I Know The Feeling
Oct 22, 2009 Opinion, Political
I have read where a bunch of musicians are upset that their “music” was used for torture, or to “enhance” torture. REM , Nine Inch Nails, Roseanne Cash, and Bonnie Raitt have all protested the use of music in this way. But there’s a problem- what is the definition of “music”?
I mean, some of what I hear these days sounds like some people whipping cats- and that is, I would guess the “good stuff”, or at least the stuff that radio stations play. It is really hard to tell the good music from the dreck- perhaps they manicure the fingernails that are dragged across the chalkboard. Regardless, the minstrels are pissed.
A coalition of high-profile musicians has endorsed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn which songs the U.S. military and security agencies used during interrogations and torture of detainees, theWashington Post reportedThursday. The group includes Rosanne Cash, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and members of Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and the Roots.
“I think every musician should be involved,” Cash said. “It seems so obvious. Music should never be used as torture.” She said she felt “absolute disgust” when she heard that military personnel had blasted songs for hours and days on end to “enhance” interrogations. “It’s beyond the pale. It’s hard to even think about.”
politicsdaily.com
Oh gosh, I know- it’s just disgusting that these people should be called musicians- after all, their true calling has caused these terrorists real pain. So obviously they are talented at doing that at least- causing pain, that is- music, maybe not so much.
Let’s face it Roseanne, if music was soothing and pleasant, it would not be any good for torture, so we really have to thank all of you punk, grunge, heavy metal and other “alternative” musicians for providing the means to make these scumbags scream and weep, until they tell all. Now that’s cool.
After all, providing pleasure for people, well, that’s boring, but pain? You musicians may have stumbled into a new niche- “Pain/Rock”. Just what I needed.
In a statement, REM said: “We have spent the past 30 years supporting causes related to peace and justice. To now learn that some of our friends’ music may have been used as part of the torture tactics without their consent or knowledge, is horrific. It’s anti-American, period.”
Other artists to sign up to the coalition include Jackson Browne, Steve Earle, Roseanne Cash, Billy Bragg, Bonnie Raitt and Rage Against The Machine.
On behalf of the campaign, the National Security Archive in Washington is filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking classified records that detail the use of loud music as an interrogation device.
bighollywood.breitbart.com
Yo, Trent, Bonnie- newsflash- it’s not just your friend’s music that has been used- it is also yours. Because let’s face it- you pretty much suck as musicians. I know, because when I come home (and I live in a rural section of Texas) I still have to listen all too often to your music, and those of the people mentioned above, and believe me, I know why they picked your “music” to enhance the torture experience- they have little else to do but put the CD on and walk away.
Even through five acres of woods, the horrible screeching sounds of your noise come through, disturbing the wildlife, as my drunken (and quite possibly meth- addicted ) neighbor turns the volume up to 11 to cover his lasting disappointment after yet another day of beating his old lady and changing tires at the local tire shop.
So I know why they use the noise- I can no longer bring myself to call what you do music- it is not- but apparently CD sales are brisk at Camp Delta.
Thank your lucky stars that somebody’s buying what you are shoveling-
Or you’d be back asking if someone wanted fries with that.
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Tags: eminem, gitmo, musical interrogations, terrorists
Terrorists, Coming To A Neighborhood Near You
Jun 15, 2009 Political
And maybe even yours…
Barack Obama showed a lack of maturity and leadership by setting a date certain that club Gitmo will be shut down. Now he is finding that all the Hope and Change chants are not getting other countries to take the inmates. Now he is running out of time and he needs to do something with the terrorists. Obama has not ruled out bringing these people to the United States:
A White House spokesman says the Obama administration hasn’t decided whether or not to release Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama has made clear “we’re not going to make any decision about transfer or release that threatens the security of this country.”
Asked if that meant he was ruling out releasing any detainees in the United States, Gibbs said: “I’m not ruling it in or ruling it out.” AP
Obama has stated that he would not release anyone dangerous into the US. That is easy for him to say since he lives in a gated community with about 30,000 people working to keep him safe. He also rides around in an armored car. He will be safe, his wife will be safe and his little girls will be safe. The rest of us will be targets.
We should not be letting these people out into our country and if they must be released here they should be released in the White House and the neighborhoods of prominent Democrats.
Obama made a mistake and now we will have to live with it. If one of these people is released in the US and causes harm Obama should be brought up on charges of treason.
This is what you get when you allow amateurs to run the place.
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Tags: gitmo, Obama, release, terrorists
Cassandra
May 22, 2009 Political
Cassandra was a mythical figure in Greek mythology- a favored priestess of the god Apollo, she resided in the city of Troy, in the temple of Apollo, where she could foretell the future to all who requested an audience. She fell out of favor with the god Apollo, because she would not submit to his amorous advances.
When that happened, Apollo cursed her , that she could foretell the future, but that no one would believe her ever again. As it happened, the Greeks had a little spat with the Trojans, recounted in the Iliad, by the Greek author Homer, and in this fight, which supposedly lasted twenty years, Cassandra made prediction after prediction, but no one believed.
At the end of the war, after twenty years had passed, the Greeks were tired, and resorted to trickery. They built a giant horse, into which went their best warriors, hidden. The rest of the armada pretended to sail away, and the trojans, awakening and seeing the giant horse, and no Greeks, came to the conclusion that they had won, and the horse was an offering to the Gods, or the Trojans (it’s unclear really who was the true intended recipient), and a peaceful offering.
Over Cassandra’s vocal protests that this horse meant doom for all Trojans, the horse was wheeled into the Walled city of Troy, and at night, during the celebrating, the hidden Greeks slipped out and, with the other Greeks who had come back under cover of darkness, killed all within Troy, or so it is written.
Former vice President Dick Cheney is the Cassandra of today’s world- he talks of terrorism (and yes, Virginia, it IS still called terrorism) that came to our shores and of terrorism that still yearns to make us very dead. He speaks from experience, experience that Skinny B and his posse DO NOT HAVE in dealing with terrorists, as evidenced by the rampant backpedaling B has had to do in the Gitmo “closings”.
“Nine-eleven caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated. Throughout the 90s, America had responded to these attacks, if at all, on an ad hoc basis. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact – crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.
That’s how it seemed from a law enforcement perspective, at least – but for the terrorists the case was not closed. For them, it was another offensive strike in their ongoing war against the United States. And it turned their minds to even harder strikes with higher casualties. Nine-eleven made necessary a shift of policy, aimed at a clear strategic threat – what the Congress called “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” From that moment forward, instead of merely preparing to round up the suspects and count up the victims after the next attack, we were determined to prevent attacks in the first place.” Weekly Standard
As counterpoint to Skinny B’s watery speech, in which he prevaricated about the terror situation, and preferred his favorite childish tactic, which was pointing to the Bush administration twenty- eight times either by name or by implication, Dick Cheney didn’t truly criticize the present administration, instead, plainly making the case of why our vigilance can not be relaxed.
“Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and our job was to stop it. We didn’t know what was coming next, but everything we did know in that autumn of 2001 looked bad. This was the world in which al-Qaeda was seeking nuclear technology, and A. Q. Khan was selling nuclear technology on the black market. We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.
These are just a few of the problems we had on our hands. And foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass – a 9/11 with nuclear weapons.” Weekly Standard
It is no accident that Dick Cheney’s popularity is growing as more and more people are becoming uneasy with this know- nothing poseur in the White House, and his crew of blame-the-victim liberals spending all their time trying to minimize any reference to terror. Calling something a “man caused disaster” will not make the deaths any less horrible, and deleting the term “terrorist”, or “enemy combatant” from our vocabulary will not cause them to either like us more, or kill us less.
“So we’re left to draw one of two conclusions – and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event – coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.
The key to any strategy is accurate intelligence, and skilled professionals to get that information in time to use it. In seeking to guard this nation against the threat of catastrophic violence, our Administration gave intelligence officers the tools and lawful authority they needed to gain vital information. We didn’t invent that authority. It is drawn from Article Two of the Constitution. And it was given specificity by the Congress after 9/11, in a Joint Resolution authorizing “all necessary and appropriate force” to protect the American people.” Weekly Standard
If you note the first sentence in that second paragraph, you will begin to see the problem we now have vis-a-vis this current administration, as all the Liberal socialists there seem hell- bent on castrating our intelligence services, beginning with the Speaker of the House, but not limited to her alone.
Perhaps, if everyone listened to Dick Cheney a little more, and Skinny B a little less, then the similarity between Cheney and Cassandra would end at having the same first letter in their names, rather than their shared voices in the wilderness.
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Tags: cheney, gitmo, Pelosi, terrorists, truth
Bag and Tag
May 11, 2009 Political
Barama has vowed to close Gitmo, the place outside of the United States where we have kept the terrorists that we managed to pick up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. These people were not haphazardly picked up for the heck of it, yanked off of their streets for “walking while Arab”- no, they were detained for actively fighting against the U.S., and were deemed to have intel that might help keep the U.S. safe. These are not impulsive decisions, decided on the spur of the moment, but considered case by case, since the room available at Gitmo is finite.
For years these people have been sequestered at Gitmo, and now the Resident has decided that we must let them go, or put them in U.S. prisons, neither of which is a good idea on its own, although if you are going to put them in prisons, they should be released into the general population, so that the prison population can show these people the error of their ways.
If, however, the decision is reached to allow these people to go back to their country of origin, they should be tagged with GPS transmitters, so we know where they are at all times. Perhaps then we could track them back to their terror cells and begin to clean up this extremist mess we have now.
It has been proved that many of these Arab terrorists revert to their old ways when they go back, and some have been re- caught, or killed on the battlefield when they were returned.
I know the argument that no country wants them, or if they are returned to their home country, that they will be tortured or killed- does anybody really care? If you play with the big boys, be prepared to play for keeps. These are people who want to die- I say, why not? This way, we will clear out Gitmo, keep track of these people, and if they are killed by their home country, oh well.
This is a problem of Barama’s own making- he should not have opened his big mouth until he had a plan, but now he is being told by both Republican and Democrat lawmakers that these terrorists should not be put into prisons in their states, so his options are limited.
Some of the liberals are saying that some of these detainees are completely innocent- who truly believes this? Really? That is an assumption, and we all know what happens when you assume. These liberal idiots are even saying that we should admit these people into the U.S. and give them welfare, so they can get used to life in the United States. Great, as long as they can live in Georgie Soros’ home, or next door to Pelosi- they can exchange waterboarding techniques.
I personally do not care about the detainees welfare- at all. Their lives are so far down my list of concerns, that they don’t even make page 23. I do care about the security of these United States, and I am more than willing to tag these POS terrorists, and release them back into the thick of things just to see where they go.
I do know one thing- the CIA needs no handcuffs on its ability to find and kill these terrorists, and Barama has now taken some of our abilities off of the table in a misguided and idiotic attempt to make the terrorists like us. What a canard- does ANYBODY without dementia believe this is a good idea?
If this is what our Pretender-in-Chief has in mind for prisoners, then I recommend a no prisoners policy- just make sure these people can’t harm us ever again.
There is one sure way to do that, and it’ll save us space in our prisons and be able to close Gitmo- just shoot them all. If you don’t have the guts to do that, then you had better re-think the Gitmo option, because doing nothing is not an option we have the luxury of considering.
Kind and fuzzy is not going to cut it either.
Come on- pick an option- grow some stones and quit looking at your tele- prompter- think for yourself, but by God, think of the safety of this country before you open your mouth and sound like an idiot.
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Tags: gitmo, GPS, liberal idiocy, terrorists
What Is Torture?
May 9, 2009 Political
This is the question du jour- actually more like the question of the year(s). In 2002, President Bush wanted to know the answers to that question and some questions related to that primary query. How do you define torture- is it something that produces excruciating pain and fear, or does this definition extend to discomfort?
Were the captured terrorists on the battlefield due the Geneva protocols, since they were not part of a Nation- State’s army, wore no uniforms, and behaved according to no code of ethics? These people came from various places, much like mercenaries, but unlike mercenaries, they did not wear a country’s uniform. The only way in which they were similar was in their hate for the West, and the United States in particular.
The fighters, as has been said, had no code of ethics, where they might protect the innocent as best as they could, rather, they used these innocent women and children as human shields in the way of cowards. They were not warriors- far from it- but like dogs cowering behind protection, they would boast in their videos that they could defeat their enemy. What pompous asses they were and are.
So what do you do with creatures like these? President Bush asked several lawyers to draw up legal opinions on the treatment of these terrorists, keeping in mind the Geneva Protocols regarding armed combat. The trouble with this, was that the Geneva Convention didn’t really address this situation- it was outdated with respect to the treatment of what should be called “extra- national” combatants- people who might fight for a cause but not a country.
There had always been an extra element of danger as regards the absence of a uniform- a person had no Geneva Convention protections, because then a person was treated as a spy, and the treatment was much rougher, and could (and often did) include torture. So were these people spies, because they wore no uniform? The legal minds, as they often do, split hairs. The Taliban and Al- Qaida fighters were somewhere in between, hiding among the innocent populace like cowards, but they definitely were not covered by the Geneva Convention and its rules.
So, since they were not one thing- spies- and were not regular army, the legal minds felt that perhaps, while we don’t torture, we could tweak their questioning somewhat. Now came the wrangling of just what constitutes torture. Is it physical pain, disfigurement, permanent disability? That was an easy yes, so scratch that- but what about perceived pain, anticipatory pain, or mental distress? Those are harder problems to deal with, because they are subjective- what bothers one will not bother another.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? This is what lawyers do, and these lawyers did their job, to the best of their abilities, to try and realistically find answers to these ambiguous questions. This was not an easy job, because no matter the final answers they gave, someone would object, as we can see now.
It turns out that the real objections are political, not moral- just observe Nancy Pelosi, who knew in 2002 that these methods were being used, and her question then was not some moral objection, no- her question was, ” Is it enough?” In the wake of 9/11, she wanted to be sure that we wouldn’t be struck again- but now, with several years distance between her and 9/11, she has conveniently “forgotten” her acceptance, and just wants to use this problem for her own political gain.
The lawyers are the ones caught in the middle here, and they are not deserving of this- what they did, they did as well and faithfully as they could, not with venom and spite, seeking to gleefully inflict pain, but to find where the definition of torture lay, and how far we, as a nation, could go in trying to protect ourselves and still keep the moral high ground. This was a question that, considering the paradigm shift in warfare and terrorism that had occurred, needed to be defined and delineated for future use.
Now, I personally do not believe that water boarding is torture- it is extreme discomfort, but then these people deserve some extreme discomfort. I do not believe that putting a caterpillar in a box with a prisoner is torture, even if he is extremely scared of the insect. I believe that these people are getting some of what they deserve, because you have to understand one thing-
These people were not just picked up off of a street, they had been fighting and killing our armed forces, sometimes in cowardly ways. They would torture, and they would behead our troops. The treatment we have put them through doesn’t even come close to their activities. If you are too squeamish to handle the details, perhaps you need to read the comics, and do not read the news, because there need to be people who will do the rough stuff that is needed to protect our nation, or we won’t have a nation.
That is a fact that most liberals fail to grasp- we will not keep our selves safe by trying to be universally liked- that is a strategy that just does not work. Sometimes you have to show that you are willing to be disliked, in order to be secure. All these lawyers did was to try and find the limits to which we would go to be secure.
They cannot be faulted for that.
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Tags: lawyers, liberal cowards, terrorists, torture