***Out In The Be-Bop 1940s Crime Noir Night- “Black Angel”-A Film Review

DVD Review

Black Angel, starring Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre, directed by Roy William Neil, Universal Pictures, 1946
Here is the skinny. Not all crime noirs are equal. The proof? Now over a score of reviews in this space on the genre. Some speak for themselves, some are unspeakable, and some like the one under review here, Black Angel, need a little prodding. In this case the prodding is in paying kudos to the director, Roy William Neil, for great photography in service of a lukewarm plot and so-so performances by the lead performers, very so-so in the case of veteran actor Peter Lorre as a night club owner with a past to hide.

Here is the story. Martin Blair (played by Dan Duryea) had a wayward wife as some men will, a frill songstress who liked jewels and lots of them from any source willing to provide them. Catherine Bennett (played by June Vincent) had a wayward husband, as some women will, who found his way to Martin’s wayward wife. Said wife along the way is foully murdered and Ms. Bennett’s husband fits the bill. Fits the frame neat, very neat, almost all the way to the electric chair. Except that Mr. Blair, a talented drunken piano player and Ms. Bennett a stay at home chanteuse team up as a song and, ah, piano duo, to figure out who really did commit the murder. All the portents point to Marko (played somewhat stiffly by Peter Lorre, no stranger to this type of role). But that is just a ruse. The real killer is well, see the film.

You can see where the problems are just by this rough outline of the plot. A plot that suspends disbelief- not- with anyone who has taken a glance at a newspaper and the likelihood that such a pairing would ring true. But such is Hollywood. The only thing that keep this one from the "has been" bin is the directing/ photography by Neil. Some of the shots just jump out, crime noir jump out at you. Too bad the plot line (which was based on a novel by the great crime story writer, Cornell Woolrich) didn’t add to those fine shots.

The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night, Circa 1970

Markin comment:

I, once long ago, was asked, in earnest, what I meant by the blue-pink western skies that has formed the backdrop for several entries in this space of late. Or rather the way I would prefer to formulate it, and have taken some pains to emphasize it this way, the search for the blue-pink great American West night. Well, of course, there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my back (sometimes shoreline right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that the hitchhike road meant heading west.

So that night is clearly not in the vicinity of the local Boston Blues Hills or of the out west Berkshires here in ocean-fronted Massachusetts, those are too confined and short-distanced to even produce blues skies much less that west-glanced sweet shade just before heaven, if there was a heaven shade, blue-pink. And certainly not hog-butcher-to-the-world, sinewy Midwest Chicago night, Christ no, nor rarefied, deep-breathed, rockymountainhigh Denver night, although jaded sojourner-writer not known for breathe-taking, awe-bewilderment could have stopped there some place outside of Boulder for choice of great western night. Second place, okay.

But no, onward, beyond, beyond pioneer, genetically-embedded pioneer America, past false god neon blue-pink glitter Las Vegas in the Nevada desert night to the place where, about fifty miles away from sanctified west coast, near some now nameless abandoned ghost town, nameless here for it is a mere speck on the map you would not know the name, you begin, ocean man that you are, if you are, and organically ocean-bred says you are, to smell the dank, incense-like, seaweed-driven, ocean-seized air as it comes in from the Japanese stream, or out there somewhere in the unknown, some Hawaii, or Guam, or Tahiti of the mind, before the gates of holy city, city of a thousand, thousand land’s end dreams, San Francisco. That is where the blue-pink sky devours the sun just before the be-bop, the bop-bop, the do wang-doodle night, the great American Western star-spangled (small case) night I keep reaching for, like it was some physical thing and not the stuff of dreams.

And the scenes below stand (or fall) as moments in support of that eternal search.


Scene One: A First Misstep In The Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night

Let me tell this story, okay, this story about a couple of guys that I picked up hitch-hiking out on the 1960s highway. I’ll get to what highway it was later because it could have been any highway, any American or European, or maybe even African or Asian highway, if those locales had such highways, at least highways for cars back in those days. Anyway it’s their story, these two guys, really, and maybe around the edges my story, and if you are of a certain age, your story, just a little anyway.

Some of it though just doesn’t sound right now, or read right, at least the way they told it to me but we will let that pass ‘cause it has been a while and memories, mine in this case, sometimes seize up even among the best of us. Ya, but this part I do remember so let’s just subtitle this one a segment on that search for the blue-pink great American West night and that makes this thing a lot of people’s story. Let’s get to it right now by picking up where they and I intersect on the great American 1960s road:

Two young men were standing pretty close together, talking, up ahead at the side of a brisk, chilly, early spring morning 1969 road, a highway really, a white-lined, four-laned, high-speed highway if you want to know, thumbs out, as I came driving down the line alone in my Volkswagen Beetle (or bug, hey, that’s what they were called in those days, you still see some old restored or well-preserved ones around, especially out on the left coast), see them, and begin to slow down to pick them up. I would no more think not to pick them up than not to breathe. A few years earlier and I would have perhaps been afraid to pick up such an unlikely pair, a few years later and they would not have been on that road. But the thumbs out linked them, and not them alone on this day or in this time, with the old time hitchhike road, the vagabond road that your mother, if she was wise or nervous, told you never ever, ever to take (and it was always Ma who told you this, your father was either held in reserve for the big want-to-do battles, or else was bemused by sonny boy wanting to spread his wings, or better yet, was secretly passing along his own long ago laid aside blue-pink highway dreams).

This pair in any case, as you shall see, were clearly brothers, no, not brothers in the biological sense, although that sometimes was the case, but brothers on that restless, tireless, endless, hitchhike road. My hitchhike road yesterday, and maybe tomorrow, but today I have wheels and they don’t and that was that. No further explanation needed. I stopped. From the first close-up look at them these guys were young, although not too young, not high school or college young but more mid-twenties maybe graduate student young. I’ll describe in more detail how they looked in a minute but for those who desperately need to know where I picked them up, the exact locale that is, let me put your anxieties to rest and tell you that it was heading south on the Connecticut side of the Massachusetts-Connecticut border of U.S. Interstate 84, one of the main roads to New York City from Boston.

Are you happy now? Not as sexy as some of those old-time Kerouac-Cassady late 1940s “beat” roads, but I believe their ghosts were nevertheless hovering in the environs. Hell, now that I think about it, would it have mattered if I said it was Route 6, or Route 66, or Route 666 where I picked them up. I picked them up, that was the way it was done in those halcyon days, and that’s the facts, man, nothing but the facts.

Hey, by the way, while we are talking about facts, just the hard-headed fact of this pair standing on the side of a highway road should have been enough to alert the reader that this is no current episode but rather a tale out of the mist of another American time. Who in their right mind today would be standing on such a road, thumb out, or not, expecting some faded Dennis Hopper-like flower child, or Ken Kesey-like Merry Prankster hold-out to stop. No this was the time of their time, the 1960s (or at the latest, the very latest, about 1973). You have all seen the bell-bottomed jeans, the fringed-deerskin jackets, the long hair and beards and all other manner of baubles in those exotic pre-digital photos so that one really need not bother to describe their appearances. But I will, if only to tempt the fates, or the imaginations of the young.

One, the slightly older one, wispy-bearded, like this was maybe his first attempt at growing the then de rigueur youth nation-demanded male beard to set one apart from the them (and from the eternal Gillette, Bic, Shick razor cuts, rubbing alcohol at the ready, splash of English Leather, spanking clean date night routine, ah, ah, farewell to all that). Attired: Levi blue-jean’d with flared-out bottoms, not exactly bell-bottoms but denims that not self-respecting cowboy, or cowboy wanna-be would, or could, wear out in the grey-black , star-studded great plains night; plaid flannel shirt that one would find out there in that bronco-busting night (or in backwoodsman-heavy Maine and Oregon in the time of the old Wobblies or Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion); skimpily-sneakered, Chuck Taylor blacks, from the look of them, hardly the wear for tackling the great American foot-sore hitchhike road which makes me think that these are guys have started on something like their maiden voyage on that old road; and over one shoulder the ubiquitous string-tied bedroll that speaks already of ravine sleep, apartment floor pick-your-space sleep, and other such vagabond sleep certainly not of Holiday Inn or even flea-bag motel sleeps; and over the other shoulder the also ubiquitous life’s gatherings in a knapsack (socks, a few utensils, maybe underwear, and then again maybe not, change of shirt, a few toilet articles. Not much more than that but more than the kings (and queens) of the roads, 1930s ancestor forbears carried, for sure , ask any old Wobblie, or bum-hobo-tramp hierarch- take your pick-who took that hard-scrabble, living out of your emptied pocket road).

And the other young man, a vision of heaven’s own high 1960s counter-cultural style: long-haired, not quite a pony tail if tied back and maybe not Easy Rider long but surely no advertisement for Gentleman’s Quarterly even in their earnest days of keeping up with the new tastes to corner the more couth segments of the hippie market; cowboy-hatted, no, not a Stetson, howdy, Tex, kind of thing but some Army-Navy store-bought broad brimmed, sun-bashing, working cowboy hat that spoke of hard-riding, branding, cattle night lowing, whiskey and women Saturday town bust-ups, just right for a soft-handed, soft-skinned city boy fearful of unlit places, or places that are not lit up like a Christmas tree; caped, long swirling cape, like someone’s idea of old-time film Zorro stepping out with the senoritas; guitar, an old Martin from the look of it, slung over one shoulder, not protective cased against the winds, rains, snows, or just the bang-ups of living, but protective in other ways when night falls and down in the hills and hollows, or maybe by a creek, heaven’s own strum comes forth. Woody Guthrie’s own child, or stepchild, or some damn relative. I swear.

Welcome brothers, as I open up the passenger side door. “Where are you guys heading?” This line is more meaningful than you might think for those who know, as I know, and as these lads will know, as well, if they spent any time on the hitchhike road. Sometimes it was better, even on a high-speed highway, to not take any old ride that came along if, say, some kind–hearted local spirit was only going a few miles, or the place where a driver would let you out on the highway was a tough stop. Not to worry though these guys, Jack and Mattie, were hitchhiking to California. California really, I swear, although they are stopping off at a crisscross of places on their way. A pretty familiar routine by then, playing hopscotch, thumbs out, across the continent.

These guys were, moreover, indeed brothers, because you see once we started comparing biographical notes, although they never put it that way, or really never could just because of the way they thought about things as I got to know them better on the ride, were out there searching, and searching hard, for my blue-pink night. Christ, there were heaven’s own blessed armies, brigades anyway, of us doing it, although like I said about Jack and Mattie most of the brothers and sisters did not get caught up in the colors of that night, like I did, and just “dug” the search. Jack and Mattie are in luck, in any case, because on this day I’m heading to Washington, D.C. and they have friends near there in Silver Springs, Maryland. The tides of the times are riding with us.

And why, by the way, although it is not germane to the story or at least this part of it, am I heading to D.C.? Well, the cover story is to do some anti-war organizing but, for your eyes only, I had just broken up, for the umpteenth time, with a women who drove me to distraction, sometimes pleasantly but on that occasion fitfully, who I could not, and did not, so I thought, want to get out of my system, but had to put a little distance away from. You know that story, boys and girls, in your own lives so I do not have to spend much time on the details here, although that theme might turn up again sometime. Besides, if you really want to read that kind of story the romance novels section of any library or the DVD film section, for that matter, can tell the story with more heart-throbbing panache that you will find here.

I’ve got a kind of weird story to tell you about why Jack and Mattie were on this desolate border stretch of the highway in a minute but let me tell a little about what they were trying to do out on that road, that west road. First, I was right, mostly, about their ages, but Jack and Mattie were no graduate students on a spring lark before grinding away at some master’s thesis on the meaning of meaning deconstuct’d (although this reference is really an anachronism since such literary theories were not then fashionably on display on the world’s campuses, but you get the drift) or some such worthy subject in desperate need of research in a time when this old world was falling apart and the bombs were (are) raining (literally) on many parts of the world.

In one sense they were graduates though, graduates of the university of hard knocks, hard life, and hard war. They had just a few months before been discharged, a little early as the war, or the American ground troops part of it, was winding down, from the U.S. Army after a couple of tours of duty in ‘Nam (their usage, another of their privileged usages was “in-country”). I swear I didn’t believe them at first, no way, they looked like the poster boys for the San Francisco Summer of Love in 1967. Something, something big was going on here and my mind was trying to digest the sight of these two guys, “good, solid citizens” before the “man” turned them around in that overseas Vietnam quagmire who looked in attire, demeanor, and style just like the guy (me) who picked them up.

Ya, but that is only part of it and not even the most important part, really, because this California thing was also no lark. This is their break-out, bust-out moment and they are going for it. As we rode along that old super highway they related stories about how they came back from “in-county,” were going to settle down, maybe get married (or move in with a girlfriend or seven), and look forward to social security when that distant time came. But something snapped inside of them, and this is where every old Jack London hobo, every old Wobblie, every old bummer on the 1930s rail highway, hell even every old beat denizen of some Greenwich Village walk-up was a kindred spirit. Like I said, and I am sitting right in the car listening to them with a little smirk on my face, the boys are searching that same search that I am searching for and that probably old Walt Whitman really should take the blame for, okay. I’ll tell you more, or rather; I’ll let them tell you more some other time but let me finish up here with that weird little story about why they were at that god forsaken point on the highway.

Look, everybody knows, or should know, or at least knew back then that hitchhiking, especially hitchhiking on the big roads was illegal, and probably always was even when every tramp and tramp-ette in America had his or her thumb out in the 1930s. But usually the cops or upstanding citizenry either ignored it or, especially in small towns, got you on some vagrancy rap. Hey, if you had spent any time on the hitchhike road you had to have been stopped at least once if for no other reason than to harass you. Still some places were more notorious than others in hitchhike grapevine lore in those days, particularly noteworthy were Connecticut and Arizona (both places where I had more than my own fair share of “vagrancy” problems).

So I was not too far off when I figured out that Jack and Mattie were on their maiden voyage. Thumbs out and talking, the pair missed the then ever-present Connecticut State Police cruiser coming from nowhere, or it seemed like nowhere, as it came to a stop sharply about five feet away from them. The pair gulped and prepared for the worst; being taken to some state police barracks and harassed and then let go at some backwater locale as the road lore had it. Or getting “vagged.” Or worst, a nice little nasty trick in those days, have “illegal” drugs conveniently, very conveniently, found on their person.
But get this, after a superficial search and the usual questions about destination, resources, and the law the pair instead were directed to walk the few hundred yards back across the border line to Massachusetts. Oh, I forgot this part; the state cop who stopped them was a Vietnam veteran himself. He had been an MP in ‘Nam. Go figure, right. So starts, the inauspicious start if you think about it, in one of the searches for the blue-pink great American West night. Nobody said it was going to be easy and, you know, they were right. Still every time I drive pass that spot (now close to an official Connecticut Welcomes You rest stop, whee!), especially on any moonless, starless, restless, hitchhiker-less road night I smile and give a little tip of the hat to those youthful, sanctified blue-pink dreams that almost got wrecked before they got started.
***********

The 1960s asphalt-driven, white-lined, hitchhike road, the quest for the blue-pink great American West night, the eternal midnight creep over laden trucks with their company-seeking, benny-high, overwrought teamster drivers, and the steam-driven, onion-filled meatloaf-milk-heavy mashed potatoes-and limpid carrots daily special diner truck stop are all meshed together. You could say that there was no hitchhike road, and no blue-pink dreams, if the old-fashioned caboose (sometimes literally) diner was not part of the mix that glued things together out on that lonely highway. No, I do not speak of the even then creeping family-friendly one-size-fits-all but still steamed meats-milky starches-sogged vegetable franchise interstate restaurants that dot the roads from here to ‘Frisco but back road, back hitchhike road if you were smart, back old-time route one, or sixty-six or twenty road where you had a chance for pushing distance and for feeling America in the raw. Hey, I have a million diner stories, diners with and without truck stops, diners famous and obscene, diners of every shape and composition to tell about. Or rather I have about three basic diner stories with a million steamed meat-loaf-mashed taters-carrots (okay, maybe string beans, steamed, for a change-up)-bread pudding for dessert variations. I want to tell you one, one involving a girl, and involving the great American night that drives these scenes. The other variations can wait their turns for some other time.

Car-less, and with no hope for any car any time soon, but with enough pent-up energy and anger to built a skyscraper single-handedly I set out for the open roads, thumb in good working order, bedroll on one shoulder, life’s worldly goods in a knapsack on the other. It was that simple in those days. Today, sadly, it would take my rental of a major U-Haul truck, for starters. As always in those days as well, and some of you may know the spot if you have ever been in Boston (or, better, Cambridge) there was (and is) a then old abandoned railroad yard that was turned into a truck depot near the entrance to the Massachusetts Turnpike where most of the truckers, the big diesel-fuelled ones, the doubled-wheeled one, picked up or unloaded their goods for further transport. That was the place to check first if you were heading west on the off chance that some mad-man trucker was looking for company on that white-lined, hard scrabble road, and did not mind bedraggled, bearded, long-haired, hippie boy company, at that. As luck would have it I caught a guy who heading out to Chicago with a load of widgets (or whatever, even these guys didn’t know, or want to know, what was on the manifest half the time, especially if they were running “heavy”).

Now there were a million and one reasons that long-haul drivers back then would take hitchhikers on board, even hippies who represented most of what they hated about what was happening in, and to, America in those days (in the days also before the trucking companies, and the insurance companies, squashed that traveling idea and left the truckers to their own devises), some maybe perverse but usually just for sheer, human companionship, another voice, or more usually someone to vent to at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour, especially at night when those straight white lines start to get raggedy looking. This guy, this big-chested, brawny, beef-eating teamster guy, Denver Slim by name (really, I heard other truckers call him that at truck stops when they gave each other the nod, although as described he was neither slim nor, as he told me, from Denver), was not different except the reason, at least the reason that he gave me, was that I reminded him of his goddam son (I am being polite here) who he loved/hated. Loved, because that is what a father was expected to feel toward kin, son kin especially and hated because he was showing signs or rebellion (read: becoming a hippie). I, needless to say, was a little queasy and sat close to the door handle for a while until I realized that it was more about love than hate. Old Denver Slim just didn’t get what was happening to his world, especially the part, the huge part, that he had no control over.

Hey, I had countless hitchhike rides in all kinds of vehicles, from the Denver Slim big wheels to Volkswagen Bugs (look that up) but the common thread was that there were some interesting (if disturbing and hopeless) stories out there. Let me fill you in on Denver Slim’s story both because it helps explain what is coming up in my own quest and the hard, hard fact that there was a malaise, a palpable malaise, in the land and his story is prima facie evidence for that notion. Denver Slim had gone, like a million other members of my parent’s generation, through his childhood in the Great Depression (Chicago) and did his military in the throes of World War II (Corporal, U.S. Army, European Theater, and proud of it). After the war he started driving trucks, finally landing a unionized teamster jobs as over-the-road long-haul driver based in Chicago. As was not unfamiliar then (and maybe not now, either), he married a local women he knew from the old neighborhood, had several children, moved out of Chicago proper to a suburban plot house (“little boxes,” from the description he gave) and bought into the mortgaged, green-grassed lawn, weekly mowed (when he was not on the road), television-watching, neighbor-averting (except for the kids' sake when young) routine that was a blueprint for America 1950s life in the lower middle classes.

Here is where Slim’s story gets tricky though, and interesting. Of course being on the road, being mortgaged up to the neck on the road he was never home enough to make the word family stick. He, as he admitted, when talking about his son Jamie, the rebellious son (read: becoming a hippie), didn’t really know the kids (the other three were daughters whom he , as he said, wouldn’t have known anyway past the age of ten or so the way things work in girl world). But here is the kicker, the kicker for me back then although I get it better now, much better. The wife, Ruth, the ever-loving wife, had along the way taken a boyfriend and, off and on, lived with that boyfriend. Slim went crazy at first about it but somehow got through it and accepted that situation. Oh, you though that was the kicker. No, that was just the prelude to the kicker. Here it is. Denver Slim, old proud soldier-warrior, old mortgaged-to-the-neck teamster, old work and slave on the road for the kids that he doesn’t know has a girlfriend, and had said girlfriend way before his wife took her lover. A beautiful family values story out of the age of the Ozzie and Harriet Show, right? But this is the real kicker for your harried hippie, old salt of the earth Denver Slim in relating the story gets a little lovesick for his honey (no, not his wife, the girlfriend, silly) who lives in Steubenville, Ohio.

And that, my friends, is where we are heading and so instead of getting a ride through to Chicago ( a place when I knew how to catch a ride west, no problem, almost like out of Boston) I am to be left off, and good luck, at the diner truck stop just outside of Steubenville, Ohio. Christ, I never even heard of the place before, never mind trying to get a ride out of there, get out of there at night as it looks like is going to happen by the time we get to the stop. Well, such is the road, the hitchhike road, and I hope old Slim had a good time with his honey, maybe, maybe I hope that is.

Courtroom art auction by Debra Van Poolen an astounding success!

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The Bradley Manning Support Network is pleased to announce that the courtroom art auction featuring the work of Debra Van Poolen was an astounding success raising more than $4480! The first round of the auction raised $2200.00 while the second round of the auction raised $2480.42. An enormous thanks to all the bidders and especially to Debra Van Poolen.

Artist bio:

Debra Van Poolen, 44, is an artist, permaculturist and activist. Currently, Debra is taking on the role of courtroom artist, covering each day of the court martial of Bradley Manning for three main purposes. First, due to the mainstream media near blackout of the trial, leaving very few artists to cover the trial, Debra sought to supply the need for more courtroom artists daily recording the important events of this unprecedented occasion in US history. Second, Debra is hoping her drawings will highlight the humanity of each person involved with the trial, especially the vulnerability of the 25-year old Bradley Manning who could face the extreme sentence of life in prison. Third, Debra intends that each of her drawings and paintings serve as yet another motivation for their viewers and purchasers to promote justice in this court martial.
80% of the profits from the first round of the auction were donated to the Bradley Manning defense fund.
In the second round of the auction, 80% of the proceeds were split evenly between the Bradley Manning Support Network legal defense fund and the Washington DC production of the play “bradass87″, written by Claire Lebowitz. (http://www.facebook.com/Bradass87play)

Bradley Manning’s defense, drawn by Debra Van Poolen

Manning Court Martial: Def. Atty. Tooman Questions Witness David Shafer

Portrait of Pfc. Bradley Manning, Whistleblower and American Hero speaking truth

Drawing of Bradley Manning in Pre-trial Hearing by Court Artist Debra Van Poolen

Courtroom Drawing of Witness Mark Mander Testifying about Wikileaks Tweet

Original Drawing of Judge Col. Denise Lind, presiding in US vs. Bradley Manning (by Debra Van Poolen)

Original Portrait Drawing of Bradley Manning in Courtroom by Debra Van Poolen

Original Painting of Ft. Meade Courtroom Proceedings in US vs. Bradley Manning

Bradley Manning’s Def. Atty. Presents Oral Argument to Judge Col. Lind

Free Bradley Manning Now!

Gov’t witness: Al Qaeda referenced WikiLeaks only twice, not since 2011: Trial report, day 30

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By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. August 8, 2013.

Youssef Aboul-Enein, government witness (Click for source)

The prosecution decided not to call its scheduled morning witness in today’s sentencing hearing for Bradley Manning, so after a long break, Youssef Aboul-Enein testified about Al Qaeda terrorism and ideology.
Aboul-Enein, an expert on ‘militant Islamism’ from the Defense Intelligence agency, testified that Al Qaeda (AQ) and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have only mentioned WikiLeaks documents twice, and haven’t done so since 2011. Those two citations are those that the government used when attempting to convict Manning of “aiding the enemy”: AQAP’s Winter 2010 issue of Inspire magazine, which said that archiving large amounts of U.S. information as WikiLeaks did was useful, and a June 2011 video featuring AQ English-language propagandist Adam Gadahn, encouraging followers to read WikiLeaks documents.
Admitting that he was speculating, Aboul-Enein said that these groups could use the Iraq and Afghan War Logs to deduce patterns of U.S. operations, but the judge has previously disregarded speculative testimony. The defense objected to Aboul-Enein’s comments at length, and tomorrow, the judge will rule on which parts of his testimony are admissible.
Aboul-Enein testified that for AQ and AQAP, propaganda – not the violent ends they advocate – is the primary goal, as it brings media attention and money. He said that while they did cite WikiLeaks in these two instances, if WikiLeaks data wasn’t around, they’d certainly have used something else to propagate their ideology. Furthermore, he testified that AQ and AQAP frequently brag about and even film tactical successes, and neither has claimed any tactical successes as a result of WikiLeaks’ disclosures.
Aboul-Enein also confirmed that several AQ and AQAP senior leaders had been killed since 2010, including Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Attyah Abedl-Rahman, and that both groups’ propaganda continued afterward.

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government06 Aug 2013http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

CLG: Al-Zawahiri is back from the dead, issuing new 'al-Qaeda' terror threats --You just can't keep a good terrorist down (or dead) for long, when the NSA's public relations department is in serious trouble! By Lori Price, www.legitgov.org 06 Aug 2013 Five (or seven) years after his death, the ever-useful Ayman al-Zawahiri is baack, issuing new 'al-Qaeda' terror alerts! These new round of terror alerts issued by the Obama administration will provide cover for the next big, fat false flag which, in turn, will provide cover for the illegal surveillance activities of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and -- as we just learned -- the DEA. Here is the CLG compilation of many of the 're-killings' of this useful al-CIAduh operative, back from the media grave. The original item is titled, Al-Zawahiri is back from the dead again, giving interviews! By Lori Price 28 Nov 2008.

US embassy closures sparked by Ayman al-Zawahiri message 05 Aug 2013 The closure of US embassies across the Middle East was prompted by the intercept of unusual communication between 'al-Qaeda's leader' and the head of its Yemen affiliate, it emerged last night. US intelligence picked up on messages in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of its Yemen branch, to carry out an attack. The messages represent rare coordination between al-Qaeda's core leadership, which is in hiding in Pakistan, and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the terror group's most dangerous offshoot. [OMG, this is absolute LUNACY. Al-Zawahiri has died so many times, CLG can't even keep track of his obituaries! --Lori Price]

US orders citizens to leave Yemen 06 Aug 2013 The US State Department has ordered citizens and non-emergency government staff to leave Yemen "immediately" due to security threats. It comes after the sudden closure of 20 US embassies and consulates on Sunday. This was prompted by intercepted conversations between two senior al-Qaeda figures, including top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, US media said.

US urges citizens to leave Yemen 'immediately' 06 Aug 2013 The US State Department on Tuesday ordered all non-essential staff out of Yemen and told US citizens to leave the country "immediately" over terrorism concerns. The latest warning comes after the closure of some two dozen US missions across the Middle East and Africa and reports of intercepted messages from Al-Qaeda's top leader ordering its Yemen franchise to carry out an attack. Intercepts between 'Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri' and the leader of the group's Yemen affiliate sparked the closure of the US missions and a global travel alert, US media reported Monday. The New York Times said in its online edition that the electronic communications last week revealed that Zawahiri had ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday. CNN meanwhile reported that Zawahiri told Wuhayshi to "do something," causing officials in both Washington and Yemen to fear an attack was imminent.

Federal Officials Boosting Security Efforts Inside US Homeland 03 Aug 2013 Federal authorities are boosting security in the United States after intelligence agencies detected a 'credible threat' to Western interests overseas and the government began closing diplomatic posts in some Muslim countries, according to homeland security officials. The Department of Homeland Security is increasing security measures at airports, train stations and other transportation hubs, and expanding scrutiny of visitors coming into the United States, two officials told ABC News. The FBI, meanwhile, is "working sources" and taking other "logical steps" to monitor any potential threat, an FBI official said.

U.S. directs DEA agents to cover up secret surveillance program used to investigate Americans 05 Aug 2013 A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial.

Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA 04 Aug 2013 Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate. From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over them. But members of Congress, including those in Obama's party, have flatly denied knowing about them. Two House members, GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida, have provided the Guardian with numerous letters and emails documenting their persistent, and unsuccessful, efforts to learn about NSA programs and relevant FISA court rulings.

Source: CIA Was Smuggling Weapons to Syrian 'Rebels' During Benghazi Embassy Attack 02 Aug 2013 The CIA was smuggling weapons from Libyan weapons depots to the Syrian rebels [aka cannibals and terrorists] during the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Benghazi. According to a report by CNN, an unnamed source has leaked that the alleged cover-up of the circumstances around the attack is to hide the reality of the smuggling, which occurred before the escalation of the Syrian civil war. This shows that the CIA has been arming the Syrian rebels since at least September 2012. The agents were running the operation out of the Benghazi "annex," which has been reported as a secret safehouse of the CIA in the city, not far from the embassy.

Federal Officials Boosting Security Efforts Inside US Homeland 03 Aug 2013 Federal authorities are boosting security in the United States after intelligence agencies detected a 'credible threat' to Western interests overseas and the government began closing diplomatic posts in some Muslim countries, according to homeland security officials. The Department of Homeland Security is increasing security measures at airports, train stations and other transportation hubs, and expanding scrutiny of visitors coming into the United States, two officials told ABC News. The FBI, meanwhile, is "working sources" and taking other "logical steps" to monitor any potential threat, an FBI official said.

EU warrant opt-out 'could free Julian Assange': Campaigners warn of four-month loophole before UK rejoins treaty 04 Aug 2013 Julian Assange could walk free from his Ecuadorian embassy hide-out next year if he takes advantages of a new legal loophole, campaigners say. The WikiLeaks founder, wanted in Sweden to answer sexual assault charges that he denies, could "evade the law" for up to four months if his European Arrest Warrant (EAW) becomes invalid, according to experts. Last month, David Cameron formally notified the EU council that the UK will repatriate police and criminal justice powers. It will "opt out" of 133 measures, including the EAW.

Monotonous, rigid military prison life awaits Manning 04 Aug 2013 Bradley Manning, the soldier convicted in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, faces the prospect of years of monotony with no Internet access in a small military prison cell but he would likely be allowed to mix with other inmates and exercise outdoors. The 25-year-old Manning, who has yet to be sentenced, would be able to nominate friends and relatives for visits pending official approval... Legal experts said the case was highly unusual and they were reluctant to predict the sentence.

Man in Custody Over Bomb Statement at Bradley Airport 05 Aug 2013 Connecticut state troopers took a man into custody after he told TSA agents he had a bomb while being screened at Bradley Airport this afternoon, a Transportation Security Administration spokesperson said. "At 3:12 p.m. ET, a male traveler who was passing through the security checkpoint at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., claimed that he had a bomb," TSA said in a statement. According to state police, Jordan Rickard, 26, of Charlotte, N.C., was chosen for additional screening while walking through the security checkpoint. When TSA asked Rickard if he had anything in his pockets, Rickard replied "Yes, I have a bomb," police said.

Radioactivity levels in Fukushima groundwater increase 47-fold over 5 days 06 Aug 2013 Radioactivity levels soared 47-fold over just five days in groundwater from a monitoring well on the ocean side of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator said Aug. 5. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said 56,000 becquerels of radioactive substances, including strontium, were detected per liter of groundwater sampled on Aug. 5 in the "No. 1-5" monitoring well, which is adjacent to the turbine building for the No. 1 reactor. Highly radioactive water has been detected for some time in groundwater near reactor and turbine buildings of the nuclear plant.

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Japan Marks Hiroshima Bombing 68th. Anniversary8/6/13 http://www.voanews.com/content/japan-marks-68th-anniversary-of-hiroshima-nuclear-bombing/1724114.html
Japan observed a minute of silence Tuesday to mark the 68th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Survivors and relatives of victims were among 50,000 people gathered at a peace park in Hiroshima for a somber ceremony. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the crowd Japan has a unique responsibility to push for the end of nuclear weapons....About 140,000 were killed following the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima August 6, 1945. Three days later, U.S. planes dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, killing about 70,000 more. The U.S. and its allies argue the bombings were necessary and helped save lives by convincing Japan to surrender, bringing a quicker end to World War II....

HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI 65 YEARS AGO REVEALED THE INHERENT FASCIST OBJECTIVES, MEANS AND NATURE OF U.S. IMPERIALISM'
The Soviet Union, a then revolutionary socialist beacon was the obstacle to U.S. global domination it would stop at nothing to defeat, with WW2 to the GWOT

Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds6/8/10 by Jacques R. Pauwels http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20478The unspoken objective of the atomic bomb was US Hegemony in Asia and the Pacific

Jacques R. Pauwels, author of The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer, Toronto, 2002

...War Department study 'Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan' written in 1946 .declassified in the Seventies, found "the Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies."...Eisenhower recorded telling Stimson "Japan was already defeated and dropping the bombs was completely unnecessary" and by Admiral William D Leahy "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."...as soon as the bomb was proven to work at the Alamagordo base in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 - the US military and civilian leadership no longer needed Russia. In fact, the bomb was a weapon against Russia. As Secretary of State-designate Byrnes explained, "our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe"... limiting its claims on a postwar set-up in the Far East.

Nagasaki voices protest "new" type U.S.nuclear test

9/25/12 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/25/c_131872548.htm

OSAKA, Sept. 25 -- Japan's city of Nagasaki expressed outrage and protest against a new type of U.S. nuclear test conducted for the sixth time in August. Local press reported the USconducted the nuclear test, which simulated a nuclear blast using intense X-ray beams and how plutonium would react, at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico August 27. Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue sent a letter of protest, dated September 24, to U.S. President Barack Obama....

The myths of Hiroshima and NagasakiBy Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, LA Times 8/05/05

...Americans were told the use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands. "The truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed he had pulled it out of thin air to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.
The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in Asian influence and the occupation of Japan. They used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned from the Potsdam Conference Aug. 3 that the Japanese were suing for peace...
Today, in the 9/11 era, it is critically important to face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue nuclear bombs are legitimate weapons belonging in a democracy's arsenal....as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," ...Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an America unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today
6/8/8 By John Pilger

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting... At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite... I met Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped. He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. The first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times...which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," he reported in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people who had no visible injuries dying from "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried, smeared --- and vindicated...
The U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale.... premeditated mass murder...refuged in the mythology of the "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton said allowed the it... to promote 60 years of rapacious war, beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None were pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, US secretary of war Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength"... eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." ...
In waging their bogus "war on terror", the governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous.... just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the US created Iraqi National Congress...The question begs: will we be bystanders, claiming like 'good' Germans that "we did not know"?

The birth of 'mere terror' Hiroshima wasn't uniquely wicked. It was part of a policy for the mass killing of civilians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1543124,00.html

Making war on civilians took a further turn in the Far East... Before August 1945, many Japanese had already been killed by "conventional" bombing. One night in Tokyo in March, US bombers killed 85,000 civilians - more than would die at Nagasaki - and at least 300,000 more were incinerated in great fire raids over the following months.And so it was that, as Evelyn Waugh put it...in 1948: "To the practical warrior the atom bomb presented no particular moral or spiritual problem. We were engaged in destroying the enemy, civilians and combatants alike. We always assumed destruction was roughly proportionate to the labour and material expended. Whether it was more convenient to destroy a city with one bomb or a hundred thousand depended on the relative costs of production." Hiroshima was but one more step.

"Toxic legacy of US in Fallujah exceeds reports of Hiroshima survivors"July 24, 2010, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault...

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study. Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have since 2005 been overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents. Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait. Dr Chris Busby, ... one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said ... "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened". US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munition

"Attitudes toward western democracy and nonviolence are key markers"US post-9/11 Strategy in the Muslim World: Promote Sunni, Shiite, Arab and non-Arab DividesRand Corporation Study Conducted on behalf of the US Air Forcewww.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG246.pdf

The U.S. Air Force asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to study the trends that are most likely to affect U.S. interests and security in the Muslim world. Researchers developed an analytic framework to identify the major ideological orientations within Islam, to examine critical cleavages between Muslim groups, and to trace the long-term and immediate causes of Islamic radicalism. This framework will help U.S. policymakers understand the political and military strategies available to respond to changing conditions in this critical part of the world. The Muslim world encompasses a band of countries stretching from Western Africa to the Southern Philippines as well as diaspora communities throughout the globe with critical implications for U.S. interests and strategy ...
....The Rand study called for madrassa and mosques reforms in the Muslim world and suggested that US should “support the efforts of governments and moderate Muslim organizations to ensure that mosques and the social services affiliated with them, do not serve as platforms for the spread of radical ideologies.”... the Rand Study suggested there should be government appointed and paid professional imams in all mosques to promote “civil Islam”. “While only Muslims can effectively challenge the message of radical Islam, there is much the US and like-minded countries can do in this ideological struggle. The struggle in the Muslim world is essentially a war of ideas, the outcome of which will determine the future direction of the Muslim world and profoundly affect vital U.S. security interests” explained Angel Rabas, RAND senior policy analyst and lead author of the report.

"Full spectrum dominance""Joint Vision 2020" United States Department of Defense

www.fs.fed.us/ fire/ doctrine/ genesis_and_evolution/ source_materials/ joint_vision_2020.pdf

...US forces are able to conduct prompt, sustained, and synchronised operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations, with access to and freedom to operate in all domains - space, sea, land, air and information. Given the global nature of US interests and obligations it must maintain its overseas presence and the ability to rapidly project power worldwide in order to achieve full spectrum dominance....

Posture Statement - US Strategic Command www.stratcom.mil/files/2013-03-05-posture.pdf
5/5/13 ...all domains—air, sea, land, space and cyberspace—threaten U.S. interests, allies, partners and homeland...maintain safe and effective nuclear deterrent

Socialist Kshama Sawant wins 35% - Seattle Gives Green Light to Oust Richard Conlin from City Hall Printer-Friendly E-Mail This Aug 7, 2013 By Kshama Sawant Campaign for Seattle City Council Seattle voters sent a clear message to an out-of-touch political establishment yesterday that they are fed up with business as usual, and are looking for an alternative to corporate-pandering politicians like Richard Conlin. Kshama Sawant, who was recently written off by The Seattle Times as “too hard left for Seattle,” won a stunning 35% of the vote, a number that will likely rise as late ballots are counted. A majority of primary voters voted against 16-year Seattle City Council incumbent, Democrat Richard Conlin, who despite a massive fund-raising advantage and name recognition, received only 49%. Sawant and a second challenger to Conlin, Brian Carver, won the majority of the vote in the City Council Position 2 race. “Working people in Seattle have a clear political choice for a change. If you want to fight for an alternative to the status quo, join us in the struggle for a citywide $15/hour minimum wage, a major expansion of public transit by taxing Seattle’s millionaires, increased investment in affordable housing, and implementing rent control,” said Sawant. Sawant has earned the endorsements of The Stranger newspaper, four labor unions, and prominent community activists such as Real Change founder Tim Harris. Unlike Conlin, Sawant refuses to accept corporate donations. Her grassroots campaign has raised $25,000, predominantly in the form of small donations of $25 or less, and has mobilized over 125 volunteers. “We will make history by raising a grassroots army of over 300 volunteers, and run one of the biggest door knocking campaigns this city has seen to defeat Richard Conlin,” Sawant declared. “Conlin has made clear where he stands, with corporations and the elite. By not representing the majority of struggling working people in this city, he has made himself obsolete.” Please Support our Campaign: 1) Donate on-line at www.VoteSawant.org/donate 2) Like our Facebook page www.facebook.com/VoteSawant 3) Volunteer at www.votesawant.org/get_involved 4) Endorse our candidate at www.VoteSawant.org/endorsements 5) Join Socialist Alternative! (206) 486-0099 VoteSawant@gmail.com Twitter: @VoteSawant [Vote percentages updated 8/08/13 as more ballots were counted.]

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