No! No! Noynoy

Philippine President Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino III made a mockery of the nation’s constitution by not just allowing a nuclear-powered ship into our territorial waters. He even boarded it and had smiling photos taken!

The ship is no ordinary nuclear weapons carrier. The USS Carl Vinson is apparently the one that took Osama Bin Laden’s body (or what was declared by Washington, following the murder in utter violation of international law, among other atrocities that are being ignored by the media) and dropped it somewhere in the North Arabian Sea.

Here is a link to the full article.

Mr. President, please review your actions. It took the eruption of a volcano to finally get rid of US Military presence in our country, and here you are all smiles. I wonder if you hugged one of the nuclear weapons like it was a teddy bear. Cute.

Big Ears, Big Clubs, and the Fifth Fleet…Ssshhhh

Bahrain, do the big ears of Washington not hear you?

Here’s part of an article from the Independent. Now tell me they are playing it fair, these so-called do-gooders of NATO and the armed Western powers?

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Bahrain escapes censure by West as crackdown on protesters intensifies 

The Shia were already angry at the ferocious repression by Bahraini security forces of the pro-democracy movement, which had sought to be non-sectarian. After the monarchy had rejected meaningful reform, the wholly Sunni army and security forces started to crush the largely Shia protests on 15 and 16 March. 

The harshness of the government repression is provoking allegations of hypocrisy against Washington, London and Paris. Their mild response to human rights abuses and the Saudi Arabian armed intervention in Bahrain is in stark contrast to their vocal concern for civilians in Libya.

The US and Britain have avoided doing anything that would destabilise Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies in the Gulf, to which they are allied. They are worried about Iran taking advantage of the plight of fellow Shia, although there is no evidence that Iran has any role in fomenting protests despite Bahraini government claims to the contrary. The US has a lot to lose because its Fifth Fleet, responsible for the Gulf and the north of the Indian Ocean, is based in Bahrain.

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from Wikipedia: The Fifth Fleet

Burnt Bridge April 2011 Online Issue

Two poems from my book Alien to Any Skin got accepted by Burnt Bridge Online.  A new poem, “Imagining Crumbs,” was also accepted.  You get a free PDF download of the issue.

“The Side of Love” video for my poem

This might be the last one for a while. I need to regroup and recover my weary troops of invisible little helpers.

Here’s the link to THE SIDE OF LOVE, a poem dedicated to the late Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Music from El-Funoun.

Images from the photo galleries of the International Solidarity Movement. Footage of Israeli forces bombing Gaza borrowed from kaiserx30.

Quick review: Murder in Samarkand by Craig Murray

Murder in Samarkand: A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror by Craig Murray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a strange book – part political thriller, part confessional, part sexcapade. He isn’t a journalist and not really a hero, more like a normal person with faults but decides to not be part of the lies that feed the horrific work of US and British politicians and military strategists (terrorists). I was hoping it would be grittier.

View all my reviews

Fear, the Official Story

Every year those who relish a particular taste
pry open this wound using blunt instruments
such as a butter knife or a spoon.
Nothing surgical, for they want the mess
to be visible to everyone. See how it hurts.

It is a strange wound felt
deeply by all who saw its birth
televised. Distances conquered
by grief via satellite.

I remember that disbelief,
texture of leather
in the back of my throat.
Then just as quickly came the fear
of who might be blamed.

The hows and whys and whos
that led to the wound were officially declared
but never put to rest.
Repetition turned to religion.

The wound itself became reason enough
to inflict misery a thousandfold greater.
Years later we are told again
this wound alone matters.

Let nothing get in the way
of this crucifixion.

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This was written in September 2008.

“The Disneyfication of War” – George Monbiot

I read this article years ago and just recently bumped into it again.  Thought it was a good read then and hopefully it still is  now.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE

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The Disneyfication of war allows us to ignore its real savagery

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24^th October 2006.

Most of our memorials sentimentalise war. Few commemorate the horror. But now we have a new category, whose purpose seems to be to trivialise it.

Last week a vast bronze sculpture was unveiled in Montrose on the east coast of Scotland by Prince Andrew. It depicts a hero of the second world war, wearing a seaman’s cap, who was decorated with “the equivalent of the George Cross”. It’s a bit late, perhaps, but otherwise unsurprising – until I tell you that the hero was a dog. The statue depicts a St Bernard called Bamse, which reputedly rescued two Norwegian sailors. It is the latest manifestation of the new Cult of the Heroic Animal.

The Imperial War Museum is currently running an exhibition called “The Animals’ War”. It features stuffed mascots, tales of the “desperate plight” of 200 animals trapped by the fighting in Iraq, and photos of dogs wearing gas masks. It tells us about the “PDSA Dicken Medal – the Animals’ Victoria Cross”, which has been awarded to 23 dogs, 32 pigeons, three horses and one cat for “acts of conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in wartime.” The museum resounds with cries of “aaah!” and “how sweet!”. War is now cute.

Last year, Disney released an animation called Valiant, about the heroics of a group of messenger pigeons in World War Two. In 2004, a vast sculpture was unveiled by Princes Anne in Park Lane in London, called “Animals at War”. It cost £1.5 million, and it is dedicated “to all the animals that served and died alongside British and Allied Forces in wars and campaigns throughout time … From the pigeon to the elephant they all played a vital role in every region of the world in the cause of human freedom. Their contribution must never be forgotten.” In Liverpool there are now two statues commemorating a dog – Jet – used to find victims of air raids in the Second World War.

I have no objection to remembering the suffering of animals. If someone started a subscription for a statue of a battery pig or a broiler chicken (conveniently forgotten by almost everyone) I might even contribute. But the emphasis given to animals’ suffering in war suggests a failure to acknowledge the suffering of human beings. The tableau in Park Lane carries the justifying motto “They had no choice”. Nor did the civilians killed in Iraq, the millions of women raped over the centuries by soldiers, or the colonial subjects who died of famine or disease in British concentration camps. You would scour this country in vain for a monument to any of them.

Bamse has been dead for 62 years. Both the Park Lane memorial and the exhibition at the Imperial War Museum were inspired by a book by Jilly Cooper – the patron saint of English bourgeois sentiment – called Animals in War(4,5). But it was first published in 1983. It is only since the invasion of Iraq that this disneyfication of war seems to have become a major industry.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

Egyptian Authorities Allow Themselves to be Israel’s Border Cops

The Egyptian government has disrupted a convoy of solidarity activists bringing needed humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. Members of Viva Palestina report that officials stopped buses carrying part of the group’s delegation as they attempted to cross into the Sinai region on the way to the Rafah border crossing, where activists plan to enter Gaza with their aid convoy.

From SOCIALISTWORKER.org

For ongoing updates, visit the Viva Palestina-U.S. Web site.

Solidarity activists in the U.S. are preparing for possible protests outside Egyptian embassies and consulates if the convoy isn’t allowed to travel. Contact organizations locally for more details.

Contact the Egyptian embassy and ask that the Viva Palestina convoy be allowed to make its journey to Gaza without further delays. Call 202-966-6342, fax 202-244-4319 and e-mail embassy@egyptembdc.org.

SocialistWorker.org reporter Eric Ruder and a number of contributors to this Web site are part of the Viva Palestina convoy. You can read blogs from some at TheSitch.com.

Bush’s ‘Smoking Gun’ Witness Found Dead

FROM A.N.S.W.E.R.

The cover-up of Bush-era crimes is taking a shocking but not unexpected turn. A fateful move has been made and it is certain to backfire.

A prisoner who was horribly tortured in 2002 until he agreed – at the demand of Bush torturers – to say that al-Qaeda was linked to Saddam Hussein is suddenly dead. Several weeks ago, Human Rights Watch investigators discovered the missing inmate and talked to him. He had been secretly transferred by the administration to a prison in Libya after having been held by the CIA both in secret “black hole prisons” and in Egypt.

Under conditions of extreme torture, the prisoner, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, agreed in 2002 to supply the Bush-ordered interrogators what they sought as a political cover for Bush’s marketing of the pending war of aggression against Iraq. Mr. Libi agreed to tell them whatever they wanted in exchange for an end to the torture. The now famous Torture Memos providing legal cover for the torture were written at the same time starting in the summer of 2002.

Libi’s tortured and knowingly fabricated testimony was the source of information used by Bush to sell the war to the U.S. Senate, and the source for Colin Powell’s bogus and lying presentation to the United Nations in 2003.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are now running around saying that the torture regime “protected the country from terrorist attack.” But the torture was used for the personal political goals of Bush and Cheney: namely, to sell their Iraq invasion to a very skeptical and disbelieving country.

Having been discovered by human rights investigators two weeks ago, Mr. Libi’s story coincided with the release of the Torture Memos and the growing clamor for criminal prosecutions of Bush officials.

His testimony is the smoking gun that would reveal that the torture regime was not for “national security” but for the personal political aims of Bush and Cheney.

He was Exhibit A in the indictment that alleges that tortured confessions and the contrived legal justifications of torture set up by Justice Department lawyers in July/August 2002 were central to the launch of the war against Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and tens of thousands of U.S. service members have either been killed or badly wounded in a war that was based on lies fortified and promoted by the most sadistic torture.

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I Crushed Your Life, Get on With It

Original image from Amnesty International

No apologies.  No legal action.  Anything goes.  Whatever you did in the past is water under the bloody bridge.

US President Obama’s statements regarding the CIA’s treatment of “terrorism suspects” is simply disgusting however you look at it.  It is consistent with what previous US administrations have done in the past century to people within American borders and those living in different parts of the world.  Can you hear the sound of rattling bones?

It seems forgetting is a disease that quickly latches on even the most seemingly pro-human rights political leaders of the world.  Is the time for dreaming and hoping over?

Imagine if the same policy were used throughout the world.  Orwell’s Animal Farm comes to mind.

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Obama accused of “condoning torture”

17 April 2009

US President Barack Obama has been accused of “condoning torture” following his announcement that CIA agents who used harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects will not be prosecuted.

Amnesty International has called on the US administration to initiate criminal investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for carrying out acts of torture, including waterboarding, in its “war on terror”.

“President Obama’s statements in the last days have been very disappointing. In saying that no one will be held to account for committing acts of torture, the US administration is in effect condoning torture,” said Daniel Gorevan, of Amnesty International’s Counter Terror with Justice campaign.

“It’s saying that US personnel can commit acts of torture and the authorities will not take any action against them.

Read the rest of the Amnesty International article.
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