City plan to snuff socialist infiltration hearing blows up in courtroom’s face

El Paso County undercovers
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO– If you attended today’s evidentiary hearing about the police infiltration of a local student group, you are no doubt left wondering what happened. Where were the defendants and why was the judge so angry? The outcome was not what either side wanted, but still it was a huge false step for the city. The defense was not provided the police witnesses it requested, but the prosecution was prevented from quashing those subpoenas outright. As a truant co-defendant, I had a unique vantage point on today’s anticlimax and I apologize I was unable to explain it in person.

Today’s hearing, it turns out, was supposed to exclude the defendants. The review of evidence relating to the police infiltration operation was intended to happen outside of public view. The lawyers signed the setting slips, not the defendants, who were kept uninformed of the October 17 hearing. The judge had specified lawyers only, to keep the details and identities of the undercovers confidential.

Can courts exclude defendants from their own hearings? Not really, but anyway.

It turns out the judge wanted privacy because she had no intention of conducting the hearing at all. Without an audience to offend, this judge planned to summarily quash the defense motions to make police administrators testify and that would be the end of it. Objections be damned, let the lawyers take it up on appeal. Push this hot potato off a year or two.

However, through documents obtained directly from the courthouse, the defendants did learn about the hearing. So the defendants made plans to attend the hearing regardless of a judge’s preferences, and they publicized the event for what it promised to be, a scandalous exposé of CSPD intelligence overreach. Subpoenaed to testify were El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, Colorado Springs Police Chief Peter Carey, Lieutenant Mark Comte of the CSPD Intelligence Divison, and Sergeant Clayton Blackwell, among others.

Colorado Springs prosecutors did not inform the defense team that they had no intention of honoring those subpoenas. Instead they planned to motion to quash the subpoenas and truncate the hearing. The city attorneys did not file those motions beforehand nor give the defense any indication they were contesting the subpoenas.

I can only surmise that the city prosecutors began receiving calls from the media about the anticipated testimony of the sheriff and chief of police, because it wasn’t until late morning on the day of the hearing, after our press release went out, that the city emailed the defense team to say that “Sgt Blackwell is on vacation.” Blackwell wouldn’t be attending the hearing, they said, and by the way, his was the only subpoena delivered.

To which I imagine our legal team said: WTF?! Now we needed a hearing to learn why the city thought it could unilaterally decide to whom to deliver our subpoenas.

It’s one thing to disrespect the rights of defendants. Our municipal court does it ALL THE TIME. Everyday, sadly. In fact, it’s done it repeatedly to the very defendants in this case, before we got lawyers. But it’s quite another thing to trample on our rights when a civil rights attorney is involved.

If Blackwell was on vacation, the case needed a continuance. And if subpoenas were going to be quashed, we needed a motions hearing. Oddly, the judge was demanding our defense attorneys show up in person. To arrange a continuance?! Riiiiiight.

Our lawyers quickly let us know there was to be no hearing. Since the defendants weren’t supposed to attend today’s hearing anyway, we deemed it prudent not to attend the prosecution’s switcheroo. Without defendants, whatever the prosecution planned couldn’t proceed. Meanwhile the defense lawyers weren’t going to abide a Podunk Springs Judge Roy Bean throwing the law book out the window. If subpoenas aren’t going to be honored, you have to present the legal basis beforehand. Them’s the rules, Hayseeds.

So the courtroom audience, including journalists and media crews who had to leave their television cameras outside, were left to witness a Colorado Springs judge fuming at being out-thunk. The defense lawyers weren’t there to let her quash away with her gavel, without regard for the Colorado Rules of Proceedure, and the judge’s original scheme excluded the defendants so as a result there were no defendants present to accept her rulings. The judge could do nothing but seethe and lecture the audience about big lawyers disrespecting municipal courts. Nevermind that our courts are corrupt mechanisms that trample rights for breakfast. (The ACLU recently released a report damning Alamosa’s city courts: Justice Derailed. Believe me, the identical abuses of power occur in Colorado Springs.)

Nevermind too, what today’s court hearing was supposed to be about: Outrageous Conduct on the part of CSPD and EPCSO, and violations of the Code of Federal Conduct. Today’s defendants were arrested on March 26, 2017, but not for walking in the street. The socialists were arrested because the Intelligence Division wanted to “arrest” an undercover officer, maybe two, in order to give them deeper cover as they infiltrated a student-led group just formed in Colorado Springs. The CSPD body-cam video released to the defendants already proves this. We wanted the decision makers responsible to explain it.

Instead of a comedy of errors spotlighting local law enforcement ignoring the people’s Bill of Rights, the courtroom audience today saw another facet of our corrupt judicial system. They witnessed a judge prepared to ride roughshod over further rights that protect citizens from authoritarian zeal. You may not care how police abuse “socialists” but the whims of a municipal court despot affect everyone caught in their dragnet, be it a ticket or a zoning dispute. Even with an expensive lawyer, you are powerless to object when a judge pretends there are no rules.

What the judge saw today was a courtroom filled with supporters of the defendants and a media interested in their story. She saw that she and her gavel are not going to make this story go away.

Hastert being a pedophile is not the story! Where did a former wrestling coach get millions to bribe his victims?!

If Dennis Hastert was being treated like a convicted serial pedophile, he’d never see the light of day, you’d think. Instead the judge was asked to take into account his years of public service. Which is almost not missing the point of the whole scandal. Dennis Hastert being a pedophile pales next to the number of victims of his white collar crime. Paying hush money to the former victims of his predatory sexual abuse was the petty crime for which he was sentenced to 15-months in prison. Hastert’s biggest crime was his corruption as the longest serving Speaker Of The House. Dennis Hastert was a high school wrestling coach before running for office and becoming a multimillionare land speculator. Could Hastert’s record stint in Congress mean he didn’t break records for stealing from his constituents and their interests? It’s obvious where Hastert got the millions in cash with which to pay off his many underage victims. THAT’S the crime for which Dennis Hastert isn’t serving enough time. BY ALL MEANS, DO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT HIS PUBLIC SERVICE. Award his millions to his abused victims, put Dennis Hastert in jail forever, then, for betraying the public trust, hang him.

I have to ask: if Dennis Hastert was a perv as a wrestling coach, what predilections do you suppose he indulged as America’s second most powerful office-holder and corrupt multimillionaire? Are we to imagine Speaker Hastert kicked his pedophilia habit for graft? Those are two distinct abberations. One’s a mental disorder, the other is calculated greed.

At today’s sentencing the judge called Dennis Hastert a “serial pedophile” and expressed it was shocking to say serial pedophile and House Speaker in the same sentence. I doubt that. Mostly because we only learn these things after the fact. I think it would be more accurate in the future to wonder which if any of our speakers are not pedophiles.

If fellow congressmen and staffers knew anything of Hastert activities –and how couldn’t they not?– they should face prosecution as well.

Who okayed Chicago’s $5 million hush payment for killing Laquan McDonald? Did buck stop with Rahm Emanuel?


Laquan McDonald’s murder was covered up for over a year, five million was paid to his family to keep the killing under wraps. The Chicago police officer who shot McDonald was only charged after the video came to light. Laquan McDonald was killed on October 20, 2014, two months after Michael Brown. Ferguson protests were in full swing. Imagine if the communities of South Chicago had seen the video when Black Lives Matter was in ascendance. It’s hard to say from how high heads should roll over this scandal. Were the Ferguson and Baltimore riots countered from above? Was riot police strategy coordinated by agencies above municipal hierarchies like Chicago’s? We know the Baltimore protests were monitored by FBI surveillance flights. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel most certainly should be forced to resign, but the authority which quashed the Laquan video is no doubt sitting on others, and this abuse extends beyond racism. Laquan McDonald’s killing and coverup didn’t just happen 400-odd days ago. It happened in the thick of Black Lives coming to Matter. Chicago cops were deleting Burger King security camera video while Ferguson solidarity protests were happening in Chicago.

The History of the Denver Police Department

Before the Denver Police Department began murdering the men, women and children of Denver, they were burglarizing Denver homes and businesses.
 
In 1960, the largest police corruption scandal in the U.S. to date began to unfold. More than 50 area law-enforcement personnel – almost entirely Denver Police Officers were caught in a burglary ring. Cops had stolen over a quarter of a million dollars from businesses they were supposed to be protecting on their beats over a ten-year period. Police cars would close down a few blocks of a major business avenue, such as University or Broadway, then burglarized and stole the safes from the businesses along the closed down portion of the street. Alarms would be going off all up and down the street, they would take their loot, then respond to the alarms and take the reports. It all came to a crashing halt when an officer named Art Winstanley literally had a safe fall out of the back of his police cruiser. He testified against his fellow officers and then by the end of 1961, 47 police officers had lost their badges. The DPD called it “Back Friday”.

Art was sent to the prison in Canon City along with over 40 of his cop buddies. When the prison door swung shut on Art, he complained to the warden that no one liked or respected him, he said the other convicts were being mean to him and spitting on his food tray; these were the convicts that Art had arrested and sent to prison for crimes that he had committed.

Many of these crimes by the Denver Police Department were known and whispered about at the time by other policemen, citizens and politicians, but for fear of retaliation from the cops, they remained silent.

It was only when one rat with his foot in the trap, trying to save himself, exposed the true extent of the crimes of the Denver Police Department. Sixty five years have now passed and the DPD have moved on from burglary to murder.

There are many who speak out for respect for the policeman, they see his blue uniform and badge, read his propaganda of “Protect & Serve” and then slovenly give them a free pass in all matter, they mistakenly think they are incapable of a lie.

These people are the product of police propaganda and a media who quietly sweeps police crimes and brutality under the rug, never to see the eyes of the public.

One of the best examples I can give is of a recent event; A policeman who was called for a disturbance at a Target store, helped a young boy repair his bike.

It seemed the boys bike chain had come off and the policeman helped him put it back on, the incident was reported by another policeman who was also there. It was said the this incident went viral; So what would my complaint be?

Had You or I, ordinary citizens stopped to help this boy, you would never had heard of the incident and it certainly wouldn’t have went viral.

I didn’t see a cop helping the boy, I saw only a man helping the boy. A blue uniform and badge does not make him a saint.
Truth be known; most of the general public have little or no contact with their police department outside of traffic stops. They have little knowledge of how brutal the unchecked police powers have become. And while these brutal crimes go on unchecked by some policemen, the others remain silent; that in itself is a crime. To be a good cop, he must stand up and bear witness to the crimes he has knowledge of, especially when it is wearing a blue uniform and badge. To do less, is to become a partner in crime.

Would that same cop who helped this boy with his bike, if put in the situation where he saw one of his fellow officers commit a crime, speak out and make an arrest of his fellow officer? History has taught us that he would not.
Where the general public see’s a badge, a blue uniform and give’s their respect, I see a human being that is capable of both good and bad deeds, and should be treated as such just as any citizen would be treated.

A question we might ask: How is it that the DA has not filed one criminal case against the police and yet the juries in civil court have awarded million of dollars to victims of police abuse.

Mitchell R. Morrissey was elected District Attorney of Denver in November 2004 and was sworn into office on January 11, 2005. He is responsible for the prosecution of more than 6,000 felony and 18,000 misdemeanor criminal cases every year.

NE Patriots are serial cheaters, so are their namesakes. The unfair advantage is an essential of Capitalism.

First the New England Patriots got caught spying on their adversaries, now they’ve been tweaking the air-pressure of their game balls to sneak a ballistic handling advantage. Rules be damned, Patriot quarterback Tom Brady prefers his ordnance two pounds psi shy, hollow-points –if you will– which are also against regulation. For how long have the Patriots been manipulating advantages? And how else? They weren’t satisfied with the home field advantage on Sunday. Maybe officials should bring protractors to investigate the Boston gridiron. A level playing field doesn’t likely suit the Patriots either.

OF COURSE it doesn’t. Who expects sportsmanship from “patriots?!” Patriotism is the antisocial insistance on your own cultural superiority. American exceptionalism is an endorsement of tactical superiority, covert war, disproportionate force, drones, extrajudicial assassination, death squads, snipers, collateral damage, and torture. Formal US policy is to FLAUNT international law. American materialism profits from insider trading, extortion, usury, and corporate hegemony uber alles! Why would our surrogate Sunday warriors pretend there is honor among thieves?

Of course America underinflates footballs to best our opponents. We also diligently deploy inspectors to ensure our intended defeatees can’t recallibrate theirs. Meanwhile our leaders dissemble when plausible deniability stretches thin.

Of course NFL officials are not discussing a Super Bowl disqualification for the recidivist Patriots. Instead they’re weighing minor penalties, no doubt manageable, if not tax deductible. If America’s best cheaters don’t advance to the Super Bowl, the outcome would be hypocritical. Go Team! America Fuck Yeah!

I’m kidding of course. Sack the quarterback, disqualify the Patriots, send whoever else to the Super Bowl, then march the entire US defense and offense departments to the Hague.

UPDATE 1/23:
While fans and media try to belittle the scandal (ie. “Deflate-gate” and “Ballghazi”), statisticians have noted a damning anomaly relating to the advantage gained from underinflated footballs. After the rules were changed to allow offensive teams to use their own footballs –Brady was among the quarterbacks lobbying for the change– New England’s ball handling superiority grew beyond the realm of probability.

Probably all teams know that well-inflated footballs fly further but underinflated balls are easier to grab. Maybe the purpose of making a personalized array of game balls available is so offensive teams can exploit alternate characteristics as needed. Maybe the NFL understood this when they granted the rule change. Maybe the Patriots just couldn’t pass up every opportunity to cheat, until the statistics made plain their greed. Whether by hubris or head-injury numbskulledness, Tom Brady and his receivers thought they coud break PT Barnum’s rule too.

The American Dream hinges on equality of opportunity and fair play, but of course Capitalism idealizes the unfair advantage.

Btw I abhor the theatre of corporate sports, but when it exposes the reek of America’s national character, I like to make sure to smell it.

Springs Democrats hope democracy loses to State Senator John Morse

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- International news headlines read “G-20 Summit Overshadowed by Syrian Crisis” but not in Colorado Springs! Here every politically active Democrat was working to defeat a recall of state senate leader John Morse, a democrat though barely. Morse is a duly elected, if unlikely, representative of conservative El Paso County, being assailed by a mutinous GOP majority angered by his stewarding of gun control legislation. The NRA has backed a blitzkrieg recall campaign, aided by local Republican officials and judges who connived election parameters designed to coax a recall victory. But who’s on the side of right, presumably with the people?

Democrats are crying foul. They’re cursing corporate money and lobbyist-villain NRA, complaining that recalls shouldn’t be motivated by ideological reasons. Really? Are recalls only for impropriety? I’d prefer corruption be answered with criminal charges, and scandal should produce resignations. I’d say ideology would be the most appropriate reason for a recall, especially if it’s about a difference of opinion about the idea of representational government.

Ironically, the underdog’s usual complaint is that incumbents are always impossible to unseat, even when they act in total defiance of their constituents. Don’t you hate that? The irony is compounded because no one will deny that the overwhelming majority in these neighborhoods oppose any abridgement of the Second Amendment right to wave guns. Senator Morse acted in defiance of that interest. Undemocratic, is what he was, as his critics accuse.

We like to vilify the NRA as the worst of special interest lobbies, but one can’t accuse them of being corporate, they’re famously supported by members! The NRA is probably the single MOST democratic of lobbying outfits. The fact that the corporate media loves to demonize the NRA should give one pause about who’s looking after who.

What’s very odd is that the NRA-backed Republicans are targeting a term-limited Democrat who has only a year left in office. What’s that about? Pundits speculate that an NRA win would be symbolic, so it’s worth the money they’re spending. Maybe. It certainly will reinforce the corporate narrative that legislators daren’t cross the NRA. How convenient.

But the recall campaign, a national story now, is not so mysterious if you think about the Kabuki nature of our two party theater. The defense campaign contrived for Senator Morse is a disquietingly artificial shade for grassroots. Against “People Against Morse” the Democrats countered with: “A Whole Lot of People For Morse”, which is certainly a catchy slogan for a politician looking to highten his visibility for a run at a next office, but for locals it lacks the ring of authenticity. What viewers outside the area don’t know is that John Morse has been a superlatively minor functionary, with a reputation for backstabbing more than leading, and certainly no one to bother defending or applauding, even if his name came up, which it rarely did.

Before this recall, people hadn’t cared enough to even think about John Morse, except to spout the usual lesser of evils rap, when there is consensus, it’s that Morse isn’t the creepiest person they knew, depending on who you asked. Now the louse has “a whole lot of people” behind him, how odd. That’s a whole lot of people who don’t care that Morse misrepresented his district, who don’t care that he’s been a war-monger right-of-center pro-industry shill. Because he’s of their party, Democrats want to propel Morse upward. And this is how malignant anti-democratic corporate bureaucrats roll into power.

To judge by the press, and the surge of effort to combat the recall effort, it appears John Morse does have “a whole lot” of support. Propaganda and amnesia.

If the recall succeeds, Americans will be shown that money does influence elections and special interest groups are adversaries to be feared. Sounds like an honest lesson. If the recall succeeds, the displeasure of the gun-loving voters of Colorado Springs will have been heard. If the recall fails, you’ll have Democrats unironically cheering against what Democracy is supposed to look like. In either event, John Morse comes out looking like somebody likes him, and that’s a step in the wrong direction for those of us without a political machine.

Super Bowl 2013 commemorates American warrior culture minus wounded vets

nfl--tv-nmt
TV NATION- Can Americans no longer embarrass themselves? This year’s pregame holiday extended to Super Bowl Eve with an un-ironic commemoration ceremony, an all-star gala tribute to football, acclaiming it a venerated touchstone of the American character, the public mob like drunken monks feasting the humanitarian contributions of the Spanish Inquisition. Football celebrates America’s cultural blood lust, a surrogate for our preemptive senseless war making, whose shared cartoon violence is expunged of its real antisocial inhumanity. Probably owing to this season’s pre pregame homophobia scandal, where collegiate casualty Manti Teo showed signs of early onset Mohammed Ali’s disease, fans learned about the concealed football side effect of compounded concussions, akin to IED survivors’ collateral brain damage. Next we’ll probably hear that footballers’ home lives spread PTSD. As football injuries become more difficult to hide from battle-weary audiences, fans will be calling for more Kevlar and then of course commensurate armor piercing anti-Kevlar. I already think football offensive lines look spectacularly under equipped without drones. Or would that position be pretended to play defense?

Letter to Michael Moore, indelible hero, retrograde Occupy Obama supporter

Dear Michael,
I write you as a longtime, enthusiastic fan, and please pardon me if the deference and affection I’d like to convey have been overcome by my shock at your recent emails. My question may sound rhetorical, but I would really like to know: what the hell compels you to shill once again for Barack Obama? Beside the campaign pablum.

When you visited Occupys across the country, including ours in Denver, I defended you to friends who dismissed you as the usual shepherd’s crook for the Democratic Party. No no no I assured them, he gets it. But did you? We weren’t protesting eight years of Bush followed by an ineffectual Obama, we were protesting Obama and the economic system under his watch. We weren’t protesting the Democratic Party being insufficiently adversarial to the Republicans, we were protesting the corporate party system, the Democrat face being the more two-faced.

Most significantly, while our anger was vented at Wall Street, the repression we were dealt, and which dissenters continue to suffer, came directly from the agencies of President Obama.

Yet now you presume to accuse the same audience of cynicism about the election, and urge us to support Democrat Obama, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, out of fear of the Big Bad Wolf, as usual Republican.

Maybe as the election draws to a climax you’ve become privy to an unseen power struggle you need to tell us about. Because it’s at odds with your earlier giddiness with Occupy. Then your enthusiasm was unclouded by your pragmatism today.

Please do tell, because Mitt Romney seems more a sheep in wolf’s clothing to me. He’s a cartoonish straw man villain spouting wedge-issue threats to scare us crows from lighting upon the real corporate agenda. The banking kleptocracy doesn’t care about gay/women’s rights except to restrict all rights, the easier to pursue its grand thefts. If the GOP had wanted to pick a winner, I’m certain the average doctor or teacher you come across everyday would have made a more suited contender.

Could the GOP have chosen a greedier more callous thug, who didn’t pay his taxes, tainted by so much scandal that a new one emerged every day to titillate and offend? Obama had to sluff the first presidential debate because they’d chosen such an unbelievable, lame duck opponent that the ratings threatened to tank.

When the Neocon Washington Post endorsed President Obama, I knew the stooge from the ringer. The empire would be screwed without Obama to placate its victims. As Glen Ford argues, Obama may appear the lesser evil, but he’s the more effective evil. He’ll sell what arrogantly-white Romney never could: more war, austerity, privatization, fossil fuel. Without Obama, the global populace would push back.

I don’t favor a Romney win, but for another reason than you. A Romney presidency would mean another cycle of voter outrage, with MoveOn once again rallying Democrats, as if they were any different, and you probably among them.

But the election is not even going to be close. The six billion spent on this election was six billion earned by the media by pretending the polling was tied, to extort more spending by both sides. Meanwhile horseless statistician Nate Silver is vilified by television pundits because he’s calculated that surprise, Obama has a comfortable lead over his bogeyman idiot challenger.

Yes I know multitudes who support Mitt Romney. Four years ago they got nowhere with John McCain, because the juggernaut of empire was already up to full steam with Obama. I confess I didn’t know it then, and fretted a GOP win like everybody else, but it didn’t keep me from voting for Cynthia McKinney against war and climate change.

You began your letter by saying “I get it” but then assume we non-voters are motivated by apathy or weariness. You’re the one who sounds worn down. Bummer.

Yours,
Eric

That’s no mystery woman, that’s my wife

Curious the class distinction made with media persons of interest. Mrs Kim Jong Un is appointed an air of notoriety by nature of having been previously unidentifiable to the West. There’s not much mystery to a retroactive mystery. So what about every other North Korean? Mystique surely does not apply to anyone not already on the media’s social register. But that surely says something about the “made” personalities of celebritydom. If the corporate media doesn’t know their provenance, say, back to their apprenticeships at Disney, then those potential loose canons will remain without celebrity title until their personalities are known entities ie bondable to the system’s image of itself. Conversely, look at the treatment of the otherwise scandalous Tetra-pack heir melodrama.

Unfamiliar to the general public, a billionaire Tetra heir lost his wife, her body went undiscovered for five days, remember that headline? Eventually we learned she was lost to drugs. The billionaire heir ignored her body after her overdose, himself still on a binge, but you wouldn’t get to that side of the story until five paragraphs into it. Even though the police only came upon the scene because the heir addict had been interrupted driving erratically. If the couple hadn’t been philanthropists, the headline would have told of billionaire addicts, given their names where not household variety. Their chief interest in philanthropy was to support an addiction recovery program, it turns out obviously a kind of tithing in lieu of quitting drugs themselves. So their philanthropy was a whitewash as much as the obit and police blotter was in the end.

Colo. College guest Donald Gregg: the man who hired the man who killed Che

He administered OPERATION PHOENIX during the Vietnam War, the CIA counterinsurgency operation which sought to pacify Vietnam with the targeted assassination of thousands of potential insurgents. For Vice President George H. W. Bush’s office, he coordinated the funding of the illegal US covert war against Central America, aka, the IRAN-CONTRA scandal. Yes, he supervised both Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, each of CIA-state-sponsored-terrorism fame. But Colorado College introduced Donald P. Gregg only as former national security adviser and ambassador to Korea. And CC gave Gregg an honorary degree — with not a peep from the know-nothings they laud as their exemplary students.

I attended because I was insulted by the lecture’s title: “What do Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jung Il have in common?” the speaker further slandered the father of modern Vietnam by indulging to associate another villain to the list, that of Muammar al-Gaddafi. But gracefully Gregg acquitted himself by explaining that Ho Chi Minh had been misjudged, and thus perhaps there is call to engage even our most despicable adversaries in dialog, lest we repeat our mistaken policies, as Gregg believes we are doing in Afghanistan.

Not much objectionable with that. Actually, you can read Gregg’s address, it’s virtually word for word the introduction he wrote for a 2009 study of the CIA’s unheralded successes in Vietnam. To his credit, Gregg does not echo the ongoing theme that Vietnam was winnable.

Relating his more recent expertise about Korea, Gregg offers that Kim Jong Il is more than your common loon. Rather, Il is of unusually high intelligence, underrated by the US, driven despotic by his isolation.

Or driven mad by our offense, I’d add. I’m surprised Kim Jong Il tolerates that we name our ambassador in Seoul as the Ambassador to Korea, rather than to South Korea. How dare US-occupied Korea assert to represent the national identity of Korea? As in Vietnam, it’s the north doing the heavy lifting toward inevitable unification.

Gregg nearly had me convinced he was reformed until he added a forth bogeyman for comparison, Iran.

Iran mustn’t get nukes, etc, etc, Ahmadinejad unpredictable, can’t be trusted, etc.

Ho Chi Minh had been demonized Gregg said, based on a wrong-headed anti-Communist domino-theory mindset, yet Gregg is perfectly willing to be stuck to Capitalism’s current mindset against Islam.

Gregg made such winning arguments for tolerance, respect, diplomacy, and the integrity of the best intelligence officers, but isn’t that precisely the neo-liberal spiel? The CC audience lapped it up.

Here was the closest most of us will ever get to someone connected to the murder of Che Fucking Guevara, icon of the world struggle against Western oppression. That’s explaining the obvious, but I’d add, Che’s heroic stature is no more diminished even if only known as a t-shirt image to this crowd.

School-of-the-Americas-trained Rodriguez knew the stature of the hero he was cutting down, to this day he brags about wearing Che’s watch as a keepsake. Rodriguez returned from this assignment with a piece of notebook paper wrapped around the tobacco left in Guevara’s pipe.

Donald Gregg didn’t kill Guevara, but we might have asked him how many youthful Viet Cong he killed or had tortured, etc, how many aspiring Nicaraguan freedom fighters, or Burmese victims, or boys and girls of yet to be named regions, of the CIA’s yet unrevealed adventures in extrajudicial preemptive death-dealings.

All of this may be blood under the bridge, except that the undercurrent of this elder statesman’s lecture tour is beating the drum for confrontation with Iran.

Need another reason to boycott 900 lb bully Amazon? Censoring Wikileaks

Amazon booted Wikileaks from its cloud server service, at the behest of Zionist warmonger Joe Lieberman. Twittered Wikileaks in response:
“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.” The corporate media is already censoring “Cablegate” with misdirection, describing the leaked diplomatic cables as indelicate embarrassments, as opposed to incriminating revelations of America’s imperialist anti-democratic outrages. The Interpol has declared an international manhunt of the Wikileaks founder based on scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct, Canada is calling for Julian Assange’s execution via US drone, our politicians want to prosecute the Australian Assange under the draconian 1917 US Espionage Act. Amazon’s cowardly deed today is a reminder of the private sector’s omniscient control over everyone’s access to information. Imagine a world where whistleblowers are denied whistles. Shopping bags only please. On Amazon’s internet no one can hear you scream.

While the US media is scolding Wikileaks spokespeople for shaming US diplomacy, the free presses are reporting about the cables which detail the US abuse of diplomatic cover to supply intelligence data, some of it intended to direct US/Israeli drone strikes. The collusion of foreign governments to help the US circumvent international law, US complicity in the Honduran coup, among many other crimes.

Bradley Manning allegedly confessed leaking Cablegate to FBI informer Adrian Lamo, describing the trove of damning revelations thus:

“Hilary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in a searchable format to the public. Everywhere there is a U.S. post there is a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. It is open diplomacy, worldwide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope and breathtaking depth. It is beautiful and horrifying.”

Although an estimated half million US government operatives had access to these cables, only 20-year-old intelligence analyst Manning had the conscience to recognize the immorality being kept from public view. That’s a military culture of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, of which discrimination against sexual preference is the smallest consequence.

Have you read any of the objective coverage of the damning cables? What’s been released is only a fraction, so as not to overwhelm a media which can only focus on a single soundbite at a time. Is the absence of cables critical of Israel evidence that Julian Assange is actually MOSSAD? Rather, and I’m not alone in pointing this out, the dearth of diplomatic cables to and from Israel indicates the streamlined collusion with the US. Only in Tarantino movies do hired killers have dialog. Old comrades don’t regale each other with revelations about Quarter Pounder versus Le Royale. Israeli and US diplomats have nothing to have to keep abreast about.

Is Assange really CIA/MOSSAD/AIPAC? I’d say the smears against him more likely are. When the same voices disparaging Assange ALSO find themselves horrified by the revelations of the US diplomatic cables, is when I’ll start giving them some credibility. Nobody’s so cynical that they cannot be shocked about US indifference to its inhumanty. Noam Chomsky calls it the US’ hate of Democracy.

US press protecting corporate identity of Melamine-poisoned milk recidivist

Melamine is back in the Chinese food chain, coming from milk product supposed to have been destroyed after the food industry scandal which killed six Chinese infants and left the health of thousands permanently debilitated. International conglomerate Danone was named then among the villains, but at that time, many of those implicated could claim to have been unknowing accomplices. What excuse could there be today for the resurfacing of the tainted stock, sold to Ningxia Tiantian Dairy by “an unnamed company as a debt payment”? International readers have nothing to fear from Ningxia products, but what of the culprit in this transaction? Why is that identity being concealed?

Just as when the poisoned food products were discovered in 2008, Western consumers were not exposed to the baby formulas which hit Hong Kong, or the Oreos, M&Ms, or Snickers which reached Indonesia. The melamine infused large western conglomerates Kraft and Mars, but endangered only their “loyal customers” in the East. Which didn’t mean that US consumers couldn’t affect their buying habits to punish Danone, Kraft and Mars.

Labadee: Royal Caribbean’s Neo Haiti

Labadee oasis seas boi caimanFormer President Bill Clinton is heading to Haiti, again. As UN special envoy to Haiti, he paid a visit last year as a guest of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship line to promote their tourist facility at La’Badie. Said CEO Adam Goldstein: “Labadee is just a great example of the way that things can work in a very positive way in this country.” Are those new ways or old? The secured compound, laying under the protection of the old French colonial capitol, greets 7,000 cruise passengers a week, even this week, many of whom don’t know they’re in “Haiti,” on an old slave plantation, or what may have been the crucible of real Islamic rebel voodoo!

I didn’t know about the private resort of Labadee, but my attention was drawn in December to the announcement of the launch of The Oasis of the Seas, the largest cruise ship ever devised. It was leaving the shipyards of Finland, having to pass under a Danish suspension bridge at low tide, so titanic was she. I took note because the headline announced her maiden destination to be Haiti, an odd place I thought, to be ostentatious.

The spotlight which the recent earthquake has brought on the poverty in Haiti had me wondering if all seventeen decks of the Oasis of the Seas were gawking at the suffering masses awaiting aid in Port-au-Prince. Not a chance. The Oasis, and Royal Caribbean’s fleet of floating carbon boots harbor at a secluded oasis which the cruise line rents from Haiti. Its income represents the largest portion of Haiti’s tourism revenue. If you thought President Obama’s offer of $100 Million was stingy, you can calculate Royal Caribbean’s avarice on one hand.

The tragic earthquake hasn’t interrupted the cruises. It this tragedy has an upside, it’s that some vacationers are expressing less facility stuffing down a burger knowing most Haitians await relief.

Haiti receives $6 for each tourist who disembarks to zip-line, buy trinkets from licensed vendors, and sun on Christoper Columbus Beach. They’re told it was his old stomping ground –which actually can be said of Hispaniola’s entire northern coastline. Likewise the same is true about the slave plantations which, from the port of Cap Francois, provided 40% of Europe’s sugar and 60% of its coffee. Today Haiti is renowned as the poorest land in the Western Hemisphere. The verdant lands of La Partie Du Nord –of Les Grand Blancs— are separated from the Haitian population by a mountainous Massif, and in the case of Labadee, with barbed wire.

habitation-slave-plantationsRoyal Caribbean boasts that its operations are critical to the Haitian economy. It employs hundreds, but contrast that with what the coast could provide if it wasn’t privatized. The resort draws from a cheap labor pool of an unlimited mass of Haitians who are kept with no other options but to hope they can replace the couple hundred employees confined to the cruise line compound.

And yes, the cruise itineraries avoid mention of Haiti, attributing Labadee as a “private island” of Hispaniola. The private island concept is not new, cruise ship operators began several decades back to seek to give their customers refuge from the growing throngs of third world poor who paddle out to the ship hoping for first world largess. Another motive was that cruise lines could also monopolize where their passengers could spend their money while ashore. What began as exclusive contracts with port destinations, very notoriously the Alaskan inland passage, became ventures where cruise line operators bought entire tracks of properties retired from oil or military use, whether half islands, or merely beaches, recast as private beaches, populated by private workforces.

Disney Cruise Line: Castaway Cay, Bahamas
Princess Cruises: Princess Cays, Eleuthera, Bahamas
Norwegian Cruise Line: Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas
Holland/Carnival: Half Moon Bay, Little San Salvador Island, Bahamas
Royal Caribbean/Celebrity: Coco Cay, Bahamas; Labadee, Hispaniola

According to the Royal Caribbean promotional material, the spelling Labadee is anglicized for English-speakers. It’s named after the Marquis de La’Badie, a “Frenchman who first settled the area in the 1600s.”

At one time the French plantation owners were comforted by their remote location, buffered they thought from the potential of slave rebellions from the south. In fact, Haiti’s famed uprising began in the north, not far at all from La’Badie. Off the Royal Caribbean itinerary, but only a stone’s throw away, that is to say, within distance of incoming stones, are landmarks important to the celebrated revolution: Haiti’s first copper mine, site of a lone concentration of Islamic slaves, and the Bois Caiman of lore.

The area of Cape Haitien, as it’s called today, holds two of Haiti’s geography secrets. One, the conclusive location of La Villa de Navidad, where Christopher Columbus built his first European settlement in the New World, a fort made of the timbers of the wrecked flagship Santa Maria; Columbus returned the next year to find his men murdered and the houses burned to the ground. Archeologists are still looking to find definitive traces in Caracol or Bord de Mer de Limonade.

Second, the site of the Bwa Kayiman, the ceremony which launched Haiti’s famed slave rebellion led by Toussaint Louverture. Some scholars have begun to question whether it happened at all. They base their skepticism on the absence of written testaments. Although it’s popularly understood that the gathering of conspirators was confessed under torture by rebels captured by the French authorities. The cynics suggest the story was a fabrication to demonize the black slaves and that:

the manuscript minutes of these interrogations have survived in the French National Archives and make no mention of this or any other vodun ceremony.

That’s something to wrap your mind around, that transcripts remain of torture sessions conducted so many years ago.

Naturally the secret gathering had to escape the suspicions of the French slaveholders, but the infamy of the declaration of the Bois Caiman has inspired every Bolivarian insurrection since, from Bolivar, to Marti, Sandino, Castro, Moralles and Chavez. Revisionists seeking to tamp the populist spirit question why its location remains a mystery. Oral tradition holds that the rebels gathered in an open space in the forests of Morne Rouge.

Morne Rouge, the place where BC ceremony hypotheses converge, is also the only place in Haiti to retain an important Islamic cult. This is because the first wave of slaves were from the Senegambian region and had already undergone heavy Islamic influence. Up to date, Mori Barthelemy and followers of the region maintain this tradition, with honor to the sun, specific funeral rites and so on. If one returns to sources of the 16th century, one finds that there is where the first copper mines were established by the Spaniards, when they started giving up on the gold.

You can find Labadee, 19° 47? 11? N, 72° 14? 44? W on any modern map. Pondering The Cape it occupies, and the deep water harbor it is able to afford a behemoth like the Oasis of the Seas, I was led to research the mysteries of Haiti’s NORD, and survey the progression of place names on European maps which span the years.

haiti
This is Cristóbal Colón‘s own recollection of the northern coast of what he called La Isla Española, marking his first landing at San Nicolas Môle, the island of Tortuga, Fort Navidad, and the landmark Monte Cristi whose height guided Columbus and led him to name Hispaniola after Spain.

haiti charlevoix
A later map made by the French attempts to show the divisions of the indigenous tribes. The site marked “Premier Etablissment” marks Navidad, built near the Taíno cultural center of Hayti-Bohío-Quisqueya.

haiti Vinckeboons
A 1639 Dutch map shows Cap François. On the south shore of Isla Tortuga lies the beach Playa Cyan, across the water from the river Rio dos Caymanis. Also note the hills to the east called Mançanilla, these divided the peaceful Taíno from the warring Caciq. The location name derives from the Manchineel Trees whose poison berries they used to poison the tips of their arrows.

haiti monte christo
French map circa 1723 marks Cayne opposite the Iron Coast of L’Ile de la Tortue. There’s also a typical sailor’s landmark: Pointe des Palmiers (trans. Point of the Palms). The promontory of Cap François has here become Le Cap (The Cape). It shelters Port St. François, east of the heights of Morne Rouge and Mines de Cuivre (trans. copper mines).

haiti labat
French map of Cape Francois dated 1722 adds Le Limbe, the first area which the rebel slaves put to the torch; and Le Chemin du Cap, the main road to the valleys of the south.

haiti Ponce
This 1796 French map features another sailor’s aid, Pointe Tête de Chein (trans. Dog’s Head Point). The fortification battery on the Cape was built upon Roche à Picolet. This map was drawn after the rebellion of 1791. The Morne Rouge (trans. Red Heights) is now designated as Ravine du Morne au Diable and the Acul à Sabal. The Devil’s Ravine is the present location of Royal Caribbean’s Labadee.

The poor of Haiti are still taking heat for the Bwa Kayiman having been a pact with the devil.

haiti bellin
I add this 1764 map for personal interest. Few maps even today mark L’Islet à Rat (trans. Rat Island), which Columbus called La Amiga, was an aid to navigation out of his anchorage at Bay of Acul which he called Cabo de Caribata.

This map also details how colonial French St Domingue was divided into districts, here the Ville du Cap, the Quartier de Plaine du Nord and Camp de Louise.

haiti moreau
This 1770 map of Cap François and Environs distinguishes the larger slavery plantations.

haiti labadi

On the subject of Columbus, isn’t it surprising to reconcile the current verdict on his genocidal behavior, with the histories which have glorified his stature? After all, the primary accounts have never changed. How did earlier biographers overlook the damning and salacious details? One very polite telling of Columbus’ adventures, written by Filson Young published in 1906 provides a prim example. Here Young addresses the kidnap and rape of the indians whom Columbus encountered:

…his taking of the women raises a question which must be in the mind of any one who studies this extraordinary voyage—the question of the treatment of native women by the Spaniards. Columbus is entirely silent on the subject; but taking into account the nature of the Spanish rabble that formed his company, and his own views as to the right which he had to possess the persons and goods of the native inhabitants, I am afraid that there can be very little doubt that in this matter there is a good reason, for his silence. So far as Columbus himself was concerned, it is probable that he was innocent enough; he was not a sensualist by nature, and he was far too much interested and absorbed in the principal objects of his expedition, and had too great a sense of his own personal dignity, to have indulged in excesses that would, thus sanctioned by him, have produced a very disastrous effect on the somewhat rickety discipline of his crew. He was too wise a master, however, to forbid anything that it was not in his power to prevent; and it is probable that he shut his eyes to much that, if he did not tolerate it, he at any rate regarded as a matter of no very great importance. His crew had by this time learned to know their commander well enough not to commit under his eyes offences for which he would have been sure to punish them.

[Giving a list of instructions to the men Columbus planned to leave behind at La Navidad, among them: ]

…and especially to be on their guard to avoid injury or violence to the women, “by which they would cause scandal and set a bad example to the Indians and show the infamy of the Christians.”

no kolumbus day christopher columbusAnd here’s the rub. In this passage the author shows if we do not absolve Columbus, we indict ourselves.

The ruffianly crew had in their minds only the immediate possession of what they could get from the Indians; the Admiral had in his mind the whole possession of the islands and the bodies and souls of its inhabitants. If you take a piece of gold without giving a glass bead in exchange for it, it is called stealing; if you take a country and its inhabitants, and steal their peace from them, and give them blood and servitude in exchange for it, it is called colonisation and Empire-building. Every one understands the distinction; but so few people see the difference that Columbus of all men may be excused for his unconsciousness of it.

It’s a picture worth a thousand ships

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minster Ayalon and Turkish ambassadorAt first the story read like diplomatic sensitivities ruffled by no more than your typical office power feng shui: the Turkish ambassador to Israel was not seated at a height commensurate with his host, the flag of his nation was not displayed, the Israeli deputy minister would not shake his hand. Rather it was Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon himself who called the reporters’ attentions to the intentional affronts, lest it was not obvious enough from the photograph. To what do the Turks owe Israel’s displeasure? Turkey’s PM has been criticizing Israel’s crimes in Gaza, to no greater degree than has been confirmed by the UN Goldstone Report. Here’s to hoping that Turkish pride will answer appropriately.

It’s been a traditional role of ambassadors to suffer their host’s anger at a perceived provocation. Didn’t Ivan the Terrible once send emissaries packing after he’d nailed their hats to their heads? Often in less diplomatic times, envoys were beheaded, to usually ruinous result. In modern times, suffering indignity to foreign dignitaries is enough to send your message. But today too, media images have come to have a greater reach across the world. I’m thinking in particular the Muslim populaces. Let’s see what kind of posture of subservience Israel can expect of Turkey.

Said one Turkish parliamentarian: “The word scandal is not enough to describe this move.” And it seems unlikely that Israel will apologize, Ayalon already responding: “In terms of the diplomatic tactics available, this was the minimum that was warranted given the repeated provocations by political and other players in Turkey.”

Perhaps Israel was emboldened by Egypt’s recent display of obedience to the mission of starving Gaza. Israel’s violent repression of the people of Gaza is meeting with growing criticism, and perhaps they expect Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to heel dutifully.

What might the minimum of responses be from Turkey, given the sway the US holds over its actions, in light too of its aspiration to rise through the EU?

With Egypt’s intention to fortify its Gaza border to curtail tunneling, and its announcement to permit no further aid from reaching the besieged Palestinians, the path remains only for someone to reach Gaza by sea. I’m hoping it will be the Turks.

Why couldn’t a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society type flotilla mount a seaborne rescue of Gaza? I’d bet televising such an adventure would find a bigger audience than Whale Wars.

Aid groups have been trying, with sporadic success, to breach Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza coast. Perhaps it’s time for a nation to lend some military vessels to the task. Why not? The United Nations considers Israel’s embargo of Gaza to be illegal. Why shouldn’t a local power sail right before the Israeli warships to escort relief supplies to the Gazans? Let’s see whose ships will look down on whose.

israel-humiliates-turkey-ambassador

UPDATE: Here it is, the Free Gaza Movement is putting together a flotilla!

Original Anti-Zionist jokes in Monty Python’s LIFE OF BRIAN remain cut out of Criterion special edition

monty-python-life-brian-ottoThink you know the saga of the deleted scenes from Monty Python’s LIFE OF BRIAN? Not if you trust Wikipedia. The 1979 comedy didn’t just take the mickey out of Jesus and the feuding Palestinian Liberation fronts, it poked fun at Zionists, as goose-stepping racists led by Eric Idle’s OTTO the NAZIRENE determined to promote Jewish racial purity, carve a Lebensraum from the “traditional Jewish areas of Samaria,” displace the Samaritans into internment camps, and plan an Anschluss of Jordan to “create a great Jewish state that will last a thousand years.” My, my, my. But the defamed parties had the last laugh. They acquired the studio with the rights to the film, obliterated the offending celluloid, reedited the video release, and have rewritten cinematic history.

Maybe you don’t care what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians. Did you know someone is messing with the oeuvre of Monty Python? We had the comedy sketches memorized in college. Who could have imagined the originals would be vulnerable to tampering?

I’m not sure this is an overreaction. Monty Python is not Shakespeare, what is? But it’s not Nicholas Sparks either. For a populist phenom I say Python rivals Swift. This is book burning, is what it is — a sinister effacing of creative work. In a recent British poll, Life of Brian was in contention for England’s greatest film comedy. But for your consideration, instead of a director’s cut, we’ve got a censor’s cut.

Here’s the lowdown in brief: three integral scenes of the theatrical release were removed from the video version. The third scene was recut to make up for the absence of the first two. And a key character was stricken from the credits.

When Criterion later released a collector’s edition, the missing sequences were included in the extras as “deleted scenes.” But these scenes were represented by mangled outtakes of the originals, from which key lines remain excised. Then an official narrative was fabricated to recount how the sequences had been removed from the original version to improve the flow, the crude outtakes testifying to why they didn’t make the cut.

But that’s all bullocks –and the niggling weak spot to this digital book burning is, ironically enough, that BOOKS were published in 1979 to accompany the film’s release: a mass-market paperback of the screenplay, and an oversized Monty Python Scrapbook.

The rewrite runs afoul too of anyone who remembers seeing the film in its first release.

Not My Tribe has suffered its own internal dissension over comparing Israel to the Nazis. Apparently it’s SO not done, not even Monty Python can get away with it.

You may have revisited the video many times, now the DVD, maybe you read about the scandals about the film’s release, maybe you memorized some of the Biggus Dickus dialog; are you curious that you missed the bits about Samaria, Jordan and purified Jewish blood?

When the Catholic church objects to a movie, it declares a boycott. Zionists take a more effective strategy. When pulling funding from the project doesn’t work, they buy the rights and delete the scenes. You’d think a film as celebrated as Life of Brian would be inviolate to culture vandals. And so far the desecration has escaped the legions of Monty Python fans. Wikipedia recounts how Otto’s scenes were deleted from the film, and thankfully resurfaced to be included as outtakes on the 2007 Criterion edition. But the account is untrue.

From restored out-takes we might surmise that Jewish objection were limited to the Star of David embellished as a swastika, but from the un-restored material it seems that the modern censors objected to Zionists depicted as determined to carve their own Lebensraum in Samariaby by means of Anschluss and concentration camps, for the sake of a third Jewish reich. And what have we now happening in the Occupied Territories which Israeli settlers insist on calling their Sumaria and Judea of biblical history, and what of the open air internment of the Palestinians in Gaza. Oh My Goodness.

The Criterion edition of Monty Python’s Life of Brian has some famously restored scenes, alleged to have been cut from the original version. They’re available again, and you can see them on Youtube. But it’s Poppycock. The scenes in question were actually removed from the video release, and “lost” by the studio which took over handmade films. The deleted scenes were actually out-takes of the originals. Fortunately, the screenplay published to accompany the 1979 release has the original lines, which vary quite curiously from what’s being peddled as the restored original. Yes, the deleted scenes have deleted scenes.

If you saw the 1979 film in the theater, you might remember Otto, the Hitleresque Zionist with the curiously non-German accent. Here is the original script made from the final take. The out-take restored as “deleted scenes” stray considerably from these lines. The lines in bold have simply been simply clipped.

BRIAN slips out through the back door and descends some steps into MANDY’S garden where he sits, head in hands.

Suddenly a voice assails him.

life of brian deleted sceneOTTO: Hail, Leader!

BRIAN: What?

OTTO: Oh, I– I’m so sorry. Have you seen the new Leader?

BRIAN: The what?

OTTO: The new Leader. Where is the new leader? I wish to hail him. Hail, Leader. See.

BRIAN: Oh. Who are you?

OTTO: My name. Is. Otto.

BRIAN: Oh.

OTTO: Yes. Otto. It’s time, you know. . .

BRIAN: What?

OTTO: . . . Time that we Jews racially purified ourselves.

BRIAN: Oh.

OTTO: He’s right you know. The new leader. We need more living room. We must move into the traditionally Jewish areas of Samaria.

BRIAN: What about the Samaritans?

OTTO: Well, we can put them in little camps. And after Samaria we must move into Jordan and create a great Jewish state that will last a thousand years.

BRIAN: Yes, I’m not sure, but I . . .

OTTO: Oh, I grow so impatient, you know. To see the Leader that has been promised our people for centuries. The Leader who will save Israel by ridding it of the scum of non-Jewish people, making it pure, no foreigners, no gypsies, no riff-raff.

BRIAN: Shh! Otto!

OTTO: What? The Leader? Hail Leader!

BRIAN: No, no. It’s dangerous.

OTTO: Oh, danger: There’s no danger. (flicks his fingers) Men!

A phalanx of armed, rather sinister, men appear from the shadows and fall in.

OTTO: Impressive, eh?

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: Yes, we are a thoroughly trained suicide squad.

BRIAN: Ah-hah.

OTTO: Oh yes, we can commit suicide within twenty seconds.

BRIAN: Twenty seconds?

OTTO: You don’t believe me?

BRIAN: Well . . .Yes . . .

OTTO: I think you question me.

BRIAN: No. No.

OTTO: I can see you do not believe me.

BRIAN: No, no. I do.

OTTO: Enough. I prove it to you. Squad.

SQUAD: Hail Leader.

OTTO: Co-mmit Suicide.

They all pull out their swords with military precision and plunge them into themselves in time, falling in a big heap on the ground. Dead.

OTTO: (with pride) See.

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: I think now you believe me. Yes?

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: I think now I prove it to you, huh?

BRIAN: Yes, you certainly did.

OTTO: All dead.

BRIAN: Yes.

OTTO: Not one living.

BRIAN: No.

OTTO: You see, they are all of them quite dead. See I kick this one. He’s dead. And this one’s dead, I tread on his head. And he’s dead. And he’s dead. All good Jewish boys, no foreigners. But they died a hero’s death and their names will live forever. Helmut . . . Johnny . . . the little guy . . . er . . . the other fat one . . . their names will be remembered . . . eventually . . . forever. So now I go. Hail Leader.

BRIAN: Wait Otto. You can’t just leave them all here.

OTTO: Why not–they’re all dead.

One oh the ‘corpses’ farts. There is a giggle.

OTTO: Wait a minute. There is somebody here who is not dead. There’s somebody here who is only pretending to be dead. Stand up, you.

One of the bodies stands up sheepishly. As he does so, he stands on someone else who quite clearly says ‘Ow.’

OTTO: Who said ‘ow’? You’re not dead either. Neither are you. Stand up, stand up, all of you. Oh, my heck, is there not even one dead?!

They have all stood up averting their eyes in shame.

HELMUT: No, sir. Not one.

ADOLF: We thought it was a practice, sir.

OTTO: Oh my cock! Tomorrow, as a punishment, you will all eat–pork sausages!

There is a horrified muttering at this suggestion. OTTO turns sharply to BRIAN.

OTTO: OK. Tell the Leader that we are ready to die for him the moment he gives the sign.

BRIAN: What sign?

OTTO: The sign that is the sign, that shall be the sign. Men, forward!

OTTO’S MEN march away singing their exciting song.

OTTO’S MEN’S SONG:
There’s a man we call our Leader.
He’s fine and strong and brave,
And we’ll follow him unquestioning
Towards an early grave. He-e gives us hope of sacrifice
And a chance to die in vain,
And if we’re one of the lucky ones,
We’ll live to die again.

BRIAN: Silly bugger.

A second scene involves Otto and his Nazirenes receiving the sign, as the crucifixion party departs the city gates.

JUDITH now is running through the crowded streets. She reaches some steps and climbs up onto a roof. Quickly, she opens a basket and releases a flock of pigeons.

A very STRANGE MAN is lying on a lonely hilltop. Suddenly he rouses himself, sits up and peers into the distance towards Jerusalem.

A flock of pigeons flies up against the sun.

Seeing this, the STRANGE MAN rouses himself and does an extremely odd but elaborate dance.

Further away, on an even lonelier hilltop, a pile of straw moves to reveal that it is in fact a MAN dressed in straw. He watches the STRANGE MAN’S dance closely.

STRAW LOOK-OUT: It is the sign!

Instantly OTTO appears, with all his men.

OTTO: The sign that is the sign?

LOOK-OUT: Yes!

life of brian deleted scene the signOTTO: Men! Our time has come! Our leader calls! Men forward!

The MEN march into the wall and each other.

OTTO: Oh my cock.

Of course the omission of Otto’s gang created a problem for the film’s final scene, where his men repeat their self-sacrifice beneath the crosses. Here was the original sequence:

Suddenly PARVUS looks up. He has heard something.

OTTO and his MEN appear over the skyline.

BRIAN: Otto! (a new flicker of hope in his eyes)

OTTO: Men, charge!

They charge.

The ROMANS, seeing this formidable army bearing down on them, finger their swords rather nervously and then break and run away back towards the city gate.

BRIAN’S face lights up with renewed hope as he sees OTTO’S army advancing at the double. The army arrives under the cross, swords held aloft. The ROMANS have all run away.

OTTO: (to Brian) Leader! We salute you. Men! Die for your cause!

With immaculate precision they all run themselves through, including OTTO.

OTTO: You see. Every man a hero. They died for their country.

BRIAN: You silly sods.

For the re-edited video and subsequent DVD versions, audio voice-overs were added to explain Otto’s final charge. None of this was in the original.

–[A group of faux oriental-looking warriors come over a hill, led by their leader, King Otto. Care to venture a guess as to who they are? Yes, it’s…]

WORKER
The Judean People’s Front!

PARVUS
The Judean People’s Front!

OTTO
Forward all!

WORKERS
Look out! The Judean People’s Front!

–[The JPF stop in front of Brian’s cross.]

OTTO
Ve are the Judean People’s Front! Crack suicide squad. Suicide Squad! Attack!!!
–[drumroll]
–[They all ceremonially whip out their weapons, open a hatch in their armor, and proceed to kill themselves.]

OTTO
Ungggghhh… that showed ’em, huh?

BRIAN
You silly sods.

11/16
ADDENDUM:

Scan from Monty Python Scrapbook of Brian of Nazareth, (NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1979) page 5: “Dramatis Personae, in order of appearance” lower ninth tenth of list.

LIFE OF BRIAN cast credits
Note Eric Idle as Otto, the Nazirene, evidently scrubbed from the revised credits too.

Top 10 secret armies of the CIA

Found this on the web, will try to retrace provenance, worth a read: The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA.

1. Ukrainian Partisans
From 1945 to 1952 the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukranian partisan units which had originally been organised by he Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out.

2. Chinese Brigade in Burma
After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000 man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade.

3. Guatemalan Rebel Army
After Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz legalised that country’s communist party and expropriated 400,000 acres of United Fruit banana plantations, the CIA decided to overthrow his government. Guatemalan rebels were trained in Honduras and backed up with a CIA air contingent of bombers and fighter planes. This army invaded Guatemala in 1954, promptly toppling Arbenz’s regine.

4. Sumatran Rebels
In an attempt to overthrow Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958, the CIA sent paramilitary experts and radio operators to the island of Sumatra to organise a revolt. With CIA air support, the rebel army attacked but was quickly defeated. The American government denied involvement even after a CIA b-26 was shot down and its CIA pilot, Allen Pope, was captured.

5. Khamba Horsemen
After the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, the CIA began recruiting Khamba horsemen – fierce warriors who supported Tibet’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama – as they escaped into India in 1959. These Khambas were trained in modern warfare at Camp Hale, high in the rocky mountains near Leadville, Colorado. Transported back to Tibet by the CIA operated Air American, the Khambas organised an army number at its peak some 14,000. By the mid-1960s the Khambas had been abandoned by the CIA but they fought on alone until 1970.

6. Bay of Pigs Invasion Force
In 1960, CIA operatives recruited 1,500 Cuban refugees living in Miami and staged a surprise attack on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Trained at a base in Guatemala, this small army – complete with an air force consisting of B-26 bombers – landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 19, 1961. The ill-conceived, poorly planned operation ended in disaster, since all but 150 men of the force were either killed or captured within three days.

7. L’armee Clandestine
In 1962, CIA agents recruited Meo tribesmen living in the mountains of Laos to fight as guerrillas against Communist Pathet Lao forces. Called l’armee Clandestine, this unit – paid, trained, and supplied by the CIA – grew into a 30,000 man force. By 1975 the Meos – who had numbers a quarter million in 1962 – had been reduced to 10,000 refugees fleeing into Thailand.

8. Nung Mercenaries
A Chinese hill people living in Vietname, the Nungs were hired and organised by the CIA as a mercenary force, during the Vietnam war. Fearsome and brutal fighters, the Nungs were employed throughout Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Nungs proved costly since they refused to fight unless constantly supplied with beer and prostitutes.

9. Peruvian Regiment
Unable to quell guerrilla forces in its eastern Amazonian provinces, Peru called on the US for help in the mid-1960s. The CIA responded by establishing a fortified camp in the area and hiring local Peruvians who were trained by Green Beret personnel on loan from the US army. After crushing the guerrillas, the elite unit was disbanded because of fears it might stage a coup against the government.

10. Congo Mercenary Force
In 1964, during the Congolese Civil War, the CIA established an army in the Congo to back pro-Western leaders Cyril Adoula and Joseph Mobutu. The CIA imported European mercenaries and Cuban pilots – exiles from Cuba – to pilot the CIA air force, composed of transports and B-26 Bombers.

11. The Cambodian Coup
For over 15 years, the CIA had tried various unsuccessful means of deposing Cambodia’s left-leaning Prince Norodom Sihanouk, including assassination attempts. However, in March, 1970, a CIA-backed coup finally did the job. Funded by US tax dollars, armed with US weapons, and trained by American Green Berets, anti-Sihanouk forces called Kampuchea Khmer Krom (KKK) overran the capital of Phnom Penh and took control of the government. With the blessing of the CIA and the Nixon administration, control of Cambodia was placed in the hands of Lon Nol, who would later distinguish himself by dispatching soldiers to butcher tens of thousands of civilians.

12. Kurd Rebels
During the early 1970s the CIA moved into eastern Iraq to organize and supply the Kurds of that area, who were rebelling against the pro-Soviet Iraqi government. The real purpose behind this action was to help the shah of Iran settle a border dispute with Iraq favourably. After an Iranian-Iraq settlement was reached, the CIA withdrew its support from the Kurds, who were then crushed by the Iraqi Army.

13. Angola Mercenary Force
In 1975, after years of bloody fighting and civil unrest in Angola, Portugal resolved to relinquish its hold on the last of its African colonies. The transition was to take place on November 11, with control of the country going to whichever political faction controlled the capital city of Luanda on that date. In the months preceding the change, three groups vied for power: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By July 1975, the Marxist MPLA had ousted the moderate FNLA and UNITA from Luanda, so the CIA decided to intervene covertly. Over $30 million was spent on the Angolan operation, the bulk of the money going to buy arms and pay French and South African mercenaries, who aided the FNLA and UNITA in their fight. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, US officials categorically denied any involvement in the Angolan conflict. In the end, it was a fruitless military adventure, for the MPLA assumed power and controls Angola to this day.

14. Afghan Mujaheedin
Covert support for the groups fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began under President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was stepped up during the administration of Ronald Reagan. The operation succeeded in its initial goal, as the Soviets were forced to begin withdrawing their forces in 1987. Unfortunately, once the Soviets left, the US essentially ignored Afghanistan as it collapsed into a five-year civil war followed by the rise of the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban. The Taliban provided a haven for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

15. Salvadoran Death Squads
As far back as 1964, the CIA helped form ORDEN and ANSESAL, two paramilitary intelligence networks that developed into the Salvadoran death squads. The CIA trained ORDEN leaders in the use of automatic weapons and surveillance techniques, and placed several leaders on the CIA payroll. The CIA also provided detailed intelligence on Salvadoran individuals later murdered by the death squads. During the civil war in El Salvador from 1980 to 1992, the death squads were responsible for 40,000 killings. Even after a public outcry forced President Reagan to denounce the death squads in 1984, CIA support continued.

16. Nicaraguan Contras
On November 23, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a top secret National Security Directive authorising the CIA to spend $19 million to recruit and support the Contras, opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In supporting the Contras, the CIA carried out several acts of sabotage without the Congressional intelligence committees giving consent – or even being informed beforehand. In response, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting the CIA from providing aid to the Contras. Attempts to find alternate sources of funds led to the Iran-Contra scandal. It may also have led the CIA and the Contras to become actively involved in drug smuggling. In 1988, the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations concluded that individuals in the Contra movement engaged in drug trafficking; that known drug traffickers provided assistance to the Contras; and that ‘there are some serious questions as to whether or not US officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua’.

17. Haitian Coup
In 1988, the CIA attempted to intervene in Haiti’s elections with a ‘covert action program’ to undermine the campaign of the eventual winner, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Three years later, Aristide was overthrown in a bloody coup that killed more than 4,000 civilians. Many of the leaders of the coup had been on the CIA payroll since the mid-1980s. For example, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant, the head of FRAPH, a brutal gang of thugs known for murder, torture, and beatings, admitted to being a paid agent of the CIA. Similarly, the CIA-created Haitian National Intelligence Service (NIS), supposedly created to combat drugs, functioned during the coup as a ‘political intimidation and assassination squad.’ In 1994, an American force of 20,000 was sent to Haiti to allow Aristide to return. Ironically, even after this, the CIA continued working with FRAPH and the NIS. In 2004, Aristide was overthrown once again, with Aristide claiming that US forces had kidnapped him.

18. Venezuelan Coup Attempt
On April 11, 2002, Venezuelan military leaders attempted to overthrow the country’s democratically-elected left-wing president, Hugo Chavez. The coup collapsed after two days as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and as units of the military joined with the protestors. The administration of George W. Bush was the only democracy in the Western Hemisphere not to condemn the coup attempt. According to intelligence analyst Wayne Madsen, the CIA had actively organised the coup: ‘The CIA provided Special Operations Group personnel, headed by a lieutenant colonel on loan from the US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help organise the coup against Chavez.

Shari McHugh is a lobbyist to the California State Legislature

NMT has been given a deadline of 5PM MST to inform our readers that California lobbyist Shari McHugh, previously implicated by the savage blogosphere to have shared improper congress with disgraced Calif. Assemblyman Michael Duvall, was wrongly identified as Duvall’s second mistress. In fact, there is no such evidence.

NOT MY TRIBE has been informed by attorney Dale Stern of the law firm of Stern, Van Vleck, and McCarron, LLC, that McHugh, of the “highly regarded Sacramento lobbying firm of McHugh and Associates” is not the “Shar” mentioned in Duvall’s infamously indiscreet bragging. Perfectly fair enough. We regret echoing the false conjecture.

To read the lengthy comment threads on newspaper blogs about the comic fall of Representative Duvall , it’s unsurprising how many readers equate lobbyists with prostitutes. NMT is satisfied then to repeat what we have now verified by the legal notice given us, McHugh is a lobbyist to the California State Legislature.

We have now to ascertain for which special interests her firm of McHugh and Associates lobbied. Consumer advocates, for example, are usually called advocates, not lobbyists. We will then be able to extrapolate how many of our fellow citizens Shari McHugh has screwed.

It’s true, Shari McHugh was tarred with the Michael Duvall scandal on the flimsiest of innuendo. But the charge of being a lobbyist sticks.

The Spirit of Revolt

There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life. These ideas are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions. The accepted ideas of the constitution of the state, of the laws of social equilibrium, of the political and economic interrelations of citizens, can hold out no longer against the implacable criticism which is daily undermining them?…?Political, economic and social institutions are crumbling. The social structure, having become uninhabitable, is hindering, even preventing, the development of seeds which are being propagated within its damaged walls and being brought forth around them.

The need for a new life becomes apparent. The code of established morality, that which governs the greater number of people in their daily life, no longer seems sufficient. What formerly seems just is now felt to be a crying injustice. The morality of yesterday is today recognized as revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions flames up in every class of society?…?the popular conscience rises up against the scandals which breed amidst the privileged and leisured, against the crimes committed in the name of “the law of the stronger,” or in order to maintain these privileges. Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted. They perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration.

In periods of frenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, it becomes evident that the economic institutions which control production and exchange are far from giving to society the prosperity which they are supposed to guarantee. They produce precisely the opposite result. Instead of order they bring forth chaos; instead of prosperity, poverty and insecurity; instead of reconciled interests, war – a perpetual war of the exploiter against the worker, of exploiters and of workers among themselves. Human society is seen to be splitting more and more into two hostile camps, and at the same time to be subdividing into thousands of small groups waging merciless war against each other. Weary of these wars, weary of the miseries which they cause, society rushes to seek a new organization. It clamors loudly for a complete remodeling of the system of property ownership, of production, of exchange all economic relations which spring from it.

The machinery of government, entrusted with the maintenance of the existing order, continues to function, but at every turn of its deteriorated gears, it slips and stops. Its working becomes more and more difficult, and the dissatisfaction caused by its defects grows continuously. Every day gives rise to a new demand. “Reform this,” “Reform that,” is heard from all sides. “War, finance, taxes, courts, police, everything would have to be remodeled, reorganized, established on a new basis,” say the reformers. And yet all know that it is impossible to make things over, to remodel anything at all because everything is interrelated; everything would have to be remade at once. And how can society be remodeled when it is divided into two openly hostile camps? To satisfy the discontented would be only to create new malcontents.

Incapable of undertaking reforms, since this would mean paving the way for revolution, and at the same time too impotent to be frankly reactionary, the governing bodies apply themselves to half-measures which can satisfy nobody, and only cause new dissatisfaction. The mediocrities who, in such transition periods, undertake to steer the ship of state, think of but one thing: to enrich themselves against the coming debacle. Attacked from all sides they defend themselves awkwardly, they evade, they commit blunder upon blunder and they soon succeed in cutting the last rope of salvation. They drown the prestige of the government in ridicule, caused by their own incapacity.

Such periods demand revolution. It becomes a social necessity; the situation itself is revolutionary.

When we study in the works of our greatest historians the genesis and development of vast revolutionary convulsions, we generally find under the heading “The Cause of the Revolution” a gripping picture of the situation on the eve of events. The misery of the people, the general insecurity, the vexatious measures of the government, the odious scandals laying bare the immense vices of society, the new ideas struggling to come to the surface and repulsed by the incapacity of the supporters of the former regime – nothing is omitted. Examining this picture, one arrives at the conviction that the revolution was indeed inevitable, and that there was no other way out than by the road of insurrection?…?But, between this pacific arguing and insurrection or revolt, there is a wide abyss – that abyss which, for the greatest part of humanity, lies between reasoning and action, thought and the will to act. How has this abyss been bridged??…?How was it that words, so often spoken and lost in the air like the empty chiming of bells, were changed in actions?

The answer is easy. Action. The continuous action, ceaselessly renewed, of minorities brings about this transformation. Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, are as contagious as cowardice, submission and panic.

What forms will this action take? All forms – indeed, the most varied forms, dictated by circumstances, temperament and the means at disposal. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, but always daring; sometimes collective, sometimes purely individual, this policy of action will neglect none of the means at hand, no event of public life, in order to keep the spirit alive, to propagate and find expression for dissatisfaction, to excite hatred against exploiters, to ridicule the government and expose its weakness and above all and always, by actual example, to awaken courage and fan the spirit of revolt.

When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellions and uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head.

Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action – men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles, intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed – these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights?…?Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come.

Nevertheless the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage and they find imitators?…?Acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.

Indifference from this point on is impossible?…?By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people’s minds and wins converts?…?Above all, it awakens the spirit of the revolt: it breeds daring?…?The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought; they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope – the hope of victory – which makes revolutions.

The government resists; it is savage in its repressions. But, though formerly persecution killed the energy of the oppressed, now, in periods of excitement, it produces the opposite result. It provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective. It drives the rebels to heroism, and in rapid succession these acts spread, become general, develop. The revolutionary party is strengthened by elements, which up to this time were hostile or indifferent to it. The general disintegration penetrates into the government, the ruling classes, the privileged. Some of them advocate resistance to the limit; others are in favor of concessions; others, again, go so far as to declare themselves ready to renounce their privileges for the moment, in order to appease the spirit of revolt, hoping to dominate again later on. The unity of the government and the privileged class is broken.

The ruling class may also try to find safety in savage reaction. But it is now too late; the battle only becomes more bitter, more terrible, and the revolution which is looming will only be more bloody. On the other hand, the smallest concession of the governing classes, since it comes too late, since it has been snatched in struggle, only awakes the revolutionary spirit still more. The common people, who formerly would have been satisfied with the smallest concession, observe now that the enemy is wavering. They foresee victory, they feel their courage growing, and the same men who were formerly crushed by misery and were content to sigh in secret, now lift their heads and march proudly to the conquest of a better future.

Finally, the revolution breaks out, the more terrible as the preceding struggles were bitter.

The Spirit of Revolt, Pyotr Kropotkin, 1880.

US gov finally murders ‘ghost detainee’ (POW) tortured by CIA for 7 1/2 years

al Fakhiri, Ali Mohamed Abdul Aziz al ZaraniLibya reports prison suicide of top Qaeda man this week. Translated form CIA Arabic speak, that means he was murdered. Sure… so much has changed with Obama in office! I’m being facetious here. This man was murdered simply because he knew too much about how the Bush Administration tortured POWs in order to try to get them to fabricate ‘evidence’ about a Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda connection to justify their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

A hit by the Libyans for Barack to help put a lid on this scandal? Well you speculate some… (Oh, Tony! Barack is not like that at all!) Sure he is. Certainly the government he heads is! I don’t doubt it for a second.

This reminds me of the President of Guatemala who has been just accused by an assassinated dead man of having murdered him. Luckily, unlike this victim of the CIA and Obama, he taped his accusation on youtube and it begins…

‘if you are hearing this, then I am already dead.’ And he is! See the video The Unspeakable Murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg (English subtitles) and the second part The Unspeakable Murder of Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano (English sub.) part 2/2

A side note to this report about the CIA murder of this tortured American-held POW, is the last words this man made to Human Rights Watch which were…

“Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?”

Good question, Fakhiri. I went to the Human Rights Watch website again and it is amazing how this group never sees wars of aggression as being human rights violations. There’s nothing about US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan there! Seems to simply have escaped their interest or concern! They, at best, have been like a gnat to the US government at times, but in the meantime, they usually are absolutely MIA. Fakhiri’s murder case is case in point.

Bishop Williamson must RECANT says Pope

Before the papal court
At the behest of the Vatican, Bishop Richard Williamson apologized for offense caused by his statements regarding WWII historical records of the Nazi concentration camps. But Pope Benedict weighed the bishop’s statement as insufficient. Now he’s demanding a full retraction before he will reconsider the latter’s excommunication. Being urged to recant may be a scandal in papal circles, but history buffs and cineasts have only ever seen truth-clinging heretics assailed with cries to “RECANT!”

Google it yourself. Oddly this development puts Bishop Williamson in esteemed scientific and theological company. But this is just historical revisionism. Especially aimed against closely held popular beliefs, revisiting the official version of the Holocaust is like backing a losing horse still too early after the “fact.” However, has blasphemy ever met with other than an officially disgusted welcome? Certainly the challenging argument only compounds its offense by deeming to compare itself to earlier, now orthodox, heresy.

One might well wonder where this episode is leading. Has the Pope been oblivious to the Holocaust issue, as his spokesmen would have us believe, or is the German pontiff deviously reopening the official discussion?

As with any reform, leaders may be receptive, but know in the meanwhile that their subjects are the hardest to win over. The brunt of resistance is thus diverted toward the heretic, until the case is made. Only in the movies do champions of the status quo look unbecoming in defeat. In the real world the holdouts are populist champions representing the overwhelming majority of adherents.

Bishop Richard Williamson’s public statements have caused great offense, and the Pope’s recent move to make peace with the renegade Williamson, among others, has reignited the fury of the Bishop’s critics. But of what import do non-Catholic opinions have on the subject of how the Vatican administrates its ranks? Surely a bishop’s personal, non-religious views, soon return to obscurity.

By throwing the ball back in the Bishop’s court, Pope Benedict unquestionably directs the media spotlight back on the “question” of the Holocaust. It’s hard to imagine that he expects anything other than a firm committed stand by the bishop. What are men of faith but what they believe?

At stake is more than the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson, but the soul of modern Germany. A re-characterization of the Nazi death camps would mean reassessing the collective guilt of Europe’s non-Jews. It might also mean a reprieve for the German People whose national identity for generations has been defined by their participation in the most unspeakable of evils.

I’m not sure why the Pope’s having once been a Hitler Youth is always dismissed out of hand. Although perhaps, for the sake of argument, that’s as it should.

The Vatican might also gain something themselves by bringing more light to critical analysis of the Holocaust. They could be seeking a possible mitigation of their infamous role in the Nazi genocide. There’s no escaping the evidence that the Catholic church collaborated with Hitler. If they can paint his “Final Solution” as less homicidal, their actions can perhaps be adjudged as more pragmatic.

Mark 6TH YEAR of Iraq Occupation with profiteers Boeing, Lockheed, GD and KBR

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A.N.S.W.E.R.’s March 21 MARCH ON THE PENTAGON to mark the sixth year of the War in Iraq will be directed not only at the US Department of Defense, but at the war profiteers for whom 2007 was a record year, among them Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR. In Colorado Springs the merchants of death can be visited on one corner.

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On March 21, 2009,
March on the Pentagon and the Corporate War Profiteers

Department of the Defense HeadquartersThe March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21 is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration. Many thousands of people are coming to Washington, D.C. to make their voices heard.

March 21 will culminate in a dramatic direct action where hundreds of coffins—representing the multinational victims of militarism, Empire and corporate greed—will be carried and delivered to the headquarters of the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death.

From the Pentagon, we will march to the nearby giant corporate offices of Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation, General Dynamics and KBR (the former subsidiary of Halliburton).

The march will start close to the State Department in Washington, D.C. (assemble at 12 noon at 23rd St. and Constitution Ave. NW).

Please make an urgently needed donation today by clicking this link to donate online through our secure server, where you can also find information on how to donate by check.

These are the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. They are the vultures who profit off the death and suffering of the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, and off of the thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines who have died or been wounded in these wars of aggression. They are anti-worker and anti-union.

The march will be led by a large contingent of veterans and family members of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and from earlier conflicts.

Militarism and Corporate Capitalism
We will march on their slick-and-shiny corporate offices that are located less than a mile from the Pentagon. Their location in the very shadow of the Pentagon speaks volumes about the intimate connection between militarism and corporate capitalism.

When the Pentagon brass retire, they rotate out of their Pentagon offices and directly into the Corporate boardrooms and office suites of the Death Merchants. It is a very cozy and very profitable relationship for the elites—in and out of uniform. They make the profits, others do the bleeding.

Last year was a great year for the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death. Profits soared even as the rest of the economy neared collapse. The CEOs of the four corporations that we will be visiting on March 21 received more than $319 million in compensation in 2007 alone (and remember, that’s just for four individuals). “We the People” paid the bill for the high tech weapons that were used against occupied people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The Corporate Executives laughed all the way to the bank while grieving parents and children buried their loved ones from Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza to Detroit.

A quick examination shows that the CEOs of the Military-Industrial Complex contributed to both the Democratic and Republican Party candidates in almost equal amounts. They favor a system that ensures that politicians will come and go every four years but the military machine—that fusion of industry, banks and the Pentagon brass—will remain as is.

We Need Jobs & Schools – Not War!
The same banks that are being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars even while they foreclose families who can’t pay their mortgage debts are double-dipping from the national treasury by making huge profits in their investments in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and KBR.

War is just good business for these corporate executives. Every F-16 bomber, attack helicopter, cruise missile and Drone bomber is a source of profit. If the wars stopped they would be out of business.

The people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. People want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel.

People are coming to Washington, D.C. on March 21 from college campuses, high schools, and cities and towns throughout the United States.

It is time for real change. Unless the movement for change stays in the streets, the powerful corporate and banking interests will certainly dominate the politics of this country. That is unacceptable. That is a path toward endless war and occupation abroad, and a massive transfer of wealth to the already rich at home.

All out for March 21! Jobs Not War! Schools Not War! Occupation is a Crime!

From pentagonmarch.org:

Meet the Corporate War Profiteers and Merchants of Death

James Mcnerney Jr BoeingW. James McNerney Jr.
CEO of Boeing.

2007 Total Compensation: $19 million. Value of Boeing Stock Owned: $25.7 million

Facts about Boeing:
Boeing currently produces numerous jets and bombers, including the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber and the F/A-22 Raptor, as well as multiple surface-to-air missiles and various bombs. Boeing also produces the bolt-on JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) that turns gravity bombs into “smart” munitions.

Boeing supplies Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-15 Eagle fighter jet and A-64 Apache attack helicopter, as well as numerous types of bombs and missiles. It was these weapons that helped to kill 1,017 Palestinians killed in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

In 2008, Boeing made $2,225,947 in campaign contributions. 58 percent of these contributions were to Democrats, and 42 percent were to Republicans. In 2008, they spent $16,610,000 on lobbying.

Despite massive profits, Boeing opposed raises for plant employees, and attempted to outsource union jobs so that the company could be “more flexible.”

Robert Stevens Lockheed MartinRobert J. Stevens
CEO of Lockheed Martin

2007 Total Compensation: $37 million. Value of Lockheed Martin Stock Owned: $33.8 million

Facts about Lockheed Martin:
Lockheed Martin currently produces the F-117 Stealth Fighter that was used in the brutal “Shock and Awe” bombings of Iraq, as well as the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet. They also produces various missile systems, including the Hellfire and Javelin, and various nuclear weapon designs. Lockheed supplies fighter jets and other weapon systems to Israel.

Lockheed’s 2008 first-quarter revenue was $9.98 billion–an increase of $700 million from the year prior. By 2015, the F-35 program alone could represent more than $16 billion in annual revenue for the company.

Lockheed’s former vice-president, Bruce Jackson, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

In 2005, Lockheed received $65 million every single day of the year from the U.S. government. That year, Lockheed garnered $228 in federal tax money from every household in the United States.

In 2008, Lockheed made $2.6 million in political contributions—49 percent to the Democrats and 51 percent to the Republicans.

In 2004, Lockheed spent nearly $10 million on more than 100 lobbyists. From 2001-2005, only Philip Morris and GE spent more money lobbying Congress. By 2008, that number was $15.8 million.

Nicholas Chabraja General DynamicsNicholas D. Chabraja
CEO of General Dynamics

2007 Total Compensation: $60 million. Value of GD Stock Owned: $154.2 million

Facts about General Dynamics:
General Dynamics currently produces dozens of weapon systems, which include the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle and the M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank series, as well as other highly devastating artillery systems and the Trident Nuclear Submarine.

General Dynamics has supplied Israel with various weapon systems, including the F-16 Falcon fighter jet.

In 2008, General Dynamics made $1,682,595 in campaign contributions—58 percent to the Democrats and 42 percent to the Republicans.

Also in 2008, General Dynamics spent $8,562,439 lobbying for government contracts.

Fueled by sales of business jets and military-combat equipment, General Dynamics reported a 32 percent jump in first-quarter profits for 2008, to $573 million. The backlog of work not completed far outpaced revenues, growing by 14 percent to nearly $50 billion.

Analysts think General Dynamics and Mr. Chabraja will do even better next year, noting the “upside potential” of the combat-systems group, which is benefiting from the U.S. Army’s restocking of equipment lost, damaged or worn by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a $12 billion backlog of orders for corporate jets.

William Utt KBRWilliam P. Utt
CEO of Kellogg Brown & Root.

2007 Total Compensation: $3.29 million. Value of KBR Stock Owned: $6.5 million

Facts about KBR:
There are roughly 14,000 KBR employees inside of Iraq that provide logistical support to the U.S. military. KBR has made billions off of “reconstruction” contracts within Iraq.

KBR is the largest non-union construction company in the United States. It has won many contracts with the U.S. government, including $100 million to build a U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, as well as $216 million for the construction of several base camps and training foreign troops from the Republic of Georgia.

Despite at least a dozen former employees alleging they had been raped by co-workers in Iraq and other employees saying co-workers regularly stole gold, artwork, and weapons, KBR remains in the Pentagon’s good graces. In mid-April, it received a 10-year, $150 billion contract to support the military overseas.

CEO William Utt called 2008 an “outstanding year,” saying KBR posted record profitability.

Despite many scandals and controversies, KBR reported that its first quarter net profits for 2008 more than tripled, from $28 million the previous year to $98 million.

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ANSWER Coalition Responds to President Obama’s Iraq Speech of Friday, February 27

With his speech today, President Obama has essentially agreed to continue the criminal occupation of Iraq indefinitely. He announced that there will be an occupation force of 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for at least three more years. President Obama used carefully chosen words to avoid a firm commitment to remove the 50,000 occupation troops, even after 2011.

The war in Iraq was illegal. It was aggression. It was based on lies and false rationales. President Obama’s speech today made Bush’s invasion sound like a liberating act and congratulated the troops for “getting the job done.” More than a million Iraqis died and a cruel civil war was set into motion because of the foreign invasion. President Obama did not once criticize the invasion itself.

He has also requested an increase in war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan, and plans to double the number of U.S. troops sent to fight in Afghanistan.

President Obama has asked Congress to provide more than $200 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the next two years, in addition to increasing the Pentagon budget by four percent.

Based on President Obama’s new budget, the Pentagon would rank as the world’s 17th largest economy—if it were a country. This new budget increases war spending. Total spending in 2010 would roughly equate to an average of $21,000 a second.

This is not the end of the occupation of Iraq, but rather the continuation of the occupation.

There is only one reason that tens of thousands of troops will remain in Iraq: It is because this is a colonial-type occupation of a strategically important and oil-rich country located in the Middle East where two-thirds of the world’s oil reserve can be found.

Obama’s speech was a major disappointment for anyone who was hoping that Obama would renounce the illegal occupation of Iraq. Today, the U.S. government spends $480 million per day to fund the occupation of Iraq. Even if 100,000 troops are drawn out by August 2010, that means the indefinite occupation of Iraq will cost more than $100 million each day. The continued occupation of Iraq for two years or three years or more makes a complete mockery out of the idea that the Iraqi people control their own destiny. It is a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and independence.

It is no wonder that John McCain came out to support President Obama’s announced plan on Iraq. McCain was an supporter of former President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s war and occupation in Iraq.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld—the architects of regime change in Iraq—never had the goal of indefinitely keeping 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. They wanted to subdue the Iraqi people and exercise control with a smaller force. The Iraqi armed resistance prolonged the stationing of 150,000 U.S. troops.

Bush’s goal was domination over Iraq and its oil supplies, and domination over the region. This continues to be the goal of the U.S. political and economic establishment, including that of the new administration.

President Obama decided not to challenge the fundamental strategic orientation. That explains why he kept the Bush team—Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Generals Petraeus and Odierno—on the job to oversee and manage the Iraq occupation. They will also manage the widening U.S. war in Afghanistan and the aerial assaults on Pakistan. There have been over 30 U.S. bombing attacks in Pakistan in the last two months.

We are marching on Saturday, March 21 because the people of this country are fed up with the status quo. They want decent-paying jobs, and affordable health care and housing for all. Students want to study rather than be driven out by soaring tuition rates. The majority of people want a complete—not partial—withdrawal of ALL troops from Iraq. They want the war in Afghanistan to end rather than escalate. They are increasingly opposed to sending $2.6 billion each year to Israel and want an end to the colonial occupation of Palestine.

Dave Schultheis of Colorado State Senate District 9- Lost in a Black Hole of Stupidity

Joe McCarthyIn this day and age, science has finally located the Black Hole of Human Stupidity and it is centered on Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis, elected representative of Colorado State Senate District 9. That’s quite a dishonor, but Dave fully deserves the distinction. I mean today, how many public officials have Joseph McCarthy listed as a great American patriotic hero on their website? That’s major league Black Hole of Stupidity if there ever was one and the people of State District 9 elected this twit! Let his love of American fascist Joe McCarthy be expressed in his own words.

Here he answers a man who wrote him opposed to his legislative support for mandatory recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance…

6. Your passing references to McCarthy are noted. I would encourage you to do some reading on Mr. McCarthy. The modern myth about him serves the political agenda of the anti-American crowd, but it does not serve history or the nation very well. McCarthy was a golden boy from Wisconsin, the youngest sitting judge ever appointed in that state, and the youngest man to be elected from that state to the U.S. Senate. He married a Washington beauty queen after moving to the capital. Because of his natural talent and intellectual and moral strength, he was on the fast track to high places. He sacrificed his personal ambitions in order to confront no-kidding Communists who had infiltrated the U.S. at high levels, and his efforts helped lead to the conviction of Alger Hiss and other documented Communist spies. Secret Soviet cables known as the Venona Project which were declassified in 1995 have removed any doubt about this. It may sound far-fetched, given all the modern nonsense you have heard about McCarthy, but his true legacy was not one of forcing patriotism on innocent little children, an association you seem to draw. It was one of courageous, though imperfect, defense of the world’s freest and best political institutions. Again, I commend him to your prudent investigation.

I hope this helps you understand my point of view, and that of others advocating both formal, public patriotism, and inner, personal patriotism. This country is great. This country is good. Loving it deeply enough to advocate public ceremonies which reflect that love is not dangerous, but healthy. Naturally, I would be happy to answer your open letter, should you care to send one, with one of my own.

Best regards to you, and thank you again for taking the time both to write and follow up.

Dave Schultheis

See Rep. Schultheis Responds to Constituent on Pledge of Allegiance
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Want more words of wisdom from this homophobic and immigrant-phobic dingbat, Dave Schultheis? How about his website’s headliner quote against being tolerant? Here it is then…

“Tolerance is a virtue of a man without convictions.” — G. K. Chesterton, who strongly influenced C.S. Lewis

So who is this G.K. Chesterton whose quote Schultheis puts on his website? He became a major Catholic apologist right at the time that the Catholic Church was solidly fascist in its sentiments in countries like Spain and Italy. Here below is part of wikipedia’s description of Chesterton…

Accusations of anti-Semitism
Both Chesterton and Belloc have faced accusations of anti-Semitism during their lifetimes and subsequently.[17] Their criticisms of the “international Jewish banking families” are some of the most important reasons for these accusations. For example, Chesterton, Belloc, and Chesterton’s brother Cecil, were vehement critics of the Isaacs, who were involved in the Marconi scandal in the years before World War I.[18] George Orwell accused Chesterton of being guilty of “endless tirades against Jews, which he thrust into stories and essays upon the flimsiest pretexts.”[19]

In The New Jerusalem, Chesterton made it clear that he believed that there was a “Jewish Problem” in Europe, in the sense that he believed that Jewish culture (not Jewish ethnicity) separated itself from the nationalities of Europe.[20] He suggested the formation of a Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later invited to Palestine by Jewish Zionists who saw him as an ally in their cause. In 1934, after the Nazi Party took power in Germany he wrote that:

In our early days Hilaire Belloc and myself were accused of being uncompromising Anti-Semites. Today, although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people.[21]

The Wiener Library (London’s archive on anti-semitism and Holocaust history) has defended Chesterton against the charge of anti-Semitism: “he was not an enemy, and when the real testing time came along he showed what side he was on.”[22]

Chesterton condemned the Nuremberg Laws, and he died in 1936, as the Hitlerite antisemitic measures were temporarily decreased due to the Berlin Olympics, long before lethal persecution by the Nazis would start.

G. K. Chesterton From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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More? Here is State Senator Schultheis touting sales of a book that decries homosexuals as being just what? …’The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today’! See Intolerant Dave on Homosexuality

Hey, did you know that? They are the principal threat to religious freedom protected by none other than Dave Schultheis! (and CS daily, The Gazette! They share this nutty view that Christians are under major attack, too). Poor Christians…. Who can save them from the fags?

Yes, Dave Schultheis of Colorado State District 9 is lost in a Black Hole of Stupidity, but that’s North Colorado Springs for you! And Dave Schultheis is one of the few remaining living, openly McCarthyite fossils left in America! Incredible! And how he manages to fuse together MLK with Joseph McCarthy is an amazing feat! Only in Colorado do we have such genius! It’s an amazing place!

US, too, joins China in having companies killing people with tainted foods

peanut butterCapitalists just don’t care. They care about making profits. The US has now joined with China in food scandals where company officials knowingly and deliberately sold off contaminated and deadly food substances to the general public. Salmonella found at Ga. plant as early as 2006 Owner Stewart Parnell of Peanut Corporation of America refused to testify at Congressional hearing; 9 have now died

And we here at NotMyTribe personally know one of those people effected by this horrible Salmonella epidemic, and it has made a mess of our friend’s life! We have no functioning Public Health System that can be depended on in our country and plenty of people are negatively impacted by this sad reality. Why do people have to live this way in our modern age?

Ted Haggard is less shifty than New Life Church

COLORADO SPRINGS- Ted Haggard’s inconvenient sex life surfaces again! And this time the scandal is all New Life’s. Ted Haggard’s PR talk show onslaught to remake his image has prompted an altar boy to go public. But it seems this violates an agreement the young man made with New Life in the aftermath of the Haggard prostitute meth-habit scandal.

According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, New Life Church leader Brady “Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.”

First let’s clarify what New Life has failed to make clear. The young man was in his “early twenties” when he approached the church about the relations between he and Haggard. According to Boyd, the “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” had gone on for “a long period of time.” The church denies that the young man might have been a minor when it began.

Second, according to a letter sent to its congregation members as a result of the new revelations, New Life Church admits now that it has “received reports of a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior.”

In light of Ted Haggard trying to repaint himself as a victim in an HBO documetary, and on Oprah Winfrey, and an upcoming Larry King Live, the New Life ex-volunteer now wants to go public with his story.

While the church told the public, and its congregation, that Haggard’s impropriety did not extend beyond the Denver prostitute, it looks like New Life Church deliberately kept this story under wraps, despite an “overwhelming pool of evidence” to indicate otherwise. In the face of the hush-up coming to light, their official response is even more duplicitous.

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance – certainly not hush money. I know that’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

An agreement to keep quiet appears to have been what New Life Church thought “it was.” Asked whether the church will pursue legal procedures against the young man, Boyd replied:

“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to.”

Barack the Magic Terrorist

blackfaceBarack the Magic Terrorist, will live in D.C., and all his fans act like the man just cannot talk or even see. (at least before he is inaugurated) Yes, that’s right. Shame on them, too! The real scandal is not that a Republican top shit is playing around again with that Puff the Magic Dragon parody of Obama made by some KKK type defect, but that the whole Democratic Party leadership assembled around Barack Obama have just sat back and not said one damn word as Israel has been doing the US State Terrorism act for them in Gaza. They are clones of Dubya and Dick when it comes to foreign policy, and domestic as well.

Barack is The Magic Terrorist since he is BLACK. Oh! That excuses everything, does it not?

Pardon me, but am I missing something here? The Republicans tried that Black face schtick with Rice, Thomas, and Powell, but hey! …those Democratic Party voters are just too damn smart and saw through it all! FAILURE But change the party label and throw in Barack The Magic Terrorist’s favorite magic word, CHANGE, and hey! …you got an American public trying to play stupid once again.

Come on, Boys and Girls! Barack and His Klan… Oh, I’m sorry… I meant His Homies… can do some wrong now, by simply staying utterly silent as they are doing completely. Is that change?

Is silence in the defense of Israeli terrorism something new? Am I missing something? Barack can’t open his mouth and voice disagreement with the Bush Administration because it is too early in January to do so? He hasn’t taken office yet and blah, blah, blah?

Can Barack the Magic Terrorist get away with this shit because, you the American people still want to play stupid some more? I’ll be damned! Don’t you get tired of doing that? Don’t you ever get tired of war and bloodshed? Don’t you ever get tired of being moral cretins? Don’t you ever get tired of being yanked around? It’s a new year and no change is yet to be seen… Americans just have not changed.