Video: Come Out Ye Black and Tans

Played this heaps today.  Very moving. INLA, IRA Irish Freedom Fighters Wolfe tones - Come Out Ye Black and Tans I was born on a Dublin street where the Loyal drums do beat And those loving English feet they walked all over us, And every single night when me da'd come home tight He'd invite the neighbours outside with this chorus:   Come out ye black and tans,  Come out and fight me like a man  Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders  Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,  From the green and lovely lanes of  Killashandra. Come let us hear you tell How you slammed the great Pernell, When you fought 'em well and truly persecuted, Where are the smears and jeers That you loudly let us hear When our leaders of '16 were executed.   Come out ye black and tans,  Come out and fight me like a man  Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders  Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,  From the green and lovely lanes of  Killashandra.  Come tell us how you slew Them ol' Arabs two-by-two Like the Zulus they had spears and bow and arrows, How you bravely you faced one With your sixteen pounder gun And you frightened them damned natives to their marrow.   Come out ye black and tans,  Come out and fight me like a man  Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders  Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,  From the green and lovely lanes of  Killashandra. Now the time is coming fast And I think them days are here, When each English yeoman here run before us, And if there'll be a need Then our kids will say, "Godspeed!" With a verse or two of singing this fine chorus.   Come out ye black and tans,  Come out and fight me like a man  Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders  Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away,  From the green and lovely lanes of  Killashandra.

Chelsea Manning - Birthday (17 December)

USA Whistleblower CHELSEA MANNNING HAPPY BIRTHDAY Born: December 17, 1987 (age 27 years) http://manningfamilyfund.org/ http://pardon.privatemanning.org/ https://twitter.com/savemanning http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/chelseamanning

20 DEC 1989 - USA INVASION OF PANAMA

ARTICLE  December 15, 2014 The Proclamation Of A Lone Superpower Above The Law The Invasion Of Panama by MATT PEPPE http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/15/the-invasion-of-panama/ .................................... COMMENT / NOTES Thought this was a very good article. Below is what I got out of it: US had large Panama-stationed military force:  18 bases. Occupied Panama Canal Zone territory = sovereign US territory until 1979. Scheduled hand-over of Panama Canal: Partial ... transfer in 1990 Full ......... transfer in 2000 *Control over vital strategic asset at issue.  Military occupier US at advantage. Applicable Panama (& any target) USA modus operandi in pursuit aggressive agenda: 1) disseminate propaganda about “human rights abuses” 2) accuse govt / leader of heinous deed/s 3) provoke the target to elicit pretext for invasion / aggression. 4) on eliciting response, launch planned attack. Note:  as in Panama case, human rights abuse overlooked while US maintains grip. Brutal tyrants are friends ... until they commit the 'crime of independence', when they become US agenda villains. Panama US Invasion: UNSC passed a resolution condemning invasion. US joined by allies #UK & #France – vetoed it. Dangerous precedent set. USA Panama Invasion set stage for:  Iraq (1) Somalia (1) Serbia NATO bombing Iraq (2)  Afghanistan  Iraq (3)  Pakistan  Libya  Somalia (2)  Yemen  Iraq (4)  Syria Human rights language appropriated by USA: “humanitarian intervention” became new propaganda tool to justify military aggression. New humanitarian ethos = ideological weapons to (domestically & internationally) justify & legitimise USA aggressive global strategies. Aggressive War  Panama - USA INVASION 1989 = aggression against SOVEREIGN NATION Nuremberg Trials defined 'aggressive war':  evil punishable by death. USA1989 Invasion of PANAMA - act against sovereign nation, evil punishable by death yet George HW Bush: enjoys a luxurious retirement. considered by mainstream USA political opinion-makers a "foreign policy moderate". Source:  http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/15/the-invasion-of-panama/ Wow, that last bit is rather scary.  [*Need to learn to summarise better.  Most of the summary form is the author's words.]

CIA Torture Report

CIA TORTURE REPORT What to do when too scattered to immerse oneself in social media escapism? Well, try to sleep.  Try, try and try again.  And if that fails, go play with the blog ... Hey, the CIA Torture Report is out - here (PDF - 525 pages) - finally published 9 December 2014. I'll forever associate CIA torture and the report with Obama's fairly ho-hum, casual: "We tortured some folks" The report's whittled down & heavily censored.  But what I read of the highlights 'most gruesome moments' (DailyBeast) (see also Guardian)  was enough to make me quite angry and disgusted. The treatment of the man that froze to death on the floor, naked and chained is beyond belief. Torture of people isn't something we usually give much thought to.  It's in the realm of maybe action-thriller movies and something we perhaps ever so vaguely figure 'might' happen in the underbelly of real life or, if we're pressed to stop to think about it, may have cynically shrugged and thought, yeah, bound to happen in some nasty underworld. But even if we could vaguely conceive of people maybe getting tortured in the course of lifestyle choices, such as a life of crime or a path of political dissidence, it would not enter our heads that agents of  democratic governments would subject living, captive, beings to torture -- and subject them to excesses of brutal torture repeatedly -- over the course of weeks of life-threatening and soul-destroying abuse. The 'enhanced interrogation' the US dished up to captives is reminiscent of torture harking back to Nazi Germans or the torture perpetrated by psychopathic sadists getting off on controlling and debasing helpless victims (which is, thankfully, quite rare among the general public, but maybe common among the CIA and cohorts by the look of things). So here we have representatives of the American state -- the symbol of the 'free, democratic world' -- sexually violating captives and subjecting them to insane, prolonged torture and even death, while America's preaching freedom, democracy, peace and moral superiority ... often at the point of a gun. That US allies were complicit in this violation of human rights and of international laws (they apparently only pay lip service to) is just as disgusting, mind-boggling and demoralising. Source:  Open Societies Foundations The above map is from the Open Societies Foundation Report -  'Globalising Torture: CIA Secret Detention & Extraordinary Rendition 2013 - here [PDF - 216 Pages]. Extraordinary Rendition:  abduction & extra-judicial transfer of persons from one country to another Just having a quick look at 'Globalising Torture', I note that Australia rates a mention because an Australian national went through the rendition and torture mill (2001-2005) before being released with no charge and finally getting an undisclosed settlement from the Australian government in 2010. The Australian government put on a bit of a show afterwards with an 'inquiry'.  But this was essentially the government investigating itself and (unsurprisingly) no wrongdoing was found. Nor did they find evidence of involvement of Australian officials: The inquiry seemingly did not investigate the statements of an Egyptian intelligence officer who alleged the involvement of Australian officials in Habib’s detention in Egypt, with Thom claiming that Habib did not provide the inquiry with a copy of the statements. The ECHR ordered Poland to pay restitution to abductees who were taken to a CIA black site in Poland & tortured.  Poland had denied culpability and had been planning to appeal the court's decision: In July 2014 the European Court of Human Rights condemned the government of Poland for participating in CIA extraordinary rendition, ordering Poland to pay restitution to men who had been abducted, taken to a CIA black site in Poland, and tortured.   Poland is appealing the decision. [wikipedia] But the cat's out of the bag now:  RT News reports that Poland had received hush money to host CIA prisons and that former President Aleksander Kwasniewski confirmed hosting CIA black sites (but had denied authorising torture).   Oh, and Poland was pissed that the US can't keep a secret.  Ah, well, you get that.  No honour among thieves (or violators). Anyway, there's 54 countries in the 'Globalising Torture' report and:  Russia's not in it!   Bring out the dancing girls & play the can-can. Moving away from the dancing girls and getting back to the subject of torture, this is some interesting information about US government funding of countries that commit torture: TOP 10 - USA AID COUNTRIES - THAT COMMIT TORTURE: 1. Israel – $3.1b 2. Afghanistan – $2.2b 3. Egypt – $1.6b 4. Pakistan – $1.2b 5. Nigeria – $693m 6. Jordan – $671m 7. Iraq – $573m 8. Kenya – $564m 9. Tanzania – $553m 10. Uganda -$456m Source:   http://leftfootforward.org/2014/01/top-ten-us-aid-recipients-all-practice-torture/ Having had a quick look at the CIA Torture Report (which I haven't read in full), the first thing I noticed was the eye-watering $81 million (plus $1 million legal indemnity) paid by the USG to the 'brains' of the torture program (which I'm pretty sure I could have devised for waaay less that fee).  What an obscene amount of taxpayer money to disburse on torturing, sexually violating and freezing people.  Oh, and I left out 'rectal feeding' or 'rectal rehydration'.  It is basically an enema -- an infusion of liquid poured into the rectum.  Liquid or ... liquefied food in the case of CIA-style 'rectal rehydration': One CIA cable released in the report reveals that detainee Majid Khan was administered by enema his “‘lunch tray’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was ‘pureed and rectally infused’”. One CIA officer’s email was in the report quoted as saying “we used the largest Ewal [sic] tube we had”.  [Guardian] Daily Caller running a headline 'Former CIA Director Michael Hayden Says Rectal Feeding Not Torture, It's a Medical Procedure'.  Guess they need to have a look at the Guardian article above.  Far from 'medical' the way CIA goons applied it.  Shame on Daily Caller 'Crapper'  (hey, that's kinda apt given the subject).   Would you believe Hayden tried to deny it was a rectal procedure: Blitzer: Is that rectal though? Hayden: No, it’s not. And I’m not prepared to tell you why one method was chosen ... Wonder if the paper's having a quiet lend of us in that article ... or are Americans really, really, dumb and likely to fall for the comedic denials? Well, that's the long awaited CIA Torture Report.   I've not read either of reports in full yet or paid very close attention to the articles, but I may go back and check things out more thoroughly.  Notice the US media is big on repeating "Torture Is Not An American Value" ('TINAAV').  That's a distancing thing (that's not America, that's those bad, bad torture progam tailors).  It's also a positive spin thing in the headlines.  TINAAV repeated thousands of times in the media provides a counterbalance to 'CIA Torture Report Sparks World Outrage' [Sky Australia] type reporting.  That's my take on it, but I'm no media expert, so you might think otherwise. There's probably thousands of things that could be said.  OK, I'm exaggerating.  There are things that ought to be said in this post.  But I'm not sure I could be bothered (I'm just a blogger for fun).  And I'm running out of steam having done yet another all-nighter without sleep. Should probably point out that the report from Open Societies Foundations looks pretty good and is rather a surprising contribution to have come across, because I've been very suspicious of anything NGO related and anything associated with George Soros, as I see NGOs as instruments of influence and 'take-over'. Oh, now I remember what I wanted to say:  the CIA Torture Report will not change a thing.   Nobody is calling for military, political & economic leadership of Nazi Germany America to be held to account and tried before an international court of law. So, it will be business as usual for the US and for countries within the US sphere of influence (and we're taking over 50 countries involved in these CIA torture activities at last count in 2013). It's also worth mentioning that this is why we should make every effort to protect and support whistle-blowers (Bradley/Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden) and journalists and publishers (Julian Assange & WikiLeaks) who have taken enormous personal risk, and taken on world powers (yep, USA and friends, the same guys that were involved in kidnap, unlawful deportation and torture),  to disclose the truth of government wrongdoing and cover-up. That over 50 governments have joined the US in criminal activity in violation of international laws should ring alarm bells like crazy.  That, and the fact that anybody can be grabbed off the street in a democracy, and shipped off for USA torture anywhere in the world. It should also concern those who have watched their government clamp down on the free press and watched in dismay as governments rushed through laws that infringe on civil liberties, justified in the name of 'national security' and 'war on terror' (or merely European Union cohesion, in the case of the European Arrest Warrant) by governments that clearly cannot be trusted to adhere to principles of justice and democracy. The CIA Torture Report ought to be an impetus for voters to demand transparent and accountable government. -----------------    Freedom & democracy eroded by infringements on: * right to freedom from mass surveillance;  * right to privacy;  * right to freedom of information; * right to freedom from government censorship * right to open, public trials;  * right to presumption of innocence; * right to freedom from extradition without evidence; * right to transparent government;  * right to accountable government.  [Excuse any typos.  No sleep.  Very tired.]

 

Prison Break

Prison Break   In twitter prison, so I thought I'd drop by & share. Found this funny comment on a post titled "Don't Freak Out, Twitter Jail is Real": Wow, it's really hard adjusting to being somewhere else.   Twitter feels like a 'living' space because it's in constant motion, whereas this is rather static. What if I can only think & communicate in nothing but tweets?

MH17: Australian Politican vs Putin

Australian Politician vs Putin https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wR2elGUBLVI Source:  QualityControlCentre - YouTube MH17

Perversion and Poetry

PERVERSION & POETRY 1.  US Surveillance of entire foreign populations US spies on multiple, whole populations worldwide ... depriving entire nations of their privacy & freedom. USA spying on Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya, Philippines + one other (likely violent unnamed) >>  Article Data Pirates of the Caribbean: The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call in the Bahamas https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/05/19/data-pirates-caribbean-nsa-recording-every-cell-phone-call-bahamas/ 2.  US Criminal Activities - Gladio B "... Pentagon, CIA and State Department maintained intimate ties to al-Qaeda militants as late as 2001." [ceasefiremagazine.co.uk] "... memoir, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, published last year, charged senior [US] government officials with negligence, corruption and collaboration with al Qaeda in illegal arms smuggling and drugs trafficking in Central Asia." [ceasefiremagazine.co.uk] "In interviews with this author in early March, Edmonds claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time, had innumerable, regular meetings at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, with U.S. military and intelligence officials between 1997 and 2001, as part of an operation known as ‘Gladio B’. Al-Zawahiri, she charged, as well as various members of the bin Laden family and other mujahideen, were transported on NATO planes to various parts of Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations." [ceasefiremagazine.co.uk] Source - Article - ceasefiremagazine.co.uk: Special Report | Why was a Sunday Times report on US government ties to al-Qaeda chief spiked? FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds was described as "the most gagged person in the history of the United States" by the American Civil Liberties Union. Was the Sunday Times pressured to drop its investigation into her revelations?  http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/whistleblower-al-qaeda-chief-u-s-asset/ 3. Operation Gladio > Secret Stay-behind Fascist Paramilitary - Europe Operation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Europe during the Cold War. Its purpose was to continue armed resistance in the event of a Soviet invasion and conquest. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all stay-behind organizations. [Wikipedia]  The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sponsoring Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and its relationship to right-wing terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the "Years of Lead" (late 1960s to early 1980s) and other similar clandestine operations, is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation. Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter. [Wikipedia] Source:  Wikipedia >>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio 4. Gary Webb - CIA-backed Contra Drug Ops - Media Corruption ‘The New York Times’ Wants Gary Webb to Stay Dead | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/181940/new-york-times-wants-gary-webb-stay-dead … GARY WEBB >"dead from 2 gunshot wounds to the head, which the coroner's office judged a suicide" >exposed CIA-backed Contra drug ops - #USA #USA >> Contras, CIA, crack cocaine, crimes of state, media power & media corruption >> Power of the Internet >> http://www.whale.to/b/mighty__wurlitzer.html … >>Collusion b/w the press & the powerful: "national news orgs. have had a long .. history of playing footsie with the CIA" WashingtonTimes (.. helped finance ..Contras, hosting fund-raisers & speaking engagements 4 .. leaders while supporting .. cause editorially) 5.  US Whistle-blower Harassment MUST READ: Applebaum, WikiLeaks, Snowden & USA harassment - http://www.exberliner.com/features/people/jacob-appelbaum-on-the-usa-and-nsa/ What they did to Applebaum's mother is disgusting. 6.  Australia - Absence Accountability & Transparency, Extension of Govt (& Govt agency) Powers, Suppression, & Threat to Free Press >>> Brandis ... an easy 'out' not commenting on anything. Not a good look. Busy ducking behind 'inaccurate' paraphrasing. #Auspol >>> Edward Snowden a traitor, Attorney-General George Brandis tells Washington think tank >>> http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/edward-snowden-a-traitor-attorneygeneral-george-brandis-tells-washington-think-tank-20140409-zqsgp.html … >> Snowden had the guts to take on the biggest criminal enterprise in the world: USA. Snowden's a hero. Note:  Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) - Washington foreign policy 'think tank' is where Brandis made the Snowden pronouncements.  7.  'Democracy' Lobbying Propaganda - Europe "Khodorkovsky for caution in anti-Russian sanctions in Prague Prague - The EU and the USA can influence the situation in Russia, but their use of sanctions should be cautious, Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was recently released from prison, said at the opening of the 18th Forum 2000 international conference in Prague today. The EU and the USA can help Russia on its road to democracy, Khodorkovsky said. Rather, the Russian democratic movement needs a cultivated influence of the Western countries, he added. International sanctions can be a precarious instrument, said Khodorkovsky, who now lives in Switzerland from where he supports opposition and democratic changes in Russia. In the summer, the EU imposed sanctions against Russia over its policy in the Ukrainian conflict. The conference, initiated by the late Czechoslovak and Czech president Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), is this year entitled "Democracy and Its Discontents: A Quarter-Century After the Iron Curtain and Tiananmen" to mark 25 years of the communist regime collapse and the massacre on Tiananmen Square in Beijing." http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/khodorkovsky-for-caution-in-anti-russian-sanctions-in-prague/1134199 "The EU and the USA can help Russia on its road to democracy, Khodorkovsky said." [ceskenoviny/cz]  "Democracy & Its Discontents: A Quarter-Century After the Iron Curtain & Tiananmen" > Not USA, Kissinger, Contras + Cocaine?  >>Given above was @ Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, this fits in very nicely:   http://www.chomsky.info/letters/19900301.htm On Vaclav Havel Speech Noam Chomsky Excerpted from Alexander Cockburn, The Golden Age Is In Us, Verso, 1995, pp. 149-151 [March 1, 1990] " ... It's also unnecessary to point out to the half a dozen or so sane people who remain that in comparison to the conditions imposed by US tyranny and violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise. Furthermore, one can easily understand why an oppressed Third World victim would have little access to any information (or would care little about anything) beyond the narrow struggle for survival against a terrorist superpower and its clients. And the Pravda hack, unlike his US clones, would have faced a harsh response if he told the obvious truths. So by every conceivable standard, the performance of Havel, Congress, the media, and (we may safely predict, without what will soon appear) the Western intellectual community at large are on a moral and intellectual level that is vastly below that of Third World peasants and Stalinist hacks -- not an unusual discovery.  Of course, it could be argued in Havel's defense that this shameful performance was all tongue in cheek, just a way to extort money from the American taxpayer for his (relatively rich) country. I doubt it, however; he doesn't look like that good an actor." [Source:  http://www.chomsky.info/letters/19900301.htm] COMMENT Although I knew there was NSA and FVEY mass surveillance, I must have missed the bit where the NSA conducts surveillance on entire populations of FOREIGN (non-FVEY) nations, as I was of the impression that surveillance was kept it 'in the family'.  Wrong. Surveillance extends to the USA spying on the Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya, Philippines and another country (likely violent if named).  But the odds are it's not limited to these countries. Why on earth would they be conducting surveillance on the population of Kenya?  Which country is the mysterious 'unnamed' country? No idea about the interest in Kenya, but I'm going to go with Pakistan for the unnamed country. Anyway, the enormity of this revelation totally blew me away.   The populations of entire nations are subject to US surveillance and are not only deprived of privacy, but are also, therefore, deprived of liberty. So how is it that this is swept under a rug and that nobody's concerned about a deed that, in my view, amounts to worldwide criminal activity by a major government? Take into consideration the 'Operation Gladio' and US 'Gladio B' activities, and the US government attempts to suppress that information.   Find the information difficult to absorb and might need to revisit the topic some time.  Nonetheless, here we have yet another example of  the US engaged in what amounts to criminal activity.  Judging by earlier disclosures (eg Gary Webb), the US has a long history of involvements in criminal activity, exposure, persecution of whistle-blowers and suppression of press and whistle-blower disclosures. Yet we have Australia's attorney-general, George Brandis, addressing a US 'echo chamber' 'think tank' (Centre for Strategic & International Studies) earlier in the year, pronouncing a whistle-blower, Snowden, a 'traitor', according to the screaming SMH headline. Brandis is the same guy who is aggressively ducking Senator Ludlam's questions in a parliamentary committee (video above), doing democracy a disservice in more ways than one, in my view. Meanwhile, in Europe, we have a stripped Russian oligarch speaking about the holy grail of 'democracy' to be installed in Russia by Europe and USA, broadcast from some US agenda NGO platform, before a rapt audience of Cuban dissidents and assorted other US ass-kissers. I don't have the mental skills, the language skills or the patience to sit here trying to find the words to articulate just how perverse I find all of the above. As I see it, you have a criminal, or rogue, gargantuan, super-government seeking to control the rest of the world by whatever means and without any limits; you have those within its trade and military treaty sphere (which is enormous), not only standing by without question, but also aggressively smearing those that stand up and disclose wrongdoing; there's a long a pattern of those beyond control or influence (or dissidents) and members of the press that dare reveal the truth, being vilified, hunted down, harassed and shut down; there's a corrupt or fearful press, that is either part of the established order, or else otherwise controlled, by authorities; there's a topsy-turvy world where 'good' is 'bad' and 'bad' is 'good'; a thousand sly GO and NGO platforms from which to evangelise about the holy grail of 'democracy', had by none but to be exported to all;  there's the abuse of power and totalitarianism (that's hypocritically decried elsewhere), and this abuse is pervasive and entrenched. Somewhere along the line, there's also denial of the important role whistle-blowers play -- or are supposed to play -- in keeping the crooked straight. And Australian whilstle-blower publisher, Julian Assange, is still held without charge by the Sweden-UK-US trio blocking his political asylum to Ecuador, while his nation stands by unconcerned about this injustice. Noam Chomsky's letter was the only breath of fresh air.  It's beautiful.  Poetry.