via DN!

link

Since the recent tragedy that has befallen the proud and persevering nation of Haiti, there has been an outpouring of support followed by a few disturbing falsities being spread about the history of the island and its people. I wrote the following to shed some light on events during and around the Haitian Revolution. Please remember memorizing and reiterating should never pass for learning. Deciphering the significance of individuals and events is what truly teaches us not just about history, but also about ourselves.

There is a wide spectrum of beliefs behind what has caused Haiti to suffer ceaselessly over the years. Some see the problem as being mostly political, bad governance, modern day colonialism, and the perceived necessity to make an example to the world of what a successful slave revolution will get you. There are even those on the fringe who cling to an ancient superstition that the island was freed by a mythological pact with Satan (video) In order to shed light on the issue I am forced to go back in time. Obviously not to the beginning of occupational history, but far enough to give others a realistic perspective on Haiti and it’s struggle.

Ghosts of Vietnam

spotted at nahright.com

On November 20, 2009, at a Borders bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, Sarah Palin held a book signing event in support of “Going Rogue”. Palin’s supporters wanted her to run for the presidency, but they weren’t exactly sure what she’d do as president. Short on specifics, most of them were uncertain what her policy positions are. They just felt that they liked her. She’s “real”. And that the solution to all of our country’s problems—health care, energy, the deficit, unemployment, and the economy—was to cut taxes and lower spending, and Palin, they said, would solve them by doing just that.

courtesy of New Left Media

via Democracy Now

With the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks ago, best-selling journalist Naomi Klein examines the grass-roots movement behind the climate debate proposal that argues all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology—everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies—are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. Klein also discusses the 10th anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests and the 10th anniverary of her first book, “No Logo.”

via, more @ PBS

Longtime investigative journalist and Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman talked to industry insiders, lobbyists, politicians and consumer advocates about how to reform the way the consumer loan industry has done business for decades.

Between Acorns and Blackwater by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Origins of ‘Counter-Terror’

Government terror teams are nothing new. My father-in-law, Andy McKevitt, who is 98 years old, remembers British soldiers leaving their barracks at night, dressing as civilians, and murdering IRA leaders.

The Brits would gather the wives and children of missing IRA leaders in the barn and burn it down, shooting anyone who ran outside to escape the flames. The idea was to send a message to the community at large – support the IRA and you’re horribly dead.

All the CIA did in Vietnam was to formalize this venerable practice, and give its terror teams a cutesy name: Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRU).

Three CIA officers were instrumental in developing the PRU in South Vietnam. The first, Edward Lansdale, managed a successful anti-communist counterinsurgency in the Philippines in the early 1950s.

His innovation was using “combat psywar” tactics to exploit the religious beliefs and superstitions of the Filipinos. In one case designed to terrorize the local people into supporting the government against the communists (Huks), Lansdale sent in a combat psywar team to plant stories among town residents that a vampire lived on the hill where the Huks were based.

In his 1972 memoir, In the Midst of War, Lansdale wrote:

“Two nights later, after giving the stories time to circulate among Huk sympathizers in the town and make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along a trail used by the Huks.

“When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatchedthe last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail.

“When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the vampire had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on the hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.”1

Former advertising executive Lansdale used language to construct a squeaky-clean, Boy Scout image in the U.S., behind which he masked a perverse delight in atrocity. He defined the above incident as “low humor” and “an appropriate re­sponse … to the glum and deadly practices of communists and other authoritarians.”2

Lansdale’s combat psywar operations relied on other forms of terror. In the Phil­ippines, his teams would creep into town and paint an eye (copied from the Egyptian eye that appears atop the pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States) on a wall facing the house of each suspect.

As Lansdale writes, “The mysterious presence of these ma levolent eyes the next morning had a sharply sobering effect.”3

In South Vietnam, Lansdale’s Eye of God trick would take a ghastly twist. CIA officer Pat McGarvey told Seymour Hersh that “some psychological warfare guy in Washington thought of a way to scare the hell out of villagers. When we [by which he meant counter-terror teams composed of Americans] killed a VC there, they wanted us to spread eagle the guy, put out his eye, cut a hole in the back [of his head] and put his eye in there. The idea was that fear was a good weapon.”4

As one American counter-terrorist told me, “We left our calling card nailed to the forehead of the corpses we left behind. They were playing card size with a light green skull with red eyes and red teeth dripping blood, set against a black background. We hammered them into the third eye, the pituitary gland, with our pistol butts. The third eye is the seat of consciousness for Buddhists, and this was a form of mutilation that had a powerful psychological effect.”

The purpose of terror tactics like these is to drive people into a state of infantile dependence on the authority they fear. CIA psywar spells are also meant to fracture a society into opposing factions and project their repressed homicidal impulses onto the “Other.” This is what happened after 9/11 – and is continuing today with the wild conspiracy theories of Fox News’ Glenn Beck.

via

President Obama has decided to abandon the Bush administration’s so-called “missile-defense” system in Eastern Europe. The Wall Street Journal reports the White House based its decision on an assessment Iran’s long-range missile program hasn’t significantly progressed. The move marks one of the Obama administration’s sharpest reversals of a major Bush administration foreign policy to date. The Bush White House claimed the missile system was intended to thwart a potential Iranian attack. But critics widely denounced it as a first-strike weapon for hitting Iran or other targets. Although it’s halted the program, the White House is reportedly open to a revival if Iran’s capabilities improve.

Circle of Sameness

via NYMag

…kids are getting busted in the city in record numbers. Guess which kids…

via DN this morning. Read “Minority Death Match: Jews, Blacks and the ‘Post-Racial’ Presidency” by Naomi Klein

Barack Obama talks to students about taking personal responsibility for their education and not falling back when things get tough. Don’t let failures define you, let it teach you. I’ll definitely cosign that. Strong message to the youth of America (even with the horribly out of sync video). link

Not really. But really. It’s metaphorical I reckon.

Link

In early August, a protester came to a raucous Tennessee congressional forum packing heat. Days later, President Obama’s healthcare event in New Hampshire was marred by a protester posing for cameras with a pistol and sign reading, “It is time to water the tree of liberty” — a reference to a Thomas Jefferson quote promising violence. And this past week, 12 armed men — including one with an assault rifle — not only showed off their firearms at Obama’s Arizona speech, but broadcast a YouTube video threatening to “forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the strength of the majority.”

These and other similar examples are accurately summarized with the same language federal law employs to describe domestic terrorism. Generating maximum media attention, the weapons-brandishing displays are “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” Yes, the gun has been transformed from a sport and self-defense device into a tool of mass bullying. Like the noose in the Jim Crow South, its symbolic message is clear: If you dare engage in the democratic process, you risk bodily harm.

spotted @ BB, (via Economist)