Florida: What it was like being Tortured in the United States 31 years ago Today– by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Let’s have a big laugh about Torture. Torture can be fun, funny. I haven’t publicly addressed this nearly enough, and for good reason. But now, let’s all laugh it up at my Torture. Because laughing is more constructive than crying, more positive. I do sometimes deal with my own Torture in my act:

Some people think of June 6 as D-Day, the day in 1944 that US and Allied forces invaded Normandy, France, from England, leading to the defeat of Germany in World War II. The anniversary holds a different significance for me. It was the day in 1981 that US and hostile forces invaded NormanB in Florida.

That’s the day I was Tortured, nearly to death, by public employees (cops and a doctor) in Florida, USA. They accused me of drug crimes that they couldn’t prove. They broke my back. They hemorrhaged my eyeballs. They permanently paralyzed part of my right hand. (I am right-handed, and a writer.)

What they did to me fits the Webster definition for Torture: Intentionally inflicting harm or damage, or the fear thereof, in attempt to obtain evidence or confession. I think it also fits the definition of Kidnapping.

Cops committed the crimes, but guess who got arrested? I was ultimately charged with three violent felonies against them!

Their actual story, as read in court from their depositions, was that when they approached me with their guns drawn: I attacked them; none of them touched me; and then I broke my own back. (I may have lost consciousness during part of the Torture, but I know that’s not what happened!)

So, I need to tell what happened, and how it came about. But I don’t want to tell anybody; I need to. I don’t want to think about it. I want to forget about it. I want it not to have happened. Broken back. I was planning to use that vertebra.

The Torture lasted for hours, at three different locations. They thought I was dead a couple of times. And I sure thought I was dead. I thought they were just going to bury me out back. I’m pretty sure they would have done that if I hadn’t gotten word out that I’d been disappeared.

When they realized that I was paralyzed from the waist down, they tried to make me walk, by having two trustees drag me around the jail while a police lady moved my feet. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!

The beating was ostensibly just spontaneous mayhem, just a stupid poorly trained policeman almost Murdering a county citizen whom he was being paid to protect.

Though the investigation certainly did relate to it, the violence may have had nothing to do with the death threat I received a few months earlier from a DEA agent – the threat that he would kill me if I exposed pertinent details of a CIA Cocaine smuggling operation. I never did reveal those details, but it looks like he sicked the dogs on me anyway. And I don’t mean dogs.

In order to set me up, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Department used Confidential Informant Jack Windisch. Though too old to be a student, Jack used to hang around my high school to sell hard drugs (Cocaine, Dilaudid [pharmaceutical Heroin two-and-a-half times as strong as the real thing], and other pharmacy products, as well as their bootlegged knockoffs). By the time Jack was assigned to entrap me, he was already angry at me for making him pay after he had tried to rip me off, and he was charged with cigarette smuggling.

Western Pasco County is a small smuggling community on Florida’s West Coast (the very next county North of the counties of Tampa and St. Pete – “Tampa Bay”). In my time, there were only two industries in West Pasco: Drug dealing and jailing. Many people were involved in both: The then-current Sheriff and the previous one both lived at the same private airport, where residents have airplane hangars next to their garages. Went on for decades.

Yes, even now every day police chase drug users and sellers while ignoring the actual crimes going on all around them. A bunch of ignorant cowards, afraid of real criminals, brutalizing school kids.

June 6, 1981, Jack Windisch phoned me, looking for some coke. I told him I had none. Right away somebody else called me, offering some. Perhaps a little too naive, I didn’t smell a rat yet. I got together with Jack. He shot up most of the coke and poured in a bunch of cut. We went to a Sambo’s restaurant parking lot where I wasn’t supposed to meet anybody.

I was still sitting in the driver’s seat when Jack brought a plainclothesman to the passenger door. The undercover detective said that a small plastic packet in my hand looked good. I knew that wasn’t good. If a bag that he thinks is Cocaine looks good to him in the dark from four or five feet away, then he’s a cop. Conventional drug-world wisdom and judicial precedent tell us what’s done next. I dropped the packet into a hard-box cigarette pack with no cigarettes in it. I crumbled the hard-box. He pulled out his gun and pointed it at me. “Pasco County Sheriff’s Department!”

I put the hard-box in my mouth. Now, I know first-hand why Alexander the Great made his soldiers shave for battle: The first thing that detective did was grab my beard and try to pull my mouth open. But I knew from Anatomy and Physiology class (I had studied Pharmacy in college) that the human jaw can clamp down tight with force that applies 20,000 pounds of pressure per square inch of tooth surface area: Anyone can hold your mouth closed; but nobody can hold your mouth open. However, it was a big package, and he stopped me swallowing it by choking me.

Suddenly, out of nowhere [or perhaps out of cars in the parking lot] uniformed Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies were running at me. The first one at my driver’s door was a 300-pound behemoth, the monster who did most of the damage. “Spit it out or I’ll blow your brains out!” he yelled as he pointed his gun at my head. I just said “Uuuuhhhhhhhhh!!!” [I was being choked.] He’d said he was willing to kill me for Possession. But I still knew about the 20,000 pounds psi.

The second cop started choking me lower on my neck than the first one. They both choked me and yanked my beard and hair and tried to force their hands into my mouth. The lying detective said that I had bitten his finger. If I had done that, his finger would have gone to the same place that hard-box went.

With both of them choking me, I stopped breathing. I thought I was about to pass out. Finally the first one let go of my neck, and I swallowed the hard-box. The big uniformed cop (weighing more than twice as much as me) yanked me out of the car by my neck, and hammered my head into the pavement of Sambo’s parking lot, over and over and over again, screaming “Spit it out! Spit it out!”

With my body between his legs, he stood cussing at me, calling me names, and dashing my bloodied head to the concrete. He stomped his jackboot onto my right hand twice, severing part of the radial nerve, permanently paralyzing part of my right thumb and ring finger. He kept his boot on my hand, his full weight. A second cop grabbed my other hand. A third one grabbed my feet. The hammering continued.

As my eyeballs hemorrhaged, I could see nothing but rapidly changing bright colors. Red! Green! Blue! Orange! White! Purple! Black! Flame! Red! Blue!…

I felt like I was flying upward in a spiral, through the flashing changing colors, flying faster and faster and faster! He hammered my head again and again. I knew I was dying. Shortly after the Torture started, I may have gasped the word “Pig!” between hammerings to the concrete; but now, dying, I didn’t want my last words to be words of hate, so I said “Jesus loves you.” Then he smashed my head a bunch more times.

They threw me into the back of a pig car and laughed about me not breathing. Two of them sat in the front seat of the car and started filling out reports.

Here is perhaps the place to flash forward to talk about my injuries. I already told you about the hand. Hemorrhaged eyeballs are not bloodshot. I don’t know what my eyes looked like the night of the Torture, because the police didn’t allow a mugshot. That would have been evidence against them. I know what my hemorrhaged eyes looked like in the mirror a month later: They were still not bloodshot: They were solid red, fire-engine red, as red as that bright red icon on your computer screen. Not bloodshot.

I don’t know exactly how or exactly when they fractured my vertebra. Maybe they hit me with their clubs. That could do it. They broke off one of the processes [bony protrusions] from a vertebra in the upper part of my back. Now, all these years later, it remains lodged between my heart and my lung, a living “bone island.” And what about mental damage? Well,… I tried to publish this article on June 6. …It’s not that anymore. Man, this is hard.

When I began to move, the cop in the driver’s seat exclaimed “He’s not dead!” The detective answered “He’s alright. Take him to West Pasco [Hospital] to get his stomach pumped!” They rushed me to the county Hospital, not to treat my extremely severe injuries, but to continue Torturing me, to try to [unconstitutionally] gain more evidence.

In the ER I met the evil Dr. Charles Prespare, MD, who is still practicing medicine in Spring Hill, Florida. I told him he should be treating my head injuries – I didn’t yet know that my back was broken, but I knew I was hurt, abrasions and blood and bruises all over my face and my head and my body.

I told him to treat my injuries, but the Fascists told him to pump my stomach. He got out an emergency medical text and read aloud that it takes 1.2 grams of snorted Cocaine for a fatal overdose.

I told the doctor I needed to speak with him privately. He pulled a curtain between me and the cops. That actually didn’t provide any privacy for our conversation, since the detective who started the beating was right there on the other side of the curtain and could hear every word. I told Dr. Prespare about Jack cutting the coke in half, and that it was nowhere near pure even before he stepped on it. So, I hadn’t taken anything like a whole gram, and anyway the 1.2 gram fatality was based on snorting, not eating it. (The reason people snort coke is that it doesn’t get you high eating it, because the metabolism is too slow to produce a high, much less an overdose.)

I told Dr. Prespare this was no O.D. and that he should be treating my injuries instead of further Torturing me. He threw the curtain back and said “Pump his stomach!” Then I demanded “What’s your name, doctor?!” He quipped “Dr. Wasserman!” ridiculing his patient, while drawing uproarious laughs from his fellow Torturers.

Healthcare workers witnessing the crimes were horrified. But none of them came forward to help me out with my case in the weeks and months that followed. Most people are afraid to oppose Fascist repression and violence. The regular Emergency Room workers wouldn’t help them Torture me though, so the cops and Dr. Prespare carried on without them. They tied my hands down. They tied my legs down. They forced a tube up my nose, down my throat, and into my stomach.

The mad doctor pumped a pint of noxious Ipecac syrup into my stomach. Ipecac bark is poisonous, and awful to a mere mortal. But I belong to the Church of the Tree of Life wherein we use herbs as sacraments, and even before joining the Church, I had been an herbalist for years, an herbal high enthusiast. I’ve had lots worse stuff in my stomach than that putrid Ipecac. I just looked at them. He pumped in another pint of Ipecac. I just looked at them.

An unexpanded human stomach only holds about two pints. But stomachs do expand. My Torturers pumped in another pint of Ipecac. Still nothing. The doctor was not legally allowed to pump in another pint of Ipecac. So, he pumped in a pint of water. I don’t intend to ever give evidence under Torture, even unto pain of death!

Dr. Prespare had used what looked like a turkey baster to pump the fluids up my nose and down the tube in my throat to my stomach. At this point, he inserted the turkey baster into the end of the tube still protruding out of my nose. He used it to suck liquid up the tube, then pumped it back down, fast. Up. Down. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. I was starting to feel nauseous. I was turning my head side to side, trying to make sure that if I threw up, it would be either on that lying detective or on that evil doctor.

Finally, I vomited, but I caught the hard-box with my teeth and swallowed it again. I was hurting. Bad. I knew that swallowing the pack again would mean a lot more Torture. But I had no choice: If I submitted and gave evidence under Torture, then that would encourage the practice of Torture. I would be doing the wrong thing. I thought I might die at any second. I didn’t want my last act to be doing something I know is wrong. Do not cooperate with Torture! Ever!

Well, they did it again, until I vomited again. This time, they were able to recover the hard-box and one plastic packet containing brown stomach juices. Their lying lab claimed that it was the purest Cocaine that they had ever tested. After those hours of ordeals, first in the parking lot, then in the Hospital, they still refused to treat my injuries. They sent me to the jail, where there were no medical facilities or healthcare workers.

At the jail, I was ordered to do something, go somewhere. I said I couldn’t do it, because I couldn’t move my legs. They wouldn’t take “No” for an answer. They had me dragged around for an hour, trying to make me walk. I couldn’t.

When a another cop came on duty, he looked in at me in my cell, where I lay face down on the cement floor, all bloodied and not moving. “What’s wrong with this guy? Is he dead?” The receptionist told him “He’s not dead. He was ‘Resisting Arrest With Violence,’” a crime which, if true, would theoretically make Torturing or Murdering me OK. The newly arrived cop chuckled. “He looks like he was ‘Resisting Arrest With Violence,” he said drawing lots of male laughter from other cops. As you might guess, ‘Resisting Arrest With Violence’ is a very common charge in these here parts. Then and now, lots of people were/are Tortured and Murdered by police in Florida.

All day, during the next day, people came to visit prisoners. They all stopped at the receptionist’s desk, 20 feet from my cell. Every time I heard someone there, I yelled out that the police had Tortured and crippled me. I urged them to call the FBI and the newspaper. All the visitors acted like they didn’t hear me. Of course they did: They were there to visit or pick up their accused relatives: They didn’t want their relatives to be Tortured like me: They didn’t want to be brutalized or arrested themselves. People are afraid to oppose Fascism.

Of course, the police didn’t allow me a mugshot, fingerprinting, or one phone call. That would have been evidence against themselves. After a whole day of that, a trustee who apparently had access to a phone asked me if the police had really done “that” to me. He asked me whom I wanted him to call. I told him to call my parents. If he hadn’t called for me, I believe I would have been buried out in back of the jail. I wonder how many bodies are out there.

And I hope that trustee wasn’t Tortured or Murdered for making the call that may have saved my life. A few minutes later, I heard the receptionist lying to my father on the phone. “Yes, he’s here, Mr. Bie. No, you can’t see him. Yes, he is in pretty bad shape: He took an overdose of Cocaine.”

My second morning at the jail without medical help still had me lying face down on the cement floor. Perhaps the Ipecac poisoning was taking effect, I don’t know, but I went into convulsions, and a thick white foam mixed with blood began oozing out of my mouth. The jailers and cops found this very funny. Many of them looked in to make fun of my convulsing and effusing. One of them joked “Maybe he’ll die!” That brought on lots of male laughter, but the female receptionist angrily rebuked them.

“If he dies, it’s our ass!” she said – she was the one who had spoken to my father. She knew my life was in danger – both from my medical condition and from her comrades. But she didn’t seem concerned about my safety, just her own. In any case, it was her impetus that resulted in me being sent back to West Pasco Hospital, to finally be treated for my injuries, two days after the Torturers broke my back.

When the ambulance arrived, a cop told the driver that I needed to go to the Emergency Room for a Cocaine overdose. When I got to the Hospital, I blurted out to the first doctor I saw “There’s no overdose! The cops beat me up!” The doctor said “I can see that.”

The unconstitutional atrocities continued at the Hospital. The cop who broke my back, hemorrhaged my eyes, and paralyzed my hand walked into my Hospital room and chained me to the bed rail. He bellowed so loud it seemed to shake the Hospital halls: “If something happens and you start walking again, I’m gonna hit you!” The word hit is slang for Assassinate, as in hit man.

West Pasco Hospital used the crooked Dr. Willard O. Brown, D.O., on my case: After examining me and my X-rays, he didn’t notice any fractures. When I confronted Brown, and told him that the X-ray Technician has seen a fractured vertebra, Brown Covered Up, claiming that it was “an old fracture.” But I’d had no old fracture to my backbone. I knew right then I’d need to get out of this podunk backwater to get any healthcare. A few weeks later, I went to the city. I took the X-rays to Dr. Arthur Appleyard, MD, a legitimate doctor in St. Pete. He confirmed that it was a fractured vertebra, and a recent one. He was willing to testify.

This same Dr. Brown had two years earlier, in January 1979, examined X-rays of my skull after a semi-truck crushed my car with me in it. Brown noticed no fracture to my skull, though all later doctors who checked did. Here’s how to check: Feel the slightly protruding bony ridge that runs from your ear to your eye: I’ve got one on my left side, but on my right side it was dented, when that truck fractured my skull! Dr. Brown’s diagnosis helped out that trucking company a heap! [I don't know if he is the same Dr. Willard Brown whom Russel Means later told me about, who had (maybe intentionally) horribly messed up things for Means' fellow American Indian activist Leonard Peltier - but he got interrupted, and I didn't get the full story, though Means repeated the name several times: "Dr. Willard Brown."]

Because the cops didn’t allow a mug shot, and because photographic evidence could help our case, my brilliant lawyer Marc Salton (now a Judge) brought a photographer to the Hospital to document my injuries. But the cops physically stopped him, and took the photographer out of the Hospital. The next day Marc walked in carrying a briefcase. He whipped out a camera, and started shooting. The cops stopped him, but he’d gotten some good photos and ran out to get them developed. Of course, when we got to court, the prosecution tried to suppress that photographic evidence of my Torture.

When Attorney Salton had first met with me at the Hospital, I told him that I may not have actually been arrested, because I wasn’t booked, read my rights, fingerprinted, photographed, or allowed one phone call; and because it seemed like they were keeping my presence there a secret in case burial were deemed necessary. But Marc assured me that I had been arrested. My four original charges were Possession of Cocaine, Possession of Cocaine With Intent to Distribute, Possession of Narcotics Paraphernalia (Jack’s needles, which actually never were illegal), and Possession of Marijuana (less than one gram allegedly found in my pocket while I was unconscious).

After a couple of days in the Hospital, they stopped chaining me to the bed. With lots of help from Physical Therapists and Nurses’ Aides, I was able to walk again in a week or ten days. After a couple of weeks in the Hospital, I was released, as bail had been posted, ten percent of a few thousand dollars. Attorneys for drug cases cost thousands. If you can’t pay a good lawyer his good income, then you can’t expect of a good outcome.

I suggested my lawyer use the precedent of Jehovah’s Witnesses being allowed to refuse blood transfusions on religious grounds, even if it endangers their lives; to show that I too had a right to turn down the “medical treatment” of having my stomach pumped, even though cops and a doctor claimed it was necessary. The prosecution tried to suppress the Torture photos, but the Judge insisted on viewing them. He surpassed the precedent:

He ruled that my Torture was more repugnant to the community than any drug crime could possibly be. He threw out the Cocaine and Paraphernalia charges, leaving only the Misdemeanor Marijuana. But the prosecution was undeterred: They quickly filed three violent felony counts against me, to try to excuse what the cops had done. Let me state here that I am a pacifist. The St. Petersburg Times after the beating quoted my father as saying that I was “a well-known pacifist.” I did not commit any violence against them, yet they charged me with Aggravated Assault, Battery on a Law Enforcement Officer, Resisting Arrest With Violence, and Possession of a pinch of pot.

After a year of legal wrangling and a change of venue to a different Judge, the case was ready for trial. Nervous, I cut my hair and shaved my beard, to try to look respectable. I got into court, and there sat a Judge with long hair and a beard. It seemed like he now wore my newly missing beard and hair. Here’s the sitch: I was already on drug Probation for pot and coke a few months before the Torture; but the prosecution flinched on trial date before we did, and agreed that if I’d plead No Contest, then Adjudication would be Withheld, and I would have no criminal record, not even on the drug crimes for which I was already on Probation.

The deal was cut, but the Judge had to make it look good for his audience, and I’m telling you, he leaned forward, pointed his trembling finger at me, and laid it on thick: “Fifteen years! The full force of every one of these charges! That’s what you’ll get if you ever get caught with drugs while you’re on my Probation, I’ll throw the book at you!” I did and he didn’t. For the three violent felonies, he added three months to the Probation I was already on, and when that was over, I had no criminal record. But what I had to go through for it!

And it seems that the First Amendment [granting Freedom of the Press] never passed in Pasco County, at all. I went to the local St. Petersburg Times office to get a copy of the weeks-old newspaper with the article about my Torture, including the words of my father and the lies of the Sheriff: “That’s what you have to expect when you Resist Arrest With Violence.” The person at the front desk claimed that they didn’t have any copies of it, and couldn’t get any. But since I was a reporter, I knew reporters, and one of them got me a copy of the paper.

Yeah, I was a reporter, until that very Sheriff ordered the West Pasco Press to fire me. Yeah, but here’s the thing, when you work as kind of your own boss, like I did, you don’t go into the office or even check in very much, when you’re out on the go, doing interviews, covering stories, shooting photos. So, I didn’t get the memo, that I was being fired on orders from the Sheriff. So, my assignment was to go photograph the Sheriff making some bullshit speech. I did it with aplomb. I shot photo after photo, near and far, used up the whole roll. I didn’t know that he had earlier that day refused to issue a Press Pass for me. I’m sure the ‘All-Reporters-Must-Carry-A-Press-Pass-Issued-By-the-Sheriff’ policy was started specifically to get rid of me. So I moved to a civilized country – St. Pete. More of a publishing industry down there, anyway.

~                         ~                         ~                         ~                         ~                        ~                         ~

Is pig one of those “words of hate”? In the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, issued by the Canting Academy to translate slang from the slums of London, the word pig is defined as a police officer. The book gives examples of its correct usage. My favorite is the sentence using a few slang words, the premise being that straight people and cops won’t get what we’re talking about: “‘Let’s floor the pig and bolt’ means ‘Let’s knock the policeman down and run away.’” About that word pig, and remembering the quote from The Big Lebowski: “This isn’t a guy who built the railroads here.” But seriously, pig is an insult. It refers to corrupt and violent police whom poor people fear, and must hide from. It’s a good word.

And the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is lots of fun for cunning linguists; I highly recommend it. Torture and execution were popular public entertainment in those days. Cockles. Do you know what it means? Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: “I heard him cry ‘Cockles!’” Still don’t have it? Cockles is the sound a person makes when he’s being strangled to death. Ahahahahahahhaha!

The Power of the Mass Media: Newly Discovered Osama bin Laden Cave Video — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

My two-year-old radical political performance art video got “featured” by YouTube this month, the first time that’s ever happened. It was suddenly promoted to lots of potential viewers around the globe. Please don’t watch it yet. I have a few things to say about it first.

When President Obama claimed in Autumn 2009 that he was empowered to order Premeditated Murder against any Muslim anywhere in the world, pardon himself for the crime(s), and then proceeded doing it in Somalia and Yemen; I was outraged, and ashamed to be an American.

The Muse poured out this poem through me, and by March 2010, I had an event scheduled to raise awareness, and was recording this video, with my videographer and significant other Rachel. Less than three months later, I posted my first blog/Diary here at FireDogLake.com.

This flick’s viewership is high for one of my videos. I don’t know why it was featured, but there are details and political events that relate. It has all along been viewed in Africa and in many Muslim countries. This month was the anniversary of bin Laden’s Murder (that is, the Premeditated Murder ["targeted assassination"] of the person whom Special Forces killed, then claimed was Osama bin Laden, then disposed of the body without verifying who it was).

When I recorded it, President Obama was propagandizing about going after the presumably living Osama bin Laden “in the cave where he lives.” Congressman John Murtha had courageously called for investigation of War Crime Atrocities committed by cowardly US Marines in an horrific massacre of defenseless women and children in Iraq. But instead of an investigation, hundreds or perhaps thousands of websites popped up demanding that Murtha be Assassinated for being so disrespectful to the Marines.

Soon, Murtha was rushed to a Military hospital, supposedly for a simple procedure. But instead of the usual simple procedure – the standard and safe laparoscopic surgery – the Military doctor sliced open Murtha’s body cavity with a knife and slit his intestine. That killed him. The Military assumed it was an accident. So did the press.

At the same time, ex-Congressman Charlie Wilson dropped dead. Charlie Wilson’s War was the book and movie about Representative Wilson’s covert program to arm bin Laden in Afghanistan. One Congressman talked too much, and the other knew too much. The Obama Administration, of course, didn’t investigate either of the killings, despite the hundreds of death threats from Marines against Murtha immediately before his Murder in Military custody.

Another reason YouTube may have chosen to promote this one at this time is that another video I’m in just soared to about 10,000 hits: A live concert I did a year ago with a couple of friends: President Obama’s Primary Democratic challenger and Political Theatre performance artist Vermin Supreme, and legendary Political Prisoner and performance poet John Sinclair – who was imprisoned after his brilliant work at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and finally released [despite his long remaining sentence] when his admirers and fellow pot smokers came out and raised hell – John Lennon and them. (Vermin’s popularity may have rubbed off on me: After finishing third in this year’s New Hampshire Democratic Primary, Vermin Supreme got millions of views on YouTube in several videos, and toys and sculptures were created in his image in other countries.)

This featuring by YouTube garnered about exactly 20% of the lifetime views for this video. The US views accounted for 53.4% of all views this month. Lifetime, US viewers have watched 51.2% of the showings. Most of this month’s 822 views occurred on the day it was featured, the anniversary. President Obama was sure promoting it then, bragging about his anniversary.

So here’s the phenomenon: Though I was registered as a Democrat when I recorded it, as an artist I’m more of a revolutionary communist, completely non-commercial, with no incentive for any corporate entity to push it. However, on YouTube I get my message out there anyway, in this case, four thousand times over!

So that you’ll fully appreciate the overwhelming extent of exposure YouTube gave my anti-status-quo diatribe, I’m about to get rabelaisian on you, and tell you exactly where it went. It went to 84 nations this month, and 115 total. And it went to Washington, DC, and 45 states this month, and lifetime: All 52 states: The 50 common ones, DC, and the Unknown State.

Of course, we don’t know how many of these views were recorded and then shared with people not online, but we do know that lots of the views were in countries where very few people have internet. And since it’s gotten popular in Arab countries, we don’t know how many of the views are by US intelligence agents monitoring dissent on the web, or trying to tie me to any alleged Terrorists who might listen to my songs.

And we don’t know about the Unknown Nations and Unknown States that crop up. That may be when the intelligence monitors are on, not wanting people to know which country or state they’re in. And we don’t know about the 19 additional views that YouTube chose not to include in its tally of statistics, but my best guess is they went to NSA headquarters, or maybe they just haven’t been fully counted yet. And we don’t know in which countries this video may be sometimes blocked, or prohibited completely.

Now, you can go ahead and watch the video. After you do, you’ll want to dig the lyrics and the footnotes. Here they are: http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2010/05/12/bin-laden-vid-pans-civil-war-for-mexican-marijuana-murthas-assassination/

Total views: 4,122 since this video was posted on March 7, 2010: Obama bin Plottin by Norman B (“Deviations from the Norm”): 822 views in the past month, mainly on its big day. Below trace those views to the viewer.

421 viewed it in the United States; 67 in Canada; 62 in California; 31 in Saudi Arabia, Florida, and New York; 24 in Texas; 21 in North Carolina; 20 in Pakistan, and Australia; 18 in New Jersey; 15 in Massachusetts, and the State of Georgia; 14 in Michigan; 13 in Ohio, and Pennsylvania; 11 in Illinois, Washington State, and Indiana; 10 in the Dominican Republic, and Colorado; 9 in Colombia, Indonesia, Nevada, Minnesota, and Louisiana; 8 in Morocco, Algeria, Portugal, Ireland, and Virginia; 7 in Austria, Peru, Germany, Argentina, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Arizona, Maryland, Connecticut, and Kentucky; 6 in Chile, New Zealand, and Missouri; 5 in Iraq, Norway, the Unknown Nation, Tennessee, Alabama, and Oregon; 4 in Finland, Belgium, Puerto Rico, Haiti, India, Tunisia, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Hawaii; 3 in Israel, the Ukraine, Greece, Romania, Suriname, Switzerland, Thailand, Singapore, Ethiopia, France, Mexico, Lithuania, Ecuador, Arkansas, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Mississippi; 2 in Senegal, Croatia, Estonia, Fiji, the Republic of Georgia, Qatar, Ghana, Tanzania, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Idaho, Vermont, Kansas, the District of Columbia, Oklahoma, and Montana; and 1 viewer is reported to have viewed it this month in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Spain, Guatemala, Panama, Japan, Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Serbia, South Africa, Bahrain, the Palestinian Territories, Guam, South Korea, Armenia, Brazil, Libya, Vietnam, Jordan, Guadeloupe, Honduras, the Sudan, Kuwait, Nebraska, South Carolina, the Unknown State, Utah, West Virginia, and Rhode Island.

Not everybody goes for the hype, or even looks in at YouTube. Viewers in the following countries have also watched it, but not when it was so trendy: Malaysia, the Philippines, Kenya, Djibouti, Hong Kong, Oman, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Latvia, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Ecuador, Hungary, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Nepal, Somalia, the Maldives, Malta, Moldova, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Iceland, Slovakia, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Angola.

9:30am 8/15/11 Breaking NOW: FBI Agent Just Revealed that the “Osama bin Laden” Body Had the WRONG Fingerprints — by Norman B (“Deviations from the Norm”)

This morning’s guest on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, author and retired FBI Agent Ronald Kessler, just revealed that the person called “Osama bin Laden” who was Assassinated by Navy Seals did not have Osama bin Laden’s fingerprints, which were on file with the FBI. This may explain why the Navy Seals destroyed the body with a “traditional sea burial.”

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and many other high ranking Cabinet officials, as well as Intelligence and Military officials, participated in the Conspiracy to Murder the man who lived very near a US-subsidized Military base in Pakistan. After the Murder, the President and others went on to tell the world that the operation had killed bin Laden, despite fingerprint evidence disproving that assertion.

After the President’s announcement, his office and the US Military quickly changed their official version of the story at least five times during the night, finally settling on the most preposterous version of all: That the Navy Seals had destroyed the body via sea burial to be reverent and respectful of the sea burial tradition of bin Laden’s ancestry. The bin Laden family is from Saudi Arabia, and from Yemen before that. Those are desert countries. Sea burial tradition. Preposterous.

By morning, the daughter of a famous Republican diplomat, Mika Brzezinski, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe wondered aloud “Now, it doesn’t take away from what they did, but why didn’t they get their story straight?” Yes, Mika, it does take away from what they did. And if they were telling the truth, they wouldn’t need to tell a story or to get it “straight.” In Virginia and North Carolina (where the Navy Seals are based and trained, and where the TV show was broadcast), telling a story means telling a lie!

The show’s host, disgraced former Florida Republican US Congressman “Joe the Dumb Guy” Scarborough, and others on the show, immediately pushed the propaganda line that everyone on television news and pseudo-news now had to promote: On the Administration’s and the Navy Seals’ latest lie about the illegal Lynching of the so-called “Osama bin Laden,” if you don’t believe this newest lie, then you’re a crazy wack-o conspiracy buff!

Within days, Bill Maher had jumped on the propaganda bandwagon on his show Real Time by attacking conspiracy crazies. Anyone would have to be crazy not to believe lying cowardly Murderers who destroy evidence.

The bin Laden Oil family has long been close with the Bushes. Both families are heavily invested in Oil and related industries, so both families make money anytime the US Military does anything, but especially when those Military moves involve Oil countries or their neighbors. That is because the US Military is the world’s largest buyer of Oil, thus every Military move by the US makes money for all Oil investors. Simple math.

Eight days after 9/11/01, US airspace was declared a No-Fly zone for all civilian aircraft except the Ryan Airlines flight moving bin Laden family members, to make them safe from the American people. Osama bin Laden’s brother Shafiq bin Laden was on that flight. He had spent 9/11 at the Carlyle Group meeting with former US President George H.W. Bush (father of then-Pres. Bush).

Osama bin Laden’s other brother, Salem bin Laden, was an investor in President George W. Bush’s Arbusto Energy, an Oil company that was an early proponent of Oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. After giving money to the future President, Salem bin Laden died mysteriously in Texas.

Osama bin Laden waged war as a CIA Asset, to defend Afghanistan against the Soviet Invasion during the Carter Presidency. The US got more than it bargained for: Osama bin Laden turned out to be a brilliant strategist: Armed by the US, bin Laden’s fighters were able to thoroughly impoverish the Soviet Union, which fell soon thereafter.

Then, through the War on Terror/War on Muslims, Osama bin Laden’s strategy thoroughly impoverished the United States with apparently unwitting cooperation from Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama (the man whom GWB’s actions, intentionally or not, helped to install).

Counter-terrorism and Intelligence expert Richard Clarke, the former US diplomat, recently revealed that the CIA contacted the 9/11 hijackers to recruit them before the attack. (See David Dayen’s FDL Roundup for Aug. 11 & links below.) In the days following the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden released videos denying involvement in the attacks, but did say he that Allah was punishing the US. This was the beginning of his television propaganda career.

Apparently still working as an Intelligence Asset, bin Laden then started releasing videos aimed at aiding the electoral hopes of his brother’s business associate. The long-running series’ most famous episode was the “October Surprise” video, released a few days before Election Day 2004 – the day former bin Laden associate G.W. Bush stood for reelection. The video brought a late rush of voters and monetary support to Bush, who won the controversial election.

The next electoral video, calculated to help usher far-Right ideologues into the US House of Representatives, came out four months before the midterm election, wherein the Republicans did take back the House. Bin Laden also put out recordings in 2008. He had a long-running video and audio career, successful in brainwashing Americans. So successful, that when his Lynching was announced, Americans celebrated their loss of rights, and the new outlaw status of their President. They acted as if what they had seen on TV made it OK for the President to sanction Murder. It did not.

After the Murder (on Obama’s orders) of the man whom President Obama called “Osama bin Laden,” the US Senate voted 97-0 to claim that the Murder was Justice. Bernie Sanders didn’t vote that way, but all the Democrats in the Senate so voted, and all of the Republicans except two. Thus, no Senate Democrats can be considered Liberal or Progressive: Liberals/Progressives don’t believe that the President is above the law, or that he’s allowed to order Assassinations of Muslims. No Liberal or Progressive would agree that Murdering a suspect without a trial is “Justice.” Especially when they got the wrong suspect!

Obama’s current Wars and warmongering in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Bahrain are putting massive upward pressure on the Oily portfolios of the Bushes, the bin Ladens, the Cheneys, and Obama’s old friends at BP. These Wars engender spectacular Conflicts of Interest and huge cash windfalls for two Oil billionaires very close to President Obama: Retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates and retiring Mideast Peace Envoy George Mitchell. They made the Wars worse, and made money off the fact that they made the Wars worse. President Obama was both irresponsible and reckless to appoint those two foxes to be in charge of the hen house that held our fragile chances for peace. Irresponsible, reckless, and dishonest.

A couple of weeks after the Murder of the man whom the President called “bin Laden,” on ABC’s This Week, reporting the Murder of another Muslim ordered by Pres. Obama, Christiane Amanpour  proudly, propagandistically proclaimed “Justice has been done again!” Our Journalists and our political “leaders” lie prolifically to help Oily War Profiteers and international criminals.

Right Now: Anderson Cooper Attacked by Obama’s Torture Regime Thugs [Suleiman's Enforcers] — by NormanB “Deviations from the Norm”

You’d better tune in right now. Echoing Al Jazeera from last night, Bloomberg reported earlier this morning that the attack mobs are drawn from the 1.7 million-member Suleiman Torture ["Security"] forces. Under Presidents Clinton, G.W. Bush, and Obama, the US has sent prisoners to be Tortured by these very forces. They just attacked CNN’s Anderson Cooper, his cameraperson, other journalists, and protesters.

President Obama has aided the Torture forces. For instance, a gang of kidnappers was convicted in Italy Nov. 4, 2009: They kidnapped a citizen and delivered him to the US Torture forces under Suleiman’s command. President Obama continues to commit Obstruction of Justice by refusing to extradite the kidnappers, because they work for the CIA.

President Obama holds some responsibility for the violent crackdown now beginning against Egyptian democracy advocates. The Suleiman/Obama/Mubarak forces have begun Torturing the protesters with whips and teargas. Egypt is in fact the primary destination of victims of American Torture. But President Obama doesn’t need to mention that. In fact, every time a reporter has raised the question of the Obama-Suleiman Torture regime relationship, the President has simply lied about the situation.

Strikingly reminiscent of Sept. 25, 2009, at the Group of 20 (G20) meeting in Pittsburgh, whereat President Obama’s motorcade fired teargas into a peaceful crowd of students, journalists, activists, and protesters.

Is this a preview of what we can expect at the upcoming “Democratic” Convention in North Carolina? (People are already calling it the “Blood and Teargas Convention.”)

Assassination Squad Complications: India Urges US: Stop Blocking Investigation of Mumbai Terrorist/Heroin Smuggler/US Agent David Headley — by NormanB ("Deviations from the Norm")

In New Delhi Thursday India External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna pressed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to allow the Indian Government access to US Agent David Headley, the confessed Mumbai terrorist bombing conspirator who "struck a bargain" with the US Department of Justice. (What a bargain!)

Heroin smuggler Headley was a DEA Agent. He’s also purportedly CIA. Such connections provide perfect cover for smuggling – The CIA shouldn’t spy on us here in the US, but the DEA freely can: An Agent with both can operate where one or the other is disallowed by law, and do commerce between the two, subverting the law for both.

The case shows a close parallel in the way the US used terrorist attack propaganda jingo to devastate human rights ("9/11") and the way Great Britain used terrorist attack propaganda jingo to devastate human rights ("7/7") and the way India used terrorist attack propaganda jingo to devastate human rights ("26/11").

It begs the question: Did those Governments already have marketing strategies for their remarkably similar jingoes ready, hoping a terrorist attack would empower them to use those strategies and slogans? (Or, didn’t they NEED terrorist assistance to implement the Wolfowitz Doctrine of suppressing Human Rights to get Oil?) It also begs the obvious question: Is Headley one of President Obama’s paid assassins?

Here Glenn Greenwald reports that President Obama was ordering assassinations within 3 weeks of DEA Agent Headley’s Mumbai bombing:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/27/yemen

Here are links on Thursday’s Headley development:

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article445819.ece

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley

and here are links on an assassination President Obama ordered a few weeks ago:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/26/uk-ambassador-yemen-assassination-attempt

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/07/obama-assassination-cleric-christmas-bombing

Ultra-right-wing Presidents Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush all pledged that the US would not commit Human Rights Atrocities, specifically that we’d never dispatch assassins. Here independent UN investigator on extrajudicial killings Philip Alston said Wednesday that such targeted killings are War Crimes:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/un-targeted-killings-war-crimes_n_597886.html

bin Laden Vid Pans Civil War for Mexican Marijuana & Murtha’s Assassination?
Hey! That’s not bin Laden! That’s a video-age journalist trying to cut through the haze of sound bites and atomized consciousness.

The video was directed and recorded by Rachel Neulander of medicinesocks. Script, Lyrics, Detailed Footnotes follow below.

OBAMA bin PLOTTIN-Norman B-Deviations from the Norm

WARNING! This is VERY SCARY! Try not to be afraid. The man you’re about to see is an actor. He’s just an actor, not a real monster. Please, don’t be scared!

Greetings, Infidels. Asalaam Alayikum. Welcome to my cave, and my new video.

Wars of Reagan and George Bush and Johnson and Nixon
And Dubya, who got in through e-lection fixin’,
But do you recall
The most dange-rous Pres’dent of all?

Obama the Baby Bomber
Killed Pashtun kids ev’ryday,
Not just because they were Pashtuns,
But just because they were in the way!

All of the worldwide nations
Were wary of this violent maniac.
But few spoke up, for fear that THEIR kids
Would get sacked in the very next attack.

Thugs accUSEd a sevenTEEN-year-old KID of a CRIME,
NOT PROVEN in all these years – I’m tellin’ all o’ ya -
Then, ELEVEN YEARS LATER in September ’09,
U.S. hitmen INVADED and caught and KILLED him in Somalia.

After Somalia, the Hit Squad moved on to Yemen,
People who knew said then that the killing was wrong.
But cads kept it mostly outta corp’rat’ propaganda news,
And soon we ALL heard a different kind of song:

‘Cause then on False-Flag Christmas Eve,
Congressman Peter King told CNN:
"Any minute now, a terrorist’s plane is gonna land,
And then he’s gonna claim he’s from Yemen!

"He’ll go on to claim that he is Al Qaida!
Hey! Let’s X-ray genitals in Amsterdam!
Men with beards are weird! They must be tortured ’cause we’re skeerd!
Mass insanity is part of this whole scam!"

Then courageous John Murtha blew the whistle on the military lies,
And way Way WAY too much Charlie Wilson knew,
So, in a single week, with the wink of an eye,
Obama’s hitmen hit those Congresspeople, too!

"Morale at the CIA" and Blackwater
HAD "reached an all-time low,"
But when Obama said he’d let them murder anyone they want,
THAT really gave them lots of get-it-up and go!

After the election, back before B.O. took office,
His pot comments started civil war in Mexico.
Many U.S. Americans don’t have maps, but Mex is right next-door to Tex.
Is there a WORSE PLACE that a civil war can go?!

El Chapo Guzman is the world’s richest man.
His worldwide wealth wouldn’t fit in failing banks!
For knocking off his competition and propping up the DEA,
Guzman publicly gives Barack Obama thanks!

[Recitative:]
The 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan stressed regional tensions – "Like, I’m – I’m really stressed-out, man" – pushing Pakistan and India to the BRINK of nuclear exchange,
Then, Bush worsened it, illegally sending nuclear bomb parts to India.
First thing Obama did when he got int’ office: Start a ANOTHER civil war, this one in Pakistan! That’s Change
I CAN’T Believe In. Doesn’t killin’ kids kinda seem a sin t’ ya?

What?! Do you think I’m not being "fair" to President Obama? Well, I’m only talking about killing kids. He’s actually doing it. And these kids he’s killing are NOT terrorists.
They’re kids.
I don’t think I’m the one being unfair here.

O, Obama the Baby Bomber
Kills Pashtun kids ev’ryday,
Not JUST because they are Jewish,
But just because they are in the way!

So, we’ve got a President committing War Crimes,
And the Democrats are covering it up,
Even so-called "progressives" and the Congressional Black Caucus;
And, who’d have thought that EVEN THEY would be corrupt?!

Blackwater/CIA – Coups-Intrigues-Assassinations – and rigged elections
Have manipulated world politics for years!
But they’d never try it here, where it would directly affect their funding.
Just keep repeating: "It can’t happen here!"
If you’re one of those who buys Government propaganda lies,
Just keep repeating: "It can’t happen here!"

(p)(c)March 7, 2010 Norman Schulerud Bie, Jr. All rights reserved.
(NOTE–The tune may sound similar to something familiar, but it’s not that tune exactly, and even if it were, I would still be able to use it under the Fair Use (F.U.) doctrine, because this is satire, parody, humor. All material used here is used fairly. This is much MORE fair than the situation discussed in Stanza 12. And if there’s any other point here on which you question its Fair Usability, remember, I already said "F.U.!")

FOOTNOTES:

Stanza2 Pashtuns are indigenous people of Eastern Afghanistan and Western Pakistan. They are the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. The Government is comprised of Heroin exporters and Oil executives. The Pashtun symbol is the Star of David; the Pashtuns refer to themselves at the "Children of Israel;" their holy book is the Book of Moses, their national hero. When the name "Moses" is spoken, Pashtuns stand at attention to honor him.

Stanza3 (This verse is NOT about the child "pirates" killed by US Navy Seals in April 2009.) In September 2009, the US Assassination Team went to Somalia to murder a person accused of a crime that happened eleven years earlier, when he was 17 years old. The commandos declared "Mission Accomplished!" The murder victim/"suspect" was never proven to have committed the crime. If there were evidence that he’d committed the crime, he could have been tried: Somalia is a puppet state set up by the US: According to the UN, Somalia’s is the most corrupt Government in the world. The bottom line: There was no evidence that this man had committed a crime when he was a child, but President Obama ordered him assassinated anyway, during a illegal clandestine invasion of a supposedly sovereign country.

Stanzas4-6 Three months later, the US Assassination Squad was killing people in Yemen. Corporate news barely reported it, but some Americans got upset that our Government was assassinating un-convicted foreign citizens on no evidence, killing people who were merely accused by right-wing ideologue Oilmen. The few protests were squelched by the False-Flag operation on Christmas Eve involving the so-called "Underwear Bomber." This is a misnomer, because the banker’s son from Africa had no bomb on him: He had PETN, from which it is possible to make a bomb, but PETN with no detonator is not a bomb, and cannot blow a hole in a plane. I happened to be watching CNN when the "announcement" came out: Not a regular news bulletin, but The White House interrupted television when nearly no one was watching. The plane was in the air near Detroit. The accused was on the plane and Congressman Peter King was already on TV trying to make political hay from it. In fact, both King and Joe Lieberman were booked to discuss the False-Flag event and advocate war with Yemen on the Sunday talk shows AT LEAST 3 DAYS BEFORE the Christmas Eve fake terrorism fraud took place. So, Senator Lieberman and Rep King apparently knew that a "terrorist" was flying a "bomb" into the US, but instead of stopping him from getting on the plane, they let it happen then tried to profit politically from the "terrorism" themselves! BY THE TIME THE PLANE LANDED the supposed perpetrator had already (falsely?) declared that he was from Yemen and Al Qaida, meaning that the murders President Obama had already ordered the day before must be OK. Just THINK about it: A suicide bomber is a person so completely dedicated to his cause that he would never turn in his compatriots, and would even die for his cause. A suicide bomber is obviously not a scared whimpering wimp that spills the beans in a few seconds when caught. THINK AGAIN: If Al Qaida is so clueless and impotent that they send part but not all of an unmade bomb, and so easy to torture information out of that an Air Marshall can get their most sensitive info in 3 minutes by just tackling him tying him up, if that’s Al Qaida, then obviously we have nothing to fear from them! But instead of arresting and prosecuting the traitors perpetrating this False-Flag fraud against the American people, President Obama is playing along with the treasonous ruse, and adding to the deception by ordering more discrimination against longhairs, bearded men, and hippies traveling to and from Amsterdam.

Stanza7 Congressman John Murtha was the most prestigious and influential spokesman against Obama’s war machine. As a highly respected ex-military man, his words carried a lot of weight both in and out of the military. During a "routine" gall bladder operation last week (at the time of writing), a doctor killed him by slicing his intestine with a scalpel. Slicing the patient’s intestine is NEVER part of routine gall bladder surgery.The doctor who killed Murtha wasn’t arrested for murder and political terrorism, he was rewarded, paid thousands of dollars by an insurance company for his skillful cutting. "Charlie Wilson’s War" was a book and movie about the Soviet war in Afghanistan wherein the CIA’s Osama bin Laden fought against the Russians. The sudden untimely deaths of Congressmen Murtha and Wilson came just as President Obama was announcing that he sends Assassination Squads to murder people, sometimes Americans. He claimed it is his right to do so, even though it is obviously an impeachable offense. If this stands, Obama makes permanent one of the Fascist Reforms that Bush implemented while people were in a state of shock following September 11, 2000.

Stanza8 When "CIA morale hit an all-time low" (because so much info on torture and terrorism committed by CIA had emerged), President Obama used the lack of morale as an excuse to rationalize his order to cover up the torture and other Bush War Crimes, joining in the Criminal Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice by blocking prosecutions of those criminals. The Obama cover-up encourages the CIA and Blackwater to commit ever more and worse torture, War Crimes, coups, assassinations and rigged elections.

Stanza9 In December 2008, a month before taking office, President Obama called for questions from the public. By far the most popular question was on legalizing marijuana (marijuana’s illegality causes thousands of killings annually). The world was hoping for reform. But Obama wasn’t taking his new job seriously: The President-elect laughed and joked and casually rejected the idea: Insisting that it’s OK to arrest others the "crime" that he committed and enjoyed.The human rights travesty, the economic devastation, and the thousands of people killed over it were things that he somehow found funny. Within in minutes of this heinous hypocrisy, the current Mexican Civil War began, and hasn’t let up since, with thousands killed each and every month. Obama started the Mexican Civil War, and Mexico is not far from the US. Not a smart move. Not a moral move. Not an honest move.

The U.S. Government claims that Pashtun children must be killed because they may be near terrorists. Ask the Obama Administration to stop killing the Pashtuns. Have Americans No Decency? Show some Courage! Stand up Against the Injustice!