The Bin Laden Trial That Wasn't

I realize this probably puts me in the minority, but I am not rejoicing over the May 1 death of Osama bin Laden. President Obama claimed that "justice has been done" with the execution of bin Laden by special forces, but I'm not so sure. I think that justice would have been better served by capturing bin Laden alive and putting him on trial.

It's not as if apprehending an evil mass murderer and putting him on trial would have been unprecedented, with all sorts of insurmountable logistical problems. It's actually been done before. For example, 50 years ago, the entire world watched as former SS officer Adolf Eichmann was put on trial in Israel for his role in organizing mass deportations of Jews to death camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II.

After Israeli intelligence found Eichmann living under an assumed identity in Argentina, agents from Mossad and Shin Bet kidnapped him and brought him back to Israel. The trial began in April 1961, with Eichmann in a booth made of bulletproof glass to protect him from possible attacks. The trial was broadcast live, so that people around the world could hear the prosecution's case as well as the former high-ranking Nazi's efforts to defend himself. The three-judge panel found Eichmann guilty on all counts, and sentenced him to death; Eichmann was hanged in 1962.

Wasn't that a better way to bring this murderer to "justice" than if the Mossad agents had just executed Eichmann on the spot in Argentina?

Another effort to bring a mass murderer to trial ultimately failed, to the disappointment of many, when Augusto Pinochet died of natural causes in 2006. Pinochet led a military overthrow of the democratically-elected government of his native Chile in 1973. On September 11 of that year (the same date on which New York and Washington would later be attacked in 2001), the Chilean military bombed and strafed La Moneda, their equivalent of the White House, as part of their coup. Thousands of citizens were rounded up, tortured, and killed, as was vividly portrayed in Costa-Gavras' 1982 film Missing. When Pinochet finally yielded power in 1990, he ensured that an amnesty law was in place to shield him from future prosecution, but the Chilean justice system was in the process of removing that amnesty and bringing Pinochet to trial for his crimes when he died. The families of his victims felt robbed of their chance to see the man who ordered the deaths of their loved ones brought to justice.

Sadly, the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks have also been robbed of a chance to see Osama bin Laden brought to trial. Instead, we have the United States setting an example that vigilante justice and extrajudicial killings are acceptable.

I'm deeply disappointed that President Obama, a former lecturer in constitutional law, doesn't see this difference.

I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night

My wife and I went to see a one-night-only showing of a new documentary about the 1960s folk singer Phil Ochs called "There But For Fortune" (www.philochsthemovie.com). The DVD is scheduled for a July 19 release, and I highly recommend purchasing this film.

Phil Ochs wrote topical songs, often using news articles from The New York Times or Newsweek for inspiration. The title of his first album, "All The News That's Fit To Sing", was a pun on the Times' debatable claim to contain "all the news that's fit to print". In some ways, Ochs was a musical version of Mort Sahl, who used newspaper articles as his jumping-off point for standup comedy routines (or, to update the analogy, think of Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show"). He was also an active participant in the movements to educate the public about those events, including the civil rights movement and U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. He performed at the street demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and became angered and disillusioned by the violent reaction against those protests by the police, ordered by Democratic Mayor Richard Daley and endorsed by Democratic Presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey. Phil's next album cover featured a tombstone giving his place and date of death as Chicago, 1968.

The movie offers a wealth of Phil's musical performances, taken from TV shows as well as film from rallies, protests, and marches. Also featured are interviews with Joan Baez and other musicians. Tom Hayden, cofounder of Students for a Democratic Society and one of the "Chicago Eight" indicted by the Nixon administration for "conspiracy to riot" at the 1968 Democratic convention, puts Phil's politics in perspective with the times. Billy Bragg, the British singer/songwriter who wrote new lyrics for the tune "Joe Hill" as "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night", is also interviewed in the film.

The film is an inspiring tribute to an overlooked artist who needs to be remembered, because his lyrics, sense of irony, and commitment to making this country live up to its claimed ideals are sadly needed as much today as they were during the turbulent decade of the 1960s.

Here's the official trailer for the movie:

May Day Greetings 2011

May 1, or May Day, is recognized by many around the world as Labor Day, in honor of the large demonstrations held by workers in Chicago in May 1886 for the 8-hour day. Many symbols of the labor movement, including the May Day holiday and songs such as "The Internationale", were hijacked by the Soviet Union and other countries whose forms of government were more correctly described as "bureaucratic collectivist" than "worker-controlled".

British musician Billy Bragg updated the lyrics to "The Internationale" in 1990; here's a video with his recording set to images of workers' struggles throughout the years. Happy May Day!