Billie Eilish Announces “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour”
42 minutes ago
Sunday 3 April 2011
Tropical Waste - RADIO #6 // Feat. Les Back
Tracklist
There's no business like war business
Lies, hypocrisy and hidden agendas. This is what United States President Barack Obama did not dwell on when explaining his Libya doctrine to America and the world. The mind boggles with so many black holes engulfing this splendid little war that is not a war (a "time-limited, scope-limited military action", as per the White House) - compounded with the inability of progressive thinking to condemn, at the same time, the ruthlessness of the Muammar Gaddafi regime and the Anglo-French-American "humanitarian" bombing.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 has worked like a Trojan horse, allowing the Anglo-French-American consortium - and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - to become the UN's air force in its support of an armed uprising. Apart from having nothing to do with protecting civilians, this arrangement is absolutely illegal in terms of international law. The inbuilt endgame, as even malnourished African kids know by now, but has never been acknowledged, is regime change.
Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard of Canada, NATO's commander for Libya, may insist all he wants that the mission is purely designed to protect civilians. Yet those "innocent civilians" operating tanks and firing Kalashnikovs as part of a rag-tag wild bunch are in fact soldiers in a civil war - and the focus should be on whether NATO from now on will remain their air force, following the steps of the Anglo-French-American consortium. Incidentally, the "coalition of the wiling" fighting Libya consists of only 12 NATO members (out of 28) plus Qatar. This has absolutely nothing to do with an "international community".
The full verdict on the UN-mandated no-fly zone will have to wait for the emergence of a "rebel" government and the end of the civil war (if it ends soon). Then it will be possible to analyze how Tomahawking and bombing was ever justified; why civilians in Cyrenaica were "protected" while those in Tripoli were Tomahawked; what sort of "rebel" motley crew was "saved"; whether this whole thing was legal in the first place; how the resolution was a cover for regime change; how the love affair between the Libyan "revolutionaries" and the West may end in bloody divorce (remember Afghanistan); and which Western players stand to immensely profit from the wealth of a new, unified (or balkanized) Libya.
For the moment at least, it's quite easy to identify the profiteers.
The Pentagon
Pentagon supremo Robert Gates said this weekend, with a straight face, there are only three repressive regimes in the whole Middle East: Iran, Syria and Libya. The Pentagon is taking out the weak link - Libya. The others were always key features of the neo-conservative take-out/evil list. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, etc are model democracies.
As for this "now you see it, now you don't" war, the Pentagon is managing to fight it not once, but twice. It started with Africom - established under the George W Bush administration, beefed up under Obama, and rejected by scores of African governments, scholars and human rights organizations. Now the war is transitioning to NATO, which is essentially Pentagon rule over its European minions.
This is Africom's first African war, conducted up to now by General Carter Ham out of his headquarters in un-African Stuttgart. Africom, as Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University puts it, is a scam; "fundamentally a front for US military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give Africom credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention." ...
United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 has worked like a Trojan horse, allowing the Anglo-French-American consortium - and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - to become the UN's air force in its support of an armed uprising. Apart from having nothing to do with protecting civilians, this arrangement is absolutely illegal in terms of international law. The inbuilt endgame, as even malnourished African kids know by now, but has never been acknowledged, is regime change.
Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard of Canada, NATO's commander for Libya, may insist all he wants that the mission is purely designed to protect civilians. Yet those "innocent civilians" operating tanks and firing Kalashnikovs as part of a rag-tag wild bunch are in fact soldiers in a civil war - and the focus should be on whether NATO from now on will remain their air force, following the steps of the Anglo-French-American consortium. Incidentally, the "coalition of the wiling" fighting Libya consists of only 12 NATO members (out of 28) plus Qatar. This has absolutely nothing to do with an "international community".
The full verdict on the UN-mandated no-fly zone will have to wait for the emergence of a "rebel" government and the end of the civil war (if it ends soon). Then it will be possible to analyze how Tomahawking and bombing was ever justified; why civilians in Cyrenaica were "protected" while those in Tripoli were Tomahawked; what sort of "rebel" motley crew was "saved"; whether this whole thing was legal in the first place; how the resolution was a cover for regime change; how the love affair between the Libyan "revolutionaries" and the West may end in bloody divorce (remember Afghanistan); and which Western players stand to immensely profit from the wealth of a new, unified (or balkanized) Libya.
For the moment at least, it's quite easy to identify the profiteers.
The Pentagon
Pentagon supremo Robert Gates said this weekend, with a straight face, there are only three repressive regimes in the whole Middle East: Iran, Syria and Libya. The Pentagon is taking out the weak link - Libya. The others were always key features of the neo-conservative take-out/evil list. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, etc are model democracies.
As for this "now you see it, now you don't" war, the Pentagon is managing to fight it not once, but twice. It started with Africom - established under the George W Bush administration, beefed up under Obama, and rejected by scores of African governments, scholars and human rights organizations. Now the war is transitioning to NATO, which is essentially Pentagon rule over its European minions.
This is Africom's first African war, conducted up to now by General Carter Ham out of his headquarters in un-African Stuttgart. Africom, as Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University puts it, is a scam; "fundamentally a front for US military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give Africom credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention." ...
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Pepe Escobar @'Asia Times'
Diraccone Diraccone
@ggreenwald it's amusing that it's okay to say "war on drugs" and "war on poverty" but once the military is involved it sure can't be a war
Saturday 2 April 2011
jonsnowC4 Jon Snow
So is Fukushima cover-up, or cock-up? How come 3 weeks on TEPCO still have so little clue as to what's going on in their shattered plant?
The Kill Team
Cpl. Jeremy Morlock with Staff Sgt. David Bram
Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji.Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging "savages" and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger.
Bravo Company had been stationed in the area since summer, struggling, with little success, to root out the Taliban and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. On the morning of January 15th, the company's 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields.
To provide perimeter security, the soldiers parked the Strykers at the outskirts of the settlement, which was nothing more than a warren of mud-and-straw compounds. Then they set out on foot. Local villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban, providing a safe haven for strikes against U.S. troops. But as the soldiers of 3rd Platoon walked through the alleys of La Mohammad Kalay, they saw no armed fighters, no evidence of enemy positions. Instead, they were greeted by a frustratingly familiar sight: destitute Afghan farmers living without electricity or running water; bearded men with poor teeth in tattered traditional clothes; young kids eager for candy and money. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of the villagers were sympathetic to the Taliban. The insurgents, for their part, preferred to stay hidden from American troops, striking from a distance with IEDs.
While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. "The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it," one of the men later told Army investigators.
The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution...
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Mark Boat @'Rolling Stone'
Vatican 'Porn' Collection to go Online
Fans of antique erotica, rejoice. The world's largest collection of pornography is about to be published on the web. Just make sure you have a credit card handy.
The Vatican Secret Archives announced yesterday plans to digitise a previously unacknowledged collection of prohibited materials.Kept hidden by an act of pontifical secrecy, the items, once decreed obscene, are being unveiled as part of a new papal directive on transparency.
The collection includes tens of thousands of drawings, frescoes, engravings, artifacts, and ephemera dating from the Reniassance back to classical antiquity.
Included in the materials available for a free but censored preview are an illuminated manuscript depicting the Song of Solomon and several illustrations of Mary Magdalene.
Profits to Defray Bankrupt Dioceses
Costs and pricing for full access to the online collection have not been finalized. Income generated from paying subscribers will be set aside in a special account administered by the Catholic Church.The account will be used to reimburse losses by churches that have decalred bankruptcy to eliminate their obligation to pay court judgements in sexual abuse cases.
Government, Industry Experts to Oversee Project
Funding for the collection's digitisation has been procured via an executive order from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has expressed a strong interest in "protecting our priceless cultural heritage." Berlusconi has appointed a confidential liaison to oversee the process.Age verification, credit card processing, and acount maintenance will be run by adult entertainment magnate Larry Flynt.
ioerror Jacob Appelbaum
Either everyone has free speech without prior restraint or no one does. Freedom is funny like that.
MMFlint Michael Moore
NOT APRIL FOOLS: NYT-top 25 hedge funds managers made $22 BIL in 2010 - or salaries of *441,400* Americans making $50,000 http://j.mp/hMX6pz
Smiley Culture's family demand answers from police over singer's death
A meeting between top Metropolitan police officers and members of the public descended into chaos and tears, as family and friends of the dead pop star Smiley Culture accused senior police chiefs of being "murderers".
A former senior adviser to the former London mayor Ken Livingstone also warned that the black community in Brixton was at "boiling point" after the 48-year-old pop star's "bizarre" death in police custody two weeks ago.
The musician, who had success in the 1980s with the singles Police Officer and Cockney Translation, died after officers came to search his house. According to a pathologist's report, Culture, whose real name was David Emmanuel, died from a single stab wound to the heart.
At the time of his death, reports suggested that Emmanuel had stabbed himself while going to make a cup of tea in the kitchen of his Surrey home.
The regularly scheduled meeting of the Metropolitan police authority, at city hall, became passionate and raucous after Tim Godwin, acting commissioner for the Met, tried to move proceedings on from Emmanuel's death.
Godwin told the MPA, the independent body that oversees policing in London, that it should not make a judgment about how Emmanuel died until the Independent Police Complaints Commission had finished its own investigation.
"It is wrong to jump to judgment either way until we see the evidence that is produced. And my sympathies are extended to the family and friends. I hope the investigation will be thorough and speedy and open to scrutiny at the end," he said.
Lee Jasper, senior policy adviser on equalities under Ken Livingstone's mayoralty, shouted from the public gallery: "Is there a letter of condolence? It would be nice, if you died in custody, would it not?"
Emmanuel's close friend, Asher Senator, cried "murderers" and "you're killing us". He was pulled away from the gallery by associates after becoming distraught. The meeting was adjourned as other members of the crowd began chanting "no justice, no peace" and more than a dozen people walked out in protest.
MPA member Cindy Butts was reduced to tears. "It has been 30 years since the Brixton riots and so much has changed but we have so much [still] to do," she said.
Speaking in the lobby of city hall after the meeting, Jasper said: "Smiley Culture was a friend of mine. We've had a suspicious death in custody and we want answers and we want them quick. So whatever process or investigation that they have, they better fast-track.
"Because I tell you what, you've got a black community here that are on boiling point and everybody needs to know that we're not simply going to lay back and wait for the long road of justice to deliver 15 years later. We want answers and we want them now."
Last week, more than 1,000 people attended a meeting at Lambeth assembly hall to discuss Emmanuel's death.
Also speaking in the lobby of city hall afterwards was Smiley Culture's nephew, Merlin Emmanuel, who said that they were calling for an independent inquiry. "We come here today because we want to get to the bottom of what happened to David Emmanuel," he said.
The music technology teacher from south-west London added: "We are not making any undue accusations but what I'd say is that he died in the most peculiar of circumstances and what's irrefutable is that the police have a duty of care to a suspect when in their custody. The police failed to enforce simple procedures and as a consequence my uncle, Smiley Culture, is dead."
Emmanuel's family said that they had commissioned an independent postmortem. The findings of this report are expected to be returned in the next few days. The family have also called a march on 16 April, which will head from south London towards New Scotland Yard.
Shiv Malik @'The Guardian'
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