The neutrality of music

I pointed out some time ago that music was very important to the Nazis.  They had inspiring songs that kept the troops marching.  I even translated some of them.  But I want to make what I hope is the obvious point that music is independent of politics.  One could appreciate the Nazi songs without at all endorsing Nazi politics. 

I thought that some good evidence of how music can mean anything politically comes from an excellent American pro-military song of the '60s.  The song was widely appreciated so the tune was re-used in a German popular song that expressed anti-war sentiments.  The same tune was used for opposite purposes!

Below is the American song, sung by its author, Staff Sadler, a very manly man



Below is the German song sung by a popular German singer:



The German song is a little curious because Germany was at that time not involved in any wars. So it presumably refers to German troops in the French Foreign Legion -- operating in North Africa, which was giving France troubles at the time. The term "vogelfrei" (outlawed) in the third line supports the connection to the Foreign Legion and the terrain description fits North Africa. Rather ironically, the majority of troops in the French Foreign Legion are German-speaking, though a lot of Russians have joined in recent times.  Some Germans still relish war, obviously. 

Below are the words of the German song, with translation:

Hundert Mann und ein Befehl

Irgendwo im fremden Land
Ziehen sie durch Stein und Sand,
Fern von zu Haus und vogelfrei,
100 Mann, und er ist dabei.

100 Mann und ein Befehl
Und ein Weg, den keiner will.
Tagein tagaus, wer weiß wohin,
Verbranntes Land, und was ist der Sinn?

Ganz allein in dunkler Nacht
Hast du oft daran gedacht,
Dass weit von hier der Vollmond scheint,
Und weit von hier ein Mädchen weint.

Und die Welt ist doch so schön.
Könnt' ich dich noch einmal seh'n!
Nun trennt uns schon ein langes Jahr,
Weil ein Befehl unser Schicksal war.

Wahllos schlägt das Schicksal zu,
Heute er und morgen du.
Ich hör' von fern die Krähen schrei'n
Im Morgenrot, warum muss das sein?

Irgendwo im fremden Land
Ziehen sie durch Stein und Sand,
Fern von zu Haus und vogelfrei,
100 Mann, und er ist dabei.

In English

A hundred men under one command

Somewhere in a foreign land,
they wander through stone and sand,
far from home and outlawed,
100 men and he’s there as well

100 men and one command
and a path that no one wants,
day in, day out, to who knows where,
burned countryside and what’s the use?

All alone in the dark night,
you have often thought about it,
that far from here the full moon shines
and far from here a young girl weeps.

And the world is still so beautiful.
Could I only see you once more.
We have already been apart one long year
because a command was our fate.

At random fate slams us down.
Today him and tomorrow you.
I hear from afar the crows cawing
in the dawn, why must that be?

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The IRS Stole $59,000 From an Innocent Veteran; Years Later, They Still Won't Return It

Oh Suk Kwon, an immigrant from South Korea who spent four decades serving in the U.S. military, had his life and business destroyed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2011—on nothing more than a hunch.

After getting out of the Army in 2007, Kwon and his wife purchased a gas station in Ellicott City, Maryland. Four years later, the IRS targeted Kwon's station as part of a now-discredited effort at catching money launderers making large cash deposits. The investigators seized more than $59,000 from Kwon, forcing him to shutter his business. His wife died soon after.

"But after the investigation ended, after the gas station went under, and Kwon's wife died amid the stress of it all, after he moved from his neighborhood in shame and the Internal Revenue Service changed its policy so no other small business would get steamrolled this way—the agency won't give Kwon his money back," writes columnist Petula Dvorak in The Washington Post.

What happened to Kwon is a tragedy. That the IRS won't now admit its mistake and return his money is a travesty.

Kwon was one of hundreds of individuals and businesses targeted by the IRS for nothing but a supposedly suspicious pattern of deposits. A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report released in April detailed how the agency seized more than $17 million from innocent business owners as part of an effort at targeting so-called "structuring," in which criminals will make cash deposits of less than $10,000 in order to avoid detecting by federal banking regulators. Under the terms of a 1970 federal law, banks must report all deposits of more than $10,000.

But the IRS's anti-structuring investigations were seriously flawed. In more than 90 percent of the cases, the inspector general found, the seized money turned out to be completely legal. The report also found that investigators violated internal policies when conducting interviews, failed to notify individuals of their rights, and improperly bargained to resolve civil cases.

That seems to be what happened to Kwon. An IRS spokesman told Dvorak that Kwon pleaded guilty to a charge of structuring, even though the agency failed to produce any other criminal charges against him.

There is hope for Kwon. Other victims of the agency's anti-structuring investigations have been made whole, but only after years of legal battles. Last year, the IRS returned $29,500 they had stolen in 2012 from a Maryland dairy farmer. The farmer, Randy Sowers, was represented by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm, in his challenge to the seizure.

"I couldn't believe...they would just come in and take my money with no prior notice," Sowers told a congressional committee in 2015 during a hearing on the "structuring" crackdown. "I thought the government was supposed to protect me. I didn't think they were supposed to come out and try to put me out of business."

The same thing happened to Carol Hinders, an Iowa woman who ran a small, cash-only Mexican restaurant. In 2013, two IRS agents showed up at Hinder's door and told her the agency was seizing $33,000 from her bank account for structuring violations. She was never accused of a crime. She later became the face of an investigative report by The New York Times that showed how the IRS was targeting innocent Americans and abusing its asset forfeiture powers. After that, she got her money back from the IRS.

"The government is seizing billions of dollars of cash and property from Americans often without charging them with a crime," said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) at the 2015 congressional hearing where Sowers testified. Civil asset forfeiture, he said, "has proven a far greater affront to civil rights than it has a weapon against crime."

In response to public outrage over how the IRS was targeting businesses with anti-structuring investigations, the agency announced in 2014 that it would change how those investigations operated, focusing only on cases where there was actual evidence of criminal activity.

But that's little consolation to Kwon, who is still facing an uphill legal battle to get his money back. Dvorak reports that the IRS refused his most recent request in August.

"There was no good policy purpose for the prosecution. They did it for money, and they destroyed a good and honest man," Kwon's attorney tells Dvorak. "It is shameful."

SOURCE

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Students love Trump's tax plan...when told it's Bernie's

President Donald Trump’s proposal for comprehensive tax reform was almost immediately dismissed as heartless and impractical by his political opponents.

But what would some of those opponents think if they were told the same plan was being proposed by someone they adore—Senator Bernie Sanders?

To find out, we headed to George Washington University to ask students their opinions on Trump’s new tax plan. WIthout much explanation, the students immediately made clear their distaste for the plan.

“It’s not the most efficient, nor beneficial to the general populace,” said one student when asked her opinion of Trump’s plan.

“It’s better for the upper class than anyone else,” added another.

After watching student after student express their disapproval of the plan, we then asked those same students what they thought of Senator Bernie Sanders’ new tax plan.

Immediately, they expressed excitement and support after hearing the details of the plan.

The only problem for them? There was no tax plan for Senator Sanders. The plan they loved was actually President Trump’s.

SOURCE

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Is Liberalism a Dying Faith?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic — and the model for mankind’s future.

Equality, diversity, democracy — this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting what America has on offer.

In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.

The right-wing People’s Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria’s vote, delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!

Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.

South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians are talking of separation.

By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington Post, Babis “makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO’s mission is outdated.”

Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.

To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many may nod at Thomas Jefferson’s line that “All men are created equal,” but they no more practice that in their own nations than did Jefferson in his.

On Oct. 7, scores of thousands of Poles lined up along the country’s entire 2,000-mile border — to pray the rosary.

It was the centennial of the Virgin Mary’s last apparition at Fatima in Portugal in 1917, and the day in 1571 the Holy League sank the Muslim fleet at Lepanto to save Europe. G. K. Chesterton’s poem, “Lepanto,” was once required reading in Catholic schools.

Each of these traditionalist-nationalist movements is unique, but all have a common cause. In the hearts of Europe’s indigenous peoples is embedded an ancient fear: loss of the homeland to Islamic invaders.

Europe is rejecting, resisting, recoiling from “diversity,” the multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual future that, say U.S. elites, is America’s preordained mission to bring about for all mankind.

Indeed, increasingly, the indigenous peoples of Europe seem to view as the death of their nations and continent, what U.S. liberal elites see as the Brave New World to come.

More HERE

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