the entire sum as stolen, and then takes the bulk of the loot home, thus becoming the robber’s silent partner. Of course, when Reikel learns on TV the magnitude of his purported take, he figures out what Miles has done. Now Reikel becomes the partner whom Miles must keep silent.

Does it make sense that someone might be using Guantanamo to keep al Qaida ranks silent, lest anyone find out that Bin Laden had only commandered the planes? Crashing the airliners was forewarned by the now infamous security memo, but the terrorists may have had nothing to do with upping the magnitude of the 9/11 disaster by setting demolition charges at the WTC and the Pentagon. Those may have been more easily planted by cold-blooded accomplices to the terrorists, silent partners who wanted a Pearl Harbor to launch their PNAC authoritarian coup.

Taking it to the streets

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Eric Verlo

This picture was taken in Nepal shortly before soldiers began swinging their sticks and firing into the crowd. Recent events have wrought inumerable protests such as this. Except for the Ukraine, Haiti and Bolivia, few have ended favorably. Protestors in western nations have thus far faced only tear gas, rubber bullets and trunchons, nothing like the massacres in Uzbekistan and China.

Look hard at this picture. Do you think the American People could ever see themselves brave enough to face this moment?

Americans have seen their elections stolen, their treasury looted, their sons and daughters killed to enrich war profiteers. They’ve seen a president lie to take them into war, try to steal their Social Security, stack the Judicial Branch to a marked imbalance, hold himself above the law against invasion of privacy, exempt himself from new laws with “signing statements,” imprison people without due process, insist on being able to torture, limit free speech to “free speech zones,” declare a war on terror but refuse to acknowledge prisoners of war, weaken pollution standards and call it a “Clear Skies Initiative, ” sell protected public lands, promote the outsourcing of jobs overseas, seek to legalize the payment of poverty waves to illegal immigrants, inhibit states and foreign nations from taking action to avert global warming, double the U.S. deficit in order to give a tax break to the super rich, launch the thoroughly illegal war against Iraq and supervise the killing of now upwards of 250, 000 Iraqi lives, more than half of them children.

Feel free to add to this list if I’ve missed something.

Most recently we’ve learned that the president considers it his right to intimidate political opponents like Ambassador Joe Wilson by “declassifying” the CIA status of Wilson’s wife, thereby endangering the life her colleagues, her contacts, her friends, and all of their contacts and friends, everyone who foreign governments now suspect might have been CIA informers.

More Americans are coming to see that our president might have conspired, abetted or at the very least permitted the mass murder of 2,986 Americans on September 11th, 2001, to create the rallying cry of “9/11” not dissimilar to Remember the Main, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin before it. Each as dubious as the Reichstag fire.

Is it time as well to consider that the fate of the world rests in the hands of a man who believes in the end times as foretold in the Book of Revelations? Is it possible that our president does not care if Armageddon is hastened in the Middle East because anyhoo it has been prophesied?

If President Bush attacks Iran, this time using nuclear weapons, will it finally occur to the American people to do something to stop him? Are they up to the task?

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